The Enigma of Sisterhood

"He fashioned a path of mayhem and death across half the cosmos, leaving nothing but dust and darkness in his wake."

Writer: Richard Dinnick
Format: Short Story
Released: June 2017
Printed in: Myths & Legends 13

Featuring: Horus

Synopsis

Sutekh has ravaged the universe, bringing shame to his family and his people. The Osirans are travelling around the universe and Sutekh must be brought to justice for all of his crime. Horus leads the pack, but the answer lies in a pair of sisters...

Verdict

The Enigma of Sisterhood was sadly not the best of penultimate stories from the Myths & Legends collection! This volume certainly has had its ups and downs and I just hope that what has been a great read as a whole does not go out with a whimper. This one just wasn't for me though as there wasn't much at all that happened. It didn't really excite me and whilst I like the idea of a mini prelude to Pyramids of Mars, I felt that story was deserving of so much better. Now, even though Sutekh was mentioned on several occasions and his imprisonment of sorts provided the basis for the plot, the direction the adventure was heading in was not all that clear which made for quite difficult reading. I say difficult in the fact that I was struggling to maintain my interest as there weren't any familiar characters of significance and the only thing we had was the presence and consequences of the previous actions of Sutekh. One thing I did enjoy was the mention of Anubis as he would go on to have a very important role in the Titan Comics adventures of the Tenth Doctor. I'd have liked to have known more about him from this story but I guess the Titan stories fill in those gaps so there's no issues there. I just hope that Richard Dinnick was aware of the comics before writing and that's where he drew the name from. The myth or legend from which this story was based upon was something I had no idea about as I'm not the biggest expert when it comes to mythology, as my lack of knowledge of many of the bases for stories in the collection has shown! Horus sounded a good character and I liked how he was the one in charge and was almost the polar opposite as being his brother. The riddle was actually quite interesting and I enjoyed the plans to dissect it, but then Khonsu had worked out that the answer was her and her sister Bastet. Day flowed into night and it was they as representatives of the moon and the sun that were the answer. Hathor agreed that this was the correct decision and so Sutekh could be captured. And that was pretty much that. It was one of the shortest adventures in the book yet at just fourteen pages, including illustrations, and there just needed to be more time for an improved rating. I like the idea but the execution just lacked excitement which was a big shame. I didn't really like the first person narrative and I think it was just confusing to not even know whose point of view it was from until very near the story's end, and even then the unfamiliarity of the character just seemed like a little bit of a letdown. I just couldn't get into this story which I'm disappointed to say as I would have liked to actually have read some of the hunting Sutekh that led to him being captured in Egypt. I guess what we got here was important for the myth or legend though. Overall, an average tale.






Rating: 5/10