The Twice-Dead King: Ruin (Warhammer 40,000) [Paperback] Crowley, Nate

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This immortality involved ‘biotransference’ – giving the necrontyr (all of them) advanced self-repairing metal bodies and in the process incinerating their mortal organic forms . . . and, as it happened, also their souls. They would no longer have hearts to beat, lungs to breath with. All of this proved much to the necrontyr’s eternal regret – but they were now no longer the necrontyr: they were the necrons. From now on they would forever wake up in a hollow metal shell and see the world through oculars instead of eyes. The extent to which they ‘miss’ – to put it in the mildest possible way – their organic selves is part of the body horror themes of this novel. There are a number of gut-wrenching moments (save in the presence of our Necron friends of course) where Oltyx is confronted by the existential horror of reality as an everyday Necron, stripped of one’s self and senses, that are so raw and agonising for him that as a reader it feels almost intrusive to witness them. When the people he knew begin to horrifically degrade, we feel Oltyx’s revulsion, and his own shame for feeling this. We experience the reality of relationships existing over aeons – the grind of grievances maintained over the lifetimes of countless brief mortals, and the nova-like brightness of hope when past loyalties are rekindled. When a writer makes you feel empathy for a being made to wage war you know they have the skills to tell a story that will be read by Necron fans for ages. Hunted by the Human armada, the new king is fighting a loosing battle to lead what is left of his deathless people into a new beginning. Sacrificing his enemies, his vanguard, his friends and even the base matter of the very void ship carrying them towards salvation, all in vain to avert the looming shadow that is throwing his hopes and ambitions into darkness.

The book follows the tale of Nomarch Oltyx, disgraced heir to the Ithakas Dynasty, in his exile on the fringe planet of Sedh. But even there, on the edge of the dynasty, a plethora of enemies rise to meet the Necrons, not just from the myriad of lesser races, but also from within. Oltyx soon finds that his fight may not be to save just his planet, but his entire dynasty. In the chaotic and war-striven future of the 41 st millennium, many powerful and dangerous races fight for domination and destruction. However, no race is more mysterious or feared than the immortal beings known as the Necrons. The Necrons are an ancient and ruthless race who, thousands of years ago, sacrificed their mortality and humanity to defeat a powerful enemy as well as death itself. Forced into thousands of years of hibernation after their great victory, the Necrons are now slowly awakening to reclaim their empire by destroying all life in the galaxy.

Oltyx arrives to a barren planet drazar but it's rumored to be home of a giant colony of flayed ones.

Llenó y sobrepasó mis expectativas. Incluso en algunos aspectos me sentí identificado con algunos elementos de la historia. Oltyx makes blunders: he kills his closest advisors and is cruel when he doesn't need to be. He, as mentioned, makes no plans and has no long-term goals. But, as a reader (listener since I had the audiobook), I didn't feel like this was wholly his fault. The narration is so close to him and focused on the desparation to survive another day that his faults are not fully laid bare to the reader. Instead of seeing the slow decay, until the very end of the book, I kept wondering "oh ho, how will Oltyx escape *this* scrape". But then the numbers in his control dwindle down to nothing and he is broken in both mind and body. It was only at this point that I realized I had not been reading a space romp but instead the tragedy showcasing the slow destruction of a people due to the hubris of their leader. The only con I can say this book has is its frequent use of WH40k and (mostly) necron terms and names. Yet the majority of social interaction in this book isn’t even external, but internal. Oltyx has five subordinate minds – or subminds: elements of his personality partitioned and given a kind of slaved semi-independence. These subminds – named Doctrinal, Analytical, Strategic, Combat and Xenology – all speak in different fonts. Doctrinal is the most pompous and stuffy, obstinately set on doing things the “right way”, Strategic is straightforward and martial, while Xenology is as obsessed with biological races as it is repulsed. And Analytical simply loves statistics and has zero awareness of how they might be received. Combat, in contrast, can only communicate in barks and grunts.

Necrontyr culture, both pre- and post-transference is explored in wonderful detail, and it is illuminating to see what aspects were retained once they’d been granted cursed immortality. Like the Imperium of Man, and indeed the various Eldar factions, the Necrons in 40K are a doomed society in decline, raging against the dying of the light and trying to keep hold of their rapidly fading grandeur, and this novels highlights how, like these ‘peers’, it’s largely their own hubris that puts them in this position. The Necrons in this book dub anything living as part of the ‘Unclean’, which stems from a revulsion of the physical form as much as anything else, though the contempt that they view the lesser races in is palpable. Hidebound by inevitable and necessary(?) hierarchies as much as the Imperium is, Necron society as depicted in this book is a rich playground for storytelling. Tonally different to Crowley’s previous Necron work, as well as Rath’s Necron novel, Ruin has a lightness running throughout it that belies the profound sadness it sometimes has; it’s easy reading but isn’t afraid to get heavy on the pseudo-science or actual emotional heft. A subreddit for the lore and stories encompassing the dark future of the Warhammer 40,000 franchise The hero of the story is Oltyx, “a Necron royal who was once heir to the throne of the mighty Ithakas Dynasty, before being cast into disgrace by his former kin and exiled to the empire’s edge”. The lore exploration of the Flayer virus is another highlight. It hobbles the Necrons in interesting ways and the story creates a rational explanation for the affliction, rather than bad batches of gene seed certain Space Marine chapters suffer from. The horror element to the flayer virus also gets some play.

Ruin is a straightforward story about a decaying dynasty no longer capable of responding to the existential threat that is the Imperium of Man. The protagonist's plot is also very simple one about a reconciliation of brothers. Pride is everything for the dynastic kings of the Necron race, who have awakened after millennia to see their empires occupied by foul beasts and simple minds. For the Necron Lord Oltyx, the Ithakas dynasty was his by right, but the machinations of the court see him stripped of his position and exiled to a forgotten world. Follow the exploits of Oltyx, who, having finally been granted the throne of the Ithakas Dynasty, now faces far greater threats, from within and without. He soon learns that the lessons of kingship are not quite what he had hoped. It’s not all cerebral storytelling, mind- there’s no way the author wrote, say, the combat scenes in chapter 17, without anything other than a big stupid grin on his face- they’re so deliciously OTT, taking full advantage of the ridiculous capabilities of high-ranking Necrons. Everything is set up really nicely for the story to be continued, but it works well as a stand-alone novel, one where some knowledge of the setting would be desirable but not essential.With Richard Reed returning to the Necrons as a narrator I had high expectations, which he met. His work on ," The infinite and the divine," Being what got me into 40k in general. He shows great range in characters and their corrupt voices. His performance alone makes this a must have. Nabokov said in his Lectures on Literature that writers are storytellers, teachers and enchanters – but that major writers are primarily enchanters, with the magic of their art present in “the very bones of the story, in the very marrow of thought.” Nate is such a craftsman, spinning bright, ephemeral threads of self and future, illuminating for us the reality of an alien mind entombed in a metal, eternal body. He works so artfully that we feel viscerally the terrible pain of Oltyx’s existence, gasp at the phantom horror of lungs unable to breathe, burn with shame at the fall of the once vaunted and glow with pride for the deconstructed minds that we (and he) come to love and respect. Is it me, or did it seem like, throughout the book, Valgul was used sort of like a legend, and was implied not to ever have really existed? And then, at the end, Oltyx took up the mantle of Flayer King in the ruins of Drazak? I had the time of my life creating the characters who populate this story, and they’re an eclectic bunch. Oltyx must contend with the mad Phaeron Unnas, who disowned and disgraced him, as well as Djoseras, the heir who replaced Oltyx,” Nate tells us.

Each beam was a malediction written in neutrinos: a simple hekatic proclamation, decreeing the non-existence of the target's mind. In the case of the orks, the proclamations were very simple indeed, amounting to little more than ' my brain has ended'. I was genuinely surprised with how good it was. don't get me wrong, it is not that I expected it to be bad, but Nate Crowley elevated the setting, characters to that illustrious four star level of quality. As I have mentioned before when commenting on the necrons as characters, it is easy to write them badly. As either malfunctioning AI or as individuals who just happened to inhabit metallic bodies controlled Synaptic disintegrators are the weapons wielded by Deathmarks; we always knew they somehow killed the brain, but it was always thought to be some kind of beam that burned out synaptic connections. The reality is similar but has far more meaning--they're hekatic in nature as well. Have a quote: The necrons have no facial expressions or inflections of voice, so instead they found more technological ways to express emotional nuance in their new bodies: through the intensity of their core-fluxes, their ocular flaring, discharge node patterns, vocal buzz-tones, actuator signals, and the glyph-signifiers (e.g. a glyph for earnestness or hostility - essentially emojis!) and interstitial codes appended to their communication relays. An excellent sequel to an already excellent. Rich character development with a lot of action. The main characters are "humanized" quite capably while remaining alien. The ambiguity in the ending is great and leaves me wanting more.

If you think this book might be a slightly greater challenge to read than the average SFF book, I’d agree. Expect to see many mentions of things like memetic and executive buffers, interstitial appendices, evocatory mediums, khets and decans, heka and pattern ataxia, crypteks and canopteks, core-fluxes, dysphorakh (I love the meaning of this one when it’s explored in-text), engrammancers, kynazhs and phaerons and nemesors and nomarchs (all high-ranking positions) . . . I think the book could perhaps have benefitted from a glossary. There were a bunch of words I had to look up – and most of these weren’t specifically 40k words at all, but just words and terms I wasn’t familiar with, often combined with words inspired by Ancient Egyptian language and culture.