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

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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. Absolute garbage. Nate Crowley wrote a teen’s light fantasy novel about a royal youth in space struggling against his newfound burden of leadership and a deadly family secret. 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”. After three hundred years of exile to a dismal outpost of a once-great dynasty, necron lord Oltyx is mired in bitterness at his reduced circumstances. When a vast ork invasion turns out to be the sign of an even greater doom to come however, Oltyx realises that his only hope – for himself, and for the dynasty itself – is to return home and break his exile. Determined to at least make the attempt, he sets out to rouse his brother and father on the dynasty’s homeworld, regardless of the personal costs he knows he will incur.

The story is about a necron dynasty falling into entropy, and is from the perspective of outcast Necron Lord Oltyx. Nate Crowley is a fantastic writer, so I'm very happy to have read his perspective on murderous skeleton robots with existential angst. Warhammer 40k is fundamentally a pulpy setting, but Crowley does an exceptional job wringing pathos from what seem to be a fairly flat caricature in the form of the Necrons. While I'm not a stranger to the setting, I'm unfamiliar to the Necrons, but that's ok! I admit doing a little wiki-investigation to assuage some of my curiosity, but really Crowley does a good job establishing everything a reader needs to know without ever dipping into "deep lore" or a gratuitous use of in-universe jargon. A pesar de sentirme perdido en algunas partes, principalmente por no saber tanto de los necron, el libro me pareció una obra maestra. No solo es emocionante sino que tiene un trasfondo bastante profundo del que se puede sacar bastante contenido e incluso reflexión.The main character manages to both be relatable yet alien and the exploration of the characters is one of the best parts of it without ever bogging down the narrative. Ruin was also a pretty impressive entry in the overall Warhammer 40K canon, especially as it contains an outstanding look at one of the franchises more unique races, the Necrons, who are extremely underrepresented in the extended fiction. Crowley has done a brilliant job here with Ruin, and I loved the distinctive and compelling Warhammer 40K story it contained. The author has made sure to load up this book with a ton of detail, information and settings unique to this massive franchise, and fans will no doubt love immersing themselves in this cool lore. Ruin also contains several massive and well-written battle sequences that will easily remind readers of the table-top games that this franchise is built around and which really increase the epic nature of this novel. The immense amount of somewhat more obscure lore may turn off readers new to Warhammer 40K fiction. However, I think that most new readers can probably follow along pretty well here, especially as Crowley has a very descriptive and accessible writing style, and Ruin proves to be an excellent and compelling introduction to the Necrons.

For being the 2nd Necron book I've ever read, the 1st being The Infinite and the Divine, I have to say this is right on with the other in being amazing and well written. 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.

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Oltyx has taken his small fleet of surviving vessels out from the destruction of their crown world to flee a cleansing crusade by the Imperium of Man that doggedly pursues him at every turn. He narrowly escapes thier clutches multiple times, but never in a way that was set up in a satisfying manner. His drive is broken, but then he is saved by the presence of an ally from another kingdom that happens to have drive technology. He doesn't know where to go, but then is informed by a mentor that there is somewhere to go. Oltyx is floundering. Nate’s fresh perspective offers readers a very different view of the Warhammer 40,000 universe. He promises “familiar factions and concepts presented in a surprising new light”. The other major side character I want to talk about is Djoseras, Oltyx’s brother, who the protagonist blames for his exile. Djoseras is an excellent mentor character who was just as deeply impacted by the transition to a metal body as his brother. Despite Oltyx’s bitter memories about him, nothing about Djoseras is as cut-and-dry and you initially believe. Once you encounter him in person and see some additional memories for Oltyx, you really grow to appreciate Djoseras more, especially once you see him lead an army in battle. Oltyx’s multiple encounters with Djoseras add some outstanding emotional elements to the story, and each of his appearances were complex and compelling. Other side characters are introduced in this book, although most of them were only featured for a short time. However, they will probably have a bigger role in the future novels in this series, and Ruin serves as a good introduction to them. While still good, this wasn't as amazing to me as the first book. The pacing was off, there was less atmosphere and dread, less effective body horror. I wasn't anywhere near as enraptured as I was in the first book when Oltyx explores Antikef and finds Unnas.

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.This review is already getting too long so I’ll end it here. Suffice to say if you want a sci-fi story that is something different – yet within a familiar SFF literary structure; if you are eager to explore a non-human POV that isn’t simply a human POV in a funny nose and green skin; if you are attracted to the idea of Ancient Egyptian-themed, reanimating yet steadily degrading (physically and psychologically) advanced robotic constructs that used to be alien people, who are horrified by fl*sh and want to reclaim and defend their antediluvian dynasties and sacred tombs – and the legions of sarcophagi deep underground with inhabitants just waiting to awaken . . . if all this takes your interest, and especially if you want all that with splashes of body horror, you should definitely give this book a shot. This book is so good I've defected to the Necrons now and don't want to hear any more organic nonsense out of any of you. Experience the tumutluous reality of ruling a necron royal court and battling the the Imperium from the perspective of an necron lord whose mind is split into discrete partitions. 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. For me to like a story, I have to care about the protagonist. For me to love a story, it has to genuinely open up my mind to new ways of being, and new realities of existing. And the Twice Dead King does this - I was immediately hooked into the pride, the fear, the horror of existing throughout the cold expanse of aeons - who you are when your physical self has gone, and who the others are that you knew before.

Ruin" was a very enjoyable read. While, as a fan of 40K lore, I am relatively familiar with the Necrons. But, I can not claim a deep knowledge (as I have for the Imperium) and this book was a superb look into the thoughts and methods of the Necrons.

If you want something more in-depth to the origins of the necrons, you could do far worse than watch this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GuEka... 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