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

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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. Similarly, Oltyx achieves redemption by accepting his decay into the curse to desire flesh and to live as a "flayed one" - a robot that hungers for organic matter even though it has no means to digest it, so is cursed with an insatiable appetite. He accepts this at the end, but the acceptance seems almost academic, and it simultaneously gives him new power and abilities. We see this upsides of this choice, but not the downsides. I think a more satisfying arc would have shown him leaving one tragedy (his failed kingship) for another (the horrors of accepting this unquenchable, unthinking, and unrestrained thirst for blood). But as it stands, we simply see him failing at being a necron king and succeeding at being a flayed king. Reign is an epic and exciting sequel to the first The Twice-Dead King novel, and I had a brilliant time getting through this compelling and fantastic novel. This book has an excellent story that dives deep into the Warhammer 40,000 lore to explore one of the more mysterious races in the canon while focusing on a conflicted and damaged protagonist. Ruin is the first novel in The Twice-Dead King series, which looks set to explore the Necrons and their place in the current Warhammer 40K universe. This was the second Warhammer 40K novel from author Nate Crowley, who previously released the intriguing Ork-centric novel, Ghazghkull Thraka: Prophet of the Waaagh!, as well as several short stories/novellas set in the universe. Crowley makes full use of his talent for getting into the mind of fictional aliens to create an excellent and enjoyable read that I had a wonderful time listening to. I would recommend this to anyone who enjoys Necron lore/books, or anyone wanting a perspective that isn’t from the imperium. I hadn’t listens to any Necron audiobooks until I listened to the infinite and the Devine, and then this which I both thoroughly enjoyed.

If you are like me who isn't that well versed in necron lore you will most likely have to pause and Google some things from time to time. But trust me, it's worth it! Peer into the into the bizarre culture and motivations of the Necrons in this great novel from Nate Crowley. The Twice-Dead King is a full-on epic for the Necrons,” Nate begins. “It plunges readers deep into the inner life of this gloriously tragic faction. It’s a tale of gothic, dynastic feuding with roots aeons deep and warfare on a genuinely titanic scale.” Oltyx knows he’s fighting a losing battle,” Nate says. “Even if he holds the line, his dynasty is crumbling behind him. It’s a bad situation.”It so many of those good good space opera tropes I love: dynasty and honor causing family conflicts to span millennia and across planets, disgraced second sons in exile, decaying empires, the works. It would be crude to say that Nate has ‘humanised’ Necrons – he hasn’t. He’s done something much harder and requiring considerably more skill, which is to open the mind of the reader to the reality of being Necron. He deftly hooks us into the pride, the fear, the horror of existing throughout the cold expanse of aeons and what remains of who you are when your physical self has gone.

Warhammer Community: How the Twice-Dead King Series Offers Deep Insights Into the Madness of the Necron Mind (posted 15/9/21) (last accessed 3/10/21) 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.We have some insight into how Necron weapons work, namely enmitic weapons and synaptic disintegrators. We already know how gauss and tesla weaponry work and that remains largely unchanged. The important thing however, is that the way they work is very core to the way that Necrons operate things like command protocols and all their "magic" stuff that sometimes seems a little psyker-y. 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 story is new and shows us so much more about the Mentality of the the Necron before and after the Bio-transference. Nate Crowley did qn amazing job in referencing deeper lore, characters and war gear that table top fans will be able to identify with ease. That’s a recipe for abject madness if ever there was one, and I don’t think it’s something which, as a species, they have any idea how to cope with. It’s something every individual has to either find their own solution to or else lose their minds.” neither matter, nor energy, but information: they cast hekatic decrees, written in the basal language of reality itself, which command the molecules of their targets not only to dissolve their bonds, but to tear each other apart.

Thanks to Nate for speaking to us a second time – we really can’t wait to get under the Necrodermis. 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. 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. 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.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. There was more combat in this book, but that had the strange aspect of actually making it less interesting and exciting, as opposed to the doomy introspection and weird alienness of Ruin. Directions (or level of pacing) I wanted the book to take, it didn't take, instead dwelling on an extremely drawn out space chase (The Last Jedi anyone?). Almost the entire book takes place on a ship - and the ship itself is barely explored. Some of it takes place on another ship. A couple of brief slices of it takes place on land. The story is about a necron dynasty falling into entropy, and is from the perspective of outcast Necron Lord Oltyx. 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. It’s as if Crowley skimmed the online wiki for some footnotes on the 40k universe and just used this as a canvas to write his own teen drama. As with ‘The Infinite and the Divine’ the alien immortal cyborgs behave exactly how humans would. It is bad writing on the part of the author, and a large stab to the nuts of the Necron race as a whole, as they’re finally given one of their own few novels to feature in - and it’s just Dune, but with the ‘human’ tag replaced with synonyms that Crowley dragged from the wiki.

No sé qué pasó, pero aunque me gustó mucho el libro, no me atrapó la lectura tanto como el anterior. Aún así, el final sobre todo es realmente impresionante.

The juxtaposition of absurd humour and tragic melancholy that Crowley finds here lends this a tone and feel that simply couldn’t have come from any other author. On the surface there’s plenty to enjoy in the depiction of necron dynastic life, the contrast between the necrons and the orks, and Oltyx’s general viewpoint on the ‘upstart species’, but dig deeper and this is really a sad story about the loss of memory and identity, about legacy and what’s worth fighting for, and about the dangers of relying too much on tradition and getting caught up in the past. These necrons may be virtually indestructible and in many ways very alien, but they’re incredibly relatable too. The human (and transhuman) denizens of the Imperium may be the main focus of the overall 40k setting, but this just goes to show that the non-human viewpoints in 40k have just as much to say too. However, the further the necrons run, the more apparent it becomes that the humans will never leave them alone. Spurred on by his most loyal advisors, Oltyx embarks on a risky plan to find an ancient planet, said to be ruled over by a deadly king and his hordes. Making use of long-lost technology, Oltyx and his people undertake a deadly trip towards their goal. However, a far greater threat soon emerges in the very heart of his ship. The flayer curse that has long infected his people and which drove Oltyx’s father mad has returned, and soon thousands are infected. Forced to take drastic actions to save his people, Oltyx soon learns the full weight of responsibility and loneliness that all kings must bear. But this king has a dark secret that will threaten the entire Ithakas Dynasty. Can Oltyx control the dark urges that reside deep within his soul or will a new twice-dead king rise to reign over the Ithakas necrons? Intriguing new author Nate Crowley presents one of the most complex and fascinating Warhammer 40,000 novels I had the pleasure of reading, The Twice-Dead King: Ruin, an epic and thrilling novel that explores one of the most intriguing races in the canon, the Necrons. See the struggles of the Necron court from their own eyes, and discover the lengths one Lord will go to for the status they desire.