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

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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”. 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 an excellent writer, and I really like his work overall. He's taken the basic concept "killer robot space skeletons ruled by an immortal pharoah based on a franchise meant to sell figurines" through a serious journey with a lot more character/pathos than you would expect for the basic outline of the setting. Contrasted with this is his penchant for Horror. Despite the levity of its humor and the apparent enthusiasm for the more absurd sides of necrons society, this is a grim, dark book. The necrons are not just a horror to the puny humans that rose up in their wake, but their existence itself is a horror *to them*. Oltyx in particular struggles with the memories of his time as a biological being and the trauma of his whole civilization being lured into the furnaces of the C'tan to be transformed into unchanging, unfeeling beings of metal and energy. Many chapters are pure body- and existential horror which really got under my skin.

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. So how do you demonstrate in a single story that you can have heart without having a heart, and write a 40K epic on the themes of love, solitude and hope with nuance, humour and action? Simply, reader, you do it like this. See the struggles of the Necron court through their own eyes, and discover the lengths one Lord will go to for the status they desire.After biotransference there was this whole thing called the War in Heaven, fought by the necrons and C’tan against their archnemeses, the Old Ones (powerful beings responsible for seeding new life in the galaxy, including eldar, orks and yes humans too). The Old Ones were defeated, the necrons overthrew their string-pullers the C’tan as well, and then – because the loss of life from this unimaginably cosmic war was incalculable, the necrons decided to . . . well, go to sleep for a while in their tomb worlds, to recover and let other conflicts of the galaxy go on without them. And by a while I mean sixty million years. 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. But Crowley puts us in the crowded head of one of their scions, who knew life at court and in war, and who was amongst the first to see, understand and confront the decay which even the most elaborate system build of the most sturdy material will be condemned to eventually. In eternity, the Necron empire faces certain doom, unless they change their way of thinking - which, however, is as much an immortal part of them as any programming would be.

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.” 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. 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.” 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. The Twice Dead King is a Necron-focused novel series by Nate Crowley. It covers the exploits of Necron Lord Oltyx. [1] Books in seriesrealmente maravillado al ver cómo el autor logra una descripción tan clara y a la vez tan compleja de los necron, sus costumbres, su forma de pensar, y su tecnología. La historia tiene una continuidad y ha sido bien planeada desde el inicio, y al final terminas entendiendo cosas que ocurrieron en el libro anterior. 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. Eres el tipo de persona que busca que todo tenga sentido y se pueda explicar? Yo era así cuando comencé a leer hasta que me di por vencido. Algo característico de los necron es que algunas cosas pasan porque sí. Y es que la tecnología de esta gente está tan fuera de liga que literalmente cualquier cosa puede pasar y la explicación es tan sencilla como “es que ellos pueden hacer eso”.

But the ending sparks some questions, it's seems to heavily imply that Olytyx and Valgûl, the Fallen Lord are similar / the same person.I don't know if I'm going to finish this. Author Nate Crowley has somehow found a way to make a story involving cannibal robots boring. The few interesting character moments cannot save just how dull the narrative and action is. My eyes glazed over at every action scene. At times it felt like Crowley was trying to do a bit too much with what he had, given that he was also trying to appease the normal WH40K audience who probably just turned up to read about pseudo-Egyptian alien robots zapping their way through humans & Orks. Portions of this novel legitimately reminded of a fusion of "Rashomon" and "The Remains of the Day," and I'm still just processing that experience. Again, because it was in a novel about pseduo-Egyptian alien robots at war with Space Orks. But far be it from me to fault someone for ambition. I'm at least intrigued enough to look into the second novel in the series.