touching

a really fantastic insight into Ahrimans true unselfish desires. still very inkeeping with the daemonic and sureal universe of 40k, but, still delivering a heart felt story. great book and perfectly read!

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Great listen again!!

love ahriman need more books about him. he would be a better chaos warmaster. Great listen

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War on the Planet of the Sorcerors

Amazing development of the twisted fate of the Thousand Sons and the warring fates which dictate the lot of the lost and the damned sorcerers of Prospero.

I hesitated before getting this book as a previous reviewer rated it as ‘unremarkable’. I couldn’t not disagree more - this is a fantastically crafted work, showing the struggles of the remaining Thousand Sons as they draw alliances and seek to find hope in their exile following the Rubric. Ahriman plays a central role naturally but it is the character development of the other Thousand Sons, the splintered Crimson King and the mercurial Tzeentch that really set this book as a milestone in the development of the lore of this cursed Legion.

Immensely enjoyed it. Fantastic voice acting brought it to life.

5 stars

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Ahriman Unremarkable

Why do I do it? I've persisted with the Ahriman audiobooks even though I haven't enjoyed a single one. I think I just really want them to be good. It's like when you keep buying records by your favourite artist long after they've peaked and wonder afterwards why you thought, against all past evidence, that each disappointing new album might be a return to form.

What is the source of my disappointment with the Ahriman books? Firstly, plot. There isn't much of one. I can count the number of major plot points occurring across the three books on the fingers of one hand. Everything inbetween (which is a LOT) is just Ahriman, his henchmen and sometimes even Magnus, popping up in one another's heads and saying, 'Is this a dream?' and 'You're not really here!'. Look, I'm okay with the metaphysical and I don't need space marines blowing up things every five seconds, but - man alive - we're three books in and the storyline is still crawling forward at the pace of an arthritic snail.

Second: Ahriman. He's just not a great character. He never has been, really: Pre-Horus Heresy series, he used to be a straight-up, two-dimensional, moustachio-twirling bad guy, which at least gave him some uses as an antagonist for the good guys to react against. Since the Heresy books, however, he's been reinvented as a guilt-ridden character desperately trying to redress his past mistakes. As a protagonist, this does have the potential to make him quite interesting. Unfortunately, he doesn't actually appear to be dealing with doubt or shame or any kind of emotion at all, to be honest. Worse, he doesn't undergo any kind of character development at all during these books.

All-in-all, Ahriman just comes across as a rather bland supercilious twit. He appears to have learnt nothing from his past mistakes, he doesn't change course or experience a moment's doubt as he seeks to undo the Rubrik. He doesn't even listen to his daddy Primarch, Magnus when he pops up.

Ahriman isn't even that evil. He comes across as having all the soul and passion of a particularly officious post-office clerk. Readers need to have some reason to root for the main character on some level, But Ahriman is simply not that much fun. He has not one iota of the wit, for example, which made Josh Reynold's Fabius Bile such an engaging monster.

To be fair to John French, none of this is helped by the narration of Mark Elstob who gives Ahriman an unpleasant, nasal voice making all his speech sound like a librarian dressing down a customer returning a late book.

As for me: enough I say, no more. This time, I really mean it...

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1 person found this helpful