As you may have gathered from the title above, I have just finished reading
Nagash the Soerceror by Mike Lee, Book 1 of the Nagash Trilogy under the Warhammer: Time of Legends imprint.
I wanted to throw up a quick review while it was still reasonably fresh in my mind.
The book chronicles the rise of Nagash (duh!) and his early battles in Nehekhara (what in present day WFB is known as 'the Land of the Dead') and is split into 2 narrative strands, one set approximately 1900 years before the founding of the Empire, and the other set 1700 years before the Empire's founding.
I think this was one of the two major mistakes the author of the book made, as it's really quite hard to care about what's happening in the -1700 strand until more detail is revealed in the -1900 strand. I thik this book would have been substantially improved by eschewing the alternating chapter format for straight up chronological order format.
The other major failing (or so I thought) was the lack of a
Dramatis Personae section. There are a lot of characters in this book, and as many have Egyptian inspired names, they become rather easy to confuse. Of course once I finished the story I discovered that a
Dramatis Personae and a breakdown of the Nehekhara pantheon appear after the story concludes. These would have been more useful at the start of the book, or at least being referenced in a Table of Contents.
Now that my gripes on the books structure are out of the way, what's the story actually like?
Pretty good actually. I like the society Lee creates for pre-Nagash Nehekhara, with it's devotion to their Gods and the covenant that forms the Blessed Land. Sure, much of it (in finest
GW tradition) is just an ancient culture with knobs on (obviously, Egypt). Another aspect I was impressed by as a long time player of the Undead army is how this modern take on Nagash fits reasonably well even with the WFB4 fluff on Undead before Vampie Counts and Tomb Kings were split. Obviously Nagash's story by necessity focuses on the Tomb King side of the equation.
I liked the way magic is introduced to the Khemrians thanks to the outside influence of certain prisoners who are sensitive to the elusive Winds of Magic (trying to stay spoiler free here) and how the final chapters epilogue seem to hint at Vampire Counts (I must confess my knowledge on
VC fluff is very limited), as well as the appearance of one of my favorite characters from WFB4, Arkhan the Black, even if he is presented rather differently here than I recall him being.
Mike Lee can write a battle scene very well, as I found it fairly easy to visualize the various formations and clashes as they happened. This is good, as this book contains one heck of a lot of battles, which did leave me rather fatigued with it, as desert battles are unavoidable rpetitive. This does make the second quarter of the book rather a slog to get through, but I felt it was worth it for the various pay offs. Another aspect of it, although rather cheesy, is that it almost seems like each battle introduces a new unit from the Tomb Kings army book each time.
One final criticism is that for a book entitled
Nagash the Sorceror is that we see precious little of Nagash! In the -1700 strand taht does make up the bulk of the book, our main viewpoints are with the various Nehekharan nobles opposing Nagash's attempts to force his will upon the land. I understand that this might be necessary when using the omniscient voice of narration, but it irked me, as I purchased the book so that I could see what motivated Nagash and e book doesn't cover that very well other than defining him as a typical villain early on.
In conclusion, this is an average book, but it has great kernel of a story at heart. It does suffer the fate of many first books of a trilogy in that it defiitely feels like a set up for a larger scale of events to come. I would recommend it for fans of the Undead armies, particularly Tomb Kings, but casual WFB fans, and those who are more interested in other armies should probably stay away.
I can't compare this to other Times of Legend books, as this is the only WFB novel I've ever read. (I prefer the
40K series')
Final Rating (out of 5)
