Review of Neferata by Josh Reynolds - SPOILERS
Picked up and read Neferata yesterday and found it very enjoyable - I have always been a big fan of Vampires and in particular the Lahmian blood line of the Queen of Silver Pinnacle, late of ancient Lahmia. I have yet to read Nagash (next on my list) but this has definitely whet my appetite for the story.
The book - like other time of Legends lines covers a wide period of history with the majority of the story tracing the machinations of Neferata, the other first Vampires and of course Nagash.
Although Neferata is of course centre stage, there are a good variety of other vampire characters including her handmaidens - especially liked Naaima, her children in darkness Ushoran, Abhorash and others such as Vorag Bloodytooth and Khalid from the Sigmar trilogy.
The story starts with her old enemy Arkhan entering the Silver Pinnacle to demand the Queens fealty but when she refuses, he wants to know how she has survived and how she can resist Nagash's will.
The primary story centres around the centuries long rise of Mourkain but also has many flashbacks to important periods of Neferata's early unlife, successes and setbacks which do help to build a full character for her and also (to me at least) a often sympathetic one....
She is clever, confident but nicely flawed being quick to anger, vain, and often predatory and cruel without thinking. Yet also truly sees herself, for the majority of the book, as able to create a better world with both the living and the dead serving her as Queen and is inspirational to her followers - sharing her plans, thoughts and fears with her inner circle - a trait that the Necromancer Morath admires when he compares her to the other Vampires:
Exert from the book which was a good summary for me:
Naamia smiled sadly "We are tools, Neferata. You call us sisters, but we are but pieces on your game-board. You collect us and hoard us, and sometimes you spend us for ambition. Other times it is for spite.
Neferata stared at her stunned. Naaima stepped forwards and took her mistress's face in her hand and kissed her softly on the cheek. "And we love you for it, because we cannot help but to do so. You unmake us as easily as Nagash's crown threatened to unmake you, and remake us in your image"
The TOL have, for me had a nice thread of greyness with many of the characters - I really liked Marius and his lover from the Sigmar trilogy, and Malkieth is great in the Sundering.
The Mourkain story is a little different to that previously expounded with most of the major Vampire players being present and part of its rise, rather than not and it serves well as the stage on which their power plays and that of Nagash are played out. The Crown of Sorcery is, as with the Sigmar Trilogy a major plot driver and its nicely worked in being misunderstood and a draw / manipulator for the major players.
The Dwarf thread of the story is also interesting with an unusual Kings son with a tragic undercurrent as the reader knows how this will all end, despite Neferatas intentions and her view of the Dwarfs as allies to be courted, rather than destroyed.
The author has also flung out plenty of plenty threads for his future novels and it will be interesting to see how and most importantly whose stores are told and whose are not - yet. I hope the story of Vorag and Stregga continues
