Soul Wars by Josh Reynolds

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**joewarhost**

Since I do a lot of driving sometimes, I decided to get into the audiobooks on Audible. They are less expensive than Black Library... I think.
Anyway, they don't have the entirety of the Realmgate Wars published, or actually they do, but the 2nd half of the series has it's sub-books broken up and sold individually, which makes my available monthly credit less valuable. So I switched to Soul Wars, and I gotta say, I was very pleased by it. It does a lot more to set the stage for the Free Peoples and Death than Sigmar's chosen.

**nels1031**

Yeah, this was a legit novel. I liked it a lot.

There was a good deal of discussion about Balthas being Balthazar Gelt, and the other possibilities that entails, but there were a lot of great little tidbits and allusions to the wider AoS lore and what might happen in the future.

The main one(in my mind), per Manfred and Arkhan's discussion at the conclusion of the novel:

Spoiler:

**joewarhost**

I'm trying to get up to speed to the lore past Soul Wars. Any suggestion on where to go after this last novel I have read?

**nels1031**

Black Pyramid, perhaps.

It has a bit of everything, really. Stormcast, Cities of Sigmar and their affiliates, Chaos (with an awesome Beastmen character) and Manfred von Carstein. Its a self contained story, but it would help to listen to the Hunt for Nagash series. They are audio drama's and are pretty neat(Nagash monologues at the start are awesome) and introduce characters/circumstances that are relevant to Black Pyramid.

Honestly, anything after City of Secrets is an improvement over the fairly one-note RealmGate Wars books.

**NinthMusketeer**

I really enjoyed the conversation at the end too. I like the depth added to Arkhan and Nagash in the novel. An element of "I will disobey you, to save you" in Arkhan's character is very fitting.

**joewarhost**

I happened to already have a copy of Nagash: The Undying King, so I started on that. Though it seems this takes place before the Soul Wars narrative of AoS 2.0. I've only gotten through a few chapters.

**nels1031**

That was a fun read as well. Order of the Fly always make great characters and it gave followers of Nagash alot of nuance.

All of the Neferata stuff by Josh Reynolds/David Annandale in AoS has been enjoyable.

**NinthMusketeer**

It's one of the few novels set before the actual 'Age' of Sigmar, in this case the Age of Chaos. Azyr is still closed off, and Stormcast don't exist yet.

The other novel is Red Feast, which is actually set in the Age of Myth (albeit at the end of it).

**Tiger9gamer**

Man I loved this book. I will say that the only thing that kinda irked me was how everyone but the sacrosanct chamber became jobbers towards the battle half of the book, but I think the background lore, the look into Azyr and the realms during the Necroquake all make up for it.

I just wish that the blessed and silvered weapons actually did stuff to the nighthaunt, as it feels they built up the ghosts as being way too unstoppable compared to their books. Sure, they could still bowl over the forces of order, but at least have the silvered weapons do more against the ghosts, just like they do for everything else.

**NinthMusketeer**

Something to keep in mind is Nighthaunt have an allegiance ability where if they charge on a 10+ they do an immediate pile-in and attack, before they even do their normal one in the combat phase. In narrative form that can be a bit difficult to portray. Also consider that the battles we fight on the tabletop are nominally equal (putting aside matched play balance issues) while battles in the fluff are often far from it.

Still, I would also like to see 'mixed results' more frequently in novels where the winning side at least suffers some damage unless they REALLY did things well. Some books are much, much better than others.

**joewarhost**

Can anyone explain to me what "The Corpse Geometries" are? I've heard that a lot in Soul Wars and several times so far in Nagash: The Undying King but I haven't heard an explanation of it.

**nels1031**

joewarhost wrote:
Can anyone explain to me what "The Corpse Geometries" are? I've heard that a lot in Soul Wars and several times so far in Nagash: The Undying King but I haven't heard an explanation of it.

I always assumed it was just a fancy name for how to properly use and harness Death magic. I think Nagash or Arkhan even call them "formulas" in the novel.

**NinthMusketeer**

"Necromancy for Dummies, by Nagash"

Arkhan convinced him to go with "The Corpse Geometries" instead.

**Tiger9gamer**

You know, now that I think about it soul wars brought up an idea.

How much of the old world do the gods remember? Like I can remember nagash trying to remember the skaven messing up his old black pyramid, but it’s just a foggy recollection. Same with nagash’s first fight with sigmar in the old world.

**joewarhost**

I have never seen it go into much detail, though I imagine that is by design. I could only guess that the writers of AoS want to distance themselves from The Old World. It seems like it's been many thousands of years since the beginning of the Age of Myth, and that the destruction of The Old World almost destroyed all of the gods who did manage to survive. Perhaps between time and trauma, most of them only have a dim memory of how things were before they found themselves in the Mortal Realms.

**NinthMusketeer**

Joewar summarizes my impression as well.