Having tackled necrons once already in his phenomenal Black Library novella Severed, it felt inevitable that Nate Crowley would turn his hand to a full-length novel exploring this lesser-seen (in BL terms) 40k faction, so it’s a welcome bonus that The Twice-dead King: Ruin is in fact the first volume in a necron duology! After three hundred years of exile to a dismal outpost of a once-great dynasty, necron lord Oltyx is mired in bitterness at his reduced circumstances. When a vast ork invasion turns out to be the sign of an even greater doom to come however, Oltyx realises that his only hope – for himself, and for the dynasty itself – is to return home and break his exile. Determined to at least make the attempt, he sets out to rouse his brother and father on the dynasty’s homeworld, regardless of the personal costs he knows he will incur.
One of the hallmarks of Crowley’s writing is his ability to take non-human characters and make them believable and engaging, but without losing that inherent sense of alien otherness. In this case, Oltyx is entirely convincing as an ancient, essentially immortal alien robot complete with five additional subminds (technically…theoretically…derived from his own personality, but certainly with personalities of their own) and the ability to sink into a sort of temporal fugue that allows him to viscerally relive ancient memories at the cost of subsequently losing them forever. He begins the story as very much the arrogant, snobbishly condescending necron lord, but the crux of the story is really his pragmatism and willingness to change. From the dry humour of his interactions with his subminds to the rich seams of anger, bitterness, and self-deception that Crowley gradually mines throughout, his arc is deeply melancholy and genuinely relatable.
This is, of course, a 40k novel so it has its fair share of action, and once again Oltyx shines here whether imperiously commanding his forces from afar or begrudgingly getting stuck in himself. Even in combat though, Crowley uses Oltyx and his fellow outcasts – from the aged, decrepit Praetor Neth to the terrifying presence of those afflicted by the flayer curse – to illustrate the fading glory of the necrons, the effects of their arrogance and solipsism and the varying ways they process and cope with (or fail to) the traumas of undergoing biotransference and dealing with their cold, unfleshed existence. Seeing Olytx bicker with his passive-aggressive (sometimes actually aggressive) subminds is fun, for example, but watching him wrestle with the shame of his dynasty’s decline is strangely sad, while it’s both heartbreaking and horrifying to imagine the deep-seated panic which reminds him that he can’t breathe, can’t control the body that he no longer possesses.
The juxtaposition of absurd humour and tragic melancholy that Crowley finds here lends this a tone and feel that simply couldn’t have come from any other author. On the surface there’s plenty to enjoy in the depiction of necron dynastic life, the contrast between the necrons and the orks, and Oltyx’s general viewpoint on the ‘upstart species’, but dig deeper and this is really a sad story about the loss of memory and identity, about legacy and what’s worth fighting for, and about the dangers of relying too much on tradition and getting caught up in the past. These necrons may be virtually indestructible and in many ways very alien, but they’re incredibly relatable too. Readers looking for insight into necron culture and history will get a lot out of this book, but it’s so much more than that – the human (and transhuman) denizens of the Imperium may be the main focus of the overall 40k setting, but this just goes to show that the non-human viewpoints in 40k have just as much to say too.
Oh, and there’s more to come in The Twice-dead King: Reign, too!
***
See also: Victoria Hayward’s brilliant guest review of The Twice-dead King: Ruin
See also: my Author Spotlight interview with Nate Crowley
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I read both of the books in this series and loved them. I had no idea Necrons could be portrayed in such an interesting way.