This book was obviously titled wrong. It should have been called "Wait... WTF?" or something along those lines.
Necrarchs are of course (or were?) the sort of scholarly nosferatu-types in Warhammer vampire lore, and as I tend to like that type a bit better than the Bela Lugosi-type, I felt that this book had promise. You'll see one of the necrarchs there on the cover, and hey, here's one of those covers that seemingly actually relates to the actual plot in the book. Not all Warhammer books can boast about that, so ... so far so good, right?
To sum up the plot real quick: Theres this part of the Empire where an old bloodline (yes...) of knights protect some peasants and the lands on which said peasants toil, seemingly primarily from the eeeevil of a coterie of necrarchs who come back to bother the good people every now and then. This is one of those times, and there's some drama and a fight.
It is really hard not to give away spoilers as I attempt to point out what is wrong with this book. So stop reading unless you want a few surprises ruined.
Some of the characters are quite good, while others really aren't. They range from stock characters to fairly interesting ones with quirks and actual personalities. I have seen both better and worse as a veteran reader of these books, and this is not where the problem lies. Allow me to attempt to illustrate the problem through a tale, a parable if you will.
Imagine a spider. A big, hairy and ugly one. The kind with a nasty "face" and multiple eyes and all that. Imagine the web it weaves. Strands of webbing, lots of them, long and in an intricate pattern. Imagine insects now. Flies, butterflies, perhaps a moth or two. You see where this is going, right? No. You don't. A large, wet dog walks by and straight into the intricate web. It rams right through it, tears it, and it's all gone. Story... done. A big... wet... dog. Or another big animal. That's not the point here.
See, in this book there are numerous characters who are introduced, talked up, explored... and then never "put to rest". Not just in a literal sense. No, there are several people whose fate is just... unknown. That goes for plot elements too. A few examples off the top of my head: One necrarch (there are several in the book) spend a great deal of time building a nine-souled monster-machine ... and it never gets to do anything. There is a bone dragon that they take great pains to revive... and it eventually just dies again. There is a mystical, fancy hand of Nagash, an undead super warrior, a werewolf, a perhaps dead older necrach, some freaks... A series of anti-climaxes at best, and the "grand finale" that one feels lead towards is not grand at all.
I liked the necrarchs with their treacheries and magical bent, but the plot just never came together, and the whole book just seems like a patchwork, or like a brainstorm of some sort. The author may have focused on creating some horror scenes that one could picture vividly, but it is just not coherent enough, and I was left with the image of a child who had emptied out all his toys on the floor.
2 stars out of 5. What the hell was this?
