Ahriman Eternal: Mega Limited Edition

[Prot]

So did anyone get it?

 

It went up for pre-release in Canada. I clicked on the link as soon as I saw it... sold out.

 

I'm so fed up with that. This is one of the very rare times where I would have really enjoyed that one in my collection.

 

But I assume some of you scored it?! Did anyone try?

[dadoc91]

Got mine at 10:55 from the german pool. Was sold out like 2 minuted later.

Also the 2 typical german scalpers have the edition up on ebay.

Edited March 12, 2022 by dadoc91

[Ubiquitous1984]

I got my copy.  But the fb BL nutters group had plenty of people commenting that they had missed out.  

[Malkydel]

Managed to get one.

 

I find the trick is to be on and logged in before 5 to the hour. It always goes up at 5 to. That and be on the right page, so generally the BL page on the GW site and with the Pre-order tab clicked. If there isn't a tab there then if you refresh the BL page on the GW site at 5 to the hour then Pre-Order will appear in the options.

 

Hilariously the last time I tweeted out that advice was the time it switched to the queue for the first time.

[Bobss]

So like

 

What happens?

[1ncarnadine]

So like

 

What happens?

Sure, I'll bite. I finished this a few days ago. My thoughts below...

 

The box is super silly and probably not worth it for the most part. I love the tasseled book mark, though. The short story Daemonologie is nice, but very low on word count. You don't really need the little mirror token in the book to read the one or two pages that have text backwards but I guess it helps if you're not used to reading things backwards (some of the Liber Chaotica entries were ridiculous about this).



 

Speaking of said short, Daemonologie is a log of Ctesias trying to summon daemons and interrogate them regarding the results of the Second Rubric at the end of Ahriman: Unchanged. He goes through several summonings to suss out information, starting with what was probably a daemonette, to a twin-headed Lord of Change, to a fragment of his own soul from when he was younger that he's locked away to consult as needed. There's some cool art in this, including portraits of old and young Ctesias.

 

The novel itself is pretty solid. Eternal feels a lot more focused and less meandering than some of the prior entries, which is good, but doesn't build to quite as high of a mad crescendo as Unchanged. The Necron villain, Setekh, is a great reflection of Ahriman himself, and his alien nature and ability to process information is handled well. I have not read The Infinite & the Divine or either of the Twice-Dead King entries, though I've been meaning to, so I can't compare French's Necrons to those, but they're extremely arcane and disturbing here. Not well understood by the Thousand Sons at all, and both the webway and the tombworld are depicted with a lot of horror.



 

Though, none of the horror in the book can compare to the experience of Silvanus. Just, good god, wow. Every time this character shows up, it gets worse. He begins at a point of stable insanity, where he's come to terms with being a mutant Eye of Terror navigator for a fleet of Exiles.

 But even that delicate sense of stability is constantly challenged and undermined... At the end of the novel,

Silvanus has been executed by Harlequins. So to maintain their navigator, the Sons retain and place his soul in a network of half-him, half-fish-in-jar fetal clones distributed throughout their fleet. He was already deranged, but this obviously shatters his sanity even further. The way Ahriman treats Silvanus contrasts his own goals well, being just one more step on the same path he's always been on. Makes me think all the way back to A Thousand Sons when Ahriman was justifying their torture of Kallista.





 

This might also be the most eerie appearance of Harlequins that I've read? They don't actually take up much page space, but they do have a significant impact on the story. Loved the tragic handing down of the Solitaire mask, too. Makes it feel extremely cursed.

 

As for plot, there's not too much to say. Ahriman and his Exiles have performed the second Rubric and hold Helio Isodorus, but now a new form of ruin is chasing them from the warp. Seemingly at random, still-living sorcerers are burning out and becoming Rubricae, so Ahriman has to fix it. They have a mysterious psychic blank named Maehekta, who claims to have come from a near-extinct society of knowledge-seeking secret-peddlers who dwelt in the Eye. Maehekta claims an ancient civilization might have a powerful time weapon that can help Ahriman. This turns out to be a treasure of the Necron Hyksos Dynasty, who meddled with time so hard that the Necron Triarchs imprisoned them. They recover a Necron cryptek trapped in a stasis crystal at the start of the novel, awaken him, and barter with this entity for a route to his tomb so they can plunder his dynasty's time knowledge.

 

To get there, they have to take a dive through the webway, but thanks to the meddling of the Harlequins they take a wrong turn and get stranded in what is essentially the webway's trash compactor. Finally they break out and reach the tombworld, and things go about as well as you might expect there:

Setekh is revealed to be the High King of the Hyksos, Bearer of the Black Disc of time, and squares off with Ahriman. Ahriman manages to deactivate Bites the Dust and escape with most of his exiles, but as they're leaving, the Pyrodomon flashes and Ignis is turned into a Rubricae Terminator. Unfortunately, they didn't manage to recover the time macguffin, as the Triarchs did not allow the Hyksos to be entombed with their treasure.

 

Meanwhile, Ctesias is still on their flagship, and discovers that Helio Isodorus is the Pyrodomon, which is deeply tied to each and every member of the Thousand Sons. As an avatar of the Rubric, it wants to make all of the Thousand Sons permanent and unchanging by becoming a single entity, leaving the Sons themselves as a legion of nothing but Rubricae. Ctesias manages to disable Helio, but when Ahriman returns, he keeps his revelation a secret.

 

The book ends with clear set-up for a sequel (or sequels), with Setekh leaving his tomb with his fleet to look for his ancient chrono-weapon. Ahriman and the Exiles had managed to psychically mark some of the Necron ship material and begin pursuit. And his Exiles are plotting and scheming behind his back, setting up further division down the road, as is natural for those souls ensnared by Tzeentch.

 

Big plot advancements or major faction revelations are a little sparse, but that's understandable if we're seeing the start of a second trilogy. I honestly had no expectations there going in, and wasn't sure if this would be a self-contained sequel. There's a lot of character work with Ignis and Ctesias in particular, lots of interviews with amnesiac Helio setting up the eventual Pyrodomon reveal, and especially Silvanus body horror, but I think we'll see a lot more of Gaumata and Gilgamos next time around.

 

Great entry. I would definitely recommend it if you were already a fan of the Ahriman series.

Edited April 6, 2022 by LetsYouDown

[Bobss]

Very cool stuff and I genuinely do appreciate the time you've put into that post. Some of those events I predicted but a lot of them I didn't. I always had a feeling French would do a second Ahriman trilogy concerning Necron chronomancy (and then a third trilogy focussing on the Black Library after this inevitably fails) as this is heavily foreshadowed in the foreword of the omnibus edition

 

A few questions:

• Does Ignis have a new robot or the same one... rebuilt?
• Do we see Ahriman's memory palace and if so does it look any different to last time? Remember, in the first two books it's like an old desert palace and then in the third book it's more like a tall cluster of minarets
• How much of the events of Unchanged are reflected on? i.e. Magnus hijacking the Second Rubric to put himself back together? The Battle of Sortiarius? Astaeos being possessed by The Crimson King and being smug at wrecking Ahriman's plans?
• I believe Josh Reynolds' portrayal of Harlequins in the Fabius Bile trilogy are the gold standard currently - how does French's portrayal hold against this?
• Is there anything remotely Imperial in this book or is it all just Ahriman vs xenos?

 

I rate the Ahriman series very highly. Tzeentch + John French = otherworldly levels of word soup, but nevertheless I hold all three novels in very high esteem. In fact the only Chaos Space Marine series I consider to be better are the Fabius Bile and Black Legion trilogies, and possibly the Night Lords trilogy depending on how hard I lean into the nostalgia factor

Edited April 6, 2022 by Bobss

[1ncarnadine]

Happy to answer those:

1) Credence is still around, even after Setekh rusts most of it apart near the end. It's even following around Rubric-Ignis at the end, too. I think previously, Ignis would just psychically reconstruct it, and now Ahriman is doing it out of sentimental guilt.

2) Yes, he's got a mind... space. It's not as nice as it the old palace, but he's working on it.

3) They reflect on the second Rubric a fair amount, though mostly in terms of how its affected their future. There's very little on Magnus himself and no mention of Astraeus. Instead, the Pyrodomon is an overwhelming, existential threat that keeps pushing them down new paths of action. I think this is intentional: it shows that Tzeentch won't let them stop, won't let them rest and reflect, and wants to drive them further down a path that forces them to either change, or create change.

4) That's a tough call. It's similar, but I enjoyed it more here, personally. They behave more like mimes and express themselves through their body language, and they're often written from a more Harlequin-aligned third person narration that touches on the names of their roles. Who they were and what player they're becoming from scene to scene.

5) It is 100% the Thousand Sons, the crew of their ships, some Necrons, and a bit of Harlequins.

Edited April 6, 2022 by LetsYouDown

[cheywood]

I finished this up last night. Overall it’s excellent, though not without fault.

 

The good: Beautiful writing. This might be French’s best book from a prose perspective. He’s cut down on description and mostly refrained from the awkward sentences that populate his earlier work at times. Ahriman, the necrons and

harlequins

are all depicted compellingly. French emphasizes their otherness and disturbing nature, as well as how the godlike extent of their powers interact with each other. The book is also clearly building towards something for the sequels, which is nice to see given the number of stand-alones we’ve had recently. Great plotting in the beginning and end. French goes to interesting if not entirely unexpected places.

 

Mixed: If you liked French’s previous work with Ahriman you will like Eternal. If you didn’t I don’t think this will change your mind. It feels very, very familiar, perhaps intentionally so given French’s comments on Ahriman as a character. That’s not a bad thing, the Ahriman trilogy is fabulous and Eternal has the benefit of French’s much improved prose, but I hope the sequel(s) branch off a little more with new PoVs. French did such great work with his Siege novels weaving lots of characters together and it feels like we know most of the cast already here.

 

Bad: The pacing felt a little off in the middle of the book, and the plot sometimes felt like a prelude to the juicy stuff to come in future books. This isn’t as short as many BL novels recently (about 40% longer than Sigismund by page count) but I would’ve liked to see a little more time spent exploring the state of the Thousand Sons and other factions involved.

 

 

Funny: Sometimes French describes a character as wearing a helmet, then describes the character as bareheaded a few paragraphs later, without any mention of them removing their helmet. I know that helmets are, in most circumstances, removable and French doesn’t need to describe the act of removal, but it always throws me for a second.

Edited May 27, 2022 by cheywood

[Roomsky]

Ahriman Eternal - John French

Poor Silvanus.

I have to give it to Black Library's authors - their ability to write new and exciting stories about characters who need to remain alive and reach a certain status quo is astonishing. Black Library isn't at all free of prequelitis, but I feel their ratio of it is waaaaaay down from other tie-in IPs.  The Ahriman Trilogy, Lucius the Faultless Blade, Khârn: Eater of Worlds, the currently ongoing character series - all these and more are quality reads that don't feel terribly stifled for servicing a tabletop mini.

I'm an unabashed fan of John French but I still picked this up with some skepticism. "More Ahriman?" I thought. "What more does French have to do with him after so much material?" A lot, apparently (and I have no right being surprised by that after going through the same thoughts regarding the excellent Sigismund book.) We always knew Ahriman had a ways to go before fully becoming the ruthless sorcerer he's known as in contemporary 40k, but after Unchanged I sort of thought we'd seen all we had in starting that journey.

I'm sure glad French didn't agree with that, because this book is a ride. We got Harlequins. We got Necrons. We got

a sentient embodiment of the bloody Rubric!

(And all are suitably alien.) I'm honestly just giddy for where the series is going next, this fourth entry somehow has the most energy of the series so far.

Content-wise, it's certainly more Ahriman. If you don't like humourless, byzantine webs of betrayal and 4-d chess this won't change your mind - and I know it's not everyone's cuppa. But as someone who thinks The Ahriman Omnibus is the best 1000+ page story in Black Library (there are better books, but other author's trilogies read more like 3 linked stories rather than one mega-chonker of a narrative,) I'm stoked to see where this next one ends.

To Taste, cuz it's John French's Ahriman. But if I were to give it a biased personal rating, it's at least a 9/10.

[byrd9999]

The Thousand Sons are my favourite faction, and Ahriman my favourite character, so I'll eat up anything with these guys in, but apart from (HH: Thousand Sons) I am still waiting for another really great Thousand Sons story, although David Guymer wrote a pretty good Primarchs short.

I have read the original Ahriman omnibus, but wasn't overly impressed with it. I don't often get along well with John French's writing style, and I thought the Ctesias short stories were more interesting than the main Ahriman narrative. And it continues in Eternal. It's hard to do something big and important with main 40k characters because they need to remain as they are in the current timeline, but Unchanged and Eternal are apt names for Ahriman in this series because he doesn't do much, other than Find the Thing because he needs to Save His Brothers, there's no development or growth. Ahriman doesn't have much of a presence.

 

Setekh tells Ahriman that he's one of the smartest people he's met in the Imperium, but all Ahriman does in this book is recognise he's walking into a trap but walks into it anyway because he has to. Ahriman is like the 4th or 5th most interesting plot line in the book. Ctesias & Helio, The Harlequins, Silvanus, Ignis, all held my interest more than Ahriman's unresolved quest for the Maguffin of Time.

 

Although we learn a few interesting legion titbits, and there are some cool scenes, this book was unsatisfying, and felt like the first 1/3rd of a bigger book, rather than Book 1 of a trilogy. I reckon by the time this trilogy is finished, if John French had condensed it into one kick-ass book it would be more appealing to me.

 

7/10 because I'm so invested in the Thousand Sons, but 5/10 if it was about any other legion.

[System Sound]

As a fellow Thousand Son's fan, with too much money invested in the plastic crack, I have to agree. French's Ahriman is the least interesting character across all 4 books.

 

McNeils Thousand Sons books are the ones that got me hooked on them. They felt esoteric and magical, and mysterious. Where as French's they're just another chaos warband with magic...

[DarkChaplain]

It's why I still struggle with reading more than the first few chapters of Ahriman: Sorcerer before putting it back on hold. I enjoyed Exile well enough, though it diminished a bit later on. I feel like Ahriman rejecting his past while still being haunted by it, keeping his old gear stashed away and all, was actually very interesting. It's what came after he started his warband that dragged, especially due to the action setpieces. And I concur: Ahriman wasn't particularly clever throughout.

 

The Ctesias, shorts, though? Yeah. Ctesias is great. I feel extremely sorry for him, in a way.