Ruin" was a very enjoyable read. While, as a fan of 40K lore, I am relatively familiar with the Necrons. But, I can not claim a deep knowledge (as I have for the Imperium) and this book was a superb look into the thoughts and methods of the Necrons. The later necron Games Workshop miniatures looked a lot more interesting, stylised and varied than their first range. But can we talk specifically about the ending, and how it low-key changes/enhances a pretty large part of Necron lore? We've had multiple references, since 5th edition, of Valgul the Bone King, and his kingdom of flayers on Drazak. The hero of the story is Oltyx, “a Necron royal who was once heir to the throne of the mighty Ithakas Dynasty, before being cast into disgrace by his former kin and exiled to the empire’s edge”. Nate Crowley is a fantastic writer, so I'm very happy to have read his perspective on murderous skeleton robots with existential angst. Warhammer 40k is fundamentally a pulpy setting, but Crowley does an exceptional job wringing pathos from what seem to be a fairly flat caricature in the form of the Necrons. While I'm not a stranger to the setting, I'm unfamiliar to the Necrons, but that's ok! I admit doing a little wiki-investigation to assuage some of my curiosity, but really Crowley does a good job establishing everything a reader needs to know without ever dipping into "deep lore" or a gratuitous use of in-universe jargon.

If I'd have to boil down what Crowley's writing excels at - in this and his other works - I'd point to three aspects that particularly stand out to me. The overarching themes on the fallibility of memory, how our emotions shape what we remember and over time twist it so far from whatever may have happened was really haunting and beautiful too. I got this as an audiobook, which, to me, is a significantly different experience to reading a physical book, but it was enjoyable nonetheless. The narrator delivered an outstanding performance and really brought life to the characters, of which there were many. Almost too many. There are so many named characters given such vivid and interesting details just to be there for one chapter and then never mentioned again. It was pretty disappointing. But the ending sparks some questions, it's seems to heavily imply that Olytyx and Valgûl, the Fallen Lord are similar / the same person. Pride is everything for the dynastic kings of the Necron race, who have awakened after millennia to see their empires occupied by foul beasts and simple minds. For the Necron Lord Oltyx, the Ithakas dynasty was his by right, but the machinations of the court see him stripped of his position and exiled to a forgotten world.Been reading The Twice Dead King: Ruin as part of the Adeptus Ridiculous monthly book club and there's alot more here than I thought. I'll begin by saying that there is a boatload of Necron lore. Nate Crowley is also the author of Severed, a novella following our favorite Nemesor and his trusty Varguard, and he's working on a sequel to this book, so it's fairly safe to say that he'll be helming the lore ship of the Necrons for a while. There's a fair bit of retconning of older Necron lore, specifically in Devourer by Joe Parrino, with some potentially major plot points for future Necron lore, so this'll be divided into less spoiler-y and more spoiler-y sections with content warnings for the latter, which may also contain spoilers for Devourer by Joe Parrino and The Infinite and Divine by Robert Rath. Let's get started! I would recommend this to anyone who enjoys Necron lore/books, or anyone wanting a perspective that isn’t from the imperium. I hadn’t listens to any Necron audiobooks until I listened to the infinite and the Devine, and then this which I both thoroughly enjoyed. Eres el tipo de persona que busca que todo tenga sentido y se pueda explicar? Yo era así cuando comencé a leer hasta que me di por vencido. Algo característico de los necron es que algunas cosas pasan porque sí. Y es que la tecnología de esta gente está tan fuera de liga que literalmente cualquier cosa puede pasar y la explicación es tan sencilla como “es que ellos pueden hacer eso”.

I liked this book a lot. The Necron lore is in abundance but it’s written in such a way that I think any fan of the Tomb Kings styles Warhammer factions will enjoy it. It’s all about Necrons though and while it features other races, they tend to play a part that’s about as impactful as a random monster in an ARPG. Which is nice, for once, in a BL book. I also noticed the fascinatingly obtuse communication technobabble was reduced in this book, but not to its benefit. The conversations seemed a lot more ordinary and human. Likewise, I missed Oltyx's subminds, a uniquely strange and entertaining aspect to the first book's POV. Then the necrons, on hidden tomb worlds scattered through the galaxy, could awake (earlier than intended, if disturbed . . .), ready to restore their ancient dynasties – and rid the galaxy of all that hated upstart life that had flourished in their absence.After biotransference there was this whole thing called the War in Heaven, fought by the necrons and C’tan against their archnemeses, the Old Ones (powerful beings responsible for seeding new life in the galaxy, including eldar, orks and yes humans too). The Old Ones were defeated, the necrons overthrew their string-pullers the C’tan as well, and then – because the loss of life from this unimaginably cosmic war was incalculable, the necrons decided to . . . well, go to sleep for a while in their tomb worlds, to recover and let other conflicts of the galaxy go on without them. And by a while I mean sixty million years. I don't know if I'm going to finish this. Author Nate Crowley has somehow found a way to make a story involving cannibal robots boring. The few interesting character moments cannot save just how dull the narrative and action is. My eyes glazed over at every action scene. It’s not all cerebral storytelling, mind- there’s no way the author wrote, say, the combat scenes in chapter 17, without anything other than a big stupid grin on his face- they’re so deliciously OTT, taking full advantage of the ridiculous capabilities of high-ranking Necrons. Everything is set up really nicely for the story to be continued, but it works well as a stand-alone novel, one where some knowledge of the setting would be desirable but not essential.