Book review // Ahriman: Sorcerer by John French
Welcome to my read-through of the Ahriman Omnibus. If you missed it in the post before, we started off with The Exile. But who is Ahriman? Well, a quick rundown would have him described as the most famous Thousand Sons in existence. And this omnibus showcases his rise to infamy. Let's jump in.
Book Details
Title: Ahriman: Sorcerer
Author: John French
Publisher: Black Library
Type: Paperback
Page Count: 416
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Commercial Fluff: Ahriman, the greatest sorcerer of the Thousand Sons and architect of the Rubric that laid his Legion low, continues to walk the path towards salvation or damnation. Searching for a cure for his Legion, he is forced to consider whether the great ritual was somehow flawed from the beginning. The answer may lie within the mysterious artifact known as the Athenaeum of Kallimakus, a grimoire of forgotten lore which is reputed to contain the exact words of the lost Book of Magnus - or, perhaps, even a transcription of the primarch's most profound and most secret thoughts.
Review
The story isn't an instant follow-up to Exile. Instead, we have jumped forward in time and events. We now find Ahriman as a leader of a large host of warbands, with a goal finally in place to focus on and give him a reason to live. He is now seeking out an item that he believes will assist him in undoing the damage he caused with the Rubric spell. However, we must deal with betrayal, jealousy, and backstabbing from Ahriman's Warband before the treasure hunt begins.
The story itself is pretty slow-burning, attempting to build up the challenging task that Ahriman is trying to accomplish. Though the book is called Ahriman he doesn't seem to be the focus of the tale, instead, a large part of the book works on introducing the all-new characters. This world-building exercise, though interesting, had the unwanted effect of losing me as a reader. I wanted a dominant Ahriman story. Instead, I am stuck with some random characters I don't care about. The plot was disjointed and jarring at best, while all the new characters made it hard to track what was happening. In addition, characters are seemingly forgotten about and disappear from this book (what on Earth?).
Ultimately, it was a slow, dragging read that went nowhere! I do feel like this book has dropped me out of this series. But as I attempt to do a complete omnibus read-through, I am starting Ahriman: Unchanged and hope these issues are fixed in the next novel.
If you have read this novel, let me know your thoughts. Am I missing something? Do you agree that the tone has changed? What happened to the Ahriman of the first novel?
Thanks for stopping by.
