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“You have my forgiveness, Konrad, whether you want it or not.”
When I started on this book, I was skeptical. I would have thought that a book about Konrad Curze should have been written by Aaron Dembski-Bowden, the king of Night Lords lore, but Guy Hayley acquitted himself well and I’m sorry I doubted him. I was also really hoping that Saul Reichlin would do the audio book because I loved his Konrad Curze voice in ‘Vulkan Lives’, but Jonathan Keeble did a pretty good job.
Normally, when I enjoy a Warhammer book as much as I enjoyed this one, I’ll re listen to it a few times. Though I doubt I’ll do that with this one because of the torture. I don’t know if other people have the same problem with it that I do. I assume it’s a pretty normal thing to find that stuff upsetting. Having said that, a book about Konrad Curze really wouldn’t be complete without it so I guess it’s sort of a damned-if-you-do-damned-if-you-don’t scenario.
As I said in my spoiler free review, the humour in this book, such as it was, really helped me get through this, between the torture and murder there was a strange light-heartedness that gave me the strength to continue. And the fact that Guy Hayley was able to insert this humour into the book without spoiling the mood of the story is a testament to his ability as a writer. One of my favourite lines in the book is when Gun tells Elver that they can achieve something remarkable, but not as remarkable as surviving. Actually, Gun as a whole was a real breath of fresh air amidst the doom and gloom and I love how he’s still polite and respectful to Curze, because he’s a son of the Emperor.
But at a risk of poking a hole in the plot. Why couldn’t Gun have just stabbed Curze a bunch of times before bringing him out of stasis? Surely, he could have come up with a better plan than letting Curze loose and then setting off a psychic flare and dying.
I don’t want to talk about Elver too much because thinking about him makes me sad. I was really heartbroken when Curze told Talos to kill Elver, even though we all knew it was coming, including Elver himself. When they made planetfall on Tsagualsa, I felt like screaming at Elver to just leave. But I guess Stockholm syndrome is a thing. I wonder if Curze intended for Elver to follow him. I prefer to think that he just didn’t care. Of course we never actually see Elver die so maybe, he goes on to become Primus, Talos’ manservant. Hey I can dream, right?
Curze’s wrestling with his foresight was quite well written. Sanguinius and Konrad both saw their own deaths, but where Sanguinius tried his best to change it, Konrad gave up, believing that the future was set in stone. This assumption becomes a lot less plausible after we see Konrad’s vision on Nostramo of the boy Khazim and his two possible futures. Curze stubbornly rejects the idea that there can be multiple futures. This seemed silly to me. Curze was young at the time, probably still in his teens and the sanest he would ever be. If you had seen your own death and were presented with the idea that the future is not set in stone, surely, you’d leap at that. But no, Curze ignores it. It makes more sense that he denies it at the end after its too late, but as a youth on Nostramo, it makes far less sense.
The passages with Shang and Sevatar enjoyable. The part when Sevatar goes from ship to ship with the Atramentar and puts down mutinies during the destruction of Nostramo was especially compelling.
This book really peaks at the end in my opinion. The exchange between Konrad and the Emperor was very moving and held a lot of weight, and the author does a great job of leaving it ambiguous as to whether or not it really was the Emperor speaking, or whether it was merely a figment of Curze’s broken mind. In the end I think it’s up to the reader to decide. Like the end of ‘Inception’.
The ending was tantalising, as Curze finally arrives at the death he’s waited centuries for. I especially loved how the book ended right as M’Shen arrived. It was one of many points where the book cleverly avoided retelling stories that we already knew.
One small gripe I had at the very end was Curze’s boots. It specifically mentions that he is wearing them as he enters his throne room, but in the official lore, it states that he’s barefoot when he dies. This felt very avoidable and maybe it’s an intentional discrepancy to show us the unreliability of history in Warhammer, but it felt very much like a mistake.
Despite that, I found this book to be a well written and exciting look into Curze’s mind.
The Emperor Protects