Shadow King novel (beware....spoilers!)

[Lord damian valar]

Hi all,

I just finished the second sundering book: Shadow King and allthough I do enjoy the sundering novels so far there are some things I found a bit disapointing and I would like your opinions on the matters:

Especially the characters of Yeasir and Allandrian. I very much liked how they developed next to Malekith in the first Sundering book and felt a bit disappointed on how they followed up in Shadow King.

Yeasir: The picture I have on Yeasir is that he would never ever betray Malekith. and I mean never! I could understand his actions in Shadow King if Malekith indeed died and Morathi ruled solely. But this seemed not the case and if Malekith would order him to seize hold of Tor Anroc then he would do so to his full capacity. If for some reason he went on a path of doubt in his loyalty I would have very much read more about it, slowly seeping in so that his actions are better felt as a reader. I think Yeasir as a character deserved more development in the second book then he got. Showing how he went from being Malekiths second in command and friend to his eventually demise and death as a traitor to Anlec. Even if he turned only on Morathi and Malekith was unconsious, it hurt me a bit to have Malekith later speak out that Yeasir was a traitor. Perhaps he could have spoken his displeasure on how badly his second in command was handled in his absence and punished the ones that killed him.

Allandrian: The second character I truly loved reading about in the first novel. I felt a bit perplexed on how Allandrian turned out to be. I could envision Allandrian as he is in Shadow King, but some more introduction on character development was needed in my opinion. A chapter could have been spent on him and how he got lured in Morathi's web. He is so different then in the first book, that more info was needed to understand his actions. He went from a calculating loyal Elf, who could commense an act of evil to further the goals of the "greater good", to an evil Prince that sacrificed his wife to Kaine and enjoys acts of evil and slaughter, without explenation on how this great change in personality took place.

Alith Anar: I could not really get into his character and feel for him in the book. Most of his actions are selvish ones and he many times left his followers and army behind to wander off feeling sorry for himself. Even for an anti hero he just seemed a bit too indifferent for his people to my taste. Do not really know how to explain what I mean, but he just did not really get to the level of character I would feel deeply for in a book that is written mostly about him, being the number one character in the book...


Well, just some personal opinions offcourse. I would like to know the opinions of others on the subject! Thanks in advance!

D...

[Lord damian valar]

does nobody have an opinion on the matters above? I would really like to hear them friends...

[Meteor]

Sorry I'm not a big fan of gw novels, especially when I'm 3/4 of the way through a massive trilogy of another fantasy collection.

However, I have begun to read the Sundering trilogy as my curiosity was piqued one day. Only halfway through the 1st novel though, so it'll take me a while to get around to discussing with you about these two interesting characters.

[Svarthofthi]

I dunno, your opinions are fine. In the sense that Alith Anar was rather selfish and self-serving for the most part in his despair. But you gotta realize the guy every time he somehow got momentum started doing something great he was suddenly and violently cast down, with consequences forthcoming.

He lost his entire family, the woman he loved turns out to be some crazy witch lady. His noble family cast down and then eventually taken care of. These are horrible things that he had to fight through, what made him great was the fact that he got through it at all.

With concerns for Yeasir I stand by that while he might have been loyal to Malekith his family came first. This was before Druchii were seriously hardened to core. He simply wished his family to be free from the taint that seemed to be spreading through his people. Its been a while since I've read it but I remember thinking that while he may have still liked Malekith or been loyal to him, I think at the time he was thought dead. Not many people care for Morathi. So there is that.

[Syjahel]

Erm. Spoilers, verbage, verbosity, spoilers, opinions





Well. I'll say now that I actually had great difficulty in finishing the book, which is most unusual for me. I did, though, and of course what follows are my own opinions. I wouldn't say that it had no merit, and I'll come to the parts I did like, but I'll also try to explain why I say what I do so that you can at least see why I've said so; there's no guarantee anyone will agree, but that's a given with opinions

The grammar, the actual structure of the language, was not as good as the first book in the series, Malekith, though it did have a little more life to it, something that I found missing from the first one. To me, it doesn't really matter in an informal setting to see "they were sat by the window" "he was laying down" etc. but someone should have spotted these errors in a novel, or it looks unprofessional or at best not proof-read.

As for Alith ... oh Alith. I wanted to like you. I really did. The concept of the Shadow King, the idea that to fight monsters one must avoid becoming one oneself, that the abyss might look back into one ... They could all have been explored here, with an ambiguous and thought-provoking look at the blurred divide between terrorist and freedom fighter and what makes the difference between Druchii assassin and Asur guerilla. Sadly it wasn't and we got pages and pages of faffing about in the woods instead with a mopey and murderous emo kid who is happy to think nothing of pouring molten gold down living people's throats.

Alith Anar goes from sympathetic-enough, likeable youth (works hard, studies, likes the outdoors, has a crush on a nice girl) with a strong sense of right and wrong to a shallow, whiny teen who spends the rest of the novel dodging responsibility. Even in the denouement, he is knocked out and essentially made into the Shadow King figurehead by his men who've had the idea for him that the race needs a legend to rally to. He plays in the woods while Ulthuan burns, preferring to live with wolves and getting sidetracked in some nonsensical sidequest so that he can get his bow, and where things are done to the Elven mythology that make me wince. He starts out with a strong sense of family which he never seems to lose, as he is always strongly attached to his family line and makes a point of remembering it. I like this trait. But I found him deeply unsympathetic after he finally went to war, and here's the thing: war didn't make him that way. Even before he's fought a stroke against what are to become the Druchii he is laughing at Elves being burned alive. For this he's rebuked by his father whose own violent death is imminent, but I never felt that even this catastrophe really changed Alith, even though it happened right in front of him. He doesn't demonstrate any real depth of thought about anything, and such thoughts as we see tend to dissolve into shoe-gazing introspection that goes nowhere. Even when the aforementioned nice girlfriend is revealed as a political tool he doesn't really demonstrate any depth of thought about this; having lost his beloved fiancee he seems more slightly disappointed than anything.

Alith doesn't seem to ever do much of his own volition (shall I stay in the city? may as well. Shall I hide in the woods? Ok then), or react to anything with any depth. Even when he does it feels more as though I am being told that he is emotional rather than really feeling it myself. I just couldn't feel any sympathy for him throughout much of the book, as he never seemed to develop as a person and crucially never really grew up. His idea of expressing inner turmoil is to sit moping in a corner.

My problem with this is that I'm never sure if it's intentional. But if it is, then Mr. Thorpe missed a great opportunity in my opinion. I suppose part of the trouble could be in telling a story where everyone knows what happens. I would still read such a story, because I like the Elven background as a whole, and because I grew up reading stories where everyone knows what happens: legends. Unfortunately for me this was not a well-loved legendary tale, but a bit of a ... well, kind of uninspiring retelling of events that should have been interesting on the level of one Elf, and world-changing on the larger stage / in the background. I didn't expect to be surprised, but I did hope to be engaged, and I wasn't ...

.. for the most part. Here are the bits I thought were really well done Both to prove that I haven't set out to hate this book, and because I think one should say when something is good, not just when it's bad.

[Was Yeasir the one whose wife and child Alith ended up leading to safety? If so then I thought those scenes were very well played out, and pretty moving actually.]

I remember quite liking Allandrian, but his appearances were brief. I could still see a lot more depth in him than Alith, perhaps because Mr. Thorpe got to invent him from scratch (but if you don't have any feeling for a character, why take on a whole novel about him?), or possibly because he did demonstrate a change from a High Elf to a more Druchii mindset through his towering ambition. I would have liked to see more of him. It's an insight into just how one gets from Asur to Druchii and that's something I am very interested in.

I would say that the very best characterisation is in the two characters of Alith's father and grandfather. I really got a sense of the contrast between the grandfather, a veteran who's seen the war against Chaos and knows exactly how awful it is, and has taken the line that almost anything that can help prevent war is better than more fighting - the appeaser, in a way - and the father, who knows how war can be but not so firsthand, and is burning to do what he sees as right, but whose filial piety will not allow him to disobey his father. These two are really so well drawn that I speculate if Mr. Thorpe researched or knew war veterans, as to me they are two very plausible outcomes of how war affects people's characters. What they do and how they act has its own internally consistent logic. Yes, I would like to see this in Alith and I feel that it's missing there, unless we allow that he really is being intentionally portrayed as a frighteningly blase youth who doesn't really deal with the horror of war at all, but their characters are believable in ways that he is not and if this was a book review I'd give them a star of their own. Though they'd have to share it with ...

... some Caledorians, who provided two pages of arrogance and being better than you which I thoroughly enjoyed. Everything's better with Caledorians, as they'd be the first to tell you.

Maybe I'd better give them their own star; you know how Caledorians are about shiny honours.

[Svarthofthi]

Yeah you know, when it comes to authors, I admire people like Thorpe, Adbnett, among others who can be somewhat Tolkien in nature.

I enjoy the idea of what they're presenting even if its presentation is not particularly perfect. Which in Thorpe's case Warhammer's fluff saw a great fattening through his talents and his stories while perhaps not the best writing in the world really seem to bring that whole crisis to life I think. The ideas have more power than the words I think in this case.

[Sweeping death]

It´s been a while that I read the book, but, although acknowledging the criticism of the posters above, my impression is slightly different.

Comparing the two novels, I liked the Shadow King a good deal better than the Malekith one and and found the character of Alith better developed than that of Malekith, perhaps because I found our King very one dimensional and with too sudden and unexplained changes of character.

In some ways, I find that Alith represents better what I feel Naggarithe stands for than Malekith does, which in itself is something that I didn´t like in both novels. They treat the rebels from the time of the Sundering as if they already were druchii, and not naggarothi loyalists, while the druchii extreme hateful character is something that has developed over thousands of years of war and defeats, living in the harsh Land of Chill and raiding on the lesser races. The brooding, taciturn, excessive, emotional, ambitious, militaristic and ruthless nature of Aenarion´s heirs is very well shown in the Shadow Warriors though. It´s just strange that in the novel these character traits all simply disappear from the naggarothi that side with Morathi and Malekith.

I also quite liked the Kurnous theme and his questing to become a hunter, which basically defines the Shadow Warrior guerilla.

As to Yeasir and Alandrian, I can only second what people have already posted.
For Yeasir, my estrangement is actually, again, more with Malekith than with Yeasir himself. Yeasir behaved like the old loyal soldier and was in no way betraying Malekith. I would have expected a different behaviour from the Witch King when he found out that lesser minions killed his marshal.

It´s the same problem that already appeared in the first novel and that I struggle with a little. The tension between the cultist, Morathi side, and the soldierlike malekith loyalists side. The way both come together and form the DE isn´t very well resolved, IMO, and Malekith´s own character and behaviour in that question often doesn´t make very much sense.

With Alandrian, the same happens. How did he come to the cult? To the point of sacrificing his own wife? Particularly as he was the more diplomatic and rational of the two friends. I too feel that some more explanation would have been good.

[Syjahel]

I really agree with you here (and in most places in fact ) - in both novels there is no attempt to really show how the people of Nagarythe became Naggarothi. It's as if they were either always like that - even to the point of using the word 'Naggarothi' before Naggaroth even exists as a realm (again, something the proof reader should have picked up), though in fact it's obvious that they used to be regular Asur once - or as if they somehow changed overnight. I suppose that the fact that long stretches of time sometimes have to be condensed doesn't help much with this, but I feel that it needed a lot more development. I would have loved to have seen it - surely the slow descent into decadence and madness would make a fascinating character study?* These are Elves, after all; they have quite a long way to fall.

I don't feel that we ever really get an insight into what it means to be the Witch King (and I would really like to see this). I don't want to digress too much, as Malekith is another novel, but there is only one place I found that our King came across as three-dimensional - the end of the book, when he was waiting for an opportunity to poison Bel-Shanaar. I suppose that what I'd say is that we _do_ get an insight into what it means to be Alith Anar - it's just that this version of him is at odds with the one from the Army Book, for me.

Thanks for posting such an interesting discussion, I rather had a ... sort of wish to discuss this and no place to discuss it

Note to self: find another word for 'discuss'.



*from a safe distance!

[Sweeping death]

Thanks mate! I guess it´s a question of attitude towards the hobby and what we want out of it, with fluff and background being important and gameplay being diverse and tactically interesting.

The use of "naggarothi" for the Naggarythe elves was something that confused me too. But it´s too widespread in the book, so I couldn´t believe it to be a simple mistake and thought it to be deliberate. Kind of the old name of their people, which the druchii kept after the Sundering, and which in its turn gave the name to their new empire. But this is of course just me rationalizing it and the core problem of the way that Malekith loyalists in the civil war are already bloodcrazied druchii remains.

It´s another topic, but related, and I think the issues discussed there are quite interesting in that sense:

http://www.druchii.net/viewtopic.php?t= ... sc&start=0

About the fascinating story that the "slow descent into decadence and madness" would make I agree, but only partially , because I think I have a deeper disagreement with that whole concept for the DE. I´d rather had them more like in 6th, proud militaristic powermongering slavers, and less decadence and madness. It´s a question of balance between the different aspects of DE, which all make them so interesting, and that I feel has gone in the wrong way.

I just finished the Darkblade novels. We are talking about druchii now, not Naggarithe, and still, with all the treachery, torture and rivers of blood in Har Ganeth, druchii society is hold together by military discipline and honour (people make the mistake to think honour is something inherently "good", while there´re plenty of historical examples showing otherwise), loyalty and machiavelian rational behaviour (and hatred, of course). Not that different to many historical societies, in fact, and something one can "suspend your disbelive", which is important in a fantasy setting.

What I find so interesting about DE is exactly that they are not mad chaos elves, but ruthless cold soldiers, forged in a life of constant war and merciles cruelty to be wielded by their godlike King, and hold together by the inquisitorial terror of the temple of Khaine. But, you see, the Temple is only a political tool too. This whole shift towards a greater focus on the pleasure cults, torture etc. brings them more to a slaanish theme and closer do 40k, which I pity.

About Alith´s character, I haven´t read the HE army book and don´t know how he is portrayed there to have any comparison to the novel. But one last point I´d like to comment is the indeed very interesting question of methods of warfare and what employing these "assymetric" warfare tactics does to one's character and the legitimacy of a cause.
And I found it quite interesting how the novel showed that the methods are actually exactly the same, independently of the cause of its wielder. A sword is a sword, after all. The Shadow Warriors employ TERROR. It´s not just guerrilla. They terrorise their foes, attacking civilians, colaborators and troops outside combat to sap their morale. Just like the French Resitance and other Partisans did.
Being called a terrorist or a freedom fighter really depends only if you are the victim of the strikes, or if you are employing these tactics yourself.

And, well, I found exactly this typical naggarithe determination to do what is needed a very interesting character trait of Alith, and something that I found quite well developed in the book.

PS: sorry for this treatise...

[Syjahel]

PS: sorry for this treatise...

Ah, don't apologise! I enjoy discussions like these very much.

In fact I'm glad you did post this response, because it made me think, especially about this part of what you say:

I think I have a deeper disagreement with that whole concept for the DE. I´d rather had them more like in 6th, proud militaristic powermongering slavers, and less decadence and madness. It´s a question of balance between the different aspects of DE, which all make them so interesting, and that I feel has gone in the wrong way.

It's strange, because actually when I think about the Druchii then this is much more my line of thinking. The slow descent into decadence and madness (SDIDAM? ) was really only applicable in the days when Druchii were all either Chaos-worshippers (because I do think the Cult of Pleasure requires decadence, and madness is often not far behind with Chaos) or even as far back as the days when they worshipped "Khorne, whom they know as Khaine, Lord of Murder" ... well fluffwise Khorne hasn't been Khaine for a long time and I much prefer the idea of a secretive, underground Slaanesh Cult as a rich noble's hobby, spreading its tendrils insidiously through society. So to speak. (I'm a Khaine person at heart.)

So I would actually say that as for how I like my Druchii, your description of it covers it much more accurately. The SDIDAM is really only fitting for the older fluff. As for the Malus books, they are the reason I'm here at DNet in the first place ... The way Druchii society is shown in them takes an unworkable culture (the fluff is just too extreme to work if you don't add in anything else - if all Dark Elves did was backstab, betray and kill each other and everyone else and nothing else there'd be none left :p ) and add enough elements to it to create a functioning society, while still being a logical extension of what has gone before. The Army Book current for the Malus books was 6th Ed, which explains all the references to Sorceresses in Convents which took me so much by surprise. And to be absolutely fair, Army Books only really deal with the aspects of society involved in war. So any novel would have to speculate a little to round out what they say. It's how good a job it makes of that task that determines how much I will take to it.

What I also find interesting in those books is how we have a society that is definitely Druchii by this time, as you say, but one that also has almost atavistic elements of more noble Elven ideals such as self-sacrifice - whenever something like this comes up it serves to remind that Druchii are Dark Elves, yes, but still Elves. So intriguing. I could get sidetracked.

Oh wait ...

I definitely agree with you that terror tactics are what are employed. And there is no sense that this is genuinely regretted by very many, very much, either. For me this removes any real ambiguity, resulting in a flatter story. For me it definitely confirms the Shadow Warriors' actions as evil - and all that remains to discuss then, is whether the ends justify the means.

While I do love the beautiful miniatures and enjoy playing the game (though not very often, sadly, yet), the background has always been the thing I like most about the hobby, so being able to talk about with others is what I'm here for really. That and the roleplaying section And with this, I'm off to play Pathfinder, where I've talked the GM into letting me play a Cultist of Khaine ...

[Sweeping death]

It´s interesting that you mention the really old fluff, as I didn´t know that DE were originally chaos whorshippers and also thought that this discussion about Khaine being Khorne was preposterous. I actually think that the vast majority of druchii players prefer the cold, rational and militaristic variant, spiced by the temple, of course. But in my experience, players of the lesser races, that only have access to the fluff in the rules book, almost all associate DE with chaos and sado-maso practices... I´ve had quite some discussions about it at warseer (btw, I´m Tupinamba there).

As you said, the armybook fluff is too extreme and doesn´t make for a viable society, and, despite several fluff flaws in the Darkblade novels (moustaches...), I liked it a lot that a workable culture was presented for the DE there. And I find it important to go a litle further still. Not only do I find the non-SDIDAM variant more feasible, I find it vastly more interesting and unique.
Not mindless brutes, like OG and Ogres.
Not chaos slaves, like WoC, Beastmen, Chaos Dwarfs and even Skaven (horned rat)
But tragic, proud and ruthlessly vengeful Elves. The fallen heirs to the greatest elven hero and proudest, most martial elven realm there were. As you said, "so intriguing"! That´s exactly what I find too.That´s why I like it when the contact to the original Naggarythe qualities are kept and when chaos influences in our fluff are diminished or kept to a persecuted hidden society (I didn´t like it to be totally supressed in our last armybook).

I´m totally a Khaine person myself, but more from the point of view of an executioner than from a witchelve (though I´m never advocating that this crazed part be taken away from the fluff. They represent an important aspect, I just find that it got a little out of control lastly). I find it very important for the DE character that Khaine is NOT Khorne. It´s an ELVEN god. It´s the elven god of revenge, war, pain and death and that´s why it is THE druchii god.

As to the Shadow Warriors, I definitely got the feel that they became very druchii like in the process of their resistance. Sometimes one could think: "Well, if they do that, they might as well join forces with Malekith again..." And the only reason I think they didn´t, is their own, personal and familiar revenge and hatred (which is also very druchii and naggarythe!). I liked that!

As to the broader comdemnation of terror, I find it to be a very complex question. As stated before, there are plenty of examples of "good" guys using clear terror tactics, not just guerrilla ones. The situation the Shadow Warriors are in is very desperate and I can easily see how the escalation of violence and atrocities gets out of hand like that. The Anlec faction uses state terror (again, there are also examples enough of "good" guys doing that... but just think about strategic bombing against civilian targets to "break the morale" of the enemy... by current UN definitions, that would clearly be terror) and the Shadow Warrior rebels respond with assymetric terror.

A horrible, cruel and bloody fate, just befitting for the cursed realm of Aenarion... (which is also one of my favourite themes. the tragedy of the curse of Khaine [not Khorne] over Aenarions family and people).

[Greenwhy]

Hey guys, I saw this thread when it started but I've only just finished the second book so I didn't want to spoil it. Firstly, You seem to be talking of what Malekith says about Yeasir as if you've read past the end of the second book. Caledor is not yet released right? where is this coming from?

With regard to what the original poster said about Yeasir I fail to see how he has betrayed Malekith. Malekith was dead and even then he was opposing Morathi as far as anybody else is aware. I love the character of Yeasir in the second book. Allandrian, however, is different. Part of what draws me to this trilogy is to find out how a noble elf is transformed into a sadistic elf simply by following a certain leader and so far it has been just as disappointing as the transformation in star wars episode 3. It seems in both that a person has changed sides/loyalties for whatever reason and immediately take on the traits of their master.

What I would love is if Malekith had of used actions which could be seen by a reasonable person as justified and not so evil; I would love to have arguments with high elf players about how Malekith had no choice and that he did what he thought was in the best interests of Ulthuan. I think we could be malicious, ruthless and vengeful without seeming so villainous.

I have always thought the same as the other posters about how there isn't really a viable civilization with all the backstabbing etc. I look forward to reading Darkblade and seeing more depth. We know that Morathi was touched by chaos but Khaine and Khorne are quite different in my eyes, even if they are both representations of the same figure. I feel that the Dark Elves have similarities to ancient Rome with all the scheming and power struggles, I think the fluff could benefit greatly from additional factions. Imagine the power struggles that could go on between the sects of the Cytherai (other than the Cult of Khaine).

[Sweeping death]

Hi Greenwhy,

the references we´ve made about Malekith´s reaction to Yeasir are from the end of the Shadow Warrior novel, where, as far as I remember, he mentions him as a traitor.

Your comparison with Star Wars hits the nail! It´s exactly how I felt too. But there I think the "explanation" would be that, once you have surrendered yourself to the dark side, it consumes you. In the warhammer universe, I don´t think there is something like that, except for Chaos, which is not the case of the Witch King.

A word be said about the Darkblade novels though. Yes, they present the parts of Druchii society that actually make this culture work, but its still pretty bloody and exagerated, particularly the first novels, where it´s all backstabbing and torturing for pleasure.

I also dig the comparison with ancient Rome (or other ancient cultures, like the Assyrians). But I think that, as Rome is normally seen as a beacon of civilization, people don´t want to compare such a vile society as druchii to them, despite the obvious parallels in being a very militaristic society, dominated by a god of war (Mars), with utter arrogance to other people, which are treated like cattle and either exterminated or enslaved, and a capacity for brutality and excesses that is appalling to our times.

Druchii, like the ancient world, is about power, fulfilling of desires and destroying your enemies. As you said, they "could be malicious, ruthless and vengeful without seeming so villainous." As a final consideration, though, they are NOT human. As elves, their depravity after millenia of being malicious, ruthless and hateful could easily surpass our comparisons with real historic societies on earth.

Cheers!

[Greenwhy]

I only remember Malekith speaking in the last 2 pages. I just re-read them and saw no mention of Yeasir. The only other thing I can think of is when Morathi said that he is not ready to see anyone (I think she was speaking with Alandrian). Was it then?

Some insightful comments on my point of view. I certainly agree with you about the Romans being seen as a "beacon of civilization".

[Dialeth]

I have a doubt about Malekith in this book:
If he is so badly injures by fire, to the point of more resurrection than healing, Why his voice is the same?