I was really looking forward to this one as Thousand Sons are a legion I have always had an interest in. Ahriman is a character that has always intrigued me as well in the Warhammer 40k and Horus Heresy era. Sadly, for me, this just never really got off the ground.

John French has superb descriptive talent and paints very vivid imagery. That may sound like a plus but, when used to excess, as it was in this novel, it's somewhat of a negative. I often found myself getting a little lost as I was too busy paying attention to the descriptions only for the actual narrative to flow on past me. I felt this one was guilty of too much purple prose and it just turned me off from what was going on and, unfortunately, I never really switched back on.

Whether it was a product of the aforementioned abundance of purple prose, or just me not connecting with the story as a whole, but I found that I really didn't care about the characters in some cases and just flat out didn't know who they were in others. They were in the book for the long haul, but nothing about them seemed to stick and leave a lasting impression. Some of what was being told was interesting, but I was too switched off from the book to truly take it all in in any meaningful way.

As mentioned before, there were some positives that I took away from it regarding Ahriman and his past, but not enough to get this any higher than a 2 out of 5. Too much happened in the non-physical world for me to care. If it wasn't some lengthy inner-monologue or memory, it was Ahriman wandering the halls of his 'memory palace'. Far too little in this book of any actual substance to have me wanting to continue on with the series.

Enter the mins of the mysterious legion of sorcerer and their main psyjer. It delves into the changes wrought by the rubicin. FUN AND ENLIGHTENING STORY

Ahriman: Exile is a book presented in three parts. In the first, Ahriman is in hiding within a band of renegade Space Marines after being cast out of the Thousand Sons for doing something utterly terribly. The second part, Ahriman is trying to find out the truth behind many of the questions laid out in the first phase of the book and the third part brings many of the plot elements to it’s conclusion.

As a whole, Ahriman: Exile is a well-rounded and complete book. The plot, all-in-all, is intriguing enough with enough of a hook to keep the pages turning; but I am afraid this is where my praise for the novel ends.

As a central character, Ahriman should he been a lot more compelling than he was. The Chief Librarian of the Thousand Sons should have a lot more wits about him and feel more intelligent than he was presented here. Instead he bumbled from one action to the next, fell for obvious traps and was too busy sulking about what he had done with/to the Rubricae – as far as I understand an enchantment to save the Thousand Sons from being further tainted by Chaos by (unknowingly to Ahriman when the deal was struck) turning them to dust. For all his grand intelligence, Ahriman was an absolute idiot with his choices, then spends a good portion of the novel in his own thoughts lamenting the choices that he had made and the fate of his beloved Legion. I personally found this aspect of the book tiresome. There’s little in the ways of character development on Ahrimans part (until right at the end of the book) and it all becomes a little trite.

While Ahriman isn’t sulking about his actions he spends a lot of time questioning the hands of fate and what that means for him. He spends a lot of time in his own head wondering who is hunting him and why. Especially early on in the novel. I found the pacing a little slow and drawn out, but plodded on, just like the main character in the book.

Surrounding Ahriman are other characters that feel like they have much more depth to them. Renegade Space Marines; Astraeos, Kadin and Thidias whose banter is unmistakably Space Marine; their quarrels settled in the fighting pits as per tradition. How they changed, physically and mentally, around Ahriman made them more engaging to read about.

After reading Mechanicum, I have come to appreciate characters revolving around Cult Mechanicus a little more as such, Mistress Carmenta and the way she interfaces with the warship Titan Child we’re brilliantly written. Her personality shone far brighter than the rest of the cast around her. At least until the introduction of Silvanus, a navigator stolen from the hands of the Inquisition, but I’ve always confessed that humanity and it’s variations and how they adapt to their challenges are what compels me to these settings far more than the monsters or the super-human, so my bias is showing here.

The writing style of Ahriman: Exile tended to lean on similes a little too much for my liking and I particularly struggled with the second section of the book which involved messing around in the Warp. This must be such a difficult thing for authors to write about, because it’s never clearly explained what the Warp is. It’s a thing that is travelled through, where daemons live and some sort of realm that hosts the ‘big bad.’ So, describing it tends to fall into the vague, contradictory, descriptions to keep it mysterious. Understandable to a degree, but Ahriman: Exile really pushed the limits of my patience of just how many of these contradictions and similes are used in one paragraph. A simple example being; ice forming on fire. It stretched me a little thin and, had I not been past the 50% mark, I’d have put Ahriman: Exile firmly in the DNF pile.

After the headache of getting through the Warp/Daemon section of Ahriman: Exile it did pick up. I took particular enjoyment in the ‘Lets steal a Navigator’ event and found it an enjoyable romp and completely different to everything else I’ve read in a Warhammer novel, but at this point it was a bit ‘too little, too late’ and the damage from the first two sections of the book was already done.

I have been assured that the next two Ahriman books in the trilogy are far superior to this one and that John Frenchs books involving Inquisitor Covenant are good reads, so I’m not giving up on the author yet, despite Ahriman: Exile not being my cup of tea.

Another great dive into the lore of Warhammer 40k, John French's Ahriman: Exile dives into the famous (or notorious) sorcerer Ahriman's current trials after being mostly responsible for the tragedy of the Rubric Marines of the Thousand Sons. French never allows Ahriman to feel too powerful, reminding the reader that no matter how powerful you are, there's always something stronger in the grimdark future.

A solid antihero story with some really original ideas. The central character is overwhelmingly powerful (as is to be expected in Warhammer) but still manages to face significant obstacles that most definitely don’t leave him unscathed. I’ll be keeping an eye out for the sequel.

I admit to not being a big fan of the thousand sons legion, until I started reading this book... Ahriman is a very intriguing character with many many flaws and these are shown well in this book, I have also purchased this on Audible I am that impressed with it