‘The Lord of the End Times’ – Josh Reynolds (Black Library)


Page Count: 298 Pages.

If you’re after reading ‘The Lord of the End Times’ then you’ll need to find yourself a copy of ‘The End Times: Doom of the Old World’ collection. I missed the ‘End Times’ series, last time round, and those books are now very expensive to get hold of (although I was lucky enough to find a copy of ‘The Lords of the Dead’ collection at a decent price and promptly reviewed ‘The Fall of Altdorf’) so when Black Library (re)released ‘The End Times: Doom of the Old World’, I was all over it.

Nothing against the other factions of the Old World but I’ve always been most interested in how the men of the Empire and Bretonnia fared against, well… everything else. So it was then that I skipped every other story and went straight to ‘The Lord of the End Times’ for a pivotal battle and what came next…

As the dread armies of the Everchosen march unabated across the desolation of the Empire, the mighty lords of distant lands look to take advantage of the growing crisis. In Naggaroth, the Witch King raises his armies against his ancestral home of Ulthuan, determined to conquer it and take it from the hated high elves and his rival Tyrion. Beneath the earth, another struggle plays out as the servants of the Horned Rat, the skaven, seek to topple the ancient kingdom of Karak Eight Peaks and lay low their old enemies the dwarfs.

Such conflicts, though grand in scale, are but a prelude to an even greater doom, as Archaon prepares his war host to sack Middenheim and the last bulwark of mankind against the ultimate victory of Chaos. Should he prevail and the mortal races fall, the Old World will not survive…

Having finished ‘The Lord of the End Times’, it is really hard to believe that it’s only 298 pages long. It certainly didn’t feel like it while I was reading… There is a lot going on here and I do mean a lot. While a couple of much shorter takes follow it, ‘The Lord of the End Times’ is essentially where the history of the Old World ends and there are a lot of loose ends to tie up before that end arrives. This makes for a lot of very dense, information heavy, story telling where it can feel like the overall plot is being asked to wait for a bit while a conveyor belt of characters are processed according to just how evil they’ve been in the past. This is most of them by the way, there are a few ‘good’ characters but this is the end of the world so…

I’ll be honest, how much you get out of ‘The Lord of the End Times’ will depend on how much you can invest in this approach. It is heavy going but I’m enough of a fan of the setting to be able to sit back and enjoy a few familiar names pop up here and there, even if they die not long after. And that’s what ultimately saves the book from just being about tying up loose ends. You may know how it will all end (the clue is in the title) but in the meantime, all the battles are spectacular to say the least and the only time it stops is when there is literally no-one left to stand up and fight. You can’t ask for a lot more than that in a Warhammer book and Reynolds really makes sure that the Old World goes out with a bang that means something to the fans.

I really should go back and fill in some of the ‘End Times’ gaps but for now, I’m sat here feeling like the Old World got the send off that it deserved. Not a bad Bank Holiday read ;o)

Comments

  1. Bookstooge27 May 2024 at 02:30

    I liked Reynolds regular fiction. It was too bad he lost the rights and can't continue writing his own stuff. He's a great author.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Graeme28 May 2024 at 00:11

      I haven't read much of his non-Warhammer stuff but 'Last Resort' was a lot of fun. I really should see what else he has written...

      Delete

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