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Ahriman: Exile

Ahriman: Warhammer 40,000, Book 1

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Ahriman: Exile

By: John French
Narrated by: Mark Elstob
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About this listen

Book one in the Ahriman series.

Cast out of his Legion, the sorcerer Ahriman, who condemned the Thousand Sons to an eternity of damnation, plots his return to power and the destruction of his foes.

Listen to it because: experience the beginning of an epic, time-twisting saga of revenge, betrayal and attempted atonement. John French takes the Ahriman you know and love from the Horus Heresy in new and interesting directions, making him both deeply sympathetic and thoroughly evil.

The story: all is dust.... Spurned by his former brothers and his father, Magnus the Red, Ahriman is a wanderer, a sorcerer of Tzeentch whose actions condemned an entire Legion to an eternity of damnation. Once a vaunted servant of the Thousand Sons, he is now an outcast, a renegade who resides in the Eye of Terror. Ever scheming, he plots his return to power and the destruction of his enemies, an architect of fate and master of the warp.

Written by John French. Narrated by Mark Elstob.

©2020 John French (P)2020 Games Workshop Limited Fantasy Fiction
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Story was pretty decent, but the narrator has the worst character voices I've ever encountered across hundreds of audiobooks. Comically bad, and constantly pulling me out of the story - I'm not sure the character voices could have missed the tone of the setting any harder. If I wasn't so committed to Ahriman's story I'd have abandoned it less than half an hour in. As is, I'd say read the physical book for this one if you have the option.

Good story, wrong narrator

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kind of zoned out a few times but the voices dragged me back in. worth the moolah to hear the different voices.

Incredible narrator.

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I had always found the other legions more tragic.
the Emperor's Children falling to Slaanesh.
the World Eaters descending into the madness of Khorne.
the Death Guard tortured into the service of Nurgle.
but thanks to the wonderful work of John French I finally understand.
it is hope that ties the legion to Tzeentch. a cruel but brilliant twist.

a lot of the reviews say the narrator is bad.
but I cannot disagree more strongly.
he put passion behind each character, and was always creative.

an awesome book, I look forward to finding out how it continues in the next one.

Better than promised!

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I was worried by the reviews of the narration, but I was well and truly surprised by how good it was, different to the others, but then again chaos scorcerers are different

Very different but awesome!

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stroy started well with a good pace.. the narrator is good and has a lot of voices but they just not ..match.. the wh40k realm.. I quickly lost interest unfortunately. Perhaps it was sounding too dramatised which made it cartoonish. I think the narration needed little more "dread" factor and more dryness to make it sound more grim and dark as it is in the wh40k.

Great story, not the best narration

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absolutely joyous to listen to. amazing book from the wonderful games work shop to good

amazing

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Missed opportunity to flesh out an interesting character. There was no sense of journey or excitement. Ahriman basically just has situations thrust upon him that he reluctantly deals with. He was a broken character to begin with and still broken at the end. Not what I expect from someone who has and is again about to lead the Thousand Sons

Missed opportunity

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There were no characters or stakes you’d care for in this story. No real feeling of brotherhood or conflict over matters of leadership when said leadership was questioned. Everyone is depressed to unfathomable levels and I feel like this story could have really benefited from a hopeless optimistic.
Ahriman is a far cry of a character from his HH counterpart who’s perspective mainly consists of brooding over past mistakes. He doesn’t form any close relationship or have any meaningful dialogue with the other characters. Which makes caring for them difficult. The human perspective we get is that of a tech priest on the verge of madness. There isn’t much character for the space marines accompanying Ahriman. They are as much or even more so mysterious than the sorcerer himself. Ahriman does less of the manipulating which is implied and more of them being stupid.
Most of what Ahriman does is the same. He is constantly looking for answers that he could easily theorise for himself and in the process, gets into increasingly dangerous situations. And when somebody actually spells these answers out to him, it’s not a big revelation. It’s just a,”nah yeah mate I already knew that”.

Nothing really big happening in the plot and the characters aren’t good enough to carry it. So I am disappointed with it.

For the performance of the narrator. He was okay. I wish he gave the space marines crew more distinct voices.

Disappointing

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Many times I have been amazed at how Black Library sources talented actors for their audiobooks. This was not one of those times.

The narrator displayed a total lack of sensitivity to the subject matter, persisting with voices that were not only opposite to intent of the written work but that were agonisingly painful to hear. I can't say if Mark Elstob hates the lore of Games Woekshop but I have no doubt he did some criminal violence to my eats. If you can, read this one.

When Bad Narration Happens to Good Story

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I tried listening for as long as I could because Ahzhek is one of my favourite characters in the setting but I couldn’t get past two hours. The nasal whine is not appropriate for one of the pre eminent sorcery of the 40k galaxy. He literally sounds like anything but a chaos space marine. It boggles me how they allowed the narrator to continue with the other books

Narrator makes Ahriman sound weak and senile

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