Ahriman: Exile

Ahriman: Warhammer 40,000, Book 1

By: John French

Narrated by: Mark Elstob

Length: 11 hrs and 27 mins

Publisher's summary

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

Good but a little hard to follow

I love chaos characters and Ahriman is no different. This story really gives you an idea of who he is after the events of the heresy and the Rubric. John French knows the thousand sons better than most I think.

The narrator is not someone I'm a huge fan of but he really gave it his best in this story. Good work Mr. Elstob

Verg good book let down by VA

Really enjoyed the story, but the VA makes the main characters sound like sniveling cowards.

Excellent!

This story was awesome! The narrator did a great job and I can’t wait to finish the rest of the series

A great tale ruined by an annoying voice actor

It took me a while to listen to this one because I couldn't take this guy's voice work for more than a few minutes at a time. I would have rather read the book for what his idea of drama induction and demonic representation. The story itself was classic Warhammer 40k

Thoroughly entertaining!

For someone as important in certain circles in the Warhammer 40,000 universe as Ahriham, this book does a great job at fleshing him out as a character.
John French makes the psychic combat and abilities, as well as the warp magic taking place, colorful, vicious and entertaining.

Mark Elstob gives an amazing performance for every character in this story. I want to highlight his performance as the ship’s navigator, giving his voice a synthetic, machine-like warble. The only character I could see improved is Ahriham himself, the performance was just a tad too nasally for my liking.

As someone who’s enjoying the Fabius Bile series, this book was a good read. I hope Black Library does more books about prominent Astartes in the traitor legions.

I gave 5 stars, but Let me explain

When I found out this trilogy exists, I prepared to empty my wallet and starve for the next month so I could get them all and feast upon the adventures of a depressed, powerful, wry psyker. My very first impression upon opening the introduction was, “wait, is that the voice from Fulgrim?”, which I remember as a fantastic story with a voice that matched the pomposity of the Emperors Children perfectly. It was like greeting an old friend who had just purchased a better microphone. As the story progressed into the second chapter and more characters were introduced, I realized 2 things: 1. The writing could politely be described as “a little hard to follow”, or at the extreme, “byzantine”, which I feel would be unfair, given that most of the action sequences were doubtless written to be concise and understood but maybe he didn’t have the time or resources to improve further upon them. 2. Ahriman sounds like the toostie pop owl and everyone else sounds like a pack of Saturday morning cartoon character. Yeah, they do. But lets put that into the context of the story. Ahriman is no longer the fine tuned, precise, disciplined psyker who walked with Magnus through the streets of Prospero, he has adapted the most useful practices from his past for survival, he’ll kick you in the nuts if he can. You can imagine the apathy he feels, a once fine student, now a shadow of his past self. He doesn’t care what you think he sounds like. The fact that everyone around him sounds so ridiculous only adds to the ennui he feels, led on these exhausting adventures by a glimmer of curiosity, meanwhile the only help he can get are transformers rejects. With every edition of 40k, and even with some genres of it’s media, the texture of the characters change. This is not Ahriman played by Jonathan Keeble, this Is Ahriman after the divorce with Magnus has finally sunk in and the kids won’t talk to him anymore. 5 stars. New appreciation for Ahriman. Good job Mark. This has been my Ted talk. Thankyou for your time.

Fairly good story, a few strange moments from VA

The story was over all enjoyable, the character switching did get confusing in some moments and some voices for the characters were either gobliny or higher pitched than expected. These voices made some dialogue almost impossible to understand.

All is dust.

Decent VA wrong novel

Story is great but performance isn’t the best. Like many people I didn’t love Ahriman’s voice but even if you get over that like I did for some reason he SIGNIFICANTLY changes their voices when speaking telepathically and it gets a little confusing at first. Not as bad as people are saying but definitely heard better. He has good range tho and characters are usually very distinct when usually Marines are just super deep voiced with vaguely different British accents or basically sound the same. I feel like his high voice would suit an Ad Mech novel since his Adept and Servitor/Augmented voices were some of the best I’ve heard it just doesn’t suit SM’s necessarily.

Isnt Ahriman supposed to be a badass?

Personally didnt like the performance but the story was kinda hard to get through. I really expected more than weak ramblings and low grade story for the Chief Librarian of the Thousand Sons.

Fantastic

Someone before in the reviews had said that this was only a 2 star performance. I don't think that they were listening to the same audio book as me. This was great. The story and the performance.