The Death of the Necromancer

Ile-Rien Series, Book 2

By: Martha Wells

Narrated by: Derek Perkins

Nicholas Valiarde is a passionate, embittered nobleman with an enigmatic past. Consumed by thoughts of vengeance, he is consoled only by thoughts of the beautiful, dangerous Madeline. He is also the greatest thief in all of Ile-Rien... On the gaslight streets of the city, Nicholas assumes the guise of a master criminal, stealing jewels from wealthy nobles to finance his quest for vengeance: The murder of Count Montesq. Montesq orchestrated the wrongful execution of Nicholas's beloved godfather on false charges of necromancy - the art of divination through communion with spirits of the dead - a practice long outlawed in the kingdom of Ile-Rien.

But now Nicholas's murderous mission is being interrupted by a series of eerie, unexplainable, even fatal events. Someone with tremendous magical powers is opposing him. Children vanish, corpses assume the visage of real people, mortal spells are cast, and traces of necromantic power that hasn't been used for centuries are found. And when a spiritualist unwittingly leads Nicholas to a decrepit mansion, the monstrous nature of his peril finally emerges in harrowing detail. Nicholas and his compatriots must destroy an ancient and awesome evil. Even the help of Ile-Rien's greatest sorcerer may not be enough, for Nicholas faces a woefully mismatched battle - and unthinkable horrors await the loser.

©1998 Martha Wells (P)2013 Tantor

Critic reviews

"Wells continues to demonstrate an impressive gift for creating finely detailed fantasy worlds rife with many-layered intrigues and immensely personable characters." ( Publishers Weekly)

Pretty good

it was pretty good and there's nothing wrong with it that I can put my finger on, but it also didn't particularly grab my attention and I found myself zoning out a lot

Good story but hard to keep the characters straight

Great narration and compelling story. I hope the next in the series has character names that are not so similar. Too many dudes with similar sounding names and similar job descriptions.

What you get when magic and revenge collide.

You can only see the hole truth when you look at the hole picture from all angles.

Good writing and great narration

The story had an interesting premise and the writing was quite intriguing. Between the words and the expert narration, this was a very easy book to listen to. The overall plot and storyline while not thrilling, kept my interest.

Engaging and propulsive

I deeply love this book. Like in Murderbot terms, it is my Sanctuary Moon. This is a mix of the very easy narrator to listen to + the fact that the close third person points of view mean that you keep discovering new things. (E.g., a character will think that something happened because of A and it’s stated in their narration as a fact, and later you find out that A would have been impossible, but it’s clear when relistening that the first character was just mistaken and the true explanation makes sense for the situation.)

This is also a good book to read before the Fall of Ile Rien books, but is an easy introduction to the series.