Book Review: Malekith

I've had this book sitting around for a loooooooooooooong time and I finally decided to get to it after I finished Blood Gorgons. I am kinda hit and miss with the Time of Legends books. I like the Sigmar books, but didn't really care for the style that Nagash was written in.

So this book is about the elves (or does GW call them elfs, like they say dwarfs?). It tells us the tale of Malekith the guy that will one day create the Dark Elves. The book begins right after the elves have finished battling daemons and their greatest mage has sacrificed himself to seal the chaos gate at the top of the world. Malekith's father, the first Phoenix King Aenarion, has died and a council of princes has come together to elect a new king.

But surely it's going to be Malekith. He is Aenarion's son. The cool one I mean, not a namby pamby priest of Asuryan like Aenarion's eldest son Morelion. He was kicking ass and taking daemon names along with his father. He's got to be a shoe in right? Well, not so much. The princes elect Bel Shanaar. And the stage is set for bad things to come.

This book covers almost two thousand year of history. I didn't know that much of the pre-Sigmar history of the Warhammer Fantasy Battle world, but this book fills a lot of it in. I knew that there were elves in what will be called the Old World, but I didn't know they essentially owned everything up to the World's Edge Mountains. They even hint that the mountains were named by the elves.

I really enjoyed almost all of this book. The meeting of the dwarfs was really well done. There were a couple of spots where we were talking about elvish politics that did seem to run on a bit too long for me. But for the for the most part, the book is really well done. I kept saying to myself, "Malekith isn't that bad of a guy, I can totally see where he's coming from.", and then something would happen and I would think, "uh-oh here it comes, he is totally gunna go evil here." and then something would happen and he would deal with it like a capable leader and not a petty villain. They author did a really good job with that.

I must say however, that the ending of the book, in fact the last 3-4 pages, are some of the best in any Black Library book. What an ending!

I give this book four Khaineite cultists out of five.