Bloody Books -The Wicked And The Warped by Robert Rath

There are certain books that make reviewing the sequel rather awkward. The Infinite and the Divine is one of them. Robert Rath's 2020 novel somehow managed the apparently impossible: it took two ancient robot skeletons, gave them a ten-thousand-year argument over an ancient Necron artefact, and turned the whole thing into one of the funniest, strangest and most unexpectedly affecting books in the Black Library catalogue. So when a sequel arrives, the obvious danger is simply doing the same thing again. Thankfully, The Wicked and the Warped avoids that trap. We once again follow Trazyn the Infinite and Orikan the Diviner. The two Necron Lords who have spent several thousand years demonstrating that immortality does not necessarily bring wisdom, emotional maturity or the ability to let a bloody argument go. This time Rath moves away from the historical feud of the first novel and into something much closer to a classic rip-roaring adventure. When the opening of the Great Rift delivers a mysterious world from the Necrons' distant past back into realspace, Trazyn sees an opportunity to uncover the fate of a lost expedition to Amenthis. Unfortunately, Amenthis hasn't exactly been sitting around waiting to be excavated. It has ended up in the Warp. The result is a gloriously excessive adventure drawing on pretty much every boy’s own story involving explorers wandering somewhere they absolutely shouldn't. Rath simply replaces the older adventure’s dinosaurs and natives with the Warp, which feels like the sort of escalation only Warhammer could consider perfectly sensible.

The real reason the book works, however, is still Trazyn and Orikan. Rath could easily have written The Infinite and the Divine 2: Still Bitching, but instead he actually develops their relationship. The bickering remains, as do the insults, betrayals and egos roughly the size of small moons, but something has changed. After the events of the first novel, there is a genuine sense that these two have been forced to reconsider what the other means to them. Two immortal beings who have spent millennia trying to murder, humiliate and inconvenience one another are now, rather reluctantly, stumbling towards something resembling friendship. That development gives the novel considerably more emotional weight than its ridiculous premise might suggest. The Necrons may technically be soulless machines, but Rath continues to find an extraordinary amount of humanity in them. Pride, jealousy, obsession, loneliness, the desire to be remembered and the desperate need to prove that they are right have all survived the removal of their flesh. Immortality hasn't freed them from human weaknesses; it has simply given them several million years to become exceptionally good at them. This is also where Rath's humour remains so effective. He can spend a page dealing with something fundamentally ridiculous, then suddenly turn around and deliver a genuinely thoughtful observation about memory, companionship or the meaning of an existence that has lasted longer than entire civilisations. The comedy works because nobody in the story treats Trazyn and Orikan as a joke. They genuinely believe their arguments are important, which somehow makes them considerably funnier.

The expedition itself pushes them into situations where their usual advantages become less reliable. Reality, memory, space and metaphysics all start behaving badly, and being an almost impossibly powerful Necron Lord isn't always enough to get them out of trouble. That vulnerability is important because it forces them to rely upon one another, which is obviously the last thing either of them wants to admit. The supporting characters of Phillias and Valeria help provide an outsider's perspective on the increasingly bizarre relationship between the Necrons. Valeria is particularly likeable and well developed, although I occasionally found her perhaps a little too likeable for an Inquisitor. Rath has previously been very good at exploring the unpleasant and occasionally monstrous aspects of Imperial characters, and compared with some of his other Inquisitorial creations, Valeria can sometimes feel as though she's wandered in from a slightly more optimistic version of the Imperium. It is a minor complaint, but one that occasionally pulled me out of the story.

The bigger question is whether The Wicked and the Warped is as good as The Infinite and the Divine. I'm not convinced that is entirely the right comparison. The first novel is built almost entirely around Trazyn and Orikan's feud, with ten thousand years of history allowing Rath to turn their petty rivalry into an enormous historical farce. The Wicked and the Warped is faster, more adventurous and much more interested in putting them through increasingly bizarre situations. That does mean some of the things that made the first book so distinctive aren't quite as central here. Trazyn's obsessive collecting and Orikan's relentless pursuit of knowledge are still present, but there are moments when the plot needs them to do something spectacular rather than something particularly characteristic. The action can occasionally overwhelm the quieter character work, and there are times when another few pages exploring the characters might have been preferable to another enormous set-piece. But ultimately, I think that trade-off works because the thing Rath is actually interested in developing isn't their rivalry, but rather their relationship.

The first book was, in many ways, about two immortals who refused to change. The Wicked and the Warped is about what happens when they finally do. Their understanding of one another changes, their relationship moves forward and the consequences of their actions extend beyond the immediate adventure. Beneath all the impossible geometries, ancient worlds and metaphysical nonsense, this is ultimately a story about companionship and what it means for beings who have effectively lived forever to discover that perhaps the thing they were looking for wasn't another artefact, another secret or another victory. That is an unexpectedly human idea to put at the centre of a story about Necrons.

Rath is still exceptionally good at balancing that seriousness with comedy. One minute the book is delivering outright slapstick, the next it is dealing with genuine danger or unexpectedly emotional material, before throwing in some philosophical observation about existence that makes you want to underline a sentence before remembering that you are reading about two robot skeletons arguing over the metaphysical equivalent of whose toys are better. The best moments are those where the comedy and tragedy occupy the same space. You can laugh at Trazyn and Orikan while simultaneously recognising something genuinely sad about two beings who have survived almost everything except the consequences of having to exist forever. And that is ultimately why the sequel succeeds. The easiest thing Rath could have done was reproduce the formula of the first book: Trazyn wants something, Orikan wants something else, they argue, somebody dies, somebody comes back, they betray one another and everyone gets increasingly annoyed. Instead, Rath takes the characters somewhere new.

It isn't quite the lightning strike that was The Infinite and the Divine, but it doesn't need to be. It is a different sort of book, and a sequel willing to develop its characters is considerably more interesting than one that simply imitates its predecessor*. The action occasionally gets in the way, and I would have liked a little more of the obsessive collector and the maddeningly smug astromancer that made the first novel so distinctive, but those are complaints about a very good book rather than evidence of a bad one. There is also something wonderfully appropriate about two ancient Necron Lords spending millions of years trying to destroy** one another only to eventually discover that they might actually be friends. It is almost unbearably sentimental until you remember that these are Trazyn and Orikan, so the friendship will inevitably involve insults, betrayal, metaphysical horrors and probably the destruction of several museums.

And then there is the epilogue, which very strongly suggests that Rath isn't finished with them yet. Quite how many times two beings who have already been alive for several million years can be described as having another chapter ahead of them is a question best left to the Necrons, but I'm certainly not going to complain. The Wicked and the Warped isn't quite the lightning strike that was The Infinite and the Divine, but it is a bloody good sequel. It is funny, inventive, surprisingly heartfelt and packed with enough metaphysical nonsense, ancient history and spectacularly bad decisions to make it feel thoroughly at home in Warhammer 40,000. Most importantly, it doesn't simply repeat the first book. It moves its characters forward. Robert Rath has once again managed to make two soulless robot skeletons feel more human than half the Imperium, but judging by these two, they certainly didn't lose their capacity for being absolute bastards.

*the subtext of the previous book is just text now.

**There’s a joke there. If they had bodies.