Path of the Archon by Andy Chambers – Book Review

Path of the Archon is the third and last book of Andy Chamber’s Dark Eldar trilogy. Three books in, Andy Chambers is clearly at the top of his game in bringing the Dark City to life.

Unfortunately, the story doesn’t live up to the glorious setting and scenery Andy Chambers rolls out. Too often it felt like the characters from the previous books randomly stumbling about, mostly so they could witness random cool stuff happening.

The eternal city of Commorragh is no longer beset by the horrors of the Dysjunction, but the scars of its passage remain. Now the supreme overlord, Asdrubael Vect, strives to reassert his authority over the anarchic city before hidden challengers can make their bid for power. The noble Yllithian frantically seeks new allies to put between himself and the overlord’s wrath, the Mandrake kings muster and Vect prepares to unleash his most fearsome weapons against his own people as Commorragh erupts into open war.

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#1 – The Good – Commorragh Brought To Live

All right. Let’s start with the good things about this book.

As with the previous books, Andy Chambers is clearly a master at bringing the Dark City and its depraved denizens to life. As with the previous books, Path of the Archon once again offers a wild roller coaster ride through Commorragh and all its weirdness and strangeness, including a visit to Aelindrach and a look into the life of Asdrubael Vect himself.

I haven’t yet been tempted into playing a Dark Eldar army, but Andy Chamber’s books really made Commorragh one of the most enjoyable spots in the 40K-verse for me.

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#2 – The Bad – The Characters & The Story

The problem I had with the book is that the story and the characters never really met up.

One one hand, there is the “plot” about a Nurgle-grab for power in the Dark City, which in the end gets stomped on by Asdrubael Vect, by not just one but two ‘deus ex machina’ with next-to-no relationship to the previous story/books.

On the other hand, there are (almost) all the characters from previous two books, Archon Yllithian, the Haemonculus Bellathonis, etc…, but all they really do is “conveniently being” in the right spaces for some timely exposition.

Example: Why would the Mandrake King need a Haemonculus servant? Because the reader needs to see that something fishy is going on in Aelindrach. No other reason, really.

This is far from the only example. All the characters we know from the previous books are “there”, but the story would’ve unfolded just the same (in the last 2 chapters or so), if they’d all died at the end of Path of the Incubus. Ultimately, they are irrelevant to the story.

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#3 – Thoughts: The Trilogy That Wasn’t

Path of the Archon wasn’t a bad book, but it was a bad ending to the trilogy.

Andy Chambers clearly can write. His prose flows a lot better than 80% of the Black Library stuff that is out there, and (like the previous two books in the series) Path of the Archon is overflowing with crazy and quirky ideas.

But as 3rd installment in this series, Path of the Archon adds nothing. Remove the characters from the previous two books (or change their names), and this could’ve easily been a stand-alone Dark Eldar novel about how Vect rules his city.

Likewise, the previous two books by and large tell the whole story of the Dysjunktion, how it was caused (Path of the Renegade) and how the worst was prevented (Path of the Incubus).

Resolving the cliff-hangers left open in the end of Path of the Incubus takes up no more than 2 or 3 pages at the very end of Path of the Archon.

Thus, ultimately, Path of the Archon felt like a lot of filler – very well-written filler, but still filler – to make a “trilogy” out of a story that was essentially told in two books.

Z.