Tomb World
Warhammer 40,000
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Tomb World
Narrated by:
Gabrielle Nellis-Pain
Buy Now for £23.99
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Narrated by:
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Gabrielle Nellis-Pain
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By:
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Jonathan D Beer
About this listen
A Warhammer 40,000 Audiobook
Khemet, a disgraced praetorian charged with protecting her tomb world as it slumbers, is roused to action once more. This is her chance to prove she is meant for greater things. She will stop at nothing to see it done.
LISTEN TO IT BECAUSE
It's a chance to see the Necron Empire in a new way. Join a lowly cryptek with lofty ambitions and a praetorian suffering from the worst punishment imaginable – can they work together to reclaim a Necron planet now infested with humans?
THE STORY
As the Necron Empire sleeps, the Triarch praetorians watch and wait.
Khemet has guarded the tombs of her people for millions of years, patiently waiting for the day when the numberless legions of the dead will rise again. As they finally begin to stir, old ambitions and treacheries are roused with them.
Betrayed and imprisoned, dogged by the shame of a terrible failure, Khemet has endured the gravest punishment Necron ingenuity can conjure. Now she is free, offered a single chance to restore her honour and reclaim her standing. For Khemet to rise, a world must die.
Written by Jonathan D Beer. Narrated by Gabrielle Nellis-Pain. Runtime 10 hours and 2 minutes approx.
©2025 Games Workshop Limited (P)2025 Games Workshop LimitedListeners also enjoyed...
Much needed Necron story
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This story is not really 10 hours long — it’s more like 6. A considerable portion of the work is dedicated to seeing the world through a conveyor belt of new disposable humans of the Imperium who, while never outright incompetent, are middling enough in their ability that they never so much as slightly frustrate the Necron protagonists.
There is no second-act low point in this book. In fact, Khemet here — who shares the very fragile, prissy arrogance of Dominion Genesis’ protagonist — is, unlike that book’s cover character, actually just built different, I guess. Khemet can defeat anyone in combat, she has creative-mode control over all other Necrons, and she can’t even be harmed by most human weapons. All her plans work out, and even the one time they don’t, she just wins anyway, easily. A Chekhov’s gun is set up early — a way in which this unfailable character might meet her end if she’s not careful — but ten minutes before the end of the book, it’s revealed she dealt with that off-screen.
Jonathan really has good ideas for books. The concept for this work, as well as his previous one, are leagues and bounds ahead of most other Black Library literature being made today. However, once more, the execution falls seriously flat.
If you want to read a disaster/horror story of a world’s fall, told without the ambience or gravitas to really fit into either genre — and where you sometimes cut to an infuriatingly unlikeable protagonist who will explain to you and everyone around her how she’s amazing and how her plans will work (and then they work that way) — then it’s a fine, inoffensive book.
I probably won’t read any more of Jonathan’s works that feature a badass-looking girlboss on the cover. He seriously can’t write them with even a spark of gravitas or earned authority. If it’s any consolation, like in Dominion Genesis, she does eventually make some commendable choices.
A very odd book.
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Necrons rocking the best 40K Novels it seems
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Characters in this book do stupid things for no reason except that the plot demands it. The heavy-handed patricarchal overtones of the Necron characters is hardly subtle. THat the hero goes along with everything they want is barely credible—she's supposed to be one of the Silent King's agents yet she allows herself to be bossed around by a couple of nobodies when it's made clear that she could kill them pretty much anytime she liked. This is not self-doubt, or being made to feel worthless by 'the man'—this just beggars belief. Why would the Silent King entrust his works to someone so utterly spineless? Like a lot of newbie 40k writers, Jonathan D Beer makes the mistake of thinking they can get away with giving their Necron characters the psychology and motivations of modern day men and women, forgetting they are the military elite of a galaxy-spanning civilisation of murderous metal skeletons from the dawn of time. They don't sit down and cry because someone in the office made them feel undervalued.
The supporting cast aren't characters. They're just cardboard cutouts that dance around the hero, doing stuff for no reason except that Beer wants us to see the hero react in some way. The Cryptech who may or may not be an ally seems mysterious at first, but it quickly becomes apparent that his actions are just random because the author thinks we're not paying attention. The baddie suddenly reveals their identity and their plan at a point in the book that can provide them no advantage, and when there's no reason for them to blow their cover, yet they do—because ...? No idea. The necrons spend 15 years undermining a human world by stealth when it's made clear they could have taken it over in about 15 minutes with a frontal assault. Why? No idea. In the meantime, there's the usual lazy 'let's introduce a bunch of Imperial characters just so we can kill them' chapters which annoy me because once you've become familiar with this particular 40k author's ploy you can spot it a mile off and being forced to waste your time on these sections feels like a personal attack.
Weird then, that the human-focussed chapters offer some of the best bits of Tomb World. The Arbites leader offers a far more compelling tough female character than the protagonist—tough and resourceful but hopelessly weak and outgunned in the face of a necron assault. The characterisation of a space marines' captain is intriguing and offers an interesting angle. These were the sole part of Tomb World that raised a flicker of interest for me. I found myself wishing Beer had written this entire book from the human perspective. As it is, they get shoved aside because it's our utterly undeserving spinless necron hero who supposed to be the one we are rooting for despite the fact that they do nothing to earn it.
Narrator Gabrielle Nellis-Pain does alright. It's not her fault the material is so bad.
Pointless
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