The Death of the Necromancer
core novel 1998 Ile-Rien
Record
| First published | 1998 |
|---|---|
| Original language |  EN |
| Work type | novel |
| Canon status | core |
| Reader rating | 4.03 (4,871 ratings, collected 2026-09-07) |
| First-edition ISBN | 9780380973347 |
| Internal chronology | 2 |
Synopsis
The Death of the Necromancer moves the Ile-Rien setting forward to an industrializing, nineteenth-century-inspired Vienne, ruled by a young queen descended from the royal Fontainon line, where gas lamps and steam trains have begun to reshape the city. The protagonist, Nicolas Valiarde, is a master criminal who has spent years methodically engineering an elaborate scheme of revenge against the men he holds responsible for his adoptive father's death. Unusually for the genre, the novel centers its sympathies on Valiarde, a character who would typically be cast as the villain, as he and his loyal circle of associates carry out their plans under the nose of the city's police. Their carefully laid plot is thrown into disarray, however, when a supernatural menace, tied to necromancy from centuries past, resurfaces and threatens to unravel both Valiarde's revenge and the safety of Vienne itself.
Where it sits
- Universe: Ile-Rien
- Series: not part of a registered series (standalone work within its universe)
- Author: Martha Wells
Notes
- Standalone novel set later than The Element of Fire; a 1999 Nebula Award for Best Novel finalist. Its protagonist, Nicholas Valiarde, is an ancestor of Tremaine Valiarde in the Fall of Ile-Rien trilogy.
Neighbouring works
Publication order and internal chronology are tracked as two separate orderings, but they resolve to the exact same sequence for this book, so one combined line is shown instead of two identical ones.
- Reading order, within Ile-Rien (standalone work): position 2 of 5: previous The Element of Fire (1993) · next The Wizard Hunters (2003)
Sources
- Ile-Rien (English Wikipedia)
- Martha Wells: the Ile-Rien Books (author's own site)
- The Death of the Necromancer (English Wikipedia)
- Wikipedia (Swedish; Martha Wells bibliography)
- Martha Wells (official bibliography)
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