Friday, 26 September 2025

War in the Museum

This short story by Robert Rath follows everyone's favourite pair of rival bickering necrons, Trazyn the Infinite and Orikan the Diviner (of The Infinite and the Divine novel fame). Trazyn, whose quasi-eternal life's effort is to construct and fill a series of planet-sized museums with stasis-trapped specimens of cultural and historical value, may have bitten off more than he can chew with his new acquisition of a tyranid splinter fleet, complete with its hive tyrant. Once his attempt to rehydrate the damaged tyrant is nearing completion, psychic tweaks between the supposedly-locked tyranid horde start manifesting, and in no short order they're all awake and rampaging through the museum. Trazyn must commandeer the aide of a Mechanicus magos and a pair of Sisters of Battle to help him defend himself while he makes for the control room to try to save his precious displays - only then Orikan turns out to be there already, causing mischief.

   This is a fun little story, but you'll get a lot more out of it if you've already read the novel I linked in parentheses above. Undead soulless metal killing machines they may be, but Trazyn and Orikan consistently prove they're far from boring.

Wednesday, 10 September 2025

the Lord of the Rings: book three

This book is the third part of J. R. R. Tolkien's timeless classic The Lord of the Rings series. As with previous more recent posts about these books, these are ones I've read before, so please dig into my blog history through category tags or the dated archive to see my fuller thoughts and/or summaries on the themes/plots of this story - I experienced this again through the ongoing mission of YouTuber Tolkien Trash to read the whole trilogy to her audience a chapter a week, a task which I have to say she is performing excellently.

Wednesday, 3 September 2025

Galatians Study

This book (available for free online from that link) is a Bible study by Tim Keller working through Paul's letter to the Galatian church. I've been working through it with my dad over the last few months, and would highly recommend it as a small-group study resource. The Galatian epistle is a potent little depth-charge of a book anyway, but Keller's insightful commentary and selection of passages from other theologians (especially John Stott and Martin Luther) who have written about the letter make this study extremely edifying and fruitful for thinking through Christian discipleship in powerfully provocative and helpful ways.