Ghazghkull Thraka: Prophet of the Waaagh!

This book is a Warhammer 40,000 novel by Nate Crowley, following the mysterious and epic biography of that most supreme of all orkish warlords, Ghazghkull Mag Uruk Thraka - whose story is finally able to be told to humanity in something like its fulness for the first time since their banner-bearer, a gretchen called Makari, is captured and questioned by the Inquisition.

   As you'd expect of a novel with orks at the heart (cf. Brutal Kunnin), this is a hilarious and thoroughly violent read; but as a window in the subjectivities of an orkish life, their culture, their worship of Gork and Mork, their secret shames and highest hopes, this is a true gem of a book that gives real tangible complex personality to the funniest faction in the fictional universe. Ghazghkull, from their brain trauma* to their triumphs in battle,** is as complexly sketched as the best human characters from Dan Abnett's Gaunt's Ghosts series - only as an ork. With ork shames and ork hopes, ork wiles, ork vices and virtues. I would be genuinely shocked if the Black Library ever managed to release another book that does as much for the exploration of orkish psychology as this one does. And yet it is more than a character study, for Ghazghkull's life has ramifications that reverberate across the galaxy in the mighty WAAAGH of which they is prophet and leader - all of which is to say, this story isn't over.

   For fans of 40k, this is highly recommended; especially for ork players, this is a must-read. Enjoyers of tongue-in-cheek science fiction more generally will find a lot to love here too.

* As a young ork they was horribly injured, losing most of their upper skull, but they managed to hold their own brains in while for several days trekking across hostile wilderness until they found a doctor who could staple them back together and put a plate over the gap to keep the grey matter inside. However injurious though, this near-braining is credited with what gives Thraka such an intimate and demonstrable understanding of the will and ways of Gork and Mork - it is their pain that made them the prophet.

* Except against their "favourite enemy", Commissar Yarrick, who they never quite managed to defeat and so came to respect deeply - insofar as an ork can respect a human.

Easy Esperanto Reader

This book by Myrtis Smith and Thomas Alexander is a collection of five* short stories with Esperanto and Spanish translations included alongside. The stories themselves are of a shockingly diverse range in genre and tone, and were mildly entertaining, though I can't say I would have ever been prone to read them had they not been offering the opportunities to deepen my grasp on a pair of languages I'm trying to learn. Their uses of vocabulary and grammar are simple enough that a halfway competent student of Spanish or Esperanto can dig up a fair amount of new intuitions as to words and rules through reading these closely with regular comparison to the English translation, for which purpose I did find this a useful little book. And it's very cheap on Kindle, which is what prompted my buying of it. I do think though that I'm going to try to finish the Duolingo Esperanto course before I try to read any more actual fiction written in the language as then my confidence and comprehension will be greater. But as a halfway testing point for learners this was pretty solid.

* There is a sixth story included though this lacks translation, and was thus of much lesser utility in learning any new vocabulary.

the Trinity and the Kingdom of God

This book by Jürgen Moltmann is one I've read pretty recently, hence that link leading to my last post about it. The reason I'm doing another post is that I've been reading through it with my dad, to help prompt us to challenge each other into thinking deeply about theology. I can only say it's been a pleasurable and edifying experience, and on a second read a lot of his arguments hit home far more clearly.