Renewal as a Way of Life

This book by Richard Lovelace is a guidebook for Christian spiritual growth. It is a condensed version of Lovelace's prior book Dynamics of Spiritual Life, but also entails an extra seven years-worth of reflections and learning around individual and corporate renewal, so it goes beyond the original in many regards.

   The book is split into three main chunks. Firstly, in exploring the normal Christian life, we consider how our lives are to be centred on God and His Kingdom; here we are given the "preconditions for renewal", those being an awareness of God's holiness, expressed in His love and His justice, and a complementary awareness of the depth of sin both in oneself and in the world. Orienting one's heart and mind in these ways is the root of sustainable and renewable spiritual life.

   Secondly, we look at the unholy trifecta of phenomena which constitute the "dynamics of spiritual death": those being the flesh, the world, and the devil. This middle section of the book is chock-full of practical insights into discerning when & where these are at play, and then navigating around or through them as we continue living under & for God.

   The third and final section explores the dynamics of spiritual life. The first chapter in this part dives into the Messianic victory of Christ and its explosively potent implications for followers of Jesus; the next two chapters dig deeper into how living out these implications manifests in firstly individual and secondly corporate (church) renewal. In these chapters we are introduced to the primary and secondary elements of renewal. Primarily, through faith in Christ as individuals we can be assured that we are accepted by God (justification), free from bondage to sin (sanctification), not alone thanks to the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, and granted authority over the spiritual powers of evil. Secondarily as we live in the light of these assurances we can follow Jesus into the world, presenting his gospel in proclamation & social demonstration (mission); we can depend on the power of the risen Christ in solitary & corporate prayer; we can enjoy community in the united body of Christ on micro- & macro- levels; and we can ever-more-progressively have the mind of Christ toward both revealed truth & our own cultural contexts by integrating theological learning & practice.

   I got a lot out of this book. It's accessibly written & consistently focused, leaning on the orthodox essentials without getting bogged down in theological corners; it's thoroughly Biblical throughout (with a Scripture quote or two on almost every page) & never tries to do more than it claims to be aiming to. Each chapter is closed off with a half-dozen or so discussion questions, as Lovelace does mention in the introduction that this would be an ideal book to work through with a small group of fellow disciples, and I imagine that doing so would be an incredibly fruitful experience, but so is just reading it to yourself. This is a book that does not make light of how difficult the Christian path can be at times, but it steadfastly instils confidence that if we have our eyes, hearts & minds attuned to God-in-Christ we will continue down the path of renewal until we are called home.

the Coming of God

This book is the fifth and final of Jürgen Moltmann's contributions to systematic theology, and as the title may suggest to the astute reader this one deals in-depth* with eschatology. As with the posts about the previous four I will give a rough overview of the book's contents before giving a bit of commentary, and as this is the last book in this series as is my wont I will then dive into some broader thoughts and reflections on the five book series as a whole. The contents of this book are split into five broad chunks:

1. Eschatology today - the transpositions of eschatology into time and eternity respectively; then the notion of God's comingness; then a tour through some key thinkers in Judaism who have contributed to a rebirth of messianic thinking.
2. Personal eschatology (i.e. eternal life) - conceptions of death as the end of life; contrasting ideas across the immortality of the soul or the resurrection of the body; a consideration of whether death is a natural ending or the consequence of sin; the prickly question of exactly "where" the dead are; and finally the psychospiritual experience of grief and mourning.
3. Historical eschatology (i.e. God's Kingdom) - political and apocalyptic versions of "the end" of history; the messianic picture; three wildly differing conceptions of millenarianism followed by a sharply nuanced consideration of whether millenarianism is even necessary; a look at exterminism (the idea that through military, ecological, or economic factors humankind may simply commit itself to an apocalyptic physical end - that is, death); a further consideration of whether apocalypticism is a necessary component of eschatology at all; and lastly an optimistic but grounded view of God's promises about the restoration of creation, in which he meticulously walks us through the theological and biblical cases for and against the idea of universal salvation (and I'll be honest - this was a big red flag initially given the particular flavour of Protestant orthodoxy I grew up in, where Hell is a necessary given, but I'm far more agnostic about the whole tangle since reading this chapter).
4. Cosmic eschatology (i.e. the New Creation) - firstly using Sabbath and Shekinah as springboard concepts into the future of creation; then the question of whether when the end comes creation will be annihilated, transformed, or deified; the ends of time and space in the eternal presence of God; and finally the scriptural metaphor of the heavenly Jerusalem as God's conclusive cosmic temple.
5. Divine eschatology (i.e. God's glory) - how all eschatological issues ultimately lead to the total and perfect self-realisation and self-glorification of God, in which a redeemed humankind is included as participant to the eternal experience, as God and His creation experience a total and perfect endless fulness, a feast of pure unending joy.

   So that's what's in here. Much of it was initially surprising to me, especially the universalism, but as I read and considered I realised more and more that the gravitational centre and methodological nature of Moltmann's theological system is so finely tuned to the core concepts of who we know God to be and logically extrapolating (with an almost outrageously generously ecumenical list of inspirational sources for these arguments) how, God being as God is and the world being as we understand it, the biblical worldview tends to lean further one way than another, and it all points not to fear and exclusivity but to redemptive renewal and inclusion and hope and joy.

   I trust it is abundantly clear that I am coming at this not as a professional academic with anywhere near enough experience or learning to start poking series critiques into Moltmann's system; I have approached these books as an enthusiastic amateur thirsting for a solid and coherent basic framework to hang my comprehension of Christian theology upon, and old Jürgen simply happened to be the first theologian who had composed such a framework that I happened to decide to pick up and work through. But I am deeply glad for that fact. These books have been an intellectual challenge, to be sure, but the more of them I read the more all the rest of what had come before made sense, and the richer my grasp of many of the fundamental tenets of Christian faith became. Obviously there are the big three caveats, which I have mentioned in posts about previous books in this series - firstly, that these books have been translated from German, so sentence structure is often quite difficult to follow; secondly, that Moltmann, being an academic theologian primarily writing to contribute to ongoing discourse within academic theology, while far from being recklessly obfuscatory or obtuse, is not writing for an entry-level audience, and so much of what he's talking about is quite difficult to get one's head around on first reading (or even second or fourth); and thirdly that Moltmann, being an academic in general, has a nasty habit of dumping in a random phrase in Greek or Latin (or even French or German sometimes) without offering a translation for it, even in the footnotes.** These pre-warnings aside, I think most moderately-educated-in-theological-terminology folks would find this series of books largely agreeable in style and especially in substance; Moltmann throughout this systematic theology has drawn widely and humbly on everything from Eastern Orthodox mysticism to strictly Reformed doctrinal positions and Catholic catechisms to Latin American liberation theology, and managed to work all of it into a cogently and compellingly structured model of what we must be talking about when we talk about the Trinity, or creation, or Jesus, or the Holy Spirit, or the apocalypse, or many other enormous and intimidating themes in the thought that has grown up around Christian faith - a model that while intellectually satisfying still leaves one with a sense of immense mystery and wonder at God's ways and being; a model that is not dry and stultifying but openly celebratory of the goodness of God and the life-giving truths that He has left us to work out and live in.

   As I said, this is the first systematic theology I've read, and I hope I won't be mentally lazy enough in the rest of my reading journey that it's my last - but it's been a thoroughly engaging and liberating one, and I would heartily recommend this whole series to any Christian who like I was finds themself in search of a holistic roadmap to thinking about their faith. Heck, I'd even recommend it to non-Christians who simply find Christian theology to be full of inconsistencies and contradictions, as they may well realise through Moltmann's rigour and breadth that there is far more internal logic at play than an external observer would easily guess.

* I say in-depth because all five of Moltmann's books in this series dig pretty deeply through eschatology, but only in this concluding volume is it front and centre in consideration.

** Which is frankly absurd, I mean, it's not like the footnotes couldn't spare the time. There's a lot of them (and honestly many of them add an excellent clarificatory point to the main text) in all five volumes.

the Spirit of Life

This book is the fourth of Jürgen Moltmann's series of contributions to systematic theology, this one dealing with the Holy Spirit's nature, character, and activity. The book is subtitled "a universal affirmation" and it delivers on this promise, as I will expand on later. For now, let's go through a rough outline of its contents - after a brief introduction discussing contemporary approaches to pneumatology, the book is split into three main parts:

1. Experiences of the Spirit - starting with a consideration of how God, being immanently transcendent, is experienced through experiences of life itself; then how the Spirit has been experienced historically, as divine energy, through God's people, the Shekinah, and messianic expectation; and finally Trinitarian experiences reflected in Christ's own spirituality, the spirit of Christ, and the mutuality between these two members of the Trinity.
2. Life in the Spirit - here we deal with the spiritual vitality of life; the liberation aspect as the Spirit bestows freedom upon its subjects; the justification aspect as the Spirit brings justice to victims, perpetrators, and structures; the regeneration and rebirth themes; the holiness which the Spirit helps people grow into through sanctification; the specific charismatic powers that the Spirit bestows upon select individuals and the purposes of these; and lastly how all this fits into thinking about mystical experience.
3. The fellowship and person of the Spirit - we first look at experience of fellowship and how this is interpenetrated with experience of the Spirit, how this is expressed in Christianity, and how loving relationships embody a social experience of God's being; then move onto ways of describing the personality of the Spirit through a range of utterly inadequate but humanly helpful metaphors (grouped into personal, formative, movement, and mystical), the streaming divinity of the Spirit's personhood, and how this fits together with various conceptions of the Trinitarian schema [the final section of this last bit takes a bit of a left turn to consider whether the filioque is a superfluous addition to the Nicene Creed or not, which is a bit detached from the rest of the book but in such an ecumenical sequence of ideas it's good to have it in there].

   So clearly this book covers a lot of ground - and the same caveats as I've given in previous posts about Moltmann's books apply here. But that subtitle, "a universal affirmation", truly does describe the overall bent of this book: while it is densely academic in style, to grasp the thrust of the arguments being made is to genuinely be held close in the encouraging embrace of the Holy Spirit as that which loves and affirms life in itself - I've labelled the post for this one "spirituality" not because it offers anything new or innovative to the Christian experience of spiritual life but because it so deeply and roundly affirms the goodness and the dependability of the basic facts of the Christian life insofar as it is spiritually experienced. The world these days is all too often dark and confusing, and much of the time I find it hard even with my faith to look to the future as the site of many tangible promises for human flourishing; but this book has done more to restore my trust in God's ineffable brilliance and unpredictability and love for that which is recognisable yet new, fresh, surprising, than almost anything else I've ever read. If you're only going to read one book out of Moltmann's contributions to systematic theology, I'd make it this one, as it will give you an identity statement and modus operandi for arguably the most mysterious member of the Trinity, that will deepen your cognizance of God's work in the world and your life, and broaden the intake valves of your heart for abundant security of hope and joy.

Fire with Fire

This book by Naomi Wolf is a powerfully optimistic perspective on the rising tide of female power toward the end of the 20th-century, envisioning how this trend can be held onto & grown into the 21st.*

   The text is split into five parts: firstly, an examination of what she calls the "genderquake" and the declining hegemony of masculine power, with a concomitant shift in female consciousness; secondly, considerations of where feminism may be falling short of its potential in recent years as it becomes co-opted by middle-class consumer models alien to its radical roots; fourthly, a dissection of the feminine fear of power & the need for a new psychology to emerge to overcome this; fifthly & finally recommendations for where to go from where the book concludes.

   I neglected to mention the third part above as that forms the longest chunk of the book, and is most central to Wolf's whole gist with it. Here she outlines two competing traditions within feminism as she sees it: "power feminism", which is all about maximally fighting for & holding onto equality without shame or doubt; and "victim feminism", which is more about emphasising the difference between men & women then highlighting the ways in which the former harm & suppress the latter all in an impotent hand-wringing sort of way. Wolf makes it very clear that she vehemently feels victim feminism has run up against number of cultural & socio-political impasses, and is now largely holding the wider movement back. There are implications in these chapters to be found of relevance to modern marginalised communities - those protesting their rights on the streets versus those who would rather simply retreat into a demarked safe space. In my opinion Wolf goes a little too harshly in her critique, and though her principles are in the right place she can't expect everybody to have the circumstances or disposition necessary to join her at the same exact spice level of her own activism. Another critique I would make is that her discussion of feminism in general is far from satisfyingly intersectional, though given the age of this book I suppose that's to be expected.

   While outdated in many places, I still found this a compelling and interesting perspective on the promise & potential of feminism, and though the basic points are almost certainly better said more relevantly to the 2020's by more recent authors, I guess this would be worth a read if you're interested in the evolution of contemporary feminist thought.

* So much & yet so little has changed since this was published over thirty years ago - one has to wonder how much of this book's core theses would still be held by Wolf today, as well as how many extra chapters she would need to add to discuss the tectonic shifts in feminism generally in those intervening decades.

Legion

This book by Dan Abnett is the seventh Horus Heresy novel, and the strangest yet by a mile. The Adeptus Astartes are barely in it! For the majority of the narrative we're following regular human soldiers through a largely uneventful* conflict where despite the overall lack of significant threat there is a significant aura of uncertainty due to the secrecy and shadiness of the Alpha Legion, the Astartes supporting them in this arena - secrecy and shadiness only compounded by the Alpha Legion's primarch Alpharius never quite seeming to be exactly the same person twice, though nobody can ever quite exactly tell as all of the Alpha Legion look so similar. The chief secondary plotline follows a mysterious immortal human called John Grammaticus, who is on a mission all his own to manipulate the Alpha Legion into contacting and collaborating with The Cabal, an inter-species collective of concerned parties working for the future cohesion of galactic order. Without giving away too much about what Alpharius and company make of the Cabal, or Grammaticus's role in things, there is a serious bombshell in here about how an Astartes Legion may choose to throw their weight behind the forces of heresy not out of disloyalty to the Imperium but out of sheer, cold, calculated pragmatism for the greater good. This is a disarmingly gripping instalment in the series - no major epic battles, but a deeper, sharper war over trust and truth.

* So much so that there is a solid six-page passage devoted to describing a weird little game that the troops play amongst themselves wherein they have to find a rock head only just smaller than the next biggest rock head someone else has. I found this bit thoroughly entertaining.

Descent of Angels

This book by Mitchel Scanlon is the sixth instalment of the Horus Heresy mega-series. In this one we open into a time before the Great Crusade had even properly taken off yet - those days when the Emperor (who we do get a snapshot glimpse of partway through for the first time in the series) was still collecting the primarchs from across the galaxy - in this case, Lion el'Jonson* of the planet Caliban, which is home to knightly orders sworn to protect the citizenry of their world from the great and terrible beasts which pretty much control the deep, dark forests covering most of the planet. Throughout the book we follow cousins Zahariel and Nemiel on their journey from supplicants to the Lion's knightly Order, to their establishment within the ranks as fully-grown knights, then the utterly unexpected arrival of Imperial forces turning Caliban's forests into factories and its culture into a mere expansion of the Emperor's divine mission to unite humanity - the shock of this transition is tempered significantly by the acceptance of both into the ranks of el'Jonson's new Astartes Legion, the Dark Angels, and these brave children of Caliban join the Crusade rolling through the galaxy to whatever end. So ultimately this book is less epic in scope than most of the previous instalments, but it provides a vitally interesting window into what worlds (and primarchs) may have been like before the Emperor came along to bestow upon them their Imperial destiny, and explores the potential sources of friction from this grand inclusion.

* Easily my favourite primarch so far - he just oozes chivalry and charisma.

Zen in the Art of Writing

This book is a collection of essays by Ray Bradbury on the art of writing. He was an exceptionally prolific and deeply skilled writer so it goes without saying that this is a very readable text. Moreover the nature of the thoughts and insights he has on the writing process, from the quandaries of inspiration to the mechanics of typing, are incredibly useful - I read this as I am suffering from somewhat of a creative slump in my own writing activities, but I have to say I found Ray's words here to be immensely liberating, empowering, and so forth. If you're already a fan of Bradbury's work you might find this an interesting insight into his process, but really the main bulk of potential audience I would recommend this to is creative writers themselves. Take good advice from an expert.

2023 catch-up

So last year I read forty-seven books, which is not bad but not amazing for a year on this blog. Let's get right into a bit of a recap...

• I read The Chronicles of Narnia for the first time: it's alright, I suppose
• The Cloven, the final book in Brian Catling's Vorrh trilogy, was immensely satisfying
• One of my favourite Discworld novels so far
• I finally finished the re-read of the Gaunt's Ghosts series that I started last year
• Even more Warhammer 40,000 novels
• And even more - though rather than grimdark these ones were genuinely funny, one following the haphazardness of orks at war and the second following the petty feud of two ancient necron rivals
• And I must be insane because I've started reading the Horus Heresy series
• Inspirational and invocational Christian books
• The second [on creation] and third [on Christ] books in Jürgen Moltmann's series of contributions to systematic theology, which I'm really getting a lot out of
• A book that made me want to do better as a white person
• Classic anarchist theory from Kropotkin
• Pete Bearder's excellent work in the theory and practice of poetry - as well as poetry itself from both the London Underground and medieval Persia
• Ancient Jewish apocrypha
• A very depressing document detailing much of the problems in my old church
• Søren Kierkegaard's very difficult theory of anxiety and sin
• Reading Korsgaard's brilliant book on active selfhood for the third time
• This fun, magical little kid's book which I bought for my niece
• Bertrand Russell's very long very good History of Western Philosophy
• And finally, I'd be astounded to discover that this wasn't the worst thing J.D. Salinger ever managed to get published - as someone who loved all four of his books, this was a genuinely upsetting experience to read

   That's it for some of the highlights (and lowlights, although thankfully this year there seem to have been very few of these). Onwards into 2024 - and hopefully an increasingly more diverse reading journey! Thanks to all my many many readers [lol] for sticking with my ramblings here, hope you've been enjoying following along with all the random fictional and non-fictional things I put in my brain.

Peace & love

Isaac Stovell

Fulgrim

This book by Graham McNeill is the fifth Horus Heresy instalment. In this one, we again skip backwards a few years to follow the strands of story around Fulgrim and his legion, the Emperor's Children - who pride themselves on being the legion that most strives for, and in large part attains, perfection in all they do. Like the Luna Wolves had before, the legion has a cohort of civilian remembrancers attached to their crusade fleet to record the great deeds achieved in the war to reunite humanity. The aesthetic experience in a temple-like construct of a defeated alien race called the laer seems to have a profound and disturbing effect on many of the legion and the remembrancers alike; this influence builds slowly over the course of this novel into a horrifying excess of expression and enjoyment. But before that peak is reached, Fulgrim is brought into the confidence of Horus's new direction and sides with the Warmaster - then, given the task of persuading Ferrus Manus, primarch of the Iron Hands legion, to join the cause also, Fulgrim tries his best but ultimately fails. This uncloseable breach between the brothers opened, Fulgrim draws the Iron Hands to Isstvan V - where, just mere days after the terribly scenes of Isstvan III, the civil war among the legions rears its head once more in all-out slaughter - including the death of Ferrus Manus himself (the first primarch to die). Despite having been forewarned by an eldar farseer earlier in the book, Fulgrim is by this point so full of pride and surety that even Horus is looking at him askance by the end: and rightly, as those feelings are not the only things Fulgrim is full of - he has been completely consumed and possessed by a daemon of the warp. His life is no longer his own - he has become a passive instrument of the dark powers. So while the chief instigator of the titular heresy is of course Horus, arguably Fulgrim fell further faster.* Quite the trajectory for one book, but trust me, it's well-paced enough that not of it feels rushed nor anything less than inevitable.

* There are a handful of other traitor primarchs who were well underway with their downward spirals before Horus too (especially looking at you, Lorgar), but we'll get to them in turn. This is a long series, folks.

the Way of Jesus Christ

This book is the third of Jürgen Moltmann's series of contributions to systematic theology, and this instalment deals with Christology, as the title probably suggests. He very deliberately opts to consider the subject matter through a messianic lens, which makes sense as Jesus was the Messiah, although this makes the points elucidated in this book altogether more rooted in Jewish tradition than most Protestant Christology tends to consciously be, which is interesting. What Moltmann has to say is broken down into seven broad chapters:

1. The messianic perspective - the genesis of its hopes, the development of the hoped-for figure therein, and a consideration of what we learn about this from Jewish-Christian dialogue.
2. Trends and transmutations in Christology - its identity and relevance as a field of thought, how its theme and scheme can be interpreted through cosmological and anthropological lenses, and what all this looks like in the modern context of a scientific civilisation.
3. Christ's mission - his birth and baptism in the Spirit, the gospel's relation to the poor, the sick, the demon-possessed and the outcast, the broader ethic of the messianic way of life as expressed and taught and lived in Jesus, and the person of Jesus as embodied in his relationships to God and the rest of humanity.
4. Christ's suffering - starting with the notion that his passion event provides an apocalyptic horizon to world history, then going on to consider the nature of his death, the presence (or rather absence) of God throughout, the overall purpose of his death, and how this is echoed in martyrdoms throughout history in remembrance.
5. Christ's resurrection - viewed through an eschatological lens, we look at the unique character of Christian faith in this event, then dissect the theological and historical problems of the resurrection as a historical phenomenon and the theological and natural problems of the resurrection as a [super]natural phenomenon, before finally thinking about the spiritual unification process foreshadowed by the resurrection as an event.
6. Christ in cosmic terms - first outlining historical and ecumenical views of such, then a look at Christ as the ground of creation, his relationship to evolution (is he its driving force, its victim, or its redeemer? Moltmann makes a case for all three), and his establishment of a basis for the community of creation.
7. Christ's parousia (that is, second coming) - the nature of its expectation, the character of the promised one who is coming "again", the event of the Last Day itself, the category of Heaven, the righteousness of the foretold judgement, and finally affirmed embodiment.

   Obviously there is a lot going on in this book (as there has been with all of Moltmann's books that I've read so far and I expect nothing less of the fourth and fifth) and it would be ludicrous for me to attempt to summarise what is said herein. I will say though that as with the books on the Trinity and creation Moltmann here delves into corners of theology that comprise the home turf of questions I have always had but never quite known how to pose; he has an uncanny knack for uncovering something so intellectually obscure that it seems almost esoteric but once discussed and placed into proper context provides new and fruitful ammunition for starting to grasp the divine mysteries underlying the Christian faith. The same caveats apply here for the first two books - that is, that being translated (very well, but still) from German means the text's structure is often a wee bit confusing, and Moltmann has that incorrigible academic habit of dumping you with a phrase in Greek or Latin that even the footnotes refuse to clarify in English for the heathen reader - but overall this is a largely readable book for how dense its ideas are, and I think any Christian reader willing to be patient and thoughtful with a meatily rewarding series of trains of thought will find a great deal in this book to flesh out their understandings of Christ's being, mission, and meaning.

Stage Invasion

This book by Pete Bearder is a multi-disciplinary investigation in poetry and "the spoken word Renaissance" that has been taking place in the west in recent years. I've actually met the author* (stage name Pete the Temp) at a fracking site a few years ago, where he performed some radical poetry - but his scholarship shown here is just as fine as his capacity for crowd-rousing verse.

   The book itself drives a complex path across its many disciplines to explicate the nature and trajectory of spoken word. After an introduction setting up the intent of the book, we are first given a glimpse into the world of slam poetry, its origins, popularity, and benefits and drawbacks.** We then dive into a definitional chapter discussing exactly what spoken word is and isn't - from the ancient concept of oral tradition to "live literature"; reflections on style, and then finally a consideration of the social format itself in which this art form generally takes place and its uniquenesses. Then there's a history chapter, starting with the Romantics through the Beat generation up to contemporary hip-hop, and how all of these have left their mark on the art form as it's evolved. The next chapter digs into DIY renewal culture; how the grassroots nature of poetic space necessarily creates room for creators to create, interact and share in innovative ways. Following this are three chapters building on the same idea - first how a poem inhabits and leaves the body of the performer during performance; second how this inhabits and shapes the experience of bodies in the crowd listening to said performance,*** and thirdly how if done well this can all lead to spoken word performances bringing out transcendent states of shared consciousness between audience and performer. The final chapter is about how this can be, and often is, utilized to great effect in harmonising sympathies in crowds for transformative political ends - poetry can be remarkably effective propaganda if written and shared correctly, as long as recognition and empathy are at its heart.

   The blurb quote on the front of this book claims it is the book "we have all been waiting for", and as a member of the many spoken word communities in the UK today, I couldn't agree more; Bearder's scholarship is deep and wide and his love of the craft evident on every page. The poetry he samples for quotes to make his points is eclectic and wondrous, and his core argument that spoken word is a social force of uniting and driving emotional communal activity toward understanding and the forging of better worlds is tangible throughout. If you're a spoken word artist craving to know more about the artistic world you inhabit, this is absolutely the book for you - if you're skeptical about it as an art form, this would be a challenging but wholesome read that will make you think twice about what you do or don't seek out and listen to. A fantastic book.

* And again [edit December 2024] as he was performing at The Shakespeares, and I got my copy signed; he says "this book - in your hands - a powerful weapon". I hope I live to prove him right.

** As the host of a spoken word night myself which is very much in its culture antithetical to slam, I found much to disagree with in this chapter, but much worth bearing in mind too.

*** This chapter has a section which delves into the role of the MC of a spoken word event, a role which I myself have held for Guerrilla since 2019, and so this was of much encouraging inspiration to me.

Rumi: Selected Poems

This book is a collection of poetry by the 13th-century Persian Sufi mystic Jalal ad-din Rumi, or simply Rumi as he is more commonly known.

   I went into this book expecting majestic, mysterious uniqueness; and I found it. Rumi, it is claimed at least by the blurb inside the Penguin Classics edition,* is the most-read poet in the contemporary United States of America - which I honestly found quite a shock given the friendly terms Iran is currently on with that country. I guess people who read poetry are generally more forgivingly open-minded? Anyway - the Penguin Classics edition, which I read, edits the whole of Rumi's multi-volume masterwork the mathnawi into twenty-seven thematic chapters, with themes ranging from Bewilderment, Emptiness and Silence and Being a Lover to Art as Flirtation with Surrender, Recognizing Elegance and Jesus. As a Sufi, Rumi believed that union with God in His divine loving nature was achievable to the willing and dedicated soul, and that belief shines through on every page of his poetry - there is an affirmingness there, a love of all that is human and authentic, almost to a fault. Many of these poems are tongue-in-cheek; lots are genuinely funny; many deal with profane matters; several are genuinely pornographic (there is one very graphically memorable one involving a donkey and a makeshift sheath); many more deal in explicitly religious terms with the struggles of human life and consciousness, of love and hope and loss and fear, of union and separation, of discovering and keeping one's place in the world or even simply of wondering where that may be. All are beautiful and worth reading.

   I don't know enough about Sufism to confidently discuss my reflections on this collection of poetry in religious or spiritual terms, but as poetry, as pure voice that uplifts and echoes the human spirit, I can confidently say that this incredible man is worth reading.

* Translated and edited by Coleman Barks, and also, for some reason, including an appendix with half a dozen random recipes.

the Flight of the Eisenstein

This book by James Swallow is the fourth Horus Heresy novel. Rather than following straight on from the third book, this one skips backwards a few years to trace the journey of Mortarion's Death Guard legion, viewed through the personage of captain Nathaniel Garro. We follow this legion through a handful of military struggles and victories, before catching up with the broader narrative at Isstvan III - where, while everything is kicking off down on the planet's surface, Saul Tarvitz of the Emperor's Children manages to send a warning to Garro (who is waiting in space) that a betrayal of epic proportions is about to take place. Shortly thereafter a small gaggle of civilian refugees from Horus's own ship (where all the remembrancers who had been assigned to them had been slaughtered once the heretical new direction of the Luna Wolves - now renamed the Sons of Horus - had been decided upon) manage to reach Garro on the Eisenstein, and inform him of the developments that are taking place. Determined to inform the Emperor of the treacheries taking place, Garro commands the Eisenstein to flee into the warp and make headway as fast as possible for Terra (i.e. Earth). They have a close shave breaking away from the rest of the fleet orbiting Isstvan III, but they eventually make it - and at the novel's closing Garro has succeeded in passing his news on to Rogal Dorn, primarch of the Imperial Fists legion who are stationed at Terra, who is quite understandably shocked and outraged at the report.

Galaxy in Flames

This book by Ben Counter is the third of the Horus Heresy series. Loken and the other Luna Wolves, in large part unaware of the heretical direction taken by their Primarch and much of the legion, team up with Fulgrim's legion the Emperor's Children, Angron's legion the World Eaters, and Mortarion's legion the Death Guard to put down a reported rebellion on the world Isstvan III. Little can the loyalists of these Astartes legions know that this whole little trip is a dark ploy to ensure the ultimate compliance of these four legions to their Primarchs' new loyalties - that is, to the Warmaster above to the Emperor... the stage is set for tragedy and slaughter as civil war amongst the Imperium's finest breaks out in earnest.

False Gods

This book by Graham McNeill is the second in the Horus Heresy series. We're back with Loken and the Luna Wolves, and they're still absolutely bossing their way through the latter days of the Great Crusade - that is, until a mysterious weapon wielded by a possessed-seeming renegade manages to seriously wound Horus himself. On the brink of expiration, the Warmaster's closest confidants decide to take Erebus up on his offer of a means of salvation, even if that means striking a binding bargain with the unknown, unknowably powerful forces of the warp - and with that, the sown seeds of heresy are covered with dirt and given their first big watering...

Horus Rising

This book by Dan Abnett is the first* in The Horus Heresy series.** I got a Kindle for my birthday for the express purpose of being able to read my way through the entire series of these novels, there being well over fifty of them (not counting short stories, anthologies, and audio dramas) so I simply wouldn't have the bookshelf space to read them physically. I have read this and the following six books of the series before, but that was way back when they were coming out originally and thus long before this blog was even conceived of. Also - just a warning note, since there are so many books in this series and the story is so epic, in the interest of not spoiling the overarching plot's many twists and turns as well as keeping myself sane by not having to spend too long on each of what will be several dozen posts by the time I'm done, I will be keeping all posts about the books in this series as short as reasonably possible.

   So, what happens in this one? The Emperor of Mankind has withdrawn from the Great Crusade, the grand mission of reunifying the disparate interplanetary civilisations of a long-separated humanity across the galaxy under a single banner, and having done so has left his favourite son, Horus Lupercal, in charge as Warmaster of the continuing crusade. Horus is one of the twenty Primarchs (superhumans bio-engineered from the Emperor's own genes) and his legion of Astartes (aka Space Marines, superhumans [albeit not as superhuman as the Primarchs] bio-engineered from the genes of the Primarchs), the Luna Wolves, has been absolutely crushing it all Crusade so far, and in this novel, they continue to do so. We spend most of the narrative's time following a captain called Garviel Loken, who is a pretty stand-up dude. The narration also devotes a fair amount of attention to regular humans who have been sent to join the Crusade as remembrancers, that is, to use their artistic and such skills to create cultural records of the grand events of the latter days of the great war. But despite everything seemingly going so swimmingly, an undercurrent of resentment that the Astartes are likely to be discarded once the Crusade is won and their winnings turned over to civilian control is brewing among the legions, and secret gatherings are starting to take shape. Is this the seeds of outright insubordination against the Emperor planting themselves? We'll see as the series progresses...

   I know this is quite a long post despite my saying that I was going to keep all the posts about this series as short as possible, but there was a lot of pre-emptive exposition to throw at you to place the whole series into context. The next fifty-plus posts will be a lot shorter.

   Oh yeah - and fuck Erebus.

* Okay, I know I've read this one already and it's a prequel, so it technically comes before this one, but this one was released first and is formally the initial instalment of the series as a whole.

** A quick note on the post labelling - I've created a separate label for this series because there are so many books in it, and it would otherwise completely dominate the sci-fi label, but obviously given the Warhammer 40,000 (well, 30,000 technically) setting all the books under this label are sci-fi with hints of fantasy.

Valdor

This book is a novel by Chris Wraight that serves as a prequel to the Horus Heresy series (and if that means nothing to you, watch this space, as I fully intend over the coming years to read the entire series detailing the pre-history of the Warhammer 40,000 universe). It follows Constantin Valdor, the leader of the Adeptus Custodes, the Emperor's closest guards, across the dark days when the reconquest and unification of Earth is very nearly complete, and the Emperor thus almost ready to set out to reconquer and unify the galaxy under human dominion. I've read this first as, as I said above, I fully intend to read the whole Horus Heresy series,* despite it being like a hundred separate novels or so, and this seemed like a handy kickstart to that process. I won't give away spoilers, as there are many in this book, but I will say that we get a glimpse of the Emperor's grand plan and unstated intent that completely reshuffled my understanding of much of the basic lore of the universe; also the detached brutality shown by the nascent Imperium is telling of what it will become. If you're not already a fan of the Warhammer 40,000 universe you probably won't get a lot out of this novel; it's well written, sure, but all the characters are such grand figures lore-wise that there really isn't all that much artistic license that can be taken with them and so it boils down to a handful of dazzling secret easter-eggs that only lore nerds will appreciate.

* I'm getting a Kindle for my birthday. Which is why. Had I meant to read the whole series in physical form I simply wouldn't have enough bookshelf space.