This review is written with a GPL 4.0 license and the rights contained therein shall supersede all TOS by any and all websites in regards to copying and sharing without proper authorization and permissions. Crossposted at WordPress & Blogspot by Bookstooge’s Exalted Permission
Title: The Infinite and the Divine
Series: Warhammer 40K: Necrons
Author: Robert Rath
Rating: 3.5 of 5 Stars
Genre: SF
Pages: 339
Words: 112K
This book came across my radar back in January, when Mark Reviewed It. It deals with two Necrons, Trazyn the Infinite and Orikan the Divine, hence the title of the book.
Oh yes, I plan to interject various Magic the Gathering cards from the Warhammer Commander set from 2022. Prepare yourselves accordingly!
They have always been enemies, even when they were still flesh and the Bio-Transference Ceremony that turned the entire Necrontyr race into Immortal Metal Necrons hasn’t stopped that rivalry.
They have found a Magical Boojum that one wants to hoard and the other wants to investigate. So for the next 10,000 years they fight and backstab and occasionally work together to figure out just what this Magical Boojum is. Well, bad news guys. It was a trap all along! The Necrons were tricked by a race called the C’Tan, godlike beings, who ate their souls when they turned the Necrontyr into the Necrons. Pretty sneaky. Well, the Necrons weren’t too happy about that and did their best to wipe out the C’Tan. They did a pretty good job, except they didn’t quite destroy them all. Those they couldn’t destroy they put into Shards, basically permanent prison. One Shard didn’t take this sitting down and decided to do something and eventually break free. Which is what this Magical Boojum does. The C’Tan breaks free, Orikan and Trazyn are forced to work together to destroy it and the book ends with both Necrons having a piece of a sub-shard which they are convinced they can handle, secretly and on their own. Sigh.
While not as bad as Farsight, this book still does rely on the reader having some knowledge of the Warhammer 40K universe. Too much in my opinion. You have to know that the space elves destroyed their society by creating one of the Chaos Gods. You have to know that the C’Tan forced the Necrontyr into becoming the Necrons. You have to have heard of the Horus Heresy and understand that it was a civil war in the human empire. There is an instance of the Empire of Mankind performing an Exterminatus on the planet that the Magical Boojum is hidden on, but the author does a pretty good job of explaining that so you aren’t left flailing, trying to figure out what it is.
Rath also does an excellent job of showing how time is so different for a race that is functionally immortal. The middle section of the book encompasses just over 8,000 years and Rath has both characters look up and realize 2,000 years have passed while they’ve been doing whatever. The “time” aspect was handled very well.
The end of the book is one massive battle that starts as a betrayal between Orikan and Trazyn and then spirals out of control as they realize that a C’Tan has tricked them both. They throw everything they have against him and barely make it out. Rath throws in tons of Necron military types to the mix and eventually my eyes just glazed over and I read it all as “then another Necron did something something something”.
Overall, I enjoyed this and found out a lot about the Necrons, but that wouldn’t have happened without input from Mark. I was doing a buddy-read with Dave and he had just as many questions as I did. The blind leading the blind as it were.
One the plus side, I got to showcase a bunch of Magic Cards, so that’s a big plus, hahahahaa.
★★★✬☆
From TVTropes.com
Synopsis – click to open
the novel follows two Necron lords, Trazyn the Infinite, a collector of ancient artifacts, and Orikan the Diviner, a powerful chronomancer. Trazyn and Orikan have been enemies for millennia, but when Orikan steals the Astrarium Mysterios from Trazyn’s collection, believing it to be the key to unlocking an ancient power, the two are dragged into direct conflict. Over the course of ten thousand years, they go from competing over ownership of the Mysterios, to working together to unlock its secrets, to stabbing each other in the back over it. Their feud reshapes timelines, dooms planets, and threatens to either destroy or restore the entire Necron race.
