The Eagle of the Ninth

by on January 29, 2021 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: Books

Long ago, my Dad recommended the novel Sword at Sunset to me. Before I ever got around to it, I found out that it was part of a series of novels Rosemary Sutcliff wrote about Roman and post-Roman Britain. So, I’ve now (much later) gotten to reading the start of the series.

It takes place near the middle of the 2nd Century AD, and is a simple, but well-written period piece. We first meet the main character, Marcus, as a freshly-minted Centurion, with his first command, coming up to garrison Hadrian’s Wall, which is under construction. We get some nice bits of legionary life, the local Britons, and some early action as rebellion flares up.

Marcus is seriously wounded, and invalided out of the 2nd Legion, and another few chapters is spent detailing recuperation at his uncle’s villa, while Marcus is left at lose ends as his entire projected career is wrecked. Both of these parts carry the reader through quite effortlessly, but are still just setup for the central story.

Ten years previously, the Ninth Legion marched north from Roman-held land to punish raiding tribesmen, …and vanished without a trace, including Marcus’ father, who had a command in that Legion. This is mentioned early, but doesn’t become a central part of the book until some way through, at which point it (and it’s eagle standard) become the central MacGuffin of the story. The rest of the story is as well-done as the previous, and is more of a typical adventure in outline.

It maintains an even, brisk pace throughout, and is definitely a recommended read.

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Anime Fall 2020

by on January 25, 2021 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: Anime

Still something of a light schedule this season, and of course the dubbed shows are trailing behind a bit.

Haikyuu – Another season with a single set of matches in a tournament. However, writing-wise it’s still all of a piece with the previous season, as a few things finally come together for Hinata. Once again, it’s a pretty small focus for 13 episodes, but the writing holds up.

Journey of Elaina — Smudge and I picked this up at the start of the season, saw most of it… and then introduced it to the guys in the dubbed version, which is just getting started. It’s kind of a magical version of Kino’s Journey, with a fairly episodic format, and some very different tones between stories.

Arte — Renaissance Italy (drawn without reference). Actually, we have a feeling the original manga artist has a decent grasp on Italian clothes and architecture, but the production studio worked entirely from his art. In any case, its a fairly good, if cheaply produced, period piece.

Is it Wrong to Try to Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon? — Smudge and I actually saw the Sword Oratoria side story as well as the current third (main) series. The former reminds me a bit of the A Certain… series, with fanservice derailing too many parts of the series. On the other hand, the writing of the latter has really dissolved into incomprehensibility, while this is still pretty good. The main story was a bit better (writing and fanservice), and definitely moves forward some interesting bits of just what’s going on in this world.

Brand New Animal — Dave actually saw this first, so for once the flow of recommendations is going the other way. Personally, I’ve been finding it okay. It is getting better as it goes (haven’t finished yet). It’s been a little all-over writing-wise, which is weakened the show for me, but the overall arc has been coming a lot clearer in the last third, so my enthusiasm is picking up.

Black Clover — The plot is in the periodic ‘power up’ stage that shonen fight anime goes to too often. Outside of that, there’s been some good things, with a look at some of the under-served portions of the kingdom, which had a fairly good climax (I would like to believe that there’s a coherent in-world reason for the strong mana zone in the middle of everything, but so far it seems like it’s just a convenient way to keep the countries separated from each other). More surprisingly, we’ve actually caught up to the current episodes.

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The White and the Gold

by on January 21, 2021 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: Books

I picked this up when there was a Kindle sale on Thomas Costain books a bit ago. I hadn’t been aware of him writing a series on Canada, and it turns out the reason is he didn’t. This is the first book in a six-book series, but each volume was written by a different author. More surprising, this wasn’t an arrangement that the publisher put together, like with the Oxford History of Europe, but one the authors themselves put together, being Canadians who felt a need for such a history series.

In general, this is up to Costain’s usual quality (I certainly recommend his history of the Plantagenets) of writing and creating a digestible narrative history. However, this is originally a 1954 book, and shows a few problems. First, this pretty much all from the colonial settler’s point of view. Given the time and knowledge available to him this isn’t too bad, and he takes time at one point to fairly graphically show that the colonists were capable of atrocities every bit as bad as anything the Native Americans did. However, there’s a fair amount of stereotyping here, and, much worse, on two occasions he has recourse to phrenology.

Outside of those concerns, there’s other things I consider weaknesses, mostly because I’d like some details outside his narrative. Costain starts with some of the initial exploration of the North American coast by Cabot et al, and by the time settlement of the area begins there’s already fishing off the Grand Banks going on, but he doesn’t mention how that got going (or by whom).

This just on the early French regime in Canada, and covers up to about 1690, which is certainly not something I have any real knowledge of. So, it was still reasonably informative, though I never got as cohesive an impression as would have like (extremely sketchy geographical knowledge of the area on my end does not help). Overall, I only give it a limited recommendation, and a more current book on the subject would probably be preferred.

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17 Obourg

by on January 17, 2021 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: Boardgaming

During December, Mark and I returned to Great War Commander, and tried out the first scenario from the British expansion. It (and the next two scenarios) are set during the battle of Mons on 23 August. It features a German attempt to take a critical bridge over a canal from a British covering force. It’s by far the most lopsided we’ve seen so far from a number of troops standpoint: fifteen German platoons to six British.

But the British have a trench and two foxholes plus a machine gun, and two “2” leaders. The Germans get a pair of machine guns as reinforcements, but have to make do with bodies and three “2” leaders until then. Also, the Germans have possible artillery support, but the British have none. An interesting SSR is that one of the British leaders is effectively immobile in a railroad station, and can’t participate in normal fire attacks, but can attack on his own with 0 firepower and 4 range, but treats one enemy unit morale as “0”, meaning that his attacks start from a base of 0 offense vs 0 defense, with modification for cards and terrain. A couple final notes: The German surrender limit is quite high (13), and the game starts on turn 5, and goes to turn 11(ish); this generates a six turn game that is highly unlikely to go overtime once sudden death rolls start on 11.

I had the defending Brits, and of course clustered around the bridge with a foxhole in that hex (I think that’s legal…?), and a trench with the MG in the hex behind it. The other foxhole went a couple hexes away, another platoon was in the rail station, and the last platoon was behind the rail embankment. Three of the five victory hexes are in the fairly limited British area, with one being the bridge (4), another the rail station (5), and a third being a road leading off the British side of the map (3). The public objective gave one VP for a crossroad on the German side of the map (2), while mine was one VP for the rail station, and Mark’s was two VP for the bridge.

The Germans only get one hexrow for their setup, and have enough platoons to have one per allowed hex. Mark put the inferior five platoons of Landwehr on the east side, and the leaders were distributed to control everything. He led off with a Move to bring the west side forward and through objective (1) (Obourg village itself), and then Advanced the center section. For my turn, I Fired at his leading troops, and a poor roll caused Mark to re-roll and pass the Initiative to me. However, they broke anyway, but a second shot at the same unit did nothing.

Mark immediately Recovered… which failed, and then called for Artillery, which was accurate on the bridge… which still meant it drifted off-target where no one was. He then tried a second Request (using the FAO instead of his leader), which was inaccurate to end up near where the first one went. He finished up the turn by Advancing the east-edge troops. I passed, and Mark Recovered to rally the broken platoon. He then Moved the bulk of his center, and my OpFire broke Waldau (his ranking officer) and three out of eight advancing platoons (the Maxim right behind the bridge was being very handy). Moreover, the final defense roll was a ’12’ for a time trigger.


↓ Read the rest of this entry…

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Paladin

by on January 13, 2021 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: Books

Okay, in parts, this is well-trodden fantasy ground. You have an order of warriors dedicated to fighting demons. You have a scrappy girl who prefers martial pursuits to marital ones. She joins the aforesaid order in disguise because girls aren’t supposed to fight.

So, some of the standard bits, needing to stay disguised, etc. And a bit of romance (which is nicely not straightforward, but does go a little overboard on a couple occasions). The world building is a bit sparse, but there’s hints of much more background than we see. Notably, demons nearly overran everything once, and were sealed away ages ago. There’s still minor ones around to cause occasional problems, but it’s not the world-ending catastrophe it was. The Paladins still keep an eye on things, and fight the occasional lone demons that are out there.

On the other hand, there only seems to be one country in the world (no others are mentioned), and the government is undefined. There’s the Paladins… and apparently no other fighting force. There is a king mentioned… but the main authority shown is the head master of the Paladins.

But, everything that happens is more-or-less internal to the Paladins, so there’s not much chance to see much else. In fact, the focus is fairly tight, with three major characters (who all get some time as the viewpoint), and a bare handful of other characters, most of which don’t have much screen time. (There’s maybe three important secondary characters for the book as a whole.)

But that is enough, as their characters and interactions drive things forward nicely. That is easily the best part of it all, though the writing does have a certain passion for the story it is telling that also carries you forward with it.

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