Beneath the Raptor’s Wing

by on November 17, 2023 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: Books

I actually like Star Trek: Enterprise. It had its problems, and plenty of problem episodes, and I’m not a fan of the Expanse story. But whenever the series dealt with the Vulcans and Andorians (especially), the series was at its best, and showing Earth’s initial influence on its neighbors was a good direction.

The apparent plans were that the fifth season would tackle the Earth-Romulan War mentioned in “Balance of Terror”. So, in a series of novels dealing with carrying the Enterprise storyline forward, that is an obvious, and attractive, subject.

The first problem is that it is more tied into the previous novels than you’d think. This starts off right after Kobayashi Maru, and everyone is still dealing with the aftermath of that book… which I haven’t read. Second, I am quite tired of in medias res openings that try to excite you with things that happen long after the start of the story. If the story’s good, it can be good from the start, trust me. And this one is so bad that you don’t even catch up to it until the next book! After that… the novel is a bit too ambitious. It covers a bit over a year with Star Fleet having to deal with a real shooting war that they’re not really ready for, and the Coalition of Planets’ mutual defense treaties buckle under. (Actually, the main problem is Vulcan staying steadfastly out of the war, and that’s not handled as well as it could have been.)

The novel is long, and goes for the ‘cast of thousands’ side of things, which works here. Far better than it would in a shorter format, such as weekly episodes, so Martin making good use of his opportunities here. It does mean this is a much slower read than most any other Star Trek novel you’re likely to run into. On the other hand, I think he needed to tighten up on tone and theme, and look more at how this war is shaping Star Fleet, and taking it ever further from it’s pure exploration roots.

One sub-plot I have definite troubles with is with Tucker. The plot itself isn’t a bad one, and certainly becomes important in the next book, but he just feels like a really unlikely choice for spy. Of course, this also flows out of a previous book (presumably Kobayashi Maru, but I don’t know). There’s a good attempt to explain why TOS’s bridge controls are so… “retro” compared to everything else, but I think we just have leave that to the side, since Strange New Worlds has overwritten that part. Unfortunately, one bit in that part would be… frankly, impossible, and I’m glad it’s just a one line mention. (There might be ways to make it work, but not as stated.)

Overall, it’s a good book, and a good delve into a period that we won’t see in any other way. There’s a bit too much sand in the concrete of the foundation, but it still stands well on it’s own, other than ending on a ‘to be continued…’ note as To Brave the Storm is directly tied into it.

└ Tags: , , , ,
 Comment 

The Horse, the Wheel, and Language

by on November 9, 2023 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: Books

The problem with getting an idea of the origins of civilization is that no one that far back had yet started writing anything down. But, there are still clues we can gather in the absence of records. David Anthony tries to tie the main two together here.

He notes that there’s a lot of professional resistance to trying to tie historical linguistics to the physical artifacts found by archaeology. One problem he notes is the two disciplines use very different jargons, and both are specialized enough that there’s no one who’s fully qualified in both fields. Anthony himself is an archaeologist and admits his deficiencies, but from my passing knowledge of the subject, he seems well read enough on Proto-Indo-European to say intelligent things. What he has to say certainly seems intelligent to me.

The first part of the book sets the scene by going through the basics of why people think there was an actual Proto-Indo-European language, and what we can deduce from that small part of it we can reconstruct. He also tackles some limitations that I had not seen discussed before, which was nice. And then the general archaeology targeted in the likely time and region, finishing with work on trying to set bounds on the likely time period PIE existed in. He he gets into arsenical bronze, which I had not known of before (bronze made of copper and naturally co-ocurring arsenic). Also, the intellectual history of ordering prehistory ‘ages’, which I suppose I must have seen before at some point, but I had forgotten it all.

One point he goes into some different terminology used in Soviet, and now post-Soviet studies, though I wish he’d gone a little further with it. Naturally, the main part of the book has a lot of more detailed looks at the archaeological record in it. It can get a bit much on the minutiae, and certainly trying to digest all the archaeology of a broad area of land and time means things sort of fly by.

He and his wife have also done work on trying to figure out just when and where the horse was domesticated. There’s some limits to what they’re doing, but it’s a much better study of the subject than we’ve had before.

In the end, this is guesswork. However, its very well thought out guesswork based on what we do know. If you’re interested in early history, if you wonder just how one language group came to dominate much of the planet, this is a very interesting book. I do think he’s on the right track, and is as good of a guess as we’re going to have until continuing archaeological discoveries can say more.

└ Tags: , , ,
 Comment 

Waterloo: The Campaign of 1815 Part 2

by on November 1, 2023 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: Books

The second book of Hussey’s study of the Waterloo campaign starts with both armies struggling to deal with the aftermath of the large battles of June 16th. It starts with chapter 31, which shows how much this considered one study in two covers, though you could read either independently, I think.

At any rate, it picks up right where volume one left off, and continues much the same kind of analysis as before. It’s not quite the same, as circumstances have changed. Before, a lot of attention was paid to the initial planning for the upcoming campaign, and we’re now in the middle of it.

So, a fair amount of the book is spent dealing with everyone’s movements on June 17, and what they knew. I think we could use just a bit more focus on Grouchy here, and the French fumble of finding out where the Prussian Army is retreating to. But, it does actually get a lot of attention, especially Napoleon’s misapprehensions possibly diverting Grouchy’s attention in the wrong direction.

And of course, there is a quite thorough look and analysis of the Battle of Waterloo itself.

But we don’t end there. Instead, the book takes a look at the Allied advance on Paris, and path of the main remnant of the French Armée du Nord in front and to one side of the advance. This occasionally breaks up a bit more than I’d like, but there is a lot to cover, and Hussey certainly covers it well, most especially including Prussian and English disagreements to the fate of Paris. This is the main part that makes this book different than others, and as valuable as the planning analysis of the first book.

For anyone studying up on the Napoleonic period, this set is some of the most important books to get. There’s a lot of import here that gets missed elsewhere as everyone is eager to get to the action. But this is much more than that, and has a lot to say about the troubles inherent in fighting as a coalition.

└ Tags: , , , ,
 Comment 

Boogeymen

by on October 20, 2023 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: Books

By this point in the TNG novel series, we’re up to about fourth season, and the line is settling down into some actual competence. (The next one, #18, is one of the few TNG novels I truly recommend, thank you Peter David for Q In Law.)

Not to say I didn’t have my doubts when starting this novel, as it seemed determined to go into some well-worn, unworthy tropes. After some initial scene setting that doesn’t seem to go anywhere, we end up with another ‘holodeck is malfunctioning’ episode. And it’s Westley’s fault.

Well, at least the fault of a program to try and give him an unpredictable foe for some personal command training that was written for him. And the program goes out of control, giving us something of a repeat of Moriarty in “Elementary, Dear Data” (apparently, the original idea was to re-use him, but had to be changed to keep room for the series to reuse Moriarty without trouble, which they eventually did). Still, it was well done, complete with the holodeck generating a simulated exit to a simulated Enterprise instead of the real one, and I was happy enough to go with this story instead of the one we’d gotten so far.

And it does take over the novel… for a time, but when we come out, and this starts connecting with everything else in a much stronger plot than we started with. However, we are still in reruns, as we recycle a different early episode plot, and the connection is more than obvious enough for the characters to bring it up.

In the end, its more of a mediocre book, but far above the 1st season set, and it did move well past my initial low expectations from a bumpy start.

└ Tags: , , , ,
 Comment 

Waterloo: The Campaign of 1815 Part 1

by on October 12, 2023 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: Books

John Hussey’s two volumes are on the the Waterloo campaign as a whole, with this one stopping two days before with the twin battles of Ligne and Quarte Bras. It goes after everything, starting with peace process of 1814.

He doesn’t go into a lot of detail there, but does go into the problems of the Congress of Vienna, and points up that Napoleon was watching the emerging factionalism with interest. From there, we get a recounting of the flight from Elba, and then the allied planning at stopping Napoleon.

And that planning takes up the bulk of the book. The general allied plan was to line four large armies up on the German border, and advance into France in something of a repeat of the 1814 campaign. The northernmost armies, British and Prussian (plus a number of minor German contingents which caused a new round of wrangling) were ready first, while Austrian and Russian armies assembled and made their way towards the border.

Napoleon needs to smash each of these armies, at least enough to put the fear of a large French victory into the allies and cause the internal tensions to tear them apart. However, the immediate reaction to his reappearance was to unite once again, putting a strain on his ability to militarily prepare in a hurry. Wellington ends up as the leader on the spot for the allies, and apparently is entranced enough by the allied planning for an offensive to not consider just how offensively-minded Napoleon really is.

Therefore both allied armies on the spot only have the loosest idea of how to handle a French offensive, even as Wellington and Blücher contemplate their coming offensive moves. This helps lead to confusion and a slow reaction on 15 and 16 June from both allied armies.

In fact, breakdowns of communication are the running theme of the last part of the book, as Napoleon tries for a dramatic victory to eliminate the Prussian army as threat, while Ney is involved in an ever-escalating battle against the British. There is a lot of study of dispatch times, and the likely interval for them to get to destinations, which does a lot to show just how fragmented views of these two battles were.

I think on occasion Hussey isn’t quite up to juggling all the balls involved here, but its a really big ask, as there is a lot that he is endeavoring to handle, and in general he does it very well, despite me getting lost on occasion. This is a very good study overall, with a lot of awareness and reference to previous serious histories and the controversies they’ve engendered. Even more than these important elements, the study of the preparations on both sides leading up to the campaign are very important, if you want to read up on more than just a period of three days in June (Ligny/Quarte Bras to Waterloo) at all, get these books.

└ Tags: , , ,
 Comment