Throne of Jade

by on December 17, 2022 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: Books

The first Temeraire book had one big question that was never answered. China had sent a dragon egg to Napoleon. The reason why highly isolationist China should do this was wondered at a couple times in the first novel, but no answer was forthcoming.

So, this second book in the series is aimed directly at that question, which had become even more befuddling as Temeraire’s true worth becomes apparent at the end of His Majesty’s Dragon. This central plot thread gets going immediately as a Chinese delegation arrives demanding Temeraire’s return. The British government, already with its hands full in Europe is not minded to outright refuse, even if all the primary characters are.

The plot structure suffers a bit as this central plot thread stretches out with no idea of how it could resolve for far too long. Much of the middle is more concerned about the process of getting halfway around the world in the early Nineteenth Century, which keeps the action going, but doesn’t do a lot for the central plot. And once the journey itself is largely over, the next stand-in taking look at a different culture, and how it treats dragons; a comparison that is deeply disconcerting to Laurence as he realizes how short Europe comes in this department. I would assume this will fuel at least some sub-plots in later books.

Reactions to this book will all hinge on how you do with a central plot that seems stuck in amber most of the time. The answer to that initial question, when it comes, makes sense, and makes for a good plot twist, but the ending itself is still abrupt and feels a little forced, though it does flow directly from what has been learned. Overall, it’s a good sequel novel that avoids trying to do the exact same thing twice in a row. This shuffles the Napoleonic Wars offstage; we hear about the Battle of Austerlitz, and that’s about it. I hope we get to see a bit more later on.

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With Eagles To Glory

by on December 9, 2022 at 12:00 pm
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All right, I wouldn’t have ever thought of a book on Napoleon’s German allies on my own, but this is a very good, if limited look at just that. This is a look at just the 1809 Danubian campaign. There’s a bit about the founding of the Confederation of the Rhine, and the 1808 events that lead into this campaign. And that’s it. There was continued fighting in 1809 in Spain, and a fair number of German troops were sent there before more had to be raised for the Danubian campaign. While that fact is discussed, that’s all that’s said except for some very passing mentions of how some of those contingents did in comparison with the with their brethren in this book.

Now, within that set of constraints, this is a very good book. The amount of detail is understandably high, even if the maps are at best lackluster, and often don’t back up the text well. There are two major sections, one of which mostly looks at the primary campaign, and the other goes into several subsidiary theaters, most notably an insurrection in the Tyrol and Vorarlberg. Bavaria gets (deservedly) a full, long chapter, with Württemberg, Baden, Hesse-Darmstadt, and Saxony also getting their own chapters.

Because he goes through each country in turn, the narrative of events is split up and gets a bit jumbled. But that’s not the purpose of this book; if you want a look at the campaign as a whole, look elsewhere (quite likely at Gill’s Thunder on the Danube series). You do get a look at the units themselves along with tables of organization for the units involved, and figures for the numbers of men.

For me, the most important part of this volume is the war in Tyrol. It is prominent in the Bavaria chapter, and also is the lead chapter in the second part. I hadn’t known anything about major insurrections during this campaign, and this one nearly overwhelmed the nearby German states. Since it was almost entirely left to German troops, it gets a full discussion here. The rest of the second part is about smaller events, winding down to some raids staged to get uprisings going in the rest of Germany, which did not happen, but the military security arrangements against these are gone into.

Overall, this is a well done book on a bit of a niche subject, but one that is more interesting than it would first seem. Unfortunately there are a few major flubs in the electronic version of the book. Mostly, it is in very good shape, but a large chunk of chapter 7 is missing, leaving you wondering exactly what just happened, with everything wrapping up right after a tense part of the campaign… and there’s eleven pages stuck after the chapter endnotes. (More signs that something went seriously wrong in there is a missing name, “an attack on ’s defences“.)

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Prime Directive

by on December 1, 2022 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: Books

Prime Directive came out a bit after my primary era of reading Trek novels, money was tighter, and there were just too many coming out. But, it got a fairly good marketing push at the time, as one of the early (third, I think) hardcover novels. I have to say the current cover is much better than the original hardcover version.

So, we get a bit of a confused opening, as the action is over, and the crew of the Enterprise has been scattered in disgrace for a violation of the Prime Directive that ended in the disaster it was designed to prevent: a dead world. Most of the bridge crew has resigned, Uhura is under court martial, Bones hit an admiral… and the Enterprise is a wreck in orbit around a moon, with one warp engine having been ejected, and the other ruined and evaporating, possibly into subspace.

A common idea in SF for various FTL drives is that they can’t be used too close to the gravity field of a large body; either it’s impossible, or there is a great chance of something going wrong (like going to Pluto when you meant to go to the Moon, and your FTL drive disappearing in the process). Star Trek has been largely silent on the subject, implying that any such trouble is fairly minimal at most. But here its assumed that it’s not mentioned because everyone knows not to do it—and the Enterprise is now the first ship to survive the attempt.

Once the stage is set, we get an extended flashback to the mission that caused all this. This gives us a look at how the Federation works to obey its own Prime Directive while studying developing worlds. There’s some interesting bits showing how the inevitable slip-ups are generally accounted for. In fact, this section is generally well done, and would make a good, if not great, novel even without the tension of the coming disaster looming over it.

Star Trek at its non-philosophical best can deliver mysteries. Not necessarily murder mysteries, but related, where the plot and action are bent towards figuring out just what is really going on, what is our limited human viewpoint missing, and how to bring a solution to bear to what has been learned. The bulk of this novel is exactly this. Even before disaster, it is obvious that something is not right in the Talin system, and the desire to delve deeper helps the pages fly by.

A bit of expectation setting/trivia: The intro to the novel firmly says this is set during the final year of the original five-year mission. I was wondering, with all the dramatic career bits here, if it was intended to be the end of the mission and the reason for Enterprise‘s refit. No, an early novel claimed that bit of the timeline, and the Reeves-Stevens respect that claim. Current fan theory likes to instead place the novel a year earlier, and use it to explain some changes in the bridge crew and small differences in the bridge in The Animated Series.

The worst problem is that after the highly public nature of events depicted here, it’s hard to imagine everyone picking up right where they left off, set for another adventure without acknowledging this one. Outside of that, this is good, gripping Star Trek novel, and well recommended. At some point, I’m going to have to read Federation (which was the novel the authors originally pitched for this publication slot, but Paramount took years to be talked into it).

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Armies of Castile and Aragon 1370–1516

by on November 23, 2022 at 12:00 pm
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Osprey’s book on Castile and Aragon is really more about Trastamara rule, with Enrique II taking the throne of Castile in 1369 and the Hapsburg Charles II taking over Spain in 1516.

The beginning of this tale is familiar to many English-language history buffs, as it crosses over with the Hundred Years War. After that, not a lot of attention is paid until 1492 and the surrender of Granada allows for funding overseas adventures. As usual, there’s a good three-page chronology at the start to help place everything.

The Weaponry & Tactics section is brief, but introduces the important points, including vulnerability to English armies. This is best known for the battle of Nájera,  but lesser known is the battle of Aljubarrota, where Juan I Trastamara tried pressing a claim to Portugal and was defeated by a smaller force with plenty of English and Gascon veterans in it. Unfortunately, there’s little follow-up to this section, including how Iberian organization and tactics changed (or failed to) after this, though in the short term Juan refused any more set piece battles with English troops.

There’s a good couple of pages about sea power in the two kingdoms, a subject that hardly ever gets enough attention in this era. From there, we get a history of the campaigns from 1407-1444, which is mostly the Aragonese expansion into Sicily and Italy. This is also informative, if predictably a bit confusing (we are talking Italian politics here), especially as we get to see how the two areas tie together.

After that is a major section on the consolidation of Castile and Aragon, and of course the conquest of Granada. That section in particular was eye-opening, as it was logistically extremely difficult country, and the war was quite extended by the difficulties in campaigning there. The book then finishes up with further campaigning in Italy at the end of the Fifteenth Century.

This is much more of a ‘pocket history’ than the examination of the armies that the Men-At-Arms series is technically supposed to be. As such, it’s well-written and informative, but doesn’t really give much idea of what these campaigns might have looked like. Similarly, Gary Embleton’s color plates are decent, but nothing special. That said the plate descriptions are good, and there’s the usual plethora of photos of period artifacts, and art (all black-and-white this time, which is becoming less common in the series).

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A Song For Arbonne

by on November 15, 2022 at 12:00 pm
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Once again, Guy Gavriel Kay does not disappoint. That said, the very beginning didn’t really grab me (especially the caper on Rian’s Island). But partway through chapter 3, Blaise, our main character, gets ambushed, and I was hooked for the rest of the novel.

This is a fantasy drawing deeply of southern France. The Court of Love rules here, and troubadours and joglars are what keep the Court vital. There is a god-goddess duo here which is much reflected in somewhat separate but equally important male and female characters of the novel. The nature of Corannos the god are not much gone into, but Rian’s, the goddess, power all emanates from an island in the southern sea. The world is much wider than we really get to see, Gorhaut being somewhat developed as the antithesis of Arbonne, and Portezza being an Italy-equivalent that a couple characters are from and the main character has spent time in, and other areas merely mentioned.

The novel is, as ever with Kay, well-paced, with the action working up to greater heights after every lull, and Blaise becoming more important in every lull. His centrality to events flows naturally as we learn more about him, and he takes to himself more responsibility.

There is a much wider cast of characters, many of which get to be viewpoint characters at one point or another. However, Lisset, the second-most prominent, seems a little undeserved as her progression doesn’t seem to mirror the novel’s like Blaise, even though she’s a vital viewpoint, and in the center of the distinctive artistic-centered culture Kay is presenting here.

And that just barely scratches the surface of an expansive novel. All of Kay’s books have enough going on to feel epic, and I think this one tops Tigana and Al-Rassan in that for me. Better yet, I have thought for a while that Occitian France needed more attention, and this makes a good primer on the subject.

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