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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Gold Brick IV

by on January 5, 2021 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: Comics

The fourth Gold Brick starts right in the middle of the action, with part two of Brianna and an attempt on the leprechauns’ gold. From there, we quickly go back to the big story line, as Gina gets invited to see the secrets of the shadow elves on Jade, and meets… herself.

Physically, this is the same as the previous volume. A collection of 25 color issues, weighing in somewhere around 450 pages. My personal copy also had the binding come lose from the cover, though it is otherwise physically intact. Thankfully, the lettering doesn’t get overly small as much as it did in Volume III.

With 25 issues, there’s time and room for a fair amount of different stories, such as yet another matchup between Ace and Night Flight, which again is very well done, especially from a story perspective. Generally speaking though, more things are tying to the Nomad Artificers, and projects they started when this universe was young…. There’s the usual bevy of new characters, as well as returning villains, and one of the more important stories deals with a return to Dreadwing’s lair, from the original short story.

On the other hand, Brittanny is found to be pregnant midway through, which has its own influence on the stories. Like with any other long-term series like this, life goes on, and the characters evolve. It feels a bit more integrated in Gold Digger, though, and certainly Tiffany Targét Gia is an important story point coming up.

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Year of the Unicorn

by on December 24, 2020 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: Books

This is another Andre Norton that I’m sure I read ages ago, but don’t have any clear memories of anymore.

This is the first of the “High Hallack” Witch World novels, which I always generally enjoyed more than the Estcarp series.

One thing that struck me early was the initial locale of the dales, and the roll of named years (which is where the title of the novel actually comes from). The Dalelands and roll of years in the Forgotten Reams were most likely inspired by this novel (and it’d be the right time for Greenwood to be starting to figure out his world).

As usual with Andre Norton, the overall theme is growth and finding your place in the world. Gillan has a place and stable life at the start of the book, but it’s not one she wants. Looking forward to the ‘dry, dusty years’ stretching out ahead of her, she wants out.

And of course, the novel starts with a path out. Thirteen brides are to be given to the beastmen, shapeshifters who were hired for a war that has now ended. She switches with one of the designated brides, and goes straight into adventure.

The pacing is very good overall, though part of the middle stays in high-gear danger for quite a while before there’s much of a break. But flow passes between mystery and wonder and action several times seamlessly and keeps the momentum going all the way. Gillan is not the most distinct of main characters, but she is a good one, willing to continue on with what she started, and does a lot to carry the plot through to its conclusion on her own.

It is a complete stand-alone novel, so it’s also a good place to get into the world (there are better, notably to my mind, The Crystal Gryphon), so don’t let its ‘series’ nature stop you from giving it a read.

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Agincourt: Henry V and the Battle That Made England

by on December 16, 2020 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: Books

This was recommended to me by someone who’s opinion I trust, so I expected a good book going in. It exceeded my expectations.

Despite the title, this is not just an examination of the Battle of Agincourt. It occupies a central place in book, but it is more than that. The book starts with a brief description of the fourteenth-century succession crisis that ended with Edward III claiming the throne of France. The first parts of the Hundred Years War are covered in a similar amount of clear brevity. Then we get to Henry IV and Henry V.

The first detailed part of the book goes into Henry of Monmouth’s (the future Henry V) campaigns in Wales, and how that shaped his future outlook on warfare. The campaign was generally underfunded, and Henry had to scrape together the resources to bring the rebellion in Wales to an end. This mostly happened after he figured out ways of better financing it on his own.

Much time is spent with the beginning of Henry V’s reign, and the various diplomatic maneuvers with France even as he secures funding from Parliament, and begins putting together an army. This forms a significant part of the book, and a nicely detailed one, using lots of examples of surviving registers and indentures to show how the army was hired and organized and paid.

Then there is a good section on the siege of Harfleur. It also goes into detail, and takes a look at was (and wasn’t) happening at the French court during all of this. The march towards Calais afterwords is also very well covered, including the fact that it had nearly reached its goal before having to turn aside to look for safe river crossings. Much appreciated is the look at how long this was expected to take, and why, and just how much of the march went off on schedule.

And then we get to the field of Agincourt, the day before, and the battle itself. In some ways, this isn’t as well-covered as the lead up to the battle, but that’s more the high bar the rest of the book set rather than an actual lack here.

After that, there is good examination of the aftermath. The main subject boils down to the prisoners taken, and their fates. This is harder to determine in detail, but Barker spends some time picking out examples. The political and military aftermath get less attention than the lead up.

It’s a well-written, and well-focused book, without being so focused as to lose some essential context. In fact, the context (especially Henry V’s early career) is the best part of the book. Highly recommended for anyone wanting to know more about this period.

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The Lost Fleet: Dauntless

by on December 8, 2020 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: Books

Okay, military science-fiction is always a selling point for me, and I have taken too long to get to this series.

It is always presented as a series, and with good reason. While this is a complete story, structure-wise, the overall situation and problem won’t be resolved (presumably) until book six. The good news is that these are relatively short books by modern standards, coming in at ~300 pages each, so this isn’t a six-book series of bloated editing.

The overall set up fairly good, and quite space opera in nature. The Alliance fleet finds an old survival pod on its way to battle, and it happens to contain a near-legendary hero from the beginning of the war—one hundred years ago. This is before the start of the book, and the actual start is the top command of the fleet getting killed, leaving our Jack Geary the most senior captain available—by nearly a century.

The setup is actually handled fairly well, and a lot of the personality, and personality clashes are well done. It’s definitely one of the strong points of the writing. The military side can get into teeth-grating problems… but this is by design. It’s… also a case of making the main character look smarter by ‘dumbing down’ the other characters. However, here, Geary is a professional, well-trained for his job. After a century of taking heavy losses, institutional memory in the fleet is almost non-existent, and all the officers are much younger than they should be. And the characters are generally written as intelligent, they just don’t have a lot of military knowledge and habits they should.

This does also mean that the other characters can serve as a way to naturally bring up how things work and explain them for the reader. One unknown is just how much the Syndicate navy is suffering from the same problem, and I assume it’ll be explored in later books. Similarly, there’s a bit of setup here for the sequel series; Campbell was definitely thinking ahead.

There’s two real battles in this book, plus some other activities (taking down some light planetary defenses), and the action is well handled all the way. It’s also nicely paced. In many ways, this isn’t anything special, just a bunch of milSF tropes seen before, but it is all well crafted, with good writing, characters, plot, and pacing. That’s the real win here, there’s not much in the way of weak points. That makes it worth a look right there, and recommended even to people who may not normally go for this kind of thing.

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