The Shattered Stone

by on April 23, 2019 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: Books

The Children of Ynell series was originally published from 1977 to 1981, and was the first time I got involved in a series that wasn’t finished yet. In fact, I never did get the final book in a series I greatly enjoyed at the time.

The Shattered Stone is the first two of the five books of the (retitled) series, and certainly the ones I remember more strongly. They really affected me when I was young, and I’ve carried a memory of them and the author’s name for decades now as I occasionally think to hunt for copies. Make no mistake, these books deserve to be much better known than they are. They’re reasonably ‘adultish’ YA fantasy novels that are basically epic fantasy, though the focus is entirely on individuals.

The Ring of Fire introduces the world, focusing on a small town and and nearby village. It is largely a tale of growing up, and realizing your parents can’t or may even not want to solve everything. It starts out jumping between two viewpoint characters, which I didn’t remember, which I think is because Zephy takes over the entire book as it goes; Thorn is still there and important, but he slides out of being a viewpoint character. It’s not a pretty setting with a repressive (false) religion, and other methods of control while Zephy is the irrepressible free spirit, and her internal struggles do a lot to make the book. Things get worse, naturally, but at the same time, she and a few stumble into something of the truth, and features about the only religious experiences that have ever had any power for me.

The Wolf Bell, surprisingly, happens centuries earlier. Many dimly known, or distant past events are either recent, or just happening at this point. Most notably, the town of Burgdeeth that is the setting of most of the first book is just being built during this one. I’m not sure if this was planned from the start, or if Murphy decided to explore the ‘back story’ or what. Though it does make some sense to come second, as it would spoil a lot of the early-book reveals of the first book to read this first. That said, they’re only tenously connected books, and one does not really lean on the other. Also, the amount of magic available is much higher here, along with a consistently higher amount of action. On the other hand, the major characters aren’t quite as sympathetic, though this is presumably on purpose, as Ramad is impossibly mature for his age (and needs to be), and his mother is ruled by a strong selfish streak.

I don’t recall much of the next two books, so I can’t say where it goes from here, or how these two fit within the whole, but I remember that they are more dependent on these two than the second one is.

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The Roman Empire and the Silk Routes

by on April 17, 2019 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: Books

This basically a follow-on to McLaughlin’s study of trade across the Indian Ocean. Despite being almost the same size, it feels like an appendix to it.

Whereas his former book spent a lot of time giving specifics of particular trade goods and where Romans were going to get them and trying to get an idea of the overall Roman budget, this is more of a jumbled history of some of the land area between Rome and China. He starts off with a discussion of what Rome had to get from China, which is interesting.

The obvious part is silk, and he goes into the difference between ‘domesticated’ silk, and ‘wild’ silk, where the latter uses threads from cocoons where the larvae ate it’s way out, cutting the strands. Chinese ‘domesticated’ silk is so good because it has extremely long single strands to work with. At any rate, the lesser version was produced in many places, including the Greek island of Cos. More surprising is the assertion that Chinese steel was superior to what Rome could produce, so high-quality steel was an import. I’d like to see some sort of study of the history of metallurgy to check that. The most surprising part is indications that Rome was exporting silk to China. It wouldn’t have been much, but the Roman world had access to some brilliant dyes that China did not, so dyed silks left the Empire again.

Most of the rest of the book takes a look at various areas and regimes along the northern trade routes that made up the Silk Road(s). He starts with China’s troubles with the Xiongnu (Huns!), which started China exploring to the south of their territory looking for potential allies against them. This eventually gets them to Bactria… but just as the post-Alexandrian nation there is dissolving into fragmented city-states.

There is some look at the Chinese economy, but it’s not nearly as well developed, and most of the book he seems to try to avoid discussing their currency. (“Han revenues: 12,300 million cash”, without saying cash what.) At one point near the end he does define the wushu, which seems to be the currency base for his calculations. He spends some time discussing the differences between revenue collection between the two, which could probably stand to be more in depth, though I’d have to spend a fair amount of time thinking about it to make sense of everything he does have there.

All that is basically the ends of the book. In between, there’s a discussion of various regions in between, their contacts with other areas, trade routes through, but mostly little on the actual trade itself. It makes for a good history of central Asia from ~200 BC to ~100 AD, also with some helpful notes on the geography involved, but it doesn’t integrate them with each other very much except for a time line given in the front. So, it’s nowhere near as useful as The Roman Empire in the Indian Ocean, though it is interesting, and good books on this region are rare.

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Francis I

by on April 11, 2019 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: Books

Frieda’s biography of Francis I is certainly on the popular history end, and is well written and accessible. Moreover, not only did I find it accessible, but it gave me some desire to get back to Here I Stand, which covers the period, and includes much of what she goes into.

However, she does not deliver on her promises in the subtitle or the introduction. Freida mentions she first got interested in Francis by seeing his symbol (a flame-wreathed salamander) everywhere in buildings while doing research. This shows the impact and involvement he had on France at the time, all the projects he had some sort of hand in. And not much of this really shows in the main part of the book. Similarly, she does not really show how he determined the course of France in the Renaissance, which would earn him the title of ‘maker of modern France’.

Coverage of the period in general also suffers, with very little attention paid to the rising religious tensions in France. (In fact, if not for the Affair of the Placards, you might not realize the Reformation is happening at all.)

She is much more successful in showing Francis as a person, and some of the court around him. She also shows how much of his reign was defined by his continual rivalry with Emperor Charles V, and how it affected the future Henri II. Francis I is largely known as a poor king and person for some very good reasons, but Frieda does a very good job of rounding out his personality and accomplishments, and while this book isn’t a great look at the early 16th Century in France, it is a good look at Francis himself, and is recommended as a deeper look into the person.

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Off Armageddon Reef

by on April 3, 2019 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: Books

David Weber is a good author with a few glaring weaknesses. Sadly, all of that is readily apparent in this novel.

The basic setup is that humanity gets to the stars, runs into an alien race apparently intent on wiping out everything other than itself, and after a tough war, looses. Earth, and all of the colonies, are destroyed, leaving one fleet with a last-ditch plan to start a new colony somewhere out of the way, avoid technology, and tell-tale high-energy emissions that will give the new colony away.

The prologue for all of this is excellently done, but is big and detailed enough that you’d think the point of the series is the buildup of Safehold to where it can try for a round two against the aliens.

Apparently not, it’s all set up for a long series of novels with lots of Age of Sail-style action. Not necessarily a bad thing, and let’s be honest, it’s Weber’s first love. But after all the initial high-tech setup, and the fact that that is the supposed end goal, I was hoping for a thick novel that deals with, shall we say, an inflection point in Safehold’s history, and then the next one could be a couple generations later, and so on, back to actually revisiting that prologue.

Inside of what we do have here, we Merlin, who’s basically Superman. As a high-tech android with the personality of a dead Earth naval officer, he’s got everything you can ask for: super strength, lightning reflexes, a library full of banned scientific knowledge… and a lack of allies. Actually, he does find those, and of course, war and action result.

The world building that surrounds this is excellent. That’s always been one of Weber’s strengths, and it is on display here, and is one of the primary reasons to read this. The plot is fairly strong as well, though it’s not really an 800-page plot; the book doesn’t need as much trimming as some other reviews say, but it does need some overall tightening up. If you want some lower-tech space opera, definitely read this, and I certainly plan on going on with the series eventually, but I can’t give it much more than a weak recommendation for particular audiences.

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Sertorius and the Struggle for Spain

by on March 26, 2019 at 12:00 pm
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This is mostly a reconstruction of the Sertorian War. There’s also some notes of the larger history of the Iberian peninsula, and people with an interest in the history of Iberia in general may want to pick this up too.

Back to the main subject, Sertorius is considered one of Rome’s best and least known generals. While I generally agree, I can’t help wondering if Sertorius was only successful because he was well-suited to the mixed force he had and the guerilla holding action he fought. That is, put him in charge of regular Roman legions in a more normal Roman war, would he have done so well, or would all of his superb qualities have been wasted in the standardized system, away from terrain he knew well? In any case, he was the perfect person for the role he did play, but that was unfortunately on the losing side of the civil wars of the early 1st Century BC. And the upshot of that is despite some glowing praise for his generalship, we don’t know a lot about what exactly happened over the course of eight years of fighting.

However, scholars have combed through all the various references that do exist to what happened, many of which are just particular incidents without a lot of context, and assembled them into a framework that seems to work. This book is Matyszak’s presentation of this framework for a popular audience. As there is so little go off of, a high percentage of the book is direct quotes from the ancient sources, woven together with explanations and probable interpretations.

As such, this is a very important book for those wanting to know more about Sertorius’ campaigns, as this is about as fleshed out as it gets at the moment (and quite possibly, ever). I have some quibbles with yet another unneeded in medias res opening to a history book, and Matyszak is still too unforgiving on the character of Gaius Marius (but that’s much more peripheral than it was in Cataclysm 90 BC). There’s three maps of Iberia at the beginning of the book, and the fun one is ‘from a campaigning point of view’, and is keyed with ‘merely unpleasant’, ‘rugged and mountainous’, and ‘practically impassible’. Overlaying the apparent routes of march of various campaigning seasons on that one would have been interesting.

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