All Quiet on the Western Front

by on August 16, 2018 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: Books

This is less a novel, and more a fictional memoir. There’s no real plot, and a barebones structure. The entire story is told first person by a young German soldier in WWI who describes the horrors of the Western Front in detail.

It picks up with Paul, the viewpoint character, having already spent time at the front, and feeling alienated from his previous life. The novel then goes through a number of different things to present the full experience of a typical lower-rank soldier. Bombardments, attacks, rotations between the trenches and the reserve, leave, being wounded and spending time in a hospital. Remarque only spent a limited time at the front, but obviously absorbed much from his fellow soldiers as years of experience are recounted in here with a great sense being all too real.

The writing is direct, and extremely effective even in translation at conveying the tone and mood intended. It’s not (and is not meant to be) glowing prose, but to beats at you in the combat beats at Paul. Any sort of more elaborate writing would only dilute the message.

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The Gods Themselves

by on August 8, 2018 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: Books

Effectively, the full title of this is “Against Stupidity, the Gods Themselves Contend in Vain”, a quote that is spread out across the three sections of the novel. I was a bit worried at first, as the book starts with (a fragment of) chapter 6), and given the occasional screwups of ebook translations, I was initially worried that something truly horrible had happened, but after the first page Asimov inserts a note that he has his own reasons for the numbering, which is part of a narrative device that works out fairly well (including the chapter numbers helping by informing you what is flashback and what isn’t).

Each of the three sections is pretty much its own novella, and were apparently initially published as such, all tied into one overall problem. The first section ultimately deals with academia and the politics that can surround it. The second is unusual for Asimov as it’s purely from the viewpoint of aliens in a different universe (Asimov generally avoided writing about aliens as he was poor at it). And the third is back in our universe, an uncertain but short time after the first section, with a completely new cast on the Moon.

All three are tied together by the interaction between two universes, our own, and one where the strong nuclear force is about one hundred times as strong as it is here. This is explained quite well in the opening parts of the book, and transferring matter between the two allows what seems to be free unlimited energy; the process of adjusting to the laws of the other universe liberates a lot of energy, with no apparent downsides. Much of the premise and action of the book revolves around what it would take to give up nearly free energy if there is an unapparent (and fatal) downside.

As ever, Asimov is a bit of a ‘flat’ writer, but he actually does fairly well on his characters here, though there’s still some ‘telling’ instead of ‘showing’ to establish the scene, and overall I zipped through the book enjoying it the entire way, though both the physics and ‘liberated’ attitudes are a bit out of date now. Certainly, his character drama of the middle section is worth the price of admission.

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Shogun

by on July 27, 2018 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: Books

Clavell’s Shogun is certainly a very good book, but it doesn’t quite seem to know what it wants to be. It’s a historical novel, but instead of presenting historical personages doing what they historically did, and then filling in a lot of gaps to make a good narrative, or having bunch of non-historical people with a historical backdrop, Shogun splits the difference.

It’s really in latter tradition, with the scenario of Japan in 1600 populated by fictional people who don’t have to be tied to specific actions, places and characters. But… the major movers are closely based off of real people, notably Yoshi Toranaga being Tokugawa Ieyasu and Ishido being Ishida Mitsunari, and this was somewhat distracting to me the entire way through. Perhaps a little more surprising is John Blackthorne being William Adams, who did get shipwrecked in Japan (a lot further west) and did become a samurai.

My knowledge of this period is more confined to the seven weeks following the end of the novel, which saw a short war that did for Japan what the war between Augustus and Antony did for Rome: it finished demolishing the previous power structures that had allowed several nearly-equal leaders to fight over ultimate control. It’s a heck of a tale in its own right, and I was surprised the novel didn’t cover that at all.

I don’t know how accurate Clavell is with the political maneuvering in the period before that, except that its certainly true to the types of things that happen and people do. That’s really the strength of the novel, and what makes it so good is the strength and variety of the characters. At the same time, there’s a wealth of detail in there about Japan that so far as I know is accurate, and very well presented. (Not so much the musket regiment being a new thing though, muskets had been in use for some time, and the power of massed fire had been shown off 25 years previous at Nagashino.)

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Wolf’s Blood

by on July 15, 2018 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: Books

It is possible for there to be more Firekeeper novels after this (and the ending is an obvious lead-in for the ability to have more), but there wouldn’t be as much point. This one deals with the biggest Macguffin of the background: the Divine Retribution, or plague, or curse, that wiped out major spellcasters a hundred years ago. It also ends with a good declaration of just how comfortable with herself Firekeeper has grown. While there’s potentially a lot of world left, and some dangling threads to explore, it would be hard to feel like anything more could easily match the scope.

Wolf’s Blood features two completely separate storylines that collide for the climax. It’s obvious what the collision course is, and the alternating between the two adds a lot of tension to a book that takes a long while to really get going. Unfortunately, the payoff for this isn’t so well done, as the second storyline, with a completely new viewpoint character, basically disappears under the weight of the main one at the end. It does get a very abbreviated conclusion, but needed a bit more to really round it off and get a good feel of Bryessidan coming to understand just where things had gone wrong.

Meanwhile, the extensive cast of characters is very good, and move along the plot quite well. A few earlier characters are re-introduced at odd times, but I think this book would stand on its own quite well if you have not read the first five. While I recommend the series as a whole, this is one of the stronger entries and recommended separately.

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Battle for Empire

by on July 7, 2018 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: Books

Tom Pocock posits the Seven Years War as the first world war (an assertion that he’s not alone in, and that I can get behind), but his book on the subject doesn’t really develop this.

Instead, each chapter is about one of the various non-European campaigns of the war, and treats each one well, if almost purely from the British point of view. There is some discussion of the immediate planning behind these campaigns, but other than the simultaneous strikes at Havana and Manila, no discussion of how these fit into wider policy. In fact, there’s only a cursory amount of discussion of wider implications. There are some good discussions of immediate effects, but nothing overall.

As a series of small histories though, the book is very good. The writing is good, and the descriptions of the campaigns are fairly thorough considering the short format. Finally, there is some good tying together with thought as to how previous campaigns (most notably the failure at Minorca, and the subsequent execution of Admiral Byng for cowardice) affected later ones. This is a good introduction to the Seven Years War outside of Europe, and recommended for that, but it’s only an introduction, and a prior grounding the European side would help.

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