Rat’s Reputation

by on May 2, 2016 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: Books

Michael Payne’s latest book is a bit unusual. It’s broken into four uneven parts, each of which contains several short or very short stories, each of which is preceded by quote from some work from that world. These smaller stories are not titled, and the table of contents does not refer to them, but just gives a couple passages from each part, along with the page it appears on.

So it’s not really conceived and structured as a short story collection, even though it technically is one. The volume is a publication of a bunch of stories that has been available in in bits and pieces for decades, and has gone from being about the anthropomorphic town of Ottersgate to centering on Rat.

As a unified set of stories, it’s all told from Rat’s point of view, except for the first story, which details his mysterious rescue as a small child from some large fire by one of the Curials (gods). The later parts of the book answer the mystery raised here, and also goes some into the nature of the Curials, but largely the book is a ‘fish out of water’ story, with the orphaned Rat growing up among squirrels and mice, and not quite fitting in (somewhat literally; the animals here have human intelligence, but the same forms we know, and somehow have buildings, and clothes, and tea—it doesn’t bear thinking about too hard—so Rat is larger than many of the people he deals with), and faces persecution from many deeply prejudiced people.

There’s also a bit of travelogue to the book. Rat spends some years on the road at one point, and you get glimpses of plenty of other towns and societies. And just what is shown of Ottersgate itself is enough to make you realize the iceberg hiding beneath the surface of this book is massive indeed. Payne has an expansive world worked out, and we’re getting bare glimpses of it.

Its structure means Rat’s Reputation does not have the tightest writing you’ll see, but each story works on its own, and while building the whole. I recommend it, and if you wonder just where some of the secondary characters disappear to near the end, I also recommend Payne’s earlier book, The Blood Jaguar. Both are good furry fantasy novels.

└ Tags: , , , ,
 Comment 

The Tigress of Forlì

by on April 25, 2016 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: Books

My knowledge of Renaissance Italy is about as minimal as it can be and still have studied Western history. That is, I know a number of very famous names associated with some artwork just as famous; I know of a little of the politics… and that’s nearly it. It’s a lack that some of my reading has been filling in the edges of. (The Fourth Part of the World had a good section on the early Humanists.)

Elizabeth Lev’s biography of Caterina Riario Sforza de Medici is about some of the details of that era, and was still very easy to follow. Lev introduces a cast of characters and keeps them all straight (despite the usual problems of different people with similar names) with unusual ability. Caterina did not make it to the big times of international fame (though ‘Medici’ is one of the big names, and I realized I’d heard the the name ‘Sforza’ before too), but she is still very much a local hero. She has obviously become a hero for Lev as well, and despite some (sadly in keeping with the times) bad qualities, and excessive bloody-mindedness, at her best she was an excellent leader and Countess.

My main complaint is that Lev starts with a prologue from what can be called Caterina’s finest hour (I might argue it, but it certainly made her reputation). It makes a good introduction to her, but when the book catches up to that point near the end, that part is basically acknowledged and skipped over, leaving the reader to recall exactly what was said at the beginning of the book. Other than the hiccup of wanting to take the prologue and stick it between two other chapters, it was a well done biography throughout.

└ Tags: , , ,
 Comment 

A Midsummer Tempest

by on April 21, 2016 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: Books

Poul Anderson’s A Midsummer Tempest starts out with a fairly straight telling of the Battle of Marston Moor. There is a difference: Prince Rupert of the Rhine is captured at the end of the action.

And then, the second chapter has Rupert taken to be held as a prisoner at a nearby Parliamentarian manor. Rupert is under close guard, but Shelgrave, his jailer, is courteous, and he and Rupert share an interest the new world of mechanical contrivances that is opening up. In fact, he has his own locomotive that he tinkers with, and access to the new northern rail line.

Into this switch to a more seemingly Victorian environment comes another primary character, Jennifer, Shelgrave’s cousin, an appropriately bold and strong-willed lady in a culture of proper feminine conformity.

The plot gets properly started after Rupert and Jennifer develop some affection for each other, and Rupert escapes from captivity with help from Jennifer, third main character, and… Titania and Oberon.

This odd mixture of history, technology two centuries out of time, and fantasy continue straight through, and in good alt-history tradition eventually gets laid out straight for the reader. The actual high-concept behind the book is that William Shakespeare is The Historian instead of The Bard in this universe, and everything he wrote is literally true here. There are cannons in Hamlet’s Denmark, there are clocks in Caesar’s Rome; overall the progress of technology is well ahead of what we’re used to.

So, with all of this, and magic from A Midsummer Night’s Dream and The Tempest, it should be a royal mess. But it works. It all works, including some very Shakespearean touches to the language. Overall, I don’t call it great, but it is still not to be missed.

└ Tags: , , ,
 Comment 

Pike and Shot Tactics 1509-1660

by on April 8, 2016 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: Books

The “Pike and Shot” period that marks post-medieval warfare is one that I’ve never known a lot about, and so Osprey’s Elite book on the subject looked like just the thing.

It actually deals with a just a portion of the period, as it’s generally considered to cover from 1500 to a bit after 1700, but Keith Roberts wisely concentrated on the reforms and changes that occurred from the Dutch Revolution through the Thirty Years War. The volume also covers the English Civil War, but that just shows how existing theory was used in the ECW, especially by the Royalists, and doesn’t go into the New Model Army at all. (Which is generally covered by other books anyway.)

I found a lot of the detailed breakdowns hard to follow, and had trouble sorting out the many diagrams in the book. Part of it is because I breezed through some of it without really studying them, and part of it is because several different styles of diagrams are given, with some being contemporary illustrations, or done in the style of certain contemporary diagrams, so they can be compared, and some in modern color illustrations. I’ve seen presentations of things like this where I didn’t need to sit down and study it, so I think the diagrams could have been much better done, even though I don’t know just what went wrong.

But the real meat of the book is a look at how European thinking about combat evolved and tried to bring more more flexibility and greater tactical acumen to the field through theorizing and then training their armies in smaller formations that covered more frontage with less depth and incorporated various methods of volley fire. I’d like to see something on the period immediately preceding, that shows how the Spanish tercio came to prominence, but I don’t know of an Osprey tactics book (much less any other book) on the subject.

└ Tags: , , , , ,
 Comment 

Byzantine Infantryman

by on March 25, 2016 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: Books

Osprey’s book on Byzantine infantry covers from around the reign of Emperor Leo VI, which saw a revival of interest in military matters, to the fall of Constantinople in the Fourth Crusade, which interrupted tradition, and very effectively brought the era to a close.

As a Warrior series book, the emphasis is on the individual men, and how they were organized, equipped and trained. I found the text of the book to be excellent, and very informative on a number of subjects. I’m not fully sure of some of Dawson’s assertions, but don’t know enough to be able to argue the point, and the vast majority seem well founded.

On the other hand, the color art is lacking. Angus McBride was one of the most celebrated of military historical artists for good reason, but this book must have been one of the last he did (it came out the year he died), and I think that forced it to be rushed through. Osprey’s Warrior series tends to feature highly detailed illustrations of all the variations of equipment, showing what all the pieces are. Instead, while there’s some very nice illustrations of people here, the backgrounds that Angus popularized are barely there at all, and there’s only a few fairly plain bits of equipment illustration. There are a few black-and-white diagrams that are very helpful in the main text, but it is disappointing compared to the ‘can we fit one more piece of equipment into this’ studies that I’m used to in a Warrior book.

This does overall hold the book back a bit, but again the main text is very good, and I was overall impressed with it. It just isn’t everything you expect from a book in this series.

└ Tags: , , , , ,
 Comment