lazybarbarians

[lazybarbarians]

Welcome to Night Vale by Joseph Fink and Jeffrey Cramer

Kalinara:  So, we’re back! And we’re trying something a little different. This week’s book choice was @ragnell’s, and she chose “Welcome to Night Vale” the novel, by Joseph Fink and Jeffrey Cramer.

Even though it’s Ragnell’s choice of book, I get to write the main review. Now here’s the complicating factor: I have almost no idea what Night Vale actually is.

Or rather, I know it’s a podcast involving weird things. But that’s about it. I’ve never listened to an episode. I have no idea what’s going on. That said, I can happily say that I could follow the book fine without any background knowledge.

So the book’s story follows two women: Jackie, a perpetually 19 year old pawn shop owner, and Diane, a single mother. The plot is appropriately weird: Jackie has been given a pawnshop ticket that she can’t get rid of and Diane has a co-worker who disappeared, who no one else remembers. Diane also has a shapeshifting teenaged son and an ex-boyfriend/father of her child appearing out of nowhere. After some initial conflict, Jackie and Diane join forces, thwart a library, interrogate a journalist, and finally make their way to a place called King City to get answers.

I liked the novel. In a weird way, it reminds me of Piers Anthony’s Xanth books: the setting is completely ridiculous, joke after joke stitched together in an intentionally incoherent framework that nonetheless forms an effective backdrop to a pretty entertaining story. Diane, Josh and Jackie aren’t deeply drawn characters, but they’re likable, and they resonate with me as symbols of adolescence and growth.

I enjoyed the running jokes throughout the story. I’m still not sure what the migraines meant, or what the point of the gray-suited man was. Or the faceless woman. I’ve basically assumed that the jokes that don’t have an obvious pay off probably have more significance to the people who’ve listened to the podcast. I definitely enjoyed the pay off of the flamingo arc though.

I’m not sure the story really had villains per se. The man in the tan jacket was definitely the cause of a lot of chaos, but it was hard not to sympathize with his situation. While in theory, I agree with Diane that he shouldn’t blame his situation on other people, it is pretty obvious that Night Vale really is a weird place and that weirdness is spreading. For all that Diane’s probably right: if the man in the tan jacket had done a good job and made a positive impact, he’d be harder to forget, it’s hard to see how he can do that now, if no one remembers him.

And Troy, well, he was just pretty useless. Nice and competent, but immature and quick to dodge his own responsibilities. It was satisfying to see Diane and Jackie yell at him though.

So it was pretty fun. And it does make me a little curious about the podcasts. I might eventually check them out.

Ragnell: Yeah, I picked the book because I’ve finished all the podcasts and wanted a little more. It’s interesting because it is standalone, a story that you really don’t need podcast background for, but it clarifies a lot of stuff discussed in the podcast that had seemed like running jokes. Like, the Man in the Tan Jacket that everyone forgets, he’s just local color in the podcast. It’s interesting to know his story now. Jackie shows up from time to time advertising sales, and Diane and Josh are mentioned in townsfolk way. But it’s nice to have this stuff fleshed out outside of Cecil and his family.

This sort of humor, with a lot of random jokes stitched together in the background is a really common nerd thing. I think it leads back to Douglas Adams and you have a lot of people who try to recapture that absurdity, but it only really works when there’s a theme tying it together and the writer really shouldn’t be subtle about it. (And when it does work, it WORKS, see Catch 22.) One thing I like about Night Vale is its very relatable, each podcast has a storyline with a theme that ties back to life amidst a few throwaway and running jokes. This novel has that aspect with the adolescence and growth. It’s not subtle, but honestly with this sort of humor it shouldn’t be subtle. All of these people tie together and it’s about growing up, and the humor supports that rather than just stringing a plot together as an excuse to make jokes.

Not sure what Kalinara will be picking, but I am eyeing It Devours! now.

[lazybarbarians]

The Little Things, by Sandy Mitchell

Kalinara: So, through a minor comedy of errors, I didn’t end up choosing something for this week until the very last minute. Because I’m not a sadist (debatably) I decided to go with a short story as opposed to a novel, and I kept with my Warhammer 40K vein and picked Sandy Mitchell’s “the Little Things.”

It’s not a deep story with a lot of clever meaning or anything. It’s just a cute little snippet of Ciaphas Cain meeting his girlfriend/handler/eventual editor Inquisitor Amberley Vail for a date and foiling an assassination attempt.

Ragnell: Poor Ciaphus, he can’t even have a nice night out.

K: To me, I think the most significant thing about this cute little snippet is that it’s a cute little snippet that manages to exist in the Warhammer 40K universe. The Warhammer 40K universe, as mentioned in a previous review, is so relentlessly, cartoonishly grimdark (yadda, thousands of people die each day to keep the carrion emperor alive, et cetera), that it’s hard sometimes to really care on a human level about the people in this universe.

If life is unending misery, slavery, and torment, and every side is monstrously, inhumanly evil to the point of ridiculousness, what’s the point of caring about whether any of these people survive, just to eke out more of a miserable existence?

But that’s what makes these little slice of life sorts of things very important. It’s one of the things that I like about the Ciaphas Cain series in general that I don’t get to see in most of the other materials in the universe: real, familiar human touches. People have lives in these stories. They have shops. They drink tea. They pick flowers. They go on dates. Sure, the Imperium is a fascist monstrosity, sure, there is endless war, but there are still little things that make life worth living.

There’s a reason Ciaphas Cain wants to stay alive, after all.

It’s also nice to see that, while a coward and scoundrel, Ciaphas Cain is a legitimately good boyfriend who cares about the little things when it comes to his girlfriend’s happiness, whether it’s remembering the right kind of flowers, or making sure that he doesn’t get an assassin’s blood all over her nice clean floor. It’s very sweet.

R: It really is. He’s an absolute macho badass, a practical self-serving coward, and a romantic all in one. I would probably have had a food taster try that dinner if I were him, though.

[lazybarbarians]

High Aztech by Ernest Hogan

Ragnell: This week’s book is High Aztech by Ernest Hogan. It follows our hero, Xólotl Zapata, as he tries to avoid various groups of religious extremists which want to convert, control, capture and kill him amidst a backdrop of violence, futurism, religious strife, cultural revival, viral mind alteration and hallucinations.

The story’s set in 21st Century Mexico, after a nuclear war in the Middle East called the Armageddon War has destabilized the West’s hold on the world and led to a resurgence of paganism. In 2045 East Asia is still a center of world business, Africa has emerged as the preeminent source for medicine and fashion, Europe has faded from prominence, the Middle East is uninhabitable, and the US has become a primitive authoritarian theocracy which burns heretics and witches. Mexico itself is experiencing an Aztec cultural renaissance as it emerges as the world power of the Western Hemisphere. Mexico City has been renamed Tenochtitlán and the old Aztec temple is a cultural centers. Espananahuatl, a blend of Aztec Nahuatl and Spanish, is spreading as the primary language. Sunrise ritual is such a common part of people’s lives that the city government has to sound a horn to clear the roads in the morning and there’s a booming business selling laserthorns for bloodletting rites,

Kalinara: One of the touches I really liked was how future technology plays into the revival of aztec customs. For example: the “humanoid” meat that the characters eat, to honor cannibalistic ritual is created in a lab. It’s genetically human meat, but no one is murdered to get it. I thought the idea of people getting artificial hearts after a sacrificial ritual was pretty interesting too, especially the way that the scars from the surgery become badges of honor.

R: Xólotl starts out getting a death threat from the Neliyacme, an extremist Aztecan reconstructionist group because some of his writing has offended them. He tries to get his mind off this and the fact that his girlfriend, , has left on some mysterious business and he doesn’t know when to expect her again, by hooking up with a second girl, Patiyonena, who is a naive rich girl. Post-coitus, Cóatliquita, who has been infected with a virus by a poltical group and has been passing it all over town, arrives and kisses Xólotl. Then she dies, leaving Xólotl infected.

The government arrives and takes Xólotl and Patiyonena, but they get attacked by rioters, so Patiyonena takes Xólotl to her parents. Fortunately, her parents are fabulously wealthy. Unfortunately, her parents are the 21st Century Aztec equivalent of Pat Robertson and the 700 Club, and they discover the virus Xólotl has actually changes someone’s mind to believe more strongly in the Aztec gods. Fleeing these guys, Xólotl gets picked up by the Garbage Queen, the businesswoman who has become rich taking care of the city’s sanitation needs, She attempts to sell him to the mafia, the Don arriving in a helicopter named for the Hindu god of wisdom. While in flight, the helicopter crashes and the Neliyacme get him. He’s next picked up by US spies, who inject him with a Christian version of the virus. After that, the government gets him, and his own mother is working for them. She asks about the effects of the two viruses and decides the best way to fix things is to inject him with ALL of the viruses and let him sort the gods out.

This leads to the best sequence, his hallucinatory Party of the Gods! EVERYBODY was there! The Aztec gods! The Mayan gods! The Hindu gods! The Greek and Roman gods! Shiva dancing with the goddess of the city! Allah, Yahweh and Jehovah discussing philosophy! Expressions of cultural fears like Godzilla and King Kong! Cultural Icons like Frida Kahlo and Elvis Presley! Personal gods! EVERY COLOR JESUS! All partying together!

Then Xólotl runs into his artist friend he’s been talking about all book, who introduces him to a genius South African scientist and reveals that they cooked up the virus in the hopes everyone would get infected with multiple strains and learn to live with each other. So they take Xólotl to a big party to infect other people, and to trap another group into picking him up so they get infected. And the party goes on.

I don’t know how to review this in-depth. It’s a seriously wild and fun book, and I believe still quite relevant. I did find the fate of the US disturbing, but that’s due to current events and not anything wrong with the story.

The only part that bugged me was the scene between the Garbage Queen and the Mafia King, talking about racism. The whole framing seemed a bit… soap opera-y and off somehow since it was from Xólotl’s perspective. There could’ve been better ways to bring up that aspect of culture besides Blanca and the Don being so ridiculous about sex and ignoring Xólotl like he’s a lamp or something. But we get a payoff in the end, so in hindsight it’s not so offputting.

K:: I thought the Garbage Queen segment was a really interesting look at race and perception. Race becomes an interesting thread in the entire novel. “Pure aztec” and “pure Castillian” come up a lot, and one of the reasons Xólotl is considered unattractive is because he looks mixed race. Blanca is actually Native American, while Gabriel is of Puerto Rican and black ancestry, but both have used plastic surgery to hide it. I am very ignorant about the subjects of racism and colorism in Mexico and Latin America, but I think that perhaps someone more knowledgeable about the subject might have interesting things to say about this segment.

R: It is, but I just couldn’t get past them exploring it by having those two play through such a private conversation in front of a third party.

K: The one part that I think that the book fell down with is the portrayal of the leader of the Neliyacme. Ultimately, the reason that Xólotl angered them is because he decided to portray the fictionalized version of their leader as gay. He had actually been inspired by a different public figure and had felt that the fictionalized version was very different than the leader’s public image. As it turns out, the real leader was secretly gay himself. Hence the trouble.

The problem though is that as soon as the character is revealed to be gay, he basically becomes the worst kind of shrill, mincing, stereotype. He’s described as shrieking, sobbing, and easily beaten up by his domineering female underling. There’s reference to him committing rape and torture on male prisoners (but he doesn’t want to do it to Xólotl because he’s “too ugly”). There are a couple of other gay characters who are tied to him (the aforementioned underling and his wife are lovers, for example), but they’re not really any better in terms of portrayal. It’s an unfortunately ugly segment of an otherwise very enjoyable book.

R: Ugh. Forgot that guy. Honestly, the Neliyacme were an insignificant part of the book compared to High Aztec, the government and the SVN. They laid the trap early with the masculinity thing, and danced so much around actually saying it and had the villain so ineffective. It was definitely a low part.

Aside from those bits, though, it was just a purely enjoyable read. I like these first-person futuristic novels that immerse you in the culture with slang terms and the main character griping about and reveling in his life. It was particularly effective when the subject is a mind-altering virus.

[lazybarbarians]

The Heat Death of the Universe by Pamela Zoline

Ragnell: This week’s selection was a 1967 short story titled “The Heat Death of the Universe” by Pamela Zoline. I first encountered this story in a collection called Women of Wonder: The Classic Years which collected several science fiction stories from the 40s, 50s, and 60s. It stood out a little, because it seemed to me like a realistic fiction story prevented in an unusual format.

The story itself is simple, we follow a day in the life of a housewife named Sarah Boyle. She lives an ordinary life in California, but she is highly educated and has an interest in scientific theories such as entropy and the Heat Death of the Universe. She writes on the walls, thinks about science and statistics, and once dyed her hair red in what passes for a fit of wild abandon in her life. During the day she feeds the children, does her housework, checks in on the pet fish and turtle, and goes shopping for a birthday party. While shopping she impulsively buys one of every cleaning product, spending almost $60 and filling 3 carts. She sets up and chaperones the birthday party. Then she cleans up after the party, bathes the children and sends them to bed, and discovers the pet turtle dead in its waterbowl. At this discovery, she has a breakdown. She cries, throws eggs at the floor, breaks dishes, throws a jar of jam out the window, and overflows the sinks with soap and water.

The basic idea of an intelligent housewife growing mad and destructive from boredom and wasted potential isn’t an unusual one, but I love the way this story presents it. It has all of the paragraphs numbered. It gives us interludes that sound like they’re from an encyclopedia, paragraphs on ENTROPY, LOVE, TURTLES and of course, the Heat Death of the Universe.

The Heat Death of the Universe is defined as the logical conclusion in a universe where entropy is increasing and energy is decreasing. As the paragraphs go through Sarah’s life in a strange, detached third-person stream of consciousness we get the effect of Sarah’s mind as a universe that’s experiencing its own Heat Death. Her potential is being wasted, her scientific acumen boiled down to writing statistics on the inside of the hamper.

At first she seems a little strange, quirky, and maybe despondent with her life choices. You read through facts and strange behavior and long descriptive metaphors about California and suburban house decorations and then you get to a single numbered paragraph that says “Sarah Boyle is never quite sure how many children she has.” and you realize, this woman is losing her mind. The third person narrative is because she is so detached from her sense of self, which is why some horrifying ideas just casually occur to her and just get discarded. And the entire format of the story is just a downward, poetic spiral that leads to the breaking point… the dead turtle.

Kalinara: I have to admit, my first time through the story I wasn’t able to follow it at all. I had better luck the second time through.

The numbered paragraphs add even more of a level of detachment and distance than the third person narration, and it both underscores and contrasts with her mental state. It becomes a list that could very well be one of Sarah’s lists: monotonous and dispassionate.

I admit though, I wasn’t really alarmed until I got to the part where she idly contemplates cannibalism. That was more than a little disturbing.

It was also interesting how none of the other characters who play active roles in the plot: the children, the mother-in-law are given names. The children come across as a faceless chaotic hoard. The mother-in-law is more distinct. She’s referred to as “Mrs. David Boyle”, which seems particularly significant when we look at Sarah’s own issues. Sarah seems to be lost in her role as a wife and mother. Her husband is nowhere to be found. And HIS mother is defined solely by her role as David Boyle’s wife and Sarah’s husband’s mother. It’s an interesting touch.

I’m not sure I enjoyed it as much as you did, but it’s definitely an interesting story, and one worth reading again.

[lazybarbarians]

For the Emperor, by Sandy Mitchell

Kalinara: So, we had a bit of an unintentional hiatus as real life hit both of us pretty hard. But now we’re back. It was my turn to pick the book this time, so I thought I’d try something a bit different. I chose “For the Emperor”, the first of the Ciaphas Cain novels in the Warhammer 40K series

.

Okay, so, disclaimer. I don’t play Warhammer, any version. I only have the vaguest idea of how it works, or who the major players are, or what the hell is even going on. All of my knowledge of the setting comes from the tie-in novels. And I have to admit, as someone used to trudging through Forgotten Realms (I honestly suspect the popularity of the Drizzt books, despite the irritating nature of the main character, comes from the fact that they’re one of a handful of series that are reasonably coherent), the Warhammer 40K novels that I’ve bothered to read are actually, legitimately enjoyable.

Ragnell: I don’t play Warhammer either, but I appreciate being able to google what the aliens look like.

K::One of the most interesting aspects of these books, to me, is seeing how the writers tackle the innate ridiculousness of the setting. I mean, don’t get me started on the thousands of people sacrificed a day to keep the undead Emperor alive so that chaos doesn’t consume all of humanity thing. The setting uses the word “grimdark” unironically. Enough said.

R: This setting is like the world/universal version of Ash from the Evil Dead sequels. And now I think I’ll picture Ciaphas Cain as 90s Bruce Campbell forever.

K: And I can see why the setting works great for the game, but it’s got to be a challenge for any writer to dreg up human stories out of that mess. And it’s interesting to see how different writers handle that.

Dan Abnett’s Gaunt’s Ghosts series seems to downplay the most ridiculous aspects of the setting to focus on trench warfare in space. Sandy Mitchell, on the other hand, seems to be embracing the over-the-top aspects of the setting and matching them with an equally over-the-top protagonist: Ciaphas Cain.

According to history, Ciaphas Cain is a legendary hero, a paragon of heroic virtue whose courage and honor are unparalleled. However according to his secret memoirs (as compiled and annotated by Inquisitor Amberley Vail), Cain has a different point of view of the events. Ciaphas Cain, according to Ciaphas Cain, isn’t a hero at all, but a selfish coward who obtained his heroic reputation through a mixture of luck, good timing, and a really good facade.

The plot of the novel is pretty straightforward: it represents an extract from Cain’s memoirs about his first mission with the 597th Valhallan Regiment. But it’s the characters, not the plot, that make the story interesting.

The Valhallan 597th has an interesting backstory in its own right. It’s made up of what had been two separate companies that were devastated during a recent battle. One of the companies was an all-male front-line regiment, the other an all-female rear echelon group. This required a bit of an adjustment period, especially since the new senior officer was one of the latter.

One thing I liked about the conflict was that while sexism was a part of it, it wasn’t simply a matter of “ew, girls” so much as the fact that these were two very different companies with very different ways of doing things. And there really wasn’t any doubt that the women were as capable as the men in actual combat.

It was however a nice set up to ensure that we had about as many prominent female characters as male characters in the story.

R: Yeah, I appreciated that too. This is an extremely macho space fantasy, and it would have been easy to have one female character for the love interest for the whole thing but this writer went out of his way to give us a mix. That was really cool.

K: We also get to witness the first meeting of Cain and his annotator in person, which is a rather nice touch. Inquisitor Vail is a fun character in her own right, and she and Cain have a lot of chemistry. One thing that I stands out for me, on reread, is how much is said and not said about the relationship between the two characters. Neither of them ever use the word “love”, but Cain himself states that she made “half a lifetime of running, shooting, and bowel-clenching terror” worth it. From Cain, that’s saying something. Vail is less effusive, but in a footnote notes that she and Cain felt “more at ease in one another’s company” than either were used to. In a way, it’s possible to read the entire Cain series as a declaration of Vail’s feelings for Cain: she’s presenting us not with the legend, but with the man that she knew. Warts and all.

R: She seems to prefer him to the legend. I like that they have a kind of stock action hero-love interest thing on paper, where she’s a spy who surprises him and she relies on his combat prowess, but there is something really fresh about it. She never gets taken out specifically to prop him up, for example. They have their own strengths and weaknesses, and some social abilities in common. And they bond over the fact that she can see through him. In fact, this consummate liar seems pretty attracted to the fact that she perceives the true him and likes him.

K: It’s probably fair to note that his initial knee-jerk fear of being discovered is not as neurotic as it might seem. His personality foibles might well be an executable offense in this universe.

The fun of this particular series is in the unreliable narrator aspect. We actually get layers of unreliable narrator here. Since the stories are presented as parts of Cain’s memoirs, we’re getting Cain’s in character version of events, decades after the fact. Assuming, of course, that Cain is telling us the truth. And assuming, of course, that Cain’s recollections aren’t clouded with self-doubt, hindsight, or foggy memory.

Vail is another layer of unreliable narrator. She claims to be impartial, supplementing Cain’s account with outside sources when needed, and adding her own footnotes to provide contextual explanations (a good way to deal with the minutia of the Warhammer universe for those of us without the patience or attention span to read through the source books), but every so often her footnotes end up with a little more personal color than necessary.

We know that Cain’s heroic deeds happened. It’s documented clearly and reinforced. But the “how” and “why” is an interesting question. Is Cain the selfish coward that he thinks he is? Is he a hero suffering from imposter syndrome who doesn’t give himself enough credit? Or is he just a normal man dealing with a batshit insane society that has no comprehension or recognition of human weakness?

R: I have to say, whatever it is results in Cain having an extremely practical and grounded focus. The setting is so overblown, so masculine, so honestly scary in how the Imperium is set up and works and how brainwashed all these conscripts are that it’s helpful to have a guy like Cain as your narrator.

K: Other notable characters include Jurgen, Cain’s aide, and probably the person that Cain values most in the entire universe (though he wouldn’t/couldn’t admit it. But his reaction when he thought Jurgen might be dead was pretty telling), and Sulla, one of members of the 597th who annoys Cain the most.

I think I like Sulla because she’s a character who absolutely did not have to be female. Her major traits: a gung ho attitude that annoys the hell out of Cain, a tendency to purple prose, and a steller career in her own right, do not require Sulla to be female. She’s a comedic foil, not a romantic option, and is never discussed in terms of physical attractiveness. In most stories, she’d be a male character. And she could have been a male character here, as the Valhallan Regiment is co-ed. But instead, the future retired General Jenit Sulla is female. And I like that a lot.

R: Sulla’s great. I’m more a fan of Kasteen though, who did pretty much have to be female to balance out the co-ed thing, but has that practical side I like. Sulla’s more gung-ho “For the Emperor!” Kasteen and Broklaw are more down to earth like Cain, focusing on the immediate goal and how to obtain it without getting the regiment killed.

K: It’s probably worth talking about Cain’s role for a moment. He’s a Commissar, which, for people who aren’t familiar with the setting, operates something like an advisor, morale officer, and secret police. As near as I can tell, with my own limited exposure to the setting, their job primarily consists of shooting people for cowardice and heresy.

They’re generally not popular, for fairly understandable reasons. (It’s a warning sign as to how bad the situation was that Kasteen was actually glad to see him.) And represent one of the more mundane horrors of the setting, when you stop and think about it.

But that’s where Cain’s pragmatism and self-centeredness serves him well. Cain knows that Commissars are generally unpopular, and that the worst often meet with friendly fire accidents as often as they’re killed by the enemy, and he has no intention of allowing that to happen to him. Besides, he has a vested interest in keeping as many of his troops alive as possible so they can stand between him and the enemy.

R: Which is another great bit, a book where the intelligent survival choice is to actually build relationships with others and keep them alive. It stands out again, against the culture Cain’s immersed in.

K: Ultimately, what appeals to me the most about this book, and this series beyond it, is that it takes a premise that ought to be cynical: the legendary hero is nowhere near the paragon of virtue that he’s reputed to be, and makes it strangely optimistic. Even if we take Cain completely at his word that he’s the selfish, cowardly phony that he labels himself as, the end result is that he has had a legitimately positive influence on a lot of people. He’s saved worlds and he’s saved lives. And when you look at it like that, it’s hard to say that he doesn’t deserve to be called a “hero” after all, even if he’d never meant to be.

In the end, instead of a story in which a hero is exposed as a scoundrel, we have a story about how a scoundrel accidentally becomes a hero.

[lazybarbarians]

The Secret History of Twin Peaks: A Novel by Mark Frost

Ragnell: It was with a little trepidation that I picked this week’s selection. This is a tie-in to a television series, one that hasn’t been on the air for 25 years, and part of the marketing for the upcoming third season. That’s not a recipe for a great reading experience. But I’ve been itching to read it, partly so I can listen to the podcasts and fan-theories that reference it and partly to get myself back into the Twin Peaks mindset by the 21st I put this. What better way to do so than with a friend?

With that in mind, and preparing for Twin Peaks spoilers pertaining to this book, the first two seasons of the series and the movie, join us below the cut for a review of The Secret History of Twin Peaks: A Novel.

This book takes place from the time of Lewis and Clark all the way past the end of season 2, with annotations from an FBI agent reviewing the material in 2016. As a result there’s a lot of spoilers and information in it, as well as the results of some cliffhangers.

Kalinara: I have to admit, my memory of Twin Peaks isn’t nearly as sharp as yours. I watched, enjoyed it, but I had to resort to the wikipedia entry more than a few times to remember individual character names and who was who. :-) For best effect, I would recommend that casual Twin Peaks fans refresh their memory about the series before they tackle the book.

R:: Well, I do rewatch pretty much the whole series every year. Often live-tweeting it. This year should be fun.

It starts with Lewis and Clark meeting the ancestors of the Nez Perce tribe, who relay to them some legends about the area and show them Owl Cave. From that point forward we go through American History from the tragic fate of Merriweather Lewis through the disgraceful treatment of the Nez Perce tribe with a backdrop of Illuminati vs Mason conspiracy theories and the founding of Twin Peaks and boy scouts witnessing events near Glastonbury Grove until we get to the 40s. A good chunk of the book is spent in the 40s, 50s, and 60s following the investigation of UFO sightings, and the involvement of one Dougles Milford in covering them up. We learn the true origin of the Log Lady, and some interesting bits about some otherwise minor characters. We get plots involving Richard Nixon and Jackie Gleason over this time, with a particularly interesting one involving Jack Parsons, L Ron Hubbard, and Aleister Crowley that implies that rather than the mystical being explained scientifically as evidence of aliens as we usually see when sci-fi and horror collide, the alien encounters may actually have a mystical explanation. It’s all very engaging and interesting and makes me wonder how many of these anecdotes are based on real stories about this historical persons. (A quick google search shows that L. Ron Hubbard actually did run off with Jack Parsons’ girlfriend after they all tried to summon the Goddess together.) We also learn that, aside from Dougie Milford being more important than previously realized, Gordon Cole also knows quite a bit more than he let on.

K: The historical background was interesting, but I felt a little disconnected from the material. It was almost like a setting book in a roleplaying game: “look at these possible plot hooks”, but I didn’t really see the connection to the modern day...or the early 90s show that I remembered. Though I did wonder about “Denver Bob”. It was far more interesting once we got to the scout trip with young Andy Packard and Dwayne Milford. (The picture that was used for young Dwayne Milford looks REALLY familiar to me, and it’s bothering me to no end.)

R: Yeah. “Denver Bob” cannot be a mistake. Also, I have a suspicion about who the “walking owl” (or something with large eyes) was meant to be.

K: I suppose the Illuminati/Mason stuff will be connected to whatever the new series does with the Black Lodge, but it still felt a bit opaque to me. I think maybe I’d like to reread it after we see the new series. The relevance will probably be clearer then.

R: Personally, I think the American History bits are there to establish that most of the bad stuff in Twin Peaks stems from screwing over the Nez Perce.

Aside from that we get the generational background of the Martells and Packards, and Jennings and Hurleys, in the form of town histories and journal entries from characters who observed the messes. We learned what happened after the explosion at the bank, that only Audrey survived and that Catherine never recovered from the loss of her remaining family. We get another version of the story behind Nadine and Ed’s ill-fated marriages, which contradict the stories told in the show, and we find out how Hank Jennings died. And we also get a little bit on the Briggs family, and some tantalizing bits in the footnotes about Cooper’s fate (implied to be tragic.) And what eventually happened to Lana, because you know you wanted to know what happened to Lana Milford, right?

K: Did we know the thing about Josie’s body weighing only 65 pounds or something when she died? I didn’t remember that detail, but as previously established, I’d forgotten a lot. I remember always having mixed feelings about Josie’s plot on the show and I’m not sure the extra backstory really helped. It almost seemed like a checklist of cliches: prostitution rings, Triad connections and so on. I do remember that Josie wasn’t the innocent girl that she seemed on the show, but this seemed like a bit much to me. Either Josie is a delicate flower or a complete Dragon Lady. One stereotype to another. There’s no nuance there. But that was kind of my problem with the character even on the show. I still feel like Joan Chen deserved better.

R: Yeah, her body weighed less but I don’t remember the exact weight. The dossier was overkill. She was implied to be somewhat victimized by Thoams Eckhart, though responsible for her own share of evil. Much more nuanced, but this account (in Cooper’s voice) coldly paints her as a pure predator. Which could be more kicking the character when down, especially as she had arguably the most horrifying end, or could be another inaccuracy in the book. It’s certainly more in line with David Lynch for characters to be rounded, capable of great evil and goodness, sympathetic even in their sin. Particularly women. He doesn’t do “Dragon Lady” very often.

I did really enjoy the book, and I want to watch the series again now that I’ve read it. It puts a new relevance on the Milford plot, gives us closure for a lot of the characters we know won’t be in season three (Catherine, Pete, Andrew, Hank, Major Briggs), leaves some threads open that may be picked up in Season 3 and just fills out some of the mythology without actually explaining it. It gives us some neat stuff from the POV of characters I love like Major Briggs, Deputy Tommy “Hawk” Hill (although it reveals he hates the nickname Hawk), Agent Cooper and leaves plenty of fodder to argue about which of the supernatural characters match with which of the supernatural occurrences in the book.

It wasn’t as scary to me as the show, but the frightening parts of the show are due to the mood and atmosphere of the film, not the black and white facts and our two main guides through this history, the Archivist and Agent TP, are not atmospheric storytellers, they are direct fact relaters. Also, it’s a Frost book and I believe in the collaboration Frost was responsible for the details of the mythology and the backstory of the characters while Lynch was responsible for making sure the audience felt genuine terror at it.

It is also riddled with contradictions and inaccuracies and I hesitate to call them mistakes because there are simply so many and some are so obvious. The one that stuck out the most to me was Maj. Briggs description of his experiences in the second season. He places his disappearance at the campsite and his return from that closer to the finale, and completely cuts out his experience with Windom Earle. This could be attributed to general confusion from both experiences being so close together, though. He doesn’t mention seeing Sarah in the finale either.

I also noticed the weirdness with Norma’s family. No mention of Annie, Norma’s maiden name is Lindstrom, not Blackburn, and her mother is listed as dying before the show starts. Some of the other reviews I’ve heard have pointed out that the book contradicts itself, such as with Doug Milford’s middle name. The dates are off. The story of Nadine and Ed directly contradicted the story told in the show. Audrey’s reason for being at the bank was different. I don’t think this stuff isn’t on purpose, though. (There’s a whole list others have found.)

It’s not really in character for the Archivist, as his identity is revealed (and for the record, I guessed it around the Roswell stuff) to make so many mistakes so I hope it’s a plot point and not just attributable to human error. Come to think of it, the Ed story is related by Hawk, and he’s one of the characters who never lies in the series.

Despite the reported statement by David Lynch that he hasn’t read this book, I suspect we’ll see the document in some way during the show and that an inaccuracy in it may be a plot point. (Even if Lynch didn’t read it, Frost wrote it and he’s involved in plotting and scripting the show.)

In the end, it’s a good bit of history and “local color” for Twin Peaks when you rewatch the show or watch the new stuff. I know I’ll never look at Doug Milford the same way again.

K: It’s definitely interesting. Given how Twin Peaks originally ended, I can’t begin to guess how much of this book will be relevant or not. But it’s definitely worth a look.

[lazybarbarians]

Precursor, by C. J. Cherryh

Kalinara: So, since I tricked Ragnell into taking two turns in a row to finish up Aftermath, this was my second turn. I decided to go back to one of the first series we started reviewing, and chose C. J. Cherryh’s Precursor. This is the fourth book of her Foreigner series.

So needless to say, none of this review will make much sense to anyone who hasn’t read the three books that came before.

Ragnell: Or at least the three reviews that came before.

K: Precursor starts three years after the end of Inheritor, and basically starts what I think of as the “Atevi In Spaaaace” trilogy. I’ll try to keep this synopsis short, as anyone who’s read Cherryh knows, her books tend to be pretty dense with content.

So by this time in the story, the Atevi have finished constructing their shuttles. And this means travel to and from the space station/ship is now a reality. The ship has recalled Jase and Yolanda, and as a response, Tabini sends Bren and his usual cohorts (Banichi, Jago, Tano, Algini) as well as a full atevi household (Bren’s status has risen in the world), up too, to set up the next stage of diplomatic negotiations.

Bren meets, however, a diplomatic quagmire. For all its urgency, the ship was NOT ready for the atevi, and a lot of strings need to be pulled to get things even remotely satisfactory. And then things go from inconvenient to downright dangerous when there is a coup in the highest ranks of ship government. Fortunately, Bren is not without recourse. And his guard are as effective as ever, even in these alien surroundings.

R: Honestly, how the hell didn’t see this coming sooner or later once the test flights went underway I don’t know. Tabini got his people to create spaceflight in three years. They should have at least expected he’d be asking soon, and that they should get some quarters ready for big aliens.

K: I think a lot of it may have been internal prejudice about primitive aliens. They see the Atevi, and they see a people who are still considerably more behind than they are technologically speaking. They don’t have any real appreciation of the way that Atevi have been able to use and innovate the Mospheiran technological advances (advances that eventually the Atevi would have been able to create themselves without help, just on a slower time scale), or how quickly they’ve come already. They also don’t seem to appreciate just how Tabini works as a leader. When he makes a decision, it happens.

As I mentioned, Bren’s status is considerably elevated. He’s finally figured out that he isn’t the ordinary translator/spy that he signed up to be. The story actually, finally, divorces his role completely from “translator” as a number of other characters with at least a workable command of the Ragi language are introduced. Both Tabini and Ilisidi show that they have resources outside of Bren, when it comes to simple communication with the humans on Mospheira. That said, Bren’s role is still vitally important.

Bren is Tabini’s diplomatic hammer, basically. And he is breathtakingly good at it. The four captains are the autocratic governing body of the whole ship, and Bren dictates terms to them. Bren also negotiates a completely separate business deal with the kinda-sorta-competing Mospheiran faction. (Bren has officially at this point made his break from the island. Apparently they do still try to pay him though.)

I remember the first time I read this book, I immediately went back and reread Foreigner. It’s a very similar feeling, I think, to watching A New Hope right after Return of the Jedi. Seeing Luke Skywalker back as that naive farmboy once you see him as the Jedi Master he becomes is such an amazing experience. He’s so adorable! This is, I think, Bren’s Return of the Jedi. There is no question that he’s a formidable force of nature, and possibly, in his own way, the third most powerful person on the planet (after Tabini and Ilisidi.)

R: Bren Cameron is one of only two people in any of the three factions who has experience mediating between humans and an alien species. (The other being the retired old paidhi Wilson, because Jase was still following Bren’s lead when he worked with the atevi.) In the situation this series has set up, that is a perfect comparison because he is basically a diplomatic Jedi. That is how rare that skill is and how necessary it is.

K: He’s not completely free of his anxieties though. There’s a truly lovely freakout scene early in the book, where he starts lambasting himself for enjoying having the fate of the world in his hands. The poor thing probably would still benefit from a therapist. Especially now that we’ve gotten a good look at his mother. The woman makes a physical appearance at the beginning of the book, and we see more of her personality through phone calls and letters. And she is terrible and incredibly manipulative. When I look at her, I start to suspect that a lot of Bren’s own diplomatic skills likely came about long before he met the Atevi, in sheer self defense.

R: He is being too hard on himself. Look, power is fun. That’s why it’s so corruptive. It’s fun to be the person someone needs to agree with and while that’s pretty much what led to the situation on the Captain’s Council first place that Bren enjoyed that scene so much proves he’s still human. Which he was worrying about last trilogy.

And really, it’s so much fun to watch. Usually we get these scenes on stuff like Star Trek with the uncooperative diplomat or politician and we see from the crew point of view. Here we see from the diplomat’s point of view, that he knows he’s being difficult and that this is part of establishing boundaries during negotiations. He feels bad about it with the rank and file personnel, and you feel a little bad for them too, but it is so enjoyable each time he puts the Captains in their place.

And then Ilisidi shows up, and it’s like he gets a power-up and gets to be ten times as loud and demanding and it is just so much fun to read. He goes from badass to Badass when she shows up.

K: At least he still has his relationship with Jago, which is so lovely and drama free. We also finally get an answer to the nature of Jago’s relationship with Banichi. Which likely adds a really interesting dynamic to Bren’s relationship with Banichi as well. Banichi is now Joe West, matchmaking his adopted son and his daughter.

R: That was just such a funny thing. And it’s not dropped for just nothing, it adds to the stressors during the parts of the book when Banichi disappears to well, be Banichi.

K: One of the things I think is really funny about this series is how each book ends up expanding on the factions and adding more division versus what came before. Like in Foreigner, we’re introduced to the humans and the atevi. Invader expands on that by introducing Deana Hanks and her Heritage Party as an antagonistic faction of humans. Inheritor is what introduces the Ship folk as their own faction, and Tatiseigi as a representative of very conservative Atevi.

Following in that trend, Precursor introduces a couple of new factions as well, and they’re all represented by new characters.

The first two I want to talk about are Tom Lund and Ginny Kroger. These two are Mospheirans, and introduced as members of the Heritage Party, who go up to the station with Bren. (Tabini’s idea, he likes symmetry and wanted Mospheira to send their own delegation when he sent Bren.) Bren particularly started off badly with Kroger, who seemed to exemplify her party’s closed minded attitude. However, once Bren and the Mospheirans unite against the increasingly bewildering behavior of the ship folk, he gets to learn more about them and the Heritage Party itself. Basically, the antagonists like Hanks and her father were only one part of the Party, while others joined because of other reasons: like the desire for independent scientific recovery and the push for space. Kroger, in particular, has personal ambitions regarding the rediscovery of robotics, which she believes will enable humans and atevi to engage in mining resources and other space-tasks with greater safety.

We have new adversaries though, in the form of Tamun, the fourth Captain of the crew, and his hardliners, who affect a coup against Ramirez, the leader of the Captains and the one we’ve encountered before (at least by radio), who is the one supporting the diplomatic relationship with the Atevi.

R: So far, Tamun is the most dickish antagonist we’ve seen. Which is why no one will miss him.

K: And then there’s Kaplan, who is introduced as Bren’s reluctant guide. Kaplan represents the everyman ship view (as opposed to Jase, who has a fairly elevated status, and also is off screen for most of the story as a victim of the coup). He is wary but ultimately curious about the Atevi, and it’s through him and crewmen like him that Bren is able to gain some social leverage, spread the truth about the coup, and make contacts throughout the ship.

Amusingly, we get a hint of Atevi politics as well. Bren’s elevated status has brought with it an official household (led by an esteemed old man named Narani, whose propriety and taste impresses even Ilisidi) and a prestigious apartment in the Bujavid, something that even some lesser Lords don’t have. Among his staff is a chef named Bindanda, who is both remarkably talented, and a spy from Lord Tatiseigi, a conservative Atevi lord who had been introduced in the last series. Everyone is well aware of Bindanda’s status as a spy, and try to accommodate that whenever possible.

R: Well, it’s not like he’s shooting up valuable artwork.

I love how bizarre the atevi seem to the crew in this way. Bren goes up there a lot more relaxed than an atevi lord would be, but clearly Tabini is presenting him as one. And that requires all this redecoration and accommodation that will definitely have to occur when the atevi take over the station and put whatever lucky lord gets to live in outer space up there. But the idea that there’s cosmetic adjustments to be made is just completely foreign to the ship humans, and they have no idea how lucky they are that Bren was sent up first with a polite staff before Ilisidi got up there.

K: In the midst of all of these events, we get some lovely worldbuilding moments. For example, Tabini has built an embassy for humans in Shejidan, designed (with input from Bren and Jase) to suit human tastes as much as possible. Meanwhile, we get to appreciate what goes into making the station quarters livable to Atevi (it reminds me a little of feng shui, though I am far too ignorant of the practice to make any real comparison.)

R: I don’t think the practice is too different from what we do for humans, just the details. They paint dentist offices in pastels so people don’t get upset. There are certain images you don’t put on the walls in public places. There’s a cliched type of motel and hotel setup so that everyone’s comfortable as they travel through. You don’t blast cacophonous music or have loud unpleasant noises in a waiting area. Certain smells are not good. Just for atevi, they need all of the numbers to be right in addition to the colors, sounds, and smells.

K: We also learn more about Ship culture: the emphasis on family (“cousins”, the fact that Ramirez’s children are in the command track, Tamun chooses his uncle to be a new Captain after the coup), a somewhat paternalistic attitude toward women, and a veneration for old women, which comes in very handy when Ilisidi comes in as the cavalry.

R: Yeah, Tabini had to have picked that reverence for old ladies up during incidental conversation and filed that away as a way of taking definitive and quick control before the Ship-Humans could know what happened.

K: I’ve said before that this is essentially the start of a new trilogy. Where the first trilogy focused on the interrelationship between Mospheira and Atevi, with the Ship as a catalyst, this trilogy is focused on space, with a special look at the ship humans and their interrelations, with Bren and the Atevi as catalysts. It’s only going to get more complex from here on out. :-)

[lazybarbarians]

Holiday Delay

As last week was Easter, today is Earth Day and tomorrow is my birthday which is a Cosmic Holiday, we'll be delaying the review until next week.

[lazybarbarians]

Charmed Life, by Diana Wynne Jones

Kalinara: So things got a little hectic between work and @Ragnell’s obsession with Mass Effect Andromeda, and we ended up missing a week or two. Oops. But we’re catching up this week with one of my childhood favorites: Diana Wynne Jones’s Charmed Life.

So Charmed Life takes place in Jones’s Chrestomanci Cycle, a fantasy series set in a world that’s fairly similar to ours, albeit with a few differences. Magic is an ordinary part of life in this world: children can take magic lessons from tutors or in a classroom, “Accredited Witches” sell their services in respectable shops, and there is even bureaucratic oversight!

The main characters of the story are siblings: Gwendolen and Cat. They’re hapless young orphans who are taken in by distant relatives, one of whom is Chrestomanci, a magic personage of some importance. Chrestomanci’s Castle is very grand, but also very strange, and seems to have a lot of rules and customs that the children don’t quite understand. Gwendolen in particular chafes under Chrestomanci’s rules and begins to act out in ways that cause a lot of trouble.

Cat, Gwendolen’s younger brother, is our viewpoint character. I remember reading somewhere that Ms. Jones intended Cat to be read as autistic, and that comes across, I think, even though the word is never used in the text. Cat is very likable, observant, and reasonably clever, but there is a lot that he doesn’t understand, and particular dynamics that he’s unable to read. It doesn’t help, though, that the authority figures in the story, particularly Chrestomanci himself, seem to think that Cat has more knowledge about what is actually happening. If they would have taken the time to TALK and EXPLAIN things to the poor kid, probably a lot of trouble could have been avoided.

Ragnell: Which is funny because when it all comes out in the end they say they were waiting for him to talk and explain how much he knew. I didn’t think autistic when I was reading, but now that you mention it it makes perfect sense.

K: Gwendolen is one of my favorite villains in literature. She’s a child, and sometimes it’s not completely clear that she understands the ramifications of what she’s doing, but she understands enough that she is still a pretty scary individual. She’s likely to be terrifying as an adult.

R: It’s always impressive when they make you dislike a child that much. Janet was a definite improvement on Gwendolen.

K: Chrestomanci himself is very grand, but I think I identify far too much with Cat, because I find him incredibly frustrating and opaque for most of the story. However, I find the idea of his office fascinating. And I’d love to learn more about the political conflict between the Chrestomanci’s office and the hedge wizards that comes into effect in the last part of the book.

R: I gathered that Chrestomanci was a good guy from certain clues, so I didn’t find him very frustrating. He was definitely opaque. I was more interested in the Family than his office, though. That quirky group of people in the household was interesting to me.

K: The one regret I have about the story is that while Cat does appear in some of the later stories in the series, Gwendolen doesn’t (at least as far as I know.) And I feel like Cat deserves a bit more closure with his sister than he’s actually gotten.

R: Also… she got what she wanted, ultimately. That doesn’t really serve my sense of justice, no matter how good an end things are for Cat.

K: I can’t argue with you there. But then Gwendolen seems like the sort that can’t ever truly be happy. But, I’d have really liked a future encounter so we’d see a more fitting end.

[lazybarbarians]

Unfortunately, things have gotten a bit hectic on our end, so we’re going to have to skip this week.  We’ll have a review up next week.  :-)   Sorry!

[lazybarbarians]

Star Wars: Aftermath: Empire’s End by Chuck Wendig

Ragnell: So over the past two weeks we finished up the Aftermath trilogy with Empire’s End and now we are totally up to date on the state of the Star Wars universe one-year post-RotJ as pertains to everyone but Luke Skywalker.

And Ezra Bridger, and Kanan Jarrus, and Ahsoka Tano or really any of the animated-verse Jedi or Sith and any of the EU Jedi or Sith like Mara Jade who still might exist in some way.

But for the soldiers and scoundrels and surviving Imperials we have a status quo for about 29 years. We also know what happens to the core characters from the first Aftermath book which is honestly (and impressively, considering how little patience I have for original SW characters) what we read this thing for anyway. (As usual, I pretty much spoil everything in this recap below.)

So we open with several threads going on. Gallius Rax is flashing back to his Tuesdays with Palpatine excerpts, and gathering the pathetic remnants of the Imperial Navy on Jakku. Because Palpatine had a big secret project there, of which Gallius was an integral part. So integral that Palpatine appoints Gallius Rax as The Contingency which we can immediately tell will be a great pain in the ass to the whole galaxy.

Norra and Company are hunting down Mercurial Swift, so they can track down Rae Sloane. Temmin is annoyed he’s always stuck on getaway driver duty. The bounties on Jas from her old bosses are mounting. Sinjir is still having his career regrets, which are worsened by the fact that without Luke Skywalker around to point out sensible things like “I don’t think that’s good for the soul”, Sinjir basically still has to do the same job only for Norra. And Norra has entered Terminator Revenge mode, which is basically what has her asking Sinjir to do the same job and limiting Temmin to getaway driver duty. This is generally what everyone has to work past the entire story. They find out Rae Sloane is on Jakku and follow.

Surprise surprise, the pathetic in comparison to its former glory but still a really really lot of ships remnants of the Imperial Navy are there. This leads the good guys to split up, with Norra and Jas taking an escape pod to the surface because Norra’s in revenge mode (followed by Mr. Bones because Temmin is worried about his mother) and Temmin and Sinjir to go back to Chandrila to get embroiled in the political plot.

Kalinara: I actually thought Norra in revenge mode was one of the weaker parts of the story, unfortunately. It’s understandable that she’d be conflicted and angry, but there were points where she just seemed cartoonishly irrational. Norra was my favorite in the previous books, but I wasn’t as big a fan of her here.

R: Mon Mothma is facing a election challenge from the appropriately named Senator Wartol, a hardline warhawk who accuses her of weakness that led to the Liberation Day attack last book. Long story short, her challenger is a corrupt asshole who has criminal ties and uses them to rig a vote to actually PREVENT attacking Jakku so that he can say he voted for it but she’s a shit Chancellor for not even being able to put this together. Sinjir teams up with the Organa-Solo family and his ex-boyfriend Conder to resolve this. He does so well that Mon Mothma offers him a job as her aide, which resolves his career path crisis, enables him to skip the Jakku attack and settle down happily with Conder.

K:: How’s that for one of the first, explicitly gay characters in Star Wars? He and his boyfriend both get to live, AND get a happy ending to boot!

R: Temmin spends his time pestering Wedge Antilles to put him on a ship and send him to Jakku. Wedge, after last book’s mini-rebellion, isn’t even allowed to go himself and is stuck being an expeditor in the hangers. After several guilt-trips, Wedge finally relents and puts together the same group of outcasts from last book to sneak, unauthorized, into the battle and lets the 16 year old join them because Wedge Antilles has spent way too much time with Luke, Leia, and Han over the last 5 years.

Temmin’s been wanting to go back to Jakku, of course, because that’s where his mother, his droid and his.. Jas have been. Both Jas and Norra got captured by Niima the Hutt, who is horrible even as Hutts go. Norra was on some work-detail where Mr Bones the droid broke her out. Jas got to pull ever-increasing acts of badassery to avoid being taken in for her bounty, steal Swift’s ship AND steal Swift’s crew.

Also in Niima’s area, Rae Sloane and Brentin Wexley, who convince her to lead them to the Imperial Secret Squirrel place where they are promptly captured and forced to witness a ridiculous speech by Gallius Rax. Sloane undergoes some of her own career angst while Brentin actually manages to get them both free. They proceed to try to fuck up Gallius Rax’s mysterious plan, and go into the Imperial Secret Squirrel place.

While in there, Norra catches up to them and they all find out that due to an overly emphatic chess metaphor Gallius Rax has activated a weapon in the core of Jakku that will destroy the whole planet and both fleets. He’s also sent the Huxes off with a bunch of children to outside the Galaxy to meet other ships with imperials and children, and the Eclipse, so that Palpatine can continue to vex the Galaxy from beyond the grave. On the bright side he kills Tashu, who was actually such a dick I was hoping they’d save him for the Jedi to kill in a later story.

Norra, Brentin, and Rae have a great deal of emotional interaction about trust and distrust, and a rather kickass three-against-one fight with Gallius in between trying to shut down the weapon. Brentin gets through all the defenses but stops to save Norra and gets killed. Rae actually turns down the weapon while Norra, feeling that her trust of Sloane was justified, drags her husband’s body out for burial. Rae then boards a ship with the Huxes and a bunch of feral brainwashed proto-Stormtroopers for the Eclipse, because she is not actually finished being evil yet.

K:: I was surprised by how much I liked Brentin, in particular, in this book. He was more plot point than character last time (even if he was a helpful juxtaposition against all those “no, Kylo is BRAINWASHED!” justifications), but here, we got to see more of who he is as a man. I was rather disappointed they killed him off. I might have liked the novelty of Norra and Brentin going through an amiable divorce.

Sloane was pretty great too. And for all of my complaints about Norra previously, she and Sloane had such a great dynamic once they finally met up. And I’m thrilled at the idea that we might see her again.

R: Wartol is arrested because he tries to kill Mon Mothma, but really only manages to destroy her office and kill the advisor who hadn’t been fleshed out until this book so we could feel bad about her. Mas Amedda manages to escape Coruscant and sign a surrender treaty. Leia attends the signing, during labor (because kid, you are gonna have to wait until galactic peace gawddammit) and thus manages to freak out her husband, attain galactic peace AND have a baby. Nothing in this book manages to excuse Kylo Ren’s horrible horrible crimes, and in fact knowing what’s coming you kind of cringe at one scene. Wedge Antilles and the Wexleys all go to the new pilot academy. Jas sets up shop with the crew she stole from Swift, and grieves Jom who went to Jakku to find her and was killed in the battle. Sinjir settles down with his new career and Conder.

K: Seriously. I didn’t see anything that remotely indicated any “mind control from birth” or whatever nonsense. It isn’t even clear that Snoke EXISTS at this point in time. Any passage that could even be remotely stretched to mean some kind of fetus communication actually has a clear explanation in the text itself.

R: Actually, every character that we might have speculated would BE Snoke was specifically killed off

For the rest of the Galaxy, Chewbacca finds his son. Lando Calrissian regains his rightful place as Baron Administrator of Cloud City (which I believe is a 4-point Freehold if you’re tracking SW characters with White Wolf rules). Jar Jar Binks makes a friend and lives out the rest of his days entertaining orphans and avoiding politics. Coruscant ends up run by Mas Amedda anyway, but technically part of the New Republic. The Sith-worshipping Acolyte group from the Interludes was revealed to be sponsored by Tashu and dedicates itself to causing shit across the Galaxy and will almost certainly factor into the Jedi storyline. A charismatic leader, Brin, forms the Church of the Force which we already know factors into the Jedi storyline. It’s revealed that there are facilities known as Observatories, set up by Palpatine, that have been receiving data from outside the known galaxy all over the galaxy and not just on Jakku and that’s probably going to come into play somewhere too. The crazy pirate who found a Super Star Destroyer Dreadnought last book has cobbled together a functioning society of pirates around the ship. The residents of Tattooine have decided to just raise their own damned Hutt, Borgo, from childhood so they can have one who’s more compassionate than Jabba was. Luke is stated to be looking for old Jedi stuff.

That was a long recap, but one of the most tantalizing aspects of this trilogy is finding out just what the status quo in the Galaxy was after they finally wiped the bloated corpse of the Empire’s bureaucracy off of the map and got their new government underway. In general, it’s pretty satisfying. You follow your six Republic heroes, with some of the named characters from the movies as supporting cast, and your two main Imperials and their support, and get kind of a view of the rest of the universe. In a couple of places, these interludes tie into the main climax but others are just epilogues for the locations in the movies or tantalizing threads for when we find out what Luke has been up to.

K: I admit, that’s what I’m waiting for most. This was a fun side trek, but where is my favorite character, damnit?

R: I’m hoping we get another trilogy explaining this after The Last Jedi premieres. Or it’s the focus of the next animated series. Ezra seems custom-made to work as a foil for Luke, and Ahsoka was written out in a way that places her in safe-keeping until after RotJ.

One thing I found myself thinking from this last book, though, is that I feel better about The Force Awakens. I know a few OT fans who were very upset about everything Luke and Leia lost in the prelude to that movie and during it. I know a couple I saw who commented that they didn’t think Luke’s actions in RotJ were even that big an effect, since the Death Star was destroyed anyway. The view of the galaxy as seen in this trilogy, PARTICULARLY Jakku as compared to what we saw in the movie, changes that. You get the impression that even though there are still darksiders active, that a remnant of the Empire has left to regroup, that there’s still corruption and pirates and bullies and innocent people languishing in extreme poverty and hardship… that there’s still been a lasting improvement directly attributable to the actions of the heroes in the movies and the heroes in these books. Jakku at Rey’s time is actually a less horrible place than seen in this book. Many of the locations from the movies show people taking action and spreading hope. The remains of the Empire are the Emperor’s last middle finger to the Galaxy, and even after thirty years of gaining strength are still not the relentless, overwhelming presence in everyone’s life they were in Rogue One. The Galaxy was not instantly fixed, and much of the progress was wiped away, but there’s still a lot to hold onto. They came a long way between RotJ and TFA.

There’s really only one disappointment about this book. Tashu’s death. I joked above, but in the first book of this trilogy his main role is torturing a captive Wedge Antilles. The fallout from this is more realistic than you usually see in action-adventure fiction, where Wedge is still recovering throughout the second book both physically and emotionally. They’re unclear on whether he’s still using a cane this book or not, but either way it’s a long-term lingering impairment. He gets to staredown and work a little on his rage at Sloane last book, but he is never shown confronting Tashu. He’s never in the same room as the villain who put him through all of that. Tashu also never has a greater impact on any other main characters either from just this trilogy or the movies, meaning this villain was specific to one major hero and had a huge impact on that hero’s life and role in a story that covers at least half a year. Tashu isn’t saved for a later book or confrontation, he gets offed by Gallius and that’s a bit of a bummer.

[lazybarbarians]

This week's post will be delayed a week due to distractions in the lives of our reviewers. Tune in next weekend.

[lazybarbarians]

Aftermath: Life Debt by Chuck Wendig

Ragnell: This week’s selection was Aftermath: Life Debt, the sequel to Aftermath. Now with major characters from the movie!

All right, a lot happens in this book and some of the events are just such a joy to describe this recap’ll be a little long:

We ended the last book with Norra putting together a team to track down war criminals. This book begins with a flashback to Jakku, and a check-in with Leia before we catch up with her. Norra and company are collecting one of their targets, and the mission shows us the tensions in the team before establishing they can all work together. Jom is still a new element, and he serves to establish how far from general acceptance people like Jas and Sinjir are before turning into a love interest for Jas for the rest of the book. Once they’ve finished, they return to Chandrila, we get a little slice of the lives they’ve carved out, the status of the New Republic, and Wedge contacts them. Han and Chewie fell into a trap while trying to free Kashyyk, Chewie was captured and Han’s transmission was cut off and Leia needs a team to go on an off-the-books mission to see what happened.

They split into teams and chase different avenues before meeting back up, being thrown off the case by Angry Police Captain Admiral Ackbar, because they can’t officially devote resources to Kashyyk. Because now that the Rebellion is officially over everything’s political and Wookiees have nothing political to offer and other reasoning that you might hear from your local lukewarm center-left political party. Norra quits and decides to work for Leia as a private citizen. Wedge does not, which puts a little damper on a romantic subplot between the two.

On the villains side, Admiral Sloane is reluctant to trust her mysterious boss, Gallius Rax, who is using her as his public face, has formed a shadow government, leaked information to the New Republic to destroy allies he doesn’t fully trust, has no Facebook or Twitter, has been keeping several groups of the Navy in hiding, and is planning an attack on Chandrila when she goes to visit. Oh no!

So she enlists the help of her assistant Adea, who Gallius has helpfully smuggled off of Chandrila and seduced, and her trusted bounty hunter Mercurial Swift (named here because even for Star Wars, that’s a bit much) to investigate his past and find out he’s the kid from the prologue.

The heroes find Han and learn he’s trying to sneak onto Kashyyk to break Chewie out of prison. They decide to help. Jom goes AWOL and joins them partway through because the power of lust compels him he is worried about Jas. Han and the original characters go to Kashyyk and free a whole ton of prisoners including Norra’s husband Brentin. Norra and Temmin go home with the freed prisoners. Han, Chewie, Jas, Jom and Sinjir stay on Kashyyk to save the planet. Here is where we learn they have control chips in the Wookies, of some old New Republic technology reminiscent of that stuff that controlled the slaves in the prequels.

Jom and Sinjir destroy the central controlling module for these chips, because like a damned idiot the villain has it all centralized, and free the Wookies. Han, Chewie, and Jas knock down some prison camp forcefields and the rebellion is off. However, the governor of Kashyyk, who is a cross between the rich guy from The Most Dangerous Game and those giants who eat talking animals in The Silver Chair. He calls down orbital strikes because he is an asshole.

Back on Chandrila, everyone is getting ready to greet Admiral Sloane who’s asked to negotiate a treaty because Rax totally implied to her that there would be a space attack on the fleet over the planet. What actually happens is she has to sit through a damned parade and a new holiday celebration, “Liberation Day.” Leia plays hookie, calls in her trusty Cameron from the comics Evaan, and steals the Millennium Falcon which really should belong to her so why did she have to steal it? Either way, she leaves a note for Wedge that basically amounts to “Come help me out or I and my unborn child are SOOO gonna die” and that is why the guy who set up security for the Liberation Day event was not present when it all went to hell.

See, the Wexley family and all of the freed prisoners are supposed to be on the dais. But something’s been wrong with Papa Wexley, that makes him stun his son and leave him in a crate beforehand. Understandably concerned, the boy tries to interrupt the ceremony but is unable to actually reach the dais before his dad shoots Mon Mothma. Norra manages to interrupt his aim. Turns out that the same technology that turned all the clones into mindless murderbots who kill their Jedi friends in TCW/RotS was used on these prisoners. ALL of the prisoners fire all over the place, there’s mass chaos, running around, and we get a pretty cool fistfight between Norra and Rae. In the confusion, some jerkass minor character frees Tashu the Worshipper of Darth Sidious. Rae shoots Adea, because Adea broke the sisters before misters rule, gets beat up and shot by Norra, and still manages to run off with Norra’s husband.

Meanwhile, back on Kashyyk, Han decides to steal a Star Destroyer--which he has totally done before but that was when he had a Jedi and a short-fuse princess--it goes a little badly but that’s okay because just when he’s about to get shot his crazy pregnant wife shows up in his miracle junk-ship, followed by Wedge with a bunch of crazy X-wing pilots, and Ackbar with his own ship of fools. They actually manage to neutralize the Kashyyk blockade. Chewie decides to stay home, Han and Leia almost do but all the chaos on Chandrila sends them back there because they are needed to stabilize the government.

The story ends with Norra’s group signing on for vengeance against Rae (excluding Jom because Jas dumps him), Rae and Brentin headed to Jakku to find out more about Rax, and Rax headed to Jakku because the Emperor sent him back as a kid to accomplish some mysterious purpose. Because Emperor Palpatine/Darth Sidious should never be allowed near children.

The first thing that strikes me about this book, and one of the things making it fun for me, is that it works other parts of the new canon into it. Last book we had some nods to the animated series. This book we have nods to those, and the comics. Han references stealing a Star Destroyer, which is a plot I enjoyed a lot in the Star Wars comics (I’ve seen some grousing on tumblr about the art that arc but the story is just fun) and we see Evaan from the Princess Leia comic. These were great ideas and great elements so it’s nice to see them in a novel. It’s also nice to think that some of the elements from the comics or the novel might find their way into the movies or animated series.

Kalinara: It does however make Luke’s absence very notable. He actually gets mentioned in this one, but there’s still no real clue as to what he’s doing.

R: The next thing is all the romance in this book. It’s like with Han and Leia’s marriage as the kickoff and driving force for the plot that their love gets echoed with the other characters’ lives. But like in ESB, all of these romances get derailed by the events. Wedge and Norra start to explore a romance, only to be stopped by Brentin’s reappearance. Norra focuses back on her husband and just as she starts to think she has him back again, it turns out he’s been mind controlled and he runs away. Jom gets too intense for Jas, so she drops the romance to focus elsewhere. And Sinjir slips into a shame spiral about his old job as a torturer and dumps his boyfriend Conder so that Conder can find someone better.

K: I had mixed feelings on the romance. Maybe it’s just because of the nature of the story, but it was hard to get too invested in the romances on the table. Sinjur and Conder seemed cute, but they had all of two scenes. I cared about the break up because I’ve grown attached to Sinjur and it was sad to see him so self-loathing. Norra and Wedge were cute, and I do like both characters, but they spend so much of the book apart, that I still don’t feel like I get an idea of what they’re like as a couple. (It does fit with Wedge’s terrible luck that his girlfriend’s long lost husband comes back though. :-)) Jom and Jas...well. Jom wasn’t even as interesting as what’s his name from the first book. And I can’t even remember that guy’s actual name.  (Edited:  I was actually thinking of Lok from Moving Target, not Aftermath.  Even so, that guy was more interesting than Jom.)

R: Among the new characters of the book, I rather liked Conder (though he didn’t get any really fun moments), Brentin, Oblivion, and Eleodie. I think Conder as Leia’s IT guy and Sinjir’s boyfriend should show up again. I think that’s a temporary breakup.

K: Of all of the new characters, I was most intrigued by Brentin. He reminds me of Ransolm Casterfo, oddly enough. Not because the characters have anything in common of course, but because I kind of think both characters serve as an example counterpoint to common fandom theories about Kylo Ren and (Armitage) Hux. Casterfo actually is the misguided Imperial-sympathizer who makes mistakes out of fear and trauma, and Brentin Wexley is actually an innocent victim brainwashed into doing things he doesn’t want to do. And when we look at these characters, and see how they’re portrayed, it makes it very obvious how weak these justifications are when we try to apply them to the actual villains.

R: I hated Lozen, but it was the kind of hate you should have for a villain. There’s a line in there with Lozen saying he likes the taste of Talz that creeped me out a bit. The Talz were a TCW species, they are sentient. It is a “We’re eating TALKING stag” moment for me and I was glad to see this guy’s end. It and the hunting sequence made him the most depraved villain in the Star Wars canon for me.

The little interlude saga of the red lightsaber is pretty interesting, but I’ll be surprised to see it wrapped up next book. This is the sort of thing that leads to a Luke plotline in a future series. I still wonder if it’s Vader’s lightsaber or someone else’s.

I’m glad Sloane survived, I prefer her as a villain to Rax. I’m looking forward to her and Brentin trying to deal with each other.

K: I think Sloane is really what Admiral Thrawn should have been in the Expanded Universe. I mean, yes, he’s got those Grand Manipulator tendencies like Gallus Rex, but there’s a reason that Sloane, not Rax, is our primary focus villain. It’s easy to get emotionally invested in Sloane’s arc. I don’t want her to win against our heroes of course, but I definitely want to see her rise in the Empire/First Order.

And I like watching Sloane come up against obstacles. I like seeing her adapt and redirect her focus. I like watching Sloane come up against things she doesn’t know, and the efforts that she makes to learn more. She isn’t magically omniscient when it comes to every single plot point like a certain blue Admiral, and I think she comes across as actually smarter and more formidable because of it. She’s tenacious, clever, and resourceful. She doesn’t need to be shilled by the narrative to be formidable.

R: I’m not sure where I want the Wexley-Antilles love triangle to go. It was interesting to see that Wedge has slid more easily into father figure role for Temmin than anyone else, even giving him a nickname. The next closest people are Sinjir and Jas, and Temmin seems to still have some serious defenses up with them. It’s an interesting situation I fear may end with Brentin’s death next book just to make a tidy family unit.

As for the majors, and the metaplot, I liked what this added. I was a little offput by Han at first, but on reflection this is exactly what he would seem like to someone who didn’t know him. Unpredictable, kind of stupid, relying mainly on luck. We normally see him with Luke, who relies on faith, and Leia, who relies on sheer willpower, so he seems kind of like the sensible of the trio in comparison. Leia, of course, topped all of his actions by being even more batshit crazy at the climax but seeming like she was in perfect control of everything all the time. (It’d be really interesting to see this group encounter Luke after how they’ve reacted to Han and Leia.)

Leia’s bits were the best part of the book, I loved the moment when she first experiences connecting with the Force and gaining knowledge from it. I loved her conflict with Ackbar and Mon. I loved her decision on what to do about all of it. I loved her calling in Evaan and I loved her playing the military guys like a flute.

I didn’t really care much for Jom or Hux, but none of their parts were big enough to drag the rest of the book for me. I really enjoyed it.

K: It was fun. I’m looking forward to seeing how the trilogy resolves..

[lazybarbarians]

A Woman’s Work, by Tanya Huff

Kalinara: So, the beginning of the year has been a little hectic for us lazy barbarians, which led to us falling behind a bit on our weekly schedule. But it's important to get back into the swing of things, so I decided to choose a short story this time around.

The short story I chose is "A Woman's Work" by Tanya Huff, (published in If I Were an Evil Overlord by Martin H. Greenberg.)

Tanya Huff has always been a favorite of mine. And whenever I see her name on something, I know I'll enjoy it. (Well, there is one exception. But no one is perfect.) She is also one of the very first writers I'd encountered growing up that seemed to make a special effort to include LGBT+ characters. (The very first time I saw a character who was very clearly portrayed as asexual, even if the term wasn't used, was in a Tanya Huff book. And the first time you see yourself reflected really does sit with you.)

"A Woman's Work" doesn't really have a plot per se. It's basically just a running scenario that involves the lead character, Arrabel, avoiding all of the usual pitfalls that bring down a villain in a fantasy novel llike refusing to allow one-on-one duels with random heroes, when archers can just shoot them, or pre-emptively burning giant hay stacks or person-concealing caravans as they come in. Or beheading enemy kings who have conveniently "committed suicide by poison" during an invasion, who had left instructions to "send the body out to the countryside."

Ragnell: It’s pretty good, and gives us an interesting story involving someone actually intelligent in the protagonist position, even if she’s technically a fantasy villain.

K: One of the bits I particularly liked was how Arrabel basically utilizes public works to aid in her villainy. But not in the standard corruption way. Her hospitals, schools, and work programs are legitimate. They just have ulterior purposes as well. (For example, the hospital allows Arrabel to determine who gets healed and how.)

It's not deep, but it is refreshing to see a portrayal of a villain who realizes that it's not necessary to make their people suffer to be effective.

R: I liked that too. I remember reading this thinking I probably wouldn’t be inclined to cause trouble in Arrabel’s kingdom either. Ultimately, whether or not the people are comfortable means more than corruption. What kills a tyrant is their need to keep power and fill their pockets at the expense of the public good. Arrabel is a tyrant clearly, but smart enough to make sure everyone’s too comfortable to want a change.

K: And there is then an interesting question. Is a villain still a villain if their effect on the world is actually positive? I would personally say yes, but I would say that if and when a hero does finally bring Arrabel down, I hope they're smart enough to leave her social programs in place. Just with more reforms, to remove the abuse of power.

R: Yeah, her motives are bad and she does not allow political dissidents and she has no concept of due process. She is a bad guy. But, she’s a bad guy who’s made everyone’s life better so hopefully whoever takes her out or succeeds her is smart enough to keep it running.

Honestly, she reminds me of Lord Vetinari in the Discworld books in that way. He is regularly shown doing things objectively horrible to keep power, and is extremely manipulative, but he regularly makes the world better. He understands that he can best secure his power by making the people feel secure. Arrabel is the same mindset.

K: ...now I ‘ship it. That would be one very effective marriage of convenience.

Despite the title, there really isn’t much about gender in this story. There’s no inherent idea that a woman would be a better overlord than a man. The closest the story comes to that idea is perhaps the unspoken implication that being a woman allows Arrabel to avoid traps set that specifically play on masculine ego tropes. (The aforementioned challenged duel is to Arrabel’s son, not to Arrabel herself.) Arrabel’s son, Danyel, lacks her wider view, and, while he’s smart enough not to challenge his mother, it is clear that he is far more susceptible to playing into the usual fantasy-setting traps. It doesn’t come across as being because Danyel is a man, though. He’s just a little stupid.

R: He’s young.

K: It’s not deep, but it’s a cute story from a long time favorite author who is always on my “yes, I must read” list.

[lazybarbarians]

Star Wars: Aftermath by Chuck Wendig

Ragnell: A couple weeks ago I chose Star Wars: Aftermath by Chuck Wendig and predicted to Kal that this would be the first time I fail to read my own pick. Because as much as I’ve badly wanted to know what went on right after Return of the Jedi I have the hardest time being drawn into Star Wars material that doesn’t feature a Jedi or really any forceusers. I’m not a smuggler, or a politics of the Star Wars Galaxy type, I’m all in for the mystic order of space-monks and the various other factions of light and darksiders. But I do like the normal humans and the third book just came out with Lando in so I decided to give the first a try and see if I could get that far.

And wow, once I got a chance to sit down and read it I really got into this. I like most of the new characters, the new villains, the various things happening in the galaxy as a direct result of Return of the Jedi. I’m tearing up my apartment looking for the second book (I swear I picked it up somewhere) as a result.

So, to recap the first novel of this trilogy (reader beware there’s spoilers down there)...

We get to meet the characters thread by thread against interludes showing us what’s going on elsewhere in the galaxy. The main villain, Admiral Rae Sloane, is gathering the remaining Imperial leadership for a survival meeting on Akiva. Rae is alive because she was not at the Battle of Endor. The rest of the remaining Imperial leadership remained alive because they were also not at the Battle of Endor. Unfortunately for them someone--no, two someone.. No, three… Wait, Four. Four someones who were at the Battle of Endor converge on Akiva for various reasons.

Significantly, one of these someones is Wedge Antilles, who was scouting for Imperial supply lines and got captured by Rae. He manages to try and signal help, but only gets inside the system. Luckily, Norra Wexley who was in Gold Squadron, is there trying to pick up her son Temmin (and if you can identify Temmin from non-Aftermath Star Wars material give yourself a pat on the back), who is in trouble with the local mob boss and has managed to cross the sphere of the other two Endor vets, Jas Emari (bounty hunter who was there to assassinate Leia and changed her mind), and Sinjir Rath Velus (Imperial officer who saw the rag-tag band of rebels blow up the Death Star and the Ewoks decimate his unit and went “fuck this shit, I’m out”).

Kalinara: Confession, I didn’t actually recognize Temmin. :-) I’m usually pretty good at that kind of thing. But not this time. Ragnell defeated me.

R: This book is packed with action scenes, but ultimately the four of these guys team up to try and bust up the meeting. To do this, they incite rioting on Akiva and a little mini-rebellion. (well, planetwide but for Star Wars that’s mini.) Wedge manages to escape when they knock out the power and actually gets a message to the fleet, bringing Admiral Ackbar and some of the Alliance Navy to Akiva to help. They all end up captured and on a ship that crashes into the bay of Sloane’s flagship. Sloane escapes. The rest of the remaining Imperial leadership is captured or killed. Wedge has a really bad week. Jas gets a heart, Sinjir gets courage, Temmin gets a brain and Norra gets a sense of home. They form a team with some guy who was in the book for five pages to hunt Nazis who escaped the Hague Imperial war criminals and I want to read the next book now dammit!

*Ahem* I generally like the new characters. I was sad both times he faked out Norra’s death, which were both totally believable because honestly both Star Wars and Disney have this thing against mothers. I recognized Temmin so I knew he’d live but I was expecting this to be the story of how he was fully orphaned, instead it was a “How I learned to stop being a douche and love my mother” story for him.

Sinjar and Jas were great fun. I like the idea that simply being at Endor changed both their lives, for the same reason but in different ways. Both saw the way the wind was blowing and while Sinjir tried to hide away Jas tried to adjust her life to fit. Neither of them got it quite right then, but it looks like they’re on the right path now which was cool.

K: I have to admit, it took me a while to get into it. I’m very picky about original characters, especially ones who have no obvious connections to the characters I love. Norra drew me in first though. I liked her immediately. Temmin was a douchebag for most of the book, but I thought he had a really nice, not redemption arc precisely though certainly betraying the group was an issue, but just a general growth arc. As child characters go, he was pretty believable. Not always likeable, but believable.

I liked Jas and Sinjir a lot. And I particularly liked the reveal that Sinjur was gay. (I had suspected when he talked about having to interrogate a “beautiful” young man, but it’s always nice to have things addressed overtly.) As reveals go, I thought it struck the right balance. Jas was surprised, because she had misread some signals, but she wasn’t shocked or horrified. It felt like it was a fairly normal, accepted part of the setting. Additionally, Norra’s sister, who had been Temmin’s guardian, has a wife. This is presented in a very matter of fact way.

In a way, the Star Wars new canon reminds me a bit of Bioware games. I feel like they are genuinely trying to give us a more diverse and inclusive setting. They don’t always succeed and there are definitely missteps and missed opportunities (do we really need five white brunette protagonists??). But I do feel there is a general push to do more. And I’m reasonably hopeful that they’ll continue to make efforts to improve.

R: We saw a half-dozen interludes on different planets just establishing how much things have changed for people across the galaxy. I liked that. I don’t feel a particular need to revisit these people for full books but wouldn’t mind updates later, or just more situations that were changed by the actions of the main characters in the trilogy. I like that some of these established that the galaxy was still a complex mess, that some established a brighter future, and that some showed the seeds of darkness being sown.

Rae Sloane is now one of my favorite supplemental villains. I honestly prefer someone like her to Thrawn, someone who’s pretty badass but not without flaw or mistake. Her plans are sensible, not ridiculously far ahead, and she is good at working by the seat of her pants. Honestly, in the Star Wars universe you’re always better off as an improviser than a long-term planner. But she has the ability to scheme and layout plans.

K: I agree with you. There were one or two moments early on that felt a little Thrawn-ishly heavy handed. But for the most part, Sloane got to be a three dimensional villain. She made mistakes, she miscalculated, and she recovered. It made her far more effective to me. I’m looking forward to seeing how she regroups from this affair.

The other villains are a great cross-section of the type of non-force-user bad guys you see in the Star Wars universe. You have your mob boss, your rich asshole who is behaving criminally but keeps a legitimate front up, your Moff, your Admiral, and your weird religious dude. Of them I thought Tashu, the old Emperor’s Advisor who was WAAAAY into being a Sith Acolyte, was pretty interesting. He and one of the interludes established a cult worship of Sith that’s a good darkside counterpart for the reverence the Jedi get from the Church of the Force and the Guardians of the Whills. I’m glad he survived and someone can dig him up to a) vex Luke, and b) menace Wedge again.

And finally, I just wanted to say… poor Wedge. He really has bad luck when Luke isn’t around.

[lazybarbarians]

Being attacked by wicked illness at the moment so we're gonna delay this week again. Sorry!

[lazybarbarians]

The Thief, by Megan Whalen Turner

Kalinara: So it was my turn to pick the book again, and I decided to step away from Star Wars for a bit. I did however keep things in the Young Adult field by choosing The Thief by Megan Whalen Turner.

The Thief is one of those books that is very hard to review, because it’s very easy to say too much about this very simple story. Fortunately, we have a cut tag.

Okay, so the Thief is a pretty basic story about Gen, a the titular thief of course, who has been recruited out of the king’s dungeon (he stole the King’s seal and was caught bragging about it) for a very important quest.

You see, the King of Sounis (Gen’s not-so-amiable host) is looking to marry the Queen of a neighboring kingdom, Eddis. Eddis is a mountain kingdom that separates Sounis from the enemy nation of Attolia. If Sounis marries Eddis, then he’ll have a clear path to attack Attolia.

Ragnell: Worth pointing out, Sounis is a dick.

K: Eddis however will have none of Sounis’s advances. So the Magus in service of the King has hatched a plan. In Eddis lore, there is a mythical stone, called Hamathes’s Gift, which is supposed to grant immortality and the rightful rule of Eddis to whoever holds it. The catch is that the stone’s power doesn’t work if it’s stolen. It must be given to its bearer for the power to work. But the loophole is that the stone can be stolen, and then given to someone else. The person who steals the stone and becomes kingmaker is known as the “King’s Thief”. This stone was lost many years ago, so now the throne passes through basic heredity like any other kingdom.

R: Told you, he’s a dick.

K: The Magus believes he has discovered the location of the stone and intends to use Gen to help him steal it so it can be given to Sounis. Sounis will then use the stone and its symbolic power to force Eddis to marry him and seize her kingdom that way.

The story is, at first glance, a very straightforward and entertaining quest story. Gen is our narrator and he is both charming and obnoxious. He travels with the Magus, the guard Pol, and two students, Ambiades and Sophos.

But it’s not quite that simple, Gen is a thief. He was in the King’s dungeon, having been caught bragging after stealing the King’s seal. Gen told us all of this early on. What he did not tell us is that he is Eddisian. And not just any thief. He is the Queen’s Thief. A role that has, like the role of King/Queen, become hereditary since the loss of the stone.

The amazing thing about the reveal is that it’s so seamless. Gen is our narrator, and his account is so frank, deft and thorough that it seems impossible for something that big to have escaped our notice.

R: It was a good reveal, but it struck me as kind of a cheat. It’s very sudden and she didn’t really give all that many hints that the narrator was hiding something.

K: I actually disagree with you there. It’s true that on a first read, there is very little indication that Gen is hiding something, but there is a lot to unpack on a second read. A lot of things that seem very abrupt are actually seeded from the very first chapter. But you have to know what you’re looking at.

The main thing is Gen is not actually intentionally deceiving the reader. As the end shows us, the story is his account as written to his cousin Eddis. He doesn’t mention being the Thief of Eddis because she already knows who he is. It’s not a matter of misdirection as much as it is a matter of interpretation. But from the reader’s perception, it completely changes everything, not just the chapters going forward, but all of the previous chapters as well.

Everything he says has a different nuance and meaning when you actually know the truth. For example, there is a scene when he is talking to the younger student, Sophos, and corrects his assumption about Gen’s family by stating that his sisters are happily married and his brothers are a watchmaker and a soldier. When I’d first read it, I’d assumed that Gen came from a middle class family but had instead chosen a life of crime. Once we know the truth, well, these well-married women, watchmaker, and soldier, also happen to be satellite members of the Eddisian royal family.

It’s not just bigger things like that though. Even little details have the same kind of dual perception. One example that springs to mind early on in the story is when the Magus, annoyed with Gen, demands that he stop chewing with his mouth open. Gen does so, which was difficult, as he had been chewing with his mouth open “assiduously” since he’d left the prison. The word means “with great care and deliberation”, and I had figured that meant that Gen was being deliberately obnoxious. But on reread, it’s clearer that what Gen meant was actually the “great care” part. Gen is a royal cousin of the Queen of Eddis trying to convince the Magus that he is peasant boy with more ability and ego than sense. He was carefully sticking to his masquerade.

I think this story says some really interesting things about perception and assumption. I am a person who often figures out twists before they are revealed, or at least, I often pick up on something not quite right, even if I don’t figure it out in its entirety. But I didn’t see this one.

R; Yeah. What struck me were the family details. From the description of the mother I was expecting them to get to Eddis and learn that he’s actually next in line for the position or something. So it was in line with everything, but still a major surprise when you find out he’s been in the position for a while and was actually the person the magus brought up earlier in the book.

K: And I think it’s because I went in assuming I knew what the story was. I read the first chapter went “okay, kid in jail, was skilled but sloppy and arrogant, got caught by his own ego” and figured okay, this is going to be a coming of age type quest story where the kid learns humility and wisdom. So whenever Gen said something about his life and his family and his backstory, I filtered it through that context. I thought Gen’s account was complete, because I was filling in the holes with my own assumptions. Just like the Magus.

Gen isn’t the only one concealing important facts on this mission though. Which makes it even more fun. Sophos is, in fact, the very disappointing heir to the throne of Sounis (nephew of the current King), who had been sent to study with the Magus because he was otherwise so hopeless. Pol is no mere bodyguard, but the Captain of a royal guard. While Ambiades is a traitor and spy. No one is exactly what they seem.

R: Ehh.. Ambiades you could see coming. He’s bitter, cruel, and acting strangely and is from an aristocratic line that lost their fortune. It was pretty clear he stole the food and honestly, I thought he’d taken the Gift too. Sophos was a surprise, though. Sounis is not only a dick, he’s kind of an idiot to put BOTH the living heir and the chance of a future heir in this basket.

K: Another part of the story that I find very interesting is the way they incorporate the myths and legends. Especially in terms of the Magus, who isn’t that bad a guy despite his mission. (He truly believes that uniting Sounis and Eddis would be the best thing for both countries.) The Magus starts from an idea that preserved records are better than the word of mouth tellings of the people who believe it, because of the way people change the story. He argues that the people of Eddis use the wrong, old pronunciation for their country when the rest of the civilized world has “moved on”. He is an academic in the driest sense of the word, but he seems to start getting an appreciation for how myth/religion and language are as much about people as they are historical record.

I think this growing appreciation for the human side of things is what helps him deal with his eventual defeat with some grace.

R: Yeah, and of the unlikeable at the beginning characters the magus is actually the one who turns out the best once you get to know him. I’m glad he made it through safely. I was more glad, though, that Ambiades didn’t. I really hated that kid.

K: Probably the last character worth noting is the Queen of Attolia. At this point, she’s more of a concept than a character. We know she’s beautiful, cruel, and that Sounis apparently fears her enough to allow the Magus to embark on a crazy artifact-hunting quest with his heir. But so far, she hasn’t even had as much development as Sounis himself. Though, given that the next book in the series is called “The Queen of Attolia”, that’s probably due to change.