Books Of Brian

I’ve recently slowed down a bit with respect to my reading, writing and posting – partly due to a busier than normal daily schedule – work, kids, a whole host of things – but partly due to a detour I’ve decided to take for the short term.  As any of you who have followed this blog know, my mainstay is Science Fiction and Fantasy – more broadly speculative fiction – a term that hadn’t really entered my lexicon until recently – likely a reflection of my age and my failure to spend time reading about the art of writing over the years.  I’d guess that a good 75% of my posts focus on old and new works of science fiction and fantasy.  Every once in a while, however, I have to step away and move to more academic fare.

If you’re read my About Me Page, you’ll know that I have a second literary love – history, current affairs and political science.  While it doesn’t receive as much of my reading time as it should, I nevertheless return to it from time to time.  I’ll go for months reading nothing but speculative fiction and enjoying it immensely.  Ultimately, though, it never fails – I always seem to hit a point where I feel compelled to read something that actually leaves me a better informed, more educated individual.  When I hit that point, my reading inevitably slows as I feel the need to put real time into the books I’ve chosen.  These are academic works, I’m reading them to further my education and they cannot be given short shrift if I really want to benefit from the experience.

You can see that tendency to swerve back to history in my posts on books like “The Templars”:

http://booksofbrian.com/on-the-nightstand-the-templars-epilogue-12-27-2017/

Or the time I took to read “The Forgotten War” – a book I commented on but have yet to review – largely because I found it informative but not particularly satisfying. I may eventually get to the point where I’m ready to put a few observations on this one into a post – but I’m not there yet.

I hit that point last week – after finishing “The Black Council” by S.M. Stirling – maybe due to its focus on the First World War.  Around the time I was finishing that book, I ran across both the topic of this post on Amazon – “Imperial Twilight:  The Opium War And The End Of China’s Last Golden Age” – and “Autumn In The Heavenly Kingdom:  China, The West And The Epic Story Of The Taiping Civil War” – both by Stephen R. Platt.  These books drew me in – partly because the episodes in history were ones that I knew little to nothing about – and partly because the reality of China as a geopolitical competitor to the United States has been weighing on me recently.  A fair fraction of my professional life has been focused on Asia – initially as a Diplomat and later as an employee of a large company that offered me multiple opportunities to live and work in the region.

My last opportunity to live and work in Asia ended in 2004 when I repatriated from a 3 year assignment in Malaysia and Singapore.  At that time, China was an emerging offshore destination for western manufacturing of low value products.  Since then, it’s become the United States’ leading competitor in the areas of science, technology, military power and global influence.  The country should be a focus of concern for any American who thinks critically about the role our country has played in the world and the constructive, liberal global leadership we’ve supplied since the end of WWII.  As a result, I felt compelled to buy and read both books.  I was able to finish “Imperial Twilight” last night and thought I should post a few thoughts.

I have to say – from the beginning – that this was an exceptional work of history.  Platt has laid this narrative out in a particularly accessible way, his research and scholarship shines through and his decision to drive the narrative via the very personal stories of the individuals involved makes it a particularly enjoyable read.  He benefits from the enormous amount of source material available – drawing from the records of the British East India Company, communications and records from the Qing Imperial Court, transcripts from British Parliamentary debate, contemporary histories, newspapers, magazines, pamphlets and the journals of the individuals involved.  He manages to bring the history of a relatively expansive period of approximately 50 years to life in a very tangible and colorful way.  His style makes this book extremely easy to read.

I don’t plan to provide a summary of the book – only to say that it details the history of trade relations primarily between Britain and China – from the early days when it was conducted through a highly regulated system centered in Canton and consisted primarily of tea and silk from China being traded for English cotton and woolen textiles to the time when it evolved into a free and open trading system that came to be dominated by the English export to China of Indian opium. Despite the reference to the Opium War in it’s title, the book actually spends little time on the conflict. It spends most of it’s time – starting in 1759 with the journey of James Flint up the coast of China from the British East India’s sole China outpost in Canton – describing the state of the Qing Empire in the 18th and 19th centuries, the perceptions of that Empire back in Britain and how Britain’s emergence as the pre-eminent world power in the wake of its victory over Napoleon began to change those perceptions, the system of trade in place between China and the West and the importance that trade had for both China and Britain. The actual conflict is ultimately seen as nothing more than a sad and – in retrospect – an entirely avoidable episode that further weakened an already declining Imperial system in China and cemented Britain’s place as a military and commercial power in Asia. It also left them burdened with the corrupting responsibility for an opium trade that was both reviled and yet too profitable and far too significant a source of revenue for the government to eliminate. Like so many histories of this type, it’s characterized by imperfect communication, inadequate mutual understanding, occasional critical miscalculations and human failure and incompetence.

As I read the book, I couldn’t help but be struck by similarities to issues we’re struggling with today – testament to the fact that there really are no new problems. Times and technologies may change but the basic complexities and problems that we humans create remain the same. By way of example – I couldn’t help but be struck by the similarities between Britain’s opium merchants – the sponsors of a destructive drug trade that ravaged Chinese society – and the international drug cartels currently smuggling and selling drugs into the United States. I also found it fascinating that – towards the end of the period described in Platt’s book – the Qing Emperor and his government engaged in a very robust debate regarding the merits of simply legalizing the drug trade instead of continuing it’s aggressive efforts to criminalize it and stamp it out via harsh punishment of end users – so similar to the debates we’re currently seeing in this country today. The retrospective conclusion alluded to in the book is that a decision to legalize the trade – had it ultimately been made – would likely have addressed at least the tensions that led to the actual conflict and may have given China greater ability to control the negative impact that opium use had within the Empire. I was struck by the degree to which poor communication, incomplete information, inadequate understanding, pride, arrogance, greed and – at times – simple foolishness can, over time, wreck a system that – while not perfect – was nevertheless working well for most involved and wreck it so completely that it resulted in an unnecessary war. I couldn’t help but think back – as I was reading – to the comedy of errors – both personal and political – that led us to invade Iraq. Finally, the background narrative of a grand but declining world power and culture being displaced by a new and ascending one is all too relevant in today’s world.

Along those lines – I have to include one quote from the book – a statement actually made by Napoleon who – at the time was serving out his exile on St. Helena. In discussing one of more provocative diplomatic British expeditions to the Qing court prior to the actual outbreak of war, Napoleon commented to his Irish physician: “It would be the worst thing you have done for a number of years to go to war with an immense empire like China. You would doubtless, at first, succeed, but you would teach them your strength. They would be compelled to adopt measures to defend themselves against you; they would consider and say, ‘we must try to make ourselves your equal to this nation. Why should we suffer a people, so far away, to do as they please to us? We must build ships, we must put guns into them, we must render ourselves equal to them.’ They would get artificers, and ship builders, from France and America, and even from London; they would build a fleet and, in the course of time, defeat you.” I sometimes fear that Napoleon was wrong only in the timing of his prediction.

Overall, this was a magnificent book – superbly researched and beautifully written – an extremely accessible and enjoyable account of what – to most of us – would be a relatively obscure historical event. It is truly worth the time and I would recommend it to anyone.

One last comment – and I’ll try not to sound too preachy – but I do want to provide encouragement to anyone reading this post to do something out of the ordinary. I don’t meet many people who have a passionate – or even a passing – interest in history and it saddens me. The time I’ve spent learning about what’s come before us has always made me a better judge of people and left me better able to sift through the chaff that pervades today’s political and policy debates. Particularly in a time like the one we’re living through today, every citizen has a responsibility to be as well educated on issues as they possibly can be and part of that responsibility – in my mind – involves a reasonable understanding of history, geography and economics. No one loves fiction more than I do but I feel a responsibility – on a regular basis – to pull myself up out of the cotton floss of science fiction and fantasy and work on my continuing education. I would urge all of you to do the same – it can’t help but make a difference.

I enjoyed this one enough so that I’ve already moved on to “Autumn In The Heavenly Kingdom”. I also have three titles from Max Boot that I’ve been meaning to read. I don’t know how much of this I’ll get through before slipping back to my first love but – by way of an advance apology – I may be boring you all for at least another week with reviews focused on works of history. Please be patient with me and have a great week.

I haven’t read everything that S.M. Stirling has written but I’ve read most of his work.  The first of his books that I found was the second he released – “Marching Through Georgia” – in 1988.  I’ve gone on to read every book in his three primary series – his Draka books, The Nantucket series and all of the Emberverse books – as well as most of his less prominent work.  I’ve enjoyed almost everything he’s written – with the notable exception of his Shadowspawn books – not sure what was happening in his life when he wrote those but they were not good.  Overall, I’m a pretty loyal fan and he’s given me many good years of reading.  He creates fascinating, incredibly detailed, believable alternate realities rooted in our world’s history, he populates them with intriguing characters and he drops them into compelling conflicts.

Two things have always stood out to me with respect to his writing.  First, Stirling must know more stuff about more things than any person alive.  One of the many things that’s kept me reading the Emberverse novels is the incredible detail he writes into the stories about everything from bowcrafting to religion to medieval military tactics to agriculture and cooking.  The guy is a walking Encyclopedia Britannica – a set of publications that anyone born in the last 25 years may not be familiar with – they were the closest thing to the Internet that all of us oldsters every had – and he does meticulous research.  His books – in addition to being great, character driven stories – are always oddly educational – something I’ve always loved.

Second, he creates extremely strong female characters – not exclusively – the men populating his novels are fascinating – Rudy McKenzie, Mike Havel, Nigel & Alain Loring – but his female characters always seem to dominate – Juniper McKenzie, Signe Larrson, Sandra Arminger, Matilda Arminger and Tiphaine d’Ath and finally Orlaith and Reiko.  They are the characters that the books inevitable seem to revolve around and they are compelling.  Once you get past the first three Emberverse novels and you lose Mike Havel – with the exception of Rudi – the women drive the narrative – the men are there as wise councilors and / or strong right arms.

Given that the Emberverse novels are coming to a close with “The Sky Blue Wolves” in November of this year, I was excited to see him start a new alternate history with this book – first in “Tales From The Black Chamber”.  It’s set in an alternate timeline during the second decade of the Twentieth Century – about the midpoint of WWI – with Teddy Roosevelt as President and leader of a new Progressive Republican Party.  He’s doing something different here – eschewing the elements of spirituality, magic and mysticism that’s woven into the bones of the Emberverse – focusing on the technologies of the time – more in line with the world he created in the Nantucket novels.  I was intrigued and very ready to see what he might do with this new story architecture.

Overall, I did really enjoy the book – it was a great story and Stirling created some great characters – particularly the protagonist – Luz O’Malley Arostegui.  She is everything you’d ever want to see in a fearless, capable, unstoppable intelligence officer.  I loved the premise that a progressive Teddy Roosevelt is crafting a new America built on progressive principles that in our world don’t see the light of day until the ’60s.  I liked the idea that the U.S. – in this universe – has created an aggressive overseas intelligence organization – 15 years before Henry Stimson closed down the Cipher Bureau – using as his justification that “Gentlemen don’t read each others’ mail”.  Stirling has built an intriguing world and his writing is – as always – superb.

Having said that, the book was just a bit of a slog for me – unusual for a Stirling novel – not a bad experience – just not as riveting as usual – and it took me more than half the book to understand why.  Short to long – it’s the detail he writes into the story – usually a strength – but in this case not quite as compelling as is usually the case.  In the Emberverse novels and the Nantucket stories, the amazing and rich detail that Stirling includes focuses on things that I do really find fascinating.  With Emberverse, it’s the rediscovery and adoption of Medieval technologies in a world without power.  In the Nantucket novels, it’s about taking the science and technology of the modern world and re-inventing it in such a way as to apply it in the Bronze Age.  For me, both premises were compelling and I never really tired of the lessons that Stirling managed to teach.  In the Emberverse series, I also really enjoyed watching the re-emergence of multiple pagan religions and mythologies in a post-modern world.  I couldn’t get enough.

With this story, I just didn’t find the detail about early Twentieth Century technology, German cuisine and female fashion to be nearly as interesting.  For me, it slowed the story down and made it drag at times.  Where I normally fly through a Stirling novel, I felt like I was working a little too hard to finish this one.  Again, it was a good book.  It just didn’t work as well as so many of the wonderful books he’s written in past.

Short to long – a very good story with some compelling characters – extremely well-written.  It just doesn’t bring that same magic that I normally find in Stirling books.

I had no plan to pick this book up – I think it actually found me.  I mentioned in my July Releases post that this was a light month and that I was looking for options to add to my TBR pile.  I’d already started the one true release that I’d selected for July – S.M. Stirling’s “Black Chamber” – and I was enjoying it.

I actually blame Amazon for what happened next.  I’m browsing my Amazon featured selections early last week and I come across this old U.K. hardcover edition of Dan Simmons’ “Song Of Kali”.  I’ve read one of Simmons’ books – “Carrion Comfort” – and enjoyed it enough (read “was creeped out enough”) to tag him as a “Followed” author.  As a purchaser of hardcover editions, Amazon’s algorithm naturally serves this up and I purchase it despite the price.  It arrived pretty quickly and I decide to read the first chapter.  The next thing you know, I’ve put “Black Chamber” aside and I’m devouring this one instead.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again – Horror is not my genre – possibly because too much of ordinary, everyday life these days has more than a whiff of horror to it – possibly because so much appalling information these days is delivered to us directly via the 24 hour news stations, the internet and social media.  Too much of the stuff I’ve read from this genre seems to be a bit unremarkable – as though real life has raised the bar to such an extent that it becomes hard for authors to find a way to chill an audience?

Maybe that’s why I enjoyed this book so much – even given the fact that it was written in 1985, Simmons found a way to make this horrifying in a durable way – and he does it without slathering on the supernatural.  Instead, he plays with some pretty ubiquitous, atavistic anxieties and fears.

Here’s the first – and anyone who’s had an expat experience – who’s lived for any amount of time outside their own country might relate to it.  Simmons takes a very naive, highly educated, middle class couple with their baby and drops them – without appreciable support – into an unfamiliar, intimidating, extremely complex foreign culture.

I’ve lived as both a government and a corporate ex-pat and I’d be the first to admit that both experiences are somewhat bubble-wrapped.  You have colleagues at work and ex-pat friends whose children all attend the same American school, you have support structures – both locally and back in your home country, you’re well compensated, your housing is provided – your sponsors make it as easy as possible.  Even with all of that, there’s a degree of stress and anxiety associated with the experience that sometimes becomes hard to manage.  The simplest things – things that you used to do without thinking – become more challenging and you feel like you’re expending far more energy every day than was ever the case at home.

Simmons captures that feeling as he describes the experiences of the Luczaks during their relatively brief visit to India.  While they have people that are ostensibly helping them, none of them are trustworthy or what they’d expected and they’re basically cast adrift in a country and society that is bombarding them with situations and messages and experiences they are inherently unrelateable.  The sense of stress they’re experiencing is tangible and you see it degrading their ability to make good, rational decisions.

The second theme Simmons drives into the narrative is a sense of horror – not related to the supernatural – but to the sheer, overwhelming poverty that surrounds the Luczaks and the sense that life is of so little value.  The vision of decay and filth and death that Simmons portrays creates a feeling of horror completely independent of the supernatural elements of the story.  I’ve traveled to India a number of times for business over the course of my professional life and, while I found it extremely overstated and representative of an earlier time, the atmosphere that Simmons creates was still reflective of things I’d seen and experienced.  It is very hard for someone from a developed country to adjust their perspective to accept as normal what is almost certainly the normal course of daily life for so many people.  By way of example, I found it profoundly disturbing to repeatedly have babies pressed against the windshield of my car by infant beggars.

Having said all that, I do want to make sure that I’m not misunderstood.  Every unpleasant shock that India delivers to the system is counterbalanced by an amazing, rewarding experience or a beautiful element of the culture.  For purposes of this story, however, Simmons very effectively uses the negatives to create a sense of horror and disregard for the value of human life that do just as much – possibly more – than the supernatural elements he introduces to make the narrative uncomfortable and disturbing.

Finally, Simmons manages to anchors the horror of the story not in the possibility of a living Goddess of Death guiding events – something that is more hinted at than confirmed – the one concrete appearance of Kali taking place at a time when Robert Luczak is under the influence of a behavior altering drug – but in the cruelty and remarkable heartlessness of the humans who worship her.  The people are the true monsters in this story and not Kali herself.  By way of example, the horror embedded in the story’s final tragedy – the death of the Luczak’s child – is cast as a purely human evil – an attempt on the part of someone to use her corpse as a vehicle for smuggling gemstones out of the country.

Short to long – so much of the horror in the story exists independent of the suggestion of supernatural influence and it comes at you from multiple sources.  I found the book to be particularly impactful – in a way that few of the more recent entries in the Genre manage to be.  It’s a book that – for me – stands the test of time and offers up the kind of experience that more horror stories should.

This isn’t really a review – more of a recommendation for a recently published short story from M.C. Tuggle.  You can find Mike’s site here:

https://mctuggle.com/

Mike just had a short story titled “Cathedra” published in the April 2018 edition of Metamorphosis magazine.

You can order a Kindle copy for $3.00 and a paperback copy for $6.00 on Amazon:

https://www.amazon.com/Metaphorosis-April-2018-Magazine/dp/1640761071/ref=sr_1_fkmr2_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1530997452&sr=8-1-fkmr2&keywords=metamorphosis+speculative+fiction+magazine

My copy arrived in the mail last week and I was able to read “Cathedra” this weekend.  It’s a smart, first contact short story set on Enceladus.  It’s described in the Afterword by the Author  as “a tale of faith and one’s discovery of purpose within society”.  It’s a quick 10 minute read and one I really enjoyed.

I haven’t had the chance to read through the other 3 short stories but I found “Cathedra’ to be more than worth the $3.00 I paid for the Kindle edition.

Cheers,

Brian

This is a bit of a retro post – going back to a book published in 2005 – but I feel compelled to pound out a short note.  Early in June, I read a wonderful, little novella by Brandon Sanderson called “The Emperor’s Soul”:

http://booksofbrian.com/on-the-nightstand-the-emperors-soul-6-23-2018/

It was my first chance to read anything by Sanderson and I really enjoyed it – his writing style, his characters, the world he created – it was a brief but intense pleasure.  I also mentioned in the post – having enjoyed “The Emperor’s Soul” as much as I had – that I planned to go back to his debut and see what he was like at the beginning.  Since I’d finished everything on my June Release List plus a bit more – I did just that and wanted to take the chance to finish out the trip.

First – and I caveat this by acknowledging that I haven’t experienced much of his work – I suspect that anyone who goes back to this book after reading Sanderson’s later work will notice a difference.  It’s not as tight as it should be – he dawdles a bit with his narrative – some of the content and some of his characters are a bit cliched – the ultimate reveal was a bit obvious to me early on in the story – there are too many red herrings and plot cul-de-sacs.  Still – I have to say it was fun and, for a lengthy book, it was a relatively fast read.  One of the reasons it went quickly was because this isn’t the type of book that compelled me to focus and pay attention to each word – a reflection of some of the earlier criticisms – but that really hurt the experience for me.

Sanderson has a novel concept and he writes into it in a very engaging way.  What really shines through and what I think I enjoyed is the way Sanderson’s two protagonists – Raoden and Sarene – are so unavoidably endearing.  They just ooze goodness in everything they do – Sanderson obviously wanted them both to reflect an uncompromising decency, courage and heroism and he was thoroughly successful.  As they develop and grow, you can’t help but root for them and want them to win.  While some might find them a bit too sugary sweet – it didn’t bother me – I’m a sucker for a true good guy or girl.

I actually found one of Sanderson’s secondary characters – Galladon – to be more effectively constructed and more interesting.  His worldliness and cynicism were a welcome counter to Raoden’s purity.  While he was a bit cliched – I also enjoyed his antagonist – Hrathen – a conflicted villain trying to do as little bad as he could – one who eventually finds redemption.

Overall, I’m very glad “The Emperor’s Soul” led me to Elantris.  It was an impressive enough debut – even with the small blemishes – that I feel like I have to move on to his “Stormlight Archives”.  If nothing else, my sis won’t be able to shake her head at me any more about not having experienced Sanderson’s works. 🙂