Saturday Review Post, 11/5/2011

Two books this week.

S.M. Stirling - The Tears of the Sun


This is the most recent of Stirling's Embervese books. Set in a world where all modern technology just stopped working in 1997, Stirling is now telling the stories about the second generation post-event (so, actually in the future). The books are best described as science fantasy - there's some science stuff there, but the plot is entirely fantasy. Gods affect the events, and there is magic and singing swords and the whole bit.

Ok. This is five books into the series, and, if you haven't been reading them, this is not the place to start. If you have been reading them, this may be the one that makes you want to stop. It has all of the things that I like about Stirling - the long, chewy compound sentences, the characters facing absurd odds, the clearly defined good and evil, and all of that. It also has all of the stuff about Stirling that makes me cringe - the writing of accents, mostly.

There are three things that I didn't like about the book - three things that make me almost inclined to tell fans to steer clear. One - the book is largely flash backs, and flash backs within flash backs - as in, the character is describing something that happened three months ago, and in the midst of the description, has to describe something that happened six months ago. These flash backs are presented entirely out of chronological order - something that Stirling does, but it's quite egregious here. You really have to pay attention to the date stamps at the beginning of each section. Two - the whole book is building up to this big climactic battle between the forces of good and the forces of evil. Everything is working towards that end. Lots of discussion of mustering troops, and talking to this group and convincing them to work with that group, and rescuing people so this other group can safely work with all of the pre-existing groups, and etc. Setting the ground for the battle. Making sure that everyone, even the enemies, are in the right place at the right time. And then, there's this battle, and it's a short chapter at the end of the book, and then it's done. For all the build up, I expected more. I wanted to read about the heroic last stands. I wanted to read about the forlorn hopes. I wanted the clash of arms and all of that. And it wasn't there. If you're going to set up a big set piece battle as the whole purpose of the book - well, you should have that battle, is all I'm saying. Three - This book should have been the last book in the series, and it wasn't. Hopefully, the next book will be - the big bad has noticed our bold heroes of good - but there was a lot of back filling and flash backs and setting up of toy soldiers and such that didn't need to be in this book, and which could have been the big climactic battle followed by the bigger, climacticer battle.

Oh. And the title was never explained, as far as I saw.

So, I will probably pick up the next book in the series when I see it, because I am a completeist, and because I care enough about the characters to see where the story ends. But, if you are not a completeist, I would suggest skipping this one. And if you aren't reading the series, this is not the place to start.

Emily Diamand - Fire and Flood


The sequel (and, I'm pretty sure, conclusion) to Diamand's Raider's Ransome. Also set in a post apocalyptic setting, these books follow Lilly, Lexy, and Zeph as they struggle to overcome differences between their societies, and to bring their AI friend to Lundun, where he hopes to be able to power up fully. The book is YA, and I'd say the low end of YA - I'd even go so far as to call it juvenile fiction - so the writing is geared at that level, and the characters are somewhere between 12 and 16. Diamand has clearly done some thinking about the way in which societies fall apart, and how the resulting tribal groups would struggle with each other. She's thought through the sort of fail-safes that a slightly more advanced society than ours might have put in place, and how those fail-safes might fail, and what that failure might look like. All in all, a simple but delightful book, with a lot of adventure and action. I'd recommend it to 8-12 year old readers, boys and girls, and people who like to read stuff for 8-12 year old readers. Good stuff.

Friday review, only a few hours late: 1/22/2011

So, this is late. But I have a valid excuse!

Yesterday, we brought our second child home from the hospital. That took precedence.
(The book is Scott Lynch, Red Seas Under Red Skies, the second Locke Lamora novel. The baby is Helen.)

Three books this week.

S.M. Stirling - A Meeting at Corvallis


This is the third book of the first Emberverse trilogy, which I have now finished re-reading. Stirling has done an amazing thing with this trilogy - he's more or less re-invented the fantasy novel. It might be argued that this is actually sci fi, but I think it's pretty clearly not. The second series really makes that clear - what we're looking at is a work of fantasy, with magic spells, noble heroes, and a divine sword that would not be out of place in something by T.H. White - actually, it might have been lifted from White in the first place. And, at the same time, it does what a good sci fi book should do - provides gentle commentary on the modern world. It's solid writing, the heroes are heroic, the villains are still human in this one, and the solutions are palatable. You'll probably like these books better if you tend towards fantasy - the fans of hard sci fi will find these a little fluffy, I think, and might want to stop after book 1.

Scott Westerfeld - Behemoth

This is the second in the Leviathan trilogy. It's an alt-hist work, focused on WWI.  England and her allies are Darwinian, meaning their society is based on genetically modified beasts - huge beasts of burden, tiny talking lizards, vast floating airship beasts, and voracious sea monsters, among others.  Germany and her allies are Clankers, meaning their society is based on technology - flying crafts, giant metal walking tanks, Tesla cannons, things like that. Within that context, Westerfeld is a) pretty consistent and b) oddly historically accurate, all things considered.

The book, as I mentioned when I picked it up a few weeks back, is lavishly illustrated. Westerfeld got his publishers to allow for a heavier paper stock, and paid the artist himself, and the result is simply gorgeous. Really, these books are worth the price for the drawings alone, they are quite honestly that good. The end papers this time are a political cartoon/propaganda poster, which is entirely accurate to the spirit of the period, and the pictures internally add a great deal to the narrative.

Of the narrative - you won't be disappointed. It's not Tolstoy, or even Hemingway, but the book is well written. The characters are believable, the plot is strong, and everything basically hangs together. The pace is very rapid - lots of action - but Westerfeld has lived up to the challenge of his illustrations by also packing the book with lush descriptions - the book works nicely as a whole.

The historical note is a very nice touch - I love when authors do that.

One final observation, though. This book seems to be marketed as "steampunk", and I'm not at all comfortable with that designation here. Spleenpunk, perhaps. This isn't an problem with the book - it is what it is - but rather with marketing. Words mean things, and publishing companies should know that.

Final book - an odd treat -

Dr. Ralph Y Hopton and Anne Balliol - Bed Manners and Better Bed Manners
(with many devilish illustrations)


A friend of mine dropped this little gem into my lap. It's a 1942 omnibus edition of two 1930s etiquette manuals dealing with bedroom etiquette. I don't know where she got it, but it came, at one point, from the library of the U.S.S. Hector - a navy repair ship launched in 1942, and decommissioned in 1984. I can just imagine the crewmen of the Hector amusing themselves by reading this trip of a book to each other.

It is a trip of a book. I'm not sure how much of the book to take seriously, frankly - it seems to be about 2/3rds a spoof of the etiquette manual in places - but in other places, it clearly means to be what it purports to be, and that makes the whole thing more absurd. The book claims to be about how best to behave in the bedroom, an area left out of most etiquette books. It opens with a detailed explanation of why the reader should buy this book rather than borrow it from the library - one should meditate on the chapters one at a time - and contains advice on how to behave when sleeping at home, when coming in late, when waking up, when sleeping on a friends yacht, when sleeping on a train, when invited to a country estate, and so on. Some of the humor comes from the over-the-top descriptions of situations and the delightful 1930s style snark (nobody has ever done it better, frankly) about things like sleeping in a train car, and staying home from work, sick, and etc. Most of the humor comes from the assumptions the authors make about their readers (everyone is upper middle class, they have servants and spend much of their time drinking and carousing, everyone sleeps in separate beds...), and the world. Some of that humor is of the "had to laugh to keep from screaming" variety - the diatribe against women wearing face cream (twice. These authors have a real hate for face cream.), for instance, or the casual racism in the advice on how to treat Pullman porters. (If elderly enough to remember being a slave, tell them you want them to be a personal body servant, and call them "Boy." If younger, call them  Buddy, and mention that you know Cab Calloway. Really.)

So, it's a hoot. It's a fascinating glimpse into the ideas and ideals of the '30s. Some of the advice is actually not awful. It contains the following unusual phrases:

bolster buddy
counterpane chum
mattress mate
pillow partner
bedroll buddy
pillow pal

All of which refer, naturally, to the person you are sharing a bed, or at least a bedroom, with. There is, however, no reference whatsoever to the oral-genital kiss of love, or, indeed, anything more than the most glancing reference (wink wink, nudge nudge) to things one might do in bed that don't involve sleeping, reading books, stealing covers, or convalescing from German measles. Indeed, despite the numerous references to maintaining certain standards of attractiveness (for both genders), there is no suggestion of why one might want to do that. There are a couple of references to children (such as: safe topics to discuss in bed: the [poor] quality of food served at other people's houses and the [poor] standards of child rearing practiced by other people. Unsafe topics to discuss in bed: the [poor] quality of food served in your own home and the [poor] standards of child rearing practiced by your spouse.), which implies the sorts of activities which result in children (ie, sex), but there is no discussion of sex whatsoever. Not even a reference to being quiet while sleeping on a boat, or anything like that.

Anyway, if you're interested in old etiquette manuals or the social-sexual mores of the 1930s and '40s, or just want a good laugh at some classic snark, this is an interesting book, and you might enjoy it.

Friday Reviews, 12/24/2010: Special Christmas Eve Edition!

Terry Pratchett - Hogfather


Pratchett writes fantasy novels, mostly.  For the most part, these books are set on the Discworld, a disc shaped planet carried on the back of 4 elephants carried on the back of a giant turtle. Once he hit his literary stride, Pratchett began using this clearly fictional environment to discuss far more real and pertinent questions of this world. These books are deeply philosophical, and also darkly amusing.

This book in particular deals with a familiar story involving a man in a red suit who travels around the world and delivers presents to the good girls and boys - the Hogfather. Pratchett slowly reveals that the Hogfather is a hold over from much older sacrificial rituals, in which a pig, or a man, might be sacrificed at the end of the year to bring the sun back. Anyway, this year, the Hogfather is missing - and Death takes his place. (Pratchett uses Death often; he's one of the most popular characters in the books. Death, oddly, is often the most alive character when he shows up.) There's a plot, you see, to kill the Hogfather. Death and his granddaughter (?!?) Susan foil the plot.

That's the story, but that's not what the book is about.  Really, the book is about what makes us human.  Pratchett believes that stories do.  Pratchett clearly believes that the Hogfather, or Father Christmas, or Santa Claus, play an important role in explaining who we are as human beings. He places the explanation in Death's mouth (Death talks LIKE THIS in Pratchett novels):

"All right," said Susan. "I'm not stupid. You're saying humans need ... fantasies to make life bearable."

REALLY? AS IF IT WAS SOME KIND OF PINK PILL? NO. HUMANS NEED FANTASY TO BE HUMAN. TO BE THE PLACE WHERE THE FALLING ANGEL MEETS THE RISING APE.

"Tooth fairies? Hogfathers? Little ---"

YES. AS PRACTICE. YOU HAVE TO START OUR LEARNING TO BELIEVE THE LITTLE LIES.

"So we can believe the big ones?"

YES. JUSTICE. MERCY. DUTY. THAT SORT OF THING.

"They're not the same at all!"

YOU THINK SO? THEN TAKE THE UNIVERSE AND GRIND IT DOWN TO THE FINEST POWDER AND SIEVE IT THROUGH THE FINEST SIEVE AND THEN SHOW ME ONE ATOM OF JUSTICE, ONE MOLECULE OF MERCY. AND YET --- Death waved a hand. AND YET YOU ACT AS IF THERE IS SOME IDEAL ORDER IN THE WORLD, AS IF THERE IS SOME ... SOME RIGHTNESS IN THE UNIVERSE BY WHICH IT MAY BE JUDGED.

"Yes, but people have got to believe that, or what's the point ---"

MY POINT EXACTLY

The little lies which help us believe the big lies. I'm inclined to agree.


Charles Dickens - A Christmas Carol


I hate Charles Dickens. I really really do. In times past, I haven't been able even to read this, his most popular work. However, I gritted my teeth and plowed through it this year. Look, we all know the story. We've seen the Muppets do it, we've seen Mickey and Co. do it, we've seen Patrick Stewart do it (or, at least, heard him do it - and I must admit, I heard Stewart as Scrooge throughout this reading, which helped a lot). Perhaps my dislike of Dickens is a case of familiarity breeding discontent. But, it didn't kill me.

My petty gripes:
1) Dickens clearly states that the ghosts will visit Scrooge over 3 nights. They do not; they visit him in one night, and Dickens retcons madly in order to explain this - I think he just didn't want to describe Scrooge during the days in between ghost visits. 2) Scrooge has mended his ways by the end of the FIRST spirit, and the SECOND spirit seems to cement that mending - the third spirit seems overkill. I mean, for symmetry, the spirit needs to be there, but Scrooge seems resigned by that point - "yes, yes, you are the spirit of Christmas yet to Come, I'm going to learn something here, aren't I? Well, let's get to it...". 3) The transformation is too much. Scrooge is a caricature at the beginning, and a different caricature at the end, but I don't believe either of them. It's clear why he's fun to play - you get to play both the black hat AND the white hat in the same character.

Things I liked, despite myself:
1) Ok, ok - Dickens has a way with language, and I enjoyed many of his multi-claused sentences. I will probably try some more Dickens in the coming year (suggestions? I've started Tale of Two Cities, Great Expectations, and Pickwick Papers, and hated all of them...) to see if my dislike is only a passing fancy. (My wife suggests that this was an abbreviated edition - and listening to the Patrick Stewart reading, I find that it is, slightly.)
2) The book was fascinating as a window into Victorian era Christmas practices - no Father Christmas (although the Ghost of Christmas Present is pretty close), no Christmas trees (although Prince Albert, Victoria's husband, introduced the tree to England, so one might expect the practice to have trickled down), and the Cratchits are so poor they are forced to eat a goose instead of a turkey. (Bwha?) Bob Cratchit, on his way home on Christmas Eve stops to go sledding. All of the silly party games that get played by Scrooge's nephew. Fascinating stuff.
3) The temperance message at the end - Scrooge never touched spirits again after that - really?


Frederic Forsyth - The Shepherd


There is an old English tradition of telling ghost stories at Christmas (Dickens did it, you know, and not just A Christmas Carol, and so did Robertson Davies, although he was Canadian, of course.) and this is a fine example of that. Forsyth tells a story of a young man flying a single seater jet fighter home from Germany on Christmas Eve, 1957. Somewhere above the North Sea, the electronics in the plane fail, and a fog rolls in. Flying in irregular triangles, he hopes to attract the attention of a radar operator, who will send up a shepherd, a plane with a working radio to guide him home. Just as he is sure that no shepherd is coming, an antique Mosquito fighter shows up and guides him down. That's the story. It's very short, less than 100 pages, and the copy that I have is lushly illustrated with lots of pen and ink drawings - it's gorgeous.  The whole book shouldn't take longer than half an hour to read - and Alan Maitland used to read it every Christmas Eve on As it Happens for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation - here's a podcast. The descriptions are lovely, the story is simple, and it gives me chills every time I read it, simply perfect.


S.M. Stirling - The Protector's War


Ummm, this one is totally not a Christmas book. Sorry. I started it at the end of last week, and I finished it this week while waiting for the Dickens to be free. This is the second of the Emberverse books, and it may well be my favorite. Stirling does a lot of interesting world building - one group of characters travel from Europe to the US, and that allows the readers to get a glimpse of what things are like outside of Oregon. It's clear why there is a community of fanficcers for this series - Stirling provides a lovely sandbox to play in, and then concentrates most of his attention on a single corner of the box (and rightly so). I love that Stirling has offered some sort of official sanction to the fic as well, since he has a page of links on his official website. He recognizes that he's only using a corner of the sandbox. Personally, I'd like to see something set on Newfoundland - if any group survived the cataclysm, it was the Newfies.

Anyway - I like the way that Stirling weaves three separate tales together here. I like the personalities that interact, I like the description of the difference between folks who lived through The Change and those born after it - it's easy to accept the status quo if you've never experienced anything like it before. I like that the characters are really only dealing with other humans - in the second series, the stakes are bigger because the players are less mundane. (I like that too, but this first trilogy is far more down to earth.) I like that Stirling seems to have restrained his desire to play with accents here - very well done.

So, that's it for this week. Tomorrow is Christmas, and I hope you all have a good one, those of you who celebrate. I'm expecting some books, and I'll tell you about them on Monday...

ahhhh! (very late reviews, 11/17/10)

This past week and such has been crazy! For instance, I have not yet been to the library this week, which is unprecedented. I did paint a room, though, so that's all good.

I do have reviews:

S.M. Stirling - Dies The Fire 

This is the first of Stirling's novels of the Change - I reviewed the most recent one a couple of weeks ago. I wanted to go back and take a look at the beginning of the characters. This was, I thought, a neat way to approach a post-apocalyptic setting - at the beginning of the novel, all explosive technology stops working. Gasoline no longer burns fast enough to power engines. Gunpowder no longer ignites quickly enough to fire bullets. Steam engines do not produce enough pressure to drive locomotives. The world is thrown back into a pre-industrial state. Stirling looks at the implications of that, and follows around 3 groups who adapt to the new environment. It's good stuff - he has good characters, he's thought about the setting a lot, and it's an entertaining read. I do find his use of accents distracting, I know I've mentioned this before. Additionally, he skirts the edge of implausible luck in a couple of places - to the extent that his characters comment on it, actually. Some plot points that I remember as coming later in the series actually happen much earlier. A good re-read, I may continue re-reading the series. 

Charles Stross - The Jennifer Morgue 

On Saturday, in addition to painting, I also went to a local book sale - factory seconds and the like - and picked up this book. Last year, I grabbed the first one of these - The Atrocity Archives - and I was actually looking for the 3rd one, which I thought was the second - so this was a nice surprise. Stross has a neat premise here. Magic, and particularly demonology, actually work. It's a subset of math. With the rise of computers during and after WWII, it's actually become easier to summon things from elsewhere. All of the major world powers have subsets of their secret services which are devoted to ensuring that such summoning doesn't happen. James Bond meets Cthulhu, basically, with a healthy dose of computer hacking thrown in for good measure. The humor is dry, the horror is just under the surface, and the books are exceedingly well written.

Stross is a hugely versitile author - he can go from hard science fiction to this to softer fantasy type settings, and makes each of them work. He doesn't like steampunk, but I suppose you can't please everyone all the time. One of the signs of that versitility here is the inclusion of a short non-fiction essay at the end of these novels. In the first one, Stross muses on the shared nature of horror writing and spy fiction. In this one, he discusses the creation and endurance of James Bond as a character. Well thought out, well written essays, plus entertaining novels? Hard to beat!

Great Big Tuesday Post of Postiness, 11/2/10

So, the weekend really didn't happen - I graded papers, and I dealt with trick or treaters, and so I did not review books. But I did READ books, and so here are some reviews.

S.M. Stirling - The High King of Montival


This is the most recent addition to Stirling's novels of The Change, which are now up to 7 or 8, I believe. Stirling has crafted a fascinating post-apocalyptic setting, and it is clear that he's really thought about how that world will affect his characters. I like that. After the first trilogy, Stirling really veers off into fantasy - he's writing a Tolkien inspired fantasy in a post-apocalyptic setting, and that's fantastic. So I like that too (although I gather that some of his readers preferred the hard-headed science of the first trilogy, which is also excellent.) What is clear, at least to me, is that Stirling has some idea of where the story will end, but not a great idea of how long it will take to get there - this novel and the previous novel both seem to begin as series ending novels, but have not ended the series by the time you get to the end of the book - there's just too much to include, a little more detail, one more group of people who have survived the apocalypse, and so we don't quite get to the cataclysmic battle between the iconic forces of good and evil. I expect that will be in the next book, which should finish the series. I hope so, actually, because The Sword of the Lady is the sort of thing that, if allowed to exist beyond two books, will seriously spoil things.

This book also broadens some discussion of the nature of stories. At several points, the characters wonder who's story they are in - is it Rudi's story, or is Rudi part of their story? Rudi points out that it depends on who is telling the story.

Three final thoughts. First, having finished this book, I've gone back and grabbed the first book to reacquaint myself with the characters. Second, this whole series cries out for fan-fic - what's happening elsewhere on the continent, in the world? (I gather that there is a community of fan-ficcers, actually). Third, have I mentioned that I  dislike the fact that Stirling writes accents? He's consistent about it, but it's a little annoying - it's like at some point it was suggested that characters with accents were more memorable than those without. I don't know, if he didn't write the accents, perhaps I would be annoyed by his saying "and, in a deep brogue, the character said, etc etc".

Jane Lindskold - The Buried Pyramid


Lindskold has written a brilliant Victorian travel romance about a young lady and her uncle travelling in Egypt, hunting a lost pyramid. And it's brilliant. And, Lindskold has written a lovely short story about a group of Victorian travelers participating in Ra's transit of the night sky and the ritual of weighing the souls of the dead. And that's brilliant. Combined, there is a minor loss of brilliance - neither aspect of the story needs the other, and the sudden shift into fairly heavy fantasy right at the end of the book feels artificial. You can see the joins between the stories.

Look, the book is fantastic. The characters are amazing, and Lindskold's description of them is excellent. The aura of mystery and threat throughout is good too, and Lindskold's exploration of Victorian era travelers in Egypt is delicious. It just feels like one of two things happened - either someone at Tor said "ok, that's great, but we publish Fantasy and Science Fiction, and this is neither, add something.", or Lindskold had this plot bunny about helping out Ra, and the rest of this was back story. I'm certainly not saying don't read the book - read this book, because it's good - I'm just saying take a deep breath around chapter 20 or so, put the book down, and come back to it as if it were a different book entirely, with the same characters. That's all.

Philip Reeve - Fever Crumb


This book sort of ties the previous two books together, in a way. It's a post-apocalyptic novel (distantly post-apocalyptic; the apocalypse happened several generations back) AND it's got a strong Victorian sensibility to it. I think this is intended to be a distant prequel to Reeve's Hungry City Chronicles. I really liked the book, I liked the steam-punkish elements, I liked the characters. It was the perfect book for a distracted Halloween night - not because it was scary, but because the plot was fairly simple, so it was difficult to lose track of where things were going. That was nice. So, I guess what I'm saying is, judging this book by it's cover was a good idea.

***

In addition to reviews, you ALSO get a Monday Library Post, free!

S.M. Stirling - Dies the Fire


This is the first book of the Novels of the Change series, because I wanted to go back and take another look at it.

Cherie Priest - Dreadnought

This is Priest's second novel of The Clockwork Century - it's a steampunk world centered on the US Civil War. The first one, Boneshaker, also involved zombies. I enjoyed it moderately, and so when I saw this available, I ordered it.

Mark Keating - The Pirate Devlin

It's a pirate novel! Set during the Napoleonic wars. Oooo, swashbuckle-y!

Reviews for Friday May 7, 2010

S.M. Stirling - Conquistador Stirling writes alternative history novels. The most prominent of them, I think,are the Dies the Fire novels, which chronicle life in the United States after an event (the Event) results in all combustion based power stopping work - gasoline burns slowly, gunpowder doesn't explode, etc. The inhabitants are forced to adapt to a pre-industrial era. Those novels are very good, especially considering that they were spin-off of a trilogy, the Islands in the Sea of Time trilogy, which follows the lives of the inhabitants of Nantucket after they have been thrown backwards in time to the age of Alexander the Great. (The Event which resulted in the loss of Nantucket is the same Event as the one which begins the Dies the Fire series.) Conquistador is one of his stand alone novels, and I'm not sure how to handle it, actually.

A little plot. At the end of WWII, American Marine John Rolfe accidentally discovers a gate to an alternative Earth, where, for reasons that are not actually that important, Europe did not develop, and so European settlers did not arrive in the Americas. He decides to move in, and create an alternative United States, inviting members of the unit he led in the Pacific to join him. Most of the novel takes place in 2009, on both sides of the "gate", with periodic flashbacks to earlier periods to explain the developments which led to the 2009 incidents. The critical thing is that Rolfe and his fellow founding fathers decide that the best way to find recruits to help settle the land is to find people desperate for a place to disappear. In the late 1940s, they recruit a family of Germans who are, in fact, Nazis. Over the course of several decades, they bring in British colonialists forced out of Africa (Kenya, South Africa), French colonialists forced out of Algeria, and former Soviets forced out of everywhere. In short, the population of New Virginia is very white, and often quite unpleasant in a racist sort of way. Stirling does caution readers not to take the views of the characters as the views of the author (in fact, quoting Niven, he suggests that readers who do so are idiots), and there are sympathetic Black and Jewish characters (a few) throughout the novel, and Stirling makes it clear that the younger generation of New Virginians do not necessarily share the views of the founders. Indeed, and I don't think this counts as a spoiler, but some may disagree, so: the heir of the Nazi family ends up married to the daughter of one of Rolfe's original soldiers, who is Jewish. The thing is, it's tough to read so many characters who are, frankly, odious. Some of them have redeeming characteristics which balance things out, but the villains display their villainousness (if that is a word) through highly racialized attitudes. It didn't stop me from reading the book all the way through, but, well, meh. I think, if this were my first exposure to Stirling, I might not have finished. His other books tend to be deeper, with more nuanced characters - this feels like Stirling is playing with an idea which he isn't fully committed to - and maybe that's exactly the case.

That being said, Stirling has carefully thought out the background of the novel, and there's a fair bit of research done. Why didn't Europeans arrive in North America? There is a reason, and Stirling has clearly thought through the implications of that reason. What will happen when Rolfe et al arrive in New Virginia? Stirling has through that through as well. There is solid research behind the book, that comes through in a lot of places, not the least of which are the technical descriptions of technology and the procedural passages about various police organizations on either side of the gate. Stirling does good work in that regard, and, to a greater or lesser extent, it is that which allows me to excuse the thinness of the characters.

A final thought - another author that I am quite fond of is Steven Gould, and the premise of this novel - the "what if" of a gate which offers an alternative to the heavily industrialized present - is very close to the premise of Gould's novel, Wildside. I even suspect that this is intentional, given the last scene of Stirling's book, which is highly reminiscent of an opening scene in Wildside. I'm not saying Gould did it better, or that Stirling did - these are completely different books, which go in completely different directions. I'm just saying, sometimes authors tumble to the same initial Big Idea. And that's entirely ok.

Jonathan Phillips - Holy Warriors Ha! I finished it! I wasn't entirely sure I would, actually - that is, not before today, anyway. But I did, so I can review it.

So, I don't know if I mentioned it, but professionally, I am an historian. So I have some interest in how the discipline is presented. This is a very approachable narrative history of the Crusades. Phillips knows his stuff - he is an established expert on the Crusades - but has managed to present a long (multiple centuries) and complex (vast political and dynastic networks, movements of large armies across huge spaces) period without coming across as dry or academic. As a reader, very enjoyable. As a historian, a) I'm jealous - no, jealous is the wrong word; appreciative, perhaps - this is the sort of thing that I want to write, eventually. b) I wish that there had been more in the end notes - Phillips includes only reference data in his notes, and there were several places where I wanted a little amplification, a small aside, or a piece of additional information. As a specific example, when Saladin re-captured Jerusalem, he installed a pulpit in the al-Aqsa Mosque. Phillips mentions that it was burned up by an arsonist in 1969, and I found myself wanting to know more about that - a few lines in a note would have sufficed.Historians often do not have the luxury of writing the notes they want to - publishers struggle to keep the work as succinct as possible - and often Phillips includes the sort of aside which might be put into a note within his text.

One passage which struck me as particularly apropos to the current international situation  was a quote from Louis IX of France, in 1250, "our departure would simply leave it [the Frankish kingdom of Jerusalem] exposed to the Saracens, particularly since at the this time it was, alas, in such a weakened and wretched condition. In the wake of our departure the Christian prisoners ... could be regarded as dead men, since all hope of release would have been removed ... But if we stayed, some good, it was hoped, may come of our presence ... although many urged us not to remain overseas, nevertheless in our pity on the miseries and adversities of the Holy Land, to whose aid we had come, and in our sympathy for the incarceration and sufferings of our prisoners, we have chosen to postpone our passage ... rather than leave the Business of Christ in a state of such utter hopelessness."  This was after a disastrous attempt to re-capture Jerusalem which ended with a barely mutually acceptable peace with the Mamluks. It's not hard to hear any other European/Western leader justifying their (or their military's) continued presence in the region - substitute "our allies" for Christian prisoners and "democracy" for the Business of Christ, and this would fit very nicely in the media of today. Which is Phillips' point, in the end. The Middle East - the Holy Land - has become an obsession for at least three different religious groups, and many of the attitudes surrounding that obsession cab be traced back to the beginning of the second century CE. Phillips stresses that the attitudes are the same on both, or all, sides of the religious divide - indeed, in several places he points out that a sermon by a Christian cleric, with some words changed, would work just as well coming from an Islamic cleric, and vice versa.

Phillips offers no prescriptions for how to address the Middle East. It is not his job, after all. However, it is revealing to consider that the regimes which tended to be successful in the region (for instance, the Franks ruled Jerusalem and the surrounding territory for almost a century, Saladin and his children were equally successful) were the ones which treated their neighbors with respect, and sought to find common ground. Both the Christian Franks and their Muslim neighbors were equestrian people, both enjoyed hunting, both had societies which placed a high value on honor. When the rulers (regardless of their religion) grounded their relationships in these common elements, relations were relatively smooth. When the religious differences came to the fore (either due to incidents within the region or pressure from outside), relations tended to break down under the strain.

Phillips does suggest that our modern impressions of the Crusaders and the Jihadis are heavily coloured by modern and slightly pre-modern romanticism. A closer look reveals these groups to be deeply complex, and ultimately quite hard to categorize, something which a) tends to be true about every group of people and b) is very easy to forget.