Wednesday 30 December 2020

The War In 2020

Reading this book made me realize, as bad as 2020 was, it could really have been a lot worse. Originally written in 1990, Ralph Peters' The War in 2020 is now firmly in the territory of alternate history. Penned in the twilight of the Cold War, the Soviet Union had not yet undergone its dramatic collapse, in many supposedly well educated circles there were fears that a technologically ascendant Japan would make the United States obsolete with a few strokes on a keyboard, and the old securities of an ascendant America might slide out the window. We weren't quite at the farcical End of History period some predicted, and there wasn't yet only one superpower. It was, in some ways, very easy to imagine a different 2000, one where there were more rising powers and impotent old enemies.

The mildly prescient tagline includes "The World of the 21st Century is barely recognizable. War has ravaged almost every continent - a pandemic plague has swept impartially around the globe", which, in light of a Drug War in Mexico, numerous warm or hot wars in Central Asia, Africa, the Middle East and Europe, seems eerily prescient. The world Peters imagines and our own 2020 also happens to coincidentally be one where a global pandemic is ravaging the world. A black man with a southern VP sits in the White House, and the United States is engaged in multiple open ended military campaigns far from home. Thankfully though, this isn't that, and merely rhymes discordantly in the bizarre present we find ourselves in.

Peters' imagines a United States having watched its old Soviet enemy fade into obscurity, and so has decided it can downgrade on defense spending. This comes to bite them in the ass as Japan uses its technological know how and powerful trade and economic muscle to propel itself to being a power not to be trifled with. They decide to institute a long running series of proxy wars designed to gradually sap American strength and in the wake of a brutal global pandemic, move to collapse one fading power and potentially eclipse all others in Eurasia.

Enter George Taylor, a survivor of a disastrous American intervention in Zaire, where a brief fight against a Japanese backed South Africa ends in debacle, and spreads the new plague to America's shores. He fights in a few smaller proxy wars before finding himself at the tip of the spear in Soviet controlled Central Asia. Supporting him are Howard "Merry" Meredith, Manuel Martinez, and David Heifetz, honest men who are trying to make the best of a bad situation. They've formed bonds through blood and steel, through campaigns from urban pacification in the continental US, to anti-guerilla campaigns in Latin America. Facing an unprepared and disease gutted military at home, and an only semi-functional at best of times and shambolic at worst allied Soviet military, the men must do what they can to stem the tide of separatist rebels propped up by Japanese advisors and technology.

The story then follows this diverse cast of characters across Washington, Moscow and the Central Asian steppes. There's predictions about the future of warfare, technological progress and how it affects war fighting. We have some hit and miss interactions. I don't necessarily read older works for their predictions on the future, but I do tend to love how hit and miss things can be. Needless to say, much of the technology predictions and geostrategic ones are completely unrelated to our world. The various wonder weapons and technology dreamed up by the author bear no real resemblance to what a battlefield in our own world looks like. As cool as vehicle mounted laser weaponry, massive computer guided warfare, and ever versatile fighting vehicles is, we're not really close to it.

That said, the M-100 fighting vehicle portrayed in the novel deserves some mention. It's an air cavalry vehicle which functions as gunship, command ship, electronic warfare vehicle and troop transport all in one. In can move a unit of dragoons into a combat zone, take out hundreds of armored and support vehicles by itself, and jam enemy signals at the same time. It can hide itself with camouflage with few restrictions, and is a top of the line fighting vehicle replacing the old Apache gunship. Essentially, it's an amazing wonder weapon which can do many things, a jack of all trades, but master of none. Peters actually portrays it as being less than infallible, mechanically problematic, and all its systems are so new it doesn't necessarily work one hundred percent as advertised. This honestly made it a rather refreshing system to be shown in a techno-thriller. 

What I truly appreciated about the story is that Peters didn't portray it as one side effortlessly crushing the other. The Soviets are driven back by Japanese technological superiority and the strength of local forces, but in a few cases manage to make savage and punishing counter attacks. The Japanese technical superiority is undone by emerging American weapons systems and those in turn are stretched to their limit by being untested in the field while not being totally superior to their Japanese counterparts. There's no wonder weapons, no side is presented as woefully inferior to the other, and even the ostensibly inferior powers manage to take the superior by surprise.

Peters writes war exceptionally well. I rarely found myself enthused in the vein of a Tom Clancy novel or a David Weber fare, or bored by the predictable curbstomping of one side. It was nuanced, and the barbarity, the cruelty, heroism and suicidal commitment to duty were showcased in equal measure on all sides. Both sides largely believed in their own cause, wanted to win for their own reasons, and did the best they could with the material they had. They were even hampered by poor political decision making by their respective leaders and subordinates, whether those be in Tokyo, Moscow or Washington. It left commanders frustrated, shackled, or sick with worry about their choices. There were massacres, the use of weapons of mass destruction, and very grim realities of modern war. It was a bloody business, and very nicely done.

I truly enjoyed that Peters made his characters flawed. Colonel Taylor for instance, hates the Japanese with a vicious streak that borders on pathological. This isn't portrayed as a virtue however, and even Taylor admits that it impairs his judgement. His subordinates have a fanatical desire to please their commander, and they all have their own flaws. This, in a few cases, leads directly to their deaths. Their enemies are not simple cardboard cutouts, some don't actively believe in their cause, and others simply fight to fight on another day. I appreciated that there wasn't any dues ex machina which forced the scales one way or another, and indeed I was actively in suspense about the outcome until the end.

This isn't to say the book is without flaws. The portrayal of the female characters was pretty atrocious. I found myself mildly reviled by the way a few of the woman were portrayed and even some of the men talking about women (if accurate in a gross misogynistic sense) was unreadable. I tended to skim over those parts. The portrayal of the Muslim characters does lack similar nuance, and by and large they do serve as the disposable cannon fodder of the story, being the acceptable antagonists. They lack a certain nuance that writers unfriendly to them today would find striking, but in the name of a popcorn action read, you could gloss over it without thinking too much.

My final assessment of this book though, is that Ralph Peters does military fiction right. He doesn't provide some miraculous solution to the conflict, there's no instant win the characters can pull off, and there's high and real stakes. People die and you can actually feel those losses. The characters are well established enough that I can sympathize with their loss, and there is glory, but also horror, in war. The ending doesn't provide you with all the solutions, and you might even wonder what these characters will move on to, but such is life after war. The War In 2020 may not have quite predicted the future, but it does tell an entertaining story of a future that never was.

Sunday 27 December 2020

Writing Update 2020

Well, for all that 2020 has been one hell of a year, it was reasonably successful writing wise. I would say I probably reached my goal of writing 100,000 words at the very least, though on very disparate projects.

Two of the big wins were completing the dark fantasy stories Priests of the White God and Winter Law which has been submitted to Grimdark Magazine, and I actually got my first rejection letter from them! Those were fun to write, with Priests probably being the most involved one as I had to look up nautical terminology to use trying to lend some depth and realism to the mostly waterborne setting. Priests ended up clocking in at 12,809 words. Winter Law ended up at 3,588, and I wrote and edited it over the course of roughly five days. So one was much more in the short story length while the other was at flash fiction length, only slightly longer than The Disappearance of Wilson.

Secondly, I self published the vignette, 2069. Only 1,400 words, this little guy is the primer for another set of short stories I aim to publish in what I'm tentatively calling the sixty-ninerverse. Those who can read that without laughing get a hearty pat on the back for their maturity. This is intended to be a series of short stories or novellas set in a very wide ranging imagining of the future of humanity inside the Solar System. From the colonization of the moon, to Mars, Venus and the outer planets, and possibly beyond. It's an exploration of the 22nd century, all the way to the dawn of the 3rd Millennium, within reason. It let's me get a bit wacky with the ideas I can explore. Essentially, it's my own little verse that doesn't need an overarching storyline and plot connecting it, and just let's me write short fiction to anthologize. Expect to see more of those in the future, with hopefully the first little anthology tentatively titled Gateway to the Stars appearing at some point in late 2021 or so once I have a few more pieces set up.

Thirdly I was almost able to self-publish an anthology this October. It is currently titled A Darkness in the Mind and will include my horror stories The Disappearance of Wilson, Priests of the White God, and two others, one titled The Closing Hour, and another story as yet untitled. This was supposed to be my big October project, but sadly that one had to go by the wayside as real life and the global pandemic interfered in a number of annoying ways. I had thought about publishing in December, but on the advice of others, I am now scheduling it for October 2021, which gives me more time to properly edit the stories, tighten the narratives, and get it as well polished as I could hope for.

The other big news was that I sat down to dig into my alternate history stories. One is A Road Not Taken, a Canadian alternate history work I mentioned at the start of the year, set around the Battle of the Ridgeway in 1866. This one aims to be as diligent in getting the details right as possible and merely to wonder what might have happened had the Canadian militia gone where they were supposed to go rather than take a fateful turn up Ridge Road in June 1866. This project is hopefully going to see the light of day come summer 2021.

The second is a project I have battered away at in various iterations for over five years by this point. This project has taken on a pretty spectacular life of its own. That is a novelization of a timeline I have long worked on at alternatehistory.com called Wrapped in Flames. Something unknown to a lot of Civil War buffs and fans of American history, but known rather well to connoisseurs of alternate history, the Trent affair of 1861 nearly put the United States and the British Empire on a collision course. The two powers came dangerously close to war. The event itself was probably the Cuban Missile Crisis of the Victorian Era, with the rising power of the United States almost pitted against the might of the British Empire near the apogee of her own power. 

Historically, the ship was stopped by the American warship San Jacinto under the command of the impulsive and cantankerous Captain Charles Wilkes (who was reputedly the inspiration for Captain Ahab of Moby Dick fame) and the two prospective envoys that the Confederate States were sending to Europe were then seized of contraband of war. This news initially elated the United States as they had, had a rough year in 1861 after the Battle of Bull Run. The British Empire on the other hand, was infuriated. Most observers in Britain thought, in 1861 and 1862, that the United States was going to lose its civil war and be split in two. Matters were not helped by the fact that neither the politicians in London or Washington understood each other, and the only politician in Washington that the British understood was then Secretary of State, William Seward, who had advocated war with Britain and annexing Canada numerous times in his life. Needless to say, the situation was ripe with the potential for misunderstanding and turning the American Civil War into a general war. However, it was Seward himself who very ably calmed the crisis and smoothed matters over with the British. Of course, what if events had gotten out of control and he was unable to do so? 

It would be safe to say the idea of the British Empire intervening in the Civil War has been explored pretty thoroughly by historians and alternate historians. It is some well worn ground, but not very well fleshed out in print. There were some efforts to write novels, but they're mostly poor fare. Robert Conroy's abysmal 1862 comes to mind. Then there's the very steampunk lite series called Britannia's Fist, which while having a unique premise, strained plausibility past the breaking point.

Wrapped in Flames aims to, through a cast of historical characters from politicians, soldiers, and seamstresses, examine what might have happened had circumstances spiraled out of control in the diplomatic situation surrounding the fraught exchange of notes between the US and the UK. The original timeline was, to be frank, terrible. I had not flexed my research muscles or writing muscles enough to make it anything beyond drek. The second version of the timeline (still writing) is better, but not overwhelmingly so. I am working on it as a sort of companion to the novelization I am writing. The timeline itself is done, in rough notes, up to the 1880s. The novelization would cover from roughly November 1861 down to December 1862. It has a fairly sprawling cast, twelve viewpoint characters thus far who move the plot in various ways throughout the novel.

Now, anyone reading this who has read the current version of the timeline needs to know they will not just be reading the timeline as it is currently posted. It very much seeks to correct a number of deficiencies, research errors, timing of events, and misconceptions I had when I began the new version back in 2016. It also, unlike the original timeline with just brief vignettes surrounded by semi-dense history book style writing, is going to be 100% narrative. As it gets closer to completion I'll be giving more details on the characters who will appear in story. I fully expect this to be a monster project topping out at 200,000 words since there is simply so much I will have to cover to tell an engaging narrative.

Don't expect much of a big progress bar on this guy, it currently sits at 47,000 words. It will take time, and we may not see the final version until 2023. I do expect though, that this project will be a trilogy, the first covering 1861-62, the second novel covering 1863, and finally the third covering 1864-65. Updates as they come!

So there we have it. Some solid progress across 2020, and going into 2021 a solid plan for what I'm writing!

Monday 21 December 2020

Parable of the Sower

In the late 2020s, Lauren Olamina lives in relative safety in her walled and gated community in California, under the protection and strict tutelage of her preacher father. Deep down, Lauren does not feel that anything they do can keep them safe. The world is falling apart. Despite having a colony on the Moon and a base on Mars, the United States is wracked with social unrest, rampant drug abuse, economic inflation and rising sea levels from unchecked global warming. Food is always getting more expensive and social services like police, ambulances and fire departments are costly and unreliable. Though her parents hope for a return to the 'good old days' Lauren thinks that is impossible.

Thus begins Parable of the Sower.

My first copy

I'd heard on and off about this book in interviews from other writers, numerous literary discussions and simple internet searches. It was often described as a "must read" by people. I picked it up expecting to disagree, but found myself adamantly agreeing with those who recommended it! From the discomfort of the near future vibes, the eloquence of the language, and the characters and messages it espouses, I can't recommend it enough!

Parable is a book with a message. First about the calamity of a slowly collapsing United States and all the uncertainty that brings, secondly it is about the idea of Earthseed. This is the religion that Lauren has discovered (not created, she is very particular about this) which realizes "God is Change" and that leads all she does from there. Lauren is young, grappling with how to explain her discovery to other people, and without scaring them away. One of the other messages in Earthseed is the importance of community, creating and building a stable one. Which, quite honestly, felt very much like something I would read in prepping fiction. 

As a very quick aside, it has a lot of the basics of the prepping movement seamlessly woven into the story. From having a bug out bag handy, to practicing with firearms, methods of hiding goods on your person, and pragmatic group oriented survival, this would be a very colorful way to introduce people to the concept. Truthfully I'm a little shocked I hadn't come across this book before in those circles.

Moving on, Lauren's life is one of loss and pain predominantly. She lost her biological mother at a young age, and her own community is losing its fight for survival. Then on the road, she finds that she can make a new community and a new family. Through acts of kindness, ruthless pragmatism, and knowing who and who not to trust, she embarks on a long journey of discovery, and one without a real destination in mind.

The story is told largely as diary kept by Lauren where she chronicles the break down of her family life, and her journey across much of California. It is also where she confides her deepest secrets and hopes for Earthseed. There too, she has an outlet for her 'sharing' ability, that is, an ability to feel the pain and pleasure of others. Though in a world as crazy as hers, it is sadly mostly pain and she does her best to keep people from knowing. It was caused by her mother's use of a new form of psychedelic drug which began flooding the US in the early 2000s. It's a secret she fights to keep, lest it be used against her.

I found the message espoused through Earthseed and Parable  as a whole, to be a very timeless one. The ideas behind Earthseed are interesting, and they fascinated me as they were an exciting exploration of how a religion is founded, how people view its early ideas, and maybe what it is like to be an early prophet absent some more dramatic divine revelation.

Readers will find it very easy to emphasize with Lauren's struggles, both personal and external, and will be rooting for her and her little family the whole way. Though I will admit some will probably find Lauren and Bankole's relationship a little off putting, but to each their own as that is a far too detailed topic to get in to. It was a read that really sucked me in, and I found myself wanting more. The only complaint I have against this book is that it was too short! It was exciting to discover that there was indeed a sequel, and I really look forward to getting my hands on it.

This is an easy recommendation whether you like science fiction or not in my opinion. Easily one of the best books I have read in 2020. Though for now, let me leave you with the original parable of the sower for some easy reading and appreciation for clever theme naming!

"Then he told them many things in parables, saying: 'A farmer went out to sow his seed. As he was scattering the seed, some fell along the path, and the birds came and ate it up. Some fell on rocky places, where it did not have much soil. It sprang up quickly, because the soil was shallow. But when the sun came up, the plants were scorched, and they withered because they had no root. Other seed fell among thorns, which grew up and choked the plants. Still other seed fell on good soil, where it produced a crop—a hundred, sixty or thirty times what was sown. Whoever has ears, let them hear.'" Matthew 13:3-9

Tuesday 15 December 2020

The Ministry For the Future

In 2020, I was very much looking forward to reading another work by Kim Stanley Robinson, as he has become one of my favorite science-fiction writers. Most famous for his Mars trilogy, and in my opinion one of his best works, 2312, he has tackled one of the greatest issues facing the world in his most recent novel. With rampant climate change altering weather, coastlines, and threatening the biodiversity of our planet, it seems that The Ministry for the Future is the only option in a world rapidly cascading towards climactic disaster.

This work is part of a growing body of literature which examines climate fiction (or cli-fi, if you will), and works to show both the perils of, and possible solutions to, climate change on Earth. Robinson has done some excellent interviews about the book, and has been very open that he's using it to address many of the problems with how society handles climate change, and how it thinks about the world economy, a system which supports a lazy or even do-nothing approach to combating climate change. As a piece of cli-fi, it is probably one of the most comprehensive in showing how many interconnected systems are contributing to, and accelerating, climactic change the world over.

Robinson's story itself begins in 2025 when a deadly heatwave kills 20 million people in India. More than plague, world wars, and any other natural disasters up to that point combined. In response, two things happen. The global shock to this catastrophe causes the UN to found the titular Ministry for the Future, whose job it is to see that the terms of the Paris Climate Agreement are held to. The second is that India, in the wake of this enormous disaster, undergoes a social and political change only a nation suffering that kind of loss on a psychological and social level could, it has an almost overnight revolution and begins desperate efforts to make sure such a tragedy never happens again. They launch what could probably be considered the first act of geoengineering by using particulates to seed the skies in their hemisphere with an artificial ash cloud to mimic an enormous volcanic eruption, and cut the intensity of the suns rays over their subcontinent for a time.

The story then follows members of the Ministry, Mary Murphy it's leader primarily, as they attempt to use what little influence they have to mitigate the damage caused by climate change. At first, this is a largely frustrating uphill battle, and many people see it as futile to fight against the currently entrenched global system. Mary is shaken by an unexpected visit from a foreign aid worker, Frank, who survived the Indian heatwave, who demands she do better. The story spreads out from there.

The deadly heat wave in India isn't the only natural disaster to plague the world in this book. More killer heatwaves rock the globe, a major one killing tens of thousands across the American South, L.A. is practically wiped off the map in a superstorm comparable to one which struck the state of California in 1862, and other deadly events stalk the world, motivating people to advocate for change.

In this story Robinson tackles numerous difficult ideas. If laws and jurisprudence aren't going to stop people from burning carbon, is it moral to use extreme methods to do so? Some groups say yes, and an extremely angry group of radicalized Indians who suffered from the heatwave, the Children of Kali, lead the way. They assassinate petrolium industry moguls, blow up private jets, and attack coal plants. In many other parts of the world, more people follow suit as the natural disasters grow more widespread. There's questions on the morality of this, weighing the worth of all future generations of mankind, and then the lives of men and women enriching themselves at the expense of others and then trying to flee from their problems. Of course, those people hit back, killing dissidents, and even targeting the Ministry!

As an alternative to violence, Mary uses her ministry to try and find a different path, an economic one. Much of the world, through both climate related damages and populist action against existing systems, begins to balk at the way they're governed and how wealth is transferred. Her own people propose a currency backed by carbon sequestration efforts, meaning that as you work to store carbon you will be rewarded by a new form of currency backed by the level of climate friendly action you engage in. To be honest, I freely admit I'm probably explaining this badly, but this should be read to be understood as its a fascinating idea.

From the ground up, people begin to agitate for change as they become broadly more affected by a changing climate, and the economic fallout from that. Students stage debt strikes, refusing to repay their loans, tenants simply occupy properties and dare someone to do something about it. The African Union pointblank nationalizes many internationally owned resources extraction operations, and in China the hundreds of millions of migrant hukou workers use their mass to occupy Beijing to demand change.

Even on an individual level, a different form of internet is developed. A new social media, web browsing app, YourLock, is launched. This app allows individuals to put their data in quantum encrypted data storage, which protects both their information and their money from theft, but also gives them a means of economic power. Since many modern internet and social media providers make money off of mining your data, the idea that you could deny them that resource and then negotiate with, and directly sell it for royalties to corporations is fairly revolutionary. It's almost an annual annuity for being yourself.

Against these backdrops, many different political and economic organizing ideas are touted. The ever familiar Mondragon model of federated worker cooperatives is of course front and center, with some fascinating expansion on the man who founded it. Before reading this, I had no idea who Father José María Arizmendiarrieta was, but he's a simply fascinating figure I'd love to know more about now! There's other examples offered, blockchain economics, even blockchain governance, as a system for the future.

In terms of science fiction, we even have a subplot following some Antarctic scientists who are engaging in an experiment in geoengineering of their own. Seeing that the West Antarctic ice shelf is in danger of slipping its bonds and collapsing into the ocean potentially adding a catastrophic seven feet of sea level rise in less than a generation, and if the Greenland ice sheet were to join it, that would be even worse! Interestingly, something like this is part of the plot of 2312, which makes for some fascinating parallel reading. However, these scientists are trying a novel approach which Robinson thought of and sketched out to try and present something that might work to help keep the worst effects of climate change and global sea rise down. It's some very interesting reading here.

What's important, I think, is that this book bucks the trend a lot of other more technocratic writers might argue for and presents no silver bullet solutions. It's a painstaking series of decisions, mistakes and uphill fights to try and build a better future. Robinson doesn't give us some easy solution and pretend everything will be alright, he instead reminds us that this is an issue we have to face head on, with everything we've got.

The plot is a bit thin though, the main characters really only exist as mouthpieces for the arguments around different ideas to deal with global warming and how to solve it. This made me less than invested in them as individuals, but more interested in the situations which surrounded them. 

The writing style was a bit difficult too, as certain vignettes would probably better have been served as being part of an overall interview process or categorization under some different internal structure similar to what was done in 2312 or World War Z to add a cohesive and overarching element to the story. This lack of structure did make me lose focus on what I was reading at some points, and occasionally served to suck me out of the book, and not in a positive way. I also tended to simply glaze over the more polemic interludes, some might enjoy them, but they weren't quite my fancy for this read.

On a purely literary level the book has a few flaws. However, the book should not be judged on its literary merits alone. In fact, its literary merits might also be better disregarded. Ministry is more a thought experiment than manifesto, an attempt to force us to confront difficult questions about climate change and its repercussions, and would make us change our minds. 

In that sense, it succeeds wonderfully. It makes you re-examine how we view the world and rather effectively points out its flaws with things such as wealth inequality, the oil and gas industry, refugee politics, and even the way our banking system works. I found many of the objections raised by characters to portions of the currently existing international system to be fascinating. There were many compelling arguments and a lot of good banter back and forth on numerous issues. You find yourself thinking "yes, why do we do things this way?" which is something not enough people seem to ask.

Rather than presenting a broad and sweeping plan for combating climate change and global inequality, the book presents many options, and gives you lots of ideas to think about. Jacobin probably had one of the best write ups on this novel saying that Kim Stanley Robinson imagines a future where we don't all die, which when you consider some of the rather apocalyptic visions of what unfettered climate change could bring, that's a nice image. I think that the hope this novel ends up conveying both in humanity, and our ability to combat climate change, is also a much needed message in a world where denialism is running up against increasingly self-evident facts, and a sense of hopelessness in younger generations.

For that reason, Ministry for the Future, while perhaps not being a literary masterpiece, might be one of the most important books you read in 2020 or 2021. It's made to make you think, and doing that, you might just come away with some ideas even this ambitious author couldn't imagine.

Saturday 12 December 2020

Rhythm of War

I've really returned to the world of Roshar in my 2020 re-read, so much so that I practically feel like I was living there in the latter half of the year! So with the release of Rhythm of War this year I was very excited to climb back in to this fascinating planet with its great story and fascinating peoples! 

There are, of course, SPOILERS for the events of the three preceding novels. You can find my reviews for those here, here, and here if you want to dip your toes in the water, but otherwise, proceed at your own risk!

The story picks up roughly a year after the events of Oathbringer. The Everstorm ravages the land, the Voidbringers and their singer allies have taken much of the world. Dalinar, his reforged Knights Radiant and their coalition of allied monarchs fight tooth and nail to reclaim as much of the world as they possibly can, but the war drags on. The reforged Radiants battle the emerhing forces of the Fused, the favorites of Odium, and Kaladin Stormblessed finds himself unable to keep up with the fighting. Shallan Davar meanwhile, works to keep her order of Lightweavers alive to fight another day, but without the help of more spren, will find herself succumbing to the many facets of her personality. Adolin Kholin, her husband, also struggles in a world where demigods soar through the skies and he is merely the most competent swordsman with no powers of his own. Meanwhile, Navani Kholin, husband to Dalinar, must try and run his small kingdom in the lost city of Urithiru, trying to unlock its secrets. Finally, the former listener scholar Venli attempts to keep her head down as Odium uses her people as disposable pawns, and potentially, find a way to fight back.

Rhythm appropriately starts off showcasing how this war has displaced so many. Long lines of refugees flooding into Kaladin's occupied hometown. It is, in my opinion, a very effecting way of showcasing the horrors of war and the toll it takes on nations, communities, and individuals. The fighting in the opening is fantastic, the characterization is superb, and the opening section here is probably one of the best Sanderson has written. I was immediately sucked in to what was happening, felt a real raising of the tensions and the stakes, and could tell you what had happened and what was going on. It reminded me a lot of the opening of The Hero of Ages for getting you situated in this world again, and keeping the story fresh and fast.

Kaladin's arc this book leads him down the path of someone suffering from "battle shock" or PTSD. It is done well, alongside handling his lingering issues with depression and anxiety to a really realistic level where he tries to fight through the pain and overcome his own feelings of worthlessness. Shallan meanwhile is attempting to fight past her three different personalities which cover up a multitude of sins, while keeping a nebulous fourth personality from emerging and taking her over.

The three most compelling arcs though, IMO were those of Venli, Navani, and Adolin. While we had some very solid movement on our three mains like Kaladin, Shallan and Dalinar, we've only gotten some time in the last three books with each of these characters, and of those Adolin took up the most space. Venli only came into her own in Oathbringer, and Navani has been more in the background of these books. Adolin was always in the forefront, but this book was truly his chance to shine. Though, unfortunately, his and Shallan's plots were relegated to the background for much of the book.

First I'm going to outline a spoiler free part before leaving more below.

The first half of the novel, after Part I is a little slow and had some events that felt rushed or overlooking certain outcomes at the end of Oathbringer, but it made for a workable opening. Kaladin's arc seemed to bog down in the middle, not because it was boring IMO, but because there just wasn't enough real material to work with. I felt you could have truncated his story in this book considerably and not really lost anything.

Meanwhile, Adolin and Shallan's stories in this book were almost completely overlooked. There was still progress and work done on them, but it felt like we had to wait forever to get through much less interesting storylines to see it, and an inordinate amount seemed to get wrapped up at the very end of the story. Adolin trying to move out from the shadow of both his Radiant wife and almost demigod father is still very fascinating. Add that to his relationship with his sword, and I think we had a much greater potential for a powerful story here.

This story though, is far more that of Navani, Venli, and Kaladin. For all that Navani and Venli are given the center stage though, I can't really say much about Venli's story. Her story seems to be much slower because, unlike the last three books, she doesn't have interludes begin which bring her to the center stage until almost a third of the way into the books. That means the looks back on her past and her build up as a character drag excessively compared to the detail put into building up Navani and Kaladin.

Navani's story is excellent however. I liked her on page presence and her struggles as a leader and someone who felt imposter syndrome as she led, but did not consider herself, a scholar. This is well reinforced in the prologue by showing off her strained relationship with her former husband Gavilar. That she has to struggle first as a leader, a scholar, and then a war leader, makes her go through many mental stresses and deal repeatedly with the cost of failure. I like her growth, and the revelations and ultimate build up for her ending were very satisfactory and made me very much enjoy building her into a main cast member in her own right.

The first to middle sections of the story though, did drag somewhat, and I did find myself not breathlessly racing through them in the same way I did in Oathbringer which I found myself doing in my original read-through of that book's Kholinar arc. The finale though, really brought the whole book together in ways that I genuinely appreciated, and I had to put the book down to dry my tears for a few moments with some characters. The send off for Eshonai was, IMO, one of the most touching moments in the book. 

Upon my first re-read, I do think that Oathbringer is actually a stronger novel than Rhythm of War simply because there was more action in that book than this one. Much was thrust on the shoulders of almost too many characters for really good build up for each of them. That being said, of the three main characters who had the greatest build up, Kaladin, Navani and Venli had some of the best work done, and poor Adolin and Shallan were somewhat left out till the end. That said, they still got excellent characterization and great moments of triumph as they found their way through this plot.

My only real criticism of this book might be that here, beyond any doubt, we get to the point of a continuity lock-out. If you haven't read all the cosmere material up to this point, you probably won't understand the implications of Shallan's plot. Many scenes won't make sense, and much of the Ghostblood's plot will seem completely unrelated to the main characters on Roshar. Casual readers will, probably be put off by this, which makes me think that beyond this book the Stormlight Archive will be primarily for fans of the cosmere.

At the end of it all though, I still enjoyed this book, and really hope that upon re-reading I'll pick up on more that I've missed and can say that this was, once again, a well done piece by Brandon Sanderson! Still, for a book that delves into not just the physical wounds, but the mental pain and anguish that can hold people back, I think this is a wonderful series to read!

Major SPOILERS below the cut!

Wednesday 9 December 2020

Fantastic Cooking in the Cosmere

Recently, in a nerdy kick, I decided I would try some fantasy cooking. Now I'm not saying I cooked with dragon eggs and added a pinch of dwarven mead for flavor, no, I used very real world ingredients to cook some very out there recipes. Welcome to my first adventure in cooking with weird recipes from fantastic places!

A real shout out to Deanna Whitney who put together the inspiration for these recipes on Tor.com and who has done quite a lot of work to make these things right. I took inspiration, if not the whole recipe, from Whitney in compiling my own two meals. Mostly to a rousing success! Let's unpack how this went!

Now as a disclaimer, I'm not really a cooking writer, so I'll be giving what I worked on, some of the recipes, and linking to the articles with preparation instruction. This is just my unpacking of how this experience went.

The two recipes I tried were from the world of Roshar in Brandon Sanderson's cosmere. If you've read my reviews of the Stormlight Archive books so far, you'll see this is a world very unlike our own. It's one which, very much, requires a bit of experimentation to get things cooking just right. Roshar has a distinct lack of anything like cows, so all the dairy is either goat or pig, and chickens come in varying shapes and sizes. That makes for some interesting cuisine, and since many meat bearing creatures are more akin to shellfish than our own meat bearing animals, you have some fun designs.

For my first recipe I decided to cook a variant of Alethi "men's food" which is different from "women's food" for cultural reasons. Men's food is spicy, while women's food is sweet. I prepared myself a dish of shellfish chickpea curry, which went quite well in concept and execution!

The basic recipe as laid out by Whitney can be found here for both the curry I used and cooking the shrimp. For the curry, I did a few changes and I used coconut milk.

Whitney's recipe is laid out with these ingredients:

  • 2 cups basic curry
  • ½ cup milk (I used goat)
  • 2 teaspoons of garam masala (to taste)
  • 1 teaspoon of chilli powder (to taste)
  • 1 teaspoon turmeric
  • 1 teaspoon+ of kosher salt (to taste)
  • 15 oz can of chickpeas: pre-cooked, drained, and rinsed
  • 4 oz of spinach 
  • 1 teaspoon of cooking oil

Chickpea curry slow simmering

I managed to get these all together in the pan quite nicely while I marinated the shrimp according to the stated recipe. Her ingredients for a marinade were as such:

  • 1 pound jumbo shrimp, cleaned and deveined
  • 1 cup water
  • 6 cloves of garlic OR 2 tablespoon of ginger-garlic paste
  • ½ teaspoon kosher salt
  • ¼ cup lime juice
  • 1 tablespoon oil
  • ¼ teaspoon pepper
  • 1 cup of coconut milk
  • 2 tablespoons of stock (I used chicken)
  • ¼ cup of toasted coconut

Then for the shrimp I roughly followed Whitney's guide to the recipe and it turned out quite well. I think I had more food waste than intended with the marinade, but overall, it was an excellent recipe! For this recipe I had to forgo using the toasted coconut, and I used pre-minced garlic for my own which saved quite a bit of time and allowed me to set the marinade up very quickly.

Both of these went off, relatively, without a hitch otherwise. I managed to make myself a tasty snack with many leftovers for work the next day! The recipe came together as a very satisfying pair.

A light snack for reading!

Next I decided to try chouta. I will admit, that of all the foods that have fascinated me in the cosmere, chouta is the one I have most wanted to try and was what I had originally set out to cook. It was the recipe though which did not turn out quite as intended.

The recipe can be found here and it is well worth checking out. The way Whitney prepared her recipe involved making your wrap and meatballs from scratch. I got tortillas from the mall personally, and simply used chopped onion, rice, hummus and feta cheese for the base of the wrap to keep everything nice and stuck together.

My difficulties began when I decided to use store bought chicken meatballs (no beef on Roshar!) and pan fried them. It was a, less than satisfactory outcome. Doing that I moved on to cooking the sauce. Since I have not cooked my own sauce before rather than making something from a can, this from scratch sauce was way too thin, more of a liquid really, rather than very thick. Despite my very amateurish efforts to thicken, it never did reach the consistency I sought so I remedied this by adding the meatballs and cooking them together.

The sauce ingredients are laid out as such:

  • 2 tablespoons butter
  • 2 tablespoons flour (I used cassava)
  • 2 cups broth (I used chicken)
  • 1/4 cup sour cream
  • ¼ to 1/2 teaspoon crushed red pepper (to taste)
  • ¼ teaspoon curry powder
  • ¼ teaspoon turmeric
  • ¼ teaspoon coriander
  • ½ teaspoon kosher salt
  • ⅛ teaspoon black pepper
The sauce was way too liquid like

I also forwent directions on cooking the bread, using my store bought tortillas to save the time. I wanted to try a thicker wrap, so I put two together. It was a bit of a stretch, but it took. To fill the wrap I used hummus, rice and chopped onions and feta cheese. It was a very tasty filling. So filling I could only eat two in one sitting! In the end, I ended up savoring them alongside a glass of yellow (white) wine with my dinner!

When I make this again I feel like I will be well served by practicing with making a sauce. I would also want to try making my own meatballs were I to do it again, and I would definitely stick to only using one tortilla. Even were I to fry the bread, one tortilla maximum. What would also be interesting is to work on my wrap style, making make it more "one handed" to work with. 

My first foray into chouta, mildly successful!

On the plus side, I had plenty of sauce, meatballs and rice leftover for a tasty meal at work the next day!

Meatballs, sauce, and rice.

This has been my first foray into fantasy cooking, but rest assured, you can't stop me from trying again!