Darkship Thieves: a book review

I never read Darkship Thieves while it was a Baen book.  Recently, Sarah Hoyt re-released it, as she got her rights to it back, and I pulled it to read via Kindle Unlimited.  I deeply regret not having read it before--it's a massively fun romp.  

Per the back cover: 

Athena Hera Sinistra never wanted to go to space.

Never wanted see the eerie glow of the Powerpods. Never wanted to visit Circum Terra. She never had  any interest in finding out the truth about the Darkships.
You always get what you don’t ask for. Which must have been why she woke up in the dark of shipnight, within the greater night of space in her father’s space cruiser, knowing that there was a stranger in her room. In a short time, after taking out the stranger—who turned out to be one of her father’s bodyguards up to no good, she was hurtling away from the ship in a lifeboat to get help.
But what she got instead would be the adventure of a lifetime and perhaps a whole new world—if she managed to survive….
A Prometheus Award Winning Novel, written by a USA Today Bestseller.

I can't say a lot without giving everything away, but I can say that the character development is spectacular, and the plot and pacing are incredibly well done.  I deeply enjoyed the book, and have snagged the second in the series to read. 

I will probably be buying this book when I can.  Because I will want to read it again. 

Amazing.

So.  The kids got a set of Little House books for Christmas.  I started reading them out loud to the kids right after we got them, and have been doing a chapter (or two...or three) every night since.  We're up to These Happy Golden Years, the last book that Laura Ingalls Wilder had fully finished (The First Four Years were a first draft/outline that she hadn't fleshed out and added to). 

The kids are loving the books. 

And so am I. 

I will admit this is my first re-read of the series in about...twenty, twenty-five years (yes, I am that old).  I am very familiar with them, because prior to hitting nominal adulthood, I had read them multiple times.  Re-reading them now, as an adult, several things have stood out. 

Charles Ingalls...was an idiot where money was concerned.  He borrowed more than he could pay back if things didn't go exactly perfect.  And he did it more than once.  One time, he was counting on a crop...that got eaten by...well, locusts.*  Another time, his crop was eaten in the seed stage by gophers.  A third by corvids (which they ended up eating).  One time could be due to inexperience, but over and over like that? 

Yikes.  Reminds me of a lot of stupid financial behavior we see even today, with student loan debt plus a car payment plus credit cards blocking people out of being able to afford to live. 

Caroline Ingalls...was a pretentious snob.  Mary was a spoiled brat (so was Grace, the youngest, but there were extenuating circumstances--she was born the same year their boy died at a year old).  And Carrie...poor little Carrie.  I think she may have had a heart condition, possibly caused by the same illness that sent Mary blind. 

And Almanzo Wilder had decided to court Laura Ingalls when she was not quite fifteen.  And watching him actually do so--the way he sorta just...showed up, and kept showing up and keeping her company...she never saw it coming until she'd fallen head over heels.  Sneaky-like, but not dishonorable-sneaky.  Really cute. 

Another thing I'd noticed, this time through...the Wilder family was far better off, financially, than the Ingalls family was, as both of them grew up.  That was not something I'd noticed, the first several times I read through the books. 

Recently, the book award for young readers named after Laura Ingalls Wilder was...yeah, not gonna be named after her anymore.  They say it's because the books are racist. 

They aren't.  Not for the time.  They're an accurate depiction of the time, including the dangers posed by the native tribes, and the fear many held for them.  And in Little House on the Prairie (yes, Indian Territory in Oklahoma, by the Verdigris River), they were in significant danger from the natives.  And the...interactions (some friendly, some decidedly not) were honestly shown, and to be honest, the fear that Caroline held was very much warranted.  So was, in a lot of ways, her disgust: I really doubt anyone would appreciate men wearing nothing more than newly-cured skunk-skins in their vicinity. 

All in all, though, the books absolutely stand up under the tests of time.  They are fully as good as I remember them being (if not better).  And I am already looking for a hardcover set for myself.

*Yes, the book called them grasshoppers, but the description was of locusts. 

Book Review

Tom Rogneby is a magnificent bastard who ended a page turner on a cliff-hanger only a little less painful than the last few seconds of Star Trek: The Next Generation episode "The Best of Both Worlds, Part I." 

And it's going to be a lot longer than just the summer break before the next season before I get my hands on the next book.  Damn it.

Via Serica is Rogneby's second published work of fiction.  His first is fun.  Brain candy in a high fantasy/horror flavor.  This one, though...this one is set during the latter days of the Roman Empire, and follows a disgraced Roman senator through the first stages of his exile/death sentence. 

Rogneby has grown immensely as a writer.  As I said, Tales of the Minivandians is fun--brain candy fun.  It's descriptive enough to transport the reader, but not so much as to prevent the reader from setting it aside to do vital functions like eat, drink, sleep, etc.  Via Serica is much more difficult to set aside--the setting is more richly detailed, and the character development and growth is impressive.  The charactars behave believably to their station and change with their experiences and environment.  There were a few, here and there, where I'd have liked a little more interaction, but that's true with any book (and differs from person to person.

The plot, though.  The plot, the story--that's where Rogneby really shines (except for ending the damn book too soon, in my opinion).  The story is believable, and the pacing of the plot is nearly spot-on perfect. 

In case my readers can't tell, I really enjoyed the book, and highly recommend it. 

Alternate Universes...great when done right.

I'm a little ambivalent on Eric Flint's world.  First of all, his setup powerfully strained my suspension of disbelief.  I mean, really: a race of techologically powerful aliens whose works of art were dangerous to the worlds around them because of the way they flung the waste around managing to hit a small, coal mining town in West Virginia carved out a six mile wide sphere of land and air above it picking it up and dropping it in Germany in the middle of the Thirty Year War.  It's really hard to close my eyes and believe that. 

I'm not a big fan of that particular time period, either.  Protestantism is still fairly new, and the conflict between the Protestants and the Catholics is particularly bloody.  Feudalism is starting to collapse in a rather bloody fashion, and literacy is patchy--unlike (surprisingly) the early Medieval period in Britain. 

Third, I am not now, and likely never will be a fan of modern unions.  You have to have a situation as unlikely and extreme as the book's to make a modern union anything other than the next best thing to a Medieval guild in the level of uselessness and oppressiveness.

Those aside, the Ring of Fire series (starting with 1632) is well-written, with truly unique characters discovering that the veneer of civilization that covers those in small towns is truly thin--and that's not necessarily a bad thing.  Like any small, Appalachian (or Midwestern) town, the number of small arms outnumbers the people: not a bad thing when that town is suddenly and inexplicably dropped into the middle of a war zone where the Geneva convention hasn't even happened yet. 

And the town, Grantsville, refuses to blend into Germany of the time, choosing instead to begin the American experiment nearly two hundred years early, and on the wrong continent.  1632 is the story of the emergency and response, the setup of a new republic, and the small amount of breathing space they won. 

Defending Byzantium

I finished re-reading the Belisarius Saga last night (couldn't fall asleep when I laid down, so why not?). 

These books, if you have not read them, are awesome. 

First, you start with the assumption that humanity has survived wars, and created weapons terrible enough that the race has had to completely change itself to survive (the example cited was a bioweapon that attacked--and destroyed--DNA).    Then you move to the assumption that the race has also flung itself into the stars, and has adapted itself to whatever environment they found themselves in, and that one faction sees all of this as polluted monstrosity.  Then imagine what would happen if this faction worked to send a computer back through time to the seventh century to possess autistic little girls in a monarchy in a small kingdom in India, to prevent the pollution from happening by destroying any ideas of progress based in merit rather than racial purity. 

Sounds like fun, doesn't it?  Not. 

Another segment of humanity has given much to send back one member of post-DNA humanity: a small crystal that has the entirety of the future, both pre- and post-meddling.  And that crystal has orders to find a specific person, but has no idea how to begin. 

It manages anyway.  And then the fun starts. 

Now, imagine a general with knowledge of tactics from future wars, and given knowledge of how to create one of the simplest of future weapons: gunpowder. 

In the first book, An Oblique Approach (no longer on the free side of Baen's website, but the second book in the series is), we follow the hero, Roman general Belisarius, as he sets plans and plots in motion to ensure humanity's freedom to develop in whatever direction it wants and needs to.  The full scope of his plans set into motion in this first book isn't fully seen until the fifth and sixth books of the series. 

The plot of the entire series is magnificent, and the development of both character and setting are wonderfully thorough.  I highly recommend the books. 

Completely awesome.

I mentioned, the other day, that I was starting to read Jim Butcher's Cold Days.  Well, I read half of it the first night, then finished it the second.  It rocked. 

If you're looking for a new series of books to get into, and you like modern fantasy--the main character is a honest-to-God wizard for hire in Chicago--I strongly recommend Jim Butcher's Harry Dresden books.  I've got an Amazon link to the first book (there are currently fourteen in the series) over to the right, under my blog list. 

The first book is Storm Front--Dresden goes up against bad guys that do murder from a distance by using the power in thunderstorms to explode their victims' hearts from a distance.  Dresden himself is an awesome character: likable and snarky, with a desperate need to do right and help people.  His sidekick, Bob, is an air elemental that shelters in a skull (and is a major pervert, and a hell of a lot bigger of a smartass than Dresden). 

Seriously, if you're interested in gritty, realistic (sort of) detective stories, as well as urban fantasy, and you haven't run across the Dresden Files, you need to give them a try.

Kate Chopin's short novel of infidelity in the search for self

The class for which I am a teaching assistant is reading one of my favorite classic American novels, this week: Kate Chopin's The Awakening. 

It was a doozy of a controversial novel when it was first published (1899), because it clearly displayed a woman's quiet unhappiness in her marriage, her realizations that she was unhappy (and seen as nothing more than property by her husband), and her actions following that realization--leaving her husband, children, and home for independence; stepping so far outside the accepted roles society had set for her that she left herself vulnerable to seduction; and her eventual suicide on her realization of how many wrong decisions she made in the process of trying to find out who she was.

Edna Pontellier doesn't seem that sympathetic of a character, at first.  She's quietly unhappy, but oblivious to that fact, for a time.  When she realizes how unhappy she is, rather than try to make the best of her life and create happiness where she is, she takes steps that we see far too often in modern times: the dissolution of her marriage, no matter the cost to her husband and children. 

Then, as we keep reading, we notice something: she's acting out in this way because she literally has no idea what to do.  She has the emotional and mental maturity of a pre-teen, and is trying to live the life of an adult.  She has no real education, her talents have been stifled all her life by the authority figures around her (first her father, then her husband), and she suddenly wakes up to find herself shackled to a man she doesn't want, by children she doesn't know what to do with but loves in a distracted, confused way, and a man she could love just out of her reach.  Every one of the actions she takes are those of a rebellious teen girl who just can't see the future consequences of her decisions. 

By the time of her suicide, I was wishing I could have been there with her, sat her down earlier in the novel, before she'd moved into her own little house, and explained a few facts of life to her.  I was really wishing someone could see the desperately unhappy little girl in the woman acting out, and could have helped her. 

And I was really wishing I could have kicked her husband in the balls for courting her so persistently while she was so very young, and marrying her without letting her grow up. 

Top five favorite books

1. Jane Eyre  (free download, your choice of format, right side of top row)

I think I was twelve when I first read this book.  I can't really detail why it's one of my favorites, but it is, and has been since I read it the first time.  I tend to re-read it every three or four years.

2. Dune

I was about thirteen when I first got my hands on this book.  It opened my eyes to human nature, political expedience, the economics of limited resources, and I keep getting new ideas from it every time I re-read it (usually at least once per year, if not more often).  The really interesting thing is how closely it parallels the British Imperial occupation of the Middle East, and the oil-based economy (and its weaknesses).


3. The Little White Horse

No real deep messages, in this book.  It's a quiet, classic children's book, involving children learning to do the right thing, no matter how scary or difficult.   When I'm the most frazzled, I re-read this book for sheer comfort.  I've always liked it better than any other children's book (save, perhaps, The Hobbit).

4. 1984 (free to read online)

I read 1984 for the first time when I was about fourteen years old.  My family were under the control of the state, since my sister and I were in the legal custody of the state, but in my mom's physical care.  If anyone ever doubted that the government has designs of totalitarian control over the lives of its citizens, they need to live for a few years with the terror of child illfare services threatening to put them in foster care if they so much as sneezed wrong, or forgot to ask permission to take a shit.

Needless to say, this book combined with the circumstances of my life formed my absolute hatred of politics, politicians, propaganda, and being controlled. 

5. Robert Heinlein's Future History series, especially the stories regarding the Howard Families

I've said before that I never had healthy models of how to be an adult.  Heinlein's stories gave me the healthiest models I had, and except for the promiscuity, I've tried to model my own behavior on his very human characters.

Chime in.  What are your favorite books, and why?

I think I prefer a world where a small woman can protect herself from a large man.

Several years ago, I discovered John Ringo's work.  Not through his Posleen books (excellent, but horrifying in places), nor through his Ghost books (oh, John Ringo, no!), but through the Council Wars books, beginning with There Will be Dragons.* 

Talk about an excellent argument for the existence of guns.

The world is set so far into the future that we can't see it from here.  Nanotechnology and wireless transmission of information and electrical power combine to form a society where, if you want something, all you have to do is tell the AI that runs everything what you want, and you'll have it before you can blink.  Body and genetic modification are common--mermaids, anyone?--and so is instantaneous travel to anywhere in the world.

Until, suddenly, it isn't.

And chaos sets in.

Sometime in the less distant future, there were wars so terrible that the designers of the AI created protocols that prevent the manufacture of electricity through industrial means--and prevent the use of firearms.  Totally prevent it.  For everyone.  Like, the cartridges just won't fire.  Black powder weapons don't work.  Something about how the AI detects the build up of pressure, and bleeds it off to power other things.

This sets up a world where strong men--and only strong men--rule.

The characters are well drawn (literally, in some cases: Ringo writes in Bun-Bun from Sluggy Freelance as a rogue AI).  The situations are, if not realistic in the beginning, certainly realistic in what happens when technology comes crashing down to a pre-industrial, pre-firearms level of civilization, where civilization manages to hang on in the first place.  

It is quite a fun book, and a fun world to spend some time in.

As a small woman, however, I do not want to live there. 

*The first two books are free to download from Baen's free library. 

More fun reading

David Weber is a superb world builder, sometimes to the exclusion of character development, but the worlds he creates are always detailed and awesome.  So far, I've read a good portion of the Honor Harrington series, his Safehold series, a few short stories set in Keith Laumer's Bolo world, and...the Bazhell books. 

So far, the Bazhell books are among my favorites--the first book of which is Oath of Swords.*  How not, when you have five different acknowledged races of Man (elves, dwarves, halflings, regular human, and hradani), a seven-and-a-half foot barbarian from the most magically violated and violent of these races introducing himself by beating the hell out of a rapist prince while he was a political hostage at that court, and a long flight from a god that wants to make that barbarian his champion? 

Bazhell is a remarkably well-developed character with the heart of a paladin (which is why he's called as one), and the skeptical dislike of religion of one who's been severely harmed by one.  Which makes it doubly entertaining when he starts having a god visit his dreams while he's traveling away from his father's court to prevent a war: not only does he not listen, he actively blocks it out, turning run-of-the-mill dreams calling one to service into terrifying nightmares that he can't remember.  It takes a visit by that god's sister (a benevolent, gentle, goddess of music), constant harassment, and finally a summoned demon attacking him for Bazhell to actually stop being stubborn and follow his own inclinations. 

One of the things I found the most entertaining in this is that he doesn't just do the math for his space battles (including acceleration and deceleration in a microgravity vacuum), he also works out grammar rules and structure for his different languages--Bazhell has an interesting way of talking that is more than just an accent, and is always consistent.

I highly recommend this series, especially if you're looking for a high fantasy sword and sorcery romp through a feudal-style world. 

*Not only is the linked copy free, it includes an additional short story David Weber wrote in the same world that has me convinced that Weber occasionally samples either very strong drink, or illicit substances: he pulls modern American soldiers out of the Middle East to help battle a demon, then sends them back with their vehicle damaged.

A lighthearted romp through the realms of the improbable...

Okay, imagine that Earth's h. sapiens wasn't the only version out there.  Imagine that Earth was invaded by a whole advanced stellar empire of a different version.  One with big noses, fur, and tails.  Now, imagine that that bunch of different-humans weren't...quite so strong in the pure I.Q. department as our kind.  Or the common sense department. 

Once you've got those ideas set in mind, you've got the basic ideas behind Christopher Anvil's Pandora's Legions. 

I read Pandora's Legions for the first time several years ago, not long after I discovered Baen's free library website.  Since then, I've read it a few more times.  It has never failed to make me laugh out loud.  Anvil writes this from the point of view of the Centrans, and the befuddled horror as the benevolent dictators discovered that their newest "conquered" people weren't quite so readily subdued (and why) comes through clearly and realistically. 

The book itself is a compilation of a novelette and several shorter pieces set in the same world, only collected into novel form much, much later by Baen's Eric Flint. 

I very highly recommend this book.  It really is laugh out loud funny.  And it is, after all, free for download or to read online, at the above link.

From which I learned to be a wife...

I've spoken before of how I learned more important lessons about living and life from reading Robert Heinlein's work than I learned from watching my own family's interactions.  There's good reason for that: as most have gathered, my family is dysfunctional, at best.  I have one aunt that has been married for more than ten years, and her marriage isn't a good one, but one where she and her husband are sort of symbiotic parasites.

So, I turned elsewhere.  I read.  And read.  And read.  And finally found my example of how to be a functional human being in Robert Heinlein's work.  Then, I found my role model of how to be a good wife from his character of Maureen in To Sail Beyond the Sunset. 

I do love that book.  No one else but the Grand Master of Science Fiction could, in 1987, set part of his science fiction novel in the late nineteenth century.  The main character, Maureen, taught me much: she, like me, is amoral, and a bit of a sociopath, who had to make up her own set of social rules to live by.  Some of mine are based on hers.  Like me, she had a mother who was a bit of a self-righteous fundamentalist. 

Unlike me, she had a spectacular father.  Her father was her guide in creating her code of morals, and was her helper while her husband was off in WWI. 

I learned so much from her.  The single useful lesson my mother taught me (how to budget, and how important it was) was reinforced, but other lessons included how to raise children, how to live with a husband and equal, and how to live with yourself, when you were alone. 

The plot of the novel is a bit loose, containing much of the character's back story to fluff out her now, which is very...very...thin.  The story is told mostly while she's sitting in a holding cell in an alternate reality not her own, and is told as if she's talking directly to the reader.  It's a remarkably engaging read, for such a character-centric, plot-shy story, but that's to be expected from such a master storyteller, so close to the end of his career. 

The character herself has some...interesting quirks.  She is the mother of the oldest human known in her existence, Lazarus Long (who tells his own amazing life story in Time Enough for Love), and winds up sleeping with him. 

Yeah, that part kind of squicked me out, too.

Beyond that, Maureen's life is one well-lived, and is a story well-told, and well worth reading. 

Cheers. 

Some silliness

All the books I've reviewed thus far have been pretty rocking good reads, but have been more on the serious side.  For those who want something lighter, Holly Lisle's Sympathy for the Devil* might well be just the right speed.

 The story starts in hell, with Lucifer and his legions working in the most horrible office setting imaginable (old, cranky computers breaking down; air conditioning on the fritz; etc.), while he reads the weekend paper--including the horoscopes.  The main character, a young widow (Dayne Kuttner) who works as an ICU nurse, doesn't show up until chapter 2.  She muses on the "unfairness" of her beloved husband--a complete jerk who drank and cheated on her--being sent to hell because of what a complete shit he was, and prays for another chance for all residents of hell.  Says she doesn't want to go to heaven if heaven is so unfair.

Sounds like the typical "What I want didn't happen, so it's not fair!!" rebellion, doesn't it?  However, the prayer was made with all faith and sincerity, so...God unleashed a bunch of hell's inhabitants into her home state of North Carolina (a number equal to one percent of the population of the state at the time).  He saw it as an opportunity for some already damned to be saved, and as a chance to prevent others from becoming damned by offering a boost to their faith.

Well...it worked.  Sort of.  Yes, there were demons, succubi and incubi all over the place; guaranteed disease free hookers; all sorts of new ways to entice people into selling their souls to get the body/career/whatever they wanted...but there was a catch.  Satan sent his Lord of Lust to try to capture our heroine's soul, and gave him a set time limit to do it in.

There were a lot of funny situations--for example, the wardrobe Satan sent along to help set up Hell's own brothel held a lot of polyester, and a lot of plaid...and nothing that fit any of them.  The cash he sent was several thousand short, and if the one in charge hadn't counted it, he'd've still been held responsible for what wasn't there.  Demons stormed a Blue Devils football game and punctured the football in the attempt to make a touchdown.  God giggling about springing this on the devil without warning (I love the characterization of God in this novel--I can't quite describe it, but He is the all good for all religions.  And He has a great sense of humor.).

It's a good, cute, fast read, with lots of short chapters.  On the surface, it's feel-good, romantic, brain and soul candy.

But it does make the reader think.  I really loved it, and I've read it several times.  Each time, I've found something different to laugh at, and something different to think about.  I highly recommend it.


*Link goes to Baen's free library site, where you can download it in whatever format you prefer, or read it online.

Is this mindset really that rare?

I just finished reading a book I repeatedly heard Dave Ramsey recommend on his radio show: QBQ! The Question Behind the Question: Practicing Personal Accountability in Work and Life. 

I am shocked and amazed.  And disgusted.

This book is about nothing more that trying to teach people to look at what they can do to fix their own problems, or perceptions of problems.  This book is trying to steer people away from blaming others (i.e.,"Why can't they ever get it right/do their jobs/give me things I want or need to do my job?"), and toward figuring out what they can do to be more productive, and figuring out what they can do to fix their own problems.

I will admit I got a bit frustrated, when I started teaching.  Our campus email system didn't work, the textbooks sucked, the kids didn't understand the first thing about writing an essay, and my colleagues wouldn't stop complaining about admin, equipment, facilities, the shared adjunct office, turnaround time for the copy center...you name it. 

I thought about it...then gave my students my personal email address.  I tried making do with the textbooks I could find for a few years...then stopped teaching from a textbook (then wrote my own when I stopped teaching in a classroom).  It's not the kids' fault they come to us not being able to write--that is the whole point of our job.  Admin is admin, and they always have their heads firmly planted somewhere dark and fragrant, so it's best to just figure ways to work around it, I never had issues with any equipment issued (I actually prefer blackboards to whiteboards or smartboards), I quit using the shared office in favor of the library coffee shop, turned in stuff to the copy center way earlier than I needed to...

I also quit hanging around with the whiners.  Students were a lot more fun to spend time with.

I have higher ratings than most of the other Composition teachers in the department.  I have the highest ratings in the department in the online sections.

All I can affect is my class and class materials.  I ask for feedback from my students and revise the class accordingly.  I learn new ways to present the material, and incorporate them.  I figure out better ways to incorporate the use of technology into my electronic classroom and my textbook (screen captures, anyone?).

I find problems, or have problems brought to my attention, and I fix them.  I don't wait to be told what to do, and I don't whine about how it's not my job, or how I don't have things I'd like to have to make my job easier.  I just figure out what needs done and do it.  I've got it nailed with work, and I'm trying to set up habits to do better with that in my home life.  I know what needs done, and I'm working on changing myself (the only one I can change) to do it.

Which is the whole point behind the book.

Why the hell is this such a foreign concept?!?

I wanna move to Freehold!

I reviewed the Barnes and Noble Nook reader earlier this month.  One of the first things I did (rather, made my husband do) was go to Baen’s free library website, and pull a couple of their books for the nook.  One of those was Michael Z. Williamson’s Freehold. 

The book starts on Earth at some time in the possibly distant, possibly not so distant future.  Earth is now run by the UN.  Needless to say, the entire world is an inner city nightmare, and all the citizens subjects accept that!!!   They also accept crimes that most decent people would not, like rape, mugging, and theft. 

Not surprising, I suppose.  Guns had been criminalized, so only the criminals had guns.

Our heroine (tough girl) is in the UN’s military, and starts the book by deserting ahead of some bogus charges.  She runs to the embassy for the planet Freehold, and they manage to get her offworld and to their little libertarian paradise.

And it really is, too—she goes from a world where it’s too dangerous for a soldier to walk around off-base in uniform (certainty of mugging, assault, and/or rape—and none of it prosecuted); too dangerous for a woman to wear certain styles of clothing, or walk around in certain places, or after dark at all; and too dangerous for children to play outside, to a world where everyone is armed, polite, and the world is nearly crime-free.  She can’t quite comprehend it, at first, and freaks out about the local styles (nearly nude during the long, hot summers), the children playing unattended in the parks, and the way nobody locks their doors.

Another thing that Freehold has going for it is that there is no central government.  Few laws.  No laws governing behavior that only impacts the individual—recreational pharmaceuticals are sold openly in the park bazaars, right next to the tables selling guns and any kind of ammo you would ever want to have.  No social safety nets—no social security, no welfare, no food stamps, no free education.  No payroll taxes—you pay fees voluntarily, or get hideously fined if you come up before a resident’s court (i.e., a witness in a case of actual crime, or if you helped out during an accident and they needed statements). 

Yet, despite the whole lack of social safety nets, few starved—capitalism was totally unrestrained, and needed no licenses to sell goods and/or services (and what services!  Prostitution was legal and unregulated, especially since blood-borne illnesses were screened for before anyone was allowed on planet).  Despite the lack of gun control laws, there was no blood in the streets—until the UN tried something against a free world.  Not only was there no blood in the streets, but very little crime, and almost none of it committed with guns (there was a lovely illustration about what happened when that was tried—punk from Earth picked up a gun and ammo from a dealer in the park, tried to steal the gun by shooting the dealer, and got ventilated by at least one bystander who then proceeded to check on the vendor [who had been wearing a vest against accidents] while the punk bled out). 

One of the more interesting things I noted was that Williamson described the Occupy Whatever movement—and the behavior and general personality features of the occupidiots—to a fare-thee-well, at least seven years before the riots demonstrations began.

Seriously, I want to live on Freehold.  We had that, once—not in my lifetime, nor in that of anyone I know, but we had it.  Sad that we gave up freedom for the illusion of safety.

Chilling.

I know this is speculative fiction, but it could easily happen. Key quote:

"America’s collapse occurred when government ceased to represent the people and became the instrument of a private oligarchy. Decisions were made in behalf of short-term profits for the few at the expense of unmanageable liabilities for the many."

I really like John Ringo's vision a lot better. It's a lot more optimistic.

Creating a desert sounds like a stunningly good idea.

Long ago, the Mongols attacked the Middle East. Temujin, in particular, did a lot of damage when the residents at the time shaved the beards off of his ambassadors. He laid waste to an entire region, kidnapping artisans to build a city for him. Even after 1,500 years, the region still hasn't recovered. Many are familiar with the saying "He created a desert, and called it peace."

Including Tom Kratman. His novel, A Desert Called Peace raises a lot of ghosts--and a lot of questions.

The villians of the piece are familiar: radical, violent fundamentalist Muslims, and (in the shadows) the transnational progressivist movement. The kick-off incident was hauntingly familiar to those Americans who haven't forgotten why Islam is our enemy: violent radical fundamentalist rag-heads combined what happened to New York City with the Hindenburg.

Only, this time, some of the victims had someone with the money and know-how to avenge them. The main character, Patricio Carrera, who'd been living in a Panama-analogue for all of his married life, and whose wife and children (including one not yet born) and rich uncle were killed in the attack, had inherited the bulk of his own family's money, and had been formerly high up in the chain of command in his native country. And knew how to build an army.

Carrera chose to use his family money to build, equip, and train a small mercenary force to be used as a tool to help him gain his revenge--and damn, does he succeed.

I had a really hard time reading this book. It brought back a lot of memories of September 11, 2001, up to and including the sounds I could hear over the radio of those who chose to jump from the burning towers hitting the pavement. Carrera's wife chose to take her small children and jump, rather than be burned to death.

Suffice it to say, this book is not one I will re-read. Too hard.

However, along with the ghosts of September 11, this book raises a lot of questions. A lot of...suspicions.

The novel was set in the far future, on Earth's only colony world. It included flashbacks to our near future, many of which involved the transnational progressive movement tearing down society as it had worked up to that point. Indeed, Earth's own fleet and base on the colony world were run by the descendants of our modern movement.

And that's where the questions, the suspicion comes in.

The Earth forces decided that the United States-analogue country on the colony world was becoming too powerful, and would likely be a threat to their power and way of life on Earth, at some point in the future. So, they considered, and decided how they were going to nutralize that threat: they funneled money (and suggestions and building plans and security plans and flight plans) to violent radical rag-head terrorists. And, had it not been for Carrera simply not permitting the Earth ass-sucking media (who behave and believe the same way our American media does) to broadcast anything that he didn't approve, and not caring what they called him or implied about his techniques, the reprisal attacks to neutralize the threat would have faced the same difficulties and results as our own attacks on Afghanistan and Iraq--i.e., demonization of nation, intentions, and troops, and crippling ROEs being emplaced.

With all of the parallels, though, I have to admit that I wonder...how did the nineteen God-damned hijackers on September 11, 2001, figure out how to hit us, where, and with what? How did they get the idea? How did they get the money?

And who was using the ignorant shits as puppets?

Won't the real Islam please stand up?

Brad Thor’s new novel, The Last Patriot, is a definite page turner.  The plot moves along quickly and well, dragging the reader from Paris to Washington to Boston, from city streets to book sellers to college campuses to Thomas Jefferson’s homes.  It’s a very hard book to put down, thanks to the plot.  However, where the plot stands strong, Thor’s character development is a little too spare, and his place description is, like Hemmingway’s, less descriptive than I would have liked.

Let’s start with the plot: frankly, I’d be surprised if it hadn’t gotten Thor a lot of death threats from the Islamofacists.  The main point of the plot is that, just before he died (was murdered), Mohammed had a startling last revelation that completely negated the previous revelation that militant Islam was based upon.  This last revelation was why Mohammed was murdered by his closest followers: they were trying to suppress it.  They failed.  This book’s plot traces the footprints of the revelation through time, through scholars, and through previous presidents’ run-ins with militant Islam.  Though the secret is never revealed to the reader, the reader is alerted that it would give the peaceful moderate Muslims a very large broom with which to clean house of the rabid radicals. 

Thor’s plot, as I said, was terrific.  I couldn’t put the book down easily.  Thank goodness the chapters were short.

That said, his characterization and scene setting left a little to be desired.  Granted, this is not the first book in that particular series.  He may have done his character set up in earlier books.  However.  Most of the writers I read do keep in mind that not all of their books’ readers come in at the beginning of the series, and they do enough character work to compensate.  If Thor develops his characters at all, he doesn’t do much with character development in this book.  It wasn’t the characters that kept me turning pages, but the desire to see the rabid, radical, militant Islamofacists get theirs. 

Thor’s scene setting wasn’t much better.  I’ve never been to Paris.  Or Washington, D.C.  Or any of the other places that he tells us the trail of the mystery goes.  He never describes place. 

Correction: he minimally described the main character’s home, in that it’s a very old church, converted first to a military installation, and then to a paranoid survivalist’s dream home, with subterranean rooms and passages hidden behind and beneath the church’s altar.

He does, however, describe weapons.  His descriptions of the guns and their capabilities had me drooling.

All in all, I’d have to say Thor’s The Last Patriot is definitely worth a read.  Despite its weaknesses, it’s a fun romp through a dangerous world.  It certainly gives the reader their money’s worth on the violence, and on the social, moral, political, and religious themes.  It will really appeal to anyone who truly realizes what a clear and present danger militant Islam is to the rest of the world.

Isolationism as mistake, religion as tool

Robert Heinlein's work is always...interesting.  I recently finished his book Sixth Column, about a United States conquered by a imperialistic, communist regime: the PanAsian empire.  All that's left of America's government and defenders are six scientists, and one regular army type that used to work in advertising before the war started.  The six scientists are all that survive an initially poorly understood experiment in creating a new super weapon to combat those of the PanAsians.

While the plot was good, and the characterizations were varied and unique, what struck me as most thought-provoking were two things: one, that the threat wasn't seen as a threat, or even as a newly emerged technological superpower, until far too late because of a virulent form of isolationism; and two, that the heroes of the tale--the leftover American defensive forces--use the PanAsian policy of not harassing the religions of their conquered peoples as a method of fomenting a successful rebellion and defense of what was left of America.

I'll start with the isolationism.  Early in the novel, Heinlein warns his readers of the dangers of national isolationism through the sole surviving and free army officer's thoughts.  America had turned its back on the world.  We hadn't gotten involved in encircling Communist nations with freedom, or in proxy wars in Asia.  No involvement in Korea or Vietnam.  We'd turned eyes away from the enemy in an attempt to pretend that he wasn't dangerous.  The fictional America of Heinlein's imagination had gone so far as to pass a law called the Non-Intercourse Act, which forbade any business dealings with Russia, or any of its allies or business partner.

And, while America wasn't watching, Asia united--all of it--and absorbed Russia through conquest.  And, while America wasn't watching, the PanAsian Empire went about absorbing the rest of the world, and developing new weapons, and ultimately coming over the North Pole at us. 

Heinlein, as I've said, was a visionary.  Granted, our non-fictional United States has not become isolationist--yet--but we certainly have turned our backs on regimes that we never should have.  Many of our former allies in Central and South America have faced rebellion, and been taken over by communist regimes that are hostile to us.  This has happened while our attention was focused on Europe, and on the more obvious dangers in the Middle East.  

The second point that I found interesting was the choice by the main characters to use one of the bits of intelligence that one of the characters went out and gathered: that white males were not allowed to assemble, legally, anywhere but in church.  Nor were white females.  The army commander figured it out: the only way to foment and train for a successful rebellion was to set up a new religion.  This was successful mostly because, as Heinlein pointed out, to the outsider, all religions look equally crackpot.

One of the things I found particularly interesting about Heinlein's created religion was that it managed to do nothing to offend any other established religion--Western or Eastern.  Would that all religions were so cooperative and non-confrontational with one another.

I won't give away any more of the plot, but this is an early science fiction story.  Everything turns out all right in the end, despite one of the scientists cracking mentally and attempting to use the technological breakthrough to seize power under the delusion that he actually was the god that they'd made up.  

I highly recommend the book.  It was as much interesting political commentary, as I've said, as it was an engaging read.  

This Rome Shall Not Fall!

Damn you, John Ringo! You did it to us again! You created another unique, totally believable character with a presence so strong that even you described writing the book as taking dictation. The Last Centurion is definitely going on my recommended reading list. It's really a good book, but very unique in plot and structure.

Call it the blog from the future.

Bandit Six (or Bandit) is an army officer who decides to write his memoirs in a sort-of blog format. There’s no direct dialogue in this novel, only compressed and rendered in its gist. There’s little to no setting description, character description, or really much description of any kind. It’s a story, told simply by the man who lived it and led his soldiers through it. Told complete with “wife edits” whenever the character’s wife has something in particular to add. Usually explaining something the narrator leaves out (either through modesty, which doesn’t seem likely, or through Bandit Six not thinking what he’s left out is important), but sometimes commenting on an event or something in the narrative (“Wife edit: So that’s where that Ming vase came from!”).

The story itself is one that I think fits Ringo in with Heinlein as a visionary. Many of the things that happen in this book—from natural disasters to human caused—could easily happen.

First among the natural disasters, we have a mutated, human-to-human transmissible bird flu creating a pandemic. Starts (where else) in China. Spreads extremely quickly. Has a very high fatality rate, but not in the typical demographics that usually die from the flu. Bandit Six describes India as losing population equal to the entire pre-pandemic population of the United States among its very rich and very poor alone. Worldwide, he estimates something between a one-third and two-thirds fatality rate, depending on region, medical treatment available, and cultural causes that have more to do with responses to the disease than the disease itself.

Second, we have global climate shift (cooling). We have, at one point in the novel, snow falling in the deserts in Iran and Iraq. Imagine what that does in the United States.

Now, on to the man-made disasters: first, we have a liberal president FUBARing an emergency response plan with requiring the vaccines to fight the pandemic only go to socialized medicine centers (a.k.a., county health departments). Many counties follow orders to the letter, and next to nobody gets the vaccine. Lots of people die. Others, like (surprisingly) New York City, distribute vaccines to all hospitals, and get all city/county employees involved in giving vaccines. People still die, but not nearly as many.

Second, we have said president nationalizing companies that collapse because of a 30-60% fatality rate from the flu (depending on the area). Many of the companies are starting to re-organize, and raise their prices according to the cost of doing business. Many aren’t able to afford goods. So, said liberal president nationalizes businesses that a) have lost their owners/ board of directors/etc., to the pandemic, or b) the president thinks that the company is trying to “price gouge” the survivors.

Then, we have said president “nationalize” farms, to make sure that there would be enough food. Some of the farms, yes, lost their owners to the pandemic, but some were selling for what the market would pay—price gouging. Said president handed the farms over to people who’d never farmed, and were “specialists” in organic farming, a method which wouldn’t feed even the reduced population.

This is all related by Bandit Six, who also relates his own unit’s version of Xenophon’s 10,000’s march home from Persia. His small unit is left in Iran, guarding a base that the rest of the larger base is rotated home to deal with the disasters in the United States. He helps stabilize the region by taking out the area bad guys with a booby-trapped ammo dump, and an all-afternoon and all-night battle, turns over the base and food to some of the refugees that live nearby, and march out of Iran, through Iraq, on their way to Turkey to be airlifted home.

The story, as I said, was very compelling, and felt real. Ringo deals with all sorts of issues, like epidemiology, global climate shift, capitalism vs. socialism, and what happens when the system breaks, either through gross incompetence of higher ups or social collapse from disaster.

Honestly, he strikes me as a visionary. Look up the topics I mention from the novel. Just Google them. You'll find them. You'll find professional journal articles beginning to be written about most of these topics, and suggesting the same things that Ringo's novel suggests as a possible future.

Update: Ringo's nuts! A visionary, but certifiably insane! Not only does Bandit Six have a website, but a myspace page!