The Boxer Rebellion: The Dramatic Story of China's War on Foreigners That Shook the World in the Summer of 1900 By Diana Preston

The Boxer Rebellion: The Dramatic Story of China's War on Foreigners That Shook the World in the Summer of 1900

By Diana Preston

Diana Preston was born in London in 1952. She is an Oxford-trained historian and it was at Oxford that she met her husband and co-writer Michael. She studied modern history, he studied ancient languages. After earning her degree, she worked as a freelance writer, mostly travel articles for UK newspapers and magazines. She would also write book reviews for the wall street journal and Los Angeles Times. Her first nonfiction book was released in 1995 and as of this review, she is still writing.  Her most recent book on the Yalta conference was released in 2019. She and her husband Michael also released a historical fiction series on the Mughal Empire under the pen name Alex Rutherford (Neat!). She is also an avid climber, having climbed Mount Kinabalu in Borneo, Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania, and Mount Roraima in Venezuela. Before we dive into the book proper, however, I kinda want to provide some context. 

In the year 1900, China was a nation in deep distress (Still in their Century of Humiliation.). The Qing Empire was seen by many Han Chinese as a foreign occupation... Because in a lot of ways it was (Yes). The Qing dynasty was founded by invading Manchus from Manchuria, who overthrew the native Ming dynasty in the 1600s. Now, the Manchus had had a lot of support from Han Chinese at the time, as the Ming were seen as weak and corrupt. Those supporters were adopted into the Manchus, either through marriage, appointment, or literal adoption into a Manchu family and clan. Perhaps because of this, the Qing were very concerned with maintaining the Manchu people as a separate identity from the Han and often went through periods of banning intermarriage and clearing Han Chinese from government posts and then into more liberal periods of intermixing (And if I remember correctly, this ran counter to how the Han tended to deal with foreign invaders.  It wasn’t the first time.  They basically assimilated anyone who conquered them.). 

The Han also resented the Manchus for things like enforcing the queue haircut which was not a traditional Chinese haircut and trying to suppress Han traditions and cultures from time to time (Which is not a very good way to, you know… stay on the throne.  It didn’t help that the Qing dynasty also failed to prevent Western Imperialism.{I feel like the Western Imperialism was the more important of the two}). I have mixed feelings about this because some of those traditions were harmless and others that the Manchu's opposed were things like female foot binding, where an infant girl's foot is literally broken and reformed to make it impossible for her to do things like walk fast (Yes, but trying to impose reforms like that from on high never works.). There were also taxation issues and the eunuchs. 

The eunuchs weren't a Manchu innovation but a perennial problem in the Chinese system. Now the idea was simple enough: create a class of educated men who have no familial loyalties because they can't have children and thus will be totally loyal to the state. The problem is this has never worked! Whether it's a class of slave soldiers like the Mameluke and the Janissaries, or men who swear to celibacy like Christian Priests and Monks or Eunuchs. What happens is either they adopt extended family members or they come together and work as a class to dominate and control the government often to the detriment of everyone else! (Or in the case of celebrate priests, they just...aren’t actually celibate.  So many popes had kids.  So. Many.)  We as a species need to accept that you cannot create a group of people who have no conflicting loyalties and will likely create a slow poison that will destroy or take over your civilization if you try! That said, a small part of me does look forward with macabre glee at how new technologies will likely convince people to try again and recreate this failure point in new and exciting ways. But I'm getting off-topic. 

By 1900 neither the eunuchs nor the Manchus were the biggest problem on the plate because the Westerners had not only arrived but were digging in. The 1800s had been a series of humiliations for the Chinese. Whether it was the Opium Wars or the series of uneven treaties (“Uneven” does not really describe them. {Yes but the uneven/unequal treaties is what the Chinese named them so I’m deferring to them}) that allowed western powers to snip off enclaves for their own use. There was also the Taiping Rebellion and the fact that the Qing had had to turn to a British officer to train an army good enough to put down the rebellion. On top of that, the western technologies and businesses flooding China were putting thousands upon thousands out of work with no alternatives (This is why I am a principle anti-imperialist.  When you use conquest,  or for that matter the IMF, to strip a country of its resources without benefit to them, subjugate its people to the yoke of capitalism, install and prop up corrupt elites… You can tell yourself whatever lies you want about helping them “develop”, “civilize” or whatever, it never actually ends well for those people and it is always wrong.  Period.{While I’m certainly not going to bat for imperialism, this sounds like an argument for complete nonintervention more than anything else}  There are ways of helping a country develop that don’t involve stripping them bare.  It’s just that, well… no one does it.). Severe drought in the north meant that the crops were failing and even the rich farmers were facing starvation. The fact that the only real major relief being offered to the average Han was coming from foreign missionaries only ground salt into the wound. This wasn't helped by the fact that Chinese converts would use missionaries to aid in lawsuits and other troubles, increasing the feeling of your average Chinese feeling like a 2nd or even 3rd class citizen in their own homeland (Because they were.). Now some missionaries were well-meaning people who wanted to help, but there were opportunists, hucksters, and worse among their ranks and the missionaries practiced almost zero self-policing

It's here that the book steps in to cover the Boxer Rebellion, the explosion of a xenophobic, traditionalist, and mystical populist movement of men and women who believed that through mastery of martial art rituals they could summon Chinese spirits to throw out the foreigners. The Manchu court found itself in a tense position because the Boxers could just as easily turn into an anti-Manchu movement. So it seems they decided to try and point the Boxers at the Westerners and stay out of the way. Mrs. Preston takes us through the months before the uprising as increasing tensions and confrontations led to anxieties and concerns among the missionaries and converted population of Northern China (The other reason not to do imperialism.  The locals might just get fed up and kill you.{I should note this is usually used as an excuse for more imperialism, the Zulus tried to kill us, we need to flood their country with more troops!}). Especially as the Boxers became increasingly aggressive, attacking, robbing, and torturing Chinese converts to Christianity to death. The Boxers would also spread stories of Christian missionaries being the darkest of sorcerers who gained their powers by eating Chinese babies and using the blood of menstruating women. Bishops were promoted to literal devils of hell, with protestants usually having to be content with being mere demons or unclean mortal sorcerers. 

Missionaries would bring their warnings to the diplomatic community in Peking, who for the most part ignored it. Although they did request and receive armed reinforcements for their community. By the early summer months, confrontation and harassment became common even in Peking. Everything came to a head around June 18th when German diplomat Clemens Von Ketteler shot and killed a Chinese boy who he suspected of being a Boxer. It's interesting to note that this was considered rather stupid of him even at the time and following events pretty much prove this right. This triggered a military riot and a wave of revenge killings directed on Chinese Christians and led to Manchu Captain En Hai shooting and killing Ketteler in return, something I can't really blame him for. This however triggered a lot of reactions from an international expedition of troops marching towards Peking, that was forced back to a mass siege of the legations that ran from June 20th to August 14th.  

It's on this siege and the expedition that relieve that siege that the bulk of the book focuses on, for the most part using first-hand accounts from the Americans and Europeans that were trapped in the legations and to a lesser extent the Catholic cathedral known as the Beitang. Mrs. Preston also uses first-hand accounts of the officers of the international expedition that relieved the siege and took Peking. It's here that I have to note the strengths and weaknesses of the book. Mrs. Preston does a good job of taking these first-hand accounts and weaving them together into a coherent and gripping narrative of people trapped and surrounded by hostile forces trying to survive against brutal odds. Given how the Boxers treated people who surrendered, it was widely accepted that this was going to be a battle to the death. What I was found interesting was that many of these first-hand accounts were actually written by the women of the legation, who were not allowed to take part in the fighting but did run the hospital, manage the food supplies, and performed other tasks like sewing sandbags to use in barricades when walls were sapped or defenses had to be shored up. (Okay that part is interesting because in a lot of historical accounts, women get short shrift.  That said, there are enough historical treatments of imperialism from the point of view of the imperialists.  Given issues talked about below, this is a special case, but it still irks me.)

However, these sources are massively skewed towards English and American sources. We don't even get a lot of French or Italian viewpoints despite their being present in the siege. There are zero first-hand accounts used of the Japanese troops and officers that defended the legations, although I should note that the Japanese troops were universally praised by the defenders for their discipline, endurance, and fighting ability. Additionally, the Chinese coverts are also on record as praising the Japanese troops for being more willing to take risks to defend them and share food with them. Nor are there much in the way of Russian sources used in this book, even though Russian troops were a massive presence in the relief expedition second only to the Japanese. I could see issues arising in getting a hold of primary Russian sources but there shouldn't have been any issues in finding Japanese sources and there should be some! (Yes, but the Author is English.  So we’re not just gonna be Eurocentric, but Anglocentric to boot.{Interestingly enough I can’t find any Japanese books about the Boxer Rebellion, I mean it could be a case of not being translated…})

Mrs. Preston does however explain the lack of first-hand Chinese sources. There don't appear to be any. Despite the Boxer Rebellion being lauded in the last half of the 20th Century as valiant proto communists, there seems to have been no preserving of any sources. Of course, most of the Boxers were illiterate according to popular tradition (To say nothing of going through decades of civil war and foreign invasion that has a tendency to destroy documents.{Started by the Boxers, they burnt down Imperial China’s version of the Library of Alexandra and didn’t take the books out first!  Argh!!!}) and the issue is confused by a number of Westerners, including one survivor of the siege, publishing fraudulent accounts claiming to be written Chinese first-hand accounts. This has made using anything claiming to be a Chinese primary source fraught at best. Add in that recently the Chinese government has been slowly but surely moving the Boxers out of the spotlight and into dim forgotten annals of history for various reasons (Basically, the Boxers weren’t actually proto-communists. {Ironically the Taiping have a better claim despite being a very weird cult}) and you end up with a situation where despite Mrs. and Mr. Preston heading off to China to try and research the Boxers, you find stuff that was written at the time to be nearly non-existent. This is still aggravating though and limits the usefulness of the book as a reference. 

Still, the book is a well-written and informative look at events in Northern China at the time and wraps up by going over the results of the Boxer Rebellion. Mrs. Preston is to be commended for not shying away from describing western atrocities but going into the same depth and examination as she does with Boxer atrocities. Whether it's discussing the Boxers burning down Hanlin Academy and destroying vast amounts of priceless Chinese literature, or the sheer brutality of the international expedition in its wholesale looting and sacking of Peking as if it was a medieval army. The Prestons are blunt and matter-of-fact in describing what happened and who did what according to the material they have. Reading this book does help one grasp why there was and still is a good amount of resentment towards the West from China both its people and its government, as well as grasping the complex mess that China was at the time. Still, the lack of sources outside of Anglo witnesses is a deep and regrettable weakness. Because of this, I'm giving The Boxer Rebellion: The Dramatic Story of China's War on Foreigners That Shook the World in the Summer of 1900 By Diana Preston a B-. Give it a look but know you're gonna need to grab other books to do additional research on the topic if this is something you're really interested in. 

  I hope you enjoyed this review, next week on Oct 1st we’ll be starting our second Fangsgiving, which was voted for by ever wise patrons.  Via their selection, we’ll be focusing on vampires so I’ll be reaching back into the romantic/gothic era of English Literature.  So we’ll be looking at The Vampire by John Polidori and Carmilla by Sheridan Le Fanu.  That’s right we’re opening with a doubleheader.  Now, this is all because of votes taken on https://www.patreon.com/frigidreads where you can join us and vote on future content!  All for a dollar a month.  Join now and help decide if November will be devoted to Dune or not!  Also, vote for what books will be reviewed in December!  Hope to see you there, until then, stay safe and Keep Reading! 

Red text is your editor Dr. Ben Allen

Black text is your reviewer Garvin Anders

 

Snake Agent by Liz Williams

Snake Agent

by Liz Williams 

Elizabeth “Liz” Williams was born in Gloucester in the UK on February 26th, 1965. Her father was a stage magician, but due to World War II and other events had to turn to working in a bank to keep the family fed. He kept practicing stage magic however and also kept a bookshelf full of John Dee and other occultist works (I officially like this dude). Meanwhile, Dr. Williams' mother was the Gothic author Veronica Williams, who wrote nearly a dozen novels herself.  This created a unique environment for Dr. Williams to grow up in (An occultist stage magician and a gothic novelist?  Naaaah, that’s perfectly conventional, seen it a million times). She attended the universities of Manchester and Sussex graduating with degrees in philosophy and artificial intelligence and then headed to Cambridge to graduate in 1993 with a Ph.D. in Philosophy of Science (Well alright then!). 

During her college career, she worked a number of part-time jobs, including a stint as a pier-side Tarot reader (Yeah, but with her dad’s library she’s probably not bullshitting but doing it right.). After graduating with her Ph.D. she worked in and out of Kyrgyzstan from the mid-90s to the 2000s as an administrator for an education program. This involved moving back and forth from the UK to Kyrgyzstan as the demands of the job required until in 2000 the program finally folded. She then spent a year running an IT program at Brighton Women's Centre. It was in 2001 that her first novel Ghost Sister was released, with Empire of Bones released in 2002, the Poison Master in 2003, and then Nine Layers of the Sky in 2004. Dr. Williams lost her long-time partner Charles in 2002 to complications surrounding a brain tumor, the fact that she could write at such a pace while dealing with a loss is something to respect in my opinion (Honestly, it probably fueled her.  I rewrote two entire Harry Potter books as queer communist propaganda to cope with a breakup.  And now I am rewriting another one.). 

After this, her attention switched to writing novel series, such as the Banner of Souls Sequence and the subject of today's review The Detective Inspector Chen Sequence. She also wrote for the Guardian throughout the last decade and runs a witchcraft shop (Hell yes!), The Cat and Cauldron in Glastonbury with her current partner, Trevor. As you might guess, Dr. Williams is a pagan and has written several nonfiction works on paganism. She is also a member of the Order of Bards, Ovates, and Druids, a Neo-Druidic group that started in England but now has members across the world. Now let's talk about the novel we're here to review, shall we? 

Snake Agent was published in 2005 by Night Shade books but distributed by Simon & Schuster, which means that Night Shade provided the editing and text setting services but Simon & Schuster actually got the book to the markets. Set in the near future, mostly in the city of Singapore 3, a franchise of the original city of Singapore (What? {I got no idea, that’s all the novel says}), the world of Snake Agent is one where the barrier between the afterlife and the physical world has been breached. Humanity has definite, physical, undeniable proof of the hereafter and it's the afterword of Chinese mythology (Oh God No.). This means Heaven and Hell are both run by dense and nearly impenetrable bureaucracies staffed by supernatural entities meant to keep the universe running and human souls moving smoothly through the wheel of reincarnation (Imagine the Flughafen-Verspätung Traurigkeit {This translate to Flughafen-Verspätung Traurigkeit}). So not even death is permanent and any punishment or reward is temporary before you're stripped of your memories and personality and sent forth to do it all over again. 

Detective Inspector Chen tries not to worry too much about bigger picture stuff like that, he's got enough on his plate. Because Chen's job is to investigate supernatural crime and try his level best to keep the people who cut deals with hell from getting away with too much. This is a tall order, as cutting a deal with hell does tend to lead to a bit of material wealth and temporal power even if the demons of hell will always betray you eventually (Why do people do this?  Aren’t there books titled “Faustian Bargains and You!” with the first sentence being “You do not want to do a Faustian Bargain.”?{You’re asking the Christian like he knows? Like half of my religion is don’t make deals with the devil and what do people do?  Make deals with the devil!}). Now Chen isn't on his own here, the powers of Heaven are also operating openly on Earth to maintain the balance, which in this case means that officers and demon hunters like Chen and others have patron goddesses' and gods who provide divine juice to their clients to confront demons, evil spirits, and other malefactors on more even terms. Humanity has also rediscovered old arts to exorcise spirits and things that go bump in the night. So instead of using court orders and a pistol, Chen operates with seals and a Buddhist rosary. Of course, hell and heaven are both bureaucracies so Chen still has to maintain his paperwork and make sure he has the proper visas filed if an investigation requires him to visit the afterlife (But at least it’s a smooth bureaucracy that works, unlike Franz Kafka International Airport? {AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA}). 

Of course, life ain't easy for Chen. For one thing, he married a demon, who is actually a very understanding and gentle lady but that's still enough to get him in really bad odor with his patron goddesses. The demon lady in question also fled Hell after putting herself in a bad odor with the authorities so Chen ain't popular with them either but I'll get back to this. On top of this, he isn't Mr. Popular with the rest of his department (So he’s pissed off literally everyone.  He needs a seminary in People Skills.  Christ, even I have managed to pull that off and I’m an outspokenly queer communist, even at work.{I don’t think it’s anything he did that pissed the humans off, just what he represents}), because humanity's collective reaction to finding out the afterlife is a real place with its own paperwork requirements? Plug our ears, stomp our feet, and whistle real loud in the hopes that Heaven and Hell go away (This is a perfectly understandable reaction, really.). Now don't get me wrong, some people are being practical about the whole business but the majority of humanity is screwing its eyes tightly closed. So when you turn the hall and there's a guy like Chen, who absolutely reeks of this supernatural stuff? You find somewhere else to be. Now his fellow officers aren't actively bullying Chen or anything, they're just doing their level best to avoid him but even that's gonna eat at you a little. 

Still, Chen figures he can still do his job, after all, he has a wife to support and given how both Heaven and Hell would love to scalp her, she isn't gonna be getting any part-time jobs to help out anytime soon (Poor thing.  What did she do, anyway? {Refuse to marry a demon that was a hive of festering diseases}Well that is definitely a reason to run...). Plus Chen seems rather driven to do his job, although the book doesn't really give us any insight into why. We find that Chen is a good, stand-up person with a moral code that the vast majority of us can respect but what motivates him? Where does he come from? Does he want anything but to go home to his wife at the end of the day? What drew him into policing the supernatural as opposed to just mundane human crime? None of these questions are really answered. I wouldn't call him a cipher but when I finished the book I realized I knew just as much about Chen as I knew at the end of the 4th chapter or so. What I know is that he is a decent person who, despite being a bit cynical about the world around him, honestly believes that he can work to make it better even if it's only marginally. Because of that, he is willing to pay the cost of doing a good deed and the right thing, no matter how steep it is (No real person is that driven without external pressures of some kind…)

This is a good thing for just about everyone in Singapore 3. Because his willingness to pay the price of a good deed is what drives him to take the case of a rich girl's ghost being kidnapped to hell. When Pearl, age 14, died officially of anorexia she was slated to head off to heaven. So imagine how her mother feels when she finds a photo of her girl's ghost in hell (Someone misfiled her paperwork!). Chen's the only one who can help her but that means going up against wealthy men and demons with minimum support from his goddess. To make up for it he is going to get some help, of dubious nature. Whether it's Zhu Irzh the slightly dodgy but almost good-hearted demon enforcer working for the ministry of Vice or the fanatical No Ro Shi, Beijing's greatest demon hunter (Okay, these people sound interesting…). 

Zhu Irzh is a pleasure to read because he's a snarky, swashbuckling type of guy. Yes, he's corrupt and untrustworthy by human standards but he's got something of a conscience underneath it all. It's just a spark of empathy and compassion but when balanced with wry humor about the ineptness of the government of hell and his concerns about what is going on around him...  Well, that spark of empathy he's hiding is going to get him killed if he's not careful. Meanwhile, No Ro Shi is as human as any of us but is a cold, relentless maniac. Driven by a black and white view of the world fueled by a suppressed outrage that Heaven and Hell not only proved the Party wrong by existing but don't comply with Party doctrine (Which Party?  The CCP or some other Party? {Yes, the CCP, he’s from Beijing and is a leading cause of demon death in Northern China}). We don't get a lot of No Ro Shi but a little of him goes a long way and despite that, I feel I understand what makes No Ro Shi tick better than I do the title character of the series, weirdly enough. 

The world-building is interesting and revealed through character action and thoughts in marvelously subtle ways. For example, there is no public or charitable medicine in Hell but there is an endless list of things that can hurt you. So even the demons have to spend large amounts of their wealth on health insurance (Let that be a lesson for you all.  Hell is fully privatized.{Oh you wish.  It’s public-private partnerships all the way down. Private Insurance paying kickbacks to government agencies etc} Kill me.). This comes up when Zhu Irzh is injured and despite being a uniformed officer of what passes for Law in Hell, the first words out of anyone's mouth is “Do you have Health Insurance?” This is also carried by Zhu Irzh amazement that Detective Chen is willing to heal him, even if that means making his goddess even more upset with him. Inari provides a lot of world-building in her own plotline which gives us a bit of a tour of Hell. A hell that is the worst combination of capitalism, autocratic rule, and corporate/aristocratic intrigue. 

I enjoyed reading the book but I did feel that Chen himself needed more characterization. For that matter the human world could have used more work as most of the book seems very focused on Hell.  This left Singapore 3 feeling pretty generic honestly.  That said Dr. Williams did a great job creating a Hell that is very different from the standard Christian or western visualization and giving us an alternate look at how you can view the afterlife. Because of that, I'm giving Snake Agent a B+ and I recommend it to anyone who would like to see a cyberpunk world with a fantasy twist that isn't Tolkienish in nature. 

I hope you enjoyed this review, which was voted for and recommended by our ever-wise patrons.  If you enjoyed it and would like to support this review series or would like a vote on future reviews, join us at https://www.patreon.com/frigidreads where a vote is only a dollar a month!  Next week we look at a nonfiction work, The Boxer Rebellion by Diana Preston.  Until then stay safe and keep reading! 

 

    

A Natural History of Dragons, A memoir by Lady Trent By Marie Brennan

   A Natural History of Dragons, A memoir by Lady Trent

By Marie Brennan

  Marie Brennan was born in 1980, in Dallas Texas. Her birth name was Bryn Neuenschwander, although she has stated a strong preference for her professional name so we'll be using that throughout this review. Marie graduated from Harvard with degrees in anthropology and folklore and pursued a graduate degree at Indiana University in the same subjects. She left the program without finishing her Ph.D. however, to pursue writing full time. Marie (She also states a marked preference for using her first name, so we'll honor that) also states that she has been happy to use her education to provide subject matter for her books. She published her first novel Warrior in 2006. She is also an avid RPG player, known for being a fan of the Legend of the Five Rings setting, and has also written novels for that setting as well as for the tiny d6 game setting. She has taught a number of creative writing classes as well as world-building and public reading classes for groups ranging from age 12 to college-age and older. She currently lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with her husband.

She is at this time a member of the Book View Café Author's Cooperative. Which is an Author owned and operated publishing company. Founded in 2008, all members are traditionally published authors and serve as editors, copy editors, and so on as needed (Excellent!  And yes, Your traditional communist editor has returned!). While they do focus on ebooks, they also have works that have been physically published. The Book View Cafe sells ebooks directly from their website and I will be attaching a link at the end of the review. That said, our current review topic was traditionally published by Tor Books, which I've already gone into so let's get to the novel. 

This is the first book in a fairly long series presented as the memoir of Lady Isabella Trent, who is the preeminent authority on dragons in her world. Dragons were difficult to study due to being large flying carnivores, who were not fond of the company of men. Their bodies also rapidly degrade after death making studying their anatomy incredibly difficult (But...  part of being a biologist is killing and dissecting the things you love! {What can I say, Dragons are spiteful that way}). If that wasn't enough, Isabella also faces a great many issues revolving around her sex and class. To put it bluntly, her world is very much like Victorian England, and women, especially noble-born, married women aren't supposed to be interested in science at all (Because let us squander the talents of a huge portion of the population!  I swear on Engel’s Beard, that bullshit is insane. {What is it with you people and facial hair anyways?}). They are also certainly not supposed to pursue an education in such matters, even if it's one through private studies and resources. They are also most certainly not supposed to be galloping about in foreign lands, getting into dangerous situations, and being alone with strange men. As far as Isabella is concerned, so much the worse for society because she is going to do exactly that or die trying (Good for her!). 

Of course, she doesn't start off there. This book is about her first attempts at learning and study and her first real expedition into Dragon country. It's also a book about her childhood, her attempts to try and make peace with her culture, and her marriage. I should note that Isabella is very lucky in her marriage, as her husband Jacob shares her interest in Dragons but also holds her happiness as more important than the consequences of not restraining her (This guy is a keeper!). Let me unpack that a bit. While women suffer more obviously and frankly in more ways than men in a sexist system that leaves them as the dependent sex, men aren't untouched by suffering in such a system. In this case, Jacob is running a real risk of social and economic damage by supporting his wife so openly. He could be viewed as anything from a weakling to a monster who callously exposes his wife to danger. Given that Jacob is dependent on social ties to maintain his wealth and privilege such damage could have dire consequences (Yeah, can confirm.  Being a social pariah is bad in these societies.  Hell, we can see shadows of this in our current society.  A guy who does nice things for his partner too much or seems overly concerned with their happiness gets called “whipped” and is thus emasculated.).

Without making a point of it or drumming it into our heads, Marie shows how such systems maintain and police themselves by hitting both men and women with heavy penalties for acting outside what's permissible for them. It works all the better that Isabella isn't trying to lead a revolution (a pity), she's just trying to study dragons, for science. If society would just leave her alone and let her get about it, everyone would benefit. Now lucky for Jacob and Isabella they have a strong patron in the Earl Hilford a noted authority on Dragons who makes a point of inviting both of them on the expedition to Vystrana (Which is a stroke of luck indeed, but not historically unprecedented.  Victorian scientists were often far ahead of the curve that way historically too.  Not, you know, most, but there were enough of them that they could get shit done.). 

It's an expedition that may be a doomed one. Not only are they in a country without the permission of the Tsar, but the guy who did invite them is missing. On top of that, there are smugglers they have to cut a deal with, villagers worried that these nosy foreigners are going to stir something up that will get them all killed, and a local nobleman who isn't really thrilled to see them. On top of everything else, something has riled up the dragon population and gotten them attacking humans. While the dragons were attacking people before Isabella and friends showed up, that's not going to stop people from blaming them if things go badly (Especially if the country is backward…). So on top of navigating an unfriendly local environment, trying to conduct a scientific inquiry in the field with only the most basic tools and instruments (there are no trains so everything has to be brought in via donkey.), they also have to solve a mystery and not get eaten while doing so. 

Marie follows a very American (although writers from other nations have done it as well) tradition of creating a fantasy world full of cultures that closely echo but are not one-to-one copies of real ones. Fans of Robert Howard's Conan or David Eddings work know exactly what I mean by this. For example, Isabella's home nation of Scirland is basically the United Kingdom. Vsytrana is basically Romania under Russian occupation, where all the nobles are Russian and don't even speak the language of the native peasants. There are some changes, for example, the majority religion is more in line with Judaism than Christianity with a division between Temple-based followers and Rabbinical traditions (Neat!  By the way, Happy New Year, fellow Jews.). 

There's also an ancient empire that is sort of like the Romans in that they left ruins everywhere but no one can actually read their writing so there's no massive influence on modern languages (So kinda like the Etruscans? {Or the Mycenaeans or the Indus Valley Civilization, etc}). The ruins of one such settlement are a minor plot point for example. This means this world lacks Latin, likely explaining many scientific issues. Because Latin served as a common language for scholars and scientists across Europe in our world. I also assume this means there's no Byzantium equivalent. With the major religion being more akin to Judaism, there is also no large organized church on the lines of the Roman Catholic Church, so Isabella's version of Europe feels less tied together as a single unit. Frankly, those changes are more profound than adding Dragons to your setting, nations seem more isolated in this world and even imperialist ambitions seem muted in comparison to real life. Which isn't a bad thing honestly (It is much harder to sustainably conquer a people without significant cultural integration.  Christendom did this in Europe, so there was a lot of movement of people, linguistic admixture, etc. There was a kind of cultural unity created by the Church.  Lacking that, you’ll likely get earlier formation of nation-states, etc. An English king inheriting your French estate isn’t such a big deal when they share that common church link and daily life doesn’t change.  But in this world, that isn’t likely to go over as well because that common thread isn’t there and the new feudal overlord is viewed as more foreign.)

The world-building is frankly amazing but Marie also does a good job of having us explore the world through Isabella's eyes. This is framed as a written Memoir of an old Isabella looking back at the struggles and accomplishments of her early life. It's also where she's looking back at her many mistakes and the costs of those mistakes. Usually, I don't care for that kind of narrative frame, often it robs the book of suspense because we know if the main character survives to 80 or whatever to write this book, then their survival is basically assured. Additionally, introducing this as a famous person's memoirs tells us that they quite likely triumphed. Marie does find a way around this by reminding us that you can win and still pay heavily for the privilege and not every victory feels worth the price. There is loss and pain in this book, enough to keep the readers from thinking that Isabella is invincible and will be just fine at the end of it. That said, this isn't a dark book even if I found the ending somewhat bittersweet. 

As for Isabella herself, she's an interesting character. She is a woman, who is possessed with talent and a deep overriding interest, as well as a fierce determination to develop both of those things. However, she does at least try to make peace with her society as miserable as that makes her at certain points in her life. That said, she is practical and zealously devoted to science and expanding the reach of human knowledge. This makes for an interesting person as our first-hand narrator, with the book being told entirely from her perspective, after all, she is the one writing it. This is not to say we don’t get to know other characters: her husband Jacob, her patron in the sciences the aged but deeply respected Earl Hilford, and her fellow apprentice Tom Wilker, a commoner who fought his way up the ladder to get the Earl's respect and attention. While Jacob and the Earl range from supportive to indulgent, Tom resents Isabella being there, feeling like she got here just because she married Jacob. Isabella in turn resents being judged by someone she feels is less learned and studied than she is. Which creates an interesting dynamic. 

Honestly, I really enjoyed this book and I really found myself wanting to look at Marie's other novels. I'm very impressed here and I can't recommend this book enough. I'm giving A Natural History of Dragons, A memoir by Lady Trent by Marie Brennan an unreserved A. This is a great example of character and world-building in a fun and interesting plot. Go ahead and give it a look yourself. 

I hope you enjoyed this week's review.  The book was not only recommended by one of our ever wise patrons but was voted for by our patrons as well.  If you would like a vote over what books or films get reviewed, theme months or other events, Join us at https://www.patreon.com/frigidreads for as little as a dollar a month!  Next week we’ll be looking at Snake Agent by Liz Williams.  Hope to see you there.  Until then stay safe and as always, Keep Reading! 

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Red text is your editor Dr. Ben Allen

Black text is your reviewer Garvin

The Clockwork Dagger By Beth Cato

 The Clockwork Dagger

By Beth Cato

Beth Cato was born, Beth Louise Davis, on January 13, 1980, in Hartford, California. She started writing at 4 years old, mostly about unicorns and horses, stapling the book spines to make them more professional. She graduated high school at 16 and started attending college, it was there that she encountered pressure not to write or even read fantasy. This includes a creative writing professor sneering at her for reading a fantasy novel. She wouldn't even have been 19 from what piece together, and this isn't isolated behavior folks. This should help y'all realize why I hold a deep and lasting disdain for a number of creative writing instructors (No joke! I had some really bad professors while getting my degree. Megalomaniacs who would fail students that didn’t kiss their ass, a case of flat-out sexual harassment, and a huge mess of nepotism that stunted the entire biology department. Yet the single most USELESS teacher I ever had was my creative writing teacher, who’s only criticism of a short story I turned in was “That’s really not what is selling right now”. Well, you would know you half-witted useless potato you don’t inspire a class by telling them on the first day “I’m only doing this till my novel sells”. SORRY bad educators get under my skin worse than bad writing) This was also backed up by relatives, at least some of whom were concerned for her soul, something that I, the son of a science fiction and fantasy-loving pastor, have always found deeply confusing. 

At age 20, Mrs. Cato would marry her husband Jason who was enlisted in the navy. They would spend at least the next several years in South Carolina and Washington. She currently lives in Phoenix, Arizona (I don’t know her but I have family that has interacted with her at writing and author things). I assume because, after a whole lifetime of living next to oceans, she looked at our heat-blasted oven of a valley and celebrated escaping the tyranny of water and cool breezes. She remains in Phoenix living with her husband, son, and several cats. Mrs. Cato would publish poetry and short stories and advanced to her first novel in 2014, the subject of our review actually, The Clockwork Dagger. It was published by Harper Voyager, who I have discussed recently enough in the past that I don't feel we need to go over them again. 

The Clockwork Dagger takes place in the kingdom of Caskentia, a nation that frankly seems rather cursed. It's ruled by a Queen that huddles in her palace kept in power by an organization of secret police and assassins, the Clockwork Daggers of the title. Among the commoners and lower nobility, she seems a rather university loathed and with good reason. Caskentia has been locked into a war for decades with a nation across the mountains that they call the Waste. Now the war was in a sense unavoidable, it started with a Waster assassin team killing the King and all the immediate royal family in a botched attempt to kidnap the princess of Caskentia for a forced marriage, leaving only a niece of the Queen to inherit the Throne(Oof decades? Yeah I can see why folks are pissed, getting locked in the war seems rough maybe some strategic assassinations would have been better?). 

However, the war has been a total waste of men and resources(MAN I am trying so hard to not go for low hanging fruit and topical references because we are better than that here). While a Peace of sorts has been reached after decades, the Caskentia male population has been decimated and many of the survivors are amputees with various levels of steampunk cybernetics. Meanwhile, the civilians are suffering famine and plague with entire villages being burned to ash to prevent artificially created diseases from spreading and the price of everything is skyrocketing. It's no surprise that no one in Caskentia feels any sense of triumph here and is looking for someone to blame.  A Queen who huddles in her palace, who isn't even supposed to be wearing that crown? Makes for a hell of a scapegoat. 

None of this is the concern of Octavia Leander, even though the war shaped her entire life. She was orphaned by a Wastelander terrorist attack. However, she was gifted with powerful healing magic and was found and raised by a school devoted to teaching such ladies how to use their talents. Ms. Leander has also found solace in the worship of the Lady, a human woman who achieved divinity and is believed to be the source of her powers. This is honestly hard to argue with as Ms. Leander does no crap magic here, with pinches of herbs and prayers she can heal even disastrous injuries, cure diseases and bring back people from the very brink of death even when they're suffering massive traumatic injuries(Yeah I would give that independent confirmation). 

Despite being one of the strongest healers in a generation, Ms. Leander isn't looking for fortune or fame here. She just wants to get to a small village that's suffering from a plague and get to work healing people so they can get to work farming. However, even if you're not interested in politics, politics can be interested in you(OH man someone is about to become a political pawn). Because Ms. Leander finds herself a target in a web of intrigue and skulduggery while trapped on an airship heading south. As she and the people around her are subjected to increasingly lethal attacks and kidnapping attempts. Her only allies seem to be the overly cultured Alzano Garrett, a steward on the rather run-down ship despite being overqualified. There's also her cabin mate, an old friend of her teacher and foster mother, Violet Stout. 

However, her allies aren't everything they seem to be. Ms. Leander has to figure out their secrets as well as the secrets of the people targeting her if she's gonna make it to safety. For that matter, she is gonna have to figure where safety is. In the small village that hired her? Among the government-run safe houses and armed guards of the overcrowded and polluted city of Mercia. For that matter is safety worth it if she cannot use her gifts and must live in a place she loathes? What other options does she have however and can she bring herself to use them? How does this tie into her faith in the Lady and why is she receiving cryptic messages from her goddess through messages from her patients (Yeesh can you imagine this in a modern Dr’s office, medical billing and coding would have kittens trying to handle prophecy. “Claim denied because you coded for prophecy involving locust, these were biting flies”), omens, and more? You'll have to read the book for answers. 

First of all, I have to say Mrs. Cato displays a real talent for establishing characters and their characteristics quickly and solidly. She was able to convey the important parts of Octavia Leander to me in under 5 pages. Considering that some writers can't do that for their main characters across an entire book that's honestly something to treasure. She also does this quickly and efficiently for Alanzo Garret, Viola Stout, and the various other characters. For example, Mr. Drury is quickly established as detestable, being a handsy, entitled man, who simply won't take no for answer. Of course, this is also a double edge sword as it undercuts the surprise of the plot and robs it of any twist (I had not thought of characterization like that being a double-edged sword but that make sense, and on some level, I’d almost prefer that over the tired twist of it turns out the good person is actually a monster.{Sure, but if we’re dealing with spies and covert agents, shouldn’t being able to control and hide their bad personality traits be a basic job qualification?}Oh for sure, What I mean is the “Hanz in Frozen” guy you really like is actually pure evil twist is overdone, hell I’d take a guy who is totally milk toast and boring turns out to be the bad guy over that.). When Mr. Drury's role in the plot is fully revealed I'm not shocked, I'm just nodding along saying of course because what else could he be? 

Mrs. Cato is also pretty good at writing character relationships, as the relationship between Garrett and Leander is incredibly well done. By the time I reached the end of the book, I fully believed that these were two people who not only enjoyed each other's company but liked and respected each other(that’s hard to do without it feeling like “these two are together because the literary gods demand it). There's even chemistry there, which is damn hard to write as a lot of writers will focus on one character feeling lust or waffling about not being able to make their minds. Mrs. Cato doesn't seem to go for that here and I am very grateful for that as there's only so much mooning about I can take in a book. For that matter so is the relationship between Leander and Mrs. Stout, although I'll talk more about that in a moment. It's not just the positive relationships however, the relationship between Mr. Drury and Leander is also well done and I'll be honest. I took outright glee in Ms. Leander making Mr. Drury pay for his behavior. The antagonism between Mr. Garrett and Mr. Drury while subtle and often played out in the back is fairly well done and fun as well. I mean come on boys, if the Marine can figure out that it's only polite to keep your hands to yourself... 

That said, I'm not so fond of some of the characters like Mrs. Stout, who feel like they should be in another book entirely. The problem here is that Mrs. Stout has her own story that's honestly a pretty different one from Ms. Leander's. While Mrs. Cato makes it clear she's focusing on Ms. Leander's story, Mrs. Stout's story is different enough in tone and style that it's fighting the rest of the book. Maybe it was just me but I could feel Mrs. Stout and her backstory trying to creep into the novel and seize control of the plot and I didn't care for it. Plus there were often times when I was asking, why is Mrs. Stout even here? I just feel like she simply doesn't mesh well with the other characters and the tone of the plot and it's not in a fun or interesting way. While the relationship between Ms. Leander and Mrs. Stout is well done, there's practically no attention paid to her relationship with the other characters. Other than her disapproving of Mr. Garrett for daring to work for a living and because I suppose someone in authority is required to disapprove of the romantic interest in these kinds of novels. 

Balancing it out I thought the world-building was done well and was mostly done through character interaction and scene description. This leaves a lot for the reader to infer but that's something I encourage. Don't get me wrong budding writers, I love a nice, juicy appendix at the back of the book but sometimes it's best to world-build with a teaspoon instead of a trowel. I know that sounds like heresy, you can focus too much on world-building is all I'm going to say there. Mrs. Cato keeps all the world-building in service to the plot, although that does leave me wondering just what the hell is going on with the wastelanders? 

This leads me to another complaint. How is it that the wastelanders are struggling and fighting just to survive in a hostile and heavily damaged environment but at the same time can wage a war of mass aggression against a more industrialized, wealthier, and more populated state? Quite frankly the war makes no sense because it wasn't a guerrilla war(it started with assassination why not have it continue with that, I mean I could see why the populace is angry if all of the upper nobility is hiding behind thick walls while common folk are randomly murdered or crops are burned in the middle of the night. {Expect there’s also massive trench warfare going on where large armies are battling it out on defined battlefields!}), there was a front line, heavily implied to be a mass of trench work with Caskentia on the defensive most of the time. Meanwhile, the wastelanders can also use mass germ warfare (despite such things as germs only barely discovered (blood magic?)), hijack airships to use in mass terrorist strikes, and even send assassins into the Royal Palace. They can do that all but still can't win the war and are constantly said to be a sparsely settled, half untamed wilderness that is barely fit for human habitation. It comes across as rather nonsensical and I'm left with the idea that either everyone in Caskentia believes in a set of wild lies about the wastelands(that would be interesting if it was an even footing but the population was sold on the idea of wastelanders being backwoods savages) or Caskentians just unable to fight their way out of a wet paper bag even while holding scissors as a group. In short, either the wastelanders make no sense or the war makes no sense. 

So while there are issues with the book and the world it's set in. It's still a fun story with very believable characters and relationships. So if you're way more interested in reading a tense mystery with a practical but human heroine and humane but capable hero then you'll enjoy this book. You'll also enjoy it if you're here for a slow-burn romance built on mutual respect and interest. Which honest does give this book a bit of a bonus given the sea of toxic and near toxic relationships that beset fiction. If however, you're enthralled by world-building and focused on wider plots and themes you'll be frustrated at the conflicting information you're getting as the characters tell you one thing but the very plot and setting tell you a completely different thing. Since I'm kinda midway between these two poles I give Beth Cato's The Clockwork Dagger a B-. Great character work and relationships, good instincts on world-building but there are elements of the execution that need work. Additionally, the plot and the pacing are professionally done making the book easy and fun to read. Given that this is her first novel I wouldn't be shocked to see Mrs. Cato improving wildly over time. 

        I hope you enjoyed this review, this book was chosen in a poll by our ever-wise patrons.  If you’ve like to have a vote on upcoming reviews, theme months, or just show support for the reviews considers joining us at https://www.patreon.com/frigidreads for as little as a dollar a month.  Next week we’ll be looking at another book chosen by the patrons, A Natural History of Dragons: A Memoir by Lady Trent by Marie Brennan.  Until then stay safe and Keep Reading!

Blue text is your guest editor Mr. Davis

Black text is your reviewer Garvin Anders