Rich Man's War By Elliott Kay

Rich Man's War

By Elliott Kay

the crewman shouted “I don't even want to be here! I only signed up for the college money!”

“Yeah?”Tanner huffed. “Me, Too.” page 411

Elliott Kay grew up in Los Angeles and now lives in Seattle. Before becoming a writer, he served a hitch in the coast guard, earned a bachelor's degree in history, survived summers in Phoenix (What the hell is it with authors in this review being Phoenix connected? Does the Arrakisesque heat create transient delusions that turn into books? {Maybe all these science fiction and fantasy books started as heat caused fever dreams?}), was a substitute teacher (the poor soul) and managed to get married. If nothing else, I can see a lot of his life in this book series; from his experience in the coast guard informing the training, to his main character Tanner Malone having to put up with hazing, disdain, and disrespect despite just wanting to do his job and get to college. Let me explain, Rich Man's War, published by Skyscape books, an Amazon imprint for self-publishing authors, is the sequel to Poor Man's Fight. I reviewed that novel about a year ago and if you need a refresher there's a link at the bottom at this review. Rich Man's War was published in 2015 and continues the story. Let me touch the basics, quick warning though this is our last review of the year so I'm feeling lacking in restraint.

It is the far future, humanity has figured out a lot of amazing things; like Faster than Light travel and how to extend our youth and health for over a century. We've also managed to turn your desktop computer into something you can wear on your wrist but odds are most y'all saw that coming (I mean, barring a haptic interface and holographic display we can already kinda do that.). Humanity is in theory united under the Union, which is an incredibly weak central government that only exists because the various alien races of the galaxy got tired of dealing with dozens upon dozens of feuding human nations, tribes, and clans shotgunned across space. Because of this, the only real function of the Union is to provide a common diplomatic front to other sapient species and a common defense with everyone kicking in funds to build, man, and maintain the Union Fleet (Dear God, save us all from minarchy. {Well the Union is not a nation, so I figure it’s actually better than the UN and competitive with the EU… Although the EU has more corporate controls}) The Union has managed over time to win some power, such as setting up restrictions on the fleet size of members in order to, if nothing else, limit the amount of devastation that occurs when member states decide to go to war with one another (I cannot express to you how horrified this makes me.). Which can and does happen, because there are no rules against it and the interstellar corporations that increasingly make up a larger share of the Union's economy has worked hard to prevent any kind of court system that could work out issues between member states because if such a court system existed, the same Union members could sue the corporations and maybe even win! Imagine what that would do to their bottom line (I retract the previous comment. I am even more horrified of this.)

It's a vast bottom line too because the Union members are under restrictions over how many ships they can field and space pirates operate across the void the corporations make good money operating as mercenary security (Aw Hell Naw!). Thus they're able to legally maintain large fleets and armies. As if this wasn't a bad enough idea just about all the interstellar media is owned by these same corporations and they run the education system (Frigid. Get the diesel fuel. There’s a society that needs to be burned to the ground. This polity is worse than the EA.). So I'm assuming that Mr. Kay's thesis behind this setting is that as a species we simply do not learn from our own history. Well, the government of Archangel, a settled system with four planets and a good number of asteroid colonies have had enough of this crap. In the first book, they nationalized their education system and took over their own security arrangements (Good for them! They could do more, but that’s a good enough first step.). The Corporations did not take this well and decided to sic pirates on Archangel to bring them to heel. Enter Tanner Malone, a really smart kid out of high school who just wanted to go to college. Unfortunately, since the education system is completely privatized, that means everyone graduates high-school with a debt. Now while Tanner had a pre-test week straight out of hell and even worse day of the test, none of that matters because the test is bloody rigged. That's right, it's not enough that the corporations get to drain money from every human being in the galaxy, avoid the law of most systems by ensuring there's no place to take them to court and maintain fleets large enough that no one can pursue more kinetic options. They have to rig the bloody system because God forbid you little walking wallets walk away with any spare change. I really want to decry this as unrealistic but I just got done reading a follow up on Volkswagen’s years-long scheme to cheat on environmental tests and Nestle decrying the fact that American courts won't let them seize water sources from towns on the idea that their bottled water is a public service (Capital abhors a public good where there is profit to be made. The capitalists, driven by the logic of the capitalist system which forces even decent people to act like monsters to avoid being out-competed by the actual monsters, will inevitably create situations like this. That isn’t even me being left of Trotsky. It is the straight-line computation. They absolutely will privatize the air if we let them.{I was hoping you would discuss rent-seeking above, as it is a prime example of it} Rent-seeking is just a special case of this general principle. Find public good - the more necessary to life it is the better - find a way to own it. Charge out the ass for it, with little to no cost to you!). So the only way I could argue against Mr. Kay here is by turning this review into a fantasy novel in its own right. Getting back to it, Tanner joined the rapidly expanding Archangel navy to get food, lodging, and a source of money to pay off the very large debt that he earned for (And presumably also to strike back against the capitalist trash. Or at least that’s a side benefit! {Tanner isn’t filled with revolutionary zeal here, he just wants to go to college} Hence, the side-benefit.) the privilege of basic schooling. When all of his shipmates were killed in a pirate attack, he not only survived but managed to take out the pirates and become a massive hero. Tanner's firm hope was that the rest of his life would be quiet and people would forget about his actions letting him fade into the background. Unfortunately, Tanner Malone is going to learn that the universe is never going to be that kind to him (Poor Tanner.).

Because things are heating up between the Corporations and the government of Archangel who goes public with the proof that the tests are rigged and starts seizing corporate property within the Archangel system, expelling their executives and declaring the debts that Archangel citizens owe to them null and void (Yes! YES!). This is a disaster for the corporations who realize that they can't afford the hole in their budgets that losing the 9th largest economy in the Union creates, nor can they afford for other systems to start to get the same idea and they need to get the Archangel government on camera recanting their claims before people start taking them seriously. So the navy, which still has Tanner Malone on the rolls for the next three years, isn't gonna let him take a backseat now that they know just how awesome he is. So Tanner, after having undergone medical and psychological treatment, is sent back out into the void where he proceeds to get himself into and out of trouble with a furious combination of quick thinking, bravery, and refusing to second guess himself in combat. It's not all bad though, as Tanner also receives additional training and commits to a career path within the navy (Might as well turn into the skid! In his shoes, I’d do the same damned thing. Hell, if we had an actual void-navy… let alone one committed to smashing capitalist overlords…{Well Tanner is figuring that if the universe is after him, he might as well learn as much as he can to make it hard for the universe to get him}). This is good because while the Archangel navy is well trained, well lead, and willing to commit to insanity if it keeps them free of corporate serfdom... They're outgunned, outmanned and fighting against powers that can maintain safe zones for recruitment and rearmament outside of their strike range. That's usually a bad sign for you in a war. Now the CNO of Archangel Admiral Yeoh has a plan to try and maximize her advantages but she's gonna need all the crazy lucky awesome she can get to pull it off. Meanwhile, in the background, there's a lot of cloak and dagger operations going on as Archangel pulls any asset they can get a hold of to survive, even morally questionable ones (Well, yeah.). Meanwhile, the corporations are pulling together their own assets and making their own plans because if they want to maintain their position of dominance across human space, or even keep the company solvent, they can't let this stand. For both sides, this rapidly becomes a confrontation with survival on the line.

The first 300 pages of the book are a careful set up of why both sides are willing to commit to armed conflict and what's on the line for them. Mr. Kay does a good job capturing the feel of a car sliding on ice towards a deep hole as events sweep up everyone and push them towards armed confrontation. We get a sense of what Tanner is struggling with as he tries to bring a sense of normalcy to his life and move on even as the galaxy assembles itself into a giant tinder pile. That said there is plenty of action going on as well, as old villains with their own grudges are also operating in the galaxy as well as forces outside of Tanner's control. To show us this, the book spends more time in other character's viewpoints than the first book but I'm fairly okay with that as it gives us a look at the wider context of the situation. He also does a good job of showing the mass confusion and barely restrained panic of warfare. It's been said more than once (and Mr. Kay uses this line in the book) that inside every army is a mob waiting to get out and when the bullets are flying and everything is going down the sewer is when you're at the highest risk of the mob getting unleashed (History bears this out. Things get really bad when that mob is unleashed. Sometimes it happens intentionally like in Nanking. Sometimes less so like the Russian army moving through Germany. Sometimes it’s just the reality of war in a given time period and the mere threat of being sacked was enough to force a city’s surrender.). We also see that on a smaller scale as we see Tanner's reaction to being thrown into the thick of it again. Because none of the events of the first book have left Tanner unscarred. Don't get me wrong, in a lot of ways he's the same kid he was at the start of the series. He's a bit sensitive to emotional blows but brave and intelligent as well as very mature for his age. However, in the book we see him... He very clearly shuts a part of himself down completely when faced with a stressful situation like combat. Which isn't entirely wrong because if you don't you won't survive it. Combat is simply not the time to be processing your fear, grief, or anger. When I read Tanner in combat - especially the climactic battle at the end of the book - I've seen that before and all I can say is that Tanner is not okay but by the end of this book, no one is. Because this isn't a book about the glory of war, while there is a big fight at the end of this novel that would shame most summer blockbusters, it doesn't solve anything at the end. The war, like the vast majority of real wars, isn't decided by a single engagement and the loses that the good guys take are so grievous they may make their victories pointless. So our novel ends on a somber note, with neither side really out of the fight. While Archangel is fighting for the best of reasons, the plain fact is that this war is bringing pain and destruction on its people and the survivors are going to be carrying that weight for the rest of their lives. Not even victory makes that go away.

Rich Man's War brings us intrigue, diplomatic maneuvers, skulduggery, and action-packed military missions while showing us the costs of all of that on the ground. By letting us see what this does to Tanner and young men and women like him, Mr. Kay reminds us firmly that even a war with a clear moral component is going to kill a lot of people that don't deserve to die. This might seem a bit of a mood killer but I honestly think we should remember that while sometimes wars must be fought and some enemies can only be deterred with violence, that comes as a cost beyond any dollar amounts. Rich Man's War by Elliott Kay gets an A from me for being to tell such a tell while keeping it a page-turner and keeping me invested in the characters.

Welp, that's it for this year folks! We wrap up in what is our 250th post and I would like to thank everyone who has been a part of this and say that I hope that you will continue on with us next year. We will be returning January 24th with whatever novels win the now open January poll. Currently in the lead is The Emperor Blades by Brian Staveley. Now if you'd like to vote in that poll or in February's poll, feel free to join us at https://www.patreon.com/frigidreads Where votes are just a dollar a month. Until then, may you have Happy Holidays, a Wonderful New Year and above all else... Keep Reading.

http://frigidreads.blogspot.com/2018/09/poor-mans-fight-by-elliott-kay.html

As always, red text is your editor Dr. Ben Allen
Black text is your reviewer Garvin Anders.

The Silk Roads: A New History of the World by Peter Frankopan

The Silk Roads: A New History of the World

by Peter Frankopan

Dr. Frankopan was born in the United Kingdom on the 22nd of March, 1971. His father, Louis Nicholas Anthony Doimi Frankopan was forced to flee Yugoslavia in 1951 by the communist government. This was due to the fact that Louis was an aristocrat and the communist government was seizing his lands (I am so spoiled for choice in terms of commentary here. I’ll leave it to the collective imagination.). Mr. Frankopan did manage to land on his feet (Understatement), marrying Ingrid Detter De Frankopan, a Swedish barrister and noted professor of international law (seriously she published almost a dozen books on international law). One of their daughters ended up marrying into the British Royal Family becoming Lady Nicholas Windsor (Damned monarchists). Dr. Frankopan himself attended Eton college (For those of you who don’t know, Eton college is one of the all-boys boarding schools where Rich Fucks send their children to be hazed and turned into Tories. Peak British Aristocracy. More than land on his feet, the exiled Yogoslav aristocrat managed to fall up the unearned privilege ladder if he can send his kid to Eton.) and then went to Jesus College in Cambridge where he met his wife Jessica (she was earning a degree in anthropology) and received a degree in Byzantine History. He went on to Corpus Christi College, Oxford (basically one of the colleges that make up the University of Oxford) where he earned a Ph.D. He is currently Professor of Global History at Oxford, Senior Research Fellow at Worcester College Oxford, Stavros Niarchos Foundation Director of the Oxford Centre of Byzantine Research. He also founded and run a string of hotels with his wife Jessica, they live in Oxford with their children. His first literary work that I can find is a translation of The Alexiad for Penguin books published in 2009. His first history book, The First Crusade The Call from the East was published in 2012. The book we're looking at The Silk Roads was published in 2015, by Vintage Books. Vintage Books is an imprint founded in 1954, it was bought by Random House in 1960 and currently is a division under Penguin Books.

The Silks Roads is an incredibly ambitious book, where Dr. Frankopan seeks to argue for an entirely new look at history placing Iran and Central Asia in the centerpiece as the engine of human history. The title refers to both how and why he believes this region to be so vital to the course of human history. The Silk Road or roads was a network of trade routes that went through central Asia and Iran connecting China and India to the Mediterranean world. The trade that traveled through those routes was staggering even in the ancient world bringing eastern luxuries to the cities of Rome and bringing western goods to Eastern markets. This, argues Dr. Frankopan is where the root cause of many of history's grand moments and turns first came into being. To make this argument, he gives us a broad survey of history starting from the Persian Empire and moving forward from there at a rapid clip. Through the chapters, we see the effect that various groups have had on the Silk Road region and the effects that the Silk Road had on them. To do this Dr. Frankopan takes us on a long journey down the many centuries showing how the trade along the Silk Road or the lack of it affected human civilizations both in Asia and Europe. Interestingly enough from my view, he also makes the argument that everyone benefits when we all calm down and just be cool. For example, there are several periods of peace early in the book where wealth beyond the wildest dreams of avarice flow across the Silk Roads and promotes explosions of scholarly thought and artistic expression but someone always decides that this means they gotta try either expand their power or clamp down on their rivals and everything goes down the drain. This leads to a period where not much is done on the artistic or scholarly front. To be fair, it's hard to research or work on masterpieces if you're just trying to find food or if you need to devote your energy to dodging invading armies. I suppose if there's one theme that unites human history across all times and regions, it's the idea of “Everything was going great and all we had to do was be cool... But we were not cool. We instead decided to wreck up the joint.”

Now the book doesn't entirely focus on the silk road regions, because Dr. Frankopan decides to follow the money in this book. If you do that in world history that means sometime after 1492, you're heading to the Atlantic. Now it's here that I learned a couple of interesting tidbits that I hadn't picked up before. I knew that Christopher Columbus was looking for the eastern coast of Asia when he set off from Spain (And thought the world was smaller than it was, because he couldn’t math.), what I didn't know was that he was fully gripped by the idea that he could convince the Indians to march west to fight the Muslims in alliance with the European Christians. Making him one of those people who just cannot let go of the fact that Christians don't run Jerusalem on top of all of his other flaws and vices (Which were many. Holy Fuck.). It was, however, the Portuguese who would find a sea route to India by going around Africa, something that the Kings of Portugal would take great delight in rubbing in the faces of the monarchs of Spain... Until the New World Treasure ships started rolling in. Dr. Frankopan takes great efforts to map out the effects of the Portuguese trade and the New World's wealth being drained out to Spain had on the Silk Roads. It was one of the factors in a mass collapse of Venetian dominated trade as the Portuguese started undercutting them. They could buy Asian goods at the source and then sail them back to Europe paying no additional duties or taxes on them and the Spanish would simply bury them using mass amounts of New World Silver. New World Silver also fueled the European obsession with Chinese goods. The influx of looted silver was so massive that the price of silver simply crashed in Europe and the Near East but remained stable in China. Which cued up hordes of Europeans looking to take their silver where it had the most purchasing power. This fueled Chinese isolationism because they didn't have to go looking for wealth, it was fighting every obstacle to throw itself at their front door.

Dr. Frankopan traces this silver price crash as part of the reason the Spanish Empire began its collapse, buckling under the strain of bad policy and megalomania (And inbreeding). This lead to a shifting of the center of Europe to the North West, or to be more specific England, while leading to the staggering fall of southern Europe. We don't get very many details of the English Empire, to be fair we don't get to many details in this book as there's just too much to cover. Most of the focus is in the last decades of the English Empire, where Dr. Frankopan advances a different view of the British Empire in the last decades of the 1800s. That of an overextended, overburdened power living in fear of a rising Russia trying to punt the eventual reckoning down the road just a couple of decades in one bad decision after another (Isn’t that kind of the standard view? {Noooo. The standard view is Golden Britannia ruling the waves until the world wars destroyed it} My read of the history of Empire must be a bit closer than standard, then. Because none of this is unfamiliar to me.). Especially in English policy in regards to Persia. It's here where Persia retakes center stage of the book as we examine the establishment of the Anglo-Iranian oil company or as we know it today British Petroleum (A pox be upon it). Persia was the center of a competition between a newly expansionist Russia and the United Kingdom looking for a bulwark against further Russian expansion as the Foreign Office found itself having nightmares of the Russian Armies marching through Afghanistan into India. Meanwhile, they ignored the rising tide of anger and resentment rising in Iran. It's in this context that he presents the decision of the British Empire to pursue an alliance with France and Russia against Germany, another rising power that was wary of Russia. I have to admit this might seem strange to readers who were born after the 1980s and know Russia only as a nearly spent power grimly clinging to relevance due to past successes and nuclear stockpiles but I'll remind such readers that Russia was once a superpower capable of causing panic from Berlin to Washington D.C. Another strange thing is his presentation of the world wars as the beginning of the end for the west, casting the United States as the last vestige of Western Might in some ways as the European Empires fell apart in the aftermath of World War II. It's certainly different than how I was raised to look at events.

The last part of the book looks at the world wars and the rise of the United States and it's being pulled into the Middle East. I say pulled because Dr. Frankopan presents the US moving into Iran and the Middle East out a need for oil and a fear of the Soviet Union despite internal resistance to the idea of entering the world's biggest sucking sandpit (this might be my own bias emerging here, readers). Dr. Frankopan examines US policy and meddling throughout the cold war and the moves of the USSR, although vastly more attention is given to the US than the USSR. To be fair, we did win the cold war which makes our actions the more relevant of the two (Not really. If only because the actions of the US were in opposition to the USSR so both are relevant.), I suppose but the coverage still feels uneven. I'm not sure if this was his intention but the picture of the US that emerges is one of a nation capable of reacting quickly to changing situations and rebound quickly from setbacks but also one of a nation that so damn busy reacting to the situation that no one stops to consider the long-term results of those actions. Just trying to gain short term improvements in positions even if everything is on fire and falling apart. Which was kind of what was happening when the Iranian revolution happened and Saddam decided to break with the Soviet Union to attack Iran. This portrayal isn't super flattering I admit but it's better than the narrative of the US bumbling from one disaster to another that I often run into (Well if the shoe fits…{Except it doesn't Bumbling idiots don’t get to be superpowers. Plus the fact that the post World War II international system is basically an invention of the US State Department is a strong mark against such ideas}). In this read of the situation, the American government moves from one improvisation to another as things keep exploding and it works frantically to stay ahead of the fallout. Another interesting tidbit here is that the Soviet intervention into Afghanistan may have been fueled in part by the rumor being floated around that the leader of Afghanistan was considering throwing in with the Americans. The book ends in the post 911 era, which is full of mistakes galore but also notes a few we avoided; such as Dick Cheney’s constant calling for bombing the Iranian nuclear plants despite being told to his face by the military that this wouldn't work. So it's good to know that there are some bad ideas that we avoided.

I don't feel that the Silk Roads quite makes a convincing case that we should look to the Central Asian area as the ground zero of history. Part of that is because Dr. Frankopan tries to cover just to much history in a single book to make a convincing case. There are worse crimes than ambition for a book to have but here the history is spread too thin for any convincing analysis to be done. Additionally, there are issues of focus as we intensively look at English and American decision making and consideration but not Russian or Chinese ones. I'm going to argue that's looking at half the picture and presents a skewed view of events. To be fair to Dr. Frankopan I think the reasons for that is it is vastly easier for someone like him to get ahold of American and English sources than Russian and Chinese ones (This is true. I have a friend who studies the history of the USSR and she basically has to travel to the archives in Moscow to get the most basic documents. But because of this, I can play six degrees of Joseph Stalin.). To be fair, I'm not sure anyone could get a hold of any Chinese sources except the official party line, which always paints the party's decisions as wise and beneficial ones but that's a target to aim at another time. That said, I do feel the Silk Roads is valuable for the economic view of history it provides and the different narratives of certain historical events, which I don't think are necessarily wrong even if I don't agree with them. To steal from popular culture, sometimes it does depend on your point of view. Overall, however, I'm giving Silk Roads A New World History by Dr. Peter Frankopan a C+. It simply doesn't have the page count to make the case it wants to and cover the massive scale of history it wants to. However, it's still an impressive work for what it is and worth reading in its own right.

This work was chosen by our patrons for review.  If you would like to vote on what books and other works get reviewed, consider joining us at https://www.patreon.com/frigidreads For a dollar a month you can vote on theme months, future reviews and more! Next week, we close the year with a book I've been wanting to get to for some time.  Rich Man's War by Elliott Kay!  Thank you for staying with us and as always Keep Reading!

Red text is your editor Dr. Ben Allen

Black text is your reviewer Garvin Anders