Breach of Peace By Daniel Gibbs and Gary T Stevens

Breach of Peace

By Daniel Gibbs and Gary T Stevens

Before we begin, I have to give one of our dreaded disclaimers. Both the editor and I know Mr. Stevens and have known him for years. That said I've never met the man face to face, as our friendship has solely been carried out online. I've been reading his work and giving him praise and grief over it for years now and in some ways commenting on his work prepared me for this review series. He has also been supportive of the reviews, becoming one of our ever-wise Patrons. In fact, Mr. Stevens sent me this book and was the man who told me about Mr. Gibbs' work in the first place. That said, everything you are about to read is my honest opinion but I feel giving you a review without mentioning my relationship would be dishonest. (I will second all of this, with the added caveat that I’ve been collaborating with him on Fanfiction for the past few years… Just to be clear as well, the co-authorship here is basically Gibbs for the world, while Mr. Stevens did all the actual writing.)

I discussed Mr. Gibbs' background in my review of Fight the Good Fight back in May, so I won't repeat myself. Mr. Stevens was born in DeLand Florida, his Mother a Licensed Practicing Nurse and his Father worked mostly as a Commercial Driver (May he rest in peace). He is currently a Professional Security Officer and an amateur historian. Before this book, his main writing experience was writing fiction on the internet, including a variety of fan fiction (Extremely complex multi-univese fanfiction). Which frankly I would defend as good practice for writing your own stories, especially since it exposes you to criticism both good and bad and you need to learn how to tell constructive criticism from just plain bad criticism. He has been working with Mr. Gibbs since 2001 on the Echoes of War universe with his own work within that setting Breach of Peace released in 2019, with additional books being released in 2019 as well.

To provide a brief recap of the premise behind the Echoes of War universe, a totalitarian communist government took over Earth at the close of the 21st century. As part of its program, it demanded that other forms of identity, such as religious belief be destroyed (although people were allowed to keep their languages, which strikes me as weird as language is a powerful means of maintaining a separate culture and identity [Problem is, it is very difficult to kill hundreds of languages. I’ll save my rant on how this is just Bad Communism™as well. I did that in the previous review. Suffice to say, good communists, are not class reductionists. {And yet it’s been done, the European powers did a pretty good of killing minority languages in their own states or crushing them to the point of extinction in the name of creating or preserving a common national identity, France for example. Frankly killing religious belief is just as hard or harder and the League isn’t hesitating to attack that.}] ). Those who would not surrender their beliefs or submit were able to flee as a fabled genius came up with a method of FTL that was cheap enough and easy enough to build that they could flee before being stopped. The single biggest group of people who fled founded the Terran Coalition. However, not everyone wanted to be a member of religious space America and friends (I know I wouldn’t be, as I would be forced to flee the Terrible At Being Communist State.). So some folks decided to peel away and make their own nations in space, with blackjack and hookers! Well, some of them, others decided to be boring and just make their own nations with others starting as members of the Coalition but deciding that it wasn't gonna work and just leaving. Thus were born various minor human powers and single planet nations or in some cases planets split between rival nations. In the centuries between this and the League of Sol showing up to attempt a surprise conquest of the Coalition, a certain amount of resentment was built up by the Coalition among the minor powers due to the Coalition's behavior or simple fact that it was the 500-pound gorilla in the room and they weren't (In fairness, America is kind of a dick. So Religious Space America isn’t gonna be different. {No one reaches hegemonic status without some level of dickery, I’m not saying that as an excuse but it’s a pretty ironclad law of international relations at this point}). Of course, everything changed when the League of Sol attacked. The minor powers declared neutrality, which was frankly short-sighted but realistic of them and it did kind of work out for them when the war dragged on for decades.

Our protagonist here is Captain James Henry of the independent trading ship, the Shadow Wolf. He’s a former Coalition Navy officer who was drummed out of the navy on trumped-up charges to cover for powerful interests. Captain Henry makes his living as an independent trader, owning his own ship, picking his own jobs and crew, answerable only to his clients and himself... And one bad job away from ruin. He's a drastically different character than David Cohen, as Captain Henry has no real faith or loyalty left to give and it's honestly understandable. Mr. Stevens does a good job of keeping Captain Henry from turning into some edgy parody however, as he is capable of having friendships and enjoying his life. That said Captain Henry is very leery of giving any faith or loyalty to groups or organizations having done that once already and been metaphorically burnt so spectacularly that he decided that fleeing his home nation to live among strangers was the best course of action. So Captain Henry is a man who is intent on being an honest businessman who looks out for his ship, his crew, his friends, clients, and himself, and some days he even manages to do it in that order. However, Captain Henry isn't the only colorful character in this crew, as he has collected a band of folks from across known space. This sometimes leads to some friction as these folks with very diverse backgrounds and political beliefs have to work and live together in tight spaces. I mean we have the ship's doctor Oskar, a man who fled not just the League of Sol but Earth itself, Tia Nguyen a former socialist revolutionary (aawww yeeaaah) from a planet dominated by mega-corporations, and Felix a hardcore libertarian from the Coalition just to start with. The crew is a great mix of people of different ethnic backgrounds, faiths, and political beliefs that get along by carefully not spending too much time discussing those politics. Of course, none of them are fans of the League, not even Tia, whose revolution was bankrolled, armed, and ultimately betrayed to the authorities by the League (Kinda like what the USSR did to the Anarchists in Republican Spain. Tia has an ideology similar to mine, in that she is leftcom or libertarian socialist, rather than an authoritarian communist.). Because the League didn't want an independent socialist power arising and providing an alternative to their brand of communist state. This is fairly common with powers trying to export an ideology honestly, they'll backstab someone without hesitation if it looks like you're creating an alternative implementation of those beliefs. (Oh, this isn’t even an alternative implementation. The ideological split was in the 1910s between Rosa Luxemburg and Friends, and Lenin and Friends {This must be how nonChristians feel when I try to explain the split between Charismatic Churches and Pentecostal ones and how that meshes with the rest of the Protestant churches…}) This is why you should be careful with foreign backers and remember they're never helping you out of the goodness of their hearts.

However, things aren't all careful coexistence and trading for profit in neutral space. The League has a presence here as it had to settle worlds to provide a launch point for their invasion. Unfortunately for the League their colonies are still raw and new and require a lot of outside support before they can become self-sufficient, never mind support a massive military campaign to conquer and occupy a large multi-planet power. So the League trades with the neutral powers and works to set up relationships with the neutrals that will either make them allies and eventual members of the League or at the very least dupes who won't help the Coalition (Which, let’s be fair, are eventually on the chopping block. Another thing to remember kids: neutrality favors the oppressor. Always.). One of those powers is the multicultural planet of Lusitania, which I really enjoy reading about. A world of Berbers, Portuguese, Basques, and others, it's a world that is growing in wealth and power from that trade but is also a troubled world with a fascist movement gaining popularity at the polls and brutalizing their opponents in the streets (Kill them. Death to all fascists.). This is also the world that Captain Henry finds himself doing a lot of business with, and increasingly finding it difficult to stay out of the local politics. On top of that, there are pirates, disasters, and all sorts of things going on in the deep void and it's getting worse as ships keep disappearing without a trace or explanation. Well, without a trace until the most recent disappearance when a surviving crew-member of the lost ship is found and Captain Henry is hired by three different groups to bring her back to Lusitania at all costs. None of them are people he can say no to and some of them make it very clear that saying no means many nasty consequences. Worse, he can’t give all 3 of them access to the survivor because at least 2 of them want exclusive access, including the one blackmailing him. Now you would think that would be the biggest problem in this story and in most of them, it would!

However, that survivor, Miri Gaon has secrets of her own. I mean after all what kind of woman puts on a spacesuit with extra oxygen and throws herself out of an airlock to escape captivity? With her past coming back to haunt her with a vengeance and a secret plot that could endanger all of neutral space bubbling into fruition no price is too high for Miri's many enemies to silence her and if possible drag her back in chains. If that wasn't enough her own employers are asking themselves the obvious question of ‘hey wait, what kind of manic does throw herself out of an airlock in an unsettled system?’ For that matter, her original rescuers are also asking the same question and it's a fair question, isn't it? I mean, why would you risk death from asphyxiation, alone in the void uncountable miles away from any hope of rescue? The answer to that question is what makes the Shadow Wolf and everyone on board of it a target for enemies with resources and numbers beyond their ability to match. As those forces are mobilized and brought to bear, Captain Henry is going to have to figure out how to do the job, protect his ship, crew, and friends and do it without selling his soul. So Captain Henry is going to have to use every ounce of cunning, luck, and hidden advantages that he has just to get to Lusitania.

I honestly enjoyed reading this story, the characters are all pretty distinct and show Mr. Steven's ability to write a variety of people and viewpoints without reducing anyone to a cardboard cutout. This book takes place at the same time as Fight the Good Fight, so I feel that you can jump right in here without any prior knowledge. Also by staying free of the main war, Mr. Stevens can give us a more gray playground with a lot of competing but legitimate interests, while also providing us undeniable and unmistakable villains. We also see Mr. Stevens put in a lot of work to humanize the League of Sol and add some depth and nuance to them here. Although that's honestly a bit of a struggle since that was the biggest weak point in Mr. Gibbs' work but Mr. Stevens does it by spending time with enough members of the League to humanize them a bit. I have to admit I kind of regret the space he had to spend to do it however since it came at the cost of space that could have been devoted to other more interesting characters. Meanwhile, he also steps back from the main conflict to show that other nations and peoples of the universe may have grudges, interests, and concerns of their own influencing their calculations. That he does this while giving us a well-paced action story with good characters with believable motivations and entertaining twists and turns is something he should be proud of. For example, I like how Mr. Stevens writes one of the villains of this piece, the Lusitanian fascist Caetano, who is clearly a dangerous woman but one capable of self-control and a certain graciousness that keeps people from realizing just what kind of shark they have in their kiddie pool. That said there are some issues here. There are several characters on the crew that just kind of fade into the background because there isn't really enough space to expand their characterization. There's also a bit of dancing around just what happened to Captain Henry which really doesn't do much for the main plot. The shape of it is pretty easy to see, so why bother hiding the details? The biggest thing here for me though is ending the story on a cliff hanger and right when the ship gets to Lusitania, so I kinda feel like we're only looking at half the story (It literally is. Mr. Stevens was forced by his editor to cut the book in half and publish the second half separately. Otherwise this would have been one book.). That is going to knock down Breach of Peace by Daniel Gibbs and Gary Stevens to a B but a solid one. That said if you're looking for a tale that would remind you of science fiction like say... Firefly, this is a good place to look.

So next week, our editor will be taking a hopefully relaxing and enjoyable vacation which he has earned after long hazardous negotiations in the index pits. I hope you will all join me in wishing him a good time. Meanwhile, we will be joined by a guest editor who will be aiding me in the review of the novel selected by our ever wise patrons. If you would like a voice in selecting future reviews, getting announcements ahead of time, discussing and voting on theme months then you should join us at Frigid Reads is creating book reviews, book discussion | Patreon where a vote on all of these matters is available at 1$ a month. Next week, Priest by Matthew Colville! Until then be safe and keep reading!

Red text is your editor Dr. Ben Allen

Black text is your reviewer Garvin Anders

Jack of Shadows By Roger Zelazny

Jack of Shadows

By Roger Zelazny

Back in April of 2019 (which wasn't that long ago but feels like a completely different age for many reasons [There are decades where nothing happens, and weeks where decades happen]), I reviewed a novel called Lord of Light. I'm actually looking at it right now as it rests on one of my bookshelves not far from me (That he can find it in his stacks surprises me.{I would think that a scientist would be familiar with the concept of organization but I’ve seen your apartment} Bro, you need mobile shelves and a card catalog at this point.  And yet, you still know where everything is like a dragon out of Norse myth.  You are a book dragon, sir.). Why am I bringing up a completely different book? Well, both books were written by Roger Zelazny, American science fiction and fantasy writer of Polish descent, who is mainly known for the Chronicles of Amber series (I go into further detail in the Lord of Light review). They are, however, very different books and if I didn't know better I would think they were from different people or very separated in time. Neither of that is true. Lord of Light was published in 1967 and Jack of Shadows in 1971. Jack of Shadows was written as an Homage to Jack Vance, an American writer who had a profound influence on American and British fantasy as men like Neil Gaimen, Michael Moorcock, and George RR Martin all considered him a powerful influence on their own work. In Mr. Zelazny's words, he wanted to see if he could create something as exotic and powerful as Jack Vance's Dying Earth. Jack of Shadows was well-received being nominated for a Hugo award in 1972 and finishing 4th in a Locus Poll for best novel in the same year. Let's take a look at it, shall we?

Jack of Shadows takes place in a tidally locked world, so one side is always in bright daylight and the other in darkness. On the daylight side the science and civilization of mortal men rules.  They're not all that different from us, they live in cities and suburbs, go to universities and work jobs. I imagine they vote in elections as well but that's not gone into. The Darkside however is the realm of magic, where vampires, spirits, and all manner of strange beings consort with human beings. There are weird overlaps though, daylighters are very superstitious, for example, they believe that the core of the earth holds an immense demon of heat and light. Meanwhile, Darksiders believe that the core of the world is a vast ever-turning machine that maintains the world in its unmoving, stable state. There is also a band of twilight where both science and magic can work and interact, if somewhat unpredictably. Now the politics of the Dayside are not gone into but the Darkside is ruled over by a class of beings who mostly look perfectly human but are immortal. In the sense that if they die, they wake up in new bodies in the dung pits of the west pole, although this process can take years. I should also note that this only happens a finite amount of times so it's possible to run out of lives. From there they must walk through wild and desolate lands back to civilization and basically start all over while retaining all their knowledge. This is an unpleasant experience and the wilderness is full of predators who seek to make meals of the recently returned. So an unlucky darksider could actually die several times just trying to get to civilization, imagine dying, waking up on a pile of manure crawling out into a desert and being killed by some unclean spirit and having to do the whole thing all over again! I don't want to say this is the most inconvenient form of immortality but man it is up there (Yeah, that would be thoroughly unpleasant. Fuck that shit.). Should be in the top 10 or 20 at least. Now I do like this, it's immortality sure but death has consequences, and worse, dying can kick you into a spiral of misfortune and pain that could take a very long time to pull out of. So it makes perfect sense for immortal Darksiders to try and avoid death because even if it won't stick, they know they're in for a bad time that might last a while. So of course, our story begins with our main character Jack being killed for the crime of being a known thief and looking at a shiny thing wrong. This inciting incident leads to Jack embracing a terrible path that has ramifications for the entire world.

Because Jack wasn't all that innocent, he was definitely there to steal said shiny thing, an item referred to as the Hellflame. The Hellflame was the reward in a contest, but more importantly for Jack, it was the price that a fellow Immortal demanded allowing Jack to marry his daughter Evene. Jack fights his way out of the dung pits and the wilderness only to find that the guys who pointed him out to the cops in the first place not only won the Hellflame but handed it over a rival who then used it to marry Evene in his place.  Needless to say, Jack is less than pleased and vows to bring a whole different type of hell flame into people's lives and take back Evene (Ah, Fantasy in the 1970s, where women are basically objects of desire without plot agency of their own!). However, his enemies are many and powerful and frankly, Jack is a jerk so his friends are few and often unable to help him. Jack does have some advantages here, first of all, he's not called Jack of Shadows because it sounds nice. Jack's magic is focused on using shadows as a power source, which means as long as he can find a shadow, he can become nearly invincible (And he lives on the Dark Side of a tidally locked world.  There are light sources everywhere.  Of course, that brings something up… how do they do agriculture?  Magical greenhouses?{Never gone into, but there’s always plenty to eat in taverns and what not so they must have something}). He can also use shadows as a method of transport, which makes it damn hard to pin him down. Additionally, Jack is really good at thinking outside the box so he's willing to go to lengths and use resources that would never occur to his enemies. So thinking outside of the box Jack realizes what he has to do is find a magical artifact called Kolwynia, the key that was lost. Of course, if he can actually find and take possession of Kolwynia, he doesn't have to stop at just revenge. He could unite the entire Darkside and rule as he sees fit. If he finds it.

Now I find myself liking the world, the idea of a world divided into two competing sets of rules for how reality works is strangely compelling. That idea that you could literally walk to a place where everything is completely different down to the physical laws of reality is interesting. Neither the Daysiders nor Darksiders understand each other very well, which adds to the mystery of the setting. Part of this is the sheer difference of their lives and the rules that govern them. Another part is, the immortals believe that they don't have souls and the Daysider do. Because of this, a Daysider can change but a Darksider is constant and their nature remains unchanging. Or so they believe, I'm not sure I share that belief. The plot itself has a lot of potential, with Jack facing a wide array of enemies of varied abilities and strengths and a goal that is difficult at best. Hell, I'll be honest and say that the first three chapters caught hold of my attention and interest as Jack was executed and crawled naked forth into a dangerous wild and dark land to fight his way back to life. Mr. Zelazny does a great job of making an environment that would be right at home in a Vance novel or any of the tales of Dying Earth.

The novel however falls flat for me after the first three chapters and drags through the middle portion of the story. There several reasons for this, first of all, is the fact that we are told things instead of shown things. We do not see Jack's quest for Kolwynia, we are just told that after spending 5 years living a lie to find it, he retrieves it (Ugh.  That was probably a novel all on its own.). Considering this is a pivotal moment that makes his revenge possible and sets up the rest of the book... More space should have been devoted to it, or the process made clearer because to me one minute he's reading computer print outs and the next minute he's attacking people with a flying mountain and I'm left asking “wait what happened here?” I'm not saying we need to be shown everything in explicit detail, Mr. Zelazny skips over what Jack does to break Evene's spirit and brainwash her into being his wife for example and that's just as well (Wait what?  So… the villain is the protagonist, I see.). It's also good that while avoiding explicit details, Mr. Zelazny doesn't handwave that away. This is repeatedly brought up in the narrative by other characters as a crime and a terrible one that Jack has committed. I am left wondering if Jack ever really loved Evene or was just taken with the idea of having her (Look, once you’re brainwashing someone, actual love is off the table.  The dude is a sociopath.). We have his word that Evene loved him (so I'm left wondering if this set of outrages is even the first time it's been done to Evene) and Jack isn't the most honest character in this story. It's also the only one that we're given any information on beyond a vague note that everyone hates him even as he unites the Darkside and takes power. Frankly, I'm left unsure as to why we get no sense that he's any more oppressive than the lords he's overthrown. In fact, he might be less oppressive in some ways given that no one among the common folk is trembling in fear that Jack will come to get them. On top of that, the people he's replaced were folks willing to murder and enslave each other at the drop of a hat so... What's the difference? (The Darkside needs a revolution.  Someone break the glass and get Lenin.)

When it comes to Jack, I feel like Mr. Zelazny was aiming for a character, not unlike Cudgel of the Dying Earth series but half the fun of a Cudgel story is watching him get his just deserts. Those stories always walked a fine line of letting Cudgel get away with just enough while getting punished just enough that in the next story he would have nothing to show for it but would be intact enough to continue. Jack starts off sympathetic but very quickly pisses it away by the fact that he treats people like crap (So it’s any and all personal interactions with a sociopath in microcosm.  Charming and sympathetic at first, but then holy shit.). There are only two characters we see Jack treat decently in the story and that's putting the bar pretty low, there's a wise woman that Jack treats as kind of a stray cat that he's fond of, as she was once a lover of his. He makes promises and will fulfill them but only if the wise woman calls him on it.  I get the sense that Jack just kinda forgets how short her life is compared to his and always assumes he'll have time to fulfill his side of the bargain later.  Which does come back to bite him a bit. Then there's Morningstar, a demonic creature locked in stone and cursed to remain there until morning comes to the Darkside (Huh.{it’s kind of poetic isn’t it?}). This combined with the fact that the only actions we tend to see Jack doing in the novel are taking advantage of people or brutally torturing and killing them (granted in response to them getting him killed and stealing his betrothed away [They were doing a public service {Jack disagrees and disagrees so much that he went and made himself God-King of the Darkness in order to win the debate with you}]) leaves me feeling rather cold at best towards Jack. Which is a problem since he's the only character who gets any real-time on-screen as it were.

That said the ending third of the book is pretty strong, with Jack finding out some things about himself and his world and having to take steps to save the world by ending it. Honestly, I think this book had too much telling and not enough showing. There's a lot of great ideas and possibilities to work with, but most of them are left unrealized and it feels like a pair of short stories that are not well joined together. I wasn't surprised to find that Jack of Shadows was written in a single draft and I really think it could have benefited from going back through the process. Another issue I think is while Mr. Zelazny is a talented writer, he’s trying to write like Jack Vance instead of writing like Roger Zelazny. Don’t get me wrong, he is great at setting up a Vancian setting and plot but he doesn’t have a grasp on Vancian characters and dialogue.  There are some scenes for example that feel like Zelazny is trying to homage the associations of wizards like the great Rhialto through the dialogue but it doesn’t quite work.  Jack of Shadows by Roger Zelazny gets a C- from me.  The setting and parts of the novel are great but the problems with the characters and middle of the novel really drag it down. Hopefully, we'll be able to return to some of Mr. Zelazny's other works in the future and see more of the material that gave him his well-earned reputation in the first place.

I’d like to thank our ever-wise patrons for supporting this review.  This book wasn’t selected by them but you can join them in helping select future books for a dollar a month.  Join us at https://www.patreon.com/frigidreads where the September poll is up and running till the end of the month.  Next week, we return to the universe of Daniel Gibbs with Breach of Peace by Gary T Stevens.  Until then, stay safe folks and keep reading! 

The Lord of Light review can be found here:  http://frigidreads.blogspot.com/2019/04/lord-of-light-roger-zelazny.html

The Bad-Ass Librarians of Timbuktu By Joshua Hammer

The Bad-Ass Librarians of Timbuktu

By Joshua Hammer

“Books are ingrained in the soul, words form the sinew and muscle that hold a society upright”
Abdel Kader Haidara page 118

Joshua Hammer was born in New York on June 12, 1957. He was educated at Horace Mann, a private college prep school in the Bronx and went on to Princeton University, and graduated Cum Laude with a BA in English Literature in 1979. He joined the staff of Newsweek in 1988 and in 1992 he became Nairobi Bureau Chief and served as Bureau Chief for South America, Los Angeles, Jerusalem, and Berlin. He lives in Berlin with his partner and youngest son, while his two grown sons from a previous marriage live nearby (Berlin is a good place to be. I’d certainly prefer to be there than the munted shitshow that is the US right now.). He wrote his first book in 1999 and released his latest book this year actually. The subject of this week's review was published in 2016 by Simon and Schuster publishing company. Let's turn to it, shall we?

Timbuktu, which in English has long been used as a metaphor for a faraway mysterious place is often regarded as half mythological. In fact, according to the BBC in 2006, 34% of young Britons thought it didn't exist and more thought it was a completely mythical place (I get it, you hear this ‘disembodied’ name in a language you don’t know and assume it is just an expression. However, that is because we westerners, in general, are pig-ignorant about Africa, and West Africa in particular. People bitch about Black History Month, but even if our society went hard in actually following through on it in a meaningful way, it would scratch the surface because it mostly deals with the forgotten and neglected history of the black people in the US. Africa - which has more than black people in it BTW - is pretty much absent unless you really specialize in university. It’s shameful. I say this because I know next to nothing and know it.). Mr. Hammer does his best to dispel this, laying out the history and importance of Timbuktu in brief in the opening parts of the book. Timbuktu is a real city in the modern nation of Mali, an ancient city that was a center of learning and literature before the first Englishman ever stepped on the North American continent. It was part of the massively wealthy Mali Empire and later part of the even more powerful Songhai Empire afterward, it has been the capital of kingdoms and an isolated colonial outpost. Today it is a UNESCO heritage site and the location of several libraries dedicated to collecting and preserving manuscripts that are some of the oldest and best examples of a native African literary tradition stretching back over 500 years of study, debate, and experimentation. One can find books discussing medicine, algebra, trade, and law from as far back as the 1400s (Mali had trade links and intellectual exchange, as far as I remember, with Europe, the Middle East, and as far away as India and China.). Some are humble works bound in goat-hide, others are shockingly beautiful works written in gold leaf on fine paper and there's at least one example of a Koran written on fish skin carefully bound together into an irregularly shaped prayer book. The libraries of Timbuktu are something of an irony as well, as they stand as a silent rebuke to the long-held European conceit that there is no literature or writing tradition native to Africa (Colonialist trash. In order to justify reducing them to destitution, Colonialists had to reduce the peoples of Africa to a “savage” caricature that had to be “civilized”. Never mind the existence of settled empires that rivaled those of Europe in terms of size and sophistication. Never mind that the unsettled peoples of Africa have and had cultures that are every bit as valid as those present in Europe.). While heavily influenced by Arab traditions, especially in regards to religion through Islam. The fact is that the majority of books are written in African languages by African born scholars. Like other conquerors, French colonial officials looted manuscripts to display in collections and museums in Paris and other European cities. All while bemoaning a lack of African writings (I’ll just be over here, ranting about the colonial looting of native cultures.). This and other waves of looters in pre-colonial times caused a tradition of families hiding their collections. There are over 370,000 known works in the assembled collections and libraries of Timbuktu and as you can imagine these books are under threat. Usually, the threat is a collection of mundane dangers that haunt books across the world: rot, neglect, termites and other pests, and of course the ever-present scourge of time (Depending on what they’re made of, books are incredibly fragile. Plant fibers dry rot, for instance, and crumble at the slightest touch.). Against these, the people of Timbuktu - with some outside funding and support - have marshaled a growing class of scholars and librarians who seek to restore and preserve the works, as well as catalog and digitize the collections. Such work extends the life of the manuscripts by decades if not more and digitization ensures that the information can be preserved against almost all foes simply by replicating it on a vast scale. However, in the opening decade of our century, another threat raised its head.

The terrorist organization of Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb started operations in the Sahel region and in time made a play to overthrow the nation of Mali to found an extremist Islamic Caliphate (Seriously, fuck these people.). In 2012 Timbuktu was occupied by Jihadist fighters of Al Qaeda and this placed the city under threat. Not only the various Sufi shrines (Sufi Islam, for those that don’t know, is a branch of Islamic Mysticism. It’s primarily but not exclusively an offshoot of Sunni Islam. I wish I could go into it more. Look into it folks, it’s neat.) that ring the city but the manuscripts themselves were in danger since many of them discussed subjects that the Wahhabist branch of Islam considered heretical or things that Al Qaeda's leaders found dangerous, like poetry or music (What is it with religious fanatics and hating poetry, music, and dance? Why do they have to be so… joyless all the damned time? {I talk more about this later}). Because apparently nothing terrifies a group of armed religious fanatics more than erotic poems about tea or songs praising the beauty of the desert night. Secretly opposing them was an organization made up of archivists, librarians, old families across the city, and normal citizens; leading this effort was Dr. Abdel Kader Haidara. Dr. Haidara's goal was nothing less than to smuggle the massive collection of books out from under the nose of thuggish theocrats and to safety at Mali's capital city of Bomoko and he leaned hard on the Timbuktu tradition of hiding the manuscripts from pushy conquers looking to destroy or loot. He had to either smuggle the books out over badly maintained desert roads that are guarded by Al Qaeda fighter or corrupt Mali soldiers, across the desert itself using pack animals or down the Niger river in small boats. What he couldn’t do himself, he had to recruit others to do, often in the dead of the night in occupied territory. It was a task fraught with risk and half of it came down to scrambling for funds from western or wealthy middle eastern backers but Dr. Haidara threw everything he had into it. (When this happened, I was teaching a biology class at the University of Texas at Arlington. UTA has a large immigrant population from the middle east, but also has… well Texans who are often islamophobic shits. So I actually took the time to go over this effort in my class.) 

Mr. Hammer devotes a good deal of the book to looking at Dr. Haidara's life before Al Qaeda was even a rumor on the wind, starting in the 1980s when Dr. Haidara was selected by his father to be the guardian of his own family's collection of manuscripts. We follow Dr. Haidara through his recruitment by Mahmoud Zouber for the Ahmed Baba Institute, from there his training in how to determine the age and value of a manuscript, often by looking at the original author of the work as well as the design of it. We follow his career across Mali and the region of northwestern Africa as he hunts down manuscripts and begins the long process of persuading the owners to either sell or donate the books to the newly established libraries. We see him become established as an acknowledged authority in his field and start his own library The Mamma Haidara Commemorative Library named after his father and gather there tens of thousands of books. Of course, Dr. Haidara's life isn't all fun and chasing books through deserts, forests, and swamps. He also faces the backbreaking work of getting funding to keep the work going. This often involves chasing after wealthy people from Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, grant-hunting from American or European Institutions (A task I do not envy him…), and fending off people who are less interested in supporting his work and more interested in looting his collection. Even if they're willing to pay for the privilege. This includes a memorable clash with agents of Libyan dictator Muammar Al Qaddafi who attempted to buy out his entire collection under the cover of making a donation (I am so glad this bastard is dead.). It's through this that Mr. Hammer shows us how Dr. Haidara earned the skills and connections to protect his heritage from Al Qaeda.

Mr. Hammer also spends some time detailing the leaders and the troops that made up the organization of Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, one of the many regional organizations operating under the banner of Al Qaeda. We see how their leaders are men who have been operating as fighters and criminals for decades and this branch of Al Qaeda is very much a criminal enterprise. Not only does this branch have its roots in drug smuggling operations but it is mostly funded through kidnapping people. Most of their targets are western tourists, aid workers, or various western specialists brought in for one project or another. While the United States and the United Kingdom have long had a policy of refusing ransom, some European states will quietly pay ransoms to get their people back. I can understand why they do this but perhaps because I am thoroughly American, I find it short-sighted at best. Paying ransom encourages more kidnappings and in this case, helped the leaders of Al Qaeda gather men and weapons to attack Mali (It’s a tough call, to be honest. A country has to weigh its geopolitical interests against its duty to protect its citizens. I can understand why some countries come down the way the US doesn’t.). So the payments led to more pain and suffering, although I'll admit that I suspect that African pain and suffering would be met with a shrug by the European governments who made those payments (Honestly, I don’t think any western government really thinks about African pain and suffering…). Mr. Hammer also goes into some detail on how they allied with more secular Tuareg rebels. The Tuareg rebels have been fighting for centuries for their own homeland and the current conflicts are just another chapter in their quest for a state of their own. In all honesty, I would be very sympathetic to the Tuareg rebels in most circumstances but here they make a deal with the devil. So I can't muster up a lot of pity for them when they are inevitably burned and chased back to the deep desert. I have nothing but sympathy for the people who have to suffer the occupation and Mr. Hammer makes a point of showing us just what it was like using eyewitness testimony, in some cases from ex-Al Qaeda fighters. It's not enough for Al Qaeda troops to rule through terror and intimidation but they ban music (seizing the radio station and destroying all their records and cassettes for example) demanding nothing but Al Qaeda announcements and Quranic verses be broadcast. They even make a point to break up gatherings of families and friends, demanding everyone instead use that time to go home and study the Quran. This is something I see repeated across religious lines, whether it's Christian, Hindu, Buddhist, or Muslim fanatics there's always this assault not just on art, music, and learning but this deep-seated hatred at the idea of joy, fellowship, or even simple human comfort (This life doesn’t matter much compared to the next, I think is the “logic”.). You can even see it in the toxic parts of pop culture fandoms at times! (Don’t even get me started on the basement CHUDs) This always comes up no matter how much they have to twist their own religious laws and instructions to do so as well, so I can only assume it's from some deep-seated flaw in humanity. I almost think that there’s some element in us that believes that happiness is a sign that we’re neglecting something. Look, wanting to reign back debauchery and abusive excess is a good and noble thing but if at any point you've made simple happiness and joy your enemy? You've become the bad guy. Write that on your hand folks, there will likely be a test at some point.

Mr. Hammer brings us a struggle between the scholars and the normal decent folks they serve and maniacs with a vision of a mono-ideological society that they're willing to kill to create that played out in recent history. While Dr. Haidara is not going to fit anyone's mold of an action hero, we're shown he's exactly the kind of hero you need in these situations. Because if you don't mind a mild spoiler he is wildly successful saving over 360,000 books and manuscripts from the hands of men who would burn them because the idea of making a space for ideas or new thoughts is so terrifying to them they would rather behave like monsters. The Bad-Ass Librarians of Timbuktu is a look at the stubborn courage and decency of everyday men standing up for what is important to them. It's also an interesting, entertaining, and informative look at a part of the world and a part of history ignored by the West and challenges assumptions that have long been held in the West. The Bad-Ass Librarians of Timbuktu by Joshua Hammer gets an A. I recommend you give a look.

If you enjoyed this review consider joining us at https://www.patreon.com/frigidreads where for as little as a dollar a month, you can vote on upcoming reviews. Next week  Jack of Shadows by Roger Zalazny.  As always keep reading! 

Reference note http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/6062360.stm BBC article mentioned in the review can be found here.

The City of Brass by S.A. Chakraborty​

The City of Brass

by S.A. Chakraborty​

Mrs. Chakraborty was born in New Jersey on December 7th, 1984 to working-class Catholics. She converted to Islam in her teens and attended The American University in Cario. It was there that she first read the stories that would provide the seed for The City of Brass. Already studying to be a historian specializing in the Middle East, she researched the region's belief in Djinn and other spirits as well as the rituals used to summon them in folklore (Neat! Also: Fuck off Islamophobes.). Fast forward to 2008, and Mrs. Chakraborty is married and her husband is attending medical school. The economy has collapsed (Oh, the 2008 crash was so good compared to the one we’re in now. That was just a correction caused by the efficiency of the free market a collapse of a speculation bubble combined with predatory lending practices and what amounts to an economy wrecking gambling addiction. The current one is even worse, caused by an economy that does not have the resiliency to withstand a demand shock because efficient markets cut the fat that allows for that, combined with a consumptive economy where workers are paid barely enough to consume and sustain those supply chains without being able to save for disasters. If you’ve ever heard the term “crisis of capitalism” this is it. Internal contradictions coming home to roost.) and she is volunteering at her local mosque and found herself frustrated that young Muslim men were really only shown one way in entertainment and young Muslim women were rarely shown at all (I for one want to see more and better of both, so good for her!). So she sat down and wrote what started off as, in her own words, Historical fan fiction and turned into a full-blown fantasy novel. Setting fantasy in history is honestly a fine American tradition, Burroughs did it before World War I. Robert E Howard's Solomon Kane series was basically historical fan fiction with magic and fantasy added in. Even the poor mad Lovecraft embraced the use of history as a setting for his fantasies and Mrs. Chakraborty provides a splendid modern example of this tradition. Let's turn to the novel though, shall we?

The City of Brass was published in 2017 by Harper Voyager, a US imprint of the publishing company HarperCollins that handles science fiction and fantasy books. Harper Collins is a fully owned subsidiary of News Corps (Excuse me as I vomit, because that’s Rupert Murdock’s company.). A subsidiary just so everyone knows is a fancy way of saying it's a company owned by another company as opposed to being owned by an individual person. News Corp was founded by Rupert Murdoch in 2013 (See?), and I'll ask my editor to keep the rant to 2 lines so as to keep the review on topic (Request pre-empted {Thank you}). The City of Brass debuted to thunderous applause with a number of magazines and reviewers listing it as the best book of the year and it was a finalist in a number of awards, winning the booknest.eu award for best debut novel and only missing winning the Joseph W Campbell award by a single vote.

The novel is set in the 1800s, during the time of Napoleon's invasion of Egypt but swiftly leaves the real world. The main character of the novel is Nahri, an orphan who grew up on the streets of Cairo. She has used a combination of inborn healing gifts, knowledge she has stolen, begged for, scraped up, and outright theatrics to con wealthy Ottoman nobles and every now and again actually heal someone (Good for her. Always good to con the ruling class to survive. Beats stealing from your fellow poor people. Praxis! {Ehhh, the story makes it clear that Nahri and her fellows will gladly prey on each other but Nahri is smart enough to scam where the money is} Fair.). She'll also rob the homes of various marks, especially rude ones as a single piece of Turkish jewelry can feed her and pay her rent for months. However, with the invasion of the French army under Napoleon bringing in a wave of refugees, Nahri gets the idea to try a new sideline. Much like how Christians believed or still believe in demon possession and witchcraft, Muslims at the time believed (I imagine some still do believe but I have no knowledge of it) that spirits called Djinn would possess people and that complicated exorcisms were necessary to cast the offending spirit out or if the spirit was too powerful at least keep it quiet (There are Muslims who still believe this, yes.). Witnessing a number of these ceremonies Nahri is confident enough that she can fake one well enough to get a payout from wealthy families and maybe even achieve her dream of gathering enough money to bribe an academy into letting her study to learn enough to become a real doctor. However, things go off the rails when Nahri exercises her gifts with languages. You see, Nahri has a gift where hearing a language in conservation is enough for her to understand it and speak it as if she was a native. She also has a language that no one else can speak or learn, one that she assumed was the language of her unknown parents. So when she decides to incorporate her unknown language into the ceremony singing a summoning spell for a Djinn, she gets more than she bargains for and that's a vast understatement (Uh Oh. Elder speech. That’s not good. Or isn’t it?).

Nahri suddenly finds herself at the center of a conflict between Djinn and Ifrits, now these are not demons or angels but are spiritual beings. According to legend and as Nehri is told in the novel, the Djinn are made from fire and smoke, while humans were made from dust and the earth. Because of this, the Djinn have vast powers and it's hard for an average human to even see a Djinn let alone fight one. So the Djinn would at times make a sport out of tormenting humanity because there were no consequences for wrecking a human city if they felt like it. Unfortunately for them, divine consequences ensued. A human king and prophet named Suleiman (for westerners that would be Solomon) called up the Djinn and demanded that they submit to his judgment or be stripped of all their powers. The Ifrits refused and spent every moment of every day finding ways to gain new powers, even if that meant trafficking with hell. The Djinn submitted and were broken up into tribes and had their powers limited. They also had their nearly immortal life span limited to centuries. One Djinn woman not only submitted but aided Suleiman because she felt that the Djinn had gone too far in tormenting humanity and the punishment was just and Suleiman not only gave her more power than any other Djinn but set her in charge of everyone. That woman's family had immense powers of healing and harm, being able to set disease right or command the body to destroy itself. They were not only the political leaders of the tribe but the objects of intense religious devotion. They ruled from the great city of Daevabad until... We'll get to that. More immediately it turns out that Nahri is distantly related to that Djinn woman. In fact, she might be the last living relative of that family and the Ifrit hold a grudge... They're not the only ones and they might not even be the most dangerous enemies that Nahri has (Okay, this is all… pretty damn good as far as background goes, and I commend the author. Also: Holy crap poor Nahri.).

Because that family, her family, was overthrown by another tribe from the harsh desert sands of Arabia. While Nahri's ancestors were members of a fire worshiping religion that reminds me a bit of Zorasterism, the tribe that overthrew them had converted to Islam. Of course, no one claims it was a religious dispute, instead what's pointed to as the issue is the treatment of the shafit. The shafit are people who are born from Djinn/human relationships. They have enough magical power that they could run rampant over humanity if they chose to but while they can be dangerous to an unprepared full-blooded Djinn, they are usually no match for the magical powers a trained adult can bring to bear. Nahri's family viewed shafit's as an abomination and destroyed them whenever possible, which admittedly makes her very existence… Interesting. It was to stop this that the Muslim tribe rose up, or so they claim. However, in modern Daevabad the shafit is oppressed and exploited underclass with few if any legal rights beyond existing (Hypocrisy thy name is human…{You mean Djinn in this case}). They can be enslaved, they cannot carry weapons or learn too much about their inborn powers, they often have no legal recourse against mistreatment by purebloods. They can even have their children taken away at a moment's notice by any pureblooded Djinn who claims a relationship with them. Meanwhile, the original tribe that maintained Daevabad (called the Daevas) and served Nahri's power remains wealthy and strong and still in the city. However, anytime they displease the Royal family to much the guards step back and whip up the shafit to attack, murder, and rob them. The Daevas are also still fire-worshippers, which the shafit who are almost entirely Muslim deeply resent. Things aren't all that great for the Daevas though, as they are constantly under the threat of abuse from the Muslim majority and face laws discriminating against their religion. The current ruling family rather cold bloodily play the Djinn tribes against each other, the fire-worshippers against the Muslim and the Purebloods against the Shafit to maintain their rule.

This is becoming increasingly difficult as decadence and corruption in the royal government become harder and harder to cover up (Haaaaa! They’ve gone Full Hedonism Bot). Among the shafit, a movement known as the Tanzeem has sprung up. It preaches the idea of equality before the law for all Muslims and an end to oppression for the shafit and champions a large list of reforms that are both religious and political in nature. However, the Tanzeem is utterly and completely hostile to the Daevas and wants to pass laws restricting their religious freedom and increase the pressure on them to convert or be dispossessed (Historically Islam has this tendency, as do some sects of Christianity like the Levelers in the English Civil War. There is a massive social justice current within Shia Islam in particular, but its development is parallel with similar currents within Western thought, and religious people for faiths other than People of the Book didn’t feature as strongly. This isn’t to say that Muslims never value it’s just that it wasn’t a thing in the 1800s as much, which is also true of most Christian sects. There’s been a lot of cultural and political cross-pollination since then, and bluntly, as a gay atheist, I had more to worry about from my Baptist neighbors than my Muslim ones in graduate school.) Meanwhile, the Deavas remember who actually built this city and have organized themselves. For the most part, the Deavas have focused on getting in good with the royal family but the Tanzeem have their own noble and royal backers. Some Deavas however remember the abuses and mistreatment that the Muslim royals and other tribes inflicted on them and the humiliations they are continuously forced to swallow don't help. Into this simmering fire of piled resentments, overlapping hierarchies of power, wealth, magic, and oppression, is walking Nahri. She's almost completely ignorant of the complicated and violent history that everyone else is carrying around, barely able to control her powers, and has no idea who is actually her friend and who is actually her foe. What she does have going for her is the fact that she is ruthless, intelligent, and has instincts built from a lifetime of cheating and lying to the wealthy and powerful. Whether or not that will be enough is something you'll have to find out.

The City of Brass is a story about pressure. Of a society under the pressure of religious, ethnic, and political conflicts (How very… Ottoman.). Of families and individuals under the pressure of conflicting loyalties and sympathies. Of Nahri under the pressure to learn how to use her powers and to learn about the dangers, she is surrounded by and maybe even to learn about her heritage, which means learning about some really dark chapters and awful actions. Pressure isn't always a bad thing, the pressure to excel is what drives many of us to learn and master our chosen fields. Pressure can lead to reform and positive change. In fact, without some sort of pressure, it's almost impossible to compel a change in government or society. That said pressure can also lead to atrocity, brutality, and oppression, and let's be honest dear reader there isn't a single one of us on Earth who doesn't have a story about a terrible decision or action taken under pressure that we would have otherwise avoided (He’s right on all of this. You know that.). Now some of you may be wondering why I've refused to discuss the male characters in the story and my answer is both for reasons of space and to make sure we avoid as many spoilers as possible. Trust me, you'll thank me when you read the book. Mrs. Chakraborty creates a richly colored setting with intense feelings that make the history and the resulting hatreds and grudges seem incredibly real. That setting is in turn populated by characters who are also very real and three dimensional, with grand virtues and fatal flaws that have consequences for their entire society. While this is the first book in a trilogy, Mrs. Chakraborty tells a complete story in this book avoiding the trap that many other authors fall into leaving the story unfinished for the next book. The City of Brass by S.A. Chakraborty gets an A from me and I hope that this is the start of a long and productive writing career for her.

So City of Brass was the winner of the August vote for our ever-wise patrons, next week our second-place winner, Bad Ass Librarians of Timbuktu will be the subject of our review. If you would like to join us and cast your own vote on upcoming reviews, themes or books to be added to the review list, join us at Frigid Reads is creating book reviews, book discussion | Patreon where a dollar a month gets you a voice on what we review next. The September poll is up and taking votes! Until next week, stay safe and keep reading!