The Burning God By RF Kaung

 The Burning God

By RF Kaung

There's always a bit of satisfaction when I complete a book series for this review. Especially one as powerful and fascinating as this one. Since it's been two years since the first book let's catch up with just who Ms. Kaung is.  Ms. Kuang was born in Guangzhou, China on May 29th, 1996. In the year 2000 her father - a former student who was at Tiananmen Square (I will resist the temptation.) - took his family to Dallas Texas where Ms. Kuang grew up. She graduated from the Greenhill school in 2013 and, attracted by the debate team, attended Georgetown University. She took a gap year in China working as a debate coach and like many newly liberated students found herself feeling strange without the specter of homework hanging over her every moment (I sympathize with this since I started this book review series when I finished my own time in college). So she decided to write a book. She was nineteen. The book was published when she was twenty-two, in 2018. The Poppy Wars was a big hit, being nominated for the Nebula Award and World Fantasy Award for best novel. The fans of the novel would award their own somewhat tongue in cheek nickname for her of Grimdark's Darkest Daughter. The sequel The Dragon Republic was released in 2019 and earned a spot on Time magazine's list of 100 best fantasy novels. Meanwhile, Ms. Kaung had headed off to Cambridge having gained a Marshall Scholarship and earned a Masters of Philosophy in Chinese Studies. In 2019 she attended Oxford and earned a Masters of Science in Contemporary Chinese Studies. In the fall of 2020, she returned to the United States, to pursue a Ph.D. in East Asian Languages and Literature. To say she's an expert on China and Chinese culture and history is one way of putting it, another way is if you're reading this review odds are you're not qualified to explain Chinese history to her (I await the neckbeards…). That said, let's turn to the Burning God!

At the end of the last book Fang Runin, known as Rin to her vanishingly small circle of friends, had realized that her biggest problem facing her nation of Nikara wasn't the remaining Mugenese soldiers who were trapped in Nikara or the feuding factions of Nikarans who were turning on each other for power as the nation fell apart around them. It was in fact the imperialist Hesperians (Good.), the Hesperians are a coalition of powers united by a single monotheist religion and a drive to unite the world under a single world order (Fuck that shit, in all its forms!). Now, they're not looking to formally conquer Nikara and turn them into an imperial possession like the Mugenese were, before Rin kinda... Exploded their country using the power of her Shamanistic connection to the god of destruction to commit genocide. Instead, they're looking to turn Nikara into a puppet state that they can exploit for cheap labor and natural resources to maintain prosperity in their own home nations (Gee!  Where on earth have we seen this before? {Pretty much everywhere humans developed societies honestly}). While this is theoretically less brutal in that the guys being sent to work the mines and factories are at least being paid, we're still looking at a lot of people being oppressed and suffering under a boot, if not just outright worked to death for pennies. There was, however, a seductiveness there because unlike the Mugenese, the Hesperians would bring medicine, food, superior technology that would again in theory at least improve the lives of the average Nikarans. As long as they converted to the Hesperian religion, adopted Hesperian practices, and learned Hesperian languages anyway. Of course, Rin only realized this after helping the Hesperians chosen puppet, the House of Yin crush most of the organized resistance to their rule (Ugh.). It doesn't help that the Hesperians loathe her personally. Let me explain. 

The Hesperians are monotheists who believe in a god of order they call the Divine Architect. As such they don't believe that Rin is touching the Divine at all through her Shaman powers but is instead a conduit for Chaos and therefore is anathema to everything good and decent in life. Now Rin is a chaos bringer and burning bundle of destruction but to be honest she didn't need Shamen powers for that. Her own natural gifts and complete and total inability to make good decisions while naturally being thrust into the right time and place for her decisions to matter are more than enough (Ouch!  But there is no lie in this statement.). Although I'll admit her kill count would be millions less without those powers. That being said the Hesperians want her, personally, to study to find a way to suppress and/or turn off her powers. The thing is, I can kind of see why. I mean the Cike, the small elite group of Shamen that were used by the Nikara Empire and later the Nikara Republic was not only able to bring about mass destruction but all of them were doomed to slide into insanity and be taken over by the god they were connected to. This would turn them into engines of mass destruction that would keep going until killed (I can certainly see the point in at least learning to control that shit, but then again, if the imperialists want me to do something, I am unlikely to say yes.). The only other way is to imprison the Shamen in a prison of enchanted stone in a specific sacred mountain, where they will remain alive and screaming in a tomb of stone... Forever. Becoming a Shamen means embracing a short, terrifying life that will end in insanity and pain... If you're lucky (Reminds  me of the rise of the Great Old Ones.{While I don’t think the gods of the Nikarans could be directly compared to the Great Old Ones, they are elemental forces older than the universe that simply do not give a shit about us, our morality or our delusions of grandeur}). Of course, the Hesperians are also incredibly vile racists who barely see the Nikarans as human and want to force them to live under Hesperian rules. So they're not doing this out of any desire to make Rin or her countrymen's lives better but to remove something they can't understand or control from the world. This also leads to them using the cruelest and most questionable of methods because why bother with a drop of kindness if you're dealing with subhuman beasts goes their reasoning. 

To combat this Rin has fled to the south to rally the reviled masses of her nation. You see Nikara itself isn't free of bigotry. The northern part of Nikara has long considered itself more advanced, more sophisticated, and just outright better than the south. As a result, southerners are looked down on as bumbling hicks at best, natural serfs at worse. This has built up a lot of resentment that Rin intends to weaponize and point at the northern-based Nikaran Republic and their Hesperian backers. Of course, she'll have to deal with the elites of the South, their factional politics, and the thousands of Mugenese soldiers still in Nikara with nowhere else to go (Sounds like a lot of hard work…). Assuming she can keep the leaders of the south from selling her out to the North. She then has to organize the people of the South into being able to effectively resist a power that can strike them from the air with impunity but Rin might have her own weapons that will bring terror and destruction on a scale even the Hesperians can't match. Assuming those weapons don't doom her first. Even then, it's not over because in the last book we learned that Rin's rival from her military academy days, Yin Nezha, is himself a Shamen of the Dragon, an elemental force that could be considered the equal opposite of her own patron the Phoenix. This means the House of Yin is basically trying to have it both ways. In this, however, she at least has something of an advantage as she is much more practiced with her powers than Nezha but is that enough of an advantage when Nezha not only has a better supplied and more advanced force but a more unified one? 

Now as you can guess the Poppy Wars series owes a lot to the experience of China in the opening decades of the 20th century. In a lot of ways, Ms. Kuang is pulling from the story of her own family, not just the story of China. If you have even a passing familiarity with the history of China in the 20th century then you can see a lot of the same beats and broad characterizations. The Empress Daji and the House of Yin despite being at odds with one another both take on characteristics of the Nationalist Chinese forces. The Mugenese are very close analogs to the Japanese(Including the nuking!). The Hesperians are basically all the western powers (the US included folks[And how!]) eager to get at the wealth and labor of Nikara and not caring about the damage they cause while getting it. I've run into some people asking if all the atrocities in these books were present in the real history and I'm just gonna say that Ms. Kaung actually misses a couple of the smaller ones that I'm aware of, which I assume is a combination of a lack of space and the fact that she needed to stay focused on the characters here. So if you found the fantasy series upsetting wait until you actually look at the history it's sourced from (Can confirm). That said this is not a one-to-one copy of the Chinese experience in WWII or the 1930s and 20s, for one thing, Ms. Kaung is more creative than that and for another she allows the characters to have a big enough impact on the world around them to change things. For one thing, having been to Japan I can confirm it was not reduced to ash choked wasteland forever with every last living thing burnt to death or buried under magma and ash (Which is good.  Though Unit 731 needed to be shot, not paperclipped.). 

Ms. Kaung's focus on the characters is a major strength in this series and she keeps it up in the last book. She also remains utterly and completely committed to the theme of Rin making bad decisions. Make no mistake here, while Rin's story is a tragedy, it's one entirely of her own making as she spurns chance after chance to choose something else. There are mitigating factors of course, but Rin at every step sacrificed everything else to pursue the fastest route to power. At every step she encountered resistance she moved to greater and greater savagery until we've reached the point where it could be argued that she has done as much damage to Nikara as anyone else. Which does a marvelous example of displaying the limits of raw power in the story. Now she's not alone in this, the elite classes of Nikara were more than happy to put their own struggles for power and position over the wellbeing of their nation or people. Those who were outright collaborating with foreign invaders were more than happy to knife each other for scraps. For that matter within Rin's own social circle, we have the genius Kitay who basically enables Rin in all her bad decisions even when he knows it's a bad idea. Nezha himself is often in the position of pouring gas on this fire given his weird relationship of hate-lust with Rin where they barrel from near romance to literal knives in the back. At every step of the way, Ms. Kaung fully embraces the implications of the character dynamics and their decisions and writes the consequences believably, vividly, and mercilessly. This whole series has been a screaming train ride towards a single end and in this final book, Ms. Kaung gives us that final train crash in all it's you-can't-look-away horror and glory. Now that said, she also knows how to avoid going overboard and embracing darkness for darkness sake. Throughout the book, there are humanizing moments of friendship, family, and willingness to sacrifice for the right thing that keeps this book from turning into an unbearable slog through suffering. There's also the underlying idea that none of this is pointless, that something better might eventually arise, and that at some point the killing can stop and the healing slowly start. This is important because without those humanizing elements and the sense that something else is possible then the books lose their emotional impact and Ms. Kaung displays that she is fully aware of that. More so than some veterans of the craft. That said if dark fantasy isn't your cup of tea, you may want to try something else but if you can stand some darkness then you should definitely get on Rin's wild ride. Just don't pretend you're surprised by how it ends. I'm giving The Burning God by RF Kaung an A and I encourage everyone to give this series a try. 

    I hope you enjoyed this week's review and had a Happy Thanksgivings folks. Next week's review as chosen by our ever wise patrons is Perdido Street Station by China Mieville. If you'd like a vote on upcoming reviews, themes, or even a look at other projects coming up... Join us at https://www.patreon.com/frigidreads Until then stay safe, happy holidays and as always Keep Reading!

The red text is your editor Dr. Ben Allen

The rest of the text is your reviewer Garvin Anders

Elves Volume 2: Honor of the Sylvan Elves By Jarry Nicholas

 Elves Volume 2: Honor of the Sylvan Elves

By Jarry Nicholas

So quick note before I jump in here, if you look for this book on Amazon, you might find a different graphic novel of the same series. Which is sold on Comixlogy as Volume III, from what little I can dig up (we at the review series, unfortunately, lack French speakers[Look, it is on the list.  But I speak German and am simultaneously studying Spanish and Russian.]), The Honor of the Sylvan Elves was packaged in Volume I Crystal of the Blue Elves. So if you're looking at a different story than the one I'm reviewing that's why. Anyways, Elves takes place in the same world as the by now familiar Dwarves comic only focusing on the stories of the Elvish people who seem broadly divided into 5 ethnic groups or ideologies. We have the withdrawn White Elves, the seafaring Blue Elves, the wood-dwelling Sylvan Elves, the corrupt Dark Elves, and of course, the disdained by everyone Half-Elves (Poor half-elves). As you can guess from the title this story focuses mostly on the Sylvan Elves or rather their relationship and history with humanity. Let's jump on in shall we.

The Princess Lladi of the city of Eysine has a problem. Well to be honest, she has several, but the most pressing problem is the large army of mercenary Orcs and Goblins laying siege to her kingdom and tearing it up bit by bit (That would in fact be a problem.). This mercenary army works for a confederation of merchant dominated cities out on the archipelago, who have decided to make a play for regional hegemony. They're doing this through a combination of brutal economic warfare by buying up commodities like wheat to drive up the price and forcing local kingdoms to take out large loans to... Buy enough food to feed people. They then use the terms of the loans to basically seize power in the local kingdoms turning the feudal rulers into puppets (So, how soft-colonialism works in the developing world by way of the IMF and World Bank.  Gotcha!). We will now pause to allow the editor time and space for his anti-capitalism rant (Oh, I am way ahead of you buddy! {Was also shorter than I expected, are you feeling alright?}  Yeah I am cool.  Just also writing communist Harry Potter fanfic that will make JK Rowling scream.). However, the city-state of Eysine has managed to resist this because they control a strategic set of straits that they charge a toll to passing ships to allow them through (Normally I oppose rent-seeking like this, but you do what you can to ward off Imperialism.). This has allowed them to feed their people and leave the ancient forests of the elves alone instead of mortgaging out their children to be chattel for amoral merchants or committing to a savage race war with the Elves to seize enough land to feed themselves (This is right-neighborly of them.). The merchants of course can't have that, which is where the Mercenary Armies of Orcs and Goblins come in. With their traditional allies refusing to march since they're now fully owned clients of the archipelago, the men of Eysine are slowly being pushed back and attritted away by a seemingly unending mass of Orcs. However, Princess Lladi is more than a pretty face or a bargaining chip for royal marriages, she's a woman with a solution. If the merchants are going to hire Orcish mercenaries to burn her kingdom to the ground, she'll get her own mercenary army. An Elvish Army (Good for her!).

Ranger and Prince of Elves Yfass is an elf with a problem. When a human woman comes running into the forest with a company of Orcs and Goblins on her heels and rushes into a ruin that is sacred to the elves, it seems a simple enough thing. Kill them all, let the crows sort them out, no one who isn't an elf leaves the forest alive (It is The Way.). That's been the rule since he was a small child, which was so long ago that the cities of men were simple towns with wooden walls. Things get complicated however when he finds out there are a lot more Orcs than he thought and the human woman channels the spirit of the ruins to cast magic and destroy the Orcs that were about to kill him. This complicates things because, well now he owes his life to this woman, and murdering people who have saved your life is rude (And sometimes The Way It Has Always Been Done needs to change.). Second, a human shouldn't haven't been able to channel that kind of magic reserved for natural spirits, elves, and the extinct order of human Druids. The Druids kept humanity in balance with nature and the elves, when they were wiped out by some unknown force, humanity was left without guidance. Without guidance humanity developed into a species out of balance with its environment or so the elves claim. This human woman named Lladi however could be the beginning of a whole new order of Druids bringing back balance and possibly rebuilding the human-elf alliance (Which would definitely be a good thing, given that those filthy fucking Imperialists won’t stop with human territories.  They’ll colonize the elves next.{Elf elders are pretty confident they don’t need grubby human allies to resist aggression and seem much more focused on the status quo.  Oddly short-sighted for people who’ve lived generations don’t you think?} Very.). Which would secure the wilderness that the Sylvan elves live in for another 1000 years at least. So why are his elders so hostile to her and so determined to see her dead? Why does his Mother the Queen heal her wounds and demand he be allowed to make his case and stand dead silent and unmoving otherwise?

Elves Volume II is a story of old secrets coming back to haunt everyone and causing new problems. Despite that, though, it is also a story of Yfass and Lladi bridging the gap between cultures and ages to come to a new understanding and the possibility of new hope. Now I liked both characters and the plot and the secrets buried within it were interesting. The art was nice and drew a sharp distinction between the increasingly urbanized and often wartorn human world and the wild but timeless elvish world. However, there simply wasn't enough space for the plot to really delve into things and it moved fast and at the expense of characterization. Mr. Nicholas responds to this by doubling down on his main characters, which leaves them feeling a bit isolated in a world of underdeveloped supporting characters but I suppose that's better than the alternative. This is a shame because Lladi's family had the potential to be great characters in their own right as did Yfass's foster brother and his elders. Despite the lack of space, I did feel it was better than average but not that much. Elves Volume II Honor of the Sylvan Elves by Jarry Nicholas gets a C+ from me. I hope to see something grow from this though.

Elves Volume II: Honor of the Sylvan Elves by Jarry Nicholas was chosen by our ever-wise patrons. Our patrons get to vote on what books or comics get reviewed, discuss and have final approval on theme months (for example October's Fangsgiving) and more. If you'd like to get a vote for as little a dollar a month, join us at https://www.patreon.com/frigidreads Next week, we finish the Poppy War with The Burning God by R.F. Kuang. Let us rejoice in what Grimdark's darkest daughter brings us. Until then, stay safe and Keep Reading!

GI Joe Volume VI By Larry Hama

 GI Joe Volume VI

By Larry Hama

“The Real Stealing is done on Paper” Cobra Commander 

(This is true.  Especially with wage labor!  Seriously, wage theft by the people who are already stealing your labor value is worth more than all other theft combined!  And it isn’t even an actual crime!  Steal $100 from the register?  You’re going to jail.  Boss steals $2000 of your wages? If you’re lucky you’ll settle for $500.)

Welcome to Part two of the glorious double header! Volume VI covers issues 51 to 60 of GI Joe, running from September 1986 to June 1987. Let's get back to the story, shall we?

Springfield is a burning field of rubble but the Joes are finding their victory to be more trouble than it's worth as the unit has been provisionally stood down and its members confined to barracks pending an independent investigation (Hehehehehehehehehe.). Worse before those orders arrive Zartan's siblings show up and break him out of the Pitt, whose location he promptly reports. This actually heads off a Cobra Civil War that starts brewing the moment that Serpentor sets foot on Cobra Island. Here's the issue, Cobra Commander is a genius, he was capable of launching a movement based on mass grievance that inspired fanatical loyalty, then converting it to a secret society and arranging infiltration into American society beyond the Soviet's wildest dreams He then created a paramilitary force as an outgrowth of that secret society that was able to operate across the globe with enough resources to field armored battalions and air wings. That he was able to do this and secure funding and backing at all levels of society without getting arrested or anyone realizing what was going on until masked troopers were screaming Cobra and launching attacks is the kind of administrative and logistical feat that is frankly superhuman. However, Cobra Commander frankly sucks donkey balls as a battlefield leader (Kinda needs division of labor like… well the vampire cabal in Castlevania.). His grasp of tactics is grade school at best, his ability to listen to subordinates is non-existent, he has a pathological inability to share credit or glory, and his level of personal courage isn't at the level of cowardice displayed in the cartoon but is still rather questionable at best (So what you are saying is that I would do a better job than him? {I’m saying our 7-year-old nephew has a good shot of out doing him}). Compare this to Serpentor who on his first day of life saved wounded troopers while under fire, got shot and sealed the wound with a hot knife and jumped right back into the battle and won his brawl with the Joes and you tell me who the average grunt Viper trooper is going to prefer for leadership? Ideally, everyone would realize that Cobra Commander is the best man to administer Cobra and oversee logistics, while Serpentor should lead from the sharp end of the spear.  Serpentor isn't gonna be willing to restrain his ambition to that however and Cobra Commander would never share the glory anyways (Wait, you mean to tell me that if you distill the essences of people like Ghengis Khan and Saladin, they won’t restrain their ambition?  Noooo! {I thought you told me that the result would be an average dude and not some mystical combination of all their qualities?} Yes, that is true.  But I am suspending disbelief.). So Good Old CC knows when his position is in danger and he knows someone like Serpentor is going to be ambitious but all of that is going to have to wait as there is a chance to burn the Pitt to ashes and kill all the Joes.

Too bad none of the Joes are home and this attack is going to run right into the independent investigation and convince the survivors that the threat is real and they need the Joes (You’d think Cobra Island would have done that, but okay! {There are… Other factors at play}). Assuming there are any survivors of course. The investigation itself being carried out by a committee of top brass is kind of hilarious. I mean Hawk shows them a video of the Joes being shelled by Cobra vipers in the streets of Springfield and loads of captured Cobra tanks and artillery only to be told it's circumstantial evidence! (What the hell do they want?) I mean I know the police have militarized to an absurd degree in this country but frankly, if 1st MarDiv got into a shootout in Reno and there were heaps of Soviet tanks being used by men claiming to be Reno PD, I WOULD HAVE QUESTIONS! SO MANY QUESTIONS! (And I would be laughing in Communist.  So Hard.  But yes, there would be questions.  Questions like “How did you get that many T-72s through customs!?  Where did the MiG-29s come from!?  Where are you servicing these vehicles!?) I mean what do you need at this point? A signed confession from Cobra Commander? Of course, Serpentor manages to play on Cobra Commander's vanity to get him to lead the assault into the Pitt and as a result, CC and Destro are lost in action. The two men who were best able to stop him from taking over Cobra. So as a result the Joes are left as a nomadic unit, and Serpentor is able to claim two victories in two engagements and takes over Cobra. He promptly turns to selling weapons to every dictator who can scrape up a spare million or five (How dastardly!  Moving in on America’s [and the USSRs] racket! {Don’t forget the UK, France, Italy and increasingly the PRC racket.  I mean India would be a huge exporter but they’re stunningly incompentent}). His biggest product? A combination of anti-air artillery and command complex he dubs the Terrordome. This was a Hasbro playset that Larry Hama turns into the center of a story of skullduggery and battlefield espionage (Wait, so… is this like one of the massive flak towers/air raid shelters used by Nazi Germany? {With a computer and communications capabilities to overlook an entire theater of deployment}). I'm honestly impressed at his ability to take what is honestly kind of ridiculous children's toys and have me take them seriously by creating political and industrial storylines around them. While the Joes conduct a series of missions across the world to get technical information on the Terrordomes and figure out just why Cobra wants them everywhere; we find out Cobra Commander and Destro aren't dead and while they're trucking across the US, they come across Billy. The young Ninja was severely injured when he decided to come to Springfield to confront his father and got involved in a battle between the Softmaster and Cobra security forces. At first, it seems that Cobra Commander is going to abandon his terrorist lifestyle and just try to be a decent Father to Billy but that doesn't last two issues and he's soon back in the saddle hunting Joes.

I admit I'm a little annoyed at this, I mean Cobra Commander does get a spiffy robot leg for his kid to replace the one that his own troops blew off but he's also willing to leave Billy behind alone to go chasing Joes when Billy is struggling with mental and physical trauma (Does this shock you?). What happened to being a better father CC? (Neglectful/abusive parents almost never actually change.  That’s what happened.) I mean, come on you could at least try to last a month in the lifestyle of a not-a-terrorist-leader! Seriously Billy would be better off with Darth Vader as his father at this point, at least Vader made his kids something of a priority when he became aware of their existence (He did prove he cared.  Literally offered Luke co-rule of the Galaxy, sacrificed himself, etc.  This shit is like… worse than Dr. Evil level parenting.). Cobra Commander doesn't make it to the end of this volume before deciding “Screw focusing on the son who I've crippled through my negligence and malice… The son who I outright lost at points in his childhood due to my focus on building a cult of personality to subvert and destroy my homeland and make war on the very concept of democracy!  I'm retaking my fascist terrorist organization back! Because that's fatherhood!”.  You know at least Vader offered to include Luke.  I’m just saying.  Involved in all of this is Fred VII, a member of the Crimson Guard who for right now plays enabler for Cobra Commander’s desire to get back into terrorism by providing equipment, a place to stay, and calling in local Cobra assets.  Like Raptor, an accountant who likes to dress up like a giant bird and attack government agents with large mutant hawks.  Look, it was the 80s, don’t ask questions. (Look, the cocaine flowed like the spice of Arrakis.  That is all the explanation anyone needs.  There was so much cocaine, that one didn’t even need to use cocaine to be affected by it.  It was everywhere, getting the culture itself high as balls.{It gave us the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Robocop, David Lynch’s Dune, and Transformers… I say we apologize for nothing!})

Meanwhile, the collection of missions to get intel on the Terrordome ends up embarking on a grand GI Joe tradition, Snake Eyes getting captured by Cobra and plugged into one of their Brain reading/scrambler machines. Only sort of on purpose this time by disguising Snake Eyes as another Joe, it takes Cobra hours to figure out that Snake Eyes isn't even really wearing his real face (I am getting Hannibal Lecter vibes here.). Which I have to admit is kind of hilarious to me. You’d think, knowing that one of their enemies is a mute ninja who has a collection of fake faces, they would be instantly suspicious of any prisoners who are on the quiet side and don't sweat while being tortured in the tropics, but noooo (Intel briefings:  Not their strong point.)! This graphic novel also has Serpentor getting increasingly cranky and given performances like these from his High Command, I can understand why. I mean, imagine you're a genetically engineered warlord whose dreams are filled with having subordinates on the level of Subutai, but instead you got people like Dr. Mindbender or the Twins. This confrontation takes place in the fictional country of Sierra Gordo as Cobra and the Joes use Revolutionary and Counter-Revolutionary Forces against each other in the pursuit of profit and intelligence The Joes are working as field advisers for the Counter Revolutionaries and Cobra working for the Revolutionaries, as well as selling them weapons. I can't call this a win for the Joes or a loss, as they get a lot of information but once again lose Snake Eyes. Seriously, I'm thinking this is going to give Scarlet a complex; she's spending a lot of time in this series watching the man she's in love with getting captured or injured right in front of her and not being able to do anything to stop it. She's not going to be able to send him out to buy milk without having a panic attack at this rate. Imagine being the VA psychologist who has to deal with this in about 10 years. Assuming we have a psychologist who has a security clearance high enough for this shit! (Come on now, that would require veterans actually getting decent psychiatric care.  What’s actually going to happen is that she’s gonna file all her paperwork for disability benefits due to crippling PTSD, wait three years for a decision, be declined on the spurious grounds that it’s not service-related, then spend another few years in appeals.  And that’s if she gets the right person’s discharge paperwork when she musters out.{I got the right paperwork… Eventually!})

Volume VI is tense and full of intrigue here but lacks the full-scale clash of arms that we saw in Volume V. Interestingly enough there are no real clear victories for anyone in Volume VI. The Joes gather intelligence and get vital information but don't score a decisive victory and Cobra takes out the Pitt but since the Joes weren't in it, it's not a knockout blow. So both groups are left circling each other with the stakes rising. That said I like this a lot better than Volume IV, which is comparable but left a lot more hanging threads and cliffhangers. Volume VI gives you the feeling of being a complete episode in a large story which is what it is. Still, it's not up to Volume V's level if you ask me. So I'm rating Volume VI by Larry Hama a B.

So our ever-wise patrons voted for GI Joe Volume V but I threw in Volume VI to celebrate Veterans Day and of course the Marine Corps Birthday. Our December polls are open for those who would like to join us, and get a vote for as little as a dollar a month. Patrons also discuss possible theme months and ideas for extra reviews. Next week we return to the world of the Dwarves series with Elves Vol II. Until then, stay safe and Keep Reading.

Red Text is your editor Dr. Ben Allen

Black text is your review Garvin Anders

GI Joe Vol V By Larry Hama

 GI Joe Vol V

By Larry Hama

“The best swords are kept in their sheaths” Storm Shadow

GI Joe Volume V covers issues 41 to 50 running from November 1985 to August 1986. Now I feel like I've said everything I could say on Larry Hama, but I'll repeat my cry to let him achieve his ambition of writing Scrooge McDuck! I also feel I've covered quite a bit about the writing process itself, and discussing Marvel comics is a bit outside the scope of a review. So let's just jump into it, shall we? Since this comic book is around 35 years old... Expect spoilers.

Volume V picks right off where Volume IV left us, in the middle of a story. Cobra had built an underwater bunker in the Gulf of Mexico with the express purpose of getting the US to blast it with heavy firepower. Which is something the US government and armed forces do quite well if you ask me and I suppose Cobra Commander agrees. Well, this causes a new island to form right in the middle of the Gulf of Mexico and Cobra claims it as sovereign territory (Interesting…). This is a rough process as the island's emergence causes a massive tidal wave that swamps a good amount of the Joe assets in the area. Now, I'm pretty sure this is unrealistic, so I've asked a geologist I know to weigh in. Some say he can identify rocks by smell, others that he is a result of climate change, all I am cleared to tell you is, my patrons would know him as Anonymous Reviewer Number 4  (In my professional opinion as a geologist, I could think of a few very specific sequences where a fault is loaded in such a way that a small amount of added energy could set off a larger earthquake. A metastable equilibrium, in other words. Earthquakes do tend to change stress fields of surrounding faults, and there have been cases of potentially sympathetic earthquakes in a region or along a larger fault zone (see something like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_Ridgecrest_earthquakes). However, even very large earthquakes like the 1964 Alaska earthquake resulted in vertical displacement on the order of tens of feet, and the energy released in that quake was approximately 5 gigatons, give or take.  The additional issue is that for an island to "rise" you would need a compressional tectonic environment where rocks are being squeezed together by the collision of plates.  The Gulf of Mexico is an extensional environment where the earth's crust is relatively stable, albeit being loaded over time with sediments from continental North America and Central America So if anything it would be more likely to see the formation of grabens, where faults are pulling apart and the earth's crust is stretching out. Cobra would be more likely to set off a new rift valley like the Mid-Atlantic ridge, rather than uplifting an island in the middle of nowhere [I love you so very much Comrade Anonymous Reviewer Number 4]). That said, it is entertaining to watch. What is slightly more realistic is that Cobra deploys an army of diplomats and lawyers to the UN, DC, and around the world to wrestle up enough recognition of their sovereignty to deter a US response. Now I think this tactic would be vastly less effective today, as the UN wouldn't be able to take any action in support of Cobra due to US Veto powers in the Security Council and no one in their right mind wanting an openly fascist terrorist group having such a secure base of operations (Um.  Provided this happens prior to January 2021, are you sure about that? {Governments react poorly to other people bringing armored battalions into their territory} An artificial Caribbean island is not US territory. <Grins> {Two points, a: prior to this Cobra led an armored assault on Fort Knox.  B that artificial Caribbean island isn’t US Territory… Yet.}). Recognition or no Recognition the USMC would storm that island and announce it a US territory at bayonet point. Besides, there aren't even any natives to worry about! It's a photo-perfect military op. At the height of the Cold War though? With plenty of nations willing and in this case vastly more able to support Cobra for reasons of realpolitik and sticking it to Uncle Sam? There's also Cobra's infiltration of the US to consider as Cobra assets in American society and the government would all be working to prevent overt action by the US

All of this is on the Joes mind as they decide to assault an island being held by a battalion with tanks and air support with a half platoon of men, some of them injured, to physically remove Cobra from the island reasoning that if Cobra has no physical presence on the island before the diplomats and lawyers can finish wrangling... Well, possession is nine tenths of the law they say. This is the first battle of Cobra Island and yes, we're gonna need more numbers. They do really well and are able to fight their way deep into Cobra's defenses but in the end, fail to beat the clock. Which is a great example of Mr. Hama's writing. By showing us the Joes losing and having Cobra achieve victories, he kept the menace of Cobra believable and maintained a certain level of realism in the comic. Which I'm sure was a struggle given that he had to balance the demands of a toy company among other things. Of course, this also shows that Cobra's main strength isn't its own military power but the people embedded in American society willing to help or stay neutral and thus hamper their nation's resistance to a terrorist fascist movement and let's be honest Cobra is a fascist organization. It's built around a personality cult welded to a sloppy ideology that the common man has been cheated of his rightful due by a nebulous group of others and only by brutal militarism and direct action can the common man take it back (Someone read their Eco.  Good.). Members of Cobra are encouraged not to think but to obey Cobra Commander to the last detail. Now that said, Cobra is interestingly free of the racism and sexism that plagues fascism but I'll also admit Cobra high Command is a very white bread affair which suggests a glass ceiling of sorts in the Cobra administration. Compare this to the Joes, which are made of men and women of all races and creeds and with women being given high positions fairly often, despite being a military organization in the mid-80s and well... I guess the Subtext is barely sub at this point, is it?

The story continues as personal issues push things forward. As some of my readers may remember, a Joe by the name of Ripcord became involved with a girl named Candy. Whose father turned out to be an officer in Cobra (This is gonna make the day she brings her boyfriend home to be threatened by her father a bit more harrowing…). In fact, he came up with the plan that started all of this. Candy disappeared when she was kidnapped when Buzzer, a member of the Dreadnoughts, a mercenary biker gang that does a lot of work for Cobra, escaped military custody kidnapping her along the way. Ripcord figures that the best thing to do is to get onto Cobra Island and basically do a live-action replay of Assassin's Creed until he finds out where his ex-girlfriend is and how to get her to safety. Now I'm gonna be honest with you folks, this is not a plan. This is a fever dream of wild hopes and ambition pretending to be a plan but Ripcord is committed to it (Not the brightest tool in the shed, clearly.{He jumps out of planes for a living}). Meanwhile, Snake Eyes gets information from a former leader of his ninja clan named the Soft Master on who killed his old master the Hard Master (There are jokes I can make here.  I won’t make them.). Leading him to promptly desert and go running to find Storm Shadow, who also loses his shit and the both of them decide to storm Cobra Island to find the killer and well... Kill him back. Ninjas tend to deal with their grief in very direct kinetic ways you see. On top of this, a Joe team comes running in to save Ripcord. What follows is a very unpleasant day for Cobra troopers as they have to deal with two ninjas in a killing rage (And the optimum number of Ninjas under the Inverse Ninja Rule is two.{It gets worse, they’re two ninjas with distinct uniforms, full names and backstories!} Marx’s Beard!  They’re invincible!), a team of Joes with orders to steal all the intel they can and get Ripcord out. Meanwhile, Ripcord ends up switching places with a member of Cobra high command, Zartan, and getting sent back to the US by Candy's Father when the two of them realize that no one has any idea where Candy is. While Zartan, due to his shapeshifting abilities, is mistaken for Ripcord and taken directly to the Pitt.

The entire graphic novel isn't devoted to the main plot however, we also get Dr. Mindbender introduced into the story, the Mad Scientist who also lifts and is responsible for creating another character that gets introduced in this volume, Serpentor. Now, Serpentor is pure pulp science, created by using the DNA of a dozen great warlords of history (although some of them have been dead for over a thousand years so I really doubt there would be any DNA left to use [There would be.  In the roots of the teeth, possibly marrow.{I review corrected}] That said, everything else about this origin story is a steaming pile of bullshit.  They would mix those genomes together and get… an average dude.  This is some strange eugenicist propaganda going on here!). In the cartoon, Serpentor is depicted as a mad man megalomaniac whose biggest advantage over Cobra Commander was having a respectful amount of personal courage. The comic Serpentor, who is created in much the same way, is a bit different and I'll get to that in the battle of Springfield. We also get the introduction of Sgt Slaughter! Sgt Slaughter was a wrestler who had the gimmick of being an ex-drill instructor and he was inducted as a Joe because Vince McMahon was making action figures for his wrestlers with another company and Sgt Slaughter had just left the WWE. Hasbro, looking to undercut their competitors cut a deal with Robert Remus, the man who played Sgt Slaughter and he signed over the rights to his likeness and for several years Sgt Slaughter would be the public face of GI Joe (This is some cursed shit.). Although he would be a bigger presence in the cartoons than in the comics, only really showing up for two issues, issue 48 and 51.  Here he shows up and quickly takes charge even taking out Zartan with a single punch.

This means that Ripcord ends up in Springfield, while Zartan is in the Pitt. What follows is basically a spy speed chess match, as both of these men posing as the other try to escape and inform their own side about the location of the top-secret base their side has been looking for (Is their fieldcraft any good?{Zartan’s fieldcraft is decent but limited by the fact that he is surrounded by suspicious highly trained and motivated people who know about his abilities.  Ripcord is dealing with the Dreadnoughts who are mercenary Australian bikers}). Ripcord manages to report first causing the first battle of Springfield. The first battle of Springfield is gloriously written. Cobra's leadership, realizing that they're outgunned and outnumbered since the Joes brought everyone, decides to evacuate the city but need someone to lead the defense. Destro is about to volunteer when Serpentor literally crawls out of his clone tube and demands the right to spend his first birthday (tube day? Clone day? I need a call from a biologist here {Decantation Day.  If he survives a year, it will be Decantiversary}) locked in brutal street by street mortal combat against a heavily armed and armored opponent. What follows is a damning indictment of Cobra High Command without Mr. Hama saying so much as a word about it in the comic or out of it. As the blocking forces of Serpentor not only hold the Joes but are often able to push them back as Serpentor leads from the front inspiring fanatical and energetic action from his Viper troops. Quite often we see that the Vipers cave quickly when running up against the Joes, but this frankly suggests they cave because they know their leaders (who are often very, very far behind him) are busy looking for the exits (Military Science peeps would call this Poor Vertical Cohesion.  Simply put, they don’t trust their officers.{We just call this bad leadership on the ground} Yes, an NCO would, but the USMC has a manual on this.). Give them a leader who runs out into the field of fire to retrieve wounded troops as Serpentor does and they're able to slug it out with the very best of the US military. Serpentor is even able to break contact with the Joes and get his men off the field of battle leaving the Joes nothing but a burning American City that has been wiped of all actionable intelligence, few if any Cobra prisoners, and a lot of the Pentagon and the Government openly questioning if Cobra was in charge of the town at all (And this is why you equip cameras.). Not bad for his first day alive huh?

Volume V is one where the Joes take a lot of hard knocks but give out a good number in return. It firmly reminds us why Cobra is so dangerous but makes the point that Cobra's greatest weakness is its own leadership, which is unable to sacrifice for a greater cause or act for anything but their own very limited interests even if that means the Cobra organization suffers (I am in fact reminded… of the Wehrmacht in 1945.  I almost pity them.  Almost, death to all fascists.  Their line officers and NCOs were excellent and they had fantastic horizontal and vertical cohesion which prevented their collapse before the glorious Red Army in 1944.  Seriously, they took 2.3 Stalingrads of deaths - not including all casualties, just deaths - in three months, and kept fighting.  However, as things got desperate and the brass became selfish and delusional - more so than thinking they could successfully invade the USSR in the first place, that was always delusion - it got really really bad to be in the Wehrmacht, and their cohesion collapsed.). Meanwhile, the Joes can come together as a unit and take incredible risks for one another and achieve the mission. Mr. Hama can make this point without having anyone give us tiresome speeches or long author soapboxes, he does it by simply showing it in the story. Which frankly makes him a great writer. There are also other stories in this volume that make it worth the price of reading. Such as the struggle of Wade Collins, a Vietnam Vet turn Cobra commando to decide just what he's going to do with his life; the final fate of Candy; and the continuing story of Billy, Cobra Commander's estranged son who has now been trained by Storm Shadow to be a ninja (That’ll make family get-togethers awkward.). With Volume V we're back in the groove I feel, I'm giving GI Joe Vol V by Larry Hama an A.

This is part one of a glorious doubleheader for Veteran's Day. Go ahead and head to the next installment for Volume VI.

Dwarves Vol III By Nicolas Jarry

 Dwarves Vol III

By Nicolas Jarry

This is my fourth review in the series, so I'm just gonna hit the highlights before jumping into the graphic novel itself. This is a French comic series with each graphic novel adopting a new main character, in an interrelated series of stories set in the same fantasy world. Dwarves take place in the same world as three other series who run under the titles of Elves, Orcs, and the most recent release Mages. As you might imagine Dwarves focuses on the Dwarven people of this fantasy world and tells the story of Dwarvish protagonists. Now that we've refreshed that, let's jump into it (Thank Azathoth.). 

Volume III focuses on Aral, a recently graduated engineering (What?  Journeyman?) focusing on obtaining his mastery. His biggest desire is to succeed at building a suspension bridge (That is… probably going to be a tall order.  And next week’s episode is the Tacoma Narrows Bridge Disaster.), find a wife, start a family, and put his past behind him (Oh here we go!). In what has been a firm tradition for Dwarvish main characters in this series, he had a troubled relationship with his father (What the… look, it’s almost like Monsieur Jarry was taking his cues from Spielberg with the daddy issues.  Not that I can throw stones, what with my massive daddy issues.). In this case, an experiment he conducted as a child started a house fire that killed his Mother and his Father never forgave him (This is why you always supervise your mad-scientist/engineer children!). His father would go on to die in a quarry accident with that division between the two of them never healing (Ouch.   Also, these people need OSHA, because that quarry was certainly not up to code.). Aral interestingly enough isn't consumed with angst over it. He makes it clear in the story that he wishes that he had listened to his Father, stopped experimenting at home and his mother was alive but he can't change the past only focus on his future. It's a suspiciously healthy outlook for a main character in this series, so I firmly suggest that none of y'all get too attached to it (Oh No…). It's also one that's going to be very challenged in the story itself. Before I get into the weeds, let me fill in the back story of this because it actually explains a lot about Dwarven society and the current state of their civilization. 

So, long ago after a war with the Elves, a powerful warlord named Fugor Greathelm established a Dwarven Empire that dominated the eastern regions of the world. Now, Fugor had taken certain injuries that left him unable to father children, so it's perhaps no surprise that he turned to adoption. He adopted a dark-skinned, black-eyed dwarven boy found one day by one of his servants and named him Forgrim. While Forgrim grew quickly and grew well, Fugor died before his adopted son could reach adulthood, an event I suspect was helped along by those elvish wounds (That is what war wounds tend to do.). Fulgrim put himself forward as his adopted father's successor to the title of Emperor but the various lords of the fortress-states rejected him completely. Each one of them decided that he would rather be a King of a city than a Lord in an empire and used the fact that Fulgrim was adopted as a convenient excuse (They’d have done it anyway.). Being soundly rebuffed by the nobility of the empire and lacking the military strength to really contest it, Fulgrim decided to attempt an alternate strategy. Gathering scholars and adventurers from across the empire, Fulgrim founded the Dragon's Lodge, an esoteric society devoted to gathering and compiling the knowledge of all races and using them to the benefit of Dwarven kind. They learned arts and secrets both arcane and scientific. They began to spread out to the different Fortress-states and made themselves indispensable. The Dragon Lodge was also a center for innovation and experimentation, soon their secrets and processes were powering a new Dwarven Golden Age. They began to draw devotees to themselves from across the Dwarven world promising mastery of secrets beyond anything Dwarves had achieved before and the possibility of eternal life (Because that is always part of it.  Then you’re giving yourself mercury poisoning and inventing gunpowder…{You think he’s kidding but this is so common that the EPA has a task force on the ritualistic use of mercury, you can look up the report and read it or even buy it on amazon}). Fulgrim himself had taken the title of Immortal Dragon and he lived up to it as four centuries passed and he seemed untouched by the years. Fulgrim stood on the brink of retaking his Father's Empire, rebuilt into something even grander and greater than his Father's wildest dreams, and doing it without firing a shot or fighting a single battle. This would have been the kind of victory that military strategists since Sun Tzu have lauded as the highest ideal, the kind of victory you win without fighting. Fulgrim however, had other ideas. For reasons I won't spoil but instead will encourage you to read the book to find out, Fulgrim had his followers turn on the rest of Dwarven kind in an orgy of slaughter and mayhem (That is just so… Stupid.  I get that there are reasons but WHY!?). This (Surprising no one {Fulgrim seemed surprised}) caused many members to defect and the Dragon Lodge was thrown down and split into four orders. The Forge, the Shield, the Talisman, and the Temple; those who maintained their loyalty to Fulgrim were ejected from Dwarf society becoming clanless and casteless (See where loyalty to emperors gets you!). However, the surviving masters of the Dragon Lodge gathered together and wrote down the knowledge they hadn't shared with the rest of DwarvenKind in a book. A book they made 12 copies of and hid in ancient underground cities. One of which has been found, under Aral's ancestral city-state. 

This means Aral, his master, his master's niece Senna and a group of the Temple's best must get into the underground city, destroy whatever is guarding the book, and then destroy the book before someone reads it (But… nooooo). Because there are dark secrets in that book, the kind could rip apart nations (Why on earth would they get written down then!  Jesus, stop taking notes in the cabal meeting! {I’m going to suggest the last loyalist masters of a cult who are willing to murder their fellows on the word of their leader might not care about the effects of their secrets on outsiders}). The kind of secrets that the Temple has a duty to contain and destroy. This isn't going to be easy though because it means Aral is going to have to confront his Father's family and the bad blood between them, his father, and him. He's also going to have to do it in a city-state slowly but surely going mad, as Dwarves lose their grip on reality and turn on each other in violent rages (Wait a minute... ). Is this a spell triggered by exposing the book? Something that guards it? Or something to do with the King of the city-state, who is a distant relative of Aral's and seems to be losing his grip on reality (If it ends up being a King and The Land Are One thing I am gonna lose my shit!  Down with monarchist propaganda! {I’ll just note that Dwarven kings are never presented that well in these comics}). For that matter are the Dwarves of the Temple going to be in any better state or will they succumb to infighting and hatred or worse will they find the book and fall into temptation? 

Volume III is told completely from Aral's point of view and is told using the framing device of him writing this down in a journal as an old man. This honestly robs it of some suspense but the story makes up some ground by making us feel a bit of concern about the fate of Aral's companions (It’s the problem with epistolary formats, yes.). It's an interesting story and it fills in a lot of lore about the Dwarvish people in this specific world setting. Although if you ask me Aral isn't as interesting or compelling as Redwin or Ordo, I think part of that is while Redwin and Ordo were pursuing their own goals and dreams, for most of this book Aral is basically working for other people and towards their goals. On the flip side, this does make him more like the average person (Insert commentary about the class struggle here.{insert sniping here}Insert Lyudmila Pavlichenko reference here.{Annnd that’s enough meta for this week!}). Senna, the niece of Aral's master is an interesting character but is thrust pretty firmly into the background and we don't know much if anything about her. The rest of the characters get even less attention. So if the plot and Aral don't grab your attention, it'll be a complete miss. That said the plot is good and compelling and Aral isn't a terrible character, just not as good as prior protagonists. Dwarves Volume III by Nicholas Jarry gets a B- from me. 

    So this review was chosen by our ever-wise patrons. As a patron you get a vote on upcoming reviews, themes, and more starting at a dollar a month. As well as every review open for discussion. If you'd like to join us, feel free at https://www.patreon.com/frigidreads Next week to celebrate Veteran's Day and the Marine Corps Birthday we'll be running a double feature of GI Joe V and VI. After that is Elves Vol III. Until next week, stay safe and Keep Reading.

Red text is your editor Dr. Ben Allen

Black text is your review Garvin Anders