Monstrous Regiment By Sir Terry Pratchett

Monstrous Regiment

By Sir Terry Pratchett

Hello there. Gary T. Stevens here again, and here is our second Discworld review for this month so our ever-lovable (Is he though?) (I'm trying to be nice here! [Yes, and he’s my pseudobrother, so I don’t have to be.]) Devil Dog-turned-anthropologist can work on his Atlantis Summer material. Well, that, and inspiration. Indeed, this was initially to come first and was written on "speculation", so to speak, that it might be needed, and because I was inspired. It was since moved to be second so that its release corresponds with Memorial Day, for a reason that will soon be apparent. So let us begin another foray into the wonderful world brought forth from the imagination of the (lamentably) late Sir Terry Pratchett: the Discworld!

Monstrous Regiment was published in 2003 as the thirty-first novel in the run. It was a nominee for the 2004 Locus Award for Best Fantasy Novel. It is also accepted to be the last "stand-alone" novel in the Discworld series, as in, we would not see its protagonists again, and all the future novels would be part of one sub-series or another (though I would argue 2009's Unseen Academicals is more a stand-alone than a Wizards novel given the primary characters were mostly new ones who weren't wizards, but that's personal taste). Some of my more historically-knowledgeable readers may recognize the title, or at least feel it scratching at their brainpans for recognition (Yes. God damned Protestantism). Suffice it to say that yes, it's a reference, and finding it is a sort of spoiler to parts of the book. But just parts. Also, looking up the reference online is cheating!

This entry takes us far from the usual setting of the Disc, Ankh-Morpork, and even further from there than the Kingdom of Lancre from Carpe Jugulum. Now we go to the far end of Uberwald and the river plains and valleys of the Kneck River and other environs, where a host of small countries have traditionally feuded and warred with one another for the usual reasons such countries do so. War is something of a sport to these people, and none have practiced it as vigorously or enthusiastically as the people of Borogravia. The Borogravians, like all their neighbors, are a monarchy, because who doesn't enjoy breeding hemophiliacs? (Habsburg Jaws don’t grow on trees. Trees have branches!) In this case, they are ruled by the Duchess Annagovia (or just "The Duchess" to most folk), who is very old, has no heirs, and may or may not be dead (Well that’s a problem. Of course, she might have heirs if she wasn’t so inbred her germ line cells could no longer divide. On the other hand, that might just mean her Duchy might get something better than a monarchy for a government.). (The alternatives appear to be a military junta, theocracy, or being taken over by the neighboring kingdom of Zlobenia ruled by a distant cousin.[No Robespierre solutions huh?])

Complicating this is that the Borogravians are also a theocracy, as the entire nation is governed by Nugganatic Law (Oh no.). Unfortunately for them, unlike some of the more chill deities and divinities up on Dunmanifestin, Nuggan is a… tetchy god. He's the kind of god who would write editorial letters to newspapers signed "Disgusted from Dunmanifestin" (When your god is also a Karen…). While most deities and their religions have the decency to have a single holy book or set of holy writings that are left alone, the Book of Nuggan receives regular updates, and those updates are typically the Abominations, those things that Nuggan finds offensive. It is an ever-growing list that now includes such items as garlic (Okay so vampire), chocolate (About as much fun as Oliver Cromwell), cats (So he’s a jealous god…), dwarves (Dick), accordion players (Poor Bear McReary), the color blue, crop rotation (Time for the Holy Holodomor! Take that Lysenko!), and babies (Well good, fewer mouths to feed with their catastrophic famine!) (Granted, eventually it means no more Borogravians, and since Discworld gods are powered by their believers' belief…). To put it simply, Nuggan is now the kind of deity who wears his underpants on his head (and who will presumably declare them an Abomination at some point too). The people of Borogravia have responded to this by directing more and more of their prayers at their ancient and possibly-dead Duchess, hoping she might intercede with their insane divinity, but so far it doesn't seem to be working (When life gives you lemons FIND A NEW GOD!) (Sage advice there.)

I share this information with you to provide the backdrop for introducing our protagonist: Polly Perks. The daughter of a tavernkeeper in the small town of Munz, Polly begins the book by commencing her transformation into Oliver Perks so that she might join the army in flagrant defiance of Nugganatic Law, which includes enforcement of gender roles and certainly does not see soldiering as something "of Women". (This is why gender roles are dumb, kids.) She has very important reasons to do so, at least to her, not the least of which is the fate of her family's tavern and her duty towards her simple-minded brother. I do not call her our story's hero because, as we shall learn, she is not the "hero" of this story, though her role will be quite interesting regardless and she will show many worthy qualities that might have made her the hero otherwise. Above all, she is our viewpoint character for most of the book, through which we will meet a host of other recruits. Polly — now dubbed "Ozzer" by her new comrades — is joined by fellow humans Shufti, Wazzer, Tonker, and Lofty, as well as the troll Carborundum, an Igor, and Maladict the vampire. Yes, I said vampire, but if you're worried about Polly's neck, you needn't be: Maladict is a Black Ribboner, a vampire who has taken the Pledge, forsworn human blood, and displaces the thirst with a devotion to something else (coffee! [I approve and understand this addiction]) (This actually becomes important to the plot).

As you might expect, these recruits all have their own motivations, their own little stories, some more involved than others, to sign up for Borogravia's army. And the recruiting party is glad to have them. Borogravia is, as always, at war, but this time it's different. Cities and states from opposite sides of the continent have joined up with their local enemies for various reasons, most of them due to the Borogravians' pigheaded adherence to Nuggan's whims and their many hereditary vendettas with neighbors making them, in the eyes of the other nations of the Disc, a sort of rogue state in need of a kicking. So now the country is facing a war against overwhelming force while they rot from within, and these recruits soon learn just how bad things are in their decaying nation. (Yeah, they really really need to find a new God). (And this is still sage advice.)

As desperate as their situation proves, they do have a couple things going for them. Well, mostly one thing, but it's a big one. While the recruiting party's Corporal Strappi is a nasty bullying coward who seems destined to be the victim of not-so-friendly fire, Sergeant Jackrum is the legend of the Borogravian Army. This fat sergeant is a truly ageless soldier who knows everyone and is known by everyone, he knows every dirty trick in the book and, more importantly, those that aren't found there. He will stop at nothing to look after "my little lads" until they are safely with the rest of their regiment, the Ins-and-Outs (also known as the Cheesemongers, which the book will dutifully explain better than I). Along the way the squad meets its commanding officer as well, Lieutenant Blouse, who is naive, apparently hopeless as a combat commander (Awwww he’s a butterbar! How cute!) (a staff butterbar to boot), but yet will show his own skill and capability in the trek that awaits them. For it is not long before Polly and her comrades meet the enemy, setting off a chain of events that will take them to the stage of history.

I dare not say anything else, because I do not want you, readers, to be spoiled about this book. As always Sir Terry is as quick to make observations about the nature of people, good and ill, as he is to satirize or derive other humor from the situation of our protagonists. There are undoubtedly dark places in this world. When one character is asked what they used to do, their reply is "I used to be beaten", and similar horrors are hinted at in the backgrounds of some of Polly's other compatriots. For another point, when someone expresses to Polly the idea that the country would be better if it were truly run just by women, she ruminates on her devout mother's worst behavior, and on the old ladies who enforce social rule and law with merciless glee. Borogravia's society is certainly patriarchal, but as in reality, that doesn't mean women don't have some role and can be just as terrible when enforcing said society. The question arises naturally as we read on: "What does Borogravia even have to be so proud over? Why would anyone want to fight for this miserable, nasty, rotting little country?" It makes for interesting observations from both the characters and Sir Terry's narrative perspective.

As one might expect from a story with a lot of soldiering involved, military humor does come up quite a bit. So too do observations, and humor, about gender roles and the perceptions of gender. Polly is proud of how well she remembers to fart, belch, and scratch, and practiced walking in trousers before signing up, as well as using the privy without "getting her feet wet" (an act I have heard a number of transmen would share her pride in accomplishing [Oh yeah, they take great pride in it. Also, if you are trans and reading this, you are valid, you are loved,]). The humor is there, ready to provide levity when the book's darker moments remind us of what war means for those who suffer through it. Polly confronts the need to potentially kill and laments the lack of training, the training that turns the sons of mothers and brothers of sisters into mere straw men to stick pointy metal things into. After all, Monstrous Regiment is an anti-war story, and you're not getting away from the darkness that entails.

For the record, it is also an anti-sexism story, arguably going to the extent of deeply questioning the very idea of fixed gender roles in society (Good, because those are stupid. As is binary gender, which is not only stupid but runs counter to human biology. Sorry transphobes, but I am a biologist and facts don’t give a fuck about your reactionary feelings.) (Quiet, they think we're the liberal/socialist pansies who place feels over reals, you're just going to confuse… ah, never mind, carry on!), or at least how we perceive them. But it is not just about these topics, and wherever it explores any of these subjects, it does so in Sir Terry's own special way that I can only describe as a grasp on language that most writers, myself included, may never reach. The power of words is often debated in not just literature but politics. Sometimes we can't even agree on what words mean. Sir Terry clearly understood that power and he writes his stories, and their messages, to guarantee as wide an understanding as I think could be hoped for.

Is it a perfect book? No, because there is no such thing, not even in Discworld (though I figure the preceding book Night Watch comes close). In this case, there are legitimate complaints about it. Even this far from Ankh-Morpork, Sir Terry still finds himself giving a guest role to Sir Samuel Vimes, with several of the Ankh-Morpork City Watch accompanying him to Borogravia and environs. Indeed, Vimes is the viewpoint character whenever we are not following Polly, and plays his own role in the shaping of events. I personally didn't find them too onerous, though I can see the argument that it was overdone. Having a vital item literally dropped onto our protagonists, for instance. I give Sir Terry the credit of believing he wasn't simply "trapped" by circumstances in the story but opted for the humor of the resulting scene since there is no mystery for the reader as compared to the characters. We know Vimes did it, even a bit of why he did it. It is the fact itself that can feel too convenient.

The validity of Vimes' role aside, I can also understand why some people find the climax a bit too easily handled. That said, I do not share these complaints, as I believe the book contains within its own message, and the events, the corollary to the apparently "easy" victory. Because in the Discworld, as in our world, there is no magic moment where everything changes for the better. Things do get better, but the next day will come, and eventually, you'll have to work to make things better still, or simply keep what you have gained. The book does not give us a happy ending, at least not the kind we're generally used to. Some characters get as close to a happy ending as they can hope for, but there is no happily ever after, and Polly in particular has no certain ending, just a path she chooses.

As I did with my first review, I will not give this a letter grade. I will say I do enjoy this one slightly more than I do Carpe Jugulum, but that's like asking me to choose between two fine dishes I enjoy dining on. Each has its own strengths, its taste, and texture, setting it apart from the other, and I enjoy both equally. As I said before, the Discworld is a setting about stories, and these are both good and meaningful stories. In this case, it is also about how our own petty-mindedness, our own stupidity, can destroy everything we love if we let it. Blindly following the same path of those who came before us, without regard for where we are, is a path to the same doom that Polly and her country face in this book, and you can't just ignore the big problems while caring about small ones. As Polly herself will eventually put it, if you want to care about small things, you have to start caring about big ones, and even the world might not be big enough.

Consider this book highly recommended.

Black text is your brave guest editor Gary Stevens

Red is your only slightly demented editor Dr. Ben Allen. 

Night Watch By Terry Pratchett

 Night Watch

By Terry Pratchett

Hello again, dear readers. I am known as Gary T. Stevens (at least to my readers) and, at the invitation of our local book-reading, book-reviewing Devil Dog (He prefers the term Crayon-Eating Jarhead) (Does he now?[Why yes.  Yes he does. {No, he doesn’t}]), I have contributed this review so that he might have time to prepare for the Atlantis Summer event.  Today I am here to share the story of the Glorious Twenty-Fourth of May and the short, burning spark that was the People's Republic of Treacle Mine Road, whose defenders sought Truth, Justice, Freedom, Reasonably-Priced Love, and a Hard-Boiled Egg! (These all sound like reasonable demands.) (It was supposed to be "Free Love", but that did not meet the approval of one of the Revolution's supporting factions, the Guild of Seamstresses *hem hem!*)

By which I mean, I am here to review Night Watch, the 29th of Sir Terry Pratchett's Discworld novels, and the sixth of those about Samuel Vimes and the Ankh-Morpork City Watch.  It was published in 2002; the following year it won the Prometheus Award and was nominated for the Locus Award.  In 2022 it ranked 73rd in the BBC's "Big Read" of the most-read novels in Britain.  And it is, by my estimation, one of the very best in the series, and I believe would be fairly enjoyable even for first-time readers.  Sir Terry is at his best in this work, bringing us strong character and thoughtful prose with all the expertise in the use of the English language one would expect of him.

In my last review, the 2021 Fangsgiving review of Carpe Jugulum, I gave a history of Sir Terry, and kindly ask you to go back to that one for the full paragraph (Please, for the love of Marx.). Suffice to say, he was a journalist turned novelist who became one of the English language's great satirists and humorists of the late 20th and early 21st Centuries, a thoughtful and wonderful human being who had a way with words and expressing ideas while making you laugh at just how silly Human beings can be (and you laugh because sometimes the alternative is crying at how cruel and foolish and just utterly stupid people can be[Have you seen The League of Fascist Karens Moms for Liberty?  It’s both.  I laugh and cry at the same time.]).

Much as Carpe Jugulum was one of the later books about the Witches of Lancre, this comes with the Ankh-Morpork City Watch having already enjoyed five books to get established to readers.  This one is, however, a bit different.  The Watch books have often been a tiered ensemble, with Sam Vimes and Carrot Ironfoundersson as the leads. This book, however, is centered on Sam Vimes facing his own past and character, in more ways than one.  He grew up a poor boy in the sprawling metropolis of Ankh-Morpork, the largest city in the Discworld, and as a young lad sought to gain some purpose (and modest income) in life by signing up for the City Watch.  Through a series of events passing over the prior Watch-related books, he has risen high indeed, marrying the wealthiest woman in the city aristocracy, rising from Captain of the Night Watch to Commander of the City Watch, and even being named the Duke of Ankh, the highest non-royal title in the city.  Suffice it to say I could probably write an essay on Sam Vimes as a character to cover his journey to this point, but that's for later.  Or reviews of the other Watch books.

Yet he was not always this high, and as happens, a part of him feels nostalgia for those old days when he wasn't running the Watch and hadn't yet become such an important figure in Morporkian civic politics that the Guild of Assassins now refuse to consider contracts on his life (well, that and all the Guild members he's humiliated and beaten over the years probably had something to do with it).  The Guild has long considered itself vital to the smooth functioning of the city, so to take Vimes off the register shows their estimation of his importance to said functioning (Even the assassin’s guild. This is what was meant by Lumpenproletariat…). (As a note, the Guild of Assassins is a preferred institution among the gentry and remaining nobility of Ankh-Morpork, particularly younger sons, and daughters who won't inherit otherwise.  Vimes feels a tad annoyed at their decision to remove him from the register, as he'd come to regard their efforts against him as a sign he was annoying rich and powerful people that ought to be annoyed.)  He's gone from wearing thin-soled boots and battered breastplates on night patrols to meeting civic government committees in shiny, golden ornamental armor and uniforms.  One such meeting calls him away from his home and the imminent delivery of his first child, into a city where the blooming lilacs remind him of betrayed ideals and fallen comrades.

But today will not go as planned, as word comes that one of Vimes' coppers has been slain at the hands of a sociopathic killer named Carcer.  Carcer is the primary antagonist of this story; the only life that matters to Carcer is his own, and he will kill simply because it amuses him.  When (not if) you find him standing over his victims with their stolen belongings bulging out of his pockets and the blood still on his hands, he'll look at you and go "Who? Me? What, haha, did I do wrong?  Just getting along in life, can't blame a man for trying, right?" It'll be said with an expression of surprised innocence confused at what you're so mad about.  Just don't look too deeply into his eyes; not because you'll see the demons within egging him on but because you'll have taken your eyes off his hands, which will most likely have something pointy in them by the end of this sentence (Sounds like a person who’s like The Joker.  You shouldn’t be mad.  You shouldn’t arrest him.  Just kill him.). (One good comparison I saw from an online commentary is that this story is Les Miserables flipped: Carcer is a psychotic counterpart of Valjean while Vimes is Javert if his devotion to the Law was tempered by actual interest in justice and protecting the innocent [Hmm.  That isn’t bad.]).

Given Carcer's skill and just plain meanness, Vimes joins the manhunt into the confines of the wizards' Unseen University, coming to grips with the knife-wielding maniac in the dome of the University Library as a thunderstorm rages overhead.  Unknown to either, this thunderstorm is not entirely natural.  The events of the prior Discworld novel Thief of Time are beyond the scope of this review, but as the Doctor would say, timey-wimey happened.  And now timey-wimey happens to Vimes, who through a series of rough events will eventually find he has been thrown into the past by thirty years.  And what was once a painful old memory has become a stark present.  A paranoid tyrant governs a city ready to explode into revolution and violence, secret police wait to spirit people off to be broken in the name of a madman's pseudoscientific conviction, and revolutionaries plot to seize power no matter how much blood might be spilled in the process. 

Even worse, he is not alone.  Carcer has been dragged back through time as well, and his first victim is John Keel; the man who was to become mentor and hero to young Lance Constable Sam Vimes, the poor rookie watchman from Cockbill Street.  Vimes must assume the place of Sergeant-at-Arms John Keel and be that mentor to young Sam — whatever the cost, given the consequence of setting the young lad wrong — while trying to chart his way through the tempestuous History happening around him. (At least he has spoilers?  Also, that is a damn fine grandfather paradox there.) As if that wasn't hard enough, he'll also have to find a way to deal with Carcer, who is clever and brutal enough to find opportunity in this dangerous time.  The closest thing he has to an ally are the mysterious History Monks, guardians of Time working to fix the damage done by the events of Thief of Time.  They play a mostly minor, if still key, role, with just enough characterization and agency that they aren't reduced to a mere plot device.

Night Watch is a character piece.  Sam Vimes, on some level, has gotten what he wanted in that he's back on the streets, a regular copper, not a man of influence and power, yet this forces him to confront the truth that he loves his wife, that no amount of grousing can make up for the fact that he believes in his work, and that he wants that life back (It’s A Wonderful Life?  Is that you?).  Yet he is lost in the past, with allies whose attempts to explain the intricacies of his situation flummox and confound him, and has been warned that the future he knows might be lost if he doesn't play the role.  Time travel plots always run the risk of getting away from the author (Yes.  Yes they do.  I wish I had my wink emoji…) due to the inherent contradictions and matters of causality involved, so Sir Terry avoids the technobabble and theorizing (with sufficient humor) to focus on the very real feelings Vimes has at his perplexing situation.  The history he knows does not change, yet between his actions and Carcer's, the history he is now experiencing is not the same.  Things are changing, and he has to wonder if the world he knows will still be there before this is over.

More to the point, he is still Samuel Vimes.  He believes in the Law applying to everyone, in trying to make his city a better place and protecting people from sociopaths like Carcer or Findthee Swing, Captain of the "Particulars" and head of Lord Winder's secret police.  Yet he is in an era festering with injustice.  He knows the revolution breaking out is just going to bring to power another petty tyrant, yet the current one is having innocent people tortured into catatonia because his secret police captain believes he can judge someone's truthfulness by measuring their skulls! (For some reason it always goes back to measuring skulls with people like that.  Judging truthfulness, Jewishness, sexual market value; whatever it is they are trying to determine, there’s always skull measurement.)  He's supposed to uphold the law, but when the army's in the streets to enforce the tyrant's rule and common citizens are raising the barricades to keep them out of their communities, where does the law lie? (Philosophically speaking, upholding something just because it is the law is an indefensible position.  Ethics lie independent of the law.)  The law whose chief enforcer has become the enemy of public peace and justice?  For that matter, what about the price of going home? There are seven graves that have to be filled for Vimes to get his future back, seven decent (or relatively so) people who have to die for history to progress, but Vimes is not the kind of person to just let those graves get filled if he can stop it.

There comes a point in this book where these pieces, and his existential despair over the fate of the future he knows, nearly break Vimes down. It's a good moment to be sure, a reminder that for all he can sometimes seem in control, the indomitable hero wrestling with historical inevitability, Vimes is human and fallible.  He despairs, he bleeds, and he struggles with his own inner darkness (which he dubs "the Beast", representing his capacity for violence, including lethal and unchecked violence).  It makes his triumphs sweeter.

Carcer is depicted as being something like what Vimes would be if he succumbed to his darkness, someone who has decided no rules apply to him because he doesn't want them to and will do as he pleases, no matter whom it hurts. This not only adds to the conflict between them but finds a mirror in the terrible leadership of Ankh-Morpork in the past, with a leader and associates who see themselves as free to do as they please with their city, treating it solely as something to extract wealth from until the entire place breaks down.  The law, the rules of society, simply did not apply.  Also the same with Findthee Swing who feels he is perfectly justified in having people tortured to justify his insane "craniometrics", much less to protect the city.  And when enough people break these unspoken rules, when the Beast is unleashed, everything breaks.

While Vimes is by far the majority of the book, we do see glimpses of other characters, including the younger version of Vimes' own boss, Lord Vetinari, at this point a young graduate of the Guild of Assassins who is due to play his own role, and his connections to those seeking to bring down Lord Winder and his corrupt administration.  They add to the tension, particularly as it's clear they regard "John Keel" as a wild card whom they can't control but aren't sure about eliminating themselves.  We never get anything from Carcer's perspective for that matter, which lends a certain force to him.  He's an unpredictable element, exploiting the situation to his own benefit and whim, and clearly enjoying the prospect of getting to hurt Vimes in the end… and perhaps more.

Altogether this is a brilliant book and I cannot recommend it highly enough.  I do recommend reading the Watch books in order if you're interested since seeing Vimes' development up to this point does add to the piece, but it's not strictly necessary.  As for criticisms?  To tell the truth, I can't even think of one.  Sir Terry wrote the book in such a way that you don't need to have read any of the prior books, even the one with the events that set off this book's main plot.  Night Watch is, on its own, a powerful tale and has all the usual witticisms and observations about human nature that Sir Terry is known for.  I can't single them out, or even go into more detail, because I can't think of which one to mention first nor do I think the editor or main reviewer would appreciate me writing ten thousand words of book quotes and related gushing.  You'll have to read for yourself.

If I were to start assigning these books grades as our reviewer wishes I would, this would be an A+.  It is by far one of the best books in the series and in the canon of fantasy literature, and I will always treasure it.

Next week, we get more Vimes, albeit in a guest-star role, as we move to the next novel in the Discworld series (not counting the YA fiction introducing Tiffany Aching): Monstrous Regiment!  It's a book about soldiers and war, just in time for the holiday that reminds us of the prices those soldiers pay when we call them to war.  See you then.

Read Steve's last guest review here! http://frigidreads.blogspot.com/2021/10/carpe-jugulum-by-sir-terry-pratchett.html

Black text is our guest reviewer Big Steve

Red Text is your editor Dr. Ben Allen

Green Text is your long-suffering main reviewer Garvin Anders

Lostuns Found By Sharon Skinner

 Lostuns Found 

By Sharon Skinner

Sharon Skinner is an American writer, poet, and recording artist. She was born in Buffalo, New York on December 21, 1956, but grew up in Winters, California. She started writing in the 4th grade. When she was 23 she joined the US Navy and ended up sailing on the USS Jason (AR-8) a heavy hull repair ship. The USS Jason was a distinguished ship that served from World War II to the mid-1990s (No way its design life was that long, damn!  Probably a Ship of Theseus by the end there.), was heavily decorated for its many achievements under fire, and was the first ship to sail with female crew members. Ms. Skinner served on the ship in 1980 while it was stationed in Diego Garcia. 

After her service, she worked a wide variety of jobs including arthouse production manager, telephone sales representative, professional trainer, visual information systems coordinator, and consultant. She also did this while pursuing secondary education, because as I can personally assure the American people the GI Bill is nowhere as generous as you think it is (Especially back then.). She graduated from Mesa Community College with an associate's Degree, then Ottawa University with a bachelor's degree in English Language and Literature/Letters. Afterward, she graduated from Prescott College with a master's in Creative Writing. She also served as executive editor for Anthology literary magazine while in college. 

After graduating Ms. Skinner focused on her writing as well as hosting the Radiant Reading internet show. The show featured her reading the works of various authors. Meanwhile, she wrote grants professionally while working on her own novels and poems so I assume she didn't sleep much (Certainly not.). In 2009 she joined the Grant Professionals Association National Board and is a certified GPC Grant Professional. In 2010 she published her first novel and many more would follow. She mostly writes fantasy, science fiction, paranormal, and the occasional steampunk. On top of that, She also serves as the Regional Advisor for SCBWI Arizona, a division of the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators. Lostuns Found is one of her more recent works only published last year in 2022. 

Lostuns Found takes place mostly in the city of Landings. A smoke and pollution-choked city powered by steam and I assume after reading the book human suffering (Well obviously.  The steam engines aren’t enough.  You need pain engines to run a modern society.). The city has a very Victorian London feel straight from the darkest parts of A Christmas Carol combined with steampunk technology run amuck. Ms. Skinner honestly does a great job of building the character of the city itself without being too heavy-handed. Simply by doing things like describing how her characters dare not go outside without at the very least heavy cloth masks to protect their lungs from the heavy miasma of ash and soot from the ever-running factories that both power the city and choke the life out of it (That actually makes them more Health and Safety conscious than the actual Victorians, who went out into a London that was so polluted moths evolved camouflage for soot, without the masks.). 

The city of Landing, as you would expect, has a great multitude of orphans on the streets. They hide in the corners and cracks of the city doing whatever they have to do to get their food and shelter while most adults treat them as vermin. They are actively hunted by corrupt law enforcement to be put into workhouses, where many of them die from overwork and malnutrition (So, basically any Victorian city. {I don’t know there’s a shocking lack of lead and asbestos in the walls} That the narrative tells you about.  The street urchins won’t know why the paint chips are sweet.). As if life wasn't harsh enough for these unwanted children, something else is hunting them and street children are disappearing to an unknown fate in alarming numbers... Well alarming for some of the other street children as no one else seems to care. This includes a number of those street children who regard the disappearance as reduced competition for scarce resources in a good number of cases. 

The street children of Landing are divided into gangs and crews of orphans who are ruthless in carving out territories and keeping nonmembers out of those territories. It's hard to judge them for that given the razor-edged existence they live in and the fact that this shouldn't be a problem they have to face in the first place! society has however abandoned them and if the adults won't show them empathy and compassion why should we expect them to show it to each other? Where would they learn it from and how could they afford to?

Some however do show empathy and compassion. Such as our male protagonist Gage, who refuses to follow the orders of his crew leader Cheeks. Instead of keeping his head down and focusing on getting bread, Gage is spending his rapidly diminishing resources on looking for the missing members of his crew, as more of them go out in the morning to hunt for food and money but simply never come back. Part of this is his stubborn belief that his crew is his family and loyalty must be given. Another part is the ever-present guilt he carries for past failures driving him to do better for his crewmates. Gage isn't the cleverest or strongest person on the street but he is compassionate and willing to put himself at great risk to achieve his goals which might carry him far... If it doesn't get him murdered or taken one night. 

Meanwhile, our female protagonist Wynd has abandoned her gang, despite being their leader. Because her brothers are among the missing and she swore to her dead father and missing mother that she would look after them. Well fairer to say that they refused to help her and cast her out for daring to want to look for them. Despite that, Wynd is driven to fulfill her word and not lose her last bits of family and belonging in a world that has turned against her and stolen from her every chance it got. She is more practical and hard-edged than Gage in all honesty and frankly a bit smarter but she is just as loyal as he is. She also has a good heart that might be her strongest asset or her own downfall but you'll have to read to see. 

Wynd and Gage will have to unravel a tangled riddle of strange non-steam-powered technology, smugglers, and a dark-haired pirate captain with a murderous henchman, who keeps appearing whenever they get too close to the answers they're looking for. As well as figure out how bizarre mechanical monsters fit into this. They'll have to do this while burying their antagonism as they come from rival gangs and have been conditioned by their hard lives to mistrust one another. There's also a certain element of personality clashing as Gage is an empathetic dreamer... For a street kid operating on the ragged edge of survival and Wynd having had all her hopes and dreams dashed repeatedly is brutally focused on what's in front of her and the practicalities of making it to the next day. It's not quite the odd couple but it produces its fair share of arguments. (I can imagine.)

As Wynd and Gage struggle to work together and build an unlikely coalition of allies to find out where their fellows have disappeared and try to hammer out something like a rescue, they find themselves in increasing danger from all sides because the stakes are higher than they can know.  And if they fail there's no one left to miss them. The character work here is honestly pretty good, both of them serve as viewpoint characters letting us see the world around them through their eyes (Do we have fun chapters where we see the same argument through each set of eyes? {Sort of, there’s a fight that isn’t shown but we see both characters thinking about what they thought happened}). Ms. Skinner does a good job of making them both distinctive enough that even if no names were used you could very quickly figure out which character is serving as our viewpoint. As both of them have distinctive voices and word choices as well as different ways of thinking and operating. 

That said, there are characters especially those introduced in the later parts of the book that suffer for that as they simply don't get the attention they need to stand out and are left feeling somewhat more like plot devices than people.  Additionally, the antagonists are rather flat having zero development (Is this a function of the narrative form being two kids?  Because if you stick to their POV ruthlessly enough, an antagonist might not get much development, because the POV characters don’t understand them. {That could be it but it’s still unsatisfying}).  So you’re left feeling that they’ve resorted to child labor because they noticed that they weren’t meeting their evil quota for the year and needed to pull off something amazing to make sure they aced their performance review and nailed down their end-of-year evil bonuses.  Yes, I know child labor was a thing in the Victorian age but these guys built up a large kidnapping and smuggling ring and there’s not much motivation given for it

The story itself is very narrowly focused and there is minimal world-building. We learn about the underside of the city of Landing and not much else. In fact, we never really get a sense of who runs Landing or if Landing is a city-state or part of a larger nation. It simply isn't important to the story so Ms. Skinner doesn't cover it. In all fairness, I don't think Gage or Wynd would spend all that much time meditating on geopolitics or economics given their situation and background (Yeah, that’s not the level their world operates in.  So they wouldn’t talk about it.  So the reader doesn’t learn it.). This creates a very tightly woven narrative that is focused on the immediate story. Which I think actually helps, not every fantasy needs to be a 1000-page plus door stopper that examines a fantasy world in great scope and depth. In fact, some stories are much better off being much more focused and smaller in scale. 

The book itself is under 250 pages and makes for an entertaining read with the plot never getting bogged down and the pacing kept at a decent speed. The minimalist worldbuilding is both a virtue and a flaw as there are some elements of the world that leave me scratching my head and wishing that we could spend some time looking at them in more depth.  None of that gets so bad as to detract from the plot, even after you realize the inspiration of the story...  I won't share that with you because I would hate to ruin the surprise. Lostuns Found by Sharon Skinner gets a B- from me. The book was still an entertaining and interesting read with good pacing but I also kinda wish that later elements had been given more time and attention. Still better than a lot of the average novels so it’s worth your time to read. 

I hope you enjoyed this review.  If you did consider joining us at https://www.patreon.com/frigidreads where for as little as a dollar a month you get a vote on upcoming reviews and themes.  Not only is there a poll up right now you can vote on but there is a suggestion thread for upcoming content this summer.  Our next two reviews will be guest works and then we will be spending the summer looking at the myth and stories of Atlantis.  I hope to see you there!  Until then, take care of yourself, each other, and as always, Keep Reading! 

Red text is your editor Dr. Ben Allen

Black text is your reviewer Garvin Anders