Crossover review Fantastic Four.

Fantastic Four

Or

Shitastic Snore

Crossover review! Hey guys I know I usually review books but for a buddy of mine who goes by General Havoc, I'm reviewing a movie instead. He runs a pretty good and fun blog of his movie reviews. I do recommend them and you can check them out here. I volunteered to see Fantastic Four, against his advice, as he was planning on skipping it. Someone had to see it though and he jumped on Jupiter Ascending for me so fair is fair. So I went to see the movie against the advice of my family, my friends and my doctor. I should really start listening when everyone lines up to tell me not to do something. Anyways on to the review.

I was told repeatedly that this film was a celebration of the comics. Well I saw damn little of the comics in this movie. The opening with Reed Richards and Ben Grimm is frankly tedious and eye rolling. Little Reed wants to be the first man to teleport organic matter (you know teleporting inorganic matter would be pretty damn revolutionary as well just saying) and announces this to his teacher and classmates. His teacher reacts to one of his students showing an interest in become a scientist by shitting all over him in front of his classmates and telling him to write a report on a “real” career. Really? I mean seriously, the kid before him chattered that he wanted to be a NFL quarterback. Bluntly Reed had a better chance of growing up to be a scientist working on teleportation then that kid but no one shit on him. This displays one of the few consistent themes in this movie, any authority figure who is not named Storm is unreasonable and dislikes our main characters... For reasons.

The opening does show us how Reed and Ben met but frankly it's a waste. We're fed formulaic origin stories (Ben is alienated from his family who makes a living from their junkyard, Reed can't stand his stepfather) and a wacky child genius who is rejected and misunderstood. Hollywood, I know you love unreasonable authority figures who piss on our “heroes” for no reason but... Do a decent job with it or don't do it. We jump to Reed and Ben as high school seniors in a science fair, where they show off their device and are disqualified for.... Reasons. This is so tired and hackneyed and cliched and they don't do a damn thing with it! It's just there to make Reed temporarily put upon! Why have this shit in your movie if you're not going to do anything with it?

Although the teacher does have a rather nice sneer. Reed is then offered a scholarship by Sue and Johnny Storm's father, Doctor Franklin Storm. By the way for those wondering, Susan is adopted. This isn't turned into a thing. Which I view as a good thing honestly.

Ben having served his betters for years is told thanks a lot now toddle on back home like a good servant. Seriously this one burned me. In the comics Ben Grimm puts up a front of being a rather dim guy, but he met Reed in college, they took classes together. Yes, Ben is not in Reed's league but seriously who is? Regardless Ben Grimm is a fucking pilot who was good enough for fucking NASA! How is it a celebration of the comic books to take away all of Ben Grimm's skills and abilities and reduce him to Reed Richard's Igor and good luck charm? It turns their relationship from one of two men with different gifts and skills who regard themselves as equals to one of Reed graciously condescending to dribble crumbles to his friend who gave him spare parts. I would bitch about the movies getting rid of Ben's military service (he was an air force pilot before being accepted by the space program) but Marvel has got me fairly well covered with Captain America, Warmachine and Falcon. This treatment of Ben stands out all the more considering Susan Storm is turned into a scientist who while not as smart as Reed is still shown to have impressive intellectual gifts. Johnny Storm is shown to have good hardware and basic engineering skills. In the original story Sue was along literally because she and Reed were knocking boots and Johnny got to come because he was the little brother of Reed's girlfriend. So everyone got upgraded expect for Ben who got downgraded and there wasn't any reason for I can see. It added nothing to the story, it gave us no new information on Ben's character. So why have this in your movie if you're not going to do anything with it?

Then we have Victor Von Doom, expect we don't. Because I don't know who the hell this guy is, but he ain't Doctor Doom. I don't know what is Fox's problem with actually getting one of the most Ionic and Memorable Comic Book Villains ever made right but it seems they can't bare to simply give us Dr. Doom. In this movie Knock Off Doom is a withdrawn painfully introverted “genius” who will make cow eyes at Susan Storm for about a 1/3rd of the movie, which I'll go into in a minute. They drop Doom's characterization for something completely different, jettison his background and origin for something completely different and then (say it with me now) they don't do anything with it! Why even name this guy Doom? He's got nothing to do with Doom! For that matter they'll take him out of the movie and only bring him back in the last 20 minutes or so because someone pointed out they needed a bad guy and a superpower fight. So there's no build up, no foreshadowing, just Doom being lost on Planet Zero (Spent all night coming up with that name didn't ya fellas? ) for a year (gonna cover this to) and brought back where he immediately starts killing people because of crazy. To be fair if I thought I had escaped this movie and was dragged back in, I'd be pretty pissed off to.

I mean first of all... How to do put this? Doom runs a country bitch! He is a sovereign ruler with resources and abilities on par with the Fantastic Four despite not having any superpowers expect for the ones he steals from any cosmic being stupid enough to get close enough to him! He's epic, grand, petty and spiteful with an ego that would make gods suggest he needs to tone it down. Worse of all, at least half of the time he can back his shit up. They run from this like vampires from day light, which only enforces that this movie is at best uncaring of it's source material or at worse ashamed of it. Which a comic book cannot be. Comic book movies can be a lot of things, as Marvel has gleefully proven that with movies like Guardians of the Galaxy, Winter Soldier and even Ant Man! But they cannot be ashamed of the comic books they spawned from. The sooner Fox figures this out the faster they'll stop making shit superhero movies. I had believed between X Men first class and Future's Past they had figured it out. I was clearly mistaken.

But let me get back to this thing. The movie tries to set up a Reed, Susan, Victor love triangle. It fails. Firstly because Reed is made painfully awkward, to be fair, I was worse in high school but christ I don't want to have to watch it. Second the actors have all the chemistry together of a pair of granite rocks. Seriously I would believe Reed being in love with Ben more. Thirdly and this will surprise you gentle readers, the movie doesn't do anything with this plot! Seriously why bother with these tired cliches if you're not going to bother doing even a cliche ending to them? It's like someone told them all movies must have a romantic sub plot but they weren't sure what romantic and plot meant. Hell, it's not settled by Susan choosing to be with Reed or anyone admitting their feelings. Victor drops his half formed crush on Susan Storm to commit himself to genocide. Frankly all I could think at that point was at least someone in this movie was committing to something!

We have a montage after Reed is recruited to build a device to jump to a planet in another dimension, because space to old school or something I guess? Despite the fact we live in a world where space travel is rapidly being privatized and there are an increasing number of organizations showing up to push back those boundaries, so a movie about people going to space would be reverent and pretty cool. But nope! We're teleporting to another dimension for reasons. I guess this could be a call back to the Negative Zone, again they don't do anything with it! When they successfully teleport a chimp to and back, they're told that it's time bring NASA in and you'd think they were told that we were gonna build a new Gitmo there or something. So Reed, Victor and Johnny decide the only adult thing to do is get drunk and hijack the teleporter and do it first so they can be in the history books. Reed drunk dials Ben, because they need him to become a bad CGI rock monster. They go bad things happen, Sue gets blasted because she walked in and tried to help. They are then turned over to the military and Reed flees because the military is bad. We now skip a year. So we have two time skips and a montage. I'm not saying that time skips are bad, but I am saying that so many in a single movie suggests to me that you need to go back to the story board. During that time skip Ben starts doing missions for the military, which is bad for reasons. The military develops ways for the Susan and Johnny to control their powers and Johnny decides he wants to go on missions to, this is bad for reasons.

The government and the military are treated as these sinister monsters who will surely destroy our heroes if left unchecked, but what do they do? They develop suits to help bring Susan and Johnny under control. I'm not a fan of these suits honestly but it's a minor plot point. They try to conduct research to understand Ben's condition and send him on missions for the US Army. When Susan says no, no one pressures or threatens her to make her do it. No one does this to Johnny either and after a year he gets ready to volunteer and everyone freaks out. Yes, clearly the stuff of villainy! I mean the most villainous person here is Doctor Storm's coworker in a suit who keeps referring to them as subjects behind their backs. But hey, an adult might be sent on a military mission of his own free will! That's awful! Speaking as a veteran of the Marine Corps? Fuck You.

But seriously why all this build up about how they can't trust the government or the military and then have the said government do... Really nothing at all that seems that sinister to me. At worse they took advantage of Ben to save other troops lives, but I guess our lives don't count. But hey, it doesn't matter because they do this build up and then... You guess it, they don't do anything with it. Instead Reed who spent the year in Central America trying to rebuild the teleporter. They don't do anything with this either. Nor do they do anything with the fact the Ben is angry at Reed for taking him on a mission that turned him into a big orange monster and then fucking off to the jungle. They. Don't. Do. Anything. With. This.

It's all resolved with hand waves at the end of the movie, where they and Not-Doom have this really... Generic, mundane let down of the a fight, our heroes turn around to the military who gave them the training and equipment to win and tell them, hey we're done working for you. You're going to give us a huge fuck off lab, fund us to whatever amount we want and we're not going to share our work with you or do anything for you at all! Because you're evil. For reasons. Now give us everything we want! It's an ending that reeks of the worse of Baby boomer entitlement where authority exists only to give you everything you want but fuck you having to do anything or... you know... give anything back. The movie closes and I am left with this. The best part was the Star Wars Trailer and the knowledge that no one ever said they were the fantastic four in this film. So they're not even the Fantastic Four In Name. Thank God for small mercies.

But I am left asking, why is it so hard to do a film about the F4? It's a simple concept, it's a family that loves to explore and push back the boundaries of knowledge and must at times fight against the new threats that exploration revels. Instead Fox continually keeps trying to turn them into a generic superhero team, stripping away anything interesting or special in favor of movies that tell stories by waving about tired old cliches and then putting them down to wave another set of tired old cliches. So I have to close this review by asking the same question I've been asking throughout. Why have the rights to the Fantastic Four, why fight and scheme and sweat to keep those rights... If you're not going to do anything with them?

Fantastic Four gets a 2.25 for Lazy Writing in the extreme, barely coherent story telling, flat acting and utterly mediocre CGI and fight scenes. I was frustrated and bored throughout this movie, go see Ant Man again if you have to do to avoid this or Man from UNCLE or anything else!

The Seedbearing Prince by Davaun Sanders

The Seedbearing Prince

by Davaun Sanders

Disclosure, I know Mr. Sanders from work. We were members of the same training class and I learned he was a writer while talking to him over a variety of subjects. Finding out that he had written pretty near to an entire series, I had to take a look. Especially when he told me this whole series sprang from the most vivid dream he ever had.

The Seedbearing Prince is Mr. Sanders first book and the first book in a series. Let me first discuss the setting because it is amazing! It is new! It is interesting! I find myself yelling at the book “wait, wait go back and tell me more about shit!” It's not medieval Europe with a new coat of paint! The setting is the World Belt, a star system where the planets and dwarf planets (or whatever we're call them these days) are linked together by what seems to be a super dense asteroid field. I mean so dense that some of these asteroids have atmosphere and life on them, to point that creatures know as Rage Hawks fly from asteroid to asteroid in search of food and nesting grounds. As you might guess standard science has been beaten up and thrown out of town more or less. I mean we have an asteroid belt with a functioning ecosystem.

Now they have space ships called transports to carry people and cargo from world to world but sometimes they need to send messages quietly and quickly. This gives us one of the most metal occupations to show up in these reviews, men who make their living by letting themselves be shot off at high speed (using high tech artifacts called portals or jump points) into an asteroid field where they use grapple hooks and wing suits to basically spiderman across a moving asteroid field! Let me state that at this point I don't care what science has to say about how possible this is, it's just awesome. The worlds are all independent with their own cultures and governments, all these governments are bound by a set of treaties overseen by an interplanetary organization named after their headquarters, the massive space fortress called the The Ring. The Ring hosts a number of groups working together to keep the World belt safe and going. The Preceptors are scholars/scientists, the Defenders are the military order so on and so forth. There is an entire system here with Shard, our main character's home world being part of it. Shard is a farming world, who provides many world with large percentage of their food (the World Belt doesn't appear to be a purely capitalist system, the Shardians don't seem to be making a lot of money on this for example) they're a very rural people as a result but honestly seem like nice people. There are also some nice cultural bits (such as a festival) while we're on Shard for people like me.

Just from my first read through, I would say that that Mr. Sanders has done some work in thinking through this setting, or at least more then some people I've reviewed here. At the same time, he avoids a cardinal sin of fantasy and science fiction writers everywhere, he doesn't explain things to death. He has a story to tell and you'll get what information is reverent to the story. Which frankly is likely the best way to do these things, as a lot of people get bored silly when someone explains how things work. I know for example in say David Weber's books, especially the later ones, I tend to skip the pages and pages of explaining how missiles and anti-missile systems work But this isn't a Weber review so I'll stop here. I will say that instead of over dwelling on things however, Sanders rushes us past some parts of the setting. This is a shame. For example the world of Aran is a hot, dry world but manages to avoid being 'Arabs in space' the story gives us glimpses of an interesting culture but we're kinda hurried along. I can understand not wanting the plot to drag down but there is such as a thing as rushing as well. I don't think this will annoy to many other readers though, as most people I run into aren't as enthralled with cultural details, but I honestly want to know more about dry Aran, freezing Suralose (a planet the characters barely spend a day on!), the city world of Montollos and the fortress ship/station of The Ring. How are they governed? How does trade work? How are families organized? What are the differences world to world? How do they say farewell to their dead and welcome new births? None of these are part of the story and I'm just going to have to hope he writes some appendixes or something.

The characters are well written and fairly enjoyable. When I first started reading, my thought was that Dayn (our hero) would be another Luke Skywalker, a farm boy wishing for more but not really doing anything about that wish until events take the choice from him. I've found these characters can get annoying if badly written, I've often wanted to smack a couple of them for one thing or another. Dayn avoids this by being proactive. He pursues his dream of being a courser, one of the crazed men and women who grapple and glide across a freaking asteroid belt! He's gathered the gear, he practices in secret, he has a plan to head out and declare for it and he sticks to that goal. Despite, everyone and everything getting in his way. In fact Dayn here is actively driving the plot having found the magic macguffin (called a seed) in the course of his training, which he does by going to the one place everyone else tells him to avoid. Dayn is not a prophesied figure here, nor is he from a blessed bloodline or some such rot. He's a young man whose drive and attempts to realize his dream have pulled him into a much wider world then he was previously aware of and into events that he had considered much to large to ever concern him.

I even like Dayn's family, usually the families in these stories are dysfunctional in some manner or the Father is the kind of person who can't stand the idea of his children having dreams and desires that he wouldn't have. While there are family conflicts and Dayn does catch familial disapproval when he does something reckless and foolish (and being a teenager he does) but it's never over board and Sanders does manage to give you a sense that this is a caring family where the members actually love each other even when they're being complete idiots. So I do feel I need to stick in some kudos here for Dayn having a reasonable and pretty good father in his life who isn't absent, drunk, abusive, neglectful or Darth Vader. It's something I would like to see more of.

We have Lurec the Preceptor, who bluntly is a nerd but not an annoying one. Lurec doesn't let himself be pushed around and is willing to stand up for himself and Dayn despite not being very physically capable. That's okay though, Preceptors are suppose to be scholars and thinkers not soldiers. That's what Nassir is for, a grim, closed mouth Defender, who frankly is rather cranky and sometimes gets up my nose. He reminds me of a couple of Sargent I didn't care for while I was in the Marines. Nassir is a Defender, a kind of super soldier trained (created?) from volunteers in The Ring. They exist to fight the antagonists of this series (we'll get to them). Nassir seems to regard his post as Dayn's bodyguard more or less as a punishment, despite being told how important this job is and why. The Defenders in general are portrayed interestingly, we're shown them repeatedly refusing to raise their hands against the people of the Belt, but at the same time they come off as distant, cold, disdainful and in some cases paranoid to the point of violence. We're also shown Defenders who are friendly, social and tolerant as well (such as a minor character named Eriya that I liked). The people of the Belt have mixed feeling towards their Defenders and I can see why, but they're going to need them.

Because of the antagonists. The World Belt was once a much nicer place, but something happened and now it isn't. One faction named the Voidwalkers withdrew beyond the World Belt to plot and basically be bad people. The Voidwalkers that appear in this story hit me as kind of cross between Ring wraiths from Tolkien and a Games workshop Chaos Space Marine. They're dark, mysterious and often wrapped in shadow. They can have horrifying effects on the mind of men and women, making their very presence a weapon. They can hide in plain sight and have many agents lurking in the cracks and corners of the societies of the World Belt all working to bring about the down fall of the system and it's worlds. They ride great and terrible monsters that most men cannot stand against. They come clad in armor and through forgotten sciences have access to technology and powers beyond the understanding of their opponents and are as a result of that disdain of their enemies because of that. In fact we often hear them referring to the people of the World Belt as Degenerates. Despite all this they are mortal and Sanders manages to make characters out of them. While they have limited time in the limelight, they are shown to be human beings who can think, plan, feel and unfortunately for Dayn love and hate. This keeps them from being to cliche, I think. The Voidwalkers work to their own ends and manage to be threatening without being invincible, doing enough damage to retain credible threat status. We see them slap around Defenders and drive entire companies of men into screaming madness for example. However, they do get hurt and even killed, letting us know that whatever else they are, they're at the bottom of it all mortal men. Which makes them more interesting then formless spirits of malice that others

Over all I really enjoyed the book with only a couple minor issues. I felt that we didn't really get to know anyone expect our main three and even then we didn't really get to spend to much time with Nassir or Lurec. We meet a lot of people who come in and out (and in some cases come back) and we honestly don't get to spend a lot of time with them. Which is unfortunate. We also run through a lot of the setting, Aran stuck with me, as did Shard but much of the rest of the setting is taken at a run. If I have a complaint I would say Sanders should slow down a little. Not by a lot, the story is well told and I enjoyed it a lot.

The Seedbearing Prince is a good science fantasy story in an interesting setting with likable characters in a story that's interesting and managed to avoid cliches I thought were going to be part of the story. I enjoyed reading it until the final page. However the pacing needs a bit of work and we could use more character development for people whose names aren't Dayn. I also have a bug up my nose about the ending but I'm sure the next book in the series will fix that (there are 3 books published already). Because of this The Seedbearing Prince gets a B+ and I'm pretty hopeful that the next book will get into the A range.   

George Washington's Military Genius By Dave Palmer

George Washington's Military Genius

By Dave Palmer

“Washington or no Army” 

Continental Army toast page 74

Back to non-fiction for a bit and given the recent holiday (that being July 4th or the American Independence Day) think a book about George Washington is called for.  Ah, Washington, the first and greatest of our founding fathers and perhaps the most mythologized.  The US has been prone to over reacting in how we see our founders, in recent times two groups have staked out their ground and gone to brutal war over it.  The first group holds up the founders as flawless demi-gods sent down from the shining heavens by the Almighty Lord God himself to lovingly hand craft the pure and wonderful city on a hill that would become the United States.  The second group decries them as a pack of ingrate wealthy elitists grown fat upon the suffering of slaves and natives who turned snarling upon the poor innocent government of the United Kingdom for meekly suggesting that the colonists should pay taxes.

My own position is bluntly that both groups are so ridiculously out of touch with reality that it is a wonder they even got the names of the people they are worshiping or slandering right.  The founding fathers were men, as such they were flawed and imperfect.  They did things that were to be frank immoral and wrong.  They also were gifted men, who did things great and amazing and acted with charity and goodness.  Such is the nature of humanity.  They crafted through messy compromise and dickering and titanic labor a nation that would prosper, grow and become one of the mightiest nations in history, whose impact on culture and history can only be denied by the stupid, blind or extremely ideological blinkered, but I repeat myself there.  Entire fields of art and science have been invented in this nation, deeds good, great and worthy of remembrance have been done here.  I cannot deny that shameful and horrible things have been done.  I also cannot deny that many people have suffered unjustly simply for their gender, race and more... I do believe that erases nor eclipses the good. I will stop here as this is suppose to be a book review not a political polemic.

As for Washington himself?  I would argue that he is worthy of praise for one simple reason, he surrendered power.  That doesn't sound like much... Until you compare him to the great number of successful revolutionaries who did not and the price their nations paid for that.  Compare Washington to Castro, or Mugabe or others and suddenly praising him for that doesn't seem so silly does it?  Disregarding that, as the book doesn't concern itself with that, I have never considered Washington to be among the great military generals and strategists of the world or even the United States.  Lt. General Dave Palmer (retired), veteran of two tours of Vietnam, former superintendent of West Point and a noted historian of the American Revolution in his own right seeks to change my mind in this book.  Let's discuss if he actually pulls it off.

Palmer starts the book by addressing the general facts of war and society in Washington's time.  Pointing out that when we peer back through the centuries we are viewing a much different time.  This war happens before the industrial revolution, an event that so dramatically changes human life on this planet that some historians have suggested that the generation of the founding fathers have more in common with the men of the Roman Empire then us, who live a mere 240 some odd years later.  War was certainly different as were the armies that carried it out.  Europe was still shaking off the memory of the destruction of the 30 year war and trying it's level best to avoid any total wars.  Armies were expensive and as such battle was something to be avoided.  A victory where your army took heavy loses (loses that would take years to replace) could lose you the war.  European armies were usually made up of economically unproductive classes (that is the aristocracy and to be blunt the criminal and jobless) press ganging (basically kidnapping someone into service) was common and as such desertion was epidemic.  This was because every man in the army was a man not on the farm or doing other more economically productive things.  The gulf between enlisted and officer class was wide and deep, with the enlisted being in the main uneducated, rough, very low class men and officers being to the manor born. The American Revolutionary army was different in the sense it was made up of volunteers from all walks of life serving for a cause.  In some ways it was a warning ripple of what the French Revolution would unleash in some decades time.  For that matter the war itself was more like the French Revolution in that society itself had to be brought into the war.  For most of the wars of 1700s, society was incredibly uninvolved.  In fact citizens often didn't know or care if their nation was at war or at peace.  It was normal to carry on trade and commerce with nations your government was at war with.   The Americans wouldn't have that luxury but would be involved in the war whether they wished to be or not.
Palmer then proceeds to introduce us to the important facts of the ground.  The nature of life and the set up of the colonies.  How the population of some 2.5 million was shotgunned across the eastern seaboard.  Despite that there were cities, Philadelphia in the 1750s was the 2nd largest city in the British Empire for example, the vast majority of Americans lived in small settlements in a large wilderness.  We are also introduced to the British government of the time of the revolution and frankly, it is unimpressive. For example two quotes about King George:

“Had he born in different circumstances it is unlikely that he could have earned a living expect as an unskilled laborer,” British scholar page 36

“He was lethargic, apathetic, childish, a clod of a boy whom no one could teach” also page 36

We also learn an important fact, at this point in time, the British Army numbered roughly 50,000 men.  These men had to police an empire stretching from Canada to India.  This I think fully explains what is come next. These sections of the book are very informative and well written, I really enjoyed the first 25% of the book and I even managed to learn some things.

The next part of the book is where Palmer proceeds to make his argument.  He divides the American Revolution into 4 phases.  The first phase which was from April 1775 to June 1776, where the revolutionaries take the offensive and eject royal government administers from the 13 colonies and directly engage the British Army.  Here he argues Washington takes the led by pushing for aggressive action against the British army in Boston and elsewhere.  While Washington was able to gain success in New England, the revolution army in Canada ending up failing.  At the end of the 1st phase we see the royal government and the British army forced out of the colonies and into Canada.  Following on the heels of this comes the Declaration of Independence in July and phase 2.

The 2nd phase was intensive defensive with Washington working overtime to keep his army in the field and intact.  This phase ran from July 1776 to December 1777, part of the reason for the defensive nature of the war was to put bluntly an extreme failure to estimate the British response.  The Continental Congress had estimated that King George III would send 22,500 redcoats, 10,000 to hold Canada with the rest coming into to invade New England.  In order to be able to meet this army on the field, the Revolutionaries in Congress determined they needed a 2 to 1 advantage at least in numbers.  They set a goal of recruiting 65,000 men.  They managed to raise an army of 25,000 and they would be meeting a British/German army around 48,000 strong. The Germans of whom over 30,000 would serve in the newly made US came from all over, their appearance enraged the colonists who believed that proper Englishmen did not sic foreign mercenaries on each other (this suggests that they were unaware of large chunks of English history but side issue). At this point if the Continental Army was destroyed the field, that would be the end of the Revolution.  Recognizing that the Hudson river and control of it was vital, he fortified it (including founding West Point itself) and proceeded to deny a decisive battle to the British Army that was now twice his size, better trained and better equipped.  However he also refused to break contact, constantly shadowing the British Army staying just out of reach of a lunge that would bring him into grips. I have to admit this is an amazing achievement.  I have some idea of how hard this would be from my own military experiences, where it is the tendencies of firefights to grow bigger.   My own experience is limited to that of a junior Corporal in the Marines though, I did not have to control militia during a retreat.  Washington did and he did it well enough to avoid destruction.  It was during this period that he received a nickname from the British Army, they would call him 'Old Fox.'  As a bitter winter fell on the US in 1777 and Christmas came near, it was the opening of Phase 3.

Phase 3 opens with Washington crossing the Delaware River to make his now famous attack on Trenton and would continue until October 1781.  A major change was an open military alliance with the French and the fact that the French fleet would be operating in the Atlantic against the British.  Additionally the flow of armies and perhaps more importantly money from France, gave Washington room to risk.  If he suffered heavy causalities, he would have the time and space to replace them.  With the French money came a stream of European Officers willing to serve and train.  Within Valley Forge those officers would hammer out the first professional American Army and Washington would use that army to attack.  Cities would be retaken and the British Army would find itself under constant attack. Facing newly aggressive American forces and a French fleet prowling along their rear, the British began to retreat from many of their toe holds in the colonies. 1780 would prove to be a year of major set backs for the Revolutionaries as the British would invade the southern colonies and internal problems threaten to have the colonies fly apart, notable was the betrayal of the Revolution by Benedict Arnold.  Washington was just able to keep the army and therefore country intact to strike back in 1781.  The South was retaken, a French army arrived to fight alongside the Continentals and at last came the victory of Yorktown.

The final phase, phase 4 was mostly negotiation between the British and the Americans. Washington had to work to keep the United States from losing the peace as the final peace treaty was hammered out and to ensure that the army didn't turn on Congress.   Something I can state is a mighty tempting idea at times even today (I might still be bitter about that veterans jobs bill guys).  Considering that many of the men of the continental army hadn't been paid in months and most of them never would be, it must have way more tempting than I could possibly imagine.  Still it was achieved and it might have one of the important things Washington has ever done.  Well stepping down from the Presidency was more important but this one is close.

The book has a lot of interesting information and presents a thought provoking argument.  As an overview it works fairly well.  The division of the war into the 4 phases makes a lot of sense and is well thought out.  However, Palmer clearly assumes his reader knows the details of all the campaigns he mentions because he never bothers providing any on his own.  This weakens the book deeply in my view making a history book that needs to be paired with at least one other book to be of any use to anyone who is not already well aqquinted with Revolutionary war history.  Frankly the lack of examination of the individual campaigns weakens the case, without showing us the actions that Washington preformed to justify calling him a military genius... It's a just a generalized argument.  It's a strong argument, and it's enough to make me say I have to rethink my stance on Washington's tactical and strategic skills but the book should have spent some more time examining the campaigns Washington undertook.  As it stands I don't believe the premise is supported by the book all that completely and frankly, I remain unconvinced that Washington should be called a military genius. Despite that it's a good basic overview of the war and gives an examination of both governments and explains of the reality of war in the time very well.

Because of that George Washington Military Genius by Dave R Palmer gets a B-. Read it, but read a book with a more detailed overview of Washington's campaigns first.

The Judging Eye by Scott Bakker

The Judging Eye by Scott Bakker

This book was a recommendation to me by a very good friend. I had read the preceding series, the Prince of Nothing books on his recommendation and found them to be frankly... Disturbing masterworks. Bakker started with the idea of the 1^st Crusade set in a world that is somewhat like our own but at the same time completely and utterly different. The events of that trilogy I will leave be other then to tell you that before reading this review you owe to yourself to pick up at least The Darkness that Comes Before and give it a read. If you like that book you'll like the rest.

Let me talk about Scott Bakker, who may be one of the best writers in fantasy today. I certainly believe him to be one of the more under appreciate writers which is saying something because fantasy and science fiction teem and seethe with under appreciated writers. Born and educated in Canada, he has degrees (a bachelors and Masters) in literature and theory and criticism from the University of Western Ontario. He also entered but never finished a PhD program for philosophy in Vanderbilt University. I was unable to find the reason he left, but I do wonder if a story I heard that several of his professors liked to harass him for writing children books was part of it. There is no proof of that, but it does point to rather infantile view some people have of fantasy and science fiction. If someone tells you that fantasy books are just for children or to live out teenage power fantasies, do me a favor and hand them Prince of Nothing and take a video of their faces as they read. Then send it to me because I will treasure it.

His education shows in his works, these books are dense and at times deep works who are at times preoccupied with ideas of the self, fate and humanity. They are balanced out and kept from becoming pretentious by the inclusion of harsh, unforgiving violence and a stark embracing of various hard truths of life especially for the underclass in a world that lacks the empathy and sympathy of the 21^st century. In a world where famine still stalks even the wealthiest of men, such empathy is a luxury not even emperors can afford after all. At the risk of making a political statement I will state this, make no mistakes the empathy that the first world displays in it's constant quest to create a more fair and just world for all of it's citizen is a luxury. One afforded to us by the infrastructure and actions of our forefathers, who if nothing else built a world where famine and plague are unknown to their children in the 1^st world. I do not say that is a bad thing, or that because it is a luxury that we shouldn't continue in that quest. Only that we should recognize that it is our wealth and security that affords us the ability to do so. But back to the review.

Little back story on this world, long ago when the best of men wore skins and worked in flint and the rest couldn't do that much, an alien ship crashed on our world. It was full of monsters. The book has a different name for them, but bluntly they're monsters in every sense of the word. These were creatures who had damned themselves and had objective proof that hell was a real place that you could end up in. They had one goal, stay out of hell at all cost. Their plan? To slam shut the gates of hell and heaven alike by killing enough of the sapient creatures of the world that there simply wouldn't be enough souls to keep the gates open. That's plan A guys, which frankly tells me they earned their damnation the old fashion way. They would opposed by the non-men, a long lived prehuman race that had already achieved a level of civilization sufficient enough to opposed them. They warred for eons until the monsters came up a simple plan. They would trick the non-men into destroying themselves and inherent the world. They came to the non-men offering peace and tricked them into asking for a gift. A gift of immortality. A gift that would later come to be called the plague of wombs, suffice to say that at the end, the non-men were a species of immortals without sisters, daughters, mothers or wives. Every female member of the species died. The non-men didn't take this lying down. They hunted down and killed everyone of the monsters expect for two who fled back to their ship and went into stasis.

The non-men then went insane as a species due to their brains being built to retain the memories of a mortal existence not being wired to deal with immortality. The only memories they could retain were usually the most traumatic and awful ones. The non-men civilization already on it's last legs would be pulled down by men. Who built their own civilization, with the mightiest being in the north where they had the most contact with the non-men. Some men developed sorcery, an ability to reshape the universe with your will, in exchange for damning yourself. A group of wicked sorcerers found the alien ship and woke up the monsters. They learned they didn't have to be damned... All they would have to kill 99.99% of sapient live and enslave the rest. They accepted and created the Consult. They then crafted the most terrifying weapon, Mog-Pharau, the No-God. It's very existence prevents the birth of new life, it is so awful and terrifying that every living person knows where it is instinctively. It dominates and controls the creatures of torment and war that the monsters bred. For the Tolkien fans, this is Morgoth unlessened by his corruption with the gloves off. It was slain by the no-men and men working together but only after the majority of mankind had been slain and the greatest civilizations of the time, the shining north was ground into powder. 2000 years later the Prince of Nothing takes place. 20 years after that the Judging Eye takes place.

Kellhus has conquered most of the known world and united it into a single empire for one reason. To assemble and supply the largest army in history that he will lead into uncharted wilderness to find the crashed ship of the Consult and kill them all before they can recreate the No-God and doom us all. To give you an idea, imagine someone at the time of the 1^st Crusade united the Christian and Muslim world and assembled an army bigger then even the ones the Romans and the Persians could field and marched that army into western Siberia. Oh and western Siberia is full of man eating tool using monsters.

The revolves around four characters.

Drusus Achamian, the sorcerer who taught the current God-Emperor Kellhus of man sorcery and more... And lost his wife to him. Drusus has spent the last 20 years holed up in a tower, abandoning his school and civilization to peer into the dreams that he and the other Mandate Sorcerers suffer every night reliving the first war against the No-God. He has gone deeper and further then any Mandate schoolmen before him, beginning to see not the fall of the north every night but bits and pieces of the life of the founder of his school. This leads him on a quest to discover the origins of Kellhus by hiring the most vicious band of adventurers he can find. Men who make their living by selling Sranc (more on them later) scalps. They will venture beyond the northern limit of the world men into the ruins left behind by the No-God to find the Dunyain, the sect of rationalist monks that bred and raised Kellhus. I'm incredibly sympathetic to Drusus and frustrated with him just like I was in the Prince of Nothing. He's intelligent, brave and at times cunning but is weak against temptation and has problems controlling himself. I nicknamed the last series Drusus Achamian is not allowed nice things and it seems to be holding true here. That said... Damn it Achamian if your will were equal to your intelligence, you would be the one ruling the world.

Esmenet, former whore and lover of Drusus Achmian. Esmenet is a living indictment against her society. Born as a lowly street whore, she was trod upon, ignored and reviled for being a whore. A role that society forced her into. It is one thing to disapprove of prostitution or even prostitutes, it is another entirely to force people to be something and then despise them for it but it is a historically accurate attitude sadly.  She wasn't taught to read until nearly 30 and afterwards she became one of the most read and educated women in society. Kellhus seduced her in cold blood because he believed that children from a mother of her intelligence and his inherited abilities (he's the product of a 2000 year eugenics program) would be useful. They are, but I'm honestly sure that they're all insane. She is now the Empress of humanity but uneasy lies the head that wears the crown. Kellhus has taken his armies to the north on a desperate crusade to save the world and while he is gone revolution and worse simmers. Surrounded by people she isn't sure she can trust and heartsick, she has to try and keep Kellhus' empire with little support form him. Esmenet reminds me of people I've known, smart but damaged by events that occurred in their early lives, they keep making horrible decisions and trying to fix those by making worse ones. It's not really her fault, but there are times when you want to scream “Damn it Woman! Stop it!”

Psatma Nannaferi, Mother Supreme of the secret cult of the goddess Yatwer, the only divine being who seems to give 3 fucks about the lower classes. Psatma has been blessed by the goddess to destroy Kellhus empire and kill him. Which honestly doesn't sound like a terrible idea... If not for the fact that Kellhus is the only guy who can lead the army that is the only chance of stopping the end of the world. There's terrible timing and then there's this. I mean seriously Yatwer, it's gonna be hard to be a goddess of slaves when they're all dead or reduced to meat puppets. You're a fucking goddess wait 5 years and let Kellhus finish his damn job. Bluntly guys, this part of the book has me wondering just whose side are the gods of this world on. I'm told they cannot perceive the No-God, but surely they realize Kellhus marched an army into the wilderness for a fucking reason.

Varalt Sorweel, son of the king of Sakarpus, the last city before the endless wilderness. Kellhus conquers it so he can use it as a supply base. His father dead, Varalt is made king of a conquered nation and brought into the army as a hostage. He is forced to try to come to terms with the conquest of his people and Kellhus. Most of his part of the book is really just foreshadowing and built up, although there is a hell of a pay off in this book that I'm not going to spoil.

All four of these characters to lesser and greater extents are revolving around Kellhus. Kellhus shows up in this book, but we don't spend anytime behind his eyes. Which heightens the mystery and makes him less human. Which is a good idea given his role in the plot. Knowing who he is lying to and who he is telling the truth to would remove almost every element of mystery in the book. I am in some circles considered a pragmatic man and I am willing to forgive a lot when the goal is preventing the extinction of all human life on the planet but Kellhus is a character who takes me to the very edge of what I am willing to forgive. Partly because I often find myself doubting that all this was necessary. Kellhus is the kind of guy who makes you wonder just what means saving the world really excuses?

That would I think be a bad idea. Another character in the book worth mentioning is Esmenet's daughter Mimara, who Esmenet gave birth to during her time as a whore and ended up selling Mimara into slavery during a famine. Mimara ended up a whore before agents of Kellhus rescued her. She is still bitter about this, additionally, she has the gift of sorcery. She tracks down Drusus and ends up accompanying him on his quest. She's an interesting character, understandably full of sharp edges and angry but not inhumanly so.

My favorite part of the book is Drusus with the Skin Eaters, the adventurer company Drusus hired to take him to ruins beyond the edge of the human world. They end up venturing into an old no man mansion under ground called the black hall. I am told that at first it was meant to be a call back to his days playing Dungeons and Dragons but has he realized there was no way to avoid a comparison to the Mines of Moria he decided to embrace it. I enjoyed the quest through the black halls, which exposed us to terror and wonder and the sheer weight of history on Bakker's world. It's a heavy weight that the inhabitants are at times barely aware of. The Skin Eaters themselves are an interesting group, although I have mixed feelings about them. Many of their rules for being out in the field (or the slog as they call it) make perfect sense. They are in the wild beyond hope or help up against monsters that would make the Reavers of Firefly say “Whoa, hey slow down, no need to be that cruel.” A certain amount of ruthlessness is called for if you want to survive the experience. That said some of their actions are brutality for brutality's sake. These are very flawed men, but honestly only flawed men would choose to live such a life wouldn't they? Bakker doesn't shy away from following the logical outcome of such a conclusion.

That sentence could be used to sum up all of Bakker's writing. Bakker is one of the better writers I've seen. Better then Larry Correia. Better then Katherine Addison. Better then George RR Martin. He refuses to shy away from any of the implications of his world or work, which can make his books somewhat disturbing. The Sranc are a perfect example of this, created by the alien monsters as biologic war machines, their sex drives are linked to murder and torment. They are Tolkien's Orcs with every ounce of humanity and dignity mercilessly scoured away and replaced only with the savage desire to torture, rape and murder and feed on the still warm and cringing remains. Where has Tolkien was unable to create a race beyond salvation because of his personal beliefs Bakker carried it out to the finish. Because Bakker's train has no damn breaks. For me the most vivid example of that lies on page 285, when a sorcerer tells Varalt that before Kellhus he was damned to hell but his faith in Kellhus has saved him. Or more exactly “But now I am saved.” If you have the vaguest idea of what Christianity is about you should understand why I howled. Both in anger at Kellhus for daring such blasphemy and in appreciation of Bakker's willingness to take his story that far. Which was the logical end point of Kellhus deciding a religion was the best way to get the army and empire he needed. I was exhausted and wrung out after finishing the Prince of Nothing series and I found myself a bit tired after reading this book. Still it remains one of the better books I've read in the last 2 years.

The Judging Eye gets an A. A well done book by a great writer. The only real compliant I have is some fool of an editor stuck the prologue “What Has Come Before” section in the very back of the book! Stop that! Short sections that give background needed to understand the story go in front! Where the reader can see them and understand before being confused as hell.

Master Sergeant by Mel Odom

Master Sergeant by Mel Odom

So I was at the Phoenix Comic Con at the end of May (Great time if you can get there folks, I really do recommend it!) when I bought way more books then was good for me. You'll be seeing a number of these books popping up from well... Now, to November likely. Now I'll admit that this isn't the first book I picked up at Con that I finished, that honor would actually go to the Usagi Yojimbo graphic novels that I picked up. They were pretty awesome. I decided to read this one first out of the actually printed word novels because... I really like Mel Odom's earlier work.

Let me talk about Mr. Odom a bit, born in California and having lived most of his live in my own Oklahoma where he teaches college courses in writing. Mr. Odom has written about 150 novels, most of them tie in books (Preying for Keeps for example was a pretty decent Shadowrun book) which run the gauntlet from Sabrina the Teen Age Witch novels to Mack Bolan novels. He sold his first book in 1988 (when I would have been all of 7 years old). Basically this guy has been writing books almost as long as I've been capable of reading. My introduction to him was the 2001 book “The Rover” which to date I believe is his best work. It's an original fantasy work with the main character of a libertarian hobbit * COUGH* I mean huh... Halfing of course! Who gets mistaken for a great warrior and pressed ganged into a pirate crew and manages to have thrilling adventures by virtue of being one of the few people on his world who can read a single language, let alone dozens of languages. I'm not gonna lie I found The Rover pretty awesome along with it's sequels... Which I do recommend. It was on the strength of that series that I picked up Master Sergeant, I was expecting something original, quirky and engaging...

I didn't get it.

I instead got Starship Troopers (the movie), Halo, and a dozen other bits thrown into a blender and reduced to a generic feeling consistent honestly bland mil-sci fi story. We have Frank Sage, the half Argentinian/something else to make him ethnically ambiguous Master Sergeant and God Of Death who for the sin of being awesome has spent the last 6 years training soldiers to fight the Phrenorians (I'll get to them). Master Sergeant Sage doesn't want to be trainer of course, he wants to be the front lines killing aliens. Because that's what all these guys want. He finally gets transferred out of his training billet and send to... Makaum a hot, humid jungle death world full of rapidly changing plant, bug and reptile life that is scheming and fighting for the chance to kill humans. Because that's what all these worlds are like. Seriously it's always desert death worlds or jungle death worlds. I mean Warhammer 40k and the Starfist series have a greater range of planets then half of these books/movies/comics, what is with that? The planet's “government” made up of human colonists who survived a crash landing and lived a primitive lifestyle until recontact, is neutral in the war between humanity and the Phrenorians, so the aliens have a presence on the planet to. As do a legion of corrupt, scheming mega corps that would have the guys from Shadowrun and Cyberpunk calling them to dial it down. I mean if nothing else if your corporate security force has a rep for killing government soldiers in bars... It's time to ask some questions. Like if we're locked in a war of survival against alien bug monsters who can build starships... Why are we letting corporations fuck about doing whatever they want?

The General in charge of the planet doesn't want to rock the boat... Of course. And say it with me, doesn't understand or appreciate the awesome talents and morality of our hero Master Sergeant Sage. Our hero must of course whip his troops into shape, confront monstrous corporate security goons, win over the natives and carry out attacks on drug labs hidden in the dangerous scary jungle while not dying and not getting discharged. Lucky for him the guy in charge of the base a rather easy going Colonel honestly is willing to let him do... Pretty much whatever he wants and cover for him later. I mean there's a Major with a Senator daddy who is supposed to be a threat... But frankly you could have cut the character entirely from the novel without impacting the story in any meaningful way. The troops kinda of resent him for being a hard ass and making them train (which is honestly realistic, if you've settled into a routine and then some new jackass comes in and upsets everything by making you do even more work... You're not going to like him) but a small crew of NCOs and Officers (because fuck those junior enlisted guys amirite?) rally to his side to be bad-ass in the jungle waging a War on Drugs.

I'm going to be blunt. Sage is fucking boring. We've seen him before. The guy who father was in army, and his grandfather was likely in the army, who lives and breaths the army and fighting the war. Who has no friends or relationships outside of the army. No interests or hobbies outside of the army. The Army and being the living model of a cutout soldier is all Frank Sage has. Which is boring. Look, I didn't meet a single dude like that in the 4 years I served, you know why? Because such a person would burn out and end up in jail or a mental institution. Even the most Hard Charging, High Speed, Low Drag Moto Motherfucker had interests outside of the military, because that's how you stay sane. Otherwise you lose your edge and burn out.

Meanwhile the Phrenorians who are scropin like lurk in the background. Sometimes supporting Master Sergeant Sage because he's totally awesome and will create chaos that we being the true master race will take advantage of or mostly just not doing much past their actually kinda of cool intro. Zho GhiCemid is honestly a more interesting character then Sage, mainly due to his savagery. We meet him when he's molting and to hurry along the process? Dude literally rips off his own skin. The Phrenorians start off interesting but that changes as we learn more about them. They see themselves as super predators with a right to control the galaxy, they have an eugenics style program to breed stronger and better Phrenorians and birth defects and such are not tolerated. You can advance up the hierarchy by killing your superiors in certain situations and strength is honored and weakness is something to prey on. They are bug like in a lot of ways, but they don't depend on over whelming numbers, with the average Phrenorian being stronger and faster then the average human, in addition to have a stinger tail that will of course kill you dead. They are also just as smart and advanced as we are. So at least Mr. Odom manages to avoid the bug cliches. That said he trips right in other ones. I mean oh look Nazi Aliens intend on conquering the galaxy because it's their right. We have never seen that before have we?

That said, there is next to nothing that is new or interesting in this book. We've all seen the characters in here a dozen times before, we've seen the setting, the bad guys, the plot... Yeah. None of this is badly written mind you. Mr. Odom turns in a workmen like job of a novel that is nothing to be embarrassed about. The prose is solid, the world building consistent if at times questionable, the characterization okay... But... I saw every plot twist coming, knew how the conversations were going to end and what roles each character was going to play by the time of their second appearance. From a first time writer or someone still a bit new and raw like say Myke Cole I would accept that. Mel Odom isn't just that guy, he's a practiced veteran and worse, he's a veteran I know can do better. So I find myself disappointed. I expected more then something that could be a Halo DLC or short story in a book about the Imperial Guard. In a lot of ways this book feels like Odom just hitting points he believes his audience expects. Bar Brawl, check. Attack in market place, check. Jungle ambush, check. Scheming officers, check. So on and so forth.

Additionally Mel Odom doesn't really understand the military. That's nothing to be ashamed of, there is no reason for a man who never served to really get it. Nor is it a requirement to write popular or even good military science fiction, or more importantly good science fiction. Let me stress this, you don't have to grasp the modern military or it's cultures to do either there. But Mr. Odom relentlessly models his Terran Army on the United States Army. Now if you have to have an army, the US Army is certainly a good one to have for all it's flaws (insert snobbish Marine comment here). If you are going to model your fiction military on the US, get a feel for the culture of service, how it works how it's members think and feel. If someone who never served wanted to get a feel for the Marines for example, I would point them towards works like Terminal Lance and other things written by men and women who served. Because some things are timeless. I fully believe that in the misty past there were Roman junior enlisted bitching about how clueless and stupid their officers were and how their senior NCOs were inhuman assholes. I also believed that those same senior NCOs were constantly aggravated by their enlisted men's ability to come up with new and interesting ways to do stupid shit and create giant fuck ups. I also believe those officers were as clueless as I believed mine were. Now I think a United World Military would feel much differently then a US institution. That said this is science fiction we don't have to be slaves to reality here but we should try to make the work feel as real and alive as possible. To put it bluntly I didn't feel that Mr. Odom put the work in to make a believable military unit. Of course when you get to it there were only about 4 and ½ characters actually in the unit anyways as Odom didn't like writing about anyone who wasn't at least a Sgt. Seriously the Terran Army feels overstuffed with officers and NCOs. With Pvts and PFCs and such only mentioned in passing and Cpls only shown doing the work that no one else will do (well there's some realism at least). This leaves the military feeling like something manufactured by Hollywood who has at best a really mixed record when it comes to displaying what the military is like. This could have been done a lot better. I mean I took Myke Cole to town over Shadow Ops Control Point and he deserved it, but at least he convinced he knew what military life was like.

Despite it's predictability and flaws the book is well written. Which is what saves it from being awful. But also that well written prose serves to highlight just how mundane and generic this story is. I'm not saying every fantasy and science fiction has to be original, but they all have to be interesting and this isn't.

Master Sergeant by Mel Odom rates and gets a flat C. Hopefully Mr. Odom lives up to his talent in the next book I pick up.

So next up I take on a book that I know will be awesome and leave me in need of a hug and some booze. My good friend Julian has patiently awaited this day, I'm currently reading and will be soon reviewing R. Scott Bakker's The Judging Eye. After that I finally get to one of Alamo's recommendations, I'd like to thank him for his patience as well. That book will be George Washington's Military Genius by Dave R Palmer.

The Goblin Emperor By Katherine Addison

The Goblin Emperor By Katherine Addison

I was going to review this anyways. I saw it sitting in Barnes and Noble as I was using the coupons they oh so dastardly send me to encourage me to shop in their store and I realized... Oh hey, this book is on my rec's list! And then this whole... thing came up so The Goblin Emperor got moved up. As a side note, I honestly prefer to buy from a brick and motor store over Amazon, Amazon's amazing don't get me wrong but I prefer the brick and motor experience if you get my meaning.

The Goblin Emperor is written by Katherine Addison which turns out to be a pen name for Sarah Monette who has been a published writer since at least 2003. Her other works (6 books and a bunch of short stories, she has done a lot of work), I am completely unfamiliar with these works so I can't comment on them at all. Wondering why I asked around about why an already published author would release a work under another name... The answer was basically that publishers don't like to release to many books under a single name or if they feel the writer is jumping their lane a bit, they put it under another name. Which is fair enough I suppose. Either way Monette is a very experienced author and it shows. The Goblin Emperor was published in 2014 and has received a lot of hype. So let's see if it stands up shall we?

The answer is... Well yeah. The Goblin Emperor is a well written book with a lot of in depth world building and characterization. Which is kinda of a problem because you need a glossary to understand people's names. For 3 chapters I just thought the elves just gave all their women the same first name for example. Part of the problem here is that the glossary is in the back of the book and I had no idea it was there as part of my own refusal to peek ahead for spoilers. Also I may be slow on the uptake. Advice for those of you writing a book that might need a glossary? Put it in the front, or note it's existence up front so I can look at it. Additionally, because of Monette's ruthless devotion to first person single narrative we don't really get to explore the in depth world building because our main character is very much nailed into place in the first couple chapters. It's like realizing someone has made an incredibly rich and interesting painting... But you only get to see a corner of it.

Let me talk about that main character a bit, Maia is the youngest prince of the elvish empire. He is also the most despised son of his father, the Emperor. Because of this Maia has been raised in a back country estate by an exiled noblemen far away from the court... Or anyone else and with a haphazard education. Normally this wouldn't matter, but the Emperor and all his other sons die very suddenly, leaving Maia as pretty much the most powerful person on the planet. Maia is a shy retiring type of person. I can sympathize with that. In fact I like Maia, although there are times where I want to scream at him to do something. That said, his quiet understated courage and devotion to trying his best to be a good Emperor to his people are traits I enjoyed. I also liked that he was also willing to push his own path at times. So I feel that on the whole Maia balanced out well. Certainly better then some protagonists I could name... That said, he's often not the most interesting character in the room and the interesting characters are here and gone.

Now the reason for Maia's disgrace is a very simple one. Maia's mother was a Goblin Princess that was married to the Elvish Emperor for political reasons. The Emperor, like many upper class elves (who are the standard light hair, eye and skin colored types), dislikes goblins. Now when I say goblins, I don't mean the squat ugly fellows you saw in the Hobbit or the green skinned capitalist many of you know from World of Warcraft. I mean dark skinned elves.

So not these guys.

More like these guys.

I'm kinda of two minds on that. On the one hand racism is bad and it's good to address that. On the other hand, Christ this is most well worn, safest message you can pick for your fantasy book. I mean even Harry Potter beat that horse into paste. That said, I'm a white male and this may be coloring my opinion. I have rarely suffered negative effects for my race or gender and certainly never to the extent say... A black person in the United States would. I am aware of this, but at the same time? Heinlein was doing this moral in 1959! I am not against having social messages in fantasy or science fiction, it's a well and time honored tradition and in some ways the two genres are at their best when they are tackling political and social issues through metaphor and allegory. But racism is bad frankly feels increasingly safe as a message. Which is a good thing for our society, but it also means I think unless you can bring something new to the table you may want to consider looking at some of the other issues plaguing our society. By all means keep the racism is bad issue, but lets look at some other issues as well. Besides the book doesn't have anything to really say on the subject nor does it examine the issue in a new or interesting way. It's just, hey the pale skinned upper class elves are mean to the lower class dark skinned elves and that's awful. People who do that are bad and should stop. Which I agree with but what else you got?

Additionally, we have a name for dark skinned elves and it isn't goblins! Yes, I am gonna be a bit of a purist snob here. I would have preferred it if the goblins here were called something else. Use the Norse name if you don't want to say Dark Elf or borrow from another mythology.  I can get the problem of having dark skinned elves be evil (which is why they're increasingly shown as gray instead of black) but the goblins here aren't evil so calling them Dark Elves would have helped deal with that problem. But frigid you say, aren't goblins presented as evil usually. Yes, that's true... But how many people with green skin and fangs do you see on the street?  But I'm rambling now. 

Also there are some questions this brings up. If the Goblins have their own state, which is so powerful, that the Emperor of Elves is marrying one of their princesses to help preserve the peace... Why is the elvish empire's underclass so full of half goblins and such? What's the history here? What happened?!? I am left with many, many questions that I am eager for answers for. Why is Elf society set up this way, how much is the life of the average elf different from the nobility? How did this happen? Where did the nobility come from? Hints are dropped, and they are tantalizing, but that's all I get. I have to admit it leaves me so many questions... Someone get her started on a sequel using one of those soldiers or factory workers I hear about.

I also would have loved to hear some of Maia's lessons on how the Elvish government system actually worked. The Emperor is clearly limited by the law but is still a powerful executive in his own right dealing with a tiered parliament of sorts that is utterly dominated by a hereditary elite but also has elected members (who gets to vote?). He is also the highest judge in the land and we should have seen more of that. Maia only gets involved in a single legal battle and solves it in a single afternoon. The Emperor is clearly more powerful then the say the current English Monarchs but more constrained then the Saudi monarchs.

Maia is forced to confront the fact that most of his court doesn't want him to be Emperor and that someone murdered his father and half brothers. He has to solve the mystery using his own resources as the official investigation gets fouled up by the prejudices of the court officials running it. It's a really interesting plot... That we don't get to see very much of. Most of it happens away from Maia. Bluntly put there's not a lot of action in this book. There's intrigue, internal conflict and political sneakiness.

These are all fairly well done and were interesting enough to keep me reading the book. But if you have no interest in these kinds of things at all, you will be bored out of your damn mind. This is a book where tastes may vary. Monette goes all out on the intrigue and showing the problems a monarch may have trying to manage a powerful and unruly nobility. Nor does she shy away from the consequences of it. Good people die, are ruined or have unpleasant things happen to them because of the actions of other people. Life is unfair, actions have consequences for people other then you and not even an Emperor can change that. Nor does being an Emperor shield you from the fall out of those actions. I really liked that. Still the book manages to keep from veering into the dark darkness of dark that some writers love to play in. I am thankful for that. Monette manages to keep a balance here.

We also see Maia grow from a teenager terrified of the bully who raised him into an adult willing to stand up for himself. Which honestly seems to be the main thrust of the book. Planting a crown on his head didn't really make him a monarch. Nor did giving him a throne make him powerful. It was his own efforts to grow into the role and start developing a willingness to tell people no that did. Realizing that all these people do in fact work for him so he is in fact in charge was kinda a process, but it was process that I kinda liked reading. Monette found ways to keep me from getting to frustrated with Maia as he bungled about especially with the opposite sex. I did find it somewhat true to life that while being powerful and rich certainly helps you with the ladies, when the ladies are used to wealthy and powerful, it's not gonna be enough to carry you over the home plate. Although I kinda disagree with the idea that his goblin blood made so many of the nobility stand at arms length. He's the fucking Emperor! You get on his good side! This isn't calculus, it's addition.

So to sum up, the characterization is interesting and believable. The main character sympathetic and likable and the world itself seems a rich one that I hope to see more stories in. The plot is one that I liked following. That said the world building is dense and not very well explained. The most interesting parts of the story, happen where you can't see them and there is a deep dearth of action and excitement in this story to my point of view. Whether you like this book is going to come down to a simple matter of taste in my view.

The Goblin Emperor gets a B+ as it doesn't suffer the minus from being a book in a series. Still I hope Monette takes more time to explain some of her world building if she should ever return to the world of Maia and I am actually eager to return. 

ISIS Inside the Army of Terror

ISIS: Inside the Army of Terror

by Michael Weiss and Hassan Hassan

As you can guess this is another nonfiction book about the middle east. If all you were doing was going off this blog I suppose you could be excused for thinking I was very focused on it. In a way I guess I kinda am. I served in the Marines (I think that's been mentioned a lot here) and the climax of that service was the Iraq invasion of 2003. I wasn't in Iraq very long. So you would think that would be a very minor part of my life. It is and remains a pivotal moment in my life. Much of who am I and what I've become is because of Iraq and because that I think my gaze in one way or another may always be drawn back to the middle east. Metaphorically speaking. That's all I really want to say on that front.

Written by Michael Weiss and Hassan Hassan, both these men are very experienced journalists and writers who have appeared in Foreign Policy, the Guardian, the New York Times and other papers. Now one might wonder if it might be to soon to analysis ISIS. I can understand that view but here's my stance. While it may be to soon to analysis the effects of ISIS or to write even the middle chapter of it's existence. It is no where close to soon to start analyzing it's history and it's structure. That's how we learn about them and to quote Sun Tzu here, “If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles.” In Iraq we did not know our enemy and look what happened. It's time to start addressing that flaw.

Either way Weiss and Hassan have convinced me in this book that to soon or not, they are capable of doing the job. To get the information for this book they used the connections and skills built up from years of covering the middle east to interview members of the Syrian and Iraqi Government, ISIS members both those who left and those still in the organization, various middle eastern analysis, US military offices and people who live in the areas in question. Additionally they sourced a vast number of articles and other written sources to put together this book. Each of these sources are listed in the notes pages (divided by chapter quoted in as well) which are over 20 pages. This is the first time I've mentioned this but I just found that fairly impressive. Especially since a good number of the other ISIS books I found were political screeds that could be summed up in the words “Thanks Obama,” you may in fact be able to hear me roll my eyes at that but this review isn't about American politics.

Side Note: I prefer to use the Arabic name for the organization of Daesh (which in Arabic also has implications of thuggishness and brutality making it a perfect fit) but the book uses ISIS, so I will in this review to prevent confusion.

The book covers the origins of ISIS and it's “founding fathers,” many of whom were members of Al Qeada or the Saddam government. It traces the ideological underpinnings of the movement (in this it goes all the way back to Abdullah Azzam a mentor of Osama Bin Laden who published works arguing Muslims must expel all occupying armies in Islamic lands), it's embracing of Takfirism (a Takfiri being a Muslim who accuses other Muslims of apostasy basically) and it's evolution away from the doctrine set down by Osama Bin Laden. In face it may shock you to learn that Osama was a moderate Jihadists. In this book you'll meet the guys who thought he didn't go far enough. This book also details the shady deals that ISIS has cut with the remains of the Saddam government. Mostly the men who put in charge of the gray and official black markets (seriously how do you have a government sanctioned black market? What is this shit?). Many of these men started out secular but found religion in the 1990s. ISIS encourages that to whole new levels. This is one of the more interesting parts of the book (although if you're like me you'll have to write down the names to keep them straight) that reaches back decades upon decades ago to trace out the inter-linkage between Al Qeada, ISIS and the Baathist of Iraq. A lot of it is economic and I'll get to that later.

This book also discusses the history of ISIS, it starts as a part of Al Qeada in Iraq, it survives the Awaking in Sunni Iraq by going underground and waiting and is protected and fed by the Assad regime in Syria looking to use it as a boogeyman. A very dark moment in this book was when I learned that the US prisons in Iraq were considered wonderful recruiting grounds and educational organizations by the various Jihadists. I delivered men to those prisons and I find even more reasons to feel grief about it now. Not that the prisons of Assad were any better. Many of ISIS's best troops and low level leaders were recruited in either prison system and neither side was very capable in even slowing this process. Going through this part really made me want a drink. There also a discussion on the tribal system, Arabic tribes remain major players in that part of the world and a government must either work with that fact or face trouble for the rest of it's days. The Awakening was the US working with that fact, deciding to stop pretending the tribes didn't matter and enlisting them whole sale. We basically did this by offering them positions within the government and paid jobs. Many young men from the tribes were hired to be the local security, which they were doing anyways, hiring them just meant that they would now side with us instead of Al Qeada. This happened right when the forefathers of ISIS got to big for their britches and decided they could run roughshod over the various tribes and treat them as conquered vassals. That didn't work out to well for them and they found themselves rebuilding in Syria, where Assad thought he could use them as a threat to force the US to talk to him.

Speaking of Assad, the book gives a real in depth at everything Assad has done to nurture and strengthen ISIS. No, I didn't mistype this. ISIS when the Syrian civil war started was the ragged remains of a Al Qeada organization that only survived because Assad wasn't gonna arrest all of them without at least some kind of a bribe from Washington. When the revolution turned violent, mainly because people who go to funerals and get machined gun tend to have dark violent thoughts, Assad did everything he could to make sure that the rebellion would have a Islamist, Sunni character. Including releasing every Islamist Jihad fighter and preacher he ever arrested and making sure they could get guns. I had to reread this chapter because the first time I literally could not follow the logic of what even now seems a move of pure insanity.

In the end, I think it springs from Assad's overconfidence. Which has marred his stragerty repeatedly during the war. Assad believed that the biggest threats to his rule were a Libyan style western invention (which I think was unlikely even then) and/or the various minority groups deciding to jump ship and ally with the Sunni. The second one I kinda get because the majority of the Sunni had already decided to wreck his shit if they got a shot. So if the Christians, Kurds and other minorities decided fuck it... Well he would be up shit creek. Assad figured the best way to do that would be to ensure that the rebellion was full of religious lunatics (I say as a practicing religious man myself) who were burning for the chance to kill them all. His sells pitch to the minorities and to the West being “Look it's either me, or a bunch of howling savages bent on genocide and slavery, who do you want?” These days I'm wondering if maybe his plan might have gone a bit to well. That said, it has had some success. The west has refused to this date to support fully any rebel faction (although money and weapons do get sent out from time to time) and while the Kurds have gone their own way, the Christians and other Muslim sects are hanging pretty close to Assad, you know to keep from being hung. Hell for that matter on Space battles and other forums, I've seen plenty of reasonable people argue that Assad is the best person to support. Personally I think we've supported to many mass murdering torturing rapists as it is, so we should let the Russians and the Iranians spend money and lives to keep his ass on the throne if they want to. To be honest my ideal solution to this whole mess would be to tie Assad's and Al Baghdadi's left hands together, throw them in a room with a single knife, lock the door and never open it again. But that wouldn't do anything expect make me and a lot of other people feel better I think.

But wait! That's not all, also covered is a brief civil war within a civil war when the other major factions in the rebellion (including Al Nursa of all people, I mean God Help Us all, we're cheering on Al Nursa, that's how fucked up this is!) decided they had had enough of ISIS (who they accused of not doing a lot of fighting against Assad, but very happy to steal turf from other rebels). This fight took place last year in 2014. The FSA, Al Nursa and a lot of other factions all got together and attacked ISIS. ISIS started having to pull back but was winning a lot of the fights. That's when Assad jumped in and attacked everyone who wasn't ISIS... Given the recent actions by ISIS to overrun a number of important military bases... If I was a Syrian Army General, I would be very unhappy with my boss. To be fair, I think of to many people who should be happy with Assad. He has basically hand raised a monster and unleashed it on the people on Syria, to either scourge them for wanting to be free or to force them into needing his protection. I really can't over state my contempt for these kind of tactics. Before you say they worked, I'll remind you the war isn't over yet and it's been going worse and worse for Assad.

The book also takes a look at the economics of ISIS and how they govern their territory. They raise money by a combination of charging for services and instituting strict price controls to prevent gouging or profiteering. They also seize the assets of anyone who is convicted in their religious courts. All those folks who have been beheaded or fled? ISIS has helped itself to their stuff (and in some cases their family members). ISIS also uses a number of black market connections inherited from Saddam officers who joined up back when the US first invaded. They of course ruthlessly murder all their competitors when they get a chance, but that shouldn't surprise anyone. An interesting thing to note it that ISIS also makes cash by selling artifacts and antiques mainly smuggling them into Turkey for sell to private collectors. Finding out this has put their rampant destruction of archaeological sites into a new context for me and a less flattering one. See by destroying these sites, they're driving up the price of the artifacts they sell. Don't get me wrong there's certainly a manic zeal for destroying all traces of non Islamic life and a rampant disregard for their fellow man (what can you expect from a band of slavers anyways?) but there's also some underhand calculation going on here. Of course the main source of revenue is... Oil they sell to Assad...

Reading this book has led me to question if Assad understands which side ISIS is on?

We also get a peek into how ISIS governs and expands. ISIS gains popularity in areas by moving in slowly first getting rid of bandits and abusive individuals (many FSA units had turned to theft and ISIS clamped on that). As they slowly become the strongest force in the region they add more and more Islamic rules until the people there realize they're living in a theocracy run by armed lunatics. ISIS is also willing to embrace the tribal system, making allies within tribes by giving them positions and putting armed men at their command with the provision that they keep order and follow ISIS' rules. There has been scattered resistance to their rule within these territories but for the most part, ISIS's willingness to resort to swift, savage force has cowed most people. ISIS also maintains a strong PR machine aimed both at it's captive population and at possible recruits outside their borders. They even adopted a motto... Don't Hear About Us, Hear From Us.

ISIS Inside the Army of Terror gets an A. Clearly deeply researched and drawing from 1^st, 2^nd and even 3^rd hand sources to create a picture of what ISIS is, where it came from and what it wants.