Not with a whimper, but a bang… Nuclear War by Annie Jacobsen

If the world ends, how will it happen? What will it look like? What is the absolute worst-case scenario, and how can we expect it to play out?

Ever since the 50s, the spectre of nuclear war has hung over our civilization like the sword of Damocles, double-edged, flaming, and bathed in heaven like the wrath of the Almighty. The fear of nuclear war probably did more to shape the Boomer generation than any other geopolitical threat, and now, as the Boomers age out and leave this world to their children, there’s a very real chance they’ll go out with the biggest bang the world has ever seen.

So what might that look like? What can we expect to see? For the last seven decades, nuclear deterrence has held, but what happens if it fails? Where do we end up after the smoke clears, and what does the world look like?

In Nuclear War, Annie Jacobsen posits a “bolt out of the blue” scenario, where an ICBM is launched at the US without any prior warning, other than our early detection systems. In this scenario, North Korea launches the nuke, but a bolt out of the blue could come from any number of nuclear powers, and immediately leads to a cascading series of events that results in a global nuclear holocaust. Jacobsen pulls no punches, and gives us a minute-by-minute, second-by-second account of how that cascade happens.

Meticulously researched and containing some shocking recently declassified information, this book is a fascinating read. I finished the audiobook the same day I started listening. Literally could not put it down. It’s terrifying, but also fascinating. For example, did you know that North Korea has put a satellite in orbit that likely contains a nuclear weapon (though of course they deny it), and if detonated over the US it will generate a high altitude EMP that would likely cause the same scenario in Forstchen’s One Second After? This is not a theoretical threat—the satellite is already in orbit. Also, did you know that if a nuclear weapon ever strikes a nuclear power plant, the resulting fallout from the combined explosion and meltdown will likely render all of the land within several hundred miles utterly uninhabitable for thousands of years? In other words, if you pick the right targets, you don’t even need a cobalt bomb to salt the earth.

But will a limited/tactical nuclear strike necessarily lead to a global nuclear holocaust that will wipe our civilization from the face of the planet? Annie Jacobsen certainly thinks so—and she makes a solid case that she will. As she puts it, the first rule of nuclear war is that there are no rules. She also points out how miscommunications and faults in our adversaries’ early detection systems could lead them to misconstrue the nature or intended target of our counterattack. And once things really get going, the process has been so systemetized that there’s very little that even the President of the United States can do to stop it from running its course. One of the things that really struck me in the book was just how powerless the president actually was, and how futile and pathetic his role turned out to be.

In the end, how does it turn out for humanity? Not very well. The resulting nuclear winter reduces the strength of the sun by 70% for about a decade, wiping out the world’s agriculture industry and rendering most temperate climates uninhabitable. I suppose if you happen to be in Samoa or Ethiopa when the nukes begin flying, you might survive, but most of the world’s seven billion people do not. And if that sounds outrageous, Jacobsen ends the book by bringing up Gobekli Tepi, an archeological site in Turkey that may have been built by the survivors of a similar world-ending cataclysm ten thousand years ago, as a sort of prehistoric time capsule from a civilization as advanced as our own (for more on that theory, read Magicians of the Gods by Graham Hancock). So just when you’re ready to say “that couldn’t ever happen,” Jacobsen points out that it not only could, but that we might indeed be the descendants of the survivors of a similar catastrophe.

It’s a fascinating book, though I’m not quite ready to buy all of Jacobsen’s conclusions. I’ve heard some counterpoints from skeptics about the current dilapidated state of Russia’s and China’s nuclear arsenals, and of the strength of our own defensive options, with Jacobsen dismisses out of hand. Then again, I wouldn’t want to bet on Jacobsen’s skeptics being right—though I suppose that I already have, by the fact that I have no plans to move my family over to Samoa or Ethiopia. But what can we really do? Food storage, solar panels, gold and silver, backyard chickens and a victory garden—if the nuclear apocalypse becomes a reality, all those preps will be about as effective as a band-aid on a sucking chest wound. Good luck.

Needless to say, this book is pretty dark, and not the sort of thing you should probably read if you’re already addicted to doom porn and struggling with anxiety over the current state of the world. For me, my personal religious convictions keep me from having panic attacks about the threat of nuclear war, but without those convictions, I’d probably be a hot mess after reading this book. However, it is an incredibly fascinating topic—and a timely one, too, given the current state of the world. If you can handle reading it, you almost certainly should.

Nuclear War by Annie Jacobsen

$20.99eBook: $14.99Audiobook: $17.72

Author: Annie Jacobsen
Genres: HISTORY, Military / Nuclear Warfare

Every generation, a journalist has looked deep into the heart of the nuclear military establishment: the technologies, the safeguards, the plans, and the risks. These investigations are vital to how we understand the world we really live in—where one nuclear missile will beget one in return, and where the choreography of the world’s end requires massive decisions made on seconds’ notice with information that is only as good as the intelligence we have.

Pulitzer Prize finalist Annie Jacobsen’s Nuclear War: A Scenario explores this ticking-clock scenario, based on dozens of exclusive new interviews with military and civilian experts who have built the weapons, have been privy to the response plans, and have been responsible for those decisions should they have needed to be made. Nuclear War: A Scenario examines the handful of minutes after a nuclear missile launch. It is essential reading, and unlike any other book in its depth and urgency.

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Faeries, Zombies, and Wizards: Dead Beat by Jim Butcher

So I’ve slowly been reading through all three hundred or so books that have been nominated for the Hugo Award, in order to figure out how I would vote for each year. It’s a useful exercise, not only for producing content for my writing blog, but for judging the evolution of science fiction and fantasy over the last century (or at least, the part of it that appeals to the most outspoken corner of fandom). In 2015, book 15 (Skin Game) of the Dresden Files was nominated, so I knew I would eventually have to tackle that series. Then, I heard an interview with Jim Butcher on the Writers of the Future podcast, in which he suggested that new readers start with book 7 (Dead Beat) instead of book 1, so that’s where I decided to start.

Until I picked up this book, I hadn’t really read much urban fantasy. I read the first Monster Hunter International book years ago, and a few short stories here and there, but I was never really big on Buffy the Vampire Slayer (which seems to be the cultural watershed that most urban fantasy fans point back to as their starting point with the genre) and fantasy stories set in the modern world never really did it for me. When I do read fantasy, I typically prefer portal fantasy like Zelazny’s Chronicles of Amber, or secondary world fantasy like Conan or Tolkien—and yes, I know that both Conan and Tolkien technically happen in a forgotten age of our own world, but Middle Earth and Hyboria are so different from the world as we know it that they might as well be secondary worlds.

All of that is to say that I wasn’t expecting to enjoy this book as much as I did. It’s really quite good! Jim Butcher really knows how to tell a great story: one that hooks you from the beginning and doesn’t let up until the end. And while I could tell that there was a bunch of stuff that had happened in the previous books, like discovering he has an incubus brother, or acquiring faerie housekeepers (which is absolutely hilarious), with the way Butcher handled it, it wasn’t a problem at all that I didn’t know any of the backstory behind all of that. In other words, he gave me just enough to understand what was happening without getting bogged down in a recounting of all of that previous stuff.

Another thing that Butcher balanced really well was Harry Dresden’s personal life vs. the overarching politics of the supernatural community, with his various courts and councils all vying for power against one another. A lot of stuff happens in this book that I’m sure will have political ramifications in later books, such as the ongoing war between the White Council and the Red Court, but the book is more about Harry Dresden and his role in all of these machinations than it is about the political machinations themselves. And Harry Dresden is a really great character to follow: smart, strong, competent, and brave, but also very down-to-earth in his flaws—and in this particular book, he’s constantly the underdog. Seriously, it was like everything he tried to do, he failed terribly at it, to the point where I was starting to wonder if perhaps the bad guys were going to win after all.

More than anything else, though, this book—and all the other Dresden File books that I’ve read since—are just a load of fun. This is a minor spoiler, but when Harry Dresden brought Sue the Dinosaur back as a zombie T-rex and stomped around Chicago fighting the bad guys with her, I couldn’t help but laugh out loud as I was listening to that part of the audiobook. It really was a crowning moment of awesome—of which there were actually several in this book, each one more entertaining than the last. The fact that Jim Butcher has never won a Hugo or a Nebula Award for any of his Dresden Files books—indeed, the fact that he was never even nominated for an award until the Sad Puppies put him on the slate—is a damning indictment of the cliquishness and poor quality of those awards.

With all of that said, though, I’m probably not going to read much urban fantasy outside of Jim Butcher and Larry Correia. I’m on book 10 of the Dresden Files right now, and I can tell that one of the conventions of the genre is to throw in lots and lots of sex or sexual innuendo. For the most part, I think Butcher handles it tastefully, mostly as a way of highlighting how lonely and sexually frustrated Harry Dresden is (which at times can be hilarious), but I don’t trust other authors to be as tasteful—and indeed, there are times where even Butcher has made me mentally roll my eyes. Also, it’s not quite as interesting or engaging when you’re no longer a sexually frustrated singleton yourself.

But genre conventions aside, I am really enjoying the Dresden File books! After I’ve read up through the latest installment of the series, I will probably go back and listen to the first six books, then acquire them all for the Vasicek family library. They’re quite good.

Dead Beat by Jim Butcher

$9.93eBook: $9.99Audiobook: $19.69

Author: Jim Butcher
Series: The Dresden Files, Book 7
Genres: Fantasy / Action & Adventure, Fantasy / Contemporary, Fantasy / General, Fantasy / Paranormal, Fantasy / Urban, FICTION

Paranormal investigations are Harry Dresden’s business and Chicago is his beat, as he tries to bring law and order to a world of wizards and monsters that exists alongside everyday life. And though most inhabitants of the Windy City don’t believe in magic, the Special Investigations Department of the Chicago PD knows better.

Karrin Murphy is the head of S. I. and Harry’s good friend. So when a killer vampire threatens to destroy Murphy’s reputation unless Harry does her bidding, he has no choice. The vampire wants the Word of Kemmler (whatever that is) and all the power that comes with it. Now, Harry is in a race against time—and six merciless necromancers—to find the Word before Chicago experiences a Halloween night to wake the dead...

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When Longer is Better: The Novels of Louis L’Amour

A few weeks ago, I wrote about how I prefer shorter fantasy books over the enormous epic fantasies that have become so typical for the genre—and for the most part, that is still true. However, my recent experiences with Louis L’Amour are prompting me to rethink some of that, or at least to recognize that for some authors, longer is better than short.

Of course, Louis L’Amour is not a fantasy writer. He wrote mostly westerns, though he also wrote some thriller and historical adventure. In fact, the two books that I think are his best (Last of the Breed and The Walking Drum) are a thriller and a historical adventure respectively. They are also about three times as long as his westerns, which are typically between 4-6 hours in audiobook format.

(As a side note, almost all of L’Amour’s books are available in audio from my local library, so I’ve slowly been working my way through all of them. At first, I put a bunch on my holds list, since there’s a wait for almost all of them, but since then I’ve found that there’s usually at least one or two that are available now at any given time, and that all (or at least most) of his books tend to cycle through this list. So right now, I’m just checking out whichever audiobook happens to come available when I’m ready for a new one, and hoping to get most of them that way. After that method dries up, I’ll put out holds for the more popular ones that never become available on their own.)

I’ve already written about Last of the Breed, which is certainly good enough to deserve its own blog post. The Walking Drum is also that good—perhaps even better—but I’ve read so many L’Amour books recently that I figure I’ll just roll up my thoughts on all of them here. And what I’ve found is that with L’Amour, there’s an almost perfect correlation between how long his books are and how much I enjoy them. Of the short stories of his that I’ve read, most of them are forgetable. And of the novels, the shorter ones tend to be good, but not great. But the longer ones invariably become my favorites—not just Last of the Breed and The Walking Drum, but Jubal Sackett (my favorite of the Sackett books so far), Fair Blows the Wind, and some of his relatively longer pulp westerns, like North to the Rails (which clocks in at 7 hours) and Westward the Tide (which isn’t my favorite, but it’s also the first western he ever wrote—if you read enough L’Amour, you can definitely see how his writing skill improved over time, though his earlier works like Westward the Tide and Hondo still have just as much passion as his later works, perhaps even more.)

Then again, perhaps it’s not a question of length so much as economy of words. In other words, could a better author write the same story in fewer pages, without losing anything of the story? For most midlist fantasy authors, the answer is almost always “yes.” Even for the greats like Tolkien and Jordan, there’s probably room for improvement (especially Jordan’s later Wheel of Time Books, though I haven’t gotten there yet—the first three books in the series are really good, even at their current length).

Some authors, like Brandon Sanderson, tend to lost economy of words when they write longer. That’s probably why my personal favorite Sanderson novel is The Emperor’s Soul, one of his shortest books. In fact, this may be true of most fantasy authors: the longer they write, the more they tend to sprawl. Don’t get me wrong—I still enjoy Sanderson, and think he’s a great fantasy writer, but it’s always the last 100 pages of his books that are the best—whether those books are 100 pages long, or 1,000.

But L’Amour is a master of writing with an economy of words, whether he’s writing long or writing short. Even when he pauses the narrative to go off on lengthy descriptions of the western landscape, or ruminations on the nature of history and human civilization, the story loses something if you cut any of them out—in fact, those are often the best parts. He always starts right where the meaningful action begins, and his stories never linger much after they’re over. As for the middle, he never pads them out with filler, like some fantasy authors tend to do. And because he writes with such a brilliant economy of words, the longer his books are, the more meat they have on them—which is probably why I enjoy them so much more.

So really, I don’t think it comes down to how long or how short a book is, but whether the author can write with an economy of words without sprawling out too much. Most fantasy authors can’t, which is why Zelazny’s Chronicles of Amber has been such a breath of fresh air for me. But L’Amour? He’s the master.

Louis L'Amour

Louis L’Amour was born in Jamestown, North Dakota. He left school at 15 to travel the world. While in his thirties, he began writing novels about life on the Western frontier. His first big success, Hondo, was made into a John Wayne movie. L’Amour is the only novelist in history to receive both the Presidential Medal of Freedom and the Congressional Gold Medal. He has published ninety novels; twenty-one short-story collections; two works of nonfiction; a memoir, Education of a Wandering Man; and a volume of poetry, Smoke From This Altar. There are more than 260 million copies of his books in print.

Hondo by Louis L’Amour

Conagher by Louis L’Amour

Last of the Breed by Louis L’Amour

The Walking Drum by Louis L’Amour

North to the Rails by Louis L’Amour

Jubal Sackett by Louis L’Amour

Visionary conservatism vs. reactionary conservatism: Another Kingdom by Andrew Klavan

Where there is no vision, the people perish: but he that keepeth the law, happy is he.
Proverbs 29:18, KJV

In my last post, about C.S. Forester’s Mr. Midshipman Hornblower, I mentioned how most conservative fiction these days—or indeed, most conservatism generally—is more reactionary than visionary, really only seeking to conserve all the things that the radicals had successfully pushed onto society twenty years ago, for the sole reason that it’s not what the radicals are pushing on us today.

It’s lonely, being a conservative in the arts. In all ages, conservatives tend to be drawn to more stable careers, like accounting or banking, than the type of career where people immediately ask “so what’s your day job?” when you tell them what you do. This is not because conservatives are inherently less creative—after all, there is (sadly) no shortage of creative bankers and accountants in this world—but conservatives do tend to create differently than liberal or progressive types. Thus, in fields where “new ideas” are celebrated over timeless values—basically, any genre that’s been taken over by “anti-___,” “___-ism,” “___-ality,” or “___-ology”—conservatives tend to bow out in disgust.

Which is a shame, because the reason conservatives are perpetually losing the culture war is because of how they perpetually cede the arts to their ideological enemies. Thus, the radicals are able to repackage all of their worst and most pathological ideas for the rising generation and make them seem new. This is the reason why Karl Marx’s utterly discredited economic theories are still culturally relevant, Lenin, Stalin, and Mao are viewed by many young people as heroes, and almost no one thinks of Hitler as a socialist. But hey—at least we got President Trump.

This is something that Andrew Klavan has been shouting about for a very long time. Unlike most conservative creators, who are little more than con-artists working a grift, or else (wittingly or otherwise) are merely conserving bad leftist ideas that are old enough to have fallen out of fashion, Andrew Klavan is the real deal. He is not just a reactionary, but a visionary, with a deep understanding of conservative values that don’t just go back to the ’00s, or the ’50s, but the 1850s and the 1600s.

Another Kingdom is a really fun read. Even though it’s technically fantasy, it reads a lot more like a thriller, with lots of action and suspense, and a conflict that spans not just the portal fantasy kingdom, but modern Hollywood and the powers that run our world. The main character goes from a dumpy, washed-up wannabe screenwriter to someone who is willing (though not yet able) to stand up to one of the worst billionaire globalist types trying to lead the world into a new age.

It’s an interesting read, though, because even though Klavan is a conservative Christian, the story doesn’t read like something that only Christian conservatives would want to read. In fact, there’s so much violence, sex, and language that most Christian conservatives are probably put off by it. But if Klavan had toned all that down to try to appeal to that particular audience, the story would have suffered quite a bit… because let’s face it, you can’t really write a story about the evils of Hollywood and the billionaire class without acknowledging the raunchy and violent parts. And of course, since the portal fantasy aspect functions as a foil to our own world, it’s a nasty, violent place as well.

In other words, Klavan had an artistic vision for this book that was informed by his conservative values, but he didn’t let his conservative values (or his conservative audience) compromise that vision or water down his story. There’s a fine line between depicting evil and glorifying evil, but if you want to write about evil then you have to be willing to walk right up to that line. Klavan does that, but his conservatism keeps him from crossing over and outright glorifying in it, the way that a lot of grimdark tends to do. He doesn’t balk from showing evil, but he also shows it for what it is, contrasting it with goodness. And because his characters are flawed humans, it doesn’t come across as preachy, either—even though some of those character flaws are the kind that more prudish conservatives tend to find offensive.

It’s not the kind of book that everyone will enjoy, but I thoroughly enjoyed Another Kingdom. The sex, violence, and language didn’t bother me at all, because the story itself felt firmly grounded, and never veered into glorification of those things. Moreover, the book is just plain fun to read—the message, such as there is one, never comes before the book’s primary purpose, which is to entertain. And Another Kingdom is a highly entertaining (and surprisingly rereadable) thriller / portal fantasy. You should give it a try.

Another Kingdom by Andrew Klavan

$19.99eBook: $14.99Audiobook: $25.99

Author: Andrew Klavan
Series: Another Kingdom, Book 1
Genres: Fantasy / Action & Adventure, Fantasy / Urban, FICTION, Thrillers / General, Thrillers / Suspense
Tags: 2020-04 Books, 2022-10 Books

Austin Lively is a struggling, disillusioned screenwriter whose life is suddenly changed forever when he opens a door and is unwittingly transported to a fantastical medieval realm. Austin finds himself wielding a bloody dagger while standing over a very beautiful and very dead woman. Bewildered and confused, he is seized by castle guards and thrown in a dungeon. Just when he begins to fear the worst he is suddenly transported back to reality in LA.

Did that really just happened? Has he gone insane? Was it all a dream? Did he have a brain tumor? Desperate for answers, sets out to find them and discovers that the mystery can only be unlocked by a strange piece of fiction that holds the truth about the magical kingdom. But he isn’t the only person searching for the missing manuscript, and his rivals will stop at nothing to get it first. To complicate matters more, Austin soon discovers that he has no control over when he passes between worlds, and finds himself out of trust for even the simple things, like walking through doorways.

Stuck between dual realities –charged for a murder he doesn’t recall in one and running from a maniacal billionaire who’s determined to kill him in another– Austin’s monotonous life has become an epic adventure of magic, murder, and political intrigue in both the New Republic of Galiana and the streets of Los Angeles California.

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“When ships were wood and men were iron…” Mr. Midshipman Hornblower by C.S. Forester

The most popular modern saga of the days when ships were wood and men were iron.
New York Times Book Review

That is, perhaps, one of the best blurbs I’ve ever read for a book, and it’s certainly fitting for the Horatio Hornblower books. These are the classics that inspired David Weber to write Honor Harrington, Lois McMaster Bujold to write the Vorkosigan Saga, and Gene Roddenberry to make Star Trek—except where all those space opera stories are clearly fantastical, the Hornblower novels are so deeply rooted in the Napoleonic Era that they could have been pulled from the pages of history. And the way that C.S. Forester writes them, you hardly realize that you’re reading a book until you look up bleary-eyed, and realize in shock that a couple of hundred pages have gone by. If Honor Harrington is what Star Trek wants to be when it grows up, then Horatio Hornblower is the wise old grandparent that Honor Harrington hopes to someday become.

As historical novels, the thing that interests me the most is how the Hornblower books fit into the generational cycles described by Strauss and Howe in The Fourth Turning and The Fourth Turning is Here. The theory is pretty simple: once every 80 to 100 years, or once in every person’s natural lifespan, society experiences a major crisis that completely reshapes their civilization. The reason it happens every 80 to 100 years is because that’s how long it takes for everyone who lived through the last crisis to die, thus leaving society with no one who remembers it well enough to prevent it from occuring again. This crisis is called a fourth turning, because it marks the end of the generational cycle, a generation being approximately 20 years, or one quarter-phase of a natural human life.

For us in the US, the generational cycles are pretty easy to pick out. We are currently in the midst of our own fourth turning, which appears likely to culminate in either a civil war, a global war, or both. About 80 years before that was World War II, and before that, the first US Civil War, and before that, the Revolutionary War. Strausse and Howe can trace back another three or four cycles, and argue fairly convincingly that the entire anglosphere can be treated as one monolothic civilization, as far as these generational cycles are concerned.

But what about other cultures? I’ve seen some geopolitical commentators argue that Russia is currently in a second turning, not a fourth—and you’d be hard pressed to claim that the Bolshevik Revolution and subsequent Russian civil war of the 1910s and 1920s was not a fourth turning of its own. Also, for continental Europe, WWI was even more devastating than WWII, arguably marking the death of European civilization itself. How was that not a fourth turning crisis? And if you mark it as one and trace back another 100 years, you have the Napoleonic wars, which certainly reshaped European civilization in the manner of a fourth turning crisis.

Which brings us back to the Hornblower books, and why I think I love them so much. C.S. Forester published the first book, Mr. Midshipman Hornblower, in 1950, shortly after the last fourth turning, and the books themselves are set in the midst of the Napoleonic Wars, which was arguably a fourth turning crisis for continental Europe. But England herself was experiencing a first turning at the time, when society comes together and rebuilds, so there’s also a strong sense of unity, patriotism, cameraderie, and personal duty—basically, all of the conservative values of yesteryear that we’ve thrown out. And indeed, since these books were written in the 40s and 50s by someone who wasn’t a beatnik, it should come as no surprise that there’s a very conservative strain to them.

But these books aren’t political—or at least, Mr. Midshipman Hornblower isn’t. Instead, it’s more of a cultural conservatism, teaching values like duty, responsibility, honesty, integrity, etc. Basically, all of the values that become ascendant in a first turning, because they were so totally lacking in the fourth turning (hence why everything came to a crisis in the first place—weak men, bad times, and all that). It also helps that we have some historical distance from the events of these books—or indeed, that C.S. Forester had some historical distance—because I’m sure that if these books had been written in the 1830s, there would have been a lot more partisan polemic stuff that wouldn’t have aged well.

Precisely because we are in the midst of a fourth turning, it seems that most of our fiction these days is gloomy, dark, dystopian, and nihilistic. Many of the prevalent tropes these days, such as “death is chic,” “victimhood is virtue,” and “you slay, girl!” stand in direct opposition to the values on which a stable and virtuous society is built—and to the extent that there is a conservatism backlash, it’s almost all reactionary instead of visionary, conserving all the worst aspects of society from twenty years ago. For that reason, the older classics like the Hornblower novels really stand out, especially today.

Hard times make strong men. Strong men make good times. Good times make weak men. Weak men make hard times. And since the times are growing harder, and we find ourselves surrounded by weak and mewling men, let us read of times when ships were made of wood, and men were made of iron.

Mr. Midshipman Hornblower by C.S. Forester

$10.49eBook: $2Audiobook: $22.33

Author: C.S. Forester
Series: Hornblower Saga, Book 1
Genres: Action & Adventure, FICTION, Historical / General, Sea Stories, War & Military, World Literature / England / 20th Century

The year is 1793, the eve of the Napoleonic Wars, and Horatio Hornblower, a seventeen-year-old boy unschooled in seafaring and the ways of seamen, is ordered to board a French merchant ship and take command of crew and cargo for the glory of England. Though not an unqualified success, this first naval adventure teaches the young midshipman enough to launch him on a series of increasingly glorious exploits. This novel -- in which young Horatio gets his sea legs, proves his mettle, and shows the makings of the legend he will become -- is the first of the eleven swashbuckling Hornblower tales that are today regarded as classic adventure stories of the sea.

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This is why I love shorter fantasy novels: Sign of the Unicorn by Roger Zelazny

About midway through the third book in the Chronicles of Amber, I came to the realization that these books are the perfect length for me. They’re about as long and as fast-paced as a typical L’Amour novel, which is to say that they’re less than 200 pages and feel like they’re less than 100. If I had nothing else on my TBR pile, I could easily breeze through one of these novels each week.

That’s not very typical of fantasy these days. After Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings became super popular, and Terry Brooks kicked off the epic fantasy boom of the 80s and 90s, it seems like every fantasy novel became a chihuahua-killing doorstopper of a book—and this was before Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time became for the Millennials and Zoomers what Lord of the Rings was for the Boomers and Gen Xers. And now, of course, we have Brandon Sanderson, who probably writes the equivalent of one Chronicles of Amber novel every week.

But it wasn’t always like this, or so I’ve heard. A while ago, I read an essay by David Hartwell where he pointed out that before Tolkien and Brooks, most readers thought that the natural length of fantasy was the short story. This was largely due to Robert E. Howard, who was a master of the short form—and before Tolkien, the biggest name writing fantasy for a general adult audience. I love the original Conan stories—I’ve read them all twice, and will probably read them all again sometime this year. I also love the Lin Carter and L. Sprague de Camp stories, though they aren’t nearly as good. (As for Robert Jordan… yeah, it’s probably best to stick with his Wheel of Time books).

Now, don’t get me wrong. I love Tolkien, and I enjoy Brandon Sanderson (though my personal favorite of his is The Emperor’s Soul, which is one of his shorter books). But speaking generally, I’ve come to prefer shorter fantasy over longer fantasy. Part of that is due to the pacing—though it is possible to write longer fantasy that is paced quite well, as Larry Correia has proven with his Saga of the Forgotten Warrior books. But the longer a fantasy novel becomes, the more likely I am to DNF or just give up on it midway through, which makes me reticent to pick up another doorstopper unless it comes highly recommended.

Fantasy readers who prefer longer books tend to argue that longer books give more of a sense of immersion in the fantasy world, but as both a reader and a writer, I’ve found that immersion doesn’t actually correlate with book length. Instead, it’s the conflict itself that tends to immerse the reader in the story: the tension, the stakes, the balancing of suspense vs. action, etc. This is a major mistake that amateur fantasy writers tend to make quite often: a book that focuses on worldbuilding at the expense of conflict will read like a slog, whereas a book that sinks its hooks in you immediately and never lets go will make you feel fully immersed, even if it explains almost nothing about the worldbuilding.

The Chronicles of Amber is a prime example of this. How does the magic work, exactly? Beyond the basic rules around walking the Pattern, and some elaborate hand-waving about the concepts of light and shadow, it’s never fully explained. If Brandon Sanderson wrote any of these books, it would easily turn into a doorstopper just to work out all the worldbuilding details that Zelazny never dwells upon. And yet, I feel totally immersed in these books, to the point where I feel like I’m right by Corwin’s side as he walks the Pattern or traverses Shadow.

My point is that when it comes to fantasy novels, longer is not necessarily better and shorter does not necessarily mean shallower. In the hands of a master, a short, quick-paced novel can actually be even deeper and more immersive than a doorstopper of a book. That is only one of the many reasons why I’m loving these Chronicles of Amber books.

Sign of the Unicorn by Roger Zelazny

$15.29eBook: $5.99

Author: Roger Zelazny
Series: The Chronicles of Amber, Book 3
Genres: Fantasy / Action & Adventure, Fantasy / Dark Fantasy, Fantasy / Epic, Fantasy / General, FICTION

He who rules Amber rules the one true world. He who thwarts Amber invites the wrath of Amber betrayed.

An unseen enemy of immense strength has seized a Prince of the Blood, and now threatens the perfect kingdom by striking at the very core of its power - the secret knowledge of Shadow.

When Corwin summons forces to defend the throne, he finds himself challenged by royal conspirators, hideous demons, supernatural patterns and the ominous unknown that suddenly transcends all he ever suspected about the true nature of Amber.

One of the most revered names in sf and fantasy, the incomparable Roger Zelazny was honored with numerous prizes—including six Hugo and three Nebula Awards—over the course of his legendary career. Among his more than fifty books, arguably Zelazny’s most popular literary creations were his extraordinary Amber novels.

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When to give an author another chance: The Guns of Avalon by Roger Zelazny

I have to be honest: before I discovered the Chronicles of Amber, I had all but given up on Zelazny as an author. All of his stuff that I’d previously attempted to read had won a bunch of major awards, and none of it appealed to me. I honestly couldn’t see what the big deal was, as none of his award-winning books or short stories really hooked or appealed to me. It wasn’t that there was anything specific about his writing that turned me off: I just couldn’t get into any of it.

Looking back, I think that the reason Zelazny’s other stuff won so many awards is because it was too late to award Chronicles of Amber with anything, and the fandom rightfully didn’t want Zelazny to go unrecognized. It’s kind of similar to the way that Final Fantasy 8 launched with a much bigger splash than Final Fantasy 7, even though FF7 is clearly a superior game: the very success of FF7 led to so much recognition (and disappointment) for FF8. Or maybe Chronicles of Amber was just too popular, and the self-appointed snobs behind the Hugos and Nebulas disdained the thought of bowing to the crass, plebian tastes of the unwashed masses… but they still couldn’t snub Zelazny entirely, since that would only discredit themselves, so they picked some of his more “under-appreciated” work. I don’t really know, as I wasn’t alive at the time.

In either case, I really had written off Zelazny as an author. So when I decided, on a whim, to pick up Chronicles of Amber just to see what all the fuss was, I was truly amazed by how good it is. The second book picks up right where the first one left off and drives the story forward, with its own brilliant twists and turns and an ending that raises the stakes even higher. It speaks to the brilliance of Zelazny’s writing that I was just as hooked at the end of Guns of Avalon as I was after the first chapter of Nine Princes in Amber.

So when is it right to give up on an author, and when is it right to give them another chance? I suppose it comes down to two things: the themes that an author chooses to write about, and their style or authorial voice.

There are lots of authors that I will not read, because I cannot stand either of those qualities. For example, I will not read N.K. Jemisin at all, because her authorial voice and writing style personally turns me off, and everything she writes is infused with themes that I find to be nihilistic and pathological. Same with Samuel Delany: there’s a reason why he endorsed NAMBLA, and I’ll leave it at that.

But there are lots of edge cases where I love the author’s voice and style, yet find their themes to be troubling. Piers Anthony and Robert A. Heinlein fall into that camp; when they’re not being dirty old men, I find that I quite enjoy their books. George R.R. Martin is another example: his prose is great, and he really does a fantastic job of immersing you into his world, but his books are so full of nihilism and victimhood that I DNFed A Song of Ice and Fire after the first book.

And then there are the edge cases where I find nothing particularly off-putting about the themes, but for some reason I just can’t get into their writing style. Until I found Chronicles of Amber, Zelazny fell squarely into that camp. Patrick O’Brien also falls into this box: I just couldn’t get into Master and Commander the way I’ve been enjoying the original Hornblower novels, though I will give the Jack Aubrey novels another try. For my wife, I think Orson Scott Card falls into this camp: she really cannot stand how all of his characters sound like a smug and snarky version of the author, rather than characters in their own right. I’m not sure if that holds true for all of his books, but for his later books it certainly seems to.

Perhaps, as a general rule, it’s best not to give up on an author unless both their writing style / storytelling voice and their recurring themes both consistently put you off—and even then, it’s probably a good idea to give them several chances before you write them off entirely. I’ve culled a lot of Heinlein from my shelves and TBR, but I’m not going to totally “cancel” him yet like some of the perpetually offended seem to want to. And as for Zelazny, the Chronicles of Amber is making me think I ought to revisit some of his other stuff that I previously dropped. Maybe there’s something there that I just missed.

The Guns of Avalon by Roger Zelazny

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Author: Roger Zelazny
Series: The Chronicles of Amber, Book 2
Genres: Fantasy / Action & Adventure, Fantasy / Dark Fantasy, Fantasy / Epic, Fantasy / General, FICTION

Across the worlds of Shadow, Corwin, prince of blood royal, heir to the throne of Amber, gathers his forces for an assault that will yield up to him the crown that is rightfully his. But, a growing darkness of his own doing threatens his plans, an evil that stretches to the heart of the perfect kingdom itself where the demonic forces of Chaos mass to annihilate Amber and all who would rule there.

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I wish I had a dozen writing books like this! Putting the Fact in Fantasy by Dan Koboldt, ed

I’ve slowly been going through all of the writing books at the Orem Library, looking for everything that I can use to hone my craft. Some of them are better than others, and some of the ones that I initially DNFed I’ll probably end up coming back to and trying again. But one of the surprisingly good ones is this recently published anthology, edited by Dan Koboldt.

It’s less of a writing book and more of a random bits of information book. Each chapter is about 4-5 pages, or around 1,000 words, and deals with some incredibly specific issue, such as how Medieval honorifics and titles of nobility (European and Middle Eastern) work, or what sort of horse breeds are best for which tasks, and why. They’re really more like blog articles written by a subject matter expert, most of whom are also writers, who share what they know with the goal of helping you write a more authentic-sounding book.

There are three things that make this book work really well. First, the articles are all very short: you can easily read each one in about fifteen minutes. Second, there are lots and lots of articles to choose from. Third, each article is focused on one very specific topic or problem, going deep rather than broad. If any of those things weren’t true: if the articles were any longer, or if there were fewer of them, or if any of them were about writing more broadly, rather than a specialized nice—the book probably work nearly as well. But the end effect is a useful reference book that is also a pleasure just to read straight through.

I wish I had a dozen writing books just like this one, dealing with all sorts of weird and eclectic topics. Instead of going to the internet for research, I could pull out one of these books and flip through it, picking and choosing the most useful articles for whatever project I happen to be working on. In fact, the table of contents of this book looks a lot like my browser history when I’m on a fantasy project, which is probably why it works so well. But because the articles are curated by a writer and written by subject matter experts, I don’t have to worry as much about things like the weird shenanigans and biases of Wikipedia editors, or trudging through half a dozen crappy clickbait articles to find the information that’s genuinely useful.

Looking on his Amazon page, it seems that Dan Koboldt has done at least one other writing book like this one, for science fiction. That’s definitely going on the wish list.

Putting the Fact in Fantasy: Expert Advice to Bring Authenticity to Your Fantasy Writing, edited by Dan Koboldt

A collection of essays from historians, linguists, martial artists, and other experts to help you write more compelling fantasy by getting the facts right

Whether it's correctly naming the parts of a horse, knowing how lords and ladies address one another, or building a realistic fantasy army, getting the details right takes fantasy writing to the next level. Featuring some of the most popular articles from Dan Koboldt’s Fact in Fantasy blog as well as several never-before-seen essays, this book gives aspiring and established fantasy writers alike an essential foundation to the fascinating history and cultures of our own world, which serve as a jumping-off point for more inspired and convincing fantasy.

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About the Book

Details

Authors: A.R. Lucas, J.R.H. Lawless, Victoria Sandbrook, Terry Newman, Tahereh Safavi, Spencer Ellsworth, Sarah J. Sover, Rebecca Mowry, Rachel Annelise Chaney, Olaseni Ajibade, Michelle Hazen, Michael Mammay, Marie Brennan, Kate Heartfield, Jen Finelli, Jay S. Willis, Hayley Stone, Amber Royer, Dan Koboldt, Amy Perkins-McKenna, Carrie Callaghan, Cheyenne L. Campbell, Christina Dalcher, Colleen Halverson, Crystal King, Debby Lush, Hannah Emery, Diana Pinguicha, Dustin Fife, E.B. Wheeler, Ember Randall, Eric Primm, Graeme K. Talboys, Wanda S. Henry
Genres: LANGUAGE ARTS & DISCIPLINES, LITERARY CRITICISM, Science Fiction & Fantasy, Writing / Fiction Writing, Writing / General
Tag: 2024-03 Books
Publisher: Writer's Digest Books
Publication Year: 2022
ASIN: 0593331990
List Price: $16.49
eBook Price: $14.99
Audiobook Price: $14.40

About the Author

Dan Koboldt

Dan Koboldt is a science fiction & fantasy writer and the author of the Gateways to Alissia series.

He's also a genetics researcher at a leading children's hospital, where he and his colleagues use next-generation DNA sequencing technologies to uncover the genetic basis of inherited disease. He has co-authored more than 70 publications in The New England Journal of Medicine, Science, Nature, and other scientific journals.

Dan is an avid hunter and outdoorsman. Every fall, he disappears into the woods to pursue whitetail deer with bow and arrow. He lives with his wife and children in Ohio, where the deer take their revenge by eating all of the plants in his backyard.

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An Amnesia Story Done Right: Nine Princes in Amber by Roger Zelazny

One of the first pieces of writing advice that I ever recieved, right alongside “never end a story with the words ‘it was all a dream'” and “never introduce the main character by having them look at themselves in a mirror” was “never write a story where the main character has amnesia.” Which struck me as kind of fishy, since I enjoyed both The Bourne Identity and Final Fantasy VI. But amnesia stories can also be done really poorly, and in fact, most of they time, they are. So I filed that writing “rule” away as a useful suggestion and went on with my writing.

Fast forward a couple of decades, to when I recently discovered Roger Zelazny’s Chronicles in Amber series. The book starts off as a stereotypical amnesia story, where the protagonist wakes up in some sort of hospital and has no idea who he is or how he came to be there. In the hands of a beginner, this story could have easily gone off the rails, but Zelazny is a master storyteller, and it hooked me almost immediately from the beginning and didn’t let up until… honestly, I’m four books in at this point, and I’m still just as hooked as I was with the first chapter. It’s pretty good.

But how can this be so? It is, after all, an amnesia story, breaking one of the first ~~rules~~ suggestions of writing? I can think of a few reasons.

First of all, even though the protagonist has the worst possible (and therefore most unbelievable) kind of amnesia, he isn’t totally helpless. In fact, he’s uncannily good at noticing important things and talking his way out of difficult situations, starting with the hospital where he wakes up, where he immediately realizes that the nurses are trying to keep him drugged so he won’t escape, but by walking out while they aren’t watching, getting to their supervisor before they can restrain him, and threatening him just enough with legal action that the supervisor decides to let him go—but not before he also extracts the name and address of the person who admitted him, a woman listed as his sister. So he shows up at her house, not even knowing his own name, but manages to bluff her so well that she can’t even tell if he has amnesia or not (or so it seems). And then his brother shows up, and they’re attacked by a bunch of supernatural beings, whom he dispatches with an antique sword, thus discovering his considerable skills with the sword… and the novel takes off from there.

Besides possessing a sharp, perceptive mind and an uncanny ability to think quickly on his feet, the protagonist also has some uncanny physical abilities that give the novel an immediate sense of intrigue. Besides his excellent swordsmanship, he also has an almost supernatural ability to heal quickly from wounds—hence, why the nurses fail in their efforts to drug him.

I suppose another reason why the amnesia story works so well is that everything plot point builds logically off of the next, as I’ve just demonstrated by outlining the events of the first couple of chapters. In a bad amnesia story, things seem to happen almost at random to a protagonist who has been rendered almost totally helpless. Not so with Nine Princes in Amber. Without this logical progression of events, the sense of chaotic randomness would overcome the sense of mystery—but with it, the amnesia itself creates a very intriguing sense of mystery that immediately draws you in.

And even though the protagonist loses his amnesia and regains ~~all~~ most of his memories before the end of the first book, that intriguing sense of mystery continues throughout the next books, because even with all of his memories, there are so many things that he just doesn’t know—not so much about the world, but about the political situation with his conniving family, and all of the events that have transpired in his absence.

And that’s the other thing that makes Nine Princes in Amber such a great amnesia story: the way that we get to discover the fantastical world right alongside the main character as he rediscovers it. And it really is a fantastical world. The basic premise of the series is that the one true world in all the universe is the fantastical kingdom of Amber, and all other worlds—including our own Earth—are but shadows cast by it. The immortal (but not invulnerable) princes and princesses of Amber have the power to “walk through shadow,” or travel between these shadow realms, but mere mortals can only traverse the boundary if one of the royal family transports them. And it’s not just the landscape and people that change from shadow to shadow, but the physical rules of the universe, as well as time and space itself, until you reach the realms of chaos on the outer edge of all existence.

The fact that the protagonist starts off with amnesia means that we get to see and experience the wonder of all of this as he rediscovers it—but because he is indeed one of the princes of Amber, the plot doesn’t slow down at all once he rediscovers the fantasy world and gets all his memories back. Without the amnesia frame story, it would have either been a slow-paced fantasy that evokes a great sense of wonder, or a fast-paced fantasy that’s difficult to follow. Instead, we get the best of both: a fast-paced fantasy that still manages to evoke a great sense of wonder, without losing you along the way.

Which leads me to the final reason why Nine Princes in Amber is such a good amnesia story: the fact that the amnesia is not the main thing that drives the story. Midway through the book, Corwin (the protagonist) finally walks the Pattern and recovers all his memories, which resolves the amnesia subplot—but by then, the main story arc is already well underway, and it doesn’t let up until… well, probably the last book in the series. But because it turns out that the amnesia was just a subplot, and not the overarching story plot itself, we’re able to get a satisfying resolution to it in the first book, instead of getting endlessly strung along by something that increasingly feels like a contrived plot device. And it turns out that there are very good reasons for Corwin’s amnesia, relating to the magic and the political intrigue in Amber. The form of amnesia depicted most often in fiction is an extremely rare condition in real life, so the magical elements underlying it actually lend more credibility to the story, rather than taking credibility away.

All in all, Nine Princes in Amber is a surprisingly good read, and a great first book in an amazing series. These books were published more than fifty years ago, but I’m only just now discovering them, and I can say that they hold up quite well after all these years. I’m currently in the middle of book 4, but I already have lots to say about the others, so you can expect to read quite a few posts on the Chronicles of Amber over the course of the next few weeks.

Nine Princes In Amber by Roger Zelazny

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Author: Roger Zelazny
Series: The Chronicles of Amber, Book 1
Genres: Fantasy / Action & Adventure, Fantasy / Dark Fantasy, Fantasy / Epic, Fantasy / General, FICTION
Tag: 2024-03 Books

Exiled to the Shadows for centuries, a man more than mortal awakens in an Earth hospital with no memory of his past—and is surrounded by enemies who hunger for his destruction. For Corwin is of the blood—the rightful successor to the throne of the real world. But to rule, he must conquer impossible realities and demonic assassins... and survive the ruthless machinations of the most insidious malevolence imaginable: his own family.

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Have we been here before? How To Save the West by Spencer Klavan

The more I read, the more I’m convinced that the mark of a truly great writer is economy of words. This doesn’t necessarily mean that their books are shorter than others, but rather, that they say more in less.

By that mark, Spencer Klavan stands above the rest. His writing is compelling and full of substance, his arguments well-developed and his thoughts very deep. And the subject matter of his book How to Save the West is as compelling as the title would suggest—perhaps even more so, given the breadth and scope of the subjects he tackles.

Like most people these days, I’ve found myself increasing looking around at the world and wondering “how in the hell did it get this bad?” Klavan answers that question with a diagnosis of our present situation, dividing it into five philosophical crises and giving us a brief history of each. It turns out that none of these crises is new: Western civilization has either dealt in some way with each of them in the past, or has been dealing with them for several centuries now.

Ultimately, Klavan concludes that the West is more resilient than we think, and will emerge from these troubled times with a new rebirth, just as it did in previous eras. However, the form of that rebirth will depend largely on how we respond to the crises of our time, not just as a people, but as individuals. This, in the end, is the key point: that the West will not be saved by a great leader, or by all of us taking some great collective action, but by each of us as individuals choosing to live good and virtuous lives, and having a positive impact within our own individual spheres of influence.

It’s a remarkably white-pilled ending for a book that does not, in any way, gloss over the challenges of our time. It’s also remarkably empowering for a book with such a clear-headed look at our times. Where other, more black-pilled authors might get bogged down in the details of how bad things really are, Klavan never loses sight of the forest for the trees—

—and I think that comes back to his economy of words. There is no filler in this book; no wasted words or meandering explorations of ultimately tangential issues. He gets right to the point, examines the issues clearly and concisely, and fearlessly presses forward to his ultimate conclusions. It’s a very good read.

How to Save the West: Ancient Wisdom for 5 Modern Crises by Spencer Klavan

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Author: Spencer Klavan
Genres: Civics & Citizenship, Commentary & Opinion, Ethics & Moral Philosophy, Europe / General, HISTORY, PHILOSOPHY, Political, Political Ideologies / Conservatism & Liberalism, POLITICAL SCIENCE, United States / General
Tag: 2024-03 JMW Books

It has been proclaimed many times, but perhaps never more convincingly than now, when every news cycle seems to deliver further confirmation of a world gone mad.

Is this the endgame? Have we come to closing time in the West?

Author Spencer Klavan is a classicist, with a Ph.D. from Oxford, and a deep understanding of the West. His analysis: The situation is dire. But every crisis we face today, we have faced before. And we can surmount each one. Today’s “five essential crises” are:

• The Crisis of Reality: Is there such a thing as objective truth—and even if there is, can “virtual reality” replace it?
• The Crisis of the Body: Not just the “transgender” insanity, but the push for a “transhumanist” future
• The Crisis of Meaning: Evolution—both biological and cultural—is a process of endless replication, of copying. But is there an original model that gives us an aspiration to aim for? Do our lives and actions have meaning?
• The Crisis of Religion: Science has not eliminated man's religious impulse, but rather misdirected it—and wrongly dismissed the profound philosophical plausibility of Judeo-Christian revelation.
• The Crisis of the Regime: Has America reached a point of inevitable collapse? Republican government was meant to end the destructive cycle of regimes rising and falling—but can it?

Klavan brings to the West’s defense the insights of Plato, Aristotle, the Bible, and the Founding Fathers to show that in the wisdom of the past lies hope for the future. That wisdom can improve our own lives and the lives of those around us—and ultimately save the West.

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