Friday, 27 February 2015 10:55 am
Book Review: Emerald Sea
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deckardcanineI don’t recall which online acquaintance got me interested in John Ringo’s Council Wars series or how. I would’ve liked to start at the beginning with There Will Be Dragons, but my family must have found the second volume easier to acquire as a timely present. Many references therein to past events sound pretty interesting. Alas, I don’t expect to read any more of the series, or even another Ringo novel, unless I get assurance that it’s very different.
The prologue establishes a much more optimistic view of human progress than mine. Thanks to, among other innovations, a decisionmaking computer program called Mother, people have enjoyed thousands of years with almost everything they could possibly want. No shortage of resources means world peace and very little crime. It also leads to people doing things never done before just for the heck of it, such as living in normally uninhabitable areas and/or with reversible shifts to decidedly nonhuman forms. And creating advanced artificial organisms, some with humanlike intelligence, leaving me to wonder how anyone can tell which strangers used to be human. The result looks a lot like a traditional high fantasy, only far from medieval.
Fortunately for the story’s sake, this utopia comes crashing down all of a sudden a few years before the setting of chapter 1. The first obvious problem with the system lies in people’s lack of directional drive, with a worrisome decline in population, science, and the arts. Paul Bowman, one of the Councilors appointed to keep Mother in check if need be, becomes so desperate to reverse these trends with a policy to reward productivity that he and his followers, dubbed New Destiny, set out to kill those who disagree, dubbed the Freedom Coalition under Sheida Ghorbani. (In synopsis, his step from honorable intentions to blatant villainy looks abrupt.) By diverting Mother’s energy to wartime matters, he gets part of his wish and exposes the other obvious problem, centralized overdependence: Technology all over the world stops working, leading to “the Dying Time” or “the Fall.” The aftermath is deemed preindustrial, tho some tinkerers manage to make a number of 20th-century-or-later items. Past-era enthusiasts like you might find at a Renaissance faire become the VIPs (and you’d be amazed at what hasn’t been completely forgotten over the millennia).
In this volume, the action largely follows the crew of a Freedom ship on a mission to seek allies among merfolk, with a little aid from “delphinos.” In the name of diplomacy, they don’t have an outright battle cruiser, but they do bring untested potential weapons in the form of “true” dragon (but ex-human) Joanna and her loyal wyverns, typically called “dragons” as well despite having two limbs fewer. Quite some time is spent figuring out how best to launch, ride, and land the dragons, with the prospect of carrying projectiles as a follow-up concern.
The most frequent focal figure, coming along as further protection, is Herzer Herrick, a ridiculously effective hand-to-hand combatant known as a Blood Lord. He’s also well-sexed, reportedly well-endowed (oh, thanks, Ringo), and not as ignorant or arrogant as you might think. Still not as reputedly dangerous as General/Duke Edmund Talbot, the leader of the outfit, who brings along his wife and adult daughter for support of a more medical persuasion.
Another common focal character is Joel, a spy for Sheida serving as a lackey on the ship. He doesn’t fight or affect the plot in any big way; he merely offers an extra POV. And reads a cruddy novel based loosely on the exploits of Herzer and others, as if to assure us that Ringo could have done much worse. I suspect that Joel gets more important in another volume.
If you’d rather pay attention to a geek, there’s engineer Evan. He takes responsibility for developing weapons and other useful devices. Unlike most characters, he does a few things to feel embarrassed about. He’s probably my favorite still-human character, with Joanna my favorite non-human.
Two AIs unexpectedly come aboard in a mischievous yet ultimately helpful capacity, particularly in battle. One is Bast, a naughty-minded elf who has taken many lovers over 2,000 years, including Herzer previously. Bast switches between normal dialog and broken English – not just telegraphic words, like Rorschach from Watchmen, but poor grammar like “Everyone demons have” – and nobody thinks anything of it. Has longevity made her forgetful of present-day speech (assuming that the plain modern English is a translation for us)? I chalk it up to the author changing his mind about how she should talk and an editor failing to ensure consistency in the transition.
The other AI is a rabbit based on an unspecified comic character, who’s darkly funny from a distance, but you wouldn’t welcome his company. I thought of him as a combination of Usagi Yojimbo, Rocket Raccoon, and Howard the Duck, but further reading tells me they meant a webcomic character I’d vaguely heard of: Bun-Bun from “Sluggy Freelance.” (Eh, it was more popular back in 2004; but even then, who’d make him real if they could?) This would explain why nobody bothers to ask the rabbit’s name and why he doesn’t get many pages, basically disappearing after a while.
Sometimes the POV shifts to New Destiny members. Some have grown to recognize how abominable their governments’ actions are but don’t see a way out; others are as unsubtly, unabashedly wicked as Snidely Whiplash. Most of the villains who encounter heroes this time around are either ex-human orcas (whose subspecies barely has any redeemable specimens) or a venomous breed of ray that somehow merits a completely new word: “ixchitl.” The orcas ask only that the mermaids remain neutral, but their nastiness is a little too evident.
It becomes apparent that a traitor on board has been leaking the ship’s location. I can’t say I like how Ringo handled this subplot. For one thing, it kinda rips off Dune. Yet even readers unfamiliar with that treachery will feel no surprise, partly because characters suspect the correct guy and few others long before his conclusive revelation. (You may give Ringo credit for not following the J.K. Rowling route of picking someone the heroes never suspected, but that doesn’t make it fun.) The real surprise is what happens next, if only because it defies known physics.
Absurd anything-goes premises, gratuitous sex talk, and sloppy assembly had my mind crying “pulp” almost from the very beginning. In synesthetic terms, reading it was like eating food that started out good but was noticeably past its sell-by date. I kept thinking of giving up on the book. It has its moments, especially in the form of competent military strategy and rare underwater action, but I feel like I should treat long tomes the way My Fitness Coach says to treat candy: If you don’t dig it, stop. “OK” is not OK.
So why didn’t I? Well, as with some other books, I first felt it was too early to judge and later thought it would be a shame to quit after investing so much time. Part of me maintained that it's good to experience the mediocre once in a while to keep the good stuff in perspective. Another part of me wanted to read the whole thing just on principle, so I could truthfully say I gave it a shot.
Speaking of principle, philosophical and political points do come up. I get the impression that Ringo is mildly conservative, and not just with his naval experience showing. His good guys aren’t very moralistic; many could be called antiheroes. They haven’t given a high priority to sorting out what they shouldn’t do to nonhumans, especially sapients who don’t look nearly human. But he clearly wants us to side with them rather than those with a less capitalist understanding of the world. Or today’s mainstream environmentalists. Whether or not his views are correct, I have to criticize his approach: Never argue about real-world science when you’ve spent hundreds of pages spelling out an unbelievable future.
Mercifully, the story ends on page 485 instead of, as I’d feared, 646. The author’s afterword entertained me more than any other five consecutive pages in the book. Turns out he named most of the characters, sometimes both first and last names, after real acquaintances. (If I’m not mistaken, “Bast” is his cat.) After that, with no notice from the cover, a table of contents, or an up-front foreword (great job, Baen Books – tho I realize that a table wouldn’t help much when chapters are merely numbered, not titled), we get a 100+-page story within the Council Wars world titled “In a Time of Darkness,” which Ringo immediately warns us is “NC-17, possibly X,” as if there were a difference. I skipped that and saw an appendix listing Council members and their allegiances, which really didn’t belong on pages 599-600, because then we get a sample chapter from the no-longer-forthcoming Princess of Wands. That might be more palatable, but I didn’t take a chance on it either.
I decided to pick up Robert Silverberg’s Sailing to Byzantium next. It’s a collection of sci-fi novellas, of which I’d read the titular first many years ago. This should be easier to put down if not so hot.
The prologue establishes a much more optimistic view of human progress than mine. Thanks to, among other innovations, a decisionmaking computer program called Mother, people have enjoyed thousands of years with almost everything they could possibly want. No shortage of resources means world peace and very little crime. It also leads to people doing things never done before just for the heck of it, such as living in normally uninhabitable areas and/or with reversible shifts to decidedly nonhuman forms. And creating advanced artificial organisms, some with humanlike intelligence, leaving me to wonder how anyone can tell which strangers used to be human. The result looks a lot like a traditional high fantasy, only far from medieval.
Fortunately for the story’s sake, this utopia comes crashing down all of a sudden a few years before the setting of chapter 1. The first obvious problem with the system lies in people’s lack of directional drive, with a worrisome decline in population, science, and the arts. Paul Bowman, one of the Councilors appointed to keep Mother in check if need be, becomes so desperate to reverse these trends with a policy to reward productivity that he and his followers, dubbed New Destiny, set out to kill those who disagree, dubbed the Freedom Coalition under Sheida Ghorbani. (In synopsis, his step from honorable intentions to blatant villainy looks abrupt.) By diverting Mother’s energy to wartime matters, he gets part of his wish and exposes the other obvious problem, centralized overdependence: Technology all over the world stops working, leading to “the Dying Time” or “the Fall.” The aftermath is deemed preindustrial, tho some tinkerers manage to make a number of 20th-century-or-later items. Past-era enthusiasts like you might find at a Renaissance faire become the VIPs (and you’d be amazed at what hasn’t been completely forgotten over the millennia).
In this volume, the action largely follows the crew of a Freedom ship on a mission to seek allies among merfolk, with a little aid from “delphinos.” In the name of diplomacy, they don’t have an outright battle cruiser, but they do bring untested potential weapons in the form of “true” dragon (but ex-human) Joanna and her loyal wyverns, typically called “dragons” as well despite having two limbs fewer. Quite some time is spent figuring out how best to launch, ride, and land the dragons, with the prospect of carrying projectiles as a follow-up concern.
The most frequent focal figure, coming along as further protection, is Herzer Herrick, a ridiculously effective hand-to-hand combatant known as a Blood Lord. He’s also well-sexed, reportedly well-endowed (oh, thanks, Ringo), and not as ignorant or arrogant as you might think. Still not as reputedly dangerous as General/Duke Edmund Talbot, the leader of the outfit, who brings along his wife and adult daughter for support of a more medical persuasion.
Another common focal character is Joel, a spy for Sheida serving as a lackey on the ship. He doesn’t fight or affect the plot in any big way; he merely offers an extra POV. And reads a cruddy novel based loosely on the exploits of Herzer and others, as if to assure us that Ringo could have done much worse. I suspect that Joel gets more important in another volume.
If you’d rather pay attention to a geek, there’s engineer Evan. He takes responsibility for developing weapons and other useful devices. Unlike most characters, he does a few things to feel embarrassed about. He’s probably my favorite still-human character, with Joanna my favorite non-human.
Two AIs unexpectedly come aboard in a mischievous yet ultimately helpful capacity, particularly in battle. One is Bast, a naughty-minded elf who has taken many lovers over 2,000 years, including Herzer previously. Bast switches between normal dialog and broken English – not just telegraphic words, like Rorschach from Watchmen, but poor grammar like “Everyone demons have” – and nobody thinks anything of it. Has longevity made her forgetful of present-day speech (assuming that the plain modern English is a translation for us)? I chalk it up to the author changing his mind about how she should talk and an editor failing to ensure consistency in the transition.
The other AI is a rabbit based on an unspecified comic character, who’s darkly funny from a distance, but you wouldn’t welcome his company. I thought of him as a combination of Usagi Yojimbo, Rocket Raccoon, and Howard the Duck, but further reading tells me they meant a webcomic character I’d vaguely heard of: Bun-Bun from “Sluggy Freelance.” (Eh, it was more popular back in 2004; but even then, who’d make him real if they could?) This would explain why nobody bothers to ask the rabbit’s name and why he doesn’t get many pages, basically disappearing after a while.
Sometimes the POV shifts to New Destiny members. Some have grown to recognize how abominable their governments’ actions are but don’t see a way out; others are as unsubtly, unabashedly wicked as Snidely Whiplash. Most of the villains who encounter heroes this time around are either ex-human orcas (whose subspecies barely has any redeemable specimens) or a venomous breed of ray that somehow merits a completely new word: “ixchitl.” The orcas ask only that the mermaids remain neutral, but their nastiness is a little too evident.
It becomes apparent that a traitor on board has been leaking the ship’s location. I can’t say I like how Ringo handled this subplot. For one thing, it kinda rips off Dune. Yet even readers unfamiliar with that treachery will feel no surprise, partly because characters suspect the correct guy and few others long before his conclusive revelation. (You may give Ringo credit for not following the J.K. Rowling route of picking someone the heroes never suspected, but that doesn’t make it fun.) The real surprise is what happens next, if only because it defies known physics.
Absurd anything-goes premises, gratuitous sex talk, and sloppy assembly had my mind crying “pulp” almost from the very beginning. In synesthetic terms, reading it was like eating food that started out good but was noticeably past its sell-by date. I kept thinking of giving up on the book. It has its moments, especially in the form of competent military strategy and rare underwater action, but I feel like I should treat long tomes the way My Fitness Coach says to treat candy: If you don’t dig it, stop. “OK” is not OK.
So why didn’t I? Well, as with some other books, I first felt it was too early to judge and later thought it would be a shame to quit after investing so much time. Part of me maintained that it's good to experience the mediocre once in a while to keep the good stuff in perspective. Another part of me wanted to read the whole thing just on principle, so I could truthfully say I gave it a shot.
Speaking of principle, philosophical and political points do come up. I get the impression that Ringo is mildly conservative, and not just with his naval experience showing. His good guys aren’t very moralistic; many could be called antiheroes. They haven’t given a high priority to sorting out what they shouldn’t do to nonhumans, especially sapients who don’t look nearly human. But he clearly wants us to side with them rather than those with a less capitalist understanding of the world. Or today’s mainstream environmentalists. Whether or not his views are correct, I have to criticize his approach: Never argue about real-world science when you’ve spent hundreds of pages spelling out an unbelievable future.
Mercifully, the story ends on page 485 instead of, as I’d feared, 646. The author’s afterword entertained me more than any other five consecutive pages in the book. Turns out he named most of the characters, sometimes both first and last names, after real acquaintances. (If I’m not mistaken, “Bast” is his cat.) After that, with no notice from the cover, a table of contents, or an up-front foreword (great job, Baen Books – tho I realize that a table wouldn’t help much when chapters are merely numbered, not titled), we get a 100+-page story within the Council Wars world titled “In a Time of Darkness,” which Ringo immediately warns us is “NC-17, possibly X,” as if there were a difference. I skipped that and saw an appendix listing Council members and their allegiances, which really didn’t belong on pages 599-600, because then we get a sample chapter from the no-longer-forthcoming Princess of Wands. That might be more palatable, but I didn’t take a chance on it either.
I decided to pick up Robert Silverberg’s Sailing to Byzantium next. It’s a collection of sci-fi novellas, of which I’d read the titular first many years ago. This should be easier to put down if not so hot.