An admission

[littlefeltfangs]

I really don't like war in books. I find it dry. You tend to need an a1 pad of paper and 4 different colours of marker to keep up with what is going on. Its full of characters who are bland and unlikeable, the ones who were likeable have usually been missing for so many pages of tactical description that you've forgotten who they are. There is desperate attempts at larger than life herocs to remind you that you are meant to care for these people. But above all, I always come away with a feeling akin to having accidently wandered into the authors living room to find him furiously masterbating over a picture of Winston Churchill.

Why littlefeltfangs, you must really hate theinsectman's latest book then? Its full of war, barely a chapter goes by without some troop movement, and some chapters are devoted entirely to how the war effort is going.


SQUUUUUUUUUEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!

Firstly, even at the most tactical, we always see it through the eyes of someone we care about. More than that, but most sets of eyes are not war-tacticians, and each of them sees in such a different way.

Kinden are different. I mean /really/. Ok, its obvious, but bloody beautiful to see the immense difference between how an Ant city stands or falls than a Beetle's.

People I care about die, and not just ones who have been built up for this very purpose. The world is so thriving that characters who were introduce literally pages before are a real loss.

And thats just it, the world is that real. I'm used to caring about individual characters in books, its how you get into the world. I'm a larper, so I'm used to playing with much wider senses of belonging, obvious to any who saw the pride of the Tlaxti. But, this book manages to evoke full fledged patriotise for a group of people who are ink and wood pulp. My god how I cheered when the flagship of Vek was destroyed, and better, destroyed by a man who gets less than a page of writing devoted to him throughout the entire book. This is not some heroic deed done by our larger than life heroes. It's a small a desperate attempt to do something, because that is what it means to take on the Collegium. But of course it isn't just the Collegium, we see it again and again in the cities of Tark and Sarn; we see it in the spider-kinden that single handedly delays the march of an empire withing a page of being introduced; and we even see it in the wasps when the scupper the plans of our heroes.

This is what stories of war should be like. The absolute best aspects of a history lesson: the way small decisions, strategies, and innovations interact to bring us the outcome. The best of anthropology and larp: showing us not just the culture of something alien, but its mind and soul. And of course the best of storytelling, because this is just a fantastic story that I can barely put down, and if I wasn't in danger of missing deadlines I wouldn't.

Comments

[innokenti.livejournal.com]

For 'tis why I love Sharpe. Bernard Cornwell tells us a little about the historical stuff and the particular engagement, but we're involved in it, we're invested in it. We're watching characters we care about.

Even historical Wellington becomes a much more real person.

Indeed. (And yeah, Adrian does it damn well too!)