Arkron

Am 12. April 1961 flog Yuri Gagarin an Bord der Vostok 1 als erster Mensch ins Weltall. Ins All erzählt die Geschichte dieses Ereignisses, die Entstehung der Rakete, das ganze Weltraumrennen im Vorfeld einmal nicht aus der Perspektive der USA mit ihrer Mercury-Rakete, in der Alan Shepard als erster Astronaut sass. Das besondere an diesem Sachbuch ist die Fokussierung auf die Seite der Sowjetunion ohne in die Falle einer verklärenden Hagiographie zu tappen. 

Stephen Walker führt seine Erkenntnisse aus einer großen Vielzahl an Originalquellen und vieler eigener Interviews mit Augenzeugen  zusammen. Dabei entsteht eine sehr unterhaltsame, aber auch vertrauenswürdige Erzählung, die sich ungemein packend liest. Walker bettet die Erzählung in den Verlauf des Kalten Krieges ein und lässt die Zeit wiederauferstehen. 

Am faszinierendsten fand ich die Ausführung der technischen Risiken, unter denen der Flug stattfand. Nach der Lektüre glaubt man eher an ein Wunder, dass der Mensch heil landete, als an eine Meisterleistung. Dabei war Gagarin nur ein besserer Passagier, und die eigentliche Ehre sollte dem Vater des Unternehmens, Sergei Korolev, gehören. Das Buch trägt viel dazu bei, die Rolle dieses Mannes zu erklären und dem Leser nahe zu bringen. Aber auch die Persönlichkeiten der Kosmonauten und Astronauten dieser Zeit werden detailreich geschildert. Nicht zu vergessen sind dabei die Schicksale der Tiere - Schimpansen, Hunde, Mäuse - die den Menschen im All vorangingen.

Ein paar Streichungen von Wiederholungen hätten dem ansonsten ausgezeichneten Text gut getan. Das Buch ist sehr lang und ausführlich, aber ich fand es erstaunlich, wie leicht und schnell es sich liest. Bildteil, ein sehr langes Quellenverzeichnis und Referenzen runden dieses hervorragende Sachbuch ab. Auch Leser, die sonst schon viele Bücher über das Space Race gelesen haben, werden hier viel Neues erfahren! Ich kann das Buch sehr empfehlen.

Ursula K. Le Guin ist nicht nur bekannt für ihre Erdsee-Fantasy Romane, sondern auch für ihre SF Werke, allen voran der Hainish-Zyklus. Umrahmt durch ihren gemeinsamen Weltentwurf können die Romane unabhängig voneinander gelesen werden. Wenn zwei von ihnen jedoch wie hier in einem Band gesammelt werden, ergibt sich eine wunderbare Gegenüberstellung und ein zusätzlicher Blickwinkel.

Die Auswahl von "Das Wort für Welt ist Wald" einerseits und "Die Erzähler" andererseits ist spanned in mehrerlei Hinsicht. Zum einen umspannen die beiden Romane mehr als dreißig Jahre Erzählens in diesem Universum, wobei Wort für Welt ist Wald in der sehr frühen Phase um 1968 entstanden ist, wohingegen "Die Erzähler" als letzter Hainish-Roman entstand. Zum anderen ähneln und ergänzen sie sich auch inhaltlich, denn bei beiden geht es um eine Kultur, die von einer technologisch fortgeschrittenen, aber zugleich ethisch zurückgebliebenen Kultur unterdrückt wird.

Widmen wir uns zunächst dem Kurzroman "Das Wort für Welt ist Wald":

James Cameron's Film "Avatar" liegt nun bereits wieder etliche Jahre zurück. Wer ihn gesehen hat kann sich sehr schnell in den Roman hineinversetzen, der sich beinahe wie eine Vorlage für den Film liest: Da gibt es den Wald, Ureinwohner (die hier grün statt blau sind und vielleicht ein Viertel so groß). Weiter gibt es den soldatischen Antagonisten und schlußendlich der Sieg des Guten über das Böse. Selbst das lucide Träumen der nativen Athsheaner findet ihren Widerpart in der Verbindung zum Avatarbaum.

Wer Le Guin liest, sollte an sich keine Feuerwerk an Action erwarten. Ihr literarischer Stil ist eher geprägt von introspektiven Anteilen und bedachtsam, oftmals lyrisch. Jedesmal wenn ich eines ihrer Werke lese, berührt etwas davon meine Seele. Hier jedoch gibt es ungewöhnlich viele Kämpfe zwischen Athsheanern und Terranern, die das Lesen recht kurzweilig machen.

Die Autorin entwickelt oftmals eine exotische Kultur, anhand derer sie unsere Gesellschaft reflektiert. Faszinierend ist in dieser Geschichte ihr Entwurf zum luciden Träumen. Tatsächlich gibt es auch in unserer Welt indigene Gesellschaften, die sich von Träumen stark leiten lassen. Bei den Athsheanern geht das soweit, dass sie denken die Terraner seien wahnsinnig, da sie so wenig Kontrolle über ihren Schlaf und Träume haben. 

Die Handlung folgt zwei Freunden. Der eine ist ein terranischer Forscher Davidson, der sich gegen das unterdrückende und arrogante Regime durch seine Firma wendet. Der andere ist der Athsheaner Selver, der zunächst nur den Mord seiner Frau an dem terranischen Hauptmann rächen möchte. Er führt einen Aufstand der eingesperrten Athsheaner herbei, der schließlich in einem Volksaufstand mündet. From Zero to Hero sozusagen.

Le Guin schrieb den Roman ursprünglich 1968 als Reaktion auf den Vietnamkrieg. Harlan Ellison erkannte sofort das Potential der Geschichte und veröffentliche sie 1972 im Rahmen seiner zweiten SF-transformierenden Anthologie "Again, Dangerous Visions". Sie wurde mit dem Hugo-Award ausgezeichnet und sehr häufig wiederveröffentlicht. 

Die politische Verbindung mag damals relevanter gewesen sein als heute, aber der Roman leidet nicht darunter und ist auch in unserer Zeit äußerst lesenswert. 

Der zweite Roman des Bandes ist "Die Erzählung" und Le Guin's letzter Roman im Hainish-Universum. Danach schrieb sie nur noch eine Kurzgeschichte, man kann es also durchaus als Abschlusswerk betrachten. Auch dieser Roman kann unabhängig von den anderen gelesen werden, und die Reihenfolge im Buch ist ebenfalls nicht ausschlaggebend. 

Der Roman folgt Sutty, eine Inderin und Sprachexpertin, die als Diplomat für das Hainish-Ekumen auf dem Planeten Aka arbeitet. Aka war noch vor ein paar Jahren ein Hinterweltplanet. Dann kamen die Hainish und die Gesellschaft dort wandelte sich um in eine fundamentalistische, technophile Monokultur.

Sutty erlebt eine Mischung aus politischen und religiösen Konflikten zwischen einem autoritären und unterdrückerischen Zentralstaat und einer indigenen Kultur. Der alte Glauben und die damit verbundene Kultur sind gänzlich verboten. 

Es dauert einige Zeit, bevor Sutty die sterile Hauptstadt mit seinen "Produzenten-Konsumenten" verlassen darf und ein Ausflug in das rustikale Hinterland genehmigt wird. Dort erhofft sich Sutty die Begegnung mit Resten aus den alten Gebräuchen. 

Tatsächlich findet sie Reste und Anzeichen der (verbotenen) Erzähltradition, von der sich der Titel ableitet. Als Leser denkt man sofort an Tibetanische Praktiken unter der Chinesischen Kulturrevolution, die auf Aka "der Marsch zu den Sternen" heißt. Sutty vertieft sich immer mehr in diese faszinierende Kultur, versucht (verbotene) Bücher zu finden und lernt (verbotene) Übungen. Immer auf ihren Fersen ist ihr dabei ein Regierungsagent, der versucht, die letzte (verbotene) Bibliothek zu finden.

Suttys neue Freunde führen sie schließlich tief in die Berge zu einem alten Kloster.

Können Sutty und das Ekumen diese Kultur vor der Ausrottung bewahren?

Ich denke, die Ähnlichkeit der beiden Erzählungen liegen auf der Hand, sind aber unterschiedlich genug, um beide lesenswert zu sein. 

In diesem Roman übertreibt Le Guin etwas ihre Liebe zum Taoismus und ihre Kritik an der industriellen Revolution, was etwas plump und langwierig wirkt. Andererseits kann man dem Roman nicht absprechen, auch über 20 Jahre nach der Veröffentlichung noch absolut relevant zu sein, angesichts der Chinesischen Repressionen gegen ganze Völker in in ihrem Herrschaftsbereich.

Die Erzählung ist nicht abgehoben oder esoterisch, der Leser kann förmlich Gerüche, Geräusche, Farben und tägliche Rituale fühlen. Das ist pure Immersion!  

Auch fällt es leicht, sich in Sutty hineinzuversetzen. Ausgehend vom Horror des unterdrückerischen Staates geht einem die Schönheit der Kultur der Landbevölkerung sehr nahe. 

Nun noch zu meiner Empfehlung: Leser, die Le Guins Hauptwerke "Die linke Hand der Dunkelheit" und "Planet der Habenichtse" noch nicht gelesen hatten, sollten dies zuerst nachholen. Vor allem, weil sie einfach grandios sind und aus meiner Sicht ein "Muss" für Genreliebhaber darstellen. Erst danach empfehle ich den vorliegenden Band.

Unsere Gesellschaft lebt unter der Spannung sozialer Ungleichheit. Wann begann das alles und sind wir notwendigerweise in dieser Situation steckengeblieben? Dieser Frage widmet sich das Autorengespann Graeber/Wengrow, der eine ein bekannter Anthropologe, der andere einer der führenden Archäologen. 

Dies ist keine kurze Abhandlung, die schnell an einem Wochenende zu lesen ist. 700 Seiten, davon zwei Drittel Inhalt, der Rest Anmerkungen, Bibliographie und Index. Was beinahe akademisch wirkt, richtet sich an wissenschaftlich interessierte Leser, ohne allzusehr ins populärwissenschaftliche abzugleiten. 

Dabei spannen die beiden Autoren einen großen Bogen auf und versuchen, bestehende wissenschaftliche Traditionen zu reformieren. In der Schule lernte ich noch die Abfolge "Jäger-Sammler, dann Bauer-Hirte, dann Städte mit Herrschern", orientiert an technologischen Innovationen. Dieses Buch wendet sich gegen dieses eingeprägte Muster, zeigt auf, dass es viele Abfolgen gibt, die hin und her mäandrieren, dass die vermeintlich primitiven Urvölker kluge, politische Entscheidungen trafen, und dass unsere vermeintlich hochentwickelte Zivilisation viele Unfreiheiten in sich bergen, die es lohnt in Frage zu stellen.

Rahmengerüst für das Buch sind die indigenen Völker Nordamerikas, die eine ungemein große Vielfalt an Gesellschaftsformen aufwiesen. Häuptlinge, die nicht einfach nur Befehle ausgeben konnten, sondern überzeugen mussten. Stämme, die friedlich, fleissig und spartanisch direkt neben aggressiv kriegerischen und verschwenderischen Stämmen lebten. Wie passt das alles zusammen und warum gehen die Menschen gerade diesen Weg? 

Was anschaulich und nah an unserer eigenen Geschichte ist, wird noch interessanter, sobald die Autoren sich dem Neolithikum zuwenden und dann auf die frühen Siedlungen und späteren Hochkulturen eingehen. China, Indien, Ägypten, Amerika mit Mayas, Inkas und Azteken, aber auch die matriarchalen Minoer kommen in der umfassenden Schau zum Zuge. 

Es ist faszinierende "big history", ein großer Wurf. Dabei muss man nicht in allen Belangen einer Meinung mit den Autoren sein, um den Ansatz und die Ausführungen zu genießen. Ich kann dieses Buch jedem empfehlen, der gerne Alternativen aufgezeigt bekommt. Alternativen zu bestehenden Lehrmeinungen, aber auch Alternativen zu unserer Art zu leben.

Synopsis: It is 300 years after the twilight of the gods, when the gods killed each other. Their tainted children, all those who have the blood of the gods within them, life as thralls in the Norse land of Vigrið. 

The story follows three warriors: Varg is a former thrall who seeks revenge for the murder of his sister, if only he knew them. He is about to find a new home among a group of mercenaries called the Bloodsworn. Orka is a mother and a warrior on a mission to find her kidnapped son and take vengeance. Elvar seeks battle-fame and an undying name among another group of mercenaries, the Battle-Grim, who hunt trolls and other tainted because they give good money.

“You are Berak Bjornasson, and the blood of the dead god Berser

flows in your veins. You are Tainted, you are Berserkir, and you are

wanted by three jarls for murder, blood-debt and weregild. And

now you are mine,” Agnar said, and smiled. “You will fetch a fine

price.”

All three have some mystery in their past which unfolds only late in the story.

Review: Shadow of the Gods starts a new series, The Bloodsworn Saga, by John Gwynne. I haven't read anything yet by this prolific author, but it shows that this isn't his first novel. One can literally feel how much Gwynne, a Viking re-enactor, loves the Nordic way of living with all its mythology.

He sprinkles his love with a lot of world-building, stuffed with Islandic terms and sentences. You'll find blóð svarið, a blood oath, or nålbinding caps, and other terms similarly like the typical Nordic trope of blood eagles. The only negative thing I can say about strange terms is Gwynne's notion of "thought-cage" for the mind - he uses it so often, 70 times in summary, and each time it drew me out of the immersion.

Magic goes through runes and Icelandic sentences: 

Blóð drekans, lík rífa, voldugur, sameina og binda, brenna þessa hindrun,

opna leið fyrir herra okkar

The reader doesn't need to know the meaning (though my ebook reader readily translates them on the fly), but they let you immerse yourself in this world just like all the well-chosen names do. Those battle descriptions with shield-walls, stabbing spears, wounds, shouts will suck you in and provides a sense of reality opposing the otherwise clear Fantasy setting.

It's not exactly our mediaeval Viking world. The gods of Vigrið were real there, magic is happening right now, and their god-blood gives the Tainted advantages in battle that others can only dream of. It is an original world, mixing elements from Bernard Cornwell's Last Kingdom series (including "arselings"), and Viking's Lagertha and Ragnar Lothbrok plus a lot of magic and gods. A world which is as beautiful as cold, and Gwynne invites you to live within its snowy landscapes.

Gwynne takes his sweet time setting up the novel. Not that there aren't enough fights, sense-of-wonder, or suspense in the first half. But the story doesn't clarify, where all is heading to, why there are three characters, and what they have to do with each other. While this might sound slow, it isn't: the story sucked me in and kept me on my toes from start to finish. Towards the end I pushed through in a marathon read, because I couldn't put it down anymore.

All three main characters are interesting, and well-motivated. Some readers will prefer Orka as a tough mother, and the only one fighting for her own instead of being part of a warband. Elvar's story is slower in the first half and really takes speed in the second half. For me, it was Varg and his way into the Bloodsworn mercenaries. Both groups of mercenaries have secondary characters which are fully fleshed out and have interesting stories of their own right. They remember me of Glen Cook's Black Company. Yes, it's a harsh and dark world, full of murder, aggression and fighting.

I'm very looking forward to the second book in the Bloodsworn saga, The Hunger of Gods, which is about to appear this April. 

Highly recommended for fans of darker, epic fantasy with multiple point of views, full of scary monsters, magic, and gods. 

I need a continuous dosis of K.J. Parker to brighten up my day. When I grabbed that eArc of How to Rule an Empire and Get Away with It I found out that I should first read this novel because it is the first in the series. What a happy accident, as I enjoyed this fantasy comedy greatly and highly recommend reading it – at least if you like snarky first person perspective by an elder protagonist Orhan who happens to be an engineer and talks a lot about nerdy stuff like siege engines, bridge building and the likes, but also treachery, forgery, and coinage – because the character isn’t exactly a poster child of honesty.

You won’t find a single dragon or magic spell in this fantasy and for all what it takes, it could be read as a historical fiction – if it would be set in our world.

Orhan is the colonel of bridge building engineers for the capital city of an empire Robur similar to classic Rome. They try to stay away from fighting, because Orhan is also a coward besides of cheating and lying. And he is humble about his own abilities and makes a hugely sympathetic and interesting flawed protagonist. The story is mainly character-driven and I couldn’t help it to laugh very often about Orhan’s self criticism, witty and sarcastic remarks, and fascinated by the genius ways he solved upcoming problems of all sorts.

He is a very unlikely person in Robur, because he is a “milky face” in a racistic blue-faced civilization. There you have it, the mirror to our days. But when the city came under siege, there was no one else to take up the flag. Given that it was absolutely unprepared and the opponent side was very intelligent, you can imagine that the narration was very fast paced and pressed. Tension all over the place, two opposing crime bands within the city leaves Orhan to juggle the forces. It is a perfectly paced page-turner, very approachable, and nearly reads itself – think of a Lies of Locke Lamora. This is not exactly typical for the author, as he usually writes differently. 

While being focused on the main protagonist Orhan, it also has some brilliant secondary characters, some of them female. Parker gives them some great and even razor-sharp dialogues, one of them very memorable. I won’t give you the details, but you’ll surely notice when you read it. 

I’m a sucker for unreliable narrators – any fan of Gene Wolfe has to be – and this is a great example, that they can be enormous fun to read, while always wondering how much you’re being lied at your face. 

If you like unreliable narrators, fast paced engineering nerdism in a lighthearted fantasy setting without supernaturalism, then give this book a try.

First Sentence: This is the story of a man who went far away for a long time, just to play a game. The man is a game-player called “Gurgeh”. The story starts with a battle that is not a battle, and ends with a game that is not a game.
Me? I’ll tell you about me later.

Seriously, the author loves to play games with the reader

Synopsis: The story follows Culture citizen Jernau Morat Gurgeh, a famous player of board games. He’s bored with his life on his home Orbital, and just parties around with his human and drone friends. 

One of his drone friends, Mawhrin-Skel, manages to blackmail Gurgeh into accepting an offer from Culture’s secrect police called “Special Circumstances (SC)”. They want him to participate in a very complex game called “Azad”.

This game isn’t played in the political sphere of the Culture, but in a far-away Empire of Azad, located in the Small Magellanic Cloud. The game Azad is the basis for the Empire, players win political status and social ranks through it, and the Emperor himself is the one player winning the game. The players define their philosophy and political targets by playing it.

Now, SC has kept contact to the Empire secret for some 70 years, but they see now the chance to introduce one of their citizens as a player in the tournament which will once again find the next Emperor.  

Gurgeh learns to play the game on his two years journey to the Empire’s home planet Eä. He’s accompanied only by one diplomatic drone Flere-Imsaho.

Gurgeh more or less flies through the qualifications which is already a shock for the Empire. They thought that he would loose his first match already. Along the way, Gurgeh learns about the highly oppressive nature of the Empire, and several other dark and cruel aspects like snuff channels for the high society, life torturing of prisoners and similar atrocities.

He’s matched against ever more capable and important opponents, and there are attempts on his life and other blackmailing actions. Nevertheless, he participates in the final rounds on a different planet Echronedal, the “Fire Planet” which has an everlasting firewall going around the planet’s circular continent. 

Review: Just recently, I’ve read the first Culture novel from Iain M. Banks, Consider Phlebas (review), and I really liked it. It’s very similar with Player of Games, not because it’s the same thing in different colours, but because it’s very different.

First of all, it feels more like an extended novella than a typical representative of the Space Opera subgenre. Compare it’s 300 pages to some other huge doorstoppers (looking at you, Mr Reynolds!), and you know what I mean.

Throughout the whole novel, I couldn’t identify with the one defining core element of the narration: the game Azad, which is an extrapolation of chess. I simply don’t believe that future games, culture-defining games would be board games. Of course, Banks hadn’t got any The Last of Us, World of Warcraft, or similar video games at the time of writing. But still, there were team-oriented role playing games around, and in the one case where Gurgeh participated in one of the first person shooter simulations, he disregarded them as uninteresting. Also, the “facing opponents” part works out very differently in our COVID-19 world. Even the pen&paper RPGs happen remotely these days. In those regards, the novel doesn’t feel fresh or relevant, it’s got a nostalgic touch. Which I liked, mind you, and I was easily able to ignore my second thoughts about them during the reading experience.  

The novel once again focuses on a single protagonist in tight third person. It doesn’t have sidekick protagonists to speak of. Yes, there are the friends of Gurgeh, especially several named drones exposing interesting personalities, but none of them steal Gurgeh’s show. Mind you, they aren’t pale or uninteresting, quite the contrary, but still, they don’t take much screen-time to be noteworthy. It’s really a one-man show. 

I can already hear the outcry “oh, that’s soooo last millenium to have an entitled white man dominating the show”. Well, it isn’t, because Gurgeh is a PoC, which causes him a lot of resentment from the racist Azad people. And also, all those Culture people constantly change their gender on a whim. I guess, everyone of the Culture is a transgender. Which, again, is considered highly offensive at the homophobic Azad.

Banks makes a decided statement about sexuality in this novel – I didn’t like that one too much, because it was too heavy-handed for my taste, and too obvious, too easy.

This is already one of the core features of this novel, differentiating it from others:

• It’s clearly structured with chapters orienting on the tournament just like a sports story.
• It doesn’t have multiple points of view (with some very minor exceptions)
• It doesn’t jump around in time (contrasting for example Use of Weapons, the third in the series)
• It has a single main protagonist Gurgeh who isn’t highly relatable but very interesting to read about
• It has several very clear philosophical statements about racism, sexism, torture, and free will. 

For my taste, it’s lacking a certain finesse and is clearly dedicated for ease of accessibility to a broader reading public. 

I really like the unobstructed flow through the novel, and could easily rush through it, just like the first Culture novel. That is a quality I often call “unputdownable” which hit me in only three reading sessions.  

As a side-note, the mysterious figure from the “first sentence” was very easily identifiable, as was the general plot line and the question “what would Culture’s AIs achieve with involving Gurgeh”. 

In summary, I loved how Banks made a statement how he write a very easy novel which doesn’t lack statements about our own society. It’s not a masterpiece but solid craft and well worth your reading time. Highly recommended!

This is the story of the Evening Star, the Venus, and how it came to appear in the sky.

Do you remember Galadriel telling Frodo “‘In this phial [..] is caught the light of Eärendil’s star“, and Elrond telling of his father Eärendil? Eärendil gets mentioned around a dozen times in the Lord of the Rings, he is in the center of Tolkien’s writings. Tolkien’s first poet from 1914 talks about him, and the first of the Great Tales, the Fall of Gondolin, which Tolkien wrote during sick-leave from the hells of WWI in 1917, leads ultimately to him.

Eärendil is the son of human Tuor and Elven-lady Idril, born and raised in Gondolin, rescued from the annihilation of this last of the Elven cities, acquiring one of the Silmaril gems by marrying Elwing, and setting out into the night sky on his boat, shining as a newborn star.

But all this is only an afterthought of the real story, the one about his father Tuor:

Tuor got a mission from sea-god Ulmo to find the hidden city Gondolin and bid King Turgon to take action before their enemy Morgoth would destroy them. 

After a long and painful search, Tuor found the city.

Now, king Turgon didn’t follow his bidding and thought that the enemy would never find the city. Instead, he welcomed Tuor and made him one of his own, let him even marry his own daughter Idril. 

Men marrying Elven maids? We know of only three such pairs in Tolkien’s works: Beren and Luthien, Aragorn and Arwen, and Tuor with Idril. They get a child Eärendil, live happily for eleven years.

But then Melkor strikes with all his might: Thousands of Orcs, numerous Balrogs, and mechanical, fire-spitting dragons. A long battle follows, but the Elven are hammered, only a few can flee through a tunnel.

On their way out, they are waylaid by a Balrog, but Glorfindel (yes, the same one who rescues Frodo and kills the Ring Wraiths in the flood of River Bruinen) sacrifices himself:

This book is also a Beginning and an End.

It is a Beginning, because it was the very first prose story that Tolkien ever wrote. Before this, he composed some poems. It is also the first of three Great Tales. The next one, written also in 1917, was Beren and Luthien, and directly after that The Children of Hurin. These three stories “represented [..] the full extent of my father’s ‘imagined world’,” as Christopher Tolkien put it. It wasn’t the First Age of Middle-Earth at the time, 

for there was as yet no Second Age, nor Third Age; there was no Numenor, no hobbits, and of course no Ring. 

It is also an End, because it was the very last book that J.R.R. Tolkien’s son Christopher edited at the age of 93, two years before he passed away at 16. January 2020. Without Christopher, we wouldn’t have the Silmarillion and all the other tales of Middle Earth’s First and Second Age. 

This edition doesn’t have any new material from J.R.R. Tolkien. The various fragments and variations of the same tale has been published before in the Lost Tales and the History of Middle Earth. New is the side-by-side arrangement in one place, leading to a easy comparison. New are some of Christopher’s commentary, comparisons, and analysis. Add to that the awesome colour plates by Alan Lee, his interior illustrations, and the cover vignette showing a swan helm before the towers of Gondolin and fire breathing dragons.

If you haven’t read the Silmarillion, this book won’t do you any good. But if you want to get adventure, gods, a romance, betrayal, a huge battle with monsters and valiant heroes, and a good portion mythology, and all that within some 150 pages, then this might be for you. Just don’t expect a finished story, it’s spread over five largely different versions, written and revised over half a century of JRRT’s productive period. I don’t know if I should recommend it to you, your mileage will vary.

As a die-hard Tolkien fan, this book means the world for me. 

One key to understand The Lord of the Rings and all the other great works by Tolkien is his involvement in the First World War. Elements like a last minute rescue of the Rohirrim, or the role of Samwise Gamgee, or the mechanical beasts entering the battle of Gondolin clearly refer to his experience in the Battle of the Somme. 

Tolkien was there in the horrors of the trenches, as a Second Lieutenant of the 11th Lancashire Fusiliers, from June to October 1916. He survived because he caught trench fever, returned to England reporting sick and never returned to action.

Why doesn't the cover illustrate those trenches, then, why isn't there a tank, or soldiers in battle gear running through trenches? The photo is well-chosen, because it shows Tolkien as part of his beloved community at Exeter College. Consider, that Tolkien wasn't one of the first to be deployed as soldier, but decided to finish his degree in university first.  

The core of this biography focuses on Tolkien's ways through the war. John Garth gives a fascinating portray, disentangles the complicated movements of WWI campaigns, and fleshes out how his schoolfriends of the T.C.B.S. club fared during the war. It is a highly involved and intense research into not easily accessible sources, and the author mastered them in a way which is accessible to a broader public. 

One can literally watch the ideas leading to the Silmarillion coming to life. The author embeds and explains several poems from Tolkien and his friends through these early years. Tolkien started his mythology reluctantly before the Battle of the Somme. But only after he returned home, his ideas came to fruition in a kind of narrative explosion. His prose work started during his rehabilitation from trench fever back home in England, beginning with The Fall of Gondolin, continued with Beren and Luthien, and finished his Great Tales with The Children of Hurin. There was no idea of the Hobbit or the Lord of the Rings, and there was no Second or Third Age. 

John Garth brings all this to life in a thorough amount of details. He contextualizes Tolkien as a war author. Where other authors of his generation like Graves, Sassoon, or Owen created a far more pessimistic, modern poetry, Tolkien reflected the fighting differently, staying with the naturalistic romances, taking a stance against the disenchantment of his time.

The last part of the book concentrates on the effects on Tolkien's later Middle Earth writings, how formative they were, and how his experiences influenced the world he created. Although Tolkien himself hated such interpretation, Garth's analysis makes sense to me. 

A huge mass of literary references and notes are given at the end of the book. Garth's choice to not add footnote numbers in the text was a good one. The book finishes with twelve pages of bibliography and a handy index. More interesting to the casual reader will be the middle part with several photos of Tolkien, and his Exeter friends of the T.C.B.S, and the maps illustrating the movements of the Battle of the Somme.

You can see that this is not "yet another" Tolkien biography. It is a necessary one, adding much to the essential biography from Carpenter. The Mythopoeic Society honored the work with an Award for Inklings Study. 

For further reading of the author, consider his Tolkien at Exeter College (review), and his newer Worlds of J.R.R. Tolkien: The Places that Inspired Middle-Earth (which I haven't read, yet).

Synopsis: Horza Gobuchul is a humanoid Changer who fights on the side of the fanatic alien species, the Idirans, against The Culture. 

As the novel opens, Horza is nearly drowning as a prisoner in the sewage. His latest spy mission has been uncovered by Perosteck Balveda, a Culture agent, and their fates are entangled from there on. Horza gets rescued by the Idirans, but they are soon attacked by enemy foes.

His ultimate goal from there on is to retrieve an advanced Culture sentient A.I. which took refuge on Schar’s World. Now, if Schar’s World would be easily accessible, the A.I. wouldn’t be there anymore. But that planet is a Planet of the Dead, a holy place under supervision by the far advanced Dra’Azon, a godlike being which forbids both Culture and Idirans to land. Only Changers may enter at all, and that’s where Horza comes into play.

He flees and gets picked up by a the Clear Air Turbulance (CAT), a pirate ship (those ship names are iconic!). He needs to win his place among the crew by a fight to the death. A fatal raid to a planet follows and leads to the death of a part of the crew. The next raid leads to Vavatch, a gigantic Culture ringworld “Orbital” which is about to be destroyed in a couple of days as a pawn offer to the war. The crew would like to steal a replacement laser from one of the abandoned ships steering around the orbital’s ocean. Again, the raid is disastrous. 

Horza gets picked up by a fatalistic group of cannibals, leading to some very memorable and also icky moments in the story (no reviewer fails to mention that chapter!). He manages to flee and joins an end-time card-game attracting high-stake players and their addicted followers – one of them the CAT’s captain whom he manages to kill and take over his identity.

Mimicking the captain, he flees Vavatch back to the CAT. As a new crew member awaits – hello, again! – his old foe Balveda who doesn’t recognize him. In a reckless escape, they shoot their way through many docks and pick up another new crew member, a sentient robot who got trapped on the spaceship.

Together they land on the icy planet Schar’s World and search there for the A.I. in a huge subterranean infrastructure. Their hunt isn’t easy, because a pair of Idiran elite soldiers oppose them. 

Review: Wow, what a ride! Starting in a fast pace right from the start, the narration around Horza drew me in instantaneous and never let go from improbable rescue to the next last-minute hectical activity. The last fifty pages of the novel were a thing of its own, super-high octane switching six different POVs in a fast frequency. I couldn’t put it down at all and ended up exhausted in the middle of the night.

But what has the eponymous Phlebas to do with it and what should he “consider”? Iain Banks first few novels were high-brow literature, that’s where he’s coming from. It’s quite a feat to switch to our beloved genre from there, and it’s shining through in many places. That’s why I call this “Literary Space Opera“, paralleled by Dan Simmons’s Hyperion Cantos. If you enjoyed Hyperion, then you’ll also like this series.

Do you have an allergic reaction to stream of consciousness? You rather like Star Wars’s clear friends and foes than shady heroes? Stay away from this novel, then, because it’s got touches of advanced literary techniques and complex narration at several places. It’s an interesting mixture of relaxing popcorn action and demanding attention!

Back to Phlebas. The title comes from T.S. Eliot’s most important poem The Waste Land (just like the later novel Look to Windward) featuring Phlebas the Phoenician who should recall his own mortality, learning from history. Just like Horza’s failure to adapt. 

The novel’s most prominent and easily recognizable topic is the ideological clash between Idirans and the Culture. On the one side unaltered natural life versus post-human technology, providing a perfect foundation for the novel.

It’s not Bank’s masterpiece, but a solid introduction to his setting, providing glimpses into the complexity of the later novels in the series. It’s also a standalone, because the next novels don’t link deeply with this one, and the main protagonists don’t carry their stories. A well developed main protagonist, a vivid setting full of space ships, ringworlds, drones, cannibal cultists, aliens, and A.I.s, and more action than your breath would like to fight against. I wouldn’t have expected those twists and that ending. That’s Consider Phlebas. Highly recommended!

Synopsis: Sybel is a sixteen-year-old sorceress "beautiful as moonlit ice", living alone in the mountains of Eld together with her mythical beasts her father had summoned: Boar Cyrin, Dragon Gyld, the Black Swan of Terleth, Lyon Gules, Cat Moriah and Falcon Ter. The creatures are very fond of her and can converse with her telepathically. The only one missing in her menagerie is the magical white bird Liralen

One day, prince Coren of Sirle disrupts her and brings her a newborn to care for. Coren believes that it is the heir of his sworn enemy Drede, king of Eldwold. Sybel names him Tamlorn and raises him up with the help of witch Maelga living nearby. 

Twelve years later, Sybel gives Tamlorn reluctantly to king Drede, causing a depression. She returns to seeking the Liralen. But her summons are answered by dreadful Blammor. 

Sybel's journey continues with giving in to marry Coren, escaping an evil wizard calling her by her true name and threatening to take away her free will, and finally starting a war with Drede.

Review: This is not your typical fairy tale building up a straight plot and ending in a happily ever after. While retaining the lyrical and dreamlike style of fairy tales, it adds many twists and deeper thoughts which will stay with me for quite a while after closing this very short novel. 

McKillip packs everything into the narration that a fantasy lover is longing for: there is the evil sorcerer applying chilling spells; the strange beasts, including a dragon and a dreadful mysterious shadow creature; a marvelous, three-dimensional and relatable heroine. Adventures, twisting suspense, and a romance done right, ending in an unexpected resolution. 

Some readers will notice that it's not a tight third person narration but keeping distance from the protagonists, just like many other mythopoetical authors did in Tolkien's tradition. Maybe that's why I loved it even more. 

The author applies a dense, gorgeous style and manages to stuff these 200 pages full of action which other authors need four times as many in their overwritten, derivative tomes to achieve the same result. There is not only Sybel's twisting quest, but also many hints of forgotten legends mentioned just as a side-note like 

the giant Grof was hit in one eye by a stone, and that eye turned inward so that it looked into his mind, and he died of what he saw there

I loved McKillip's often playful, humorous narration and can only recommend it to readers who don't absolutely need a thousand pages to get into a story. In many respects, it reminds me of Ursula K. Le Guin's Earthsea novels, and I cannot possibly give a higher praise.