RI April 2024

Once again Tony inspires me to, belatedly, get on the ball.

As usual, the links below are Amazon affiliate ones which, in theory,
though never yet in practice, could earn me something should you enter
Amazon that way.

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The Long Night Paperback  January 1, 1983
by Poul Anderson
https://amzn.to/4bt6jEy

I had this book sitting around for a long time, but kept putting it
off because the thought of "The Long Night", after Flandry lost, was
kind of depressing, and on some subconscious level, I expected the
stories would be too.  In the event, that turned out not to be the
case.  This collection comprises five Anderson Technic Universe
stories with some third-party interstitial material.  I had
occasion to go back to look at the Planet Stories version of one
story as I wondered if some very "modern" attitudes had been present
in the original (they were) and found it the same text as presented
here, which I assume is true of the others as well.

1) "The Star Plunderer"

This is actually not a Long Night story at all, but rather the story
of the founding of the Terran Empire.  Published in 1952 in "Planet
Stories", there are some traces of the Planet Stories "habitable
solar system" trope remaining, but nothing really explicit.  The
story opens with the defeat in pitched battle of two of the last
of Earth's defense force after a wave of alien invasions and governmental
collapse.  The survivors, a man & a woman (apparently the armed forces
are integrated) are captured as slaves for the alien raiders, but
gradually come to understand that the alien ship is actually being
puppet-mastered by a fellow captive, Manuel Argos, who is waiting
to make his move.  Argos is a bit of a bastard, as he would almost
have to be to pull off what he is planning.  In the meantime,
we learn a bit more about the founding principles of the Empire, some of which
are surprisingly forward-looking:

We'll have to get the racist complex out of mankind. We
can't conquer anyone, even the Gorzuni, and keep them as
inferiors and hope to have a stable empire. All races must
be equal. --- He rubbed his strong square chin. "I think
I'll borrow a leaf from the old Romans. All worthy individuals,
of any race, can become terrestrial citizens. It'll be a
stabilizing factor."

With the pair of survivors pulled into Argos's plan, things proceed
to a satisfactory climax, though the male of that pair (our viewpoint
character) had not sufficiently considered another stabilizing factor
a new Empire would need...

I enjoyed this one quite a bit, and don't recall reading about the
early days in any other story.  (Interestingly, at this point
the civilization fighting for its life and losing really should be
the "Polesotechnic League", but I believe a different name is given,
as perhaps the Future History was not quite locked down at this
point).

2) "Outpost of Empire"

This is also not a Long Night story, but a Flandry era story, or perhaps
a bit before Flandry.  It may be past Noon in the Empire, but it is
definitely not Dusk.

The planet Freehold is on the marches of the Empire, and has a civil war
problem, as well as an intertwined resident-alien revolt one.  Over the
years, the somewhat birdlike Arulians had been allowed to settle and
been granted some extra-territorial rights.  They had their gripes against
the humans, but nothing major for some years until their off-world polity
allied with Merseia at which point agents-provocateur started fanning those
grievances.   The human component of the problem came from those who
left the Empire settlements to forge an Arulian influenced way of life
much more in tune with the ways of the planet than the original settlements.

The Empire considers the whole civil-war cum alien rebellion to be a very
minor problem all told in the grand scheme of things what with the ongoing
Merseia stand-off and can't even dedicate a Flandry level agent to deal with
it.  Instead they hire a private xenologist John Ridenour, who has to
arrange his own transport, to look into things.  In the event, of course,
Ridenour turns out to be an Anderson "Man Who Counts" (though there is
a brush with an unexpected other such) and manages to bring things to a
livable, if not perfect, conclusion, admittedly after lots of death and
destruction.  In the meantime his fidelity is tested and proves more
resistant than you might expect for that of a somewhat past Noon Imperial...

This is probably my favorite story in the collection, though I think the
motivation for the pseudo-psychic talents of the rebels was a bit weak.

3) "A Tragedy Of Errors"

This is the first real Long Night story here, and follows the adventures
of the warlord Roan Tom, and his two wives as they escape a losing battle
in a failing spaceship and must perforce put down for repairs on a
puzzling world filled with forces turned hostile by linguistic drift.

I thought this one was a bit weak, with the wives's solo adventure
(complicated by the fact that they don't have a language in common)
being somewhat underplayed due to length constraints, and with the
main impetus to the overall struggle being a little facile.  I could tell
the odd nature of the planet would figure in at some point, but I'm not
sure it did convincingly in the end.  Still OK, but not up to the first
two.

4) "The Sharing Of Flesh"

This one is well into the rebirth of civilization after the Fall,
and concerns a scientific expedition rediscovering a lost colony,
and the vengeance of one of the principle scientists (from Roan Tom's
world) after the murder of her husband by natives.  It suffers a
bit from the fact that I suspect most of the readers are more
perspicacious than the scientists as to what is really going on.

5) "Starfog"

Here we are into the heyday of the Empire's replacement civilization
(though they seem oddly unwilling to check out what has actually happened
on Earth itself) and have another "troubleshooter" story as the very
junior "Ranger of the Commonalty" Daven Laure is sent to another
fringe world to check out the story of a ship of travelers who seem
to come from another universe, and to get them home if possible.

His working out of the actual source for the ship, and his arranging
to help them within the limits his society sets is satisfying though
there is a bit of artificial tension where they perceive him to
be working at cross-purposes that is not fully convincing.

The ending here is a bit ambiguous.  A new problem is set, which
in the decadent days of the Empire would have obvious solutions, but
which it is not clear either side could avail themselves of here.
Interestingly this is the only Technic story I can think of that
involves AI, though still not fully acknowledged by society.

Soul Harvest: A Post-Apocalyptic Fantasy Harem (Dread Knight Book 2)
by Sarah Hawke
https://amzn.to/3QCQSS7

Betrayed by both his Order & his allies, Dread Knight Duncan Keene
continues to fight a hopeless battle to turn back the zombie hordes
unleashed by his erstwhile companions, twisted by a major spell
gone wrong, and to find the ultimate method behind the madness.

In the meantime, he and his proto-harem are coming to terms, and
finding information that suggests his lost first-love is in the
thick of things where corrupted mages are working to bring back the
war machines that shattered civilization the first time, but not
as spellfire powered, which was bad enough then, but as soulfire
powered which will be many times worse...

As usual, Hawke tells a good story, never letting the harem aspect
overweigh the plot.  Along with Mike Truk (who may have retired?)
she is the best I've seen in this genre.  I did feel there was a
bit overmuch to-ing & fro-ing in this installment that could probably
have been condensed a bit.

Skulduggery Pleasant (16)  A Mind Full of Murder:
The new epic detective adventure story in the
Skulduggery Pleasant series
by Derek Landy
https://amzn.to/3yllUHJ

I had a real problem with the way Darquesse reset the Universe in the
last installment, as well as the notion that we (the non-magical readers)
were probably bad people.  To be fair, Landy does not back away from either
aspect of the previous denouement here.  The magical tend to remember what
happened *before* the Reset, and it was not pleasant.

In particular, it motivates a serial killer (who very consciously uses
horror movie tropes) whom neither Skulduggery nor Valkyrie are able to
stop.  The manner in which they very conspicuously fail at that stopping
also gets them on the wrong side of their friend the now alive again
tailor and Sanctuary leader Ghastly Bespoke.  Having fallen flat on their
faces as the free-wheeling (and at this point two member) Arbiter Corps
also puts the pair in line for a poisoned-chalice offer from the Sanctuaries
as a whole.  There is also a pretty successful bit of misdirection enabled
by the Magical's use of taken names...

As I mentioned I really did not like the ending of the previous book,
so this one is a step up in my estimation.  There are still some chickens
unroosted here, and I'm not sure how I feel about their eventual nesting
place.  Still quite enjoyable.
--
columbiaclosings.com
What's not in Columbia anymore..