Tuesday 27 September 2011

Destroyermen: Into The Storm

By Taylor Anderson

Look, I'd just finished a very big book, and was eyeing up another fairly substantial tome, and wanted something quick and mindless. And was not disappointed.
Shortly after Pearl Harbour, a pair of beat up US destroyers running from the Japanese encounter some magic weather that transports them to an alternate universe where the dominant species is evolved cannibal velociraptors, whose preferred prey is sentient ocean going lemurs.
Soon the USN-Lemur alliance is busy building cannon, oil refineries and the like in the hope of turning back the unstoppable tide of lizards, preferably before they capture the more beat up destroyer, complete with idiot mutinous captain and so work out how to build steel ships and artillery. In other news, will the square jawed captain get off with the headstrong nurse? Will the...
Oh look, I really don't care. The characterisation is minimal, the sea battles are a foregone conclusion.
As I said, I was looking for something plenty mindless, and have no cause for complaint on that score.




A Dance With Dragons

By George R.R. Martin

A large book, a late book, and paradoxically too short a book. Also, volume 5 (or if you're a British publisher, volume 6, or perhaps even 6&7) in a series, so for God's sake don't start here.
Sometimes described as a Fantasy version of the Wars of the Roses, the initial set up was of a kingdom which had deposed a (mad, bad) dynasty a generation back, and where the incoming king discovered that it was easier to seize a throne than to rule.
Much plotting, scheming and civil war follows, while the last survivor of the former royal family grows up, gains followers, and rather. To everybody's surprise a set of young dragons, which turn out not to be extinct after all.
While the previous books have all been pretty much centred in the warring Seven Kingdoms, by this point the war is pretty much spent, and most of the action here revolves about the Dragon Queen, who has stopped off somewhere in a desert to learn how to rule before she takes up her fathers throne.
So for much of the book there she is, tossing out a rather unpleasant though familiar set of rules (no slaves, no gladiators) and wondering just why no-one appreciates everything she's done for them, all the while schemers circle like sharks.
There's the prince eager to win her hand, or failing that acquire a dragon, the adventurers and dispossessed who expect her to lead them to glory, or at least to grant them honourable service, the pirates, armed with what is claimed to be a magic war horn of dragon control, the slavers and arena owners who really can't see what the fuss was about. And so on.
Meanwhile back home the action is in the frozen north, where the remnants of a knightly order guard a mighty wall from hairy barbarians and supernatural horrors, where the one royal pretender who actually put the salvation of the kingdom ahead of his immediate gain tries to regain his momentum and the thoroughly nasty Boltons scheme to prevent him.
Quite a lot going on then, all building up to two climactic battles, all very involved. And all that with about half of the core cast getting little or no face time.
Just what is Sansa, the drippy but lovely last surviving heir to House Stark up to? Still being held in reserve as a pawn presumably, but is it working out? Just what's happening with Bran, the other Stark heir, thought dead, but getting a tad mystical in the far north? At least he gets a few chapters, which is more than can be said for his younger brother, widely believed murdered, actually living safely, not seen for three books, or his mother, quite definitely murdered, apparently raised from her watery grave, and not happy about it. You know, for a family widely known to have been wiped out, the Starks are surprisingly healthy.
Several other characters get no more than a look in. Despite Martin's well known tendency to kill off key characters, there remain an awful lot of them.
Still, at least the main plots move on. There are those battles. One of which is just starting as the book ends, the other is claimed fought (and lost) but off the page, and the claimant is not the most honest character in the book.
I enjoyed it. Don't get me wrong. It's a book I've been waiting for for five years, and I desperately hope the next one comes round a bit more quickly, but it could have been better. To be honest I don't entirely care about what happens in the deserts. It's colour, it develops character, and at least one critical plot point has been reached, but dammit, an awful lot of points still dangle.
One interesting feature is the way sympathies have flowed. The Starks, who rose in romantic rebellion at the start have been pretty much wiped out (militarily, if not as a family), the scheming incestuous Lannisters remain militarily powerful, though failing a bit on the family side. The exiled young lady with the dragons was looking pretty good as a potential saviour, though having a whole book focussed on her makes me think she's a ditherer. The dull but dutiful King at the Wall was similarly seeming a good bet, but even if he survived the book, his power is surely spent. We've pretty much run out of good candidates to pull the whole thing together.
So perhaps we have two more books to come, and in them Martin has to come to the point. And I'll be there, even if this weighty tome didn't really deliver.