This sequel to Legacies continues the story of Alucius,
nightsheep herder and horse trooper, as the political situation develops
and he learns more about his world. He’s now married, and (thanks to his
exploits in the previous book) is a captain in the Iron Valley Militia.
All he really wants to do is complete his term of service and return to
his life as a herder. But there are two obstacles to that dream: his
skill, and his Talent. He’s too good a commander to be allowed to leave
the service, and though he’s worked hard to keep his Talent a secret,
he didn’t reckon with the Lord-Protector of Lanachrona.

It seems that in the dim distant past, the entire continent of Corea, of
which the Iron Valleys are a very small part, was ruled by a government
called the Duarchy. It was a golden age, so the legends go, in which
Talent and technology were combined, though it had some
nasty flaws that led in the end to a complete societal collapse all
across the continent. Few of the Duarchy’s artifacts remain in Alucius’
day; the most obvious is a road network of imperishable stone. But the
Lord-Protector of Lanachrona has a wondrous device, the last remaining
Table of the Recorder. A person with sufficient Talent and the proper
training can use the Table of the Recorder to see events anywhere in the
world, at the present moment or any moment in the recent past. The Table
of the Recorder has an interesting blind spot, however–whether
unavoidably or by design, highly Talented individuals are invisible to it.
Their surroundings, however, are not.

The absence of a person in the table where interesting things are going on
is therefore interesting information. The absence of a person in the
table where your spies indicate that a person should be is therefore
interesting information. As the book progresses, the Lord-Protector has
a shrewd notion that Alucius is very talented indeed. And as it has long
been the Lord-Protector’s dream to annex the Iron Valleys, you know that
Alucius isn’t going to have a quiet time between now and retirement.

Meanwhile, in a vault deep in the grass-lands of Illegea, a nomad warchief
is given access to weapons of the Duarchy that have lain in suspended
animation for a thousand years: twenty pteridons and sky lances of the
Myrmidons of the Duarchy. With himself and nineteen of his fighters
awing on pteridon back, and all of the clans of Illegea united under him,
Edyss thinks it’s a fine time to take on the decadent city-dwellers.

On the whole, this is a rather more satisfactory read than its
predecessor; there’s plenty of action, and we actually get some
interesting (and surprising) answers about the history of Alucius’ world.
However, I’m quite curious to see where Modesitt takes this next–the next step
isn’t at all obvious.

I was looking for Google-Whacks (a Google-Whack is a pair of words that yields exactly one page when you Google them), and found the above pair. Here’s the page Google found; if anyone can explain to me why it exists, I’ll be much obliged to them.

Some while ago, Ian Hamet wrote a
lengthy post about one of the great comics of the early days of the
silver screen, Buster
Keaton. And so when I was at Fry’s Electronics the other day, and
found a DVD of Keaton’s The General on sale for the whopping sum
of $4.95 (eat your heart out, Ian) I nabbed it, and tonight we watched it.

In this flick, Keaton is a train engineer with two loves–his girl, and
his locomotive. And then the Civil War breaks out, and honor–and his
girl’s family–demands that he join the army. He can’t, of course,
because he’s more useful to the South as an engineer, but his girl
doesn’t buy it. Snub, snub.

And then some Union soldiers make the mistake of stealing his locomotive,
the “General”. Keaton grabs the next locomotive, and they’re off!

Let me tell you, this is some seriously funny stuff–it’s like a
live-action Warner Bros. cartoon. There are train chases, misfiring
cannons, a damsel in distress, slapstick aplenty, plus lots of dangerous stunts–and
then you realize that Keaton did all his own stunts. So did Daffy Duck,
but somehow it’s more impressive when Keaton does it.

The film quality was pretty good, considering; the low price shows up
mostly in the soundtrack. It’s a silent film, of course, so the folks who
produced the DVD added a soundtrack of classical music standards played
seemingly at random. There’s a battle scene near the end with cannons
and rifles going off, and big bursts of smoke drifting across the valley,
all to the pleasant, peaceful strains of the Blue Danube waltz. For a
moment I thought I was watching Dr. Strangelove.

It’s not the funniest movie I’ve ever seen; the pacing is a little too
slow for that. But it was definitely $4.95 well-spent.

I like this book, and I’m not entirely sure why. I liked it the first
time I read it, and I wasn’t sure why that time either. In fact, I liked
it better this time than that time. It’s a long, slow book, but something
about it grabs me. The longer Anthony Trollope novels grab
some people that way, and I imagine it’s the same kind of effect.

Anyway, this is the story of a farm boy named Alucius. His father went
off to fight a border war when he was a baby and never came back;
consequently, he’s been raised by his grandparents and his mother. I
called him a farm boy; in fact, he’s what’s called a “herder”, and he
helps his grandfather raise and herd nightsheep, large, tolerably fierce
sheep that grow a special kind of wool–properly processed, it becomes a
pressure-sensitive fabric called nightsilk. Nightsilk undergarments, if
properly cut to your body, will stop a bullet.

Of course, tending nightsheep is a lot of work, and it takes a particular
kind of Talent to do it well. The Talent lets you control the nightsheep,
and can also help you detect sandwolves and sanders before they attack.
All herders have a touch of the Talent, some more than others; if they
didn’t, they wouldn’t be herders. Townsfolk with herder forebears
sometimes have it as well.

The early part of Alucius’ life is what you’d expect…working with the
nightsheep, learning how to card the wool and process the nightsilk, a
variety of chores, the occasional trip into town, the occasional daylong
party at someone’s stead. But then he comes of age, and is drafted into
the militia; Alucius’ small country is under attack, and he’s needed to
defend it. Fortunately, thanks to the Talent is that he’s a
first-class shot.

The book follows his career in the militia as a horse-trooper and scout,
his eventual capture, and his subsequent career until his return home.
Along the way he learns a lot more about his Talent and about his
world, as do we, and a variety of interesting things happen.

And when you get to the end of the book, you say, “Well, that was
interesting…I wonder what the point was.”

And yet, for some reason I was happy to read it again. Weird.

So Anne, my two-year-old, and James, my four-year-old, are sitting next to me, and I witness this exchange.

Anne: I’m very pretty.
James: Yes, Anne, you’re very pretty.
Anne: (looking at James) You’re very smart!

Hmmmmm.

On June 3rd and 4th I attended the Plano-West conference in Long Beach,
California; I seem to have been almost the only blogger present, as I’ve
not seen any in-person reports anywhere on the ‘net. For the benefit,
then, of my fellow orthodox Episcopalians here’s a report of what went on.
If you’re one of my regular readers feel free to skip this, as I won’t
be providing a whole lot of context.

Continue reading →

I’m back from my conference, which I hope to say more about later today; first, though, I need to deal with accumulated paperwork and such-like.

Posting will likely be nonexistent until Saturday, as I’m spending the next two days at the Plano West conference in Long Beach, California.
I’ll probably post something about it when I get back.

This little number is the second Wodehouse novel I ever read. The first
was The Code of the Woosters, which I fear I did not
appreciate as I should have. I kept asking inconvenient questions of
myself, like “Why is Bertie willing to risk being arrested just so that
he can keep eating the food prepared by his Aunt Dahlia’s cook Anatole?
He must be an idiot!” The unwritten rules that govern Bertie and his
fellow Drones weren’t yet clear to me, and it was some years before I
attempted Wodehouse again.

When I did, it was in the guise of that admirable collection,
The Most of P.G. Wodehouse, which is still in print, and which
I highly recommend as an introduction to Plum and his creations. It
consists mostly of short stories, including the inestimable
“Uncle Fred Flits By”, and one novel, to wit,
Quick Service. I read the novel, and then I almost immediately read
it aloud to Jane, the first of many Wodehouse novels so read.
And then I didn’t read it again until just now, in the new “Collector’s
Wodehouse” edition, when I enjoyed it just as much as before.

It’s all familiar territory by now, of course. There’s the aspiring
socialite who controls the purse strings, and her henpecked husband.
There’s the pretty young girl. There’s the young upper-class twit she
thinks she wants to marry. There’s the curmudgeonly, misanthropic,
dyspeptic, fat, middle-aged businessman who controls the upper-class
twit’s inheritance.

And then there’s Joss Weatherby. Among all of Wodehouse’s leading men,
Joss Weatherby stands alone. He is creative, resourceful, capable,
courageous, forthright, eccentric in speech and manner, ardent in love,
and above all, determined, and very, very, funny. The only character I
can compare him to is Psmith, except that he’s like Psmith with the volume
turned up three or for notches–if such a thing is possible. Watching
Joss work–well, it’s a treat.

You should try it some time.

Uncle Fred, the Earl of Ickenham, the bane of Pongo Twistleton,
congenital imposter, is perhaps my favorite Wodehouse character.
And being a congenital imposter, it was inevitable, I suppose,
that he would eventually come to Blandings Castle. But I really
wish that Wodehouse hadn’t done it. Uncle Fred may be a natural
visitor to Blandings, but that’s rather the point–it’s Uncle
Fred’s job to be as thoroughly and completely outrageous in his
imposture as possible, and it’s difficult to that in a place
like Blandings where imposters are a dime a dozen.

Ah, well. It’s still a fun read.