Category Archives: Books

The Sunrise Lands, by S.M. Stirling

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The Sunrise Lands is the latest (paperback) release in Stirling’s series about “The Change”. Short synopsis, for those who came in late: one day, all high technology, from steam engines and gunpowder on up, simply ceases to work. Civilization collapses. There are mass die-offs, and all manner of horrible things. New societies begin to coalesce, and fight for survival against nature and against each other.

At the end of the previous novel, A Meeting at Corvallis, relative peace has settled in the Pacific Northwest, and our heroes (those that survived) get to take a break. Twelve years pass. The son of Juniper MacKenzie, Rudi MacKenzie, is now a grown man, and the tanist of Clan MacKenzie. His blood sister, Mathilda Arminger, remains princess and heir to the throne of the Portland Protective Association. The various states that formed in the previous three books are generally prosperous. And weird things are beginning to happen….

In short, this is the book in which we begin to get an idea–no, that’s way too strong–this is the book in which we begin to get hints about why the Change occurred…and possibly, just possibly, begin to see those who caused the Change begin to make their presence known. I won’t say more than that.

I have mixed feelings about this book. It’s very clearly the first book in a set (of three, I presume) and so there’s lots of set-up and very little payoff. A lot happens, but there’s little suspense; the plot meanders forward, but it doesn’t really build to a climax.

On the other hand, it’s a pleasant enough ride; and there’s a lot about it to like. Stirling’s post-apocalyptic world is an interesting one, and the characters are fun. And given that it is the first book in a set, and given Stirling’s past performance, I’m more than willing to cut him some slack.

I have to say, I really like the treatment of religion in this book, which is amazingly realistic. From most books written from a more or less American viewpoint, you’d think that deeply religious people are either fruitcakes or hypocrites. In this book, we have realistic people whose religion is simply part of their lives. Some, naturally, are more devout than others, but most have some form of religious practice–just as most Americans do. More than that, Stirling plays fair. He has done his homework. This book is chock full of serious Roman Catholics who act, speak, and pray like serious Roman Catholics, including one of the principles, Mathilda Arminger.

Of course there are also a great many not-terribly-serious Catholics, especially when it comes to sexual sin; but I can’t argue that that’s unrealistic either.

I do have a qualm, and a complaint. The qualm is that while Catholicism is presented realistically, the “Old Religion” is presented as true, that is, true in the context of the world Stirling is building. (I don’t mean to imply that Stirling is a neo-pagan; so far as I know, he’s a somewhat lapsed Episcopalian, or was.) Of course, it’s possible that the scenes in which the pagan gods appear to take a hand are evidence of something else….

I didn’t expect anything different, though. So that’s a minor quibble. The complaint is about a brief mention of the Dominican order. In earlier volumes, the Lord Protector of Portland has set up his own version of the Catholic Church, with a nutcase as “pope”, and his own version of the Inquisition. Now, twelve years later, the “Church” in Portland has come back into communion with the Church of Rome under Pope Benedict’s successor, Pius XXIII and the Inquisition has been abolished…and it’s said that some of the Dominicans mourn its passing. Now, whatever might be said about the Inquisition as it really was (and the Pope has formally apologized for its excesses), the Inquisition in Portland in Stirling’s books is a wholly evil endeavour, and one that the Dominicans I’ve met (mostly on-line) would have had nothing to do with, much less look back with fondness on. But it was a passing moment, no more.

Orphans of Chaos, by John C. Wright

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It just occurred to me that I haven’t written about John C. Wright’s “Chronicles of Chaos” trilogy, which I read over the summer and quite thoroughly enjoyed. The titles are Orphans of Chaos, Fugitives of Chaos, and Titans of Chaos, and the contents of the titles is an interesting mix of fantasy, mythology, and epistemology, the latter used in a delightfully odd way.

The premise is (apparently) straightforward: there are five orphans, three boys and two girls, living in a boarding school/orphanage in England. The time is the present. They have lived there, all together, for (almost) as a long as any of them can remember. The conditions are reasonably good: they are fed well, clothed well, and educated well, in a surprisingly classical vein. But they are not generally allowed TV or movies or modern novels, and they not allowed to leave the grounds except on rare occasions under strict supervision. As they are approaching adulthood, naturally they chafe under these restrictions.

Oh, and each of them has a strange power. Our heroine, for example, though not obviously muscular, can carry absurdly heavy weights without difficulty.

Who are these orphans? Why are they being kept here? Who is running the orphanage? And what does epistemology have to do with any of this? There’s more below the fold–but be watch for the spoiler warning.

To summarize, though: it’s a neat adventure, Wright does some new and interesting things, the characters are compelling, and I look forward to reading more by him. The only complaint I have is a certain juvenile fascination with sex on the part of the five principles–not a lot of actual sex, mind you, and none on stage, but a fair amount of thinking and talking about it. Of course, the principles are juveniles….

Anyway, good stuff.

Mild Spoiler Warning: If you’re already planning on reading these, you might want to stop here.

I’m going to try to explain what I found so charming, philosophically, about the books, without giving too much away.

Although each of the five orphans appears human, each is really a member of a different supernatural race, each with its own powers, and there’s a complicated rock-paper-scissors scheme whereby the powers of each race can be blocked by those of one of the others; this provides much of the plot. But the neat thing is that each set of powers comes with an appropriate philosophy/epistemology.

One character, for example, can manipulate matter at the atomic level. He can open locks, he can modify machines, he can create “serums” with a profound affect on the behavior of other people. He’s basically a walking nanotech lab. And going along with this is a purely naturalist epistemology. People are essentially machines. There is no super-natural. Everything that is can be manipulated in fundamental ways at the atomic level. That’s the way the character thinks, and that is, in fact, how his power works.

Another character has the power of dreams. He can make things happen just by wanting them to happen strongly enough. Philosophically, he is, I guess you’d say, an Idealist: the real world doesn’t really exist. All is fluid; all can be whatever you want it to be.

In short, the world-views of the five clash just as their powers clash–yet they must learn to work together to survive. Yet they cannot abandon their world-views; they are part of each character’s nature, and one of the means by which they exercise their powers.

Philosophically speaking, this is of course nonsense: there are five philosophies on offer, here, and they can’t all be true. Nor can any of the characters (except possibly the Idealist) truly accept the powers of the others without rejecting the philosophy that underlies their own. In that sense, I guess you’d say that pragmatism (and friendship) wins the day.

Nevertheless, good fun, and a nifty mix of deep thought and occasionally frivolous behavior.

The Demon and the City, by Liz Williams

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When I read Williams’ first novel about Inspector Chen, Snake Agent, I wasn’t entirely satisfied; it was OK, but I wasn’t sure I’d try the next one. Julie from Happy Catholic noted in a comment that she thought the next book was better, so I decided to give it a try. And it is somewhat better.

I described the premise of the series in the first review, so I won’t repeat that here. The emphasis shifts in this book from Inspector Chen himself to his new partner, the demon Zhu Irzh, who is finding life outside of Hell to be both fascinating and a bit of a slog. It seems that human girls find him too scary to cope with, and so he’s getting just horribly frustrated, sexually, poor thing. I found this whole line of development tedious, even if it’s reasonable in context. I can hardly expect a demon from (a decidedly non-Judeo-Christian) Hell to be either inhibited or temperate when it comes to sex, but that doesn’t mean that I want to read about it.

I don’t have much more to say about the book itself, though I note a pattern developing, in that once again I liked the second half of the book a lot more than the first half. The first half was tedious and a little icky; and then Zhu Irzh finds a girlfriend about halfway through which means that he can stop obsessing about his lack of a sex-life. This can only be a good thing.

I observe from Liz William’s bio at the back of the book that she is co-proprietor of a witchcraft supply shop. I confess I find this troubling, and so I want to be very cautious about recommending her books; I don’t want to encourage interest in witchcraft. That said, the novels do not appear to have an axe to grind in this area, so your mileage may vary.

Bottom line: I was entertained, and somewhat conflicted.

The Narnian, by Alan Jacobs

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I was given this biography of C.S. Lewis for Christmas quite some time ago now, but didn’t so much as open it until about a week ago. It’s an odd thing, as there was a time when I’d have dropped good money on a grocery list if it happened to have Lewis’ name on it. I simply wasn’t in a C.S. Lewis mood. On top of that, I’d previously read The Inklings once or twice, and Surprised by Joy numerous times, and almost all of Lewis’ other books, and I’m afraid my thought was, “Just what I needed, another biography of C.S. Lewis.” An ungrateful thought, to, as the family member who gave it to me really had considered my likes and dislikes.

Anyway, it languished on the shelf until I happened to pick it up about a week ago. I just finished it; and frankly, it’s not just another biography of C.S. Lewis. There’s a lot of material in it that was new to me, and the author writes with perception, affection, and good sense.

The only rough spot comes toward the end, when Jacobs addresses Lewis’ thoughts on men and women and what we now call “gender roles”. Poor Lewis, so wise in other ways, but here such a prisoner of his class and era–it is only in this section that Jacobs appears a prisoner of his own.

Anyway, good stuff; I enjoyed it thoroughly.

Philosophy 101 by Socrates, by Peter Kreeft

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I picked up this book the other day because I was enjoying Kreeft’s Socrates Meets Descartes, and this appeared to be in the same vein. In fact, it is, and it isn’t. It’s written at a similar level and for a similar audience, but the style is entirely different.

Whereas Socrates Meets Descartes is a dialog written by Kreeft and involving Socrates, this present book is a commentary on Plato’s Apology. Socrates offended a lot of people, and was brought up on charges of atheism, among other things; the Apology describes his defense, and his condemnation to death. Kreeft also provides selections from Plato’s Euthyphro, to show why Socrates was on trial, and from the Phaedo, to show how Socrates died, with additional commentary on both.

As a commentary, it’s both enlightening and entertaining, and Kreeft’s love of both the topic and of philosophizing in general is infectious. I enjoyed it, and recommend it. However, I have one minor quibble with the cover blurb, which makes it appear that the book stands alone. It really does not; although Kreeft quotes liberally from the Apology, I found that I really needed to dig up a copy of the Apology and read it straight through before going on with Kreeft’s commentary. That’s the right thing to do, anyway, but the blurb should have made it clear that this is a companion to Plato, and does not contain the complete text.

Incidentally, Kreeft uses W.H.D. Rouse’s translation of the Apology; I found the complete text, using the same translation, in Great Dialogs of Plato, published by Signet Classics.

Ender’s Game

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Jimmy Akin has a neat review of Ender’s Game, which somehow he had never previously read. (Me, I bought it in hardcover…having fallen in love with the short story, which was in the first issue of my first subscription to Analog. 1976, that was. I still have it around somewhere.)

Socrates Meets Descartes, by Peter Kreeft

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I picked up this book as the result of several intersecting strands of thought. First, thanks to my interest in Thomas Aquinas I’ve been delving into things philosophical. Second, I’ve become familiar with Peter Kreeft from his writings on Catholicism. Third, I’ve long held a kind of an intellectual grudge with respect to René Descartes. Descartes is generally known as the “Father of Modern Philosophy”; and the really new and radical element in his philosophy is doubt: doubt of the things that are as plain as the existence of the floor under my feet. In my view, to begin by doubting objective reality makes as much sense as having yourself hogtied before commencing a wrestling match. That many philosophers have followed Descartes down this garden path is simply proof of C.S. Lewis’ observation in The Magician’s Nephew: the trouble with trying to make yourself stupider than you are is that you very often succeed.

Consequently, I snagged this book when by chance I came across it: for I thought I might learn something, that I would be entertained, and that the author was trustworthy. On the former two points I was amply satisfied; on the latter I am satisfied as well, but with a qualification.

Kreeft’s book is a dialog between Socrates and Descartes in which Socrates cross-examines Descartes about the content of his book, the Discourse on Method. As such, it’s one of a series by Kreeft; apparently Socrates has previously met Marx, Machiavelli, and Sartres, and I gather he’s going to meet Kant in the future.

I’ve occasionally run across books in which a fictional interviewer questions great figures of the past, and they respond with bits from their written works. This is something different. The conceit is that Descartes has met Socrates in the Afterlife–in Purgatory, to be precise–and that as part of his purgation he must attempt to defend his philosophical work against Socrates’ questioning. It works quite well, for the most part, though I think that Kreeft gets a little too cute with it here and there.

But here’s the qualification I need to make: Socrates isn’t really Socrates–not Plato’s Socrates. The Socrates we know is primarily a literary conceit adopted by Plato as a way to convey his own philosophical ideas. The manner and philosophical style of the fictional Socrates is no doubt descriptive of the real man, and no doubt many of the ideas presented originated with him as well–Socrates was Plato’s teacher, after all. But just as Plato’s Socrates is Plato’s mouthpiece, so Kreeft’s Socrates is Kreeft’s mouthpiece. This book isn’t a meeting between Descartes and Socrates as Plato presented him. Kreeft’s Socrates has clearly been doing a deal of studying since he died; he’s familiar with the history of the world, both politically and intellectually, from his day to ours, and he not infrequently argues from an Aristotelian and Thomistic point of view rather than from a Platonic or even Neo-Platonic point of view.

I’ve no real problem with this; I picked up the book rather hoping that this is just what he would do. But a reader unfamiliar with Kreeft’s work would reasonably expect (given the cover blurb) to find Descartes being cross-examined by Plato’s Socrates rather than Kreeft’s. That said, it’s hard to know how any author, however pure his motives, could have achieved that; and at least the basis for Kreeft’s criticism of Descartes is right out there in plain sight.

And of what does that criticism consist? I don’t feel able to state that in any pithy or authoritative way; I’m still very much a newbie at thinking about these things. In part, though, “Socrates” shows that despite his avowed policy of “universal doubt”, Descartes actually assumes quite a bit more than he thinks he does (including the ability to reason logically) and that a certain amount of circular reasoning in involved in his attempts to safeguard reason and objective reality. Descartes comes across as a brash young man, brilliant but a little too ready to assume that the beauty of his conclusions validates the argument by which he reached them.

Pleasingly, Socrates leaves Descartes with his contemporary Blaise Pascal, with the hint that Pascal possesses what Descartes lacks. This is pleasing because, due to Julie D‘s recommendation some while back, Kreeft’s edition of Pascal’s Pensées, was in eyeshot at the
time.

Pauline Baynes, RIP

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I discovered today, courtesy of Lars Walker, that Pauline Baynes, illustrator of books by both J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis, has passed away. Lars links to an excellent post about Baynes, which I commend to you.

After the venerable Dr. Suess, I think Pauline Baynes was the first illustrator whose name ever registered on my consciousness. I remember being quite thoroughly delighted when I realized that the pictures from Farmer Giles of Ham were drawn by the same hand as those in the Narnia books; and I was equally delighted when I was given a hardcover set of the Narnia books and first saw the illustrations properly reproduced.

I can’t say that I’ll miss her, particularly, as I only knew her through her pictures, and until today had no idea that she was still alive. But I’m grateful for her work and glad that I can continue to enjoy it.

Come to that, it’s probably time to re-read Farmer Giles of Ham….

Snake Agent, by Liz Williams

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Julie at Happy Catholic reviewed Snake Agent, by Liz Williams, about a month ago, and I was sufficiently intrigued to pick it up whilst on vacation.

The set-up is interesting: it’s a police procedural, set in a near-future Chinese city called Singapore 3 (apparently the original Singapore becomes a franchise operation), in which the hero regularly has to work with representatives of Heaven and Hell (Asian-flavored, of course).

Julie really liked it; I’m somewhat ambivalent. If I were getting on a plane tomorrow and needed a book to read, I’d happily buy the second book in the series, but on the other hand I’m in no rush to go get it. But read Julie’s review; your mileage may vary.