Books I Read In May

Fiction
'The Long Earth' by Terry Pratchett and Stephen Baxter
This is the first book in the 'Long' pentalogy by Pratchett and Baxter. It works on the common science fiction basis that there are an infinite parallel universes and people can travel between them. However, in contrast to many books on this them, not least 'Lord Kalvan of Otherwhen' which I review before, the different versions of Earth are devoid of humans. Many of the differences are biological - the main one being that humans are on just one version of Earth. Some of the differences are geological/geographical, but even these are not particularly noticeable in 'near' versions of Earth, i.e. people can still mine gold in exactly the same place as on Datum Earth, our Earth. As the book goes on some other humanoid species, usually with the ability to 'step' between the different versions are encountered and finally after lots of quite tedious travelling the threat to them is encountered.

The trouble with the book is that it is like a bag of ideas that have not really been worked up into a successful story. At a distance we see how the ability to step can aid criminals and terrorists, how so many people leaving our Earth impacts on the economy and the backlash to the whole ability to step - about one fifth of people cannot do it. We get a scrap about a First World War soldier thrown into a different Earth and a bit about a girl growing up in a new settlement in one of the alternate Earths, but very little is done with them. The main story is about a natural stepper and an airship run by an artificial intelligence, Lobsang, which has gained human status basically touring through Earth after Earth, seeing a few things and trying to work out various jeopardies. It is interesting to see these but it is not really a gripping story.

Another challenge for non-American readers is the American focus of the book. I know Pratchett and Baxter came up with the idea while at a convention in Wisconsin and used the locale as the basis for some of the characters' experiences. However, it means that the book gets rather filled up with the kind of American frontier myths that populate survivalist fiction. You can only stomach so many people being smug about how much more they know about living in the wilderness than others, let alone the self-righteousness in building a 'better' society, in fact simply replicating white domination of North America once more in a hundred different locations.

Despite the fact that stepping is open to four-fifths of the world's population, we only see one Briton using it inadvertently and no people from other nations doing so. Though the lead character Joshua Valienté spends much time hovering over parts of Central Asia and Europe, we do not see how people from those nations are using it, let alone from highly populated Asian states or those with dictatorships rather than democracy. Even when focused on North America, there is not even coverage of how black people, Hispanics and indigenous Americans might have used the ability to make a different America in one or more of these alternatives. The white Pilgrim Fathers/Frontier mentality/narrative is almost painful in being so dominant in this story.

There are some good ideas in this book. However, in too much of the text little happens. Certainly though some of the questions of this effect are discussed, many are overlooked and instead the book lazily falls back on simply assuming that the frontier mentality would reign supreme once again, trapping you in a book which is like being stuck next to an American on a plane lecturing you on how little you know about how to survive. Overall, despite the good premise, this was disappointing.

'The Fort' by Bernard Cornwell
In contrast to some of Cornwell's other books, this one has a very tight focus on the so-called Penobscot Expedition during the American War of Independence and covers only a few weeks. The book is informed throughout with letters and accounts of the battles. The campaign was around the British attempt in 1779 to establish a port as the basis of a new British colony of New Ireland in what is now eastern Maine, but was at the time part of Massachusetts. The fort of the title is Fort George, established on Majabigwaduce Peninsula by a small British force and despite being initially outnumbered by the 44-ship armada sent against them was able to hold on until a British fleet arrived trapping the American ships and destroying many of them.

Cornwell shuttles back and forth between the American and British perspectives, showing how in campaigns egos and cunning can have such an impact and can counterbalance numbers. The Americans were hampered by incessant arguing between the army and navy commanders and as a result of the ego of Paul Revere, who, despite his subsequent reputation was lazy and arrogant, and unwilling to yield to superiors. As with all Cornwell's books we get a range of perspectives of men serving at different ranks and in this case of some of the locals, whether loyal to the British or the American side. There are good skirmish scenes and, if you do not know the specific history, tension over which side will be reinforced first. Overall, it is an interesting microcosm which shows how the attitudes of commanders and their soldiers can have such an impact. My only complaint is that once the final naval battle is engaged it all ends abruptly and there is a long discourse by the author, some of which add nothing to this story.

'Fatal Remedies' by Donna Leon
Sometimes with Donna Leon's Guido Brunetti novels - this one, published in 1999 was the 8th in the series - it is uncertain what she wants the focus to be. Sometimes she manages to pull disparate elements to make a stronger whole. However, at other times, this process is a little less successful. This novel is an example of the latter. For much of the first third of it the focus is on Brunetti's wife, Paola who, in a protest against a local travel agency that is providing sex tours to the Far East to allow paedophiles to exploit children there, twice vandalises the agency's window. Guido himself is put in a difficult position and there is some pressure for him to resign. However, then, quite abruptly, this point of tension seems to evaporate and the rest of the novel focuses on a more straight forward Leon plot around the illegal selling of expired and placebo medicines to African and Asian states and murder to cover this up.

The two parts are not really well integrated. The element of Paola and her belief in calling out corrupt business is interesting, but is not really resolved. The jeopardy for Guido's career and the tension between the couple is not followed up. I accept it might be laying the ground work for developments in subsequent novels - at present there are 21 more in the series - but if that was the case it should have appeared as a sub-plot rather than a kind of different plot with only very loose connection to the other plot in the novel which becomes its main focus for the latter two-thirds of the novel. This is not a bad novel, but it could have been far better with some restructuring to blend the two streams rather than having them effectively abut against each other.

'Lord Kalvan of Otherwhen' by H. Beam Piper
Published in 1964 (in my edition, but apparently not actually out until the following year), this short (192 pages in my edition) novel starts from the same basis as 'The Long Earth' (2012) reviewed above, i.e. that there are parallel versions of Earth that people can inadvertently or intentionally travel between. In this case, however, the bulk of these versions are filled with humans, though at very varied stages of development and with diverse distribution across Earth. I do not know if Pratchett and Baxter felt this approach had been looked at in so many books that they should leave humans out of theirs. Anyway, in this book, the different Earths are policed by the Paratime organisation in part to prevent the planet being used up fully as happened in their own stream. However, passing between the different strands in vehicles, means that sometimes people are caught up and dumped in a different version.

In this story, Corporal Calvin Morrison of the Pennsylvania State Police, a veteran of the Korean War is accidentally dumped in a version of Pennsylvania with sort of 16th Century technology. In this world, Aryans left south Asia and migrated eastwards into North America rather than westwards to Europe, so a series of petty kingdoms are now founded along the Atlantic seaboard. In this version of Earth a religion controls access to gunpowder and uses this to hold power over the various princes. With his more technological knowledge, Morrison manages to break this monopoly and through a serious of wars rises up to be king of the region. For some reason the paratime authorities, rather than preventing him from altering the history of the region actually help him, contrary to their precepts.

Piper clearly had an agenda with this novel, which started as a short story and was a context later taken up by other authors. The main one is that he wants to show that the 'great man' view of history is not wrong. At one stage one of the paratime officials even feels Morrison's achievements disprove the emphasis on steady societal changes. This mirrors arguments in Piper's own time, especially against Marxist historical interpretations. Piper clearly believes one man can alter history and emphasises the role that warfare plays. Indeed much of the book is taken up with complicated battles. It is very hard to follow these without a map. For most readers, references back to the local geography of Pennsylvania does not help. Piper also clearly wanted to portray his state's police in a positive light too, with one character saying they are among the best ten forces on Earth.

As a fantasy battle romp, the book is not bad. However, you do feel that the character has it his own way for too much of the time as if Piper was keen not to admit any weakness in his thesis. Maybe that was acceptable in the early 1960s but I imagine would jar with many readers of contemporary fantasy. I suppose the book is useful as an artefact in the development of parallel worlds, which as the 'Long' series discussed above shows, remains a popular one for writers even fifty years later.

'The Good Earth' by Pearl S. Buck
I only became aware of this book when it was re-released in 2004 and did not realise until reading it that it had been published in 1931. It was a bestseller, won the Pulitzer Prize in 1932 and was followed by two sequels. Buck was an American missionary who spent much of her life as a child and young woman in eastern China. The book focuses on the family of an initially poor farmer, Wang Lung as it grows and he faces many travails but eventually becomes wealthier to the extent that he and extended family replace the local gentry encountered at the start of the book. The most effective bits of the book are when Buck is describing when the crops fail whether due to drought or flood.

The book is set in Anhwei [Anhui] province. During a famine, Wang Lung and his family flee 'south' by steam train to a town named Kiangsu [Jiangsu], but that is a province to the East of Anhui, so it seems likely she meant Soochow [Suzhou] or perhaps Nanking [Nanjing] itself. While there, it appears that they witness some of the incidents of the 1911 Revolution. This seems to occur when Wang Lung is in his early 20s. However, the time frame is awkward as towards the end of the book when Wang Lung is explicitly a man in his 70s there is talk of another revolution. Things which might count as this: the uprisings, the appearance of the Chinese Communist Party and then the Great Northern Expedition of the Nationalists, falling in the 1920s would occur while Wang Lung was still young or middle aged. If it were not for the railways which were not constructed in the region until 1908-09, one might assume the first 'revolution' was the Taiping Rebellion, 1850-64 which included Anhui. Thus, Buck is either projecting into the future beyond her own time, correctly expecting China to have another revolution, which it did, or effectively much of the story is 'out of time'.

While the book uses vocabulary which we understand, a lot of it is more complex than we would use commonly nowadays. The tone of the book seems very influenced by what Buck would have read and often sounds like a parable. There is no explicit judgement of the mistakes Wang Lung makes, his treatment of different people, for example, how he buys slaves and a concubine; neglects his hard working wife and effectively tries to kill his uncle and aunt through plying them with opium. It is left to the reader to make decisions. I guess this should be welcomed rather than Buck imposing  judgements on a different culture, even one which sees girls in particular sold into slavery or killed at birth.

Wang Lung's mentally disabled daughter is neglected except by her parents. No-one, bar perhaps O-lan, his wife, is a hero. Wang Lung behaves in an appalling manner at different stages of the book and many of the people around him are deeply unpleasant. However, I guess this willingness to show people with all their flaws is one attraction of the book. Above all, it highlights life in a rural region of central China, which despite references to steam trains and bayoneted rifles, was the way it had been for millennia and presumably opened the American audience's eyes to the country they knew little about, though with the Japanese invasion of North-East China in 1931, effectively starting the 14-year long Pacific War, it was to be in the news for the next two decades. Buck is far from being a work of propaganda and as result, as you will see noted in commentary, despite its success did nothing to improve the American perception of China. Ironically missionaries and Christianity do not feature in the book at all.

Overall it is an intriguing book which to some degree shows realities of life in rural China in the early 20th Century and if you are willing to accept the distorted chronology and the tone of the book you might find it engaging. It is very much of its time and no-one like Buck could write such a book now without being accused of cultural appropriation and being patronising to the people it features. Consequently despite the flare up in popularity in the mid-2000s it is more likely that readers nowadays would be happier reading 'Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China' (1991) by Jung Chang, instead.

Non-Fiction
'Europe 1780-1830' by Franklin L. Ford
This is another of those books from my collection that I should have come to far sooner. I bought it in 1987, four years after it was reissued and it has largely remained in storage since. That is a shame because it is a brisk but comprehensive study of Europe over fifty years, that deftly explains a very complex period without losing the reader. Ford achieves this by taking a thematic approach, not simply, for example, looking at society or population, but when he turns to the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars. This enables him to disentangle the complexity of these times, for example, keeping apart Napoleon's reforms in France from narrative of the conquests. I think his description of the phases of the French Revolution are some of the clearest I have read in a general history of the period. I also like that he contextualises the events within longer-term economic, demographic and intellectual shifts. He is also willing to take time out to look at how things may have gone differently, so pushing against the sense that anything of what happened was 'inevitable'. These acute, perceptive approaches to the mess of the period effectively allows him to show how while this was a period of great change it also had strong strands of continuity. Overall, this is an engaging read and a refreshing perspective on a period that is detailed but because of its approach never allows the detail to choke up the progress of the book.