Benjamin Espen

Not just a boot camp story, but a look at recruitment into off-the-books service

Revisado: 03-30-22

Forget Nothing: Part II might seem like just another boot camp story. And on the surface, it is. But nothing at Galaxy’s Edge is as it first appears, and this story is no different.

This isn’t even the first time we have had a boot camp story in Galaxy’s Edge. The Legionnaires part of Gods & Legionnaires has that honor, coming first in publication order and in-universe as well. For many fans, the utterly brutal selection process Tyrus Rechs put his first Legionnaires through was a relief from the incomprehensible weirdness of the A. E. van Vogt-like look into the mind of a Savage that comprised the rest of the book. That brutality is recapitulated here, with Andien Broxin enduring much the same process 1,500 years later.

As an inside look at what that process does to your mind, I found Forget Nothing: Part II interesting. Shaping a person into a capable and trustworthy practitioner of instrumental violence is not pretty. As Andien learns, the Legion will turn you into something you do not want to be in order to fulfill its mission.

The strangeness in Forget Nothing: Part II is more subtle. The first layer is right out there for you to see. Start with the cover art. Devoted fans of the series who have already read Convergence will understand the reference, and indeed should have a pretty good idea where the book is going and how it ties into the rest of the story. I imagine there might be a few readers who come to Galaxy’s Edge through side books like these, so I won’t spoil it for those readers and listeners.

But let’s peel another layer, because that particular reveal isn’t even close to the most interesting thing in this book. In my review of Convergence, I said that essential context for interpreting these books is the generation-long Forever War in the Middle East. A major theme of Galaxy’s Edge is the simmering anger of the most disciplined and loyal and competent soldiers at the futility of the conduct of the Forever War and the accompanying waste of blood and treasure.

Something I didn’t get into in my review of Convergence is the contempt in which those loyal and competent soldiers hold the members of the intelligence community. This was most memorably illustrated by the character named “Deep State” Volman in the other major Cole and Anspach universe, Forgotten Ruin, but you can see this theme of anger and distrust and feelings of betrayal running through Galaxy’s Edge as well.

Not every character is as over-the-top repulsive as the polo-shirted political hack Volman. “Tom”, the deep cover operative you meet in Kill Team is a sympathetic villain, a loyal son of the Republic who was seduced into committing unspeakable atrocities for “the greater good”. This book is about the process by which good men [and women] are recruited to do those things.

Let me be clear that I am speculating about things I have not experienced. If I did know something, I would not talk about it. But if you look, there are things that can be seen, or more often, a pattern of things that are not seen.

“The notion of staffing the CIA with former policemen instead of drunken fraternity brothers is misguided. Spies are not cops, just as cops are not soldiers. Spies, or at least the agents who control them, are essentially social workers: they keep track of disgruntled people and give them money to keep them cooperative. Cops can be taught to do this, of course, but there is no reason to think they would be especially good at it.” -John J. Reilly

In the United States, the CIA in particular is notorious for recruiting via an old-boy network in the Ivy League schools. The caricature of Volman nails this background perfectly. This works pretty well for finding the kind of gentlemen adventurers from middling to high social class backgrounds that litter the history of espionage. In the mid-twentieth century, you could think of T. E. Lawrence, Carleton Coon, or Kim Philby as typical examples. Their background is good for the basic work of running a network of informants, or even some basic army cadre work like Lawrence and Coon did in World War II.

This process doesn’t work so well when you need an operator, those quietly competent servants of empire that come from nowheresvilles like Modesto, California. Sometimes, intelligence agencies work with established military forces, like MACV-SOG. But that means people who are ultimately loyal to another organization and lots of bureaucratic complications. The way to solve this is to field your own force funded and commanded from your own organization. So there are people who work for intelligence agencies that are not primarily grown up frat boys or desk jockeys, but hard men who break stuff and kill people.

In order to find those men, it makes sense to go looking in the places that produce them. But a problem is that soldiers are often straightforward and unsubtle men, motivated by duty, while spies have a tendency toward moral flexibility and find duplicity as natural as breathing. Now, you can filter those soldiers and look for those with a problem with authority or a willingness to break the rules. But that can have its own negative consequences, producing a persistent personnel problem of people who cannot quite distinguish self interest from the national interest.

So there is another path, the one you see in Forget Nothing: Part II. What you see here is a process of manipulation and seduction, an initiation that the new recruit probably isn’t really aware of until its too late. The process of hardening soldiers to use violence probably makes this other, related process easier, as a candidate for an elite military unit is subjected to unspeakable hardship, and has to learn to tolerate unfathomable things in order to master themselves sufficiently to use force unflinchingly no matter the circumstances.

The things that intelligence paramilitaries are asked to do are then cast as nothing but more of same, only freed from petty bureaucratic oversight. We can judge how true that is in part by looking at things that are no longer secret, but also by the reaction of those who might be recruited for such things, and reject the call.

This book, and the thread that runs through Galaxy’s Edge, is a reflection of something like a foreign body response, a reaction to something unwelcome from the outside.

Or perhaps you could also see the book as something like a vaccine, a presentation of a neutered version of a dangerous thing so that the recipient recognizes and is prepared to resist the real thing when it comes along. A vaccine intended to prevent its audience from becoming “Tom”.

I suspect how interesting this book is will depend on the reader or listener’s interest in these matters of internal military culture. Andien certainly overcomes many obstacles in the story, but a traditional adventure it is not.

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The real conflict is within each man's heart

Revisado: 03-14-22

Shadows and Crows: The Lost — Book 2 by Peter Nealen is a dark and otherworldly adventure in a haunted world that sits right at the edge of familiarity. Like the spectres that lurk in the gloaming, it feels like if you listen long enough, you might recognize something you know. Alas, you will then probably discover that you have been sucked in and there is no escape.

Shadows and Crows is Peter Nealen’s second book in the WarGate style series The Lost. I feel like Nealen really hits his stride here, the pacing of this book was excellent. I always wanted to listen to just a little bit more, no matter what had just happened. I also enjoy Mark Boyett’s voice work, from the gravelly gunnery sergeant to the Irish-inflected Tuacha.

When we left off in the last volume, Conor McCall’s Recon Marines had narrowly escaped the Fohorimans, men twisted by dark sorcery, monstrous and misshapen. In the process, they found new allies, the Tuacha, who provide them refuge from the many dark things that lurk in the world they have found themselves in. Fortunately for Conor and the rest of the Marines who escaped, the bounty of the Tuacha includes the ability to resupply them will all the instruments of modern mayhem that an infantryman might desire.

In book 2, their services are required when the Isle of Riamog is attacked by something even more foul than the Fohorimans. You might think that their job is going to be straightforward, as they enjoy home field advantage and they have been re-armed. This is where Nealen gives the Marines a worthy enemy, one who can use the dark magics of this world to counter the advantages of man-portable machineguns and 40mm grenade launchers. I won’t spoil the fun here, as I found the whole thing so well done.

In the aftermath of this attack, the Tuacha discover that a sacred artifact has been taken from their lands, along with the holy woman who was its guardian. Neither the Tuacha nor the Marines can abide such a thing, which is the event that sets the rest of the book in motion.

You might think you know what you are going to be in for here. The Marines and their Tuacha allies will use their martial skills to hunt down whatever eldritch trespasser violated their new home, rescue the damsel in distress, and frag/ventilate anything that gets in their way. In a general way, these things can be expected, but there is more to this book than it might first seem.

The reason why is that Shadows and Crows is a Gothic adventure. I am going to take a detour to explore what this means, as the term Gothic can have a variety of meanings ranging from the architectural to the aesthetic. In this case, what makes Shadows and Crows Gothic is that getting killed by a monster in the dark isn’t the worst thing that can happen to a character.

The worst thing that can happen is a character can lose their honor, and their soul. That they can side with Evil against Good and abandon their principles in the pursuit of power. When Conor and his platoon were transported into this world of ice and monsters, the veil was torn, and many things that were hidden in our world were lain bare.

In a Gothic adventure, the conflict is not only between men and monsters, but within each man’s heart. The fault line between good and evil lies there, and the true struggle is within even as the visible servants of darkness must be vanquished without.

Yet, there are compensations for the unclean things that roam the world freely. There are not merely hints of holiness, but shining exemplars of heroic virtue that confound the wicked things with piety, meekness, and humility. With faith like a mustard seed, nothing will be impossible to them. The discipline and sacrifice of the holy ones amazes Conor, as it should. It is easy to write a book where the heroes deliver kinetic violence to the wicked. It is far harder to write one that plausibly leaves those competent in breaking stuff and killing people in awe of a man whose weapons are prayer and fasting.

This is what elevates Shadows and Crows above your average mil-sf. At least to my outsider’s eye, Nealen gives the verisimilitude expected of a book that wants to explore how modern military tactics and weapons could be used against things that go bump in the night. Where things get far more interesting is when Nealen brings in hope, and the possibility of redemption for even the most wretched.

I am enjoying this series immensely, and I wish Nealen continued success.

I received a review copy from the publisher.

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In the world of Cradle, family is everything

Revisado: 10-16-19

In the world of Cradle, family is everything. It shapes your destiny by defining your powers and your path. It determines who you can trust, and who you must fight. For Yerin and Lindon, being adopted into the Aurelius family has done all this and more.

This is the first time I have listened to, or reviewed, the audiobook version of one of Will Wight’s books. I was emailed asking if I wanted a review copy of the audiobook, and despite generally preferring reading to listening for mental bandwidth reasons, I agreed to give it a try this time. I was planning on reviewing the book anyhow, having purchased the ebook on Kindle on my own, but since audio has been gaining in popularity recently I thought I would see what all the fuss is about.

I still think I prefer reading, but I did really enjoy the narration of Travis Baldree. His voice work is excellent, with each character easily distinguishable in terms of accent and inflection. My favorite by far is Akura Fury, who I imagined as something like an aging surfer dude from reading the book first, which is very much the mode in which Baldree voices him. Well, if an aging surfer dude had phenomenal cosmic powers. Now, when I read the Cradle series, I am going to hear Baldree’s voices.

Now, on to the book! Uncrowned gives a clearer look at the highest levels of advancement on Cradle. When Lindon started out in Sacred Valley, Gold was nothing but a rumor, spoken of only in myth and legend. When Lindon’s fate was altered by the return of one of the lucky few who managed sufficient mastery of the Sacred Arts to ascend beyond his homeworld into the Heavens, we got a glimpse of just how far one could go, especially when Suriel, Judge of the Abidan, intervened and dealt with the ascended one as easily as one of Lindon’s clan Elders might have dealt with him, an Unsouled.

That intervention was the key event in Lindon’s life, setting him on the path that brings him to the Uncrowned King tournament. However, in some as yet unrevealed fashion, this event also altered the fate of everything else in creation. Through the eyes of Suriel, Lindon’s savior, and later Makiel, we have slowly seen an unfolding of what amounts to the politics of Heaven. Although the Abidan, composed of those Sacred Artists of a thousand worlds who have grown powerful enough to leave the world of their birth, would surely insist that they are above the petty concerns of the mere mortals they have left behind, in practice their relations with one another are much the same as we see on Cradle. Endless jockeying for position and status internally, and ruthless war against anyone outside of their circle of trust.

Admittedly, the Abidan do seem to have intellect and foresight that have grown in concert with their power. However, it is not at all clear that they will not face a reckoning for their hubris. The Abidan face a celestial nemesis, the Vroshir, with sufficient power to contest their control of the Iterations. The Abidan expanded their territory far beyond what could be maintained, and the Vroshir are ready to take advantage of that. It also seems clear that Lindon and his friends will have some part to play in the coming Götterdämmerung. This anticipation is one of the most delicious bits of Cradle. We know that eventually Lindon will ascend to the Heavens, and his reflexive crouch towards everyone will be hilarious.

And in some curious way, this may all turn upon that most familiar and prosaic of institutions: the family.

In the clannish shame culture of Cradle, an intense source of social pressure comes from the fear of not living up to the expectations set down by your ancestors. However, since sufficient advancement in the Sacred Arts also results in unusually long life, that social pressure can become quite personal, since the revered ancestor can make their disapproval known in person.

Any individual of sufficient advancement can not only found a dynasty, but personally lead that family in its struggles for supremacy. This neatly solves the typical succession problems arising from regression to the mean by making successors superfluous. What makes me really curious is the question of whether any of the Abidan have children? Particularly the Judges, the council of seven who rule. The only one we know of who did is Ozriel, distant ancestor to Eithan Aurelius, and Ozriel was always at odds with his fellows.

It was the disappearance of Ozriel that brought Suriel to Cradle in the first place, which then brought Lindon to her attention, setting in motion the events that bring us here. Ozriel seems to have been interested in his descendants in a personal way, which is very different than the way Makiel, Suriel’s opponent among the Abidan deals with the rest of humanity. I’m curious to know if Wight intended for Makiel to have been a father before he ascended to the Heavens, because it certainly seems that he is missing that most basic of all connections to humanity.

Which brings us to the real monster of Cradle: Eithan. Lindon continually surprises people with his determination and his power, not to mention his appearance. But Eithan is capable of far more, including the ability to deceive others about his true intentions and capabilities. I first truly grew suspicious in book four, when Eithan effortlessly foiled every attempt of the humiliated Jai Underlord to seek revenge upon Eithan. Until he let him bring a forbidden treasure from the Western Labyrinth and thereby awaken the Dreadgods. I’m not sure that is really what he meant to do, but I can’t discount it either.

Everything is subsumed in his goal: his dandyish appearance, his recruitment of Eithan and Yerin, even his failures seem to advance his goals. It is not that Eithan never makes mistakes or is never thwarted, never in danger. It is that absolutely everything slides off of him. Here, in Uncrowned, we get hints that Eithan, while technically an Underlord, already has glimpses of power far above his current level. Faint echoes of the power of Ozriel, his ancestor. It actually seems that Eithan might have some limited ability to see the future. Enough, in fact, that he can deflect attention from himself when someone notices this about him. Lindon is the star of the show, but Eithan is the director.

As always, waiting is such sweet sorrow, but I trust that Wight will keep to his current schedule and treat us to further adventures and further revelations in the future.

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