Reviews and Comments

This is a novel of alternates worlds set on post-apocalypse Earth. On Earth Zero, as he calls it, an inventor-entrepreneur safely ensconced in a gated city shielded from the harsh conditions of its planet has found a way to reach alternate versions of the planet. Crossing over is risky, so the task devolves to the expendable: the citizens of the wasteland ruled by warlords outside the city gates. Like Cara.

I’m not sure anyone could care enough for Cara, or her tech megalomaniac boss with a dark past, to carry a novel, were it not for a simple fact: This is not a novel of alternates worlds set on post-apocalypse Earth.

What Micaiah Johnson has created instead is something that takes the form and background of its genres and uses them for a meditation on inequality, violence – carried out on others and self-inflicted –, and all forms of exploitation, all couched into a simple, slow burn thriller. And as if this were not a small miracle alone, Johnson’s writing – wry, personal, sharp and human – will get you into the head of her protagonist in a way only the best can. This is more Red Harvest in speculative 21st century costume than anything you’d want to call “sci-fi”, and I for one can’t wait to read what she writes next.

… and, coming back too this almost forty years after last reading it, I wasn’t expecting too much. Sure enough, the world view is horrifically dated: white Brit dudes saving the world through süperior technology with the help of other white dudes and some loyal colonial dudes. A cruel, generically ‘yellow’ enemy bent on world domination slash destruction of civilisation. Literally not one woman in sight and a view of non-whites that, at its most kind, can only be called folkloristic – j’en passe et des meilleures. Superficially, there is enough to erase Jacobs’ early work from comics art memory. And yet, I’d argue it very much needs to stay in it.

First, the are some saving graces: in 1950, five years after the conclusion of World War II, the idea of an aggressively imperialistic asian empire wasn’t exactly outlandish (and yes, Jacobs did model his supposedly ‘Tibetan’ military on the Imperial Japanese Army, with more than a bit of Adolf Hitler added to its supreme leader, Basam Damdu). And while the antagonists are constantly saddled with the demeaning generic ‘Jaunes’ (‘Yellows’) and are, with one exception, either portrayed as jingoistic bullies or mindless extras, that portrayal never veers into the racialised evil caricature you might expect. In fact, except for the megalomaniac emperor, the one purely evil antagonist is a Westerner, the flamboyant Colonel Olrik. As to the all-guys world, it is partially a product of its creation date – surprisingly, that makes it feel less dated once you get over it because it doesn’t portray utterly outdated gender roles (don’t @ me) –, partially also one of Blake and Mortimer being very much a headcannon gay couple. You can really ship these two.

But none of that would mean anything without two net positives. One, Jacobs’ spectacularly cinematic style. That may sound strange, considering his books are really heavy on text, but his way of composing and lighting / colouring his sequences stands up to time – just take a peek at the covers. Two, his storytelling. You might disagree with his worldview, but there is no doubt this is an action story for an adult public, told by a master in the making. This was a graphic novel long before the term was coined; heck, it would take even the French and Belgians twenty more years to promote comics to the ninth art form. Which all sums up to say that, 70 years later, Le secret de l’Espadon is not an unproblematic piece of comics art; but comics art it undoubtedly is.

Diclaimer: this review is for the original French version. English translations exist AFAIK, but you are on your own finding them. Also, mandatory comics review note.

This is very much just one part of a three-part novel, which I find difficult to review in isolation. Because this site works best when people review the things they read, however, I will be adding the same review to all volumes.

John Scalzi is a nice guy writing nice SF novels.

You could almost leave it at that, really. For the sake of context, I will add a few more details to this assessment. This, like all of his novels I have read, is smoothly plotted and written, entirely unsurprising in its cliffhangers and ultimate resolution, and contains exactly one original idea. This being said, it’s an entertaining read if, at times, a bit too glib to my taste (I don’t think Scalzi has ever seen a witty repartee he didn’t like). If what you want from your SF is what I just described, you could do a lot worse than the Interdependency series.

This is very much just one part of a three-part novel, which I find difficult to review in isolation. Because this site works best when people review the things they read, however, I will be adding the same review to all volumes.

John Scalzi is a nice guy writing nice SF novels.

You could almost leave it at that, really. For the sake of context, I will add a few more details to this assessment. This, like all of his novels I have read, is smoothly plotted and written, entirely unsurprising in its cliffhangers and ultimate resolution, and contains exactly one original idea. This being said, it’s an entertaining read if, at times, a bit too glib to my taste (I don’t think Scalzi has ever seen a witty repartee he didn’t like). If what you want from your SF is what I just described, you could do a lot worse than the Interdependency series.

This is very much just one part of a three-part novel, which I find difficult to review in isolation. Because this site works best when people review the things they read, however, I will be adding the same review to all volumes.

John Scalzi is a nice guy writing nice SF novels.

You could almost leave it at that, really. For the sake of context, I will add a few more details to this assessment. This, like all of his novels I have read, is smoothly plotted and written, entirely unsurprising in its cliffhangers and ultimate resolution, and contains exactly one original idea. This being said, it’s an entertaining read if, at times, a bit too glib to my taste (I don’t think Scalzi has ever seen a witty repartee he didn’t like). If what you want from your SF is what I just described, you could do a lot worse than the Interdependency series.

I started on this after reading Gailey’s “Do Hippos Count as Dragons”, the premise was simply too good to pass by. Even if I wasn’t such a sucker for Western steampunk(ish) stories, the idea of feral hippos roaming the Mississippi would have been alluring in its originality.

Unluckily, Gailey’s writing is not up to her ingenious premise. The whole thing reads like a slapdash novelisation of an unmade film script, possibly one for a 1970’s style adventure caper – you know, the kind that used to star James Coburn and hasn’t been made well anymore since Peckinpah passed –, with the operative word being “slapdash”. The writing is peripatetic and superficial, with narrative threads or insights emerging far less often than the eponymous aquatic pachyderms. Add some jarring anachronisms in a world that, for all I can see, is meant to be exactly the US 1890s except for the hippos, and things fall apart quickly. Which is a pity. I mean … “hippo riders of the Wild West” does have a ring to it.

Why this ever was bestseller is beyond me. David, cribbing more or less wholesale from his sources, never manages to go beyond rehashes of conventional takes on military events – outdated ones at that, judging from the cases where I am more familiar with current academic discourse (Teutoburger Wald, Crécy, Caporetto). The promised analysis of causes and patterns never materialises, a handful of throwaway sentences after rambling retellings a poor excuse for them. A few infuriatingly superficial remarks hint at more, but never lead anywhere (as an example, David mentions in his chapter on Bannockburn that Edward I. successfully repressed the Scots with combined arms, something his son did not even try. Exploring how this came about – effectively, why medieval armies lacked institutional learning – could be a fascinating topic, even if done superficially, but David fails to follow up). Add some truly ghastly “Old White Dude” missteps and a tendency to riff on the Great Man theory of history with a Great Incompetent theory of command and you have a truly frustrating, pointless read.