What on Earth is Red Reading This Time: Sixteen Ways to Defend a Walled City

There are times when your past catches up to you in unexpected ways. 

A few years ago* my wife and I were perusing our local bookstore when I came across a title that stopped me dead in my tracks. I pulled out the book from the shelf and stared at the cover for a hot minute. 

"It couldn't be."

I flipped the pages until I found the "About the Author", read it, and sucked in my breath.

"Wow. It IS him."

My wife saw the look on my face and came over. "What is it?"

I held up the book and pointed at the author.

"Holy shit."

"Yeah."

It was her ex-boyfriend. The boyfriend immediately before me.

"Do you want to buy it?" I asked with a mischievous grin.

The look she gave me could have curdled milk.

I was reminded of that story when I read Sixteen Ways to Defend a Walled City, by K.J. Parker. It's not because I knew the author or anything, but I certainly did know the protagonist. Or rather, I knew of him.

It was sunny outside, but clouds
and gloom rolled in this afternoon.
Hence the off color to the photo.

The protagonist of the story, Orhan, is an outsider who had risen through the ranks of the army to reach the title of Colonel of Engineers of an Empire which was heavily based on the Roman and/or Byzantium Empire. Orhan was a member of a tribe that have been uncharitably called "milkfaces", which pretty much loosely identifies him with the Germanic tribes. And he kind of gets roped into leading the defense of, well, Constantinople. I say Constantinople rather than an equivalent to Rome because the two main factions within the city are Blues and Greens, which do have a historical precedent in the Byzantine Empire itself. (Seriously. And no, I'm not channeling old episodes of The Tomorrow People.) 

Orhan himself, however... Well, I have met people exactly like him in the past. In college.

It's not that he's snarky or has an issue with authority, because a lot of people I knew in college were both. In fact, that was part of the appeal from the back blurb, that Orhan has those traits. But Orhan also has one thing in spades, that when combined with the others, just really give me flashbacks to a couple of people I knew in college: arrogance.

***

I suppose you could argue that a person has to be confident in their abilities if they rise to being a Colonel of Engineers, particularly if they are an outsider. But I will counter that there's a big difference between confidence and arrogance, and Orhan may profess the former but adheres to the latter. 

The novel reads like a "how I did it" story, in which Orhan either did something himself, directed people in how to do something, or he happened to know the exact perfect person to do something he wanted done. 

A screencap from Young Frankenstein;
no idea who did the initial screencap.

The first couple of times I kind of ran with it, but as the coincidences kept piling up I began to question the story itself. I mean, I know that it's possible that in a large city the right people might be out there, but that Orhan happened to know exactly the right person for each conundrum became less and less likely as the novel progressed. Likewise, that Orhan happened to have exactly the correct amount of foresight and the corresponding strategy ready to defeat what was thrown against him became more and more eyebrow raising the deeper into the novel I went. 

It was then when I began to wonder whether I was missing the point of the novel, and if this was actually a commentary on Fantasy novels that seem to have the protagonist pull everything out of a hat by the end. Well, that's all fine, but those sort of Fantasy novels aren't in that much demand these days compared to the grimdark aspect of Fantasy, so I kind of set that analysis aside. Then I began to wonder if the author was using Fantasy as a commentary about real history, given the obvious parallels with the Roman/Byzantine Empire and the Germanic invasions that brought about its fall. I couldn't quite disprove this angle, as I couldn't disprove the concept of the novel being satire --ala Gulliver's Travels-- but for some reason I didn't really get satire vibes that much. 

One thing is certain: the novel is certainly well written, and the author did keep the pages turning. The story itself is quite good, and outside of some issues with the plot --such as how Orhan kind of falls into "relationships" with women, which kind of oozes "privileged" and Marty Stu-- and the characterizations of the various races Robur (Romans/Byzantines) are darker skinned, and the oppressed barbarians are all light skinned (aka "milkfaces"), I wanted to see how the story ended. So kudos to K.J. Parker for that.

But K.J. Parker is not K.J. Parker.

K.J. Parker is a pseudonym for novelist Tom Holt. 

"Well," I mused, "that explains a lot."

A listing of Tom's quotes from Goodreads establishes the humor behind his pen, and through those I could see exactly where Orhan got his voice. 

Orhan has the voice of someone who is so confident in their intelligence and wit that they can't help but share it with you all the freaking time. It's fine to have that wit and to make occasional commentary with it, but when you spend all of your time trying to prove how witty you are, you tend to turn people off. And with those people I knew in college, they are interesting to talk to in small bites, but if you lived with them or were in a class with them, all we got was a steady stream of said witticisms.** After a while you just want them to give it a rest, already. I mean, I'm not a killjoy, and I do have my own snark (I mean, have you read this blog?), but there comes a point where the overall effect of the steady stream of witticisms is diminished by their sheer volume. 

Then again, this might be a question of pacing for Fantasy versus some other genres. I didn't have much of a problem with Robert Lynn Asprin's Myth Adventure series, but after about Book 5 or so the humor started to wear a bit thin.***

So if you don't mind the steady stream of snark and witticisms, and that Orhan's inner voice has an answer for just about everything, this book might be for you. For me, it was uncomfortably close to a few people I knew in college so I couldn't disassociate the novel from my experiences with them, which were not uniformly happy ones.

***

But oh, there is one thing of note: this is a Fantasy novel without, well, Fantasy.

It's a work of fiction to be certain, and the countries and personnel are completely made up, but there is absolutely no magic or fantastical dealings of any kind. This leads me to one big question: why is this book a Fantasy if the only thing "fantastical" about it is that the countries and people are made up? People don't stick the aforementioned Gulliver's Travels in Fantasy, and neither do they put 1984, The Handmaid's Tale, or The DaVinci Code in Fantasy either. But for some reason, Sixteen Ways to Defend a Walled City is shoehorned into the Fantasy genre.

So... What makes a Fantasy novel a Fantasy?

Now THAT is a question that begs a good discussion. Preferably over a drink (your choice) with some food. At a bar or a coffee shop (again, your choice).

I'm open to suggestions, given that someone had to have had an idea that this story belonged in the Fantasy genre, so let's hear them. Obviously a fictional city or society wouldn't count, or a lot of "General Fiction" suddenly lumped into Fantasy, and the tension in the novel doesn't mean that it suddenly has turned into a Thriller, so why Fantasy? Anybody got any ideas?

Regardless, I think I'm going to take a pass on the other two novels in the "series". I put the "series" in quotes because I've discovered that each successive novel isn't built upon the others in the same way that you'd expect a series to be, and from what I've read the tone of each novel is pretty much the same as the others: if you've read the first one you know what to expect with the next two. In that respect, they're a lot like a David Eddings series: if you read The Belgariad, you already know the plot (and to a lesser extent the characters) of The Malloreon, or The Elenium, etc. That doesn't make the story bad by any stretch, it's just that you pretty much know what you're getting. And for the personal flashbacks that this story gave me, I think I'll pass this time around. Maybe with some time and distance I'll come back to the second novel in the series, How to Rule an Empire and Get Away with It.

*Pre-pandemic.

**I had an English seminar with a professor who basically lived by spouting off all sorts of quotes and observations from a variety of upper class and/or noble people to the point where I often wondered if he were a Royalist at heart. I remember once making a comment about Tolkien in his class, and I discovered very quickly that said professor did NOT like J.R.R. Tolkien or his works. I believe the words "juvenile trash" were thrown around more than once in his acerbic reply to my brief comment. And this was coming from a guy who --while he adored the modern novel (Ulysses and Mrs. Dalloway and others of that ilk)-- binged on Romance novels whenever he could. "The trashier the better," he frequently said.

***Ye gods, that series went on for how long? Yikes.