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.

Meme Monday: Spring Memes

Spring has sprung! Well, on the northern hemisphere at any rate it has, the frost warnings and surprise snowfalls notwithstanding.

So in honor of Spring, here's some Spring-y memes....

Oh yes, I can agree with this.
From someecards.

I have had teachers do this to me when
I was a kid. This hurts, like pouring salt
in a wound. From Reddit.

That's just like today!
From kristrimmer.com.

And for those who have a bone to pick with the ol' Groundhog who predicted an early Spring...

From all over the net. Really.

Upon Further Review

I suppose I ought to explain a few things concerning my sudden interest in posting about books, and no, it has nothing directly to do with my own attempts at fiction.* 

Several months ago, a long-time blogger friend of mine put out a request for beta readers of a novel she was completing. Given that I’d long been an admirer of her artistic endeavors, I raised my hand and volunteered. “Why not,” I figured, since I was very curious about how her writing had been progressing.

A month or two later a PDF file was sent to me, and that meant I had to buckle down and get to work. Still, it was the holidays, and I’d already committed to installing some office furniture in the dining room of the house, effectively turning it into the home office we’d been using it as for over a decade.** So when I finally sat down to begin reading, I wasn’t sure if I had the time commitment to finish reading the novel to make any review useful. 

I guess I need not have worried, because once I got into the groove of reading, my usual issues with being sucked into a story reared their head and I found myself staying up far past 3 AM multiple nights. It got so bad that I would start reading during some particularly boring meetings at work. I have read books that I’ve simply had to give up because there was no drive to continue with the story, so kudos to my friend for writing an engaging novel. 

Oh crap, I hope I didn't look like
THAT. From Ranker.

When I finished, I sat back and said to myself “What now?”

I knew I should write up my thoughts and send them off to her, but I did ask several questions during a chat session we had after I reached the ending. I think I can count the number of romance novels I’ve read on one hand (two hands if you count Sharon Shinn, whose novels straddle the line between Fantasy and Romance), so I had questions about the genre, the word choices, some of the tropes I noticed, and how some parts of the novel fit together. She is currently well on her way toward finishing the second novel featuring the same characters, so I’m glad she’s continuing to write in the same world.***

Still, there was the nagging hole in my free time that only fiction could fill. 

Alcohol and reading books generally
don't mix well. Don't ask how I know
that one. From Imgflip.

I glanced over my long standing “to be read” pile, which had grown into a fairly large collection over the past decade, and poked at it for a while, wondering what to do. I eventually settled on The Chronicles of the Black Company rather than finish a series or two I’d started years ago as I would likely have to start over for those, and that can be a bit daunting. 

I’ve since reread my post on The Black Company, and one thing I noted was that while I tried to explain away my liking of the omnibus trilogy, the post itself was rather bland. I don’t think that I was intentionally avoiding taking a hard stand in either direction, because I realize that different people like different things about a book review, but watching the brouhaha over the Wired profile of Brandon Sanderson I realized that I was being the anti-rabble rouser. It’s not as if I have any grand, incisive commentary on the prose or the story, but even if I did I would have never have written my review in the same fashion that the author of the Wired article did. 

TL;DR: I don’t believe in being a dick.

***

"Card, you're too nice," is what a guildie once told me when I passed on gear I needed but that other people could use in the raid. He wasn’t wrong, because I don’t believe that being an asshole helps much in the long run. That doesn’t mean I don’t get angry or inveigh against the gods from time to time –and I am a tower of fury when that happens—but I recognize that being in a constant state of anger is unhelpful. 

Which is also why I dislike certain aspects of the media –and social media—that rely upon raw emotional reactions to drive popularity. 

I have caught myself being angry at something I’ve seen on television or social media and only a while later I’ve gone back and discovered that the news article (or whatever) was carefully crafted to generate such a reaction out of me, or more importantly, people with my background. And that in turn has generated even more anger, but this time against those who performed the manipulation. Because of that, I’ve oriented my posts in PC to be less confrontational than they could be. There’s always a little devil sitting on my shoulder, telling me that if I was a bit louder, more arrogant, or more combative I’d see more traffic on the blog. And perched on the other shoulder is a little angel musing “You know, you could be a bit more assertive…”

“You’re not helping,” I tell her quite frequently.

“Still, in the end it’s who you want to associate with,” she presses on, ignoring my commentary. “Do you want to be with assholes, or with people you like?”

And I know the answer to that one. 

Yes, they are modeled after
The Devil's Panties. If you haven't
read this webcomic yet, GO!

So in the end, I'm going to stick to my guns and not be an asshole about these reviews. That doesn't mean I'm not going to be critical when I feel the need for it, but I can separate being critical from being a jerk.

And maybe after some months of reading I'll be able to slow down a bit and not read so voraciously. (I hope.)

*Back in high school, my guidance counselor would constantly hound me to read as much as I could, because he believed strongly that reading –any reading—would prepare me for college. He wasn’t picky about what I read, unlike my dad; he only cared that I was reading. My AP English teacher encouraged reading as well because he felt it would improve my writing. So, while I do realize that reading would improve my writing, that was only of secondary concern to why I’m reading more fiction than I have before. And stumbling on my high school journal entries a few months ago while cleaning, I can only say that my writing certainly needed all the help it could get. I was not a wunderkind like Christopher Paolini, for certain.

**It also meant my wife wasn’t spreading her papers all over the house and she finally had a space of her own. We had been using a dining room table we received as a hand-me-down from her sister for my desk, and a hodge-podge of 25-year-old pre-fab desks and microwave carts to hold everything.

***I even borrowed the name of something in the story for a baby Tauren Hunter I have on a Wrath Classic server, so I hope that imitation is surely the most sincere form of flattery.

Meme Monday: Dragon Memes

...or is that draggin' memes? It is a Monday after all...

But I digress. That rather famous "other half" of D&D is here to represent!

If only I didn't work from home...
From imgflip.

I always wondered...
From joshuawright.net.

I'm glad I'm not Carl.
From a lot of Pinterest pages.
I'd really like to know who
made this so I can give credit.

Heh.
From lotromemes.

The Past Casts a Long Shadow

I had the afternoon to myself*, so I did what I typically do on a Sunday when I have an itch to explore and the weather is lousy for hiking: I visited a bookstore.

After having finished The Chronicles of the Black Company, I was looking at replacing it in my "to be read" pile with another book, but I was more interested in chasing down a diabetic cookbook that I could use. I know how to break down existing recipes and eliminate sodium and carbs at least decently well these days, but it is also nice to occasionally find a cookbook where that groundwork has already been done for you, such as this one from America's Test Kitchen, the Consumer Reports of Cooking.**

The nice part about perusing a bookstore is that you never know what you're going to end up with when you walk in the door. Sure, you could stick to exactly what you're looking for --and when I've got things to do I will do just that-- but if I'm browsing all bets are off.

I know, I should check out Naomi's
His Majesty's Dragon, but I'm not a big
fan of alternate history. Although the premise,
a mashup of the Napoleonic Wars and
Dragons, does sound interesting.

At some point I found myself over at the magazine racks, perusing so-called "bookazines",

Like oh, say, THIS.
Although to be fair, I'm pretty
sure that Larry Elmore isn't gonna
lose any sleep on my interest in painting.

which seem to be books in the form of single issue magazines, when I found myself kind of crowded out by a family who didn't seem to notice me there. I mean, I'm not a small guy, and I was there at least a few minutes before they were, but I suddenly found myself crowded out by them. Rather than bitch about it, I just decided to relocate for 5 minutes or so and then come on back to finish my browsing.

When I did I found that the family had indeed moved about 10-15 feet away, but they were in the middle of a knock down drag out argument. Well, as much of one that could be had in a bookstore.***

"THAT is not a book!" 

"You want me to spend my hard earned dollars on THAT?"

"A book has paragraphs in it! Not THAT!"

"Are you really going to read THAT??!!"

Yes, those were the parents. 

I couldn't see what the book in question was, but it wouldn't have shocked me if the kid --my guess she would have been early teens, but you never know-- had found the graphic novel/comics section and pulled out something from there. 

Even then, I felt for her, because I lived that same argument 40 years ago. Many times.

***

The first time was back when I was in Second Grade, and my mom took my brother and I downtown and we stopped at a bookstore there. We were each allowed to get one book, and I chose a book on primary colors and my brother chose a book about cats. When my dad got home that evening, he saw the books and threw them away, saying they were "kiddie books" and "you're too old for books like these". 

Yes, there was drama, in no small part from my trying to explain to my mom and brother --who was bawling his eyes out-- that dad had said "kiddie books" and not "kitty books". 

Several years later, in the midst of some of the worst bullying I received in middle school, I buried myself in The Lord of the Rings and The Silmarillion. It was a way of coping, losing myself in the books and loving the narrative voice. Then one Sunday afternoon when I was sick and rereading The Fellowship of the Ring once again, my dad came in and told me that if I didn't stop reading those books and "read something else", he'd take them away.**** I believe the words "rot your brain" and "something for grownups" were in that tirade somewhere, but all I saw was red.

I fumed for several days, but eventually I moved on to Terry Brooks' The Sword of Shannara and I discovered David Eddings' The Belgariad, likely to my dad's chagrin. 

This was the book cover I knew
back in the day. From Goodreads.

***

But from my own experience I vowed I would not be that parent to my own kids.

When my oldest was in the middle of her "princess craze", when every book she ever read just absolutely had to have a princess in it or she wouldn't read it*****, I took her downtown and we perused the absolutely gigantic children's section of the downtown library. 

The Secret Garden, found in the secret
garden adjoining the Children's Section
of the Cincinnati Downtown Library.
From the Library's Flickr account.

We went through a lot of books, and I had absolutely no luck in getting her to try another book without a princess in it, until I stumbled upon this:

No, this is not the library's copy.

"Does it have a princess in it?" my oldest asked, curiously.

The fact she didn't reject it outright was a good sign, so I quickly flipped through the book and said "there's a noble lady in it, is that close enough?"

"Hmm... okay."

I rejoiced when her back was turned and we checked the book out (with a bunch of princess books, because you knew that was gonna happen). Later that night I read the book to her, and then she asked for it again the next night. And then for the next month she would get out her watercolors and scrap paper and "make a book" in the same style as Marguerite did.

And that was that.

***

So yeah, I saw the drama this afternoon and really did I feel for the kid. Yeah kid, I know what you're going through; just remember this afternoon --and what it felt like for you-- when you've got kids of your own.

*Work kept me fairly close to my home office, otherwise I'd have likely gone with my wife to see my youngest play in a concert this evening. As it was, she went on and is spending the night at her parents' house, using the concert as an excuse to check in on them as they're hitting 90.

**At least that's what I call them. Consumer Reports, please don't go knocking on my door for a cease and desist; it's a compliment of the highest order.

***I was once at the downtown library branch and someone, about 20 years my senior, came in looking for his kid who hadn't shown up when they were supposed to. He first demanded that the staff call for the kid over the intercom, and when the staff refused he then proceeded to start hollering her name at the top of his lungs: "TRACY!! GET YOUR ASS DOWN HERE!!" They tried to shush him up, but you can imagine how that went over, so he was grabbed by library security and a policeman on duty, and forced over into a corner. I couldn't tell if they put him in handcuffs, but I took that as my cue to leave the building.

****He couldn't throw them out because the books belonged to my mom.

*****This was before her interest in Harry Potter, by the way.

It's All Filler in the End

Given that for almost a decade I never bothered to update the header to Parallel Context, it feels a bit weird to have people comment whenever it changes.

To be honest, I'd really like to have a series of headers that are rotated through every time you access PC like what Rav has on her blog Ravalation*, but I also recognize that it's likely a Wordpress plugin that she's using. And Blogger gets less than minimal support from Google anyway, which drives me nuts because if there was even a little bit of support Blogger would be a fantastic platform. Of course, if Google actually did what they usually do they would have pulled the plug after a couple of years when they realized they weren't gonna make a quick buck on the platform, over a decade ago. 

So.... Yay that they're not paying attention to Blogger?

Without a plugin to use I've tried building a GIF that cycles through 3 or 4 screenshots, but if you want something resembling decent quality you have to pay for it. And really work your ass off to get over the learning curve (::cough:: Gimp ::cough::). Besides, I'm not dropping a ton of money on something like Photoshop just to make a few GIFs. 

This would have been one of the pics
I'd have used in that GIF or plug-in.
If nothing else, Guild Wars 2 has some
fantastic graphics. And yes, Mikath
is yet another redheaded bearded guy.

***

All that's past is prologue, I suppose.

I changed the header of Parallel Context this time around because I wanted to distance myself from Wrath Classic a bit. No, I'm not planning on dropping Wrath Classic, it's that I'd rather see something on the header that brings back fond memories rather than resentfulness. I had to learn that one the hard way by stubbornly sticking to my TBC Classic header cadence just because that was the current phase of the expansion. So this time, since I'm not planning on raiding anymore** I decided to plop in a graphic from a more pleasant memory, Blackwing Lair. Blizzard's Season of Mastery used that graphic when BWL was released, so while it's not from an actual raid the picture still brings back a memory of the time when our best Mage pulled threat on Chromaggus and wiped the raid. We collectively laughed our asses off when that happened, because no more than 5 minutes beforehand the tank had boasted that he wasn't gonna have any problems with threat on ol' Chromag, and one of the Mages proved him wrong in the blink of an eye.

It was also a time before TBC Classic, when the raid split up into two and both doubled down on the hardcore route. Compared to TBC and Wrath Classic, those WoW Classic raids were just, well, fun. 

Feels kind of weird seeing this graphic.
I tried using this as a background for a short
while but it was far too busy. This was even
before my (brief) raiding career.

***

One thing that I have found is that I still enjoy the Classic leveling dungeons far more than I have a right to. Kind of like how if you're in a group that isn't wearing a ton of heirloom gear*** you can't simply steamroll over the content, you have to work at it. Plus the background to a lot of these Classic dungeons are fantastic, such as the quest lead-ins to The Deadmines or exploring an entire freaking city in Blackrock Depths. Now that I've been around the block more than my share of times, I do find that some of these old leveling instances in MMOs to be the most fun for me, such as Mandalorian Raiders and Athiss in SWTOR, the Garth Agarwen and Great Barrow instance clusters in LOTRO, and The Sanctum of Burning Souls in Age of Conan.

Sith Inquisitors are the Warlocks
(aka Purple Mages) of the SWTOR universe.

Maybe I should stop being so narrow-minded and spice things up a bit with a greater variety of headers from a greater variety of games. And not just MMOs, either...

The inner cover of the old Moldvay
D&D Basic Set. Willingham's artwork still
holds up to this day.

*If you reload her blog you'll see the header pic changes each time. I'm jealous. (Oh, and yes, it's HTTP, not HTTPS. Rav is still around, but hasn't updated the blog in ages.)

**Maybe the occasional Vault of Archavon, because it's pretty simple to do.

***Until I finally reached max level for the first time back in 2009-2010, I used to complain about the unfair advantage that heirloom gear gives a player compared to those without heirloms. I mean, you not only have to be max level to buy them, but you have to have enough badges from running heroic group content at max level to afford them; you can't just walk in and buy them with gold. Then, when you get them, you have a built in advantage of having gear that "levels" in quality with you. Still, a couple of my toons do have heirloom gear because they do make it easier to forget about trying to scrounge for the best gear on several of your item slots while questing out in the field. And this is coming from someone who tends to forget about selecting talents on a talent tree for, oh, five levels' worth of talents at a time.

EtA: Corrected some grammar.

Meme Monday: ::wink wink:: Memes

I know, I've used the title "Naughty Memes" before, but that was in reference to Naughty or Nice for Santa Claus for Christmas. And yes, I've done "Love Memes", but this is... ::wink wink::

Thanks for that, Agnes.
From knowyourmeme.com.

So...

We're all adults here, right? Or at least acquainted with horniness, whether we're teenagers, college kids, or older. I've been sitting on these for quite a while now, but since Easter just passed, and this would have been the time for ancient fertility rites and festivals, why not have a ::wink wink:: Meme Monday?

"I don't get it. Your names are Buzz and
Woo-- ...ohhhh..."
From memecenter.com.

For my wife this is very much a thing.
The first part, not the WoW part. Since
I had no sisters and I didn't date a lot
of girls, I have no idea how accurate this is,
but "getting the @#$%-ing bra off" is
a priority after work. Just sayin'.
From LyraFTW on Facebook.

Oh, the poor player. I would have
said that by accident.
From Munkythetroll.

Well, to be perfectly honest...
I mean, even I know that and I didn't
even watch Game of Thrones.
From Tumblr.

And two bonus ::wink wink:: memes...

Pretty much this. "We all make that
face during sex when we look like Shemp
when he needed cheese." --Dennis Miller
(back when he was good.)
From Kismetsgamerpublishing.

Boom.
From dndmemes Facebook group.