Tuesday 12 August 2003

Pic of the day: Into the Darkness. Luckily, it's not about me this time.

Review: Derlavai, book 1

Lately I have been reading a paper book. That's rather unusual for me, I usually buy e-books from Fictionwise.com. In part I guess I did it to support the new geek shop in Kristiansand, "Outland". Located on the main street - albeit in a basement - it is bound to have fairly high rent. And the customers - or should I say "customers" - tend to be kids and some teens more interested in talking and playing card games than buying. I can only hope they buy their cards there too.

Anyway, the book is Into the Darkness by Harry Turtledove. It is the first in a series of at least six about "the world at war". It is, then, a World War novel. But not like that. Not like that at all. In fact, it is like nothing I have ever seen.

Turtledove is well known for his alternate history novels. This is a genre somewhere in between historical fiction and speculative fiction: You take history at some point in the past, then move it in a different direction. Another name for it is "what if" (two Usenet groups dedicated to this kind of speculation both have .what-if as part of their name). By far the most common are: "What if the South did not lose the Civil War?" And "What if the Axis did not lose World War 2?" Other common scenarios are "What if Rome did not fall" and "What if the Vikings settled America?" These events were so much in the balance that it is easy to think of ways they could have gone differently. Or so it seems to the casual observer.

Turtledove had already made a name for himself before his groundbreaking Worldwar novels. That series (still ongoing, it seems) is a step far out from conventional AH and toward SF. Aliens, humanoid reptiles, come to conquer Earth. They have early 21th century technology plus starfaring. They have sent only a moderate force, expecting peasants with pitchforks. They have the bad luck of finding the planet studded with fighter planes and submarines. And they have the good luck to arrive just as WW2 is about to break out. The world does not unite against them, and a very different WW2 breaks out, with different fronts and one more Great Power. But that's not the book I'm reading now. Far from it. Sort of. You see, both of them are World War novels. Very strange World War novels. But the Derlavai series (or Darkness series) is even weirder.

***

Into the Darkness is about a world where magic is very real, and can be harnessed systematically. Humans being humans, their application of magic is eerily similar to our application of technology. They have tame dragons (well, as tame as dragons can be) used mostly for aerial warfare. They have explosive magic called "eggs" which are basically bombs and grenades. And of course the "stick", a ranged weapon like a rifle, except it works more like a laser, sending out short bursts of searing heat. Behemoths are bred for armored attack, and leviathans for sea. Trains (called caravans) race along the Ley lines. Crystals are used for ranged communication, although there is no equivalent of radio or TV. Oh, and no democracy: Feudalism is still the rule, although it is less formal in some places.

Since the technology is around 1940 level, you would expect an allegory of WW2. You would be almost wrong. You see, both the continents and nations have been thoroughly randomized. You will find no true equivalent of Germany or America or Japan. There are two evil empires, one of them civilized but ruthless and one backwards but huge and insane. But they are not Germany and Russia. And the Jews are not Jews, they are Romans, except they are tall and blond and the only culture to wear trousers rather than kilts, tunics etc. These Kaunians, as they are called, once had an empire spanning much of the known world. But eventually the empire fell to the Algarvians, red-haired barbarians from the south.

Yes, for some obscure reason the more civilized evil empire is named Algarve. As far as I can see, all the other names are either imaginary or extremely obscure: Forthweg, Valmiera, Unkerlant, Lagoas, Gyongyos, Kuusamo, Yanina, Jelgava ... So why the main aggressor is named for a popular tourist trap in Portugal is beyond me. Perhaps Turtledove has a score to settle after a bad vacation or something.

Anyway, Unkerlant is not Germany but more like Russia. Except not really. And Algarve is not really Germany either. The cultures are so randomized, your expectations are confounded over and over. The nations constantly act out of character or lie in the wrong places. To top it all, the civilized world is in the southern hemisphere. The further north you come, the warmer; the only black people live on a peninsula around the size of Scandinavia; they are highly civilized, go naked except for sandals, and ride camels to battle.

A world war does indeed unfold, but it does follow WW2 only in the roughest of outlines. If you describe it in more than a couple sentences, the parallel falls apart. This, if I may say so, is a good thing. It means you have no idea what will happen next. Except that the poor Kaunians are going to become victims of genocide when everyone has had time to get used to the thought.

Best of all, Turtledove manages to convey the feeling that everyone is right. Or rather that everyone feels they are in the right. We see through the eyes of commoners and nobles (who also tend be soldiers and officers respectively), men and a few women, from different nations. And they are all good people, trying to do the right thing. You see two characters who would kill each other on sight, and still you identify with them both. This is the true value of the book: It dispels the illusion that war is good guys fighting bad guys. War is good guys fighting good guys because they are conditioned to obey bad guys. And even the bad guys mostly just do their job. The only true bad guy in the first book is king Swemmel of Unkerlant, a rough equivalent of Stalin, and he may quite likely be insane. Even so, ironically we find that it would probably have been better for all if he had acted on his madness rather than being calmed down by the good guys... Oh, and I guess the fat, lazy, slightly corrupt constable is a bad guy too. Just a little bit bad. The other viewpoint characters are almost saints ... and they are still likely to blaze each other's brains out.

My worst complaint about this book is the confusion. Since languages and names are randomized too, you cannot say for sure where most people are from. And the book changes viewpoint several times each chapter, and each time you may have to read a couple pages before you realize where you are and which character you are riding. Names are so random and people are so similar that the book would benefit enormously if someone had added a small symbol of nationality at the beginning of each viewpoint, kinda like the icon chapters in Wheel of Time. Only the women and children (and the old black guy) really stand out from the gray mass of similar viewpoints. This may be intentional to show how alike we humans are, but it is also really really frustrating. This guy needs a less respectful editor.

That said, I've already bought the next three books in the series...