Thursday 21 August 2003

Pic of the day: Darkness descending by Harry Turtledove.
(The first book was reviewed August 12.)

Review: Derlavai, book 2

The world is at war (with the exception, so far, of a minor tropical continent barely fully explored). The smaller (but more advanced) evil empire has conquered its neighbors and is now plowing into the larger (but more backward) other evil empire. They approach the capital through land burned by the retreating enemy. Long supply lines, rough terrain and a harsh winter grind them down, and in a city not far from the capital their advance is broken and they are forced to retreat. Meanwhile they continue to kill an ethnic minority, with more help than hindrance from some of the conquered nations. Across the sea, the world's leading researchers are studying a new application of the basic laws of nature, an almost impossible source of energy that might dwarf anything man has ever controlled before.

World War II? Not quite. In Derlavai the weapons are powered by magic, and the nations are feudal kingdoms. The prime aggressor is not Germany but Algarve, and not our Algarve either: These Algarvians have red hair, but their culture and manners, even names, are strikingly similar to modern Italians. Derlavai's Russia is called Unkerlant, and lies to the west. Then again, civilization here is on the southern hemisphere. South of Algarve's new provinces, across a long strait, lies the equivalent of America. Except they are the oldest civilization and the natives of their continent ... Oh, and they are short, slant-eyed, and language and culture are Finnish.

While this magic world has no trolls and dwarves, there is one humanoid race unlike any in our world: On the frozen "austral continent" live humans covered in fur all over, both men and women. The magic there works differently, and people have Hebrew sounding names. But the "Jews" of the world are the tall blond Kaunians who once ruled much of the world ...

***

Darkness descending is the second book in the series. In terms of progress, it is already the equivalent of 1942 and Stalingrad. The fact that there are 4 more books upsets me somewhat. I like the current pace, which would take us to 1945 at the end of book 3. I fear that things will slow to a crawl, to accommodate the extra books. Combined with the wealth of characters, this would be hard to slog through. But for some reason, this has not happened yet. Time is still moving at its usual brisk pace.

The appeal of this series is the distance it manages to make to the real WW2, which it uses to portray people from all sides as heroes or at least good citizens doing what they think is right. Due to our memories and prejudices this might be hard to pull off with a simple historical novel series.

This makes it all the more jarring, to me at least, when I see the words "night and fog" painted on the doors of empty houses where Kaunians have been dragged away to their death. "Nacht und Nebel" is so closely associated with the Nazi death camps that it could almost be considered a trademark. To this day, if you walk up to a German and say "Nacht und Nebel", he will without a doubt believe you consider him a Nazi or at least hold him responsible for his country's atrocities during that time.

But overall, the book manages to keep a distance to our history that gives it a life of its own. You don't know what will happen next ... well, you have a vague idea what will happen to the world, but not each person or town or battle or even campaign. It is not a translation of our world into magic terms ... it is a story of a magic world going through the same sort of crisis as our own did. And a good story it is, too.