Thursday 26 August 2004

Pic of the day: Not exactly the Good Book, but entertaining and thought provoking for a novel, like its prequels. (I read them at this time last year.)

"Jaws of Darkness"

No, it's not about me being depressed. It is the latest book available here in Harry Turtledove's Derlavai series, about the equivalent off World War II on a world where magic is real. But unlike your standard Dungeons and Dragons book, this is not set in the Middle Ages. The dragons are now bred for aerial fighting and bombing; leviathans are used as submarines, and behemoths as tanks. Magical warfare has become industry. And with the boundless ambition of King Mezentio, human sacrifice becomes industry too. While not exactly Hitler, King Mezentio takes on a similar role on this planet.

When you try to describe the plot in a few sentences, it sounds like our World War II. But if you look closer, it is very different. The supposed Germans have Italian-style names and mannerisms, while the supposed Russians speak something similar to German and their country borders on the only black kingdom on the continent. The Americans look like Japanese or perhaps Chinese but speak Finnish, and are the aboriginal people on their island continent. And so on and on. It is a completely different story ... and yet, after all the plot twists and turns, the very large picture is eerily familiar.

By the time we come to Jaws of Darkness, it would be around 1944 in our world. The would-be world conquerors are retreating through the occupied territories on both flanks. But the details are still different, and the individual fates we have followed through the series are still largely undecided. But by now the viewpoint characters all make sense. I must admit that for a while in the first book, I thought they were kinda randomly chosen. I mean, sure they were meant to be there, but I thought perhaps most of them were only meant to provide perspective on the war, as seen from the hapless common people who pay the price. By now it is clear that they play an important role in history, even though it is sometimes just by being at the right place at the right time.

The book continues to make the war understandable by showing how people view the world through their limited knowledge. The same unthinking nationalism can still be found in our own world, even in the more advanced countries. But because of the distance from our own world we can see it clearly in this book, as none of the cultures really correspond to our own. This is one reason why I highly recommend this series.

Another nice detail is that the sex scenes are mercifully brief and vague and integral to the plot. In fact, I think the one childbirth in this book gets more attention than all the sex put together. I guess it helps that I come from Piers Anthony's Key to Havoc with its abundance of explicit fornication. People, there is a reason why most folks don't have sex on the lawn but in the bedroom. It is a very private thing and kinda messy too. Show your characters some respect. That's one of the things I like about Turtledove: He gets along with his characters. Even if they have to die, even if they fall on hard times, even if they are evil ... They are treated with respect and understanding.