Knight's Reading List XX: August 2008

Reading List:

Drake, David. The Fortress of Glass.
___. When the Tide Rises.
Marryat, Frederick. Mr. Midshipman Easy.
Ryan, Mark. Geometry for Dummies, 2nd edition.
Talese, Gay, editor. The Best American Essays 1987.
Theroux, Paul, editor. The Best American Travel Writing 2001.

Non-Fiction:

Ryan, Mark. Geometry for Dummies, 2nd edition. Indianapolis: Wiley Publishing, Inc., 2008. xviii + 388 pages. Index.

Most people think of geometry as a branch of mathematics. Some of them think of it as a particularly dull branch of mathematics they were compelled to study in ninth or tenth grade. Because of its emphasis on proofs, Mark Ryan’s book makes it clear that geometry is a method of logical thinking. Geometric proofs, like other kinds of formal logic, have very precise rules and require rigorous thought applying the relevant principles.

I have often said that the most useful part of the mathematics I learned in school was trigonometry, because it’s the only part I ever made money from. (I worked for a civil engineering firm for a couple of summers while I was in college, and I applied trigonometry to land surveying.) That is not entirely true, I realize. The logical thinking and the attention to the structure of a problem required for geometry are applicable to many of the problems we face at work and in other fields of life.

I enjoyed revisiting geometry, the logical structure of which was so admired by the philosopher Thomas Hobbes. You mind find that you also enjoy returning in thought to the tenth grade.

Talese, Gay, editor. The Best American Essays 1987. 1987. xxii + 323 pages.

Theroux, Paul, editor. The Best American Travel Writing 2001. 2001. xxii + 418 pages.

I really enjoy the “Best American” collections, whether short stories, mystery stories, essays, or travel writing. If I’m going to review them, however, I need to take a lot more notes on the contents. Right now, I couldn’t recall a single essay from Talese’s collection, even though I know I found a number of them to be interesting and well-written. One of the best essays in the Theroux collection is by a woman who goes to the Arctic islands and goes out with Inuit seal hunters on their dog sleds. It comes to me now that the same woman wrote an essay on ranching in Wyoming that was included in Talese’s collection. I think I’ll have to re-read these books before I can say much more about them. I do think they would repay re-reading.

Fiction:

Drake, David. The Fortress of Glass. New York: Tor, 2006. 384 pages. The Crown of the Isles, Volume One.

In the beginning, there was Lord of the Isles, a fantasy novel set in a world of islands ranged round the Inner Sea like jewels around a diadem. This developed into a series of six books called, also, Lord of the Isles. After the first book, there were the sequels Queen of Demons, Servant of the Dragon, Goddess of the Ice Realm, Mistress of the Catacombs, and Master of the Cauldron. The unifying motive of the stories is the struggle of six friends – the only six characters common to all of the novels – against magicians and demons using the forces of evil against the interests of mankind. The six friends consist Garric or-Reise and his sister Sharina os-Reise (who are not, in fact, biological brother and sister; Cashel or-Kenset and his sister Ilna os-Kenset, children of a human and a nymph; Tenoctris, a wizard brought forward from a thousand years in the past; and Liane bos-Benliman, Garric’s fiancee. The religious background is based on the pantheon and beliefs of the Sumerians, while the magic is classical and largely Egyptian.

The Fortress of Glass marks a departure in this series, hence its designation as “The First Volume of The Crown of the Isles.” Basically, the clash of magical forces becomes so cataclysmic that the world of the Isles undergoes a basic physical and temporal transformation, and comes into contact with a new and threatening culture, the Coerli. The novel leads up to that catastrophe in Drake’s patented fashion. The six friends arrive with some other friends and advisors, and a royal fleet, at the island of First Atara. They find that King Cervoran has just died, and his son, a young boy named Protas, has succeeded him. At the funeral for King Cervoran, Garric disappears, transported by magic to another plane, a world on which the Coerli are the dominant species. Ilna, with her friend Chalcus and the child Merota on a patrol on the cutter Heron. Cashel takes the orphaned Protas in hand. Sharina becomes regent in Garric’s absence. And we’re off!

Imagine a novel in which the author follows Lewis and Clark on their expedition, interweaving an account of Zebulon Pike’s travels up the Arkansas, while following the activities of Jefferson back in Washington, and bringing all of these characters back together at a reception at the White House at the end of the book. Imagine, moreover, that Lewis and Pike bring back to Washington information that allows Mr. Jefferson to solve his most pressing political problems. There, in a nutshell, is David Drake’s technique. He divides his characters up into four groups, sends each group off on a series of adventures that would stand on its own as a novella, and brings them back together at the end so that the resolution of their individual challenges contribute to the successful conclusion of the main problem of the book: defeating evil and unifying the Isles under Prince Garric. Herman Wouk used a similar structure in The Winds of War and War and Remembrance, but I think Wouk used even more characters. Allan Drury’s Washington novels had something of the same structure, and so did Tolstoy’s War and Peace. There are a number of tricks to managing a work in this form, and Drake handles them all competently, resulting in an engrossing read, in which the reader is caught up in several narratives at once.

___. When the Tide Rises. Riverdale, NY: Baen Books, 2008. 356 pages. Sequel to Some Golden Harbor.

David Drake has two successful series of novels in print. From Tor, you get Lord of the Isles. From Baen, you get The RCN Series, the first of which was With the Lightnings. The adventures of Lieutenant Daniel Leary and his communications aide Adele Mundy in the Royal Cinnabar Navy (hence “RCN”) are fast-paced and exciting. This is Space Opera in a modern incarnation.

The sixth in The RCN Series, When the Tide Rises, involves now-Commander Leary and Mundy in the affairs of a backwater planet, threatened by the forces, and the intrigue, of the Alliance, Cinnabar’s chief adversary. Drake bases this book on Lord Cochrane’s experiences in Chile and Brazil. (Patrick O’Brian used some of the same material in some of his novels. I must say the whole thing reminded me of Conrad’s Nostromo, but without the mines.) Which is to say, with slender resources, their wits, and the courage of their RCN crew, Leary and Mundy have to overcome not only the Alliance threat, but the cowardice, selfishness, and fecklessness of the locals.

I went into some detail about the structure of Drake’s Isles novels above. The RCN novels are shorter and very much simpler. Instead of tracking four groups of characters, plus side events, you have two: Leary and Mundy. Moreover, they operate together at frequent intervals, and their communication is constant. In fact, they come close to the sort of rapport that allows people to finish each other’s sentences. On the other hand, the simplicity of the plots shouldn’t deceive you about the characters; Leary and Mundy are fully-realized personalities, with quirks and twists enough to make them almost as surprising as real people.

Marryat, Frederick. Mr. Midshipman Easy. 1998 [1836]. Xviii + 340 pages.

I enjoyed reading Mr. Midshipman Easy. Marryat has a wry and ready sense of humor, and this is a lively tale of sea-going adventure in the Mediterranean during the Napoleonic Wars. I don’t know if C. S. Forester read Marryat, but Patrick O’Brian, author of the Aubrey/Maturin novels, certainly did. In fact, there are incidents in Mr. Midshipman Easy which will be easily recognizable to O’Brian fans. This is a book well worth reading for anyone interested in naval warfare. Mr. Hornblower! Mr. Aubrey! Meet your literary great-great-grandfather!