This book is a pretty serious classic of Japanese space opera. Written by Yoshiki Tanaka in 1982 (I think), it spawned a series of 10 main books and 5 volumes of side stories. It was adapted into anime twice, and manga, and video games. But it didn't really make it over to the U.S. in any official capacity until around 2016.
This version was translated by Daniel Huddleston (which is oddly coincidentally the name of a Nero Wolfe character).
I had heard of the series but never really looked deeply into it. Then I saw a short clip from the old anime and was intrigued. So, I figured I'd check out the first book and see what I thought.
I was generally impressed, but with a little twinge of weirdness. Let me explain.
This book is pretty well-done. It's trying to be very epic, and it at least tries to earn some of that epicness, which partially alleviates a common complaint I have with books like this.
It focuses on two characters, one each from the Empire and Alliance, two groups that have been at war for hundreds of years. Reinhard von Lohengramm is an upstart noble of the Empire trying to free his sister from an unhappy situation and revitalize the Empire. Yang Wen-Li is an eccentric tactical genius who calls himself "naturally lazy" and has a very unique perspective on the world around him. Yang rises through the ranks of the Alliance based on his clever handling of several major tactical problems.
This first book is the story of both of their rises through the ranks of their respective factions, and all the drama and politics that go with that.
The thing that gives me that twinge of weirdness is the tone. The narrator is typically very dry and lofty, but it frequently "swoops down" to the perspective of one character or another, only to fly back up again a few sentences later. But the really weird part is when that disembodied narrator swoops down to give some kind of weird aside to the reader... it's an interesting technique, but it also was a little jarring, even disorienting at times.
The book's level is also a little weird. 99% of the vocabulary is at a fairly low young-adult level, but at times it throws in a few weird and uncommon words, as if groping through a thesaurus. At the same time, there are a few points where a whole paragraph is used to give a definition for a term like "heterochromia," when the word could have been used alone or avoided entirely.
Even weirder, while I ended the first book wanting to know what happens next, at the same time I felt a little put off by the floweryness and wordiness of this book. It's weird to want to move to the next volume but feel little desire to re-read the first. But that's something a good serial does, I guess?
There were a few typos and even a couple of places where I think the sentence was mistranslated, though I didn't have a Japanese version at hand to compare, so maybe I'm wrong.
All in all, it was a good read, a little simplistic in language while also wordy, but had good tactics and politics and drama without becoming melodramatic or trite. Though it is filled with philosophical tidbits that might also seem novel to a young adult reader, but are pretty obvious to someone as old as I am.
If you can tolerate the tone and style, and if you want some good, well-thought-out space opera. Give it a look. The version I read is here. Make sure to check the sample to get a sense of the style. Maybe it won't bother you as much as it did me, but on the other hand you might find it disqualifying.
And if you want more spoilers, check out the Spoiler Section of the video embedded above.
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