A Gateway to Great Fantasy! Raymond E. Feist's Magician: Apprentice!

Gotta admit, I'm a pretty big fan of Raymond Feist. My first experience with his work was ironically something he was only partly involved in: the classic PC RPG Betrayal at Krondor. There was something fun and enjoyable about the world--fairly grounded, lots of little details, fun and funny characters, and lots of intrigue.

Imagine my surprise a few years later when I stumbled upon a book called Krondor: The Betrayal, which was his adaptation of the story used for the game that he wrote after the fact, as far as I understand. I grabbed it off the shelf and really enjoyed it. That got me interested in his earlier works, too.

So, this post is all about Feist's first novel, which was a massive tome called Magician in Europe, but for the U.S. market it got split into two volumes: Magician: Apprentice and Magician: Master. I'll be talking about the first volume today.

This was Feist's first novel, and it was based on a world that he and his friends had created and fleshed out as a setting for their tabletop RPG sessions. Reviews at the time said its weakest point was its lack of originality, but I feel like that's missing the forest for the trees. Midkemia shares a lot of rough characteristics with classic sword and sorcery settings, but I think it offers a lot more.

For example, Feist's setting, especially in the earlier novels, is much lower-magic than most. This gives things a very grounded quality that makes even small stakes feel heavy. Feist's take on medieval-style politics is rich and nuanced and has a reasonable mixture of good and bad guys, with some nice philosophical hooks behind the good guys. The world has a believable mixture of light and dark, and practical and magical. We see large variations in culture, climate, and government over the course of just this book.

Magician: Apprentice tells the first part of the story of Pug, a young man who will become a very powerful force in later books. We get to see the first couple of years of the Riftwar, which I find fascinating. It's a hero's journey, but with enough unique bits that it feels fresh and alive.

Feist is great at juggling multiple story threads without rushing to get from one to another or to bring them together. Pug's story, that of a common-born orphan thrust by coincidence into the role of an unsuccessful apprentice, results in his eventual elevation to minor nobility by his Duke Borric and his entry into the war effort.

But his story, starting in Crydee, splits into three as you read further. We get a side story of Pug's foster brother, Tomas, and his interactions with the dwarves and the elves, and a fantastic tale full of intrigue as we follow Duke Borric's son Arutha on a series of political missions. These three threads split off from each other partway through the book and all of them develop in interesting ways.

There's a lot of mystery in this book.

Midkemian politics are one of my favorite aspects of the early Feist novels. He aims neither for an idealistic portrayal of a kingdom fighting an empire, nor a grim and pessimistic look at life under a noble caste. Borric has a strong sense of justice and obligation to the people, and so do his sons, sometimes to what many would call a fault. There are hints of a crisis looming on the horizon in this book, and the efforts of Arutha and his companions to cope with it are amazing to read.

There is no obvious "villain" on the Midkemian side, only some with different senses of where honor and allegiance should lie, and a king with an interesting, conflicting position.

There are several moving moments throughout the book. Without spoiling too much, we have the Choosing ceremony, a pledge of three friends, scenes that show the strangeness of war and honor, and more.

Feist has a good sense of comedic timing in this book, too. The three friends' pledge is a good example, but we have the dry humor of Martin and the elves, the bickering between Roland and Carline, and the humble irony of an old pirate captain.

Romance is present in the book but it is kept fairly tasteful and is not really the focus of the book.

All in all, this book was the beginning of the Riftwar Saga, a series of four books of which I've read three (really need to get a copy of Silverthorn one of these days), and enjoyed all of them. Feist organizes his books into "sagas" of usually four books, where each "saga" has a different set of main characters, with some overlap and appearances of characters from other books. I've probably read about ten or twelve of Feist's books at this point, and honestly my favorites are many of these older ones.

Later works have a tendency to raise the stakes in a way I find a little ridiculous, whereas these early books, sometimes the stakes are just one little frontier castle and a few hundred men, and I love how Feist handles these situations. Plus, the low-magic setting means that problem-solving is a thoughtful and detailed process, which I really enjoy.

Each Feist Saga has a different focus, too, so feel free to start at the beginning of any of them, but this is his first book and is an excellent starting point, no matter which of his "sagas" you end up liking best.

Grab a copy here, if you're interested:
https://a.co/d/bELGigK

The Joy of Low-Stakes Storytelling! Lessons from my First Novel, part 2!

One of the trends I've seen in a lot of modern fiction is the tendency toward the epic. Everybody wants to create this massive, complex, world with amazing, powerful characters engaged in a climactic struggle to save the universe from an unapologetic, existential evil that holds billions of lives in the balance.

God, I'm tired of those.

Detail, Dialect, and Sausage-Making: A Review of The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress

Well, here we are: Robert A. Heinlein's The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress. You'd think, me being me, that I would have read this libertarian sci-fi classic a long time ago, but somehow that's not the case.

That said, let's get to it.

The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress tells the story of a revolution of the people of the Moon against the control of the Earth. The main/PoV character is Manuel, a guy who works on Luna's biggest supercomputer, and finds out that it's alive, or something close to it. That's not a spoiler; it happens in the first few pages of the book.

Manuel befriends this computer. He calls it Mike. Around the same time, Manuel gets pulled into some major civil unrest on Luna, and ends up leading a group working toward independence for the moon colony. The original inhabitants of Luna were criminals, but now that's not the whole population, plus many of the criminals have served their time, only to discover their bodies can no longer handle full Earth gravity.

Having a huge, self-aware supercomputer on their side turns out to be a big help to the independence movement.

To continue with minimal spoilers, what I can say is that the scenario Heinlein creates for the quest for independence is incredibly detailed, with a lot more ups and downs than many authors would bother to create, and more ups than you'd expect, thanks in big part to Mike's input. There are some very interesting hard choices to be made, and Heinlein doesn't skimp on consequences.

Because of the high level of detail, the pacing varies widely throughout the story. The "fun" parts are relatively quick, though expanded significantly through Heinlein's attention to detail, but the "boring" parts are not ignored. It feels like most authors who write about big societal upheavals love to ignore the busywork, but Heinlein doesn't let us pretend there isn't sausage being made.

The Lunar quest for independence kept me intrigued, though. I would frequently wonder, what problem will they face next? What tactics will they use? There were almost always multiple courses of action to take, and a decent amount of discussion and consideration of pros and cons and potential next moves.

The story is told from Manuel's first person perspective, which is consistent and usually unsure of what he'll do next or whether what he's doing is right. He's thrown into the driver's seat of history by accident, and his clear purpose and level-headedness pull him through.

There are lots of unique and interesting cultural details in the story: life on Luna, how cultural norms are enforced, the strange cultural norms that arise due to certain societal forces, tons of detail about the long-term health and physical traits of born and bred moonmen... I wonder how accurate Heinlein's perspective on the long-term effects of 1/6th gravity are on the human body. We know zero-g is really bad, but Heinlein proposes a lot of positive effects of long-term moon-level gravity.

One element that gets a lot of detail is Heinlein's description of the "line marriage" system prevalent on Luna. Part of me wonders how much of Manuel's praise for the "line marriage" is Manuel speaking, and how much is Heinlein. Clarke did something similar, too, in Rendezvous with Rama, but there was a lot less detail about it in Clarke's writing.

Another element that I found kind of... quaint? was the conception of how low the bar was to a computer being seen as "alive." In the modern day of AI production of everything from writing to memes to videos to jokes and beyond, once Manuel discovers Mike can talk and come up with jokes, he pretty much concludes Mike is a real boy.

The characters in the book are functional but not really layered or tricky. Everything is pretty straightforward, with nearly all of the intrigue coming from their complicated task. Heinlein tries doing something really weird with dialect in this book: he drops a lot of pronouns and connecting words, and throws in a lot of little foreign-language bits, which were almost always thankfully obvious in meaning. However, the dialect is somewhat inconsistent, leading to it being more difficult for the reader to "get used to."

The foreign language bits are frequently redundant, with several different words used for "yes," or so it seems, but on more careful consideration I realized that it may have been an attempt by Heinlein to highlight the spirit of independence and local pride of the people of Luna.

One final major criticism: The current e-book edition available on Amazon is abhorrently bad. It is a bad picture-to-text scan, with lots of messed-up letters and hyphenation. The formatting is awful, with missing line and page breaks. The last sentence of most chapters runs into the next chapter number, it's so badly done. There are even quite a few repeated sentences later in the book!

So, I'll link to an older edition here, and if you want a physical copy, go look for an old print edition or something on Ebay or whatever. I'm serious. As far as I can tell, the print editions that pop up first on Amazon are also based on this butchered eBook version.

Final thoughts: I enjoyed it, even though it was somewhat hard to read, partly due to Heinlein's inconsistent application of dialect, and partly due to the awful eBook version. However, if I look past those problems, I thought it was detailed, fought hard to stay plausible, and most of all, was hopeful. A good story for any freedom-loving sci-fi readers to check out.

Lessons from my First Novel 1: Five Planks for Character-Building

One of the things that bugs me about modern science fiction is the characters... Despite often being parts of supposedly military organizations, they pull rank at the slightest provocation. Their leaders give bad orders, and their subordinates disobey reasonable ones. The Peter Principle is everywhere on display.

We see characters who can do anything and everything well, who always succeed and have no sense of their own fallibility. Headstrongness has become almost a kind of plot armor.

We see characters who turn minor disagreements into massive splinters and nursed grudges. They rarely discuss their differences and come to some kind of middle ground, not even an agreement to disagree in too many cases.

We also see fiction where the PoV character almost always knows best.

We see never-before-observed phenomena and problems solved in five minutes with the science-fiction equivalent of chewing gum and gravel.

A part of my desire is to push against this trend, and while I was creating my debut novel, Pursuit of the Heliotrope, I came up with five planks to help create characters that are balanced--capable but flawed.

The five planks are:

1. Professionalism. Characters argue but attempt to reach consensus.
   For instance, in one of the discussions, Lew comes up with an idea that makes Orland Co. look a little bad, but the company rep looks at his arguments in good faith and attempts to provide additional info to help mitigate any situations that might arise if Lew is right.
   My characters maintain professional language and tone.
   For instance, the Orland company rep is not demanding or haughty. Iggy and Wyatt have a very professional back-and-forth as Iggy searches for traps on a ship. Criticisms are done in private, when necessary and possible.
   Ranks are respected but not worshipped.
   For instance, Aric makes a point to treat his hired contractors well, at his own expense. There are occasional direct orders given, but when they happen, they are usually for the clear benefit of the subordinate. Wyatt recognizes that he's getting older, and remembers the value of youthful agility.
   
   
2. Respectability. Subordinates respect superiors and superiors respect subordinates.
   For instance, Aric recognizes Lew's expertise on repairs, and puts significant trust into his evaluations. Iggy says to Aric that he "learned from the best," but he's careful to say this so that Wyatt and Max can't hear him.
   Superiors know the strengths and weaknesses of their subordinates and give them appropriate tasks.
   For instance, Wyatt assigns two solid engineers to help Lew work on the Heliotrope. Wyatt even knows that one of his people, Wil, is a good cook--even though that has nothing to do with Wil's official duties.
   Subordinates look up to their superiors, for good reason, and understand that they can learn from them.
   For instance, Wyatt's part-time engineers both look up to Lew as they see his expertise is the real deal.
   Disagreements happen but they are usually resolved calmly; criticisms are not seen as or used for personal attacks.
   For instance, at one point Wyatt neglects to mention a possible tactic, but for good reason, which a short conversation and some reasonable questions shows.
   
   
3. Specialization. Each character has strong and weak points.
   For instance, the different crew members are assigned to the tasks that they're best at. Lew is good at haggling for parts, but not for other goods, and he knows it.
   Characters aim at tasks that match their skills.
   For instance, the same people work with Lew multiple times on engineering tasks.
   Superiors point their subordinates in the directions that match their skills, and also the superiors recognize those skills.
   For instance, Wyatt's assignments to the Kingfisher for a particular maneuver.
   
   
4. Competence. People in certain positions are generally there for a reason.
   Everyone recognizes Wyatt's expertise in security work. Aric handles high-level planning way better than Lew or Bill. The captains of each ship command the respect of their crew because they are seen as competent, but not overcompetent.
   Problems are solved, but it takes time and materials. There are several briefings and planning sessions. Resources are finite and have limited flexibility. Sometimes things are jerry-rigged and sometimes there's a plan to get what they need. There is significant down-time when time-intensive tasks need to be completed.
   Simple ideas are thought up by multiple specialized characters. Bill and Max have a common idea at one point, and so do Aric and Lew.
   
   
5. Fallibility. This is the negative plank that ties everything together.
   Even characters with strong specializations can and do fail. There are a few examples of this in the book.
   Characters also recognize the possibility of failure and try to plan for contingencies. They check the final quality of their work, too.
   For instance, when Lew is fixing some thrusters, he not only takes time and materials and manpower to finish the repairs, but he talks about the tests he performed to ensure that the repairs are holding.
   

These are the five planks that I tried to incorporate into my character designs and interactions in order to get away from the tropes I mentioned at the beginning of this post. While these aren't a perfect silver bullet, I think they helped to make my story more fun and more believable, and give my characters more depth and reasonable interactions.

If you agree, you might want to give Pursuit of the Heliotrope a try.

You can grab a copy at Amazon.

Or at a variety of other eBook retailers.

Thus concludes Part 1 of the lessons I learned from writing my first novel. There will be more parts coming soon!

Light-Years Away, Both in Tone and Actual Distance: Foundation and Empire!

I really loved Foundation, so naturally I wanted to read the next book in the series, Foundation and Empire, fairly soon... What I found was a very different book from the first one, much more "concentrated," and with a very different tone!

In fact, one of the weak points of the book is going to affect the review, because Foundation and Empire's plot is littered with deliberate surprises, to the point that it's a hard book to review without major spoilers, but I'll try.

Tips and Thoughts on Jargon for Writers and Readers

After reading Dune, I spent a little time thinking about the use of jargon in writing--where it's necessary, where it isn't, how to handle it, how it can be used for nefarious purposes, etc.

So, in case you don't know the definition, let's start with What is Jargon? Jargon is technical terminology or high-level language compared to the expected audience of the piece. So, if I talked about Bragg diffraction to a group of physicists, that wouldn't be jargon, but if I put it into a story, it would. This could also include the use of made-up or foreign-language words in fiction, for instance, a random Romanian word in a book not targeted at Romanian speakers.

Sometimes jargon is necessary. We need it when we need a precise description of a thing, such as the cobalt bombs of On the Beach or the psychohistory of Foundation. We also need it when we are introducing unique or novel constructs in our fictional worlds, such as Dune's stillsuits and Feist's Lesser and Greater Path magicians.

It's worth noting that novel jargon can be made more accessible by making compound words like stillsuit; the definition is in the word.

Sometimes jargon is unnecessary but helps to add flavor to the story. Proper names are a good example of this, such as Epasotl in Doomsday Recon. We may also want to show off cultural artifacts or phenomena which are part of the story, such as Clanspeak in Battletech, or unique month and holiday names in the Elder Scrolls setting.

It's worth remembering that whenever jargon appears for a good reason in the story, the author needs to make a good faith effort to explain the jargon either explicitly or through context. Sometimes flavor jargon only appears once, but even then it helps if there is some context to guide the reader's understanding. For example, the fictional month names in the Elder Scrolls world are mostly veiled references to what time of year it is, with references to harvest times, etc.

All of these uses of jargon are valid and can be great boons to your worldbuilding. However, some authors like to use jargon in ways that can confuse the reader or damage immersion.

One example is extensive use of large quantities of jargon which require the reader to spend a lot of time reading and trying to remember the meaning. In The Widow's Son, there were frequent sentences in foreign languages (mostly Spanish) that were often long enough that someone unfamiliar with Spanish would have trouble understanding what was said. Some of the context clues for the meanings of those sentences were too vague or too far away or even missing.

Using jargon when perfectly reasonable English terms already exist is another bad use of jargon. Perhaps one of the silliest and most egregious examples is illustrated here:

Another bad use of jargon is to create an illusion of depth, or to force a particular theme. One poignant example of this is the naming conventions in the anime Evangelion. Throwing darts at a bible in order to name things is neither depth, nor true attention to theme.

As a writer, here are some things you can do to ensure your jargon is reasonable:

Ask yourself... 

• Is this jargon necessary?
• Is the reason behind it justified by the plot, characters, or setting?
• Is it organic and supported by context?
• How much am I asking the reader to memorize?
• Can I simplify it or make things easier to read somehow?

As a reader, you might ask yourself these questions instead:

• Is the jargon slowing me down?
• Do thematic elements of the jargon actually fit?
• What jargon do I actually need to remember, and which can I let slide by?

Jargon is a powerful tool, which can add precision, originality, and color to your writing. As a reader, you should also be open to being taught interesting, original, and useful things in your reading.

However, it can also be used to confuse or dupe the reader. Therefore, writers must be aware and respectful of the reader's time, and readers should distinguish between jargon that serves the story and jargon that confuses things, and actively avoid the latter.

Intricate Characters, Unique Worldbuilding, but so darn Depressing: Dune Review!

Before I start, I want to tell a little story. Back in the day when Borders had bookstores all over the place, I would often go to see what was on the shelves with friends. My friend Justin and I came up with a fun game to play with the later Dune sequels (the ones from after Frank Herbert died). We called it the "Dune check," and what we'd do was grab a Dune book off of a shelf, open it to a random page, and see if there was anything on that page that was written so weirdly that it was funny. I don't think we ever found a pair of pages that wasn't funny.

So, I was a bit skeptical going into Dune, and was pleasantly surprised to find that, while the writing is a bit clunky in places, it wasn't nearly as laughable as the later Brian Herbert books. As I've been leaning more into classic sci-fi, I thought it was worth giving Dune a real chance.