A Throne of Bones – Pot Roast and Morphine, 2 Day Supply
| January 26, 2013 | Posted by Koanic under Christianity |
My preferred form of stimulation is intellectual. Vox’s latest book, A Throne of Bones, is like a 2-day morphine high. Just buy it.
If you need convincing, here my review.
Vox Day is to RR Martin as a box of pastries is to a pot roast dinner. One may taste better at the beginning, but the other you wouldn’t mind eating for the rest of your life.
* General praise
** Christian
Excellent and Tolkeinesque accounting for strong or deep history, the time of myth, impinging on the present.
Deep respect for the Church.
The scenes are more tightly woven and charged with emotion than Martin’s, and at the same time infused with truth, beauty, and inspiration, unsullied by Pollyanish Christianese, a balancing of darkness and light that is true to life in a (mostly) Christian era. Stepping into that world is like the relief of a warm bath, as one lets the filth and lies of a post-Christian era wash away.
** Military
Excellent comprehension of military culture, tactics, and strategy. A real pleasure.
Amazingly good dialogue on battlefield fear. Worth the purchase price alone. A father’s pride and a son’s loyalty are beautifully represented. Wouldn’t we all die to have relationships like that?
Excellent tension between foolhardiness, experience, valor and cowardice. Brilliant division of perspective on the battlefield, experience and youth.
The waiting before a battle, nerves and artillery.
No faggy moaning about the horrors of killing in war, but no inhuman bloodthirstiness either – instead, religious humanity tempered with steel.
Delightful flights of philosophical fancy mixed with battlefield realities, without cliched dramatization.
I KNOW that “Carnifex” is a reference to Warhammer 40k.
Accurate portrayal of the nonlethal nature of gladiatorial bouts.
** Social
Acknowledgment of social and intellectual strata.
Accurate portrayal of the vanity, empty charm, arousal at bloodlust and welching of some young girls, the sensitivity of others, and those inbetween. And an impressively accurate portrayal of a young maiden’s illicit fiery love, and fear of her father and detection. Give Vox credit for accurately portraying and differentiating the young girls this time.
Woman’s fear of being exposed in front of everyone – women are shame based. Irony of female religiosity, praying for assistance in sin. The pitilessness of metal on metal, reflecting the pitilessness of God and Nature towards the fatuous hamster.
** Dwarf comedy
Vox has a habit of embedding secret subtexts in his novels, and I’ve uncovered the latest one. The bunnyslayer scene – how meta, coming from a WoW dwarf. Did he think we wouldn’t catch the Borgulus Bunnyslayer anagram? Braless Burly Unyoung, Global Unbusy Nursery indeed!
As evidence, I quote Vox:
“I already know how the series will end. A dwarf, sitting on a mountainside, holding the bloody carcass of a rabbit in his hand as he watches the sunset. And a single tear rolls down his bearded cheek.”
But seriously, Lodi is extremely well done. The funny little lines like an impatient young 56 year old dwarf are just icing. No Gimli from LoTR movie antics.
* General criticisms
Didn’t inflect the Roman Social War script enough to account for the church.
Some of the characters blended together due to Vox writing himself in.
One of the climactic scenes was predictable and kinda lame.
Unrealistically clean action and emotion, failing to portray the Cro Mag majority, and making most characters too rational and intelligent.
* Spoilers
I hate talking in glowing generalities, so this from this point forward my review will contain lots of spoilers. Once you’re convinced, stop reading. You can always come back later after you’ve finished the book.
—–SPOILERS AHEAD——
The death of the pope geniunely moving. I suspect he was murdered by sorcery of the Watcher to accelerate the selection of the next pope, and curtail the investigation. Forcing him to hurry his plans, with sloppy results.
Fortex, the impressive alpha idiot who gets himself killed, was well done. Fortex’s error and reaction was believable.
Most excellent gladiatorial contest between the two damnatii women and the goblins. You can see the weak, slow, cowardly women ineffectively jabbing; the small male goblin eking out a victory. I cheered and roared at the fake “woman wins” feint at the end. Talk about subverting a trope! Vox takes sadistic joy in meticulously skewering various sacred cows, and I love him for it.
Loved the awkward dwarf rider outsmarting the skilled goblin rider in the rabbit games. I’m only surprised Vox didn’t make it cats instead of bunnies. The dwarf’s salute made me laugh aloud even on the second reading.
The dark irony and realism of Theuderic’s sexual relationship with the elven princess whose downfall he caused. And his thorough, psychopathic rationality in killing everyone who knew to protect his secret. Yet the man is merely human, the relationship happy, and Theuderic is genuinely concerned for her wellbeing. Ah, life.
And the elven princess, her beautiful absence of empathy for the hubristic evolutionist mages, even in their agony, her teasing of Theuderic, yet beneath, love. This was well done.
The beautiful question to the evolutionist ideologue: “Were you there?”
I loved the ultraviolent discomfirmation of evolutionary theory, punctuated by helpless elven laughter.
The promotion of Laurent, and the scorn of the elfess for the “old” men, drove home a point – that venerable experts are anything but.
Well-done tension between ambition and genuine piety – both are real in the chapel for selection of the new pope. God working with crooked timber.
I’ll stop with my blow-by-blow here. I could go through the whole book, but what’s the point? If you’re not convinced by now, don’t read it.
** Dumb confrontation between Corvus and Watcher
I conversed with Vox about this, and we wound up disagreeing. I thought the scene sucked.
This has to be a trope.
1. Villain gets built up: executes flawlessly, is super alpha.
2. Villain meets hero near end of book.
3. Hero hopelessly outmatched.
4. Villain inexplicably loses hand. Hero out-alphas villain through whole conversation.
5. Villain inexplicably gives hero extra moves in a row, allowing him to win.
So, for 1. we have: An ancient figure who has seen all of history, and been a player. A Draculesque figure brought down by some ancient Van Helsing society. A magically invincible super-demon who shuts down minds at the speed of thought. Instant, decisive, contemptuous. He skillfully captures the
papacy without detection, with all that implies in terms of psychological and religious insight. Super badass alpha badguy!
2. Villain meets hero near end of book. Glance at the remaining page count… you know what’s coming. Lame.
3. Hero hopelessly outmatched. We have the ineffective sword stab. A contrived event to show us Corvus has no chance. Yeah, right.
4. Villain inexplicably loses hand. Hero out-alphas villain through whole conversation.
The lame Watcher steadily loses hand throughout the entire exchange. It doesn’t fit. Corvus out-alphas him long before he out-murders him.
A real ancient entity wouldn’t tolerate the loss of hand to begin with. Vox’s elven court was a good example of credibly badass mages, dealing casually with would-be assassins.
No punishment
It was inexplicable for the Watcher not to inflict pain punishment after the blow. The power to inflict pain is a form of hand. His plaintive “Why did you do that” and nonretaliation feels incredibly weak. The bluster belies the facts. There’s nothing of an ancient demon there. The race that rules the werewolves wouldn’t act like this.
He didnt’ have to kill Corvus to put him on his knees. He immobilized the pope without killing him. Why would he be willing to threaten to kill Corvus’ whole family, but not to inflict a little personal pain? How could he be sophisticated enough to choose the papacy as the center of his power, manipulate a papal election, and yet be totally surprised by Christian defiance?
It’s so weak, it feels liberal. Or maybe liberal gamma. Even a child might’ve overreacted, but not underreacted.
Compounding matters, he starts whining about it. Throwing in a “worm” doesn’t alter the fact. If he was really upset, he would’ve brain melted, just a taste to show who’s boss. The decisive demon mind flayer has vanished, replaced by a comic arch villain trope. “You defy me?! Inconceivable!”
Handling “no” properly
There’s no way a Watcher who knew which bishop electors to approach possibly be surprised by genuine Christianity.
Someone who considered all creation in its passing seasons would have seen every species of mulish male defiance repeated a thousand times over.
He meets Corvus refusal with a plaintive “why”. He’s either submissive to Corvus’ frame or reactive to him throughout. This is nothing like the serene untroubled confidence of the unchallengeable. That demon would have answered “So be it” and killed him as soon as Corvus mentioned Magnus.
I don’t think a Watcher would view any human as indispensible, but even if he did, all the more reason to impress on him the pain of disobedience. Especially that Watcher, who was clearly unbalanced and sadistic.
A real demon would’ve dropped him on the first no, not goggled absurdly like a woman turned down for sex. Then the rest of the conversation would’ve been had comfortably with Corvus on his back, as the Watcher explained to him how he would inflict these and other inventive tortures on his whole family should the answer remain no. And also favor the other political party. And how the only way to get rid of him was to allow him to leave through the shadow gate. Maybe offered a deal to leave the church alone. Tell him to consider it a sort of exorcism, a victory for the faith.
5. Villain inexplicably gives hero extra moves in a row, allowing him to win.
Apparently neither pain averse nor dominant nor aware of the need to assert himself to win an ally, he permits Corvus to stab him without retaliation, drops the sword on the floor as they stand toe to toe, then turns his back at a harmless exorcism attempt (unnecessarily, since his magic is omnidirectional) and invites the decapitating blow.
It was completely foolish to let Corvus swing on him the first time. There could’ve easily been a disabling flurry instead of a single attack, or a blow to the head. It was also foolish to leave the sword lying right there. Something that had been painfully killed before would have better survival instincts.
Sure, guys let girls punch them on the shoulder or chest. Not in the nose. Much less the balls, which is the appropriate equivalent in stunlock and pain.
A stunlockable mage would know better than to stand next to an enemy warrior. Even if he survived, it’d be rather inconvenient for his cover to have a large hole through him. Much less have to wait weeks for his head to grow a new body, in the middle of an anti-magic nuthouse.
If a Watcher can feel pain, why would he let anybody start chopping him up? The vast demon who insta-coma’d the spec ops mage isn’t the same as the one who let Corvus pick up the sword and strike.
Conclusion
The scene violates rational odds. The openly defiant Corvus had way too high a win probability in the meeting, due to the Watcher’s unilateral passivity. Either Corvus needed to lie, or get luckier than a mere backturn to a non-threatening interruption.
Really, the only way Corvus should’ve won is if he brought the Michaelines with him. Which he should’ve known to do. Maybe have them wait 5 minutes and then come in, to allow the dialogue or whatever. They were right there with him at the gate when he figured out the situation. All he had to do was say “Come with me.”
I just finished reading the Vampire Earth series. It has a similar entity, the Kurians. Although the author occasionally screws up, usually Kurians don’t hesitate to employ the mindflay when an attacker gets close. They’re a good example of something ancient and hard to kill, that nevertheless occasionally gets caught due to various factors.
Corvus’ actions are easy to understand. Better to die than sell your soul to the antichrist. But it worked too conveniently. Which is too bad, because it cheapens the “fear not” message.
** Corvus fight with wife
Corvus’ argument with his wife over the death of Fortex felt a bit off. Long speechifying is realistic if not necessarily effective, but the woman would’ve responded on a time and rapport breaking basis. In other words, not to the dialectic, but melting against the rapport break over an extended period of time.
In my experience, it’s not the logical variables that matter in an argument with a female, but hand and rapport and time. It seems like all fights are the same, so I eventually just started skipping the content.
There’s loads more to talk about in a book like this, but who has the time? I do, apparently!
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Pat
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Koanic
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FrankNorman
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John Strong
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John Strong
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John Strong
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http://www.facebook.com/ronny.abraham.31 Ronny Abraham
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