Mare Somniorum

Hm, I just realized I forgot to post about this one.  It’s been a while now, I did put it off for a good while after feeling that the second book in the trilogy (Redemption Ark) didn’t suck me in.  Anyway, I did eventually pick up “Absolution Gap” and it brings us back into Reynolds’ big opera.

But, hey, we’re down planetside on yet another track.  In more ways than one.  Surprisingly I found a lot more of a fresh feel to this book than I expected and it was obvious that Reynolds really wanted to go somewhere with this book. We get more character time and lots of peeks into peoples inner workings, in the not-so-gory way.

The actually planetside setting itself is quite interesting and the culture that has come around the place is eeriy yet believable.  Our old friends come back to face another set of challenges and to make some tough choices.  All in all, it was a very nice step up from were we left off.

The series as a whole is worth reading, but it’s not something I’d feel horrid for missing.  Not like “Chasm City” anyway, that still stands out for me as Reynolds’ crux.  He’s written something that he’ll be measured out against for all time, and I really don’t see him being able to match it.

And so we reach the end of the Hutch / Academy saga.  The sixth and last installment is “Cauldron”, and after finishing it one can’t help but feel that McDevitt has been as much a part of this journey as we have.  In “Cauldron” we now have an improved engine, we can visit the core of the galaxy, we can truly reach out to the stars and we do just that.

We visit several worlds, each visit something that once would have been a book onto itself.  We have miniature versions of previous books (“Deepsix” and “Omega” both) but in “Cauldron” McDevitt has changed his focus.  We’re no longer looking outwards, we’re not looking at the external action.  As we throw away the chains of distance, as the stars open up to us, we start looking inwards.  We start to question ourselves.

And that’s what this work is about.  It’s about how we are affected by the journeys we’ve done, how we’re affected by the fact that space is opened up to us, how our conceptions and desires change when our possibilities change.  To begin with I felt a bit surprised at all this, especially as I’ve said before that I’ve always felt McDevitt to deliver a specific “realm” of storytelling that was a well known to us.  With “Cauldron” he moves even further towards Clarke as the outside world becomes little more than a backdrop for us to question ourselves.

Does he succeed?  Yes, I think he does.  I’ll admit to having my doubts while reading it, and that I actively had to reevaluate the book in hindsight, but it *is* a good book.  We’re left off with the tail end of a saga not only about the adventures of Hutch, but also of how her world, in every way, now has changed.  And with it, we change as well.

A planet is about to get sucked into another planet.  It’s the celestial event, and not to mention the fireworks, of a lifetime.  And then someone has to discover ruins on one of the planets…  Suddenly there is a race to scout out the planet as best one can before its ripped apart and turned into stellar debris.  Inte rstellar traffic might be in its golden age but space is a big place so one takes what one can get to do the exploring.

We’re not surprised that “Hutch” is in the area, and she promptly gets instructed to go down and find out as much as possible about the planet and its inhabitants in the time remaining. Of course, last time someone was there the mission got aborted as the local wildlife took a liking to the party.  “Liking” in the sense of finding them quite decent as snacks.  It’s pretty clear from the start that it’s not going to be a pleasure cruise.

I first read “Deepsix” maybe five or six years ago, and it didn’t leave much of an impact.  Rereading it now I mostly wonder why that was.  “Deepsix” is well paced, well written and classic McDevitt.  It’s a good read that quickly sucks you in and holds on to you on every page as you flip through them.

“Learning to Eat Soup with a Knife, Counterinsurgency Lessons from Malaya and Vietnam” is a look at the very history of military experience under pressure. How do two very different military machines deal with the previously unknown? This is shown to be as much a cultural experience as a military one. How the military is formed and what it has fought for helps shape not just the military structure and its doctrine, but also how hard it becomes to change the institution itself.

To review both wars from a military perspective, Nagl seeks to understand how well either military became learning institutions. Nagl looks at how the institutions changed over time in their respective situations and how they saw themselves as well as their enemies at large. It is, without a shadow of a doubt, a stark review of US military mentality. Trying to change how the war in Vietnam was waged was hard, even though several attempts were made from within the US military hierarchy. As an anonymous U.S. Army officer replied in 1969 to one of the last attempts at a change of policy:

I’ll be damned if I permit the United States Army, its institutions, its doctrine, and its tradition to be destroyed just to win this lousy war.

“Learning [...]“, University of Chicago Press paperback, p. 172

Templer, once he took over the British leadership in Malaya strongly desired and nurtured new ideas, realistic goals and honest news. Westmoreland however very much fronted the “can do” attitude and ensured that the only acceptable review of the way the war in Vietnam was fought was written by the people who were responsible for the current strategy.

It is, all in all, a highly informative work on every level the book seeks out. The authors new preface from his combat experiences in Iraq also help to illuminate the current status of the US military. The book is highly recommended reading.