The Mercy of Gods
Read courtesy of NetGalley and the publisher. I will admit to a little trepidation when I saw this was coming. I’m a major fan of The Expanse series; there’s always that mix of excitement for new work from a favourite author (combo, in this case), and worry that new work will not compare to the old. What if the first stuff was a result of thinking and planning for their whole life, and now they are doing stuff with less preparation?
Happily, my fears were completely and utterly unfounded. This book is wildly imaginative, the characters are flawed and complex and compelling, and I am already psyched for the next one. Which is probably in at least a year, so that’s going to be so very frustrating.
Humans live on Anjiin. They haven’t always been there, but they have no history to explain how or why or even really when they arrived. But they’re doing very well in terms of arts and sciences and general life standards. They have a highly structured society, which isn’t great for everyone, but people deal with it as people always do. Dafyd works in a team that has recently made a major breakthrough: they have figured out a key step in integrating the two sets of biology on Anjiin. Because this is the clue as to humanity not being indigenous to Anjiin: there is the biology that seems related to humanity, and there is… everything else. And ne’er the twain shall meet. Until now.
At this point, it seems like the story will be about science and scientific rivalry. Which is all well and good. But then something is spotted on the edge of the heliosphere, and it turns out to be aliens, who do dreadful things to Anjiin and then collect a bunch of humans and take them… somewhere else. At which point the story becomes something else entirely. There are a whole range of aliens under the dominance of the Carryx, and humans are now one of them; they have to figure out what that means, on a personal and collective level. There are (unsurprisingly) a range of responses – and it’s in this that Corey shows a deep and compassionate understanding of humanity. I don’t agree with all of the ways various characters respond – and I’m not meant to – but I do understand why they act like they do.
It’s a first book in a series, so the ending is in no way a finale. It’s absolutely a prologue to what’s to come – indeed, the opening of the book, written by a Carryx, already says that Carryx interaction with humanity is going to have unexpected and catastrophic consequences. Exactly how will that happen? No idea! Need the rest of the series to figure that out!
History in Flames: the Destruction and Survival of Medieval Manuscripts
Read via NetGalley. It’s out in August 2024.
This book is highly engaging, thoughtful, sometimes depressing, and overall wonderful.
It’s also occasionally snarky. To whit: “On 19 July 1870 France declared war on Prussia (this was a time when states still officially declared war).”
One of the things that people who have never studied history don’t really think about is just how much we don’t know about the past. And that that lack is not for want of trying, but because the sources simply aren’t available. And that sometimes, that lack isn’t because people in the past didn’t bother to record it, but because the sources have been “lost”. Sometimes “lost” means the sources succumbed to time and the environment; sometimes folks re-used the medium for other purposes (binding other books, or for bullet casings – which makes me weep). And sometimes, as in the focus of this book, they are destroyed when humans destroy archives and libraries during military campaigns. The examples are from France, Ireland, Italy and Germany – he is frank, in the introduction, about the focus being narrowly European and medieval; that’s his area, after all.
The book starts with an overview of how we know what we know – a good reminder for the expert, an easy intro for the novice. It then uses one of the most famous European examples of how narrowly some of our information has avoided being lost: the manuscript of Beowulf, whose story gives me nightmares every time I read it (one manuscript, nearly lost several times… we were THIS CLOSE to not having Grendel and Grendel’s mother and MY GOODNESS imagine how different European literature would be).
The meat of the book is in four chapters that focus on four specific case studies – four instances of the military destroying archives or libraries. In two cases, Bartlett focuses on one significant object that was lost in the destruction, as a specific example of what we used to have; in the other two, he focuses on the entire oeuvre that was destroyed, and what that means for our knowledge of an era. So each chapter has an explanation of why folks were fighting, and why the specific place (Dublin, Chartres) was affected; then discusses what was in the library/archive – how and when it was made, why it was important, how it got to be in that place. And then the process of destruction (being blown up from the inside; bombs dropping from above).
All of that is what I expected from the title, and the overview. What I had overlooked is that the subtitle also says “and Survival”. So each chapter also includes how scholars tried to save the information otherwise lost: finding examples of transcripts, lithographs, and photographs of the now-destroyed work; finding copies of letters and so on in other archives; and so on. Within the horror, therefore, at losing an enormous swathe of Irish medieval history or the largest Mappa Mundi, there is a small amount of joy and gratitude at how people tried to mitigate the loss. And that makes me very thankful.
This is an excellent book for the reader who has a keen interest in medieval history; for those interested in the construction of knowledge; and for those with a broad general interest in history. I loved it.
Randomly Yours, Alex 