Indonesian and American

Manusia Indonesia, or Indonesian Man

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a year ago · 2 likes · 2 comments · Michael P. Marpaung

Since then, I have completed my reading of Manusia Indonesia. But not just, I’ve also read Lubis’ novel, Harimau! Harimau!, or Tiger! Tiger! in English.

When I bought the book, I didn’t really know what to expect. It’s just that this guy had become one of my favorite authors, so I wanted to give his works of fiction a go.

Thankfully, the blurb at the back cover explained the book well. Perhaps too well. It basically gave away the story. But because of that, I’ll be cavalier with the spoilers. You have been warned.

Let us begin…

Harimau! Harimau! telah mendapat Hadiah Yayasan Buku Utama sebagai buku penulisan sastra terbaik tahun 1975.

Buku ini dapat dibaca sebagai sebuah cerita petualangan di rimba raya oleh sekelompok pengumpul damar yang diburu oleh seekor harimau yang kelaparan. Berhari-hari mereka mencoba menyelamatkan diri mereka dan seorang demi seorang di antara mereka jatuh menjadi korban terkaman harimau.

Di tingkat lain, juga terjadi petualangan dalam diri masing-masing anggota kelompok pengumpul damar ini. Di bawah tekanan ancaman harimau yang terus-menerus memburu mereka, dalam diri meraka masing-masing, yang mempertinggi pula kesadaran mereka tentang kekuatan dan kelemahan-kelemahan para anggota kelompok mereka yang lain.

***

Translated to English:

Harimau! Harimau! has received the Yayasan Buku Utama Award as the best literary book of 1975.

This book can be read as an adventure story set in the deep jungle, where a group of resin collectors is hunted by a starving tiger. For days, they struggle to save themselves, yet one by one they fall victim to the beast’s attacks.

On another level, the story also follows the inner adventures of each member of the group. Under the constant threat of the pursuing tiger, each of them is forced to confront what lies within, the awareness of their own strengths and weaknesses, and those of their companions.

So to summarize…

There is a hungry tiger that’s out to kill a bunch of guys in the deep jungle. And they’re trying to survive.

That’s why I call it the Indonesian version of the movie Predator. Though this novel came out about a decade before Predator did.

Obviously though, there are some differences. Let’s begin with…

The Characters

What strikes me about Harimau! Harimau! is how masculine the cast of characters are. As someone whose exposure to Indonesian literature had been from school readings, I was shocked. This is the one book I wish had been on my Bahasa Indonesia class.

The novel centers around a group dammar resin collectors who go into the jungles to make a living before finally returning home to their village. They were all rough and tumble men, not intellectuals. Keep this in mind.

Here are the major characters, ordered by their moment introduction:

• Pak1 Haji: A former globetrotter and the oldest member of the group. As the name suggests, he is the only one in the group to have undertaken the Hajj—that and his knowledge of the Qur’an made him the moral authority figure of the story. Curiously despite his age, he is not the leader of the group who was instead…

• Wak2 Katok: The unofficial leader of the group, despite not being the oldest. A war hero, a martial arts master, and even a sorcerer (think more dukun/witch doctor and less Final Fantasy). Out of the group, he is the only who owns a gun, and is an able hunter himself. Everyone looks up to him, especially his martial arts students. These are…

• Sutan, Talib, Sanip, and Buyung: These are four youngsters, each and every one of them are considered fine young men in the eyes of society. They are all married and in their twenties, with the exception of Buyung—who is at the tender age of 19 and still unmarried, making him the “rookie” of the group. But we’re not done as capping of the group is…

• Pak Balam: A war hero who used to fight against the Dutch, and Wak Katok’s best friend (the two fought side by side during the revolution). Doesn’t say much but a hard worker.

In addition to the main group, the novel also has other important characters. The first is Wak Hitam, an old hermit with a reputation as a mighty sorcerer; everyone is afraid of him. Another thing he is known for is his multitude of wives who are scattered all around the land; his tendency to pick up a new wife like they’re Pokémon is not lost on the gossipmongers; it doesn’t help that the new wife is always a virgin. His latest (and youngest) one is a very comely young woman named Siti3 Rubiyah. Their extreme age difference became a source of conflict in the novel (but I’ll save that for “The Story” section).

Harimau! Harimau! has an ensemble cast where each of the major characters has significant “screen time”. But the closest thing to a protagonist this book has is Buyung. He is the youngest, he is the most innocent, yet in many ways he is the most competent of the youngsters. For one thing, he is a very skilled marksman, so much so that Wak Katok would often lend him his hunting rifle.

And let us not forget the hungry tiger. In a sense, it is a character, yet it’s more of a force of nature. And a monster that needs to be killed, but more on that later.

The characters are masterfully written, they are flawed but likable4. More importantly, they fit well with where the story is supposed to take place, which brings me to…

The Setting

Harimau! Harimau! takes place in Indonesia. Where exactly is not specified, but I’m fairly certain it’s somewhere in Sumatra. Here’s why:

1. The author, Mochtar Lubis, hailed from Sumatra (he was an ethnic Batak, and he was born in Padang).

2. There are no tigers in Java, not anymore.

3. The honorifics used (like “Wak”) is closer to Sumatran society than Javanese.

4. Lubis got the inspiration for this novel while he was trekking in the jungles of Sumatra, and had a run-in with a wild tiger.

This isn’t the Sumatra of the cities like Medan or Palembang. Rather, it’s deep in the boonies, here in Indonesia we’d call it the pedalaman. In the world of Harimau! Harimau!, civilization is far away as our heroes found themselves in the deep jungles. But even said civilization, the home village5 of Buyung and friends, is also small and isolated.

Now I’ll circle back a little bit to the characters. As I alluded to before, the setting fits the character well. By this I mean that they act, talk, and even believe like actual Indonesians—and I don’t mean the Westernized types. Seriously. If you ever get to know guys who are “Indonesian Indonesians”, these dammar collectors will feel very familiar. Especially in how they react to the events of the novel—speaking of, let’s go to…

The Story

Now I’ll be honest, the story of Harimau! Harimau! is at first slow. But this set up is necessary.

After a week of collecting dammar in the jungle, our heroes have collected enough to sell and began making their way home. On the way to their village, they stayed in the isolated home of Wak Hitam. Despite being in his seventies, the old sorcerer is still up to his usual nonsense as he had gotten for himself yet another wife.

This time the (un)lucky lady is the beautiful Siti Rubiyah. I say unlucky because her husband, in addition to being older than dirt, is bedridden with fever and is most likely on the brink of death. Perhaps it’s the fact that our heroes had gone for over a week without seeing a woman, but they all went head over heels for her, especially the hot-blooded youngsters. Of course, none of them dared touch her; being superstitious kampung Indonesians, they were terrified of being cursed by Wak Hitam should they make a move on his wife.

Or so we would think.

Buyung, still unmarried, pines over his childhood friend Zaitun. With their respective parents being close, it’s almost a foregone conclusion that the two would be married. And yet, Buyung finds no satisfaction in this. Yes, he wants her hand in marriage, but he also wants her heart. Unfortunately for Buyung, he finds her hot-and-cold demeanor to be less than reassuring.

Meanwhile, we have Siti Rubiyah who has been giving Buyung… hints, let’s just say. After all, unlike the old and probably dying Wak Hitam, Buyung is actually a man her age. Through a mix of pity and sexual attraction, Buyung found himself drawn to the young wife.

This creates a love triangle involving Buyung, Zaitun, and Siti Rubiyah. It’s funny since it’s the only love triangle I can think of where one part of the triangle isn’t even present in the story, only mentioned.

When it came time for the group to leave Wak Hitam’s house, Buyung had to return when he realized that he left behind his mouse-deer trapper. It was then that he ran into Siti Rubiyah. And with no one else in the home other than the dying Wak Hitam, one thing led to another.

And Buyung committed adultery with Siti Rubiyah.

From that point on, Buyung found himself dealing with guilt and rationalization. But I’ll save that for “Themes” section of this article.

After Buyung caught up with his friends, they found a deer out in the open. They were able to kill it with Wak Katok’s rifle, thanks to Buyung’s marksmanship. Happy with their catch, the men cut up the deer meat to bring home. Little did they know, they had just drawn the attention of a starving tiger.

Yes, this is where the tiger came into the story. In their rush to pack up their catch, the men left trails of deer blood as they walked, allowing the tiger to follow them.

The first victim of the tiger was Pak Balam, who went out alone to relieve himself at the river. Now isolated, the tiger attacked him. Thankfully for him, his friends heard his cry for help and was close enough to rescue him.

Pak Balam survived, but it was clear he was mortally wounded. Now dying, he began confessing his sins. The sins he confessed were not of commission, but rather omission. As someone who fought alongside Wak Katok against the Dutch, he was there to see his best friend committing atrocities and yet he let it happen; indeed, the first thing he confessed was actually about the time Wak Katok murdered a wounded comrade of theirs so they could make their escape from the Dutch without giving away the location of their hideout.

From this point on, Lubis showed his hand. And the novel was better for it, which brings me to…

The Themes

One major theme of the novel is confessing one’s sins. As the tiger began killing the men one by one, the pressure for each of them to confess their own sins increased. And thus, we soon began to see how each of these men, though respected in the eyes of society, had their own skeletons in their closet.

This is where Lubis’ writing really shined as he really got into the heads of the characters. In this way, he made great use of the written word in ways that visual media like film wouldn’t be able to do. And he shifted through the minds of these characters seamlessly. Normally, the writing guru types frown upon this as “head hopping”. But in the case of Harimau! Harimau! it works perfectly because it demonstrates how all the men, though of differing personalities, are the same in their hypocrisy.

For example, we have Pak Haji who though outwardly seemed to be the most pious and religious of the group, he in truth had lost his faith a long time ago—only going through the motions of religiosity so his neighbors wouldn’t trouble him about it. Calling him an atheist would be a stretch though; his loss of faith was not so much in the existence of God but in the goodness of Him.

Amongst the youngsters we have someone who had committed theft and assault, another who had all kinds of sins in his conscience, even one guy who was a rapist and a murderer. So Buyung was hardly alone in his sinfulness.

But perhaps the most striking psychological study is that of Wak Katok, the man everyone admired. Behind his swagger and performative leadership, we see a coward.

In one situation, he contemplated giving Buyung the rifle to shoot the tiger. Why? Because if he misses, then it would be Buyung’s fault, not his. In other words, the pressure of the situation was so high he’d rather hand over the responsibility to his underling. And what ended up stopping him wasn’t his honor or his sense of responsibility, it was his desire to hold on to power—of which the rifle represents.

The text itself summarized this aspect of Wak Katok6:

Sikap Wak Katok tak hendak melepaskan senapan dari tangannya, lambang kekuatan dan kekuasaannya, sejak harimau datang menyerang, sebenarnya tak lain dari sebuah pengakuan kelemahan yang terkandung dalam dirinya sendiri.

**** [My translation to English below]

Wak Katok’s refusal to let go of the rifle from his hands, the symbol of his power and dominion, since the tiger attacked, was in truth nothing more than a confession of his own weakness.

For Wak Katok, the gun is compensation for his moral weakness7. But it’s not just his gun. His martial arts, his black magic, all the things that made up the persona that he had crafted for himself. All of that is nothing but a compensation for his moral weakness.

This description of the late American author Ernest Hemingway8 can perfectly describe Wak Katok also:

[His] obsession with guns and killing would lead to war crimes he committed … His hyper-masculinity was compensation for the moral weakness he showed in capitulating to temptation.

This temptation, of course, also has a sexual nature. As it turns out, Wak Katok also committed adultery with Siti Rubiyah—meaning Buyung was not alone in this particular sin.

I went through all that, and I still need to talk about the tiger.

The tiger isn’t a sinful man, of course. In fact, it’s more a force of nature. The characters spoke of it as if it was sent by God to punish their sins. And in a sense, they’re right. Of course, it’s still an ordinary tiger. In fact, it’s an old tiger, starving and dying because it's no longer able to hunt properly.

One can’t help but feel sorry for it, but you really shouldn’t. This brings me to…

The Ending

Writing a good ending can be tough, especially for a horror-ish tale like this novel. By this point, it’s clear that Wak Katok is as much of a villain as the tiger itself. In addition to being deathly afraid of the tiger, he was also secretly planning to kill his companions so he could preserve his reputation—which had been stained by Pak Balam’s untimely confession. Wak Katok only held off his designs because he didn’t want to face the tiger alone.

Thus, that murderous plan never materialized. Instead, Wak Katok’s cowardice was finally exposed, and he became even more unhinged in his attempt to hold on to his power. The story crescendos with a confrontation in which our heroes subdued Wak Katok and tie him up. But this came at the cost Pak Haji, who was mortally wounded by Wak Katok’s gun in the fight. Now there were only two men left, including Buyung who was now the unofficial leader of the group.

Now from this point on, you can make the argument that the group could have just gone home. After all, the tiger already had its meal (one man was devoured thanks to Wak Katok’s decision to abandon him). They could have cut their losses and save themselves.

Instead, Buyung decided to hunt the tiger. Why? Because it’s the right thing to do. This beast had killed three men. So on justice alone, it has to die. But in addition, the tiger had now gained a taste for human flesh, meaning that it’s a danger that cannot be ignored.

So a trap was set: Wak Katok was tied up to a tree as bait to attract the tiger. In the words of Buyung himself, they were “using a tiger to catch another tiger”.

The trap worked, the tiger arrived. And just as the tiger lunged at Wak Katok, Buyung fired, killing it instantly.

But as it was happening, Buyung in his mind was contemplating letting the tiger kill Wak Katok before taking the shot. It would be easy to pass it off as an accident. But then he remembered Pak Haji’s dying words: “bunuhlah dahulu harimau dalam hatimu sendiri” (first kill the tiger in your own heart).

The tiger is a monster, sure. But we are all monsters in our own way. Now this doesn’t mean that the monster is secretly misunderstood and that “humans are the real monsters”—a pitfall a lot of modern horror fall into. The external monster is still real, and the tiger still needs to be killed.

But it’s not guns or martial arts or black magic that will kill the tiger. It’s truth, moral clarity.

So to put it another way…

Before you can kill the monster without, you must first kill the monster within.

And now let’s address one more thing before we conclude: the title.

Why is the book called “Tiger! Tiger!”? Why not just one tiger? Simple, because there are two tigers in the story: the tiger without and the tiger within. The book cover demonstrates this well:

The cover shows a tiger in the background, obviously the hungry tiger in the story. And in front of him is a man with a rifle, whom I assume is supposed to be Wak Katok. When I first saw the cover, I didn’t think much of it. But little did I know, that cover already told the story before I even crack open the book.

Whoa…

Conclusion

So that’s Harimau! Harimau! or Tiger! Tiger! by Mochtar Lubis. If Manusia Indonesia is Mochtar Lubis’ treatise on who Indonesian man is, then Harimau! Harimau! is the author’s demonstration on how he acts.

There is more I could have said. A lot more. But this article has gone on long enough. If you’re looking for a good Indonesian novel to read, I highly recommend it. Apparently, it has been translated to English, Dutch, and German, with a Japanese translation on the way; so even if you don’t speak Indonesian, you can still read this masterpiece. While I can’t vouch for those translations, I can certainly vouch for Lubis’ skills as a writer of not just essays but also fiction.

-Michael P. Marpaung

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Michael P. Marpaung, Author

But far be it for me to claim to be a superfan. After all, I’ve only just played two games in that series: the aforementioned Trails from Zero and its direct sequel Trails to Azure; these two games form what I call the ‘Crossbell duology’ because they took place in the same setting (Crossbell) and centered around the same cast of characters.

I love these games. The story is memorable, the characters are enjoyable, and the gameplay is satisfying. But the strongest part of the series is easily the music. I’ll be honest, I’ve played the Trails soundtrack so many times I lost count. I’m pretty sure I’ve spent more time listening to these songs than playing the actual games.

So once more I returned to this series. I try to space out when I play these games because I don’t believe “binging” is a good way to enjoy media (it certainly isn’t a good way to enjoy food). I played through Trails from Zero in 2023 and Trails to Azure in 2024. This year? The awkwardly named Trails of Cold Steel1.

From what I know, this is a mix of soft reboot and sequel to the previous games. It’s a little complicated, I hope to talk about it more in a future article. I haven’t gone too far into Cold Steel. So I’m not doing a deep dive into the game. I’m just giving my impression as someone who is currently doing a blind run2 through the game. So far, I’m around 10 hours into the game. I have finished the Prologue and Chapter One of the game.

Knowing the Trails series, I’m sure I’ve barely scratched the surface of this game. But let’s get to it.

Cold as Steel

Here’s the premise for Trails of Cold Steel: You’re Rean Schwarzer, a student who had just enrolled in Thors Military Academy, the finest military academy in the Erebonian Empire (think fantasy Napoleonic era Germany undergoing a magical version of the industrial revolution).

Also, you’re skilled with the katana. Because swords are cool, especially Japanese swords3:

But for some reason, you were put into Class VII, an experimental cohort that doesn’t take into account social class nor background, an unprecedented thing given the feudalistic nature of Erebonian society.

Your classmates are:

• Elliot Craig: a timid and musically inclined boy who is kind of your best friend. He reminds me of Syrus from Yugioh GX.

• Gaius Worzel: a foreign exchange student and all around chill guy. If there are questions the player would ask about Erebonian society, he’s the most likely to ask them.

• Alisa R4: the female lead and the the game’s primary love interest. Kind of a tsundere5. More on her later.

• Machias Regnitz: the brilliant son of a powerful governor. Hates nobles for being arrogant but is an arrogant S.O.B. himself6.

• Jusis Albarea: A scion of a powerful noble house. Snooty and standoffish but has a good heart. Also likes to instigate if his initial relationship with Machias (one of mutual antipathy) is any indication.

• Laura S. Arseid: A knight’s noble daughter. Skilled with the blade.

• Emma Millstein: The bookish nerd girl.

• Fie Claussell: A reclusive girl who says very little (and for some reason seems younger than everyone else in the main cast).

So far, I found that these characters played their roles fairly well. Not that I find them particularly deep as characters (yet). I don’t really hate them nor do I particularly love them either. If I have to pick a favorite character so far, I guess it would be Fie7. Personally, I find myself relating to her very well; like her, I never care for high school. Not the studying and certainly not the social aspects.

This brings me to the premise of the story to which I alluded to in the title of this article: Trails of Persona. And yes, this game gave me strong Persona vibes. And as someone who once gave Persona 3 a try and never got very far, I wasn’t looking forward to this aspect of the game. If this game was not a part of the Trails series, I would not have picked it up.

My feelings on the whole “high school” vibe comes down to “it is what it is”. Personally, I’m not a fan of it at all. Then again, I also hated school, especially high school. So I never found the high school sim genre of video games to be appealing in the slightest.

Thankfully, Trails of Cold Steel doesn’t go too deep into the high school aspect the way the Persona games do. At least not as far as I can tell 10 hours in.

Unfortunately, the “high school” vibe did bleed into the character dynamics. This brings me to Alisa and her interactions with Rean. At first glance, Alisa is the main girl of the story. Even the cover of the game shows her sharing the main screen with Rean (as shown above). Naturally, the game pushes her to be the “main love interest” for Rean8.

Ok, cool. So how does the game show us that Rean and Alisa are meant to be a couple? How about having our hero accidentally pushing his face into the heroine’s… *ahem* “Victoria’s secret compartment”?

Afterwards, Alisa slapped Rean for being a “pervert” (of course). And then Alisa held a grudge against Rean for weeks on end (of course). But thankfully, the two eventually made up with one another, somewhat awkwardly.

I know it’s “anime” and it’s supposed to be funny, but I was not laughing. I guess I’m just not that part of the demographic. But this is what I mean by “high school”.

From Crossbell to Cold Steel

Compare this dynamic to that of the Crossbell duology/series and how they handled the “main couple”: Lloyd and Elie. Their first significant interaction was shortly after the party’s first mission. While shooting the breeze together, Lloyd learned how Elie, the President’s prim and proper granddaughter, was able to push her way into becoming a member of the Police Department despite not having gone through the proper training.

Lloyd was impressed by Elie’s skills and ingenuity, to the point where he felt that she was simply out of his league. But Elie saw differently; she in turn was impressed by the fact that Lloyd have already gotten his detective’s certifications at the young age of 18 (which showed Lloyd’s hardworking nature). Despite having only known each other for a few hours, there was already respect between the two.

It’s not a particularly explosive interaction and chances are, most players won’t remember it9. But this understated exchange laid the foundation for how their dynamic would develop. When later on Elie fell for Lloyd’s awkward (and unintentional) charms, it was believable because there was already a rapport between the two.

So far, this “vibe” is the biggest difference I can tell between Zero and Cold Steel. The premise of Trails from Zero is that you are police officers. The characters there are adults; young adults sure, but adults nonetheless. The premise of Trails of Cold Steel is that you are high school students. Basically kids who are not old enough to drink. And that’s not me saying it, that’s the game saying it through Instructor Sara of Class VII, the game’s authority figure who seems to spend more time getting drunk than actually teaching. Speaking of, let’s compare her to her counterpart in Trails from Zero: Chief Sergei of the Special Support Section (SSS).

On the surface, Sara and Sergei are very similar. They are both easygoing unconventional authority figures who prefer to take a “hands-off” approach with the people under their charge. Their purpose in their respective games is to give the main party a semblance of direction and otherwise get out of the way. But while Sergei is a grizzled hardboiled detective (right down to his smoking habit) who wouldn’t be out of place in a noir novel, Sara is a flirty young woman who likes to drink. She is a character who can only exist (as least in the way she is presented) in anime. If Trails of Cold Steel wasn’t an anime video game, I’d shudder to think what might have happened if she was left alone with Rean for an extended period of time.

I’m sure there are hidden depths to Sara’s character, just as there are also hidden depths to Sergei’s character. But the point is in their first impressions; both games give off different vibes based on how their respective primary authority figures are presented.

Now this isn’t me criticizing Trails of Cold Steel for being “anime”. After all, the Crossbell games also have “anime tropes”. In fact, I’d say the entire Trails series makes heavy use of anime tropes. It’s far from my favorite aspect of the series. But you know what? I’ve made my peace with it.

I suppose it’s a matter of expectations. I came in hoping for a continuation of the Crossbell series, if not in story then at least in spirit. While it certainly does that, it also diverges enough that I can’t help but feel that something was lost along the way.

Closing

All that being said, I don’t want to give the impression that I hate the game. Far from it. I’m enjoying the game right now. If I’m not, I wouldn’t be spending 10+ hours on it. So far, I found the gameplay loop to be satisfying enough to keep going. The graphics, I found them serviceable. While I still prefer the 2D look of old Trails, I don’t mind “3D Trails”.

And of course, there’s the music. The normal battle theme alone makes the whole experience worth it:

So that’s the article right there. Obviously as I keep going through the game, my assessment of it will change. But until then, I stand by this post.

-Michael P. Marpaung (AKA Germanicus)

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1

Yeah I know what you’re all thinking:

In defense of Falcom, the title sounds cooler in the original Japanese (Sen no Kiseki)

6

Ironic.

Also, there will be spoilers. You have been warned.

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Joker: Folie à Deux

First we’ll start with my least favorite movie I’ve watched in Indonesia: Joker: Folie à Deux, though I’ll call it Joker 2 from this point on because I’m not a dork. Where do I start? What about all the stupid songs that killed the pacing of the movie? I get that Lady Gaga’s playing Harley Quinn, but they really went overboard with the musical aspect of the film.

More importantly, the subversion. Keep that term in mind because this’ll be a theme in this post. I remember the controversy surrounding the movie. Many saw the film to be a big middle finger to the people who liked the first movie and was drawn to the main character.

And they would be right.

Now personally, I haven’t watched the first movie. And I’m not a zoomer. So I don’t really understand the appeal of the homicidal clown. But I know subversion when I see it. Like everyone else in the audience, I expected the movie to end with Joker breaking out of prison with Harley’s help. That’s certainly where the movie would have gone if it wasn’t for subversion.

Instead, we have the Joker getting raped by the prison guards.

Yeah…

What else is there so say? No more from my end. Though if you want a good analysis of the film taken from a political and cultural standpoint, check out ’s article: They Will Make You the Villain Then Laugh When You Agree.

Verdict:

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Conclave

Speaking of middle fingers and subversions, if Conclave isn’t the embodiment of those things, then I don’t know what is. My friend in his article - The Conclave’s Letter to Christianity - wrote that “at the heart of the movie’s controversy is its portrayal of the humanity of the men involved at the highest levels of the Vatican”. I disagree:

But let’s just put that aside for the moment. Even without that bit of subversion, there’s still the subversion in terms of storytelling. I maintain that the most natural way for the story to end is for the protagonist, Cardinal Lawrence, to be elected Pope despite his earlier insistence that he was not “a serious candidate” after all of the other real candidates fell off.

I honestly have a lot more thoughts on this, probably because I just watched it. But a newsletter issue of - Joy, Judgement, and Conclave - put my feelings of the movie in words better than I could have:

To be a thriller, there must be stakes, and the audience must buy into them. But while “Conclave” is about the Church, it is utterly — almost self-congratulatingly — devoid of faith. It leaves a void at the center of the plot, and the characters, which you feel rather than see as it drains the drama from every scene.

There’s a great deal this film gets wrong, both in terms of the rude legal mechanics of a papal interregnum and the theological and political contours of the voting college, to be sure.

…

The real problem with “Conclave” is it neither trusts the natural drama and stakes of its subject — instead relying on the Dan Brown-esque absurdity of a dead pope’s carefully calculated plan to elevate an hermaphrodite — nor does it allow for even a moment’s authentic spiritual tension.

God and faith are not present among the cardinals, but kept firmly in the background, out of focus, to serve only as color and backdrop like the rest of the Vatican scenery.

I’ll let ’s words stand without commentary. And please read the whole article on the movie - much recommended.

I will also add that in terms of ‘ecclesiastical inaccuracies’, I wouldn’t really have much of a problem with them to begin with if people aren’t convinced that this movie is a “real life” portrayal of how the Catholic Church works. And no, I’m not exaggerating. I watched this movie with my brother and my parents. As we left the theatre, my non-Catholic parents treated this movie as if it was real life, as if the cardinals portrayed are real people and not the product of the imagination of a man whose works even Wikipedia associates with anti-Catholicism. You think I made that up? Nah, I got proof:

The only reason I’m ranking Conclave higher than Joker 2 is because at least this movie was competently made. Despite my misgivings throughout the movie, this movie kept my attention until the end. And I would have seen this movie, flaws and all, in a positive light if it wasn’t for that twist. So maybe, more than anything, I should be thankful for that stupid ending.

Verdict:

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Kraven the Hunter

Given how negative I have been so far, and that now I’m getting into a movie that almost everyone thinks negatively of (or so it seems), some of you may think that I also hate this movie…

Eh. Not really.

Believe it or not, I actually enjoyed Kraven the Hunter. Maybe it’s because I didn’t have much of an expectation for it to begin with. Regardless, I like the character of Sergei Kravinoff, his journey, and his complicated familial relationships. As a hero, Kraven was likable and I found myself rooting for him.

Heroes you want to root for, villains you want to root against… that should be the baseline for any work of fiction. But apparently, not anymore. So just for that, I put Kraven the Hunter higher than Joker 2 and Conclave.

That said, remember the theme of this post: subversion. And yes, this film has it because of course it does - it’s a Hollywood movie. Throughout the movie we are introduced to the Foreigner, an assassin who uses hypnosis to disorient his enemies. He looked to be a character who was finally a match for Kraven. And at first, the matchup seemed to be living up to the billing, with Kraven being outmatched by the assassin who looked ready to deliver the final blow. How will Kraven get out of this?

The answer is Calypso, AKA literal magical black girl, blowing the Foreigner’s head off with a crossbow out of nowhere.

…

How anticlimactic.

But other than that, I enjoyed the movie. It’s by no means my favorite movie, but I liked it enough to look up Kraven the comic book character. And now I feel cheated because I would have loved the big game hunter Kraven of the comic books; the movie Kraven is basically the land version of Aquaman.

Oh well…

Verdict:

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Kuasa Gelap (Dominion of Darkness)

This is the only Indonesian movie on this list, and I consider it to be the best of the four. Make that what you will.

But seriously, I really had a blast with Kuasa Gelap; I honestly didn’t think I would. I’m not the biggest fan of horror movies, especially Indonesian horror movies. Also, when I read the synopsis of the movie which describes the main character Romo1 Thomas as a “priest who doubts his faith”, I began to cringe inside.

Little did I know, I was projecting my American mind onto the Indonesian moviemakers. Upon watching this movie, I was surprised by how Catholic this movie is.

I don’t know if the writers and the director of the movie are Catholics, but if someone told me that they are, I would believe it. Meanwhile, if someone told me that the writer and director of Conclave are Catholics, I would not believe it. At all.

At the very least, I would imagine them to be Catholics in the same way I would imagine an Indonesian with “Islam” on his government ID card who eats pork and drinks alcohol to be Muslim.

But I digress.

I’ve heard a story of how the actor playing Romo Thomas, Jerome Kurnia, studied Latin for his role in the movie. I haven’t determined the veracity of that story, but I believe it. That’s how much thought went into this movie.

It felt like I’m watching the product of some guy in Indonesia who had been watching one too many Fr. Chad Ripperger videos and decided to make a movie about it, but taking place in Indonesia. And I love it.

All that being said, this movie isn’t perfect. It made use of all the tropes and tricks that people hate in horror movies. Things like jump scares and stuff. So if you don’t like those things, you probably wouldn’t like this movie.

‘Different strokes for different folks’, as the saying goes.

Further delving into this movie, a reading from the synopsis might lead one to think of The Exorcist. And it’s a reasonable comparison. I wouldn’t be surprised if the makers of Kuasa Gelap were inspired by The Exorcist. The characterizations seem to line up pretty well, in both movies we have…

• A young priest experiencing a crisis of faith having to take part in an exorcism (Romo Thomas in Kuasa Gelap, Father Karras in The Exorcist)

• An old priest, a veteran exorcist with a health problem (Romo Rendra in Kuasa Gelap, Father Merrin in The Exorcist)

• A young girl suffering demonic possession (Kuasa Gelap differs from The Exorcist in that the girl in question is a high school student instead of a 12-year old, but the formula remains)

The plot beats were also similar. For example, around the third act of the movie, the veteran exorcist priest were put out of commission because of his health problem and now the young and inexperienced priest had to finish the job.

So what’s the difference? What’s the magic word for this post again? That’s right… subversion.

In The Exorcist, the exorcism ultimately failed, leading the demon to possess Father Karras; the movie ended with the priest committing suicide, seemingly a noble act but was it really? I suppose, given that the good father received his last rites. But contrast this to how Kuasa Gelap resolved the demonic possession:

The exorcism was a complete success. No asterisk.

That in itself made all the difference. But I’m not done. In addition to that simple fact, the older priest in Kuasa Gelap survived his ordeal. The story concluded with Romo Thomas now on his way to becoming a full-fledged exorcist under the guidance of his new mentor, Romo Rendra.

In The Exorcist, both priests were dead by the end of it. The girl was freed, yet in a sense, the demon had succeeded. So it was a pyrrhic victory at best.

I find this ironic because apparently The Exorcist was based on a real-life exorcism, yet that exorcism - of one Roland Doe - was a success. So where it mattered, Kuasa Gelap was actually closer to the story of Doe than The Exorcist, the novel/movie it supposedly inspired.

The problem with The Exorcist is that the movie believes in the devil, but does not believe in God. Kuasa Gelap, while acknowledging the dangerous power of the demonic2, also believes in God’s power to overcome evil.

once said that “all fiction is message fiction”. And nothing demonstrates this better than how these two movies were resolved.

And that’s why I love this movie known as Kuasa Gelap. It’s not perfect by any means, but where it matters, it delivers.

Verdict:

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To make up for my lack of computer, I instead brought my Kindle which had been gathering dust. And with it, I’ve picked up the various books I’ve put down - or in this case, a book I have yet to even pick up after I bought it. Thus, bringing us to the topic of this post…

I read this book, Answering the Human Question: A Gnome’s Essays on Mankind, from start to finish during my Thailand trip. The authors - The Brothers K - are not to be mistaken for . I mentioned this tidbit because I bought this book under the impression that this novel was written by Substack’s resident French-Canadian fantasy writer duo. But as it turns out, The Brothers K are yet another pair of fantasy fiction writing brothers. Though these brothers - Kevin James & Kyle Jacob Ferraren - are actually based in the Philippines.

Just how many fantasy fiction-writing brother-duos are there?

Anyways, if the Ferraren brothers are reading this: please be sure to thank the other Brothers K for this, because otherwise I wouldn’t have bought (and read) your book.

But let us move on…

I found the title of the book, Answering the Human Question, to be very interesting. It’s reminiscent of real-world political issues like ‘The Irish Question” or “The Jewish Question”. In other words, a complicated dilemma with no easy solution in sight.

As for the second part of the title, A Gnome’s Essays on Mankind, this is a reference to the narrator of the story. But before we can get into that, it’s time for me to explore the novel’s setting. As the name suggests, this is a fantasy story in the vein of J.R.R. Tolkien, Dungeons & Dragons, and Warhammer Fantasy, meaning that this world is rich with various races other than mankind, creatures like elves, dwarves, orcs, and even Eastern-inspired races like the dragonborn.

Now I can already see the eyerolling from a lot of people. “Sounds cliche”, some might say. Understandable, except that the authors had skillfully weaved in an interesting twist into what seems to be a generic fantasy setting. First was the narrator: a gnome, but not your garden-variety gnome. In the universe of The Human Question, gnomes are diminutive creatures who preferred to stay in their isolated realm and not get involved in geopolitics. So they’re basically the hobbits, only they live very… very long lives. Keep this in mind, this is an important plot point in the novel.

As for our narrator gnome, it was clear that he was not the average gnome. For one thing, he went out on an adventure. This un-gnomish action was how he ran into our heroes. Now let us get into the plot, and I promise to keep spoilers to a minimum.

Written as a series of in-universe essays by our gnomish narrator, Answering The Human Question is not a personal story per se. Rather, this is a story of humanity, centered on a country known as the Barroch. Or at least, that was its name by the end of the novel. Keep in mind that the plot spanned thousands of years; as the millennia passed, the place went through various name changes due to historical circumstances. And throughout the generations, our narrator encountered humanity - the good, the bad, and the ugly. Such characters include:

• Baruk, Jhalyah, and Abeel: a hunter-gatherer family who eventually settled in the area. They are also the first humans who met our narrator. The family’s chance encounter and friendship with the gnome would be the foundation upon which the story rests. Everyone listed below are their descendants.

• Karyol: Abeel’s great-great grandson and the chief of the village founded by Baruk. His presence is a lesson, one that our gnome narrator learned the hard way, on the fleeting nature of human life.

• Varr the Conqueror: a barbaric warlord who behave more like orcs than the kindly humans who befriended our narrator. He is symbolic of humanity’s capability for great violence, a foreshadowing of things to come.

• King Andrwyn the Great: Varr’s grandson. Unlike his predecessors he sought to emulate the civilized ways of the elves, having been taught the Elvish language by our narrator. His reign saw humanity and his kingdom, Vardor, earning the respect of the so-called ‘Elderkin’ (the elder races in the story, their ranks include elves, dwarves, dragonborn, and gnomes).

• King Lothan the Lout: As the name suggests, he was not an admirable character. Yet when the Armies of the Dark Lord threatened the entire world, it fell to him to defend his kingdom and his people.

• Elsbeth the Witch-Queen: The first Queen-Regnant of Vardor and a woman highly gifted in the magical arts, a rarity for humans. Her reign saw the building of schools as humanity began to learn science.

• James Barshireford T. ‘J.B.’ Ableson: A “Captain of Industry” whose wealth and inventions made him a prominent figure in the Republic of the Barroch (the successor state to the Kingdom of Vardor). By his time, humanity had carved for themselves a distinct identity of their own - one based on industry and technology. Of course, this industrialism meant that humanity was now a legitimate threat to the Elderkin, if not the entire world. Hence, “The Human Question”.

I’ll leave the character analysis at that. I feel like I’m already giving away too much as it is.

But before I can end this post, I want to address the elephant in the room. Based on what I’ve said about Ableson, readers may suspect that this is not your ordinary fantasy world…

And they would be right. In fact, the way the world unfolds is easily the best part of the novel. From hunter-gatherers to a humble village to the Medieval Age, the Renaissance, and finally the Modern Era. Reading this book is like playing Civilization, except with elves, dwarves, and gnomes in the mix.

I understand that genre mixing is not everyone’s cup of tea. But as for me, I love it. Love it, love it, love it.

I can’t even be mad that I bought this book under a false understanding of the authors’ identity. In fact, I’m happy to be able to add the Philippines to my “Books Read World Map”. Also, I find the situation kind of funny:

Here’s an Indonesian reading a book written by Filipinos while in Thailand, finally finishing it during a flight to Malaysia (I had a transit in Kuala Lumpur on the way back to Jakarta).

Us ASEANians just have to stick together, you know.

So what are you waiting for? Get the book on Amazon. It has the Germanicus Stamp of Approval.

Until next time,



Michael P. Marpaung

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If you like gripping fantasy narratives like Answering the Human Question, check out my novel: The Santara Commentaries. Available on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and other platforms. Click below 👇👇👇

UPDATE (8/30/2024): I accidentally refer to ‘light novels’ as ‘visual novels’ in the original version. Apologies for the confusion.

“Don’t judge a book by its cover.” That’s a very popular saying with some wisdom to it. Just because something is good on the outside, doesn’t mean it’s good on the inside. It applies to a lot of things, including literal books.

However, I’m glad that in this case, I did judge a book by its cover. And by book, I mean the Japanese light novel Eighty-Six by Asato Asato.

Just look at it. I love the set-up for the cover. The contrast between the two main characters; both of them seemingly reaching towards each other but instead they reach past each other.

Maybe I’m just overthinking this. Maybe I just like how the girl on the right looks.

Moving on...

As you know, I have been living in Indonesia for a few months now. One of the things I do to revive my fluency in the Indonesian language is to read in Indonesian. So far, I have done it with nonfiction works. I wrote about it last year in my personal blog:

Indonesian and American

Reading in Indonesian

Welcome back…

Read more

3 years ago · 1 like · Michael P. Marpaung

But fiction is an entirely different beast. In fact, I hadn’t read fiction in Indonesian since I was in high school... over fourteen years ago. That all changed a few months ago when my brother handed me this book at the bookstore. He did it jokingly, since other than my occasional flirting with JRPGs like Trails or Xenoblade Chronicles, I’m not a weeb at all. But I felt like I was in a rut at the time, so I decided to mix things up and actually buy the book.

Now I’ll be honest, I just finished this book yesterday. That means it took me a while to finish it. I’m still not sure why.

Of course there’s the obvious answer: distraction. But that aside, I suspect the most important factor is that I read Eighty-Six in Indonesian. As I said, I hadn’t read fiction in Indonesian in over a decade. So I had to get used to the prose.

Speaking of prose, it could also be how Japanese light novels are written. I haven’t read many of them1, but I notice that they can be very dry reads. Since the medium made use of pictures scattered throughout the books, their texts do a lot of telling over showing. And while I’m not the biggest fan of “show don’t tell” as a writing advice2, I can now see why some people really harp on it.

Another possible factor is the content...

As I said, I jumped into Eighty Six without knowing too much about it. Just the cover and the blurb at the back. And since the blurb I read was in Indonesian, I didn’t fully grasp what it was saying.

And boy was I surprised. If I can use one word to describe Asato’s book, I would be “edgy”. Or maybe “grimdark”.

The story takes place in a war torn world. Our heroes fight for the San Magnolia Republic. And San Magnolia is... a nazi state. And no, I don’t mean it in a leftist “everyone I don’t like is Hitler” kind of way. I mean the society has a racial hierarchy in which one race is at the top, and others are at the bottom. In fact, the author did it in such an over-the-top way wherein only the alba, the pale-skinned, silver-haired folks are considered humans so they live comfortable lives. Meanwhile everyone else, the colored folks, are seen as pigs in human form3; they are herded into concentration camps and sent to fight in the war until they die.

So let’s go back to the cover. Now take a good look at the two characters pictured.

Yeah.

I don’t blame readers who think the author went too far with the edge. As for me, I love it. I love the edge.

So does that mean our heroes are the bad guys? Not at all. In fact, it’s a common trope in fiction to have good guys who fight for an evil system. Why? Because what they’re fighting against is even worse. Gears of War, Warhammer 40,000, and Halo come to mind4.

In this case, our heroes fight against a horde of killer robots known as Legion. Legion, as in Mark 5:9 - “my name is Legion for we are many”. That Legion.

And Legion is hardly the only Biblical/Christian allusion in Eighty-Six. Now I’ll be honest, I’m not the biggest fan of Christian allusions in Japanese media. I find that they’re usually shallow and go no further than aesthetics. Now I do not expect otherwise because Japan is not and has never been a Christian nation5. However, Asato weaved in her Christian references so well that I’m impressed. In fact, I wonder she is a Christian herself. At the very least, she must have some significant exposure to Christianity and Western culture in general.

And speaking of the author, she is also interesting in her own way. As readers might tell, Asato Asato is a pen name. By her own admission, it was a play on her real name (Toru Asakura) and the number 886.

I went to Google Translate and here’s what I got:

Why is this significant? Let me explain. In Internet speak, 88 is a code denoting sympathy for Hitler and Nazi Germany. It’s basically a meme on the Internet. To put it simply:

Coincidence? Well... her book has references to World War II, Nazi Germany, and other German references like Erich Maria Remarque7. So I find it hard to believe that she doesn’t know about the connection between 88 and Hitler.

Now I must clarify that this is not a complaint, but an observation. Like I said, I like the edge. In fact, I gave Ms. Asato’s book a four-star on Goodreads and left this review:

This is an interesting read. I just went into it based on the cover alone; I'm glad I gave it a try. A lot of edgy stuff to be sure, but that's war. I like the two main characters, Lena and Shin. Lena is instantly likable, which is good since the narrative starts (and ends) with her. As for Shin, it took me a while for me to warm up to him, but I like his character arc. Very satisfying. All the others with some exception is kind of a blur to me, but they serve their narrative purpose.

Also for some reason, this book has a lot of Biblical/Christian allusions. Not complaining. In fact, I love how well they're weaved in. I honestly didn't expect that from a Japanese author.

Now I'll be honest, it took me a while to finish this. But that's not necessarily on the author since I read this book in Indonesian (and I usually read fiction in English).

I also appreciate that the book doesn't end with a BS cliffhanger. When I first saw that this is a "volume 1", I was afraid that it'll be quite the commitment. Indeed, this was part of a series which last time I check has 13 volumes to its name. Thankfully, the author instead ended this particular volume on a satisfying note while leaving things open for future installments.

As I said in Goodreads, this book is only the first of a series. And I must reiterate my appreciation for the fact that Ms. Asato did not saddle the reader with a cliffhanger at the end to get them to read the next volume. Rather, the first volume of Eighty-Six ended on a rather satisfying note while at the same time leaving things open for future volumes.

And while I don’t see myself reading the next issue any time soon, I will surely consider it.

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Author’s Note II: Also, titles with an asterisk (*) next to its name indicates a Substack Serial that was unfinished as of the writing of the review.

Episode Zero: ESPN’s First Take

Originally posted on Twitter

***

Episode I - The Book of Wonder by Lord Dunsany

Originally posted on Twitter

***

Episode II - The Birth of a Nation (1915 Film)

Originally posted on Twitter

***

Episode III - Underland and the Forehidden Kingdom* by Stephen A. Davis

Originally posted on Twitter

***

Episode IV - Ben-Hur (1959 Film)

Originally posted on Substack Notes

***

Episode V - Project Fable* by Sujan Sundareswaran

Originally posted on Substack Notes

***

Episode VI - A Broken Woman’s True Desire* by Joseph Wiess

Originally posted on Crann na beatha

Note: This was originally a comment to a story that ended being long enough to be its own short-review. At the moment, the author had put it behind paywall. Thus, I will not put the screenshots here.

***

Episode VII - Jurassic Park by Michael Crichton

Originally posted on Substack Notes

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Also, Substack says this post is “too long for email”. Readers are recommended to read this post directly on the website.

UPDATE (July 4, 2024): I added a bit of clarification for this article regarding Snyder and his views on religion.

Anyone who grew up in the 2000s (like yours truly) will no doubt know about 300, the movie about the Battle of Thermopylae and the 300 Spartans who fought against all odds and the overwhelming Persian Army. It’s the kind of movie you cannot forget once you’ve seen it.

There is a unique aesthetic to the film, at least at the time. Not surprising given that it’s an adaptation of a graphic novel1 series by the legendary comic book artist Frank Miller. Meanwhile, the director Zack Snyder was a comic book enthusiast in his youth; his filmography full of comic-book inspired movies is proof of this.

Even if you haven’t seen 300, you’re probably aware of its most famous scene:

And the memes it spawned:

But I’m not here to talk about old memes.

Speaking of old, I was definitely not old enough for this R-rated movie when it came out for the first time. But I was certainly old enough to be aware of the “controversy”2 surrounding its historicity. Honestly, I didn’t really care. 300 was a fun movie and I loved it wholeheartedly.

Now? I do care. Don’t get me wrong, I have no interest in nitpicking every single historical inaccuracy in the film. Firstly, I don’t want to be that guy who keeps saying “ACKSHUALLY”. More importantly, I’m more than willing to let the moviemakers take some artistic license. 300 is a fantasy movie, let’s be clear on that.

I am instead more concerned with the implication of what Snyder put on screen. And I’m not talking about the predictable accusations of “Iranophobia” or whatever. Instead, I want to focus on an aspect of the film that people don’t focus on.

A Propaganda Film

Much as it pains me to say, there’s no denying it: 300 is a propaganda film. It came out in 2007, at the height of America’s Global War on Terror. That was a time in which people who took their religion seriously were seen as a threat to the neoliberal world order.

It’s not a coincidence that the villain of the movie, Xerxes, were presented as a “god-king”, desiring for people to bend their knees to him and worship. The Persian King made for a good foil to our hero Leonidas, the man who were defiant to the very end in the name of freedom.

300’s theme of religion-bashing did not start with the Persians. We first saw it with the Ephors. In the movie, they were presented as a group of deformed and superstitious priests. The narrator, a Spartan who survived Thermopylae, has nothing but contempt for these guys.

In addition to being butt ugly, the Ephors were uncooperative. They told Leonidas that the Spartan Army should not march during the full moon, but that’s not the kicker. Soon, the viewers are introduced to the Oracle3.

Taking a very cynical view of the ancient greek religion, 300 depicts the Oracle as a drugged up woman who was nothing more than a mouthpiece for the Ephors. Oh, the movie also implied that the Ephors raped the oracles who live with them on a regular basis.

But that’s not all. After Leonidas left the Ephors in disgust, it was shown that the Persians were bribing them all along.

Something tells me Zack Snyder is not a fan of religion.4

All this is to show that 300 is not just a propaganda film. It is also a smrt story.

Being Smrt

I will now explain myself. I’m sure some readers think that I misspelled my article’s title. But no, I did something even worse. I engaged in neologism.

“Smrt” is a term coined by author in a blog article of his. It refers to stories written by atheists who had contempt for the religiously-minded5. The term itself is a play on the word “smart” because people who engaged in this kind of storytelling like to fancy themselves as clever when they are in reality anything but. I’ll let Brian explain the process:

Here’s how the trick works. The Smrt author presents himself as a sort of Gnostic oracle who’s got the dirt on some formerly sacred Western tradition. He doesn’t break the fourth wall and make these claims overtly. Instead he establishes his credentials by portraying the skeptics attacking the fable as cool, informed characters the reader wants to emulate. At the same time, those who cling to traditional Western beliefs are mocked as credulous–often violent–dupes. The Smrt author carefully frames the window of allowable debate in his world to exclude any compelling arguments for the defense.

Another author expanded on Brian’s concept in his own blogpost. He brought up examples from the Netflix Castlevania series to many a Japanese Role-Playing Games (JRPGs). To quote:

Dishonest characterization, ahistorical examples to tar certain groups, and hack one dimensional characters, are used to warp the story in the fashion the writer wants. This is done to send a message, and it's wrapped in shiny plastic coating to distract from it.

…

You might have noticed a theme with smrt stories. They tend to make the writer look arrogant in their attempt to teach a point, and if you dig deep enough they end up contradicting the work in the process. It's always been in fiction to some extent, but entropy is real. What was once chest congestion has morphed into a full blown flu.

Both Brian and JD have described a real phenomenon that many, including yours truly, have noticed. So please give their articles a read.

Let’s go back to 300…

The issue is that the writers and director of the movie6 don’t seem to believe that anyone could have believed what the ancients believed back then. Thus, true believers were portrayed to be corrupt and superstitious. Meanwhile, the virtuous characters might as well be atheists.

I wouldn’t really mind this portrayal of Ancient Greeks or the Spartans by Snyder if it wasn’t for one thing: it’s not even true.

A Spartan King Must Die

The ancient historian Herodotus had written a solid account of Thermopylae. If you want to read it, here’s the link.

But if you don’t care about reading, you can always watch this documentary:

When I watch the above documentary, I would get the feeling that actual Spartans were completely different to the ones that Snyder presented in 300. Why? It’s around the 5:30 mark of the video:

The contrast between the above documentary and 300 in their portrayal of Spartan religiosity could not be any more different. The former shows a people, including their king, who took their religion seriously. Then there’s the Oracle who, though offscreen, was a credible authority rather than the sexual plaything for creepy men as portrayed by Snyder.

Speaking of the Oracle, she plays an important role because her prophecy is an integral part of the Thermopylae narrative. This was how Herodotus recorded it (bolded emphasis mine):

Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when published

Fated it is for you, ye dwellers in wide-wayed Sparta,
Either your city must fall, that now is mighty and famous,
Wasted by Persian men, or the border of fair Lacedaemon
Mourn for a king that is dead, from Heracles' line descended.
Yea, for the foe thou hast nor bulls nor lions can conquer;
Mighty he cometh as Zeus, and shall not be stayed in his coming;
One of the two will he take, and rend his quarry asunder.

The Father of History evidently thought this prophecy was important. He believed that it played a part in King Leonidas’ decision making. When it became clear that the Greek position in Thermopylae was untenable, Leonidas and his 300 Spartans stayed behind while sending the other Greeks back home7. Reason being that Leonidas knew that if he remained, “he would leave a name of great renown, and the prosperity of Sparta would not be blotted out”.8 This was only possible because of what the Oracle told the Spartans when they consulted her prior to the war.

I found it interesting that this prophecy was completely missing in 300. But I’m not surprised in the least. The theme of “religion bad” was clear even early in the movie. It was finally driven home around the end when the narrator, having finished his retelling of Thermopylae, was now ready for battle in Plataea:

“This day, we rescue the world from mysticism and tyranny”

-Dilios, 300

Hold on a minute. Since when is mysticism a bad thing? More importantly, since when did the Spartans see mysticism as a bad thing?9

The irony to all this is that I found the Leonidas of Herodotus to be a much more admirable figure than that of Zack Snyder. The former seemed to know, perhaps unconsciously, that he was going to die. And yet he went to battle anyways. Because a Spartan King must die for a Persian one to be defeated; it was destiny.

This isn’t to say that the Leonidas of 300 doesn’t embody self-sacrifice. He certainly does. In fact, I love how the movie portrayed him as a somber man10 who was eager to die in battle for his home and his love. Yet by removing the “mystical” aspect of the Thermopylae narrative, 300 undermined the sacrificial aspect of Leonidas and his Spartans. I mean, why didn’t the Spartans just retreat like the rest of the Greeks? Is delaying Xerxes by a few more hours really that important?

Coda: Noble Pagans or Smrt Pagans?

The noble pagan, or the virtuous pagan, is a well known concept in Christian thought. Even those who did not explicitly accept Christ may exhibit virtues that Christians should emulate.

In this sense, King Leonidas and his 300 Spartans are an example of the noble pagan; they exemplified the virtue of fortitude or courage. But this is not something that existed in a vacuum. The Spartans were not just a militant people, they were also pious, almost to the point of superstition. For better or worse, their beliefs are not a trivial part of their character.

By removing the piety of the Spartans, the creators of 300 had done us all a disservice. They had turned the noble pagans of Sparta into smrt pagans.

It might not be blasphemy, but it certainly is madness.

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After I published this analysis, it has come to my attention that it’s actually Frank Miller who doesn’t like religion. On the other hand, Zack Snyder actually has a habit of putting Christian imagery into his movies. To quote someone I interacted with on Discord:

Warning: As always, there will be spoilers. I will keep the ones for this book to a minimum, but like with my analysis of All Bow Down, there will be spoilers for the previous books. Thus, readers are advised to read those books or at least my analyses of them before reading this one.

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Introduction

Welcome back to the review series of Kenny Ching’s Chronicles of Gog book series. From what I can tell, this should be the last one in the series, at least for the time being. I hope you’ve read the previous two books: Illusion of Control and All Bow Down. As you may remember, both books ended in a cliffhanger.

This time around, it was Tavian’s love interest (and wife) Abby who died. But if you’re familiar with this series, then you know death isn’t necessarily the end of a character’s involvement in the story. Abby is no exception, though I’m getting ahead of myself.

Another character who got back from the dead was the giant Og, as readers would know from All Bow Down. I mentioned this because he became the major villain of the story. To quote the blurb of this book:

King Wu has taken control of Gog, but his grip of power on power is shaky. He hears the popularity of his greatest soldier, Tavian, whom Wu secretly seeks to eliminate despite the protests of his son Lu, Tavian’s best friend. Yet, Tavian remains fiercely loyal to his King, even as his allies push him to rebel against Wu and become King himself. Meanwhile, in the eastern desert city of Magog, a threat to humanity mutates unchecked, and Queen Egypt must make risky preparations for a potentially cataclysmic war with the cyborg giant Og and his half-human minions.

So that’s the setup for Loyal 2 Chaos. This brings me to the next part of this analysis, the story.

Story

Unlike the previous book All Bow Down, Loyal 2 Chaos took part about five years after its predecessor. Thus, it felt like a different story in contrast to the previous two books which felt more like two parts of the same story.

Here, the readers saw the aftermath of the Triopolites-Kukazi War which saw the Kukazi emerging victoriously over their hated enemies. Wu became the King of Gog while his robo-wife Egypt became Queen. Meanwhile, Tavian became the King’s loyal soldier; fighting alongside him was his best friend and the King’s own son, Prince Lu.

However, all was not well in Gog. As the blurb had mentioned before, a new power had arisen in the far off-desert in the form of cyborgs led by Og. Tavian and his squad of soldiers were sent on various missions to deal with this emerging threat. However, he also had to deal with the jealousy of his own King.

Despite his fierce loyalty, Tavian continued to draw the ire of Wu. This led to the King constantly sabotaging his best soldier’s equipment. These irrational actions were not lost on Tavian’s teammates who lost their respect for Wu in favor of Tavian.

Meanwhile, we also learned that Egypt, who is more of a robot than an actual human being, continued to perform many scientific experiments. Some were dangerous, but others had helped both our hero and Gog in general. One particular handiwork of hers was an AI that was generated based off Abby; readers of the previous book may remember that after she died, Egypt decided drill into her brain.

Thus, we see our heroes having to deal with two threats: external and internal. External in the cyborgs of Magog led by Og, internal in the jealous King Wu of Gog who seek to kill Tavian.

Now let’s move on to the characters of this book.

Characters

It should go without saying at this point, but this book (like the series in general) has many characters. As readers may remember, this series is basically a retelling of the Book of Samuel, with many of the characters having their own ‘biblical counterparts’. I find these parallels to be a nice touch, I love one particular scene near the end of the story (if you’ve read the book, you’ll know which one).

In the previous two analyses, I’ve said that both Illusion of Control and All Bow Down don’t have a clear protagonist. Rather, they have two each. Loyal 2 Chaos did not break from the mold as they followed this same ‘deuteragonist model’ that was established by the author. This time the two protagonists of the story are Tavian and Lu.

I’ll start off with Tavian. As I have said before, he is the David counterpart. And just like David, he remained loyal to his King even though that person was trying to kill him. The readers, like some of the characters in the book, may think he’s being naïve. To be honest, I can certainly understand this criticism. While Tavian’s loyalty is commendable, his naivete did cause him to make a mistake that led to the death of an important character.

Now let’s get to Lu. Firstly, I feel like I’ve made a mistake in my previous analyses because I barely talked about the prince, thus giving the impression that he’s not an important character. But he is and it is finally time for me to give him his due. I love the character development that he went through in this story.

In the previous books, he was pretty much a spoiled brat who hated his father and was generally irreverent; I’ll be honest, I wanted to see his face clocked at times. But in this story, he was much more mature. He became more of a man as he got a wife and started to take his responsibilities as a Prince seriously. More importantly, he grew to love and appreciate his father.

Unfortunately, King Wu did not necessarily return that affection. This brings me to the antagonists of the story.

The first I’ll talk about is Wu. Unfortunately, the king had gone off the rails. We see this foreshadowed in the previous book, All Bow Down, where he basically made a deal with the devil to get an edge over the Triopolites. Thus, Loyal 2 Chaos capped off this character development (to use the term broadly) as Wu started out from a heroic character in the first book to a more morally ambiguous one in the second, and now he was a full-on villain.

Quite the fall from grace for Mad King Wu.

Next, we have Og the King of Magog. We didn’t see much of him in the book, but we definitely saw his handiwork.

Finally, we get to Egypt who was a much more ambiguous character. Sure, she’s creepy and capable of great destruction. But she had also been helping our heroes. Like with the previous books, she’s definitely a wild card. Never know what we’ll get out of her.

There are also other characters of note such as the AI Abby who’s trying to get out of Egypt’s virtual prison, Tavian’s war buddies who had his back over Wu, the prophet Yu-El who remained opposed to Wu and Egypt’s rule over Gog, and so on. But I don’t want to make this review too long, so let’s move on to the setting.

Setting

With the story taking place about five years after its predecessors, the setting was quite different than that of those two books. For example, the nuclear fallout that surrounded the City of Gog had now disappeared thanks to Egypt. Replacing them was a verdant forest. All Bow Down somewhat showed the woods when the Kukazi took refuge there, but Loyal 2 Chaos greatly expanded on them.

In addition to this was the desert which served as the location of the City of Magog. Magog itself was quite the place as it was the location of Og and his cult of cyborgs who worship him as a god. After spending the entirety of the series in Gog (or its surroundings), I do find Magog to be a breath of fresh air.

I like how we slowly see more of the world as the series goes on. In Illusion of Control, it was just the city. Then All Bow Down showed the forests in the outskirts. Loyal 2 Chaos showed even more as we saw the desert where Magog was located.

And apparently, the whole series takes place in Nevada.

All this makes me wonder if there’s going to be more to the world than Gog and Magog. Judging by the name though, I doubt it.

One more thing I want to mention about the setting is the trans-humanist aspect. This is something was always there since the first book. Then it was made more explicit with robot Egypt in the previous book. Loyal 2 Chaos built it up even more as the book brought us AI Abby and the cyborgs of Magog. This is a heavy topic and Mr. Ching did well in making this theme an integral part of the story without being overbearing about it.

Conclusion

And that’s Loyal 2 Chaos by Kenny Ching. This is an interesting third book of the series. I find it more compelling than the first book, Illusion of Control. At this point, the author had hit his stride and was able to set up the story for that awaited resolution in the next book (it better be resolved by the next book, lol). On the other hand, I still enjoyed All Bow Down more because of the mix of war and political intrigue in that book.

Personally, I was at first under the impression that this book was going to be the series conclusion. Why? Because there were three books published as of the writing of this post. But as it turned out, the book also ended in yet another cliffhanger.

I don’t mind though, since I’m loving the story. But I hope the author will follow it up; nothing’s more annoying than a series that died without a conclusion, especially one you’ve put some investment in. According to the author’s note at the end, it seems like he is working on the sequel called The Doctrine of Fear. However, the website linked is dead. If Mr. Ching is reading this post, I hope he’ll tell about that particular project.

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Alternatively, you can buy my novel, Inquisitor’s Promise, available on Amazon (Kindle and Paperback), Lulu, and Laterpress.

Warning: As always, there will be spoilers. I will try to limit the spoilers for this book. However, there will be spoilers for the previous book. Thus, readers are advised to either read that book or at least my analysis of it before reading this one.

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Introduction

Welcome back to my review series of the Chronicles of Gog books by Kenny Ching. I hope you’ve read the previous book, Illusion of Control. But anyways, the story ended with a cliffhanger when we first left off.

Tavian had been killed! Yup, you heard that correctly.

But lest, dear readers, you want to complain about spoilers, it’s in the blurb of this book. I’ll let the author speak for his own work:

Tavian’s friends seek to rescue him from Og, not knowing that he’d been murdered. Egypt has rebelled against her brother Andrew, who responds in a way from which he will never recover. And Wu has become King, but now faces the seemingly impossible task of waging war against the Triopolites.

Thus was setup for Book 2 of Chronicles of Gog.

Because this is an analysis of a sequel, I will take a different tack from my usual format. Usually, I’d put the story in the last part of this analysis. But for this one, I’m going to cover the story first.

Story

Following the footsteps of its predecessor, All Bow Down also focuses on the conflict between the Kukazi and the Triopolites. But this book definitely took it up a notch. The stakes were increased as the two sides are finally locked in an all-out war.

The first thing that King Wu did in this war was to rescue Tavian, who readers might remember got himself captured in the last book. And though he was killed by Og, he was able to be revived by the creepy Egypt through nanite technology.

Readers who are paying attention might wonder how the Kukazi can possibly stand up to the Triopolites given the latter’s advantage in both technology and resources. Just how were our heroes supposed to stand up to this juggernaut?

The answer to this question is Egypt, who decided to form an alliance with King Wu, betraying her brother. Acting as a fifth column, the triumvir was able to supply the king with the necessary information to score important victories against the Triopolites. Thanks to Egypt, the Kukazi was given a fighting chance against their nemesis. But make no mistake, Wu had made a deal with the devil. Fitting, given that he is the Saul figure of the story.

Tavian, having been rescued and revived with nanotechnology, became the Kukazi’s strongest warrior. And of course, we also got a good look at his love interest Abby who ran afoul of her father, Sejanus. Meanwhile, Andrew struggled to deal with his sister’s betrayal.

What will happen? Lots of drama and political intrigue, that’s for sure.

One thing I like about this book is how the war between the Kukazi and the Triopolites was resolved within this very book. Impressive given how this book is only 137 pages long, according to Amazon. I’ve mentioned this before, but I love the author’s brevity.

But let’s move on to the characters of this book.

Characters

As I have mentioned in the previous Fiction Analysis, this book has a lot of characters. Furthermore, most of the characters have their own counterparts in the Book of Samuel. But this analysis will focus on the major characters.

Like Illusion of Control, All Bow Down doesn’t have a clear protagonist. Instead, the story has two: King Wu and Tavian (the Saul and David figure, respectively).

Out of the two, Wu is clearly the anti-hero. As I said earlier, he made a deal with the devil by allying with Egypt. But in addition to working with the enemy, there is a romantic aspect to this relationship. This made the whole affair even more despicable given that Wu already has a wife and son.

Meanwhile, Tavian is the more heroic of the two deuteragonists. But he’s not a perfect boy scout, either. The technology that brought him back to life gave him superhuman strength, but it also made him emotionally unstable. His violent streak brought him into conflict with not just his family members but also with Abby.

Speaking of Abby, I want to get into the antagonists of this book: Andrew and Sejanus.

With Egypt having betrayed the Triopolites, Andrew and Sejanus are the remaining loyal members of the Triumvirate. The two have very differing temperaments, but they both have one thing in common: female family members who betrayed them. Egypt for Andrew, Abby for Sejanus.

This is a great touch by the author as we were able to get into how both Andrew and Sejanus reacted to their respective predicament. Andrew, being the more sentimental of the two, struggled heavily. But Sejanus was unscrupulous, to say the least.

Finally, I would remiss to not talk about Egypt in detail. She’s an interesting character. A mad scientist of a woman, she’s clearly bad news. But she’s also helping out the Kukazi. Ultimately, she’s the wild card of the story.

I think I’ve said enough about the characters. They did a good job in showing the intrigue of the city-wide war. Despite the huge cast of characters, none of them feel tacked on or unnecessary; they all serve a purpose.

Now let’s move on to the setting.

Setting

I have covered the setting of the whole series in my previous fiction analysis. For the most part, the setting remained generally the same. Thus, I will not tread old ground.

That being said, this book takes the story to a new place: the forests on the outskirts of Gog. In their war against the Triopolites, the Kukazi retreated en masse from the city to set up camp in the forests and engage in guerrilla warfare – Viet Cong style. This is a nice bit of expansion into the world.

Now let’s wrap this up.

Conclusion

All Bow Down is a worthy sequel to Illusion of Control and a good continuation to the series as a whole. Like its predecessor, it also ends on a cliffhanger. It’s not quite on the same level as the last one, but I was honestly itching to read the next book because of it.

All in all, I’ve been loving the sort of cyber-punk feel to this post-apocalyptic story. The way technology was used in this story definitely raised up some ethical and metaphysical questions. This would be taken up a notch in the sequel, Loyal 2 Chaos.

But that’s a story for another analysis.

End Note

This one has nothing to do with this post but rather on what I’ll be doing in the next three weeks with Germanicus Publishing.

As you might know, I aim to post three weeks of fiction followed by one week of nonfiction. But for the next three weeks, I’ll be focused on writing more stories that I don’t think I’m ready to publish in that stretch of time. Thus, I’ll be taking a break with my posting. However, I will still be sending emails every Thursday. I’m not ready to show my hand yet, though. Just keep an eye out.

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Warning: As always, there will be spoilers. I will try to keep it to a minimum, but it’s honestly unavoidable.

Get the book of Amazon. [BTW, the kindle edition is free]

Introduction

The cool thing about Indie books (or Indie whatever for that matter) is that you don’t know what you’re going to get. For better or worse, a lot of ideas that authors came up with get rejected by publishers. Perhaps some authors were able to get their works published but at the expense of having their unique voices watered down.

I opened this analysis with that because I think pitching Illusion of Control to a publisher would have been a terribly difficult task. I doubt the average publisher would be open to a “post-apocalyptic Old Testament story” (as I put it in the blurb).

Like many things I ended up getting into, I was only aware of this book thanks to Twitter. One of the writers I followed on Twitter talked about this book and mentioned how it was free on Amazon Kindle. Not wanting to miss out on a free e-book, I decided to take the author up on that offer.

And here we are. Needless to say, I enjoyed the book because otherwise I wouldn’t have bothered writing an analysis on it. Furthermore, I enjoyed the book so much that I also read its two sequels. Indeed, this book is the first part of the Chronicles of Gog book series. I intend to make an analysis of the two sequels also, but one book at a time.

To those new to Fiction Analysis, I will be analyzing this book from three angles: the setting, the characters, and the story.

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Setting

Illusion of Control takes place in Gog, a postapocalyptic city which the populace were divided into two classes of people: the elite Triopolites and the underclass Kukazi. But I’ll just let the book speak for itself:

In the postapocalyptic city of Gog, two people groups live in what remains of the city. The powerful, wealthy, and technologically superior Triopolites live in lavish towers and are guarded by lavish security forces. The lower-class Kukazi live on the margins of the decaying city, surviving by any means necessary.

Yu-El is the leader of the Kukazi, both spiritually and politically. After discovering a heinous internal political scandal, Yu-El has committed his first public execution, leading to fear and uncertainty among the Kukazi.

By the way, that’s the whole prologue of the book. Not even 100 words. As someone who writes flash fiction and microfiction stories, I must say I’m impressed by the author’s brevity.

Also, an interesting thing about the apocalypse event in the Chronicles of Gog series is that we don’t really know what had happened all those years ago. It’s something that adds to the mystery of the setting.

This is where I must talk about the “gimmick” of this book (and the Chronicles of Gog series as a whole) – it’s a retelling of the First Book of Samuel (or Kings if you read the Douay-Rheims), but in a post-apocalyptic sci-fi setting. Thus, readers will see nanomachines, genetically engineered giants, and nuclear fallout but in an Old Testament story.

It’s a cool idea. And with an Old Testament story, we also get Old Testament characters.

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Characters

Now I want to talk about the characters. First of all, this book has a lot of characters. Given that this is a retelling of 1 Samuel, readers might expect characters who are more or less “expies” of these Old Testament characters. And they would be right.

Here, I would like to enlist the help of someone who had reviewed the book on Amazon:

As you can see, much of the characters in the book have their own counterparts in 1 Samuel. However, Mr. Ching was also able to put his own twist in some of the characters. Furthermore, there are some characters who do not have a clear Biblical counterpart.

One of the “original character” in the book is Andrew Andartè, one of the Triumvirs of the Triopolites alongside his sister Egypt and a gruff military man named Sejanus. Andrew is clearly the antagonist of the story given that the Triopolites (Philistines) were oppressing the Kukazi (Israelites). To add to the drama, he has a history with Yu-El, the priest who leads the Kukazi.

But as bad as the Andrew is, he is nowhere near as bad as Egypt, who simply lacks humanity. Out of the three triumvirs, she is the most monstrous. With the other triumvirs (Andrew and Sejanus), readers can find some degree of nobility. No such thing for Egypt.

As for the heroes of the story, there doesn’t seem to be one clear protagonist. Initially, Yu-El takes center stage. But then the story’s spotlight drifts towards Wu and Tavian, the Saul and David figure respectively.

As I said earlier, there are a lot of characters in this book. But despite that, Mr. Ching did well in giving each of them proper characterizations.

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Story

Now we move on to the story of the book.

Illusion of Control focuses on the conflict between the Triopolites and the Kukazi. As its name suggests, the book centered around the Triopolites’ attempt to control of the city of Gog and the unruly Kukazi.

Political intrigue abounds as triumvir Andrew attempted to enlist the help of the priest Yu-El in getting the Kukazi to make peace with the Triopolites. But it failed, setting the stage for the larger conflict between the two factions.

More importantly, this also sets the stage for the crowning of Wu as the King of the Kukazi by Yu-El. This was not exactly a decision that was well received, given that up to this point, Wu seemed to be a bum who spends more of his time playing basketball than doing anything productive.

But in addition to this political intrigue, we also get into a subplot involving Tavian. Here, we see Tavian’s friendship with Wu’s son Lu (shades of David and Jonathan). We also see the romance between Tavian and Abby, the daughter of triumvir Sejanus (Abigail was one of David’s wives in the Old Testament, though she was not a Philistine, so this is an interesting use of the character by the author). Here, the three of them got into some shenanigans that quickly escalated into something serious.

It’s clear the author was trying to go for the “Biblical narrative” kind of writing. Thus, the authors move from one character to another, and the story moves pretty quickly. There are a lot of things happening in the book even though it’s not even 200 pages long.

I can certainly understand if readers find the whole narrative moving too quickly for their liking. Personally, I loved it. However, I’m also used to “classical narrative” wherein the story moves quickly and the author didn’t dwell too much on a particular scene.

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Conclusion

One thing to keep in mind about Illusion of Control is that it’s the first book of a series. I mention this because the book ended on a cliffhanger. I can understand if people are annoyed by this decision. But I’m willing to give Mr. Ching a pass for this because this book is free on Kindle, so I see this book as a preview of things to come.

And that was Illusion of Control by Kenny Ching. I blasted through this book in a single night. I like how unique the concept is, and the author managed to do it justice. If you have a Kindle account, just take a gander and see if you like it.

But I’m not done yet. I’m planning to do an analysis of the other two books in the series. Yes readers, this’ll be a miniseries of reviews. Just keep an eye out for next month. God willing, I’ll be able to release the Fiction Analysis of All Bow Down.

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Warning: There will be spoilers. Though I will keep it to a minimum.

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Introduction

For the latest episode of Fiction Analysis, I want to look at a book written by Minnesotan science fiction author Bradford C. Walker. Mr. Walker was (is?) part of the Pulp Revolution, or PulpRev, an indie literary movement aimed to “make science fiction and fantasy … fun, heroic, and truly romantic again.”1

If you want to know more about the PulpRev (as well as its close cousin the Superversive Movement), I suggest you read the cited article.

While the indie book scene makes for an interesting story in and of itself, I’m more interested in talking about one particular product of this movement, Mr. Walker’s Reavers of the Void. This book is to be the first of a space opera series known as the Star Knight Saga, but I’ll get into that much later into this analysis.

For now, I will be looking at this book from three angles: the setting, the characters, and the story.

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Setting

Reavers of the Void takes place in AD 3001. In the 31^st century, the ruling power of the galaxy is known as the Galactic Christendom. Galactic Christendom is an alliance of interstellar nations under the banner of the Church in Earth’s very own Rome, specifically the Vatican City. Meanwhile, Earth itself had become a planet-sized Papal States.

To learn more about the setting of the Star Knight Saga at large, check out Mr. Walker’s blog.

What I described above is the general setting of the series. But in terms of Reavers of the Void itself, the story takes place in the frontier region known as the Dire March; the capital world of which is New Edinburgh. However, there are scenes that takes place on Earth. The point is that the book in general takes place somewhere in which the space pirates are a legitimate threat.

What can I say? I love this setting. It’s like Star Wars, but with the Crusaders instead of Jedi Knights and the Galactic Christendom instead of the Galactic Republic. There’s even a Palpatine-esque figure, though I’ll leave it at that to prevent spoilers.

As a Catholic who loves space opera, this is awesome!

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Characters

Now we move on to the characters. Mr. Walker’s book has a colorful cast of characters that can generally be described as fun. There are quite a bit of significant characters in this relatively short book, so I will categorize them as either one of the good guys or the bad guys. I will analyze the good guys first.

First, we have the protagonist of the story: Sir Ramsey Hennepin, the Lord Roland. The star knight Ramsey is a classic heroic figure who is a man of action through and through. I like how he is portrayed as a paragon without any hint of irony or some sort of ‘hidden dark side’. He is shown to be a gentleman, though he can be stern when he needed to be; this was shown in his earlier dealings with the main girl.

Which brings me to…

Countess Gabriela Robin is the lead girl of the book. The beautiful Gabriela is also the love interest to Ramsey though she’s not in the book just to look pretty. In fact, she is the main prize of the villain thanks to her lineage. Personally, I like how Mr. Walker handled the romance in the book; Gabriela was actually the first to fall in love and the one who initiated the relationship, which is interesting. Anyways, it’s cool how she’s both spunky and feminine.

The next two characters I want to talk about are the father and son Sibley and Creton. The former is Ramsey’s sergeant-in-arms while the latter is a young kid who serves as the knight’s page. Sibley acts as the older and wiser figure, though still a warrior. Meanwhile, young Creton is the opposite. Throughout most of the book, he was portrayed as a helpless kid though that changed somewhat in the later parts of the story.

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Now, we’ll get to the bad guys.

The space pirate Red Eyes is the main antagonist of Reavers of the Void. But strangely enough, he did little of his own dirty work in this book. Instead, those were left to his two underlings: Zuzu the Painbringer and Dashing Jack.

Zuzu is the sister of Red Eyes and a particularly tall woman. This giantess of an amazon is a stereotypical ‘strong female character’ but villainous. She is as unfeminine as you can get, a contrast to Gabriela. I dislike her pretty quickly, so props to Mr. Walker for making a villain that’s easy to root against.

On the other hand, I found Jack to be more endearing. He’s not a good guy by any means, though he has some fun lines that made him likable. It also helped that he’s a mercenary figure who’s not all that dedicated to Red Eyes.

The last significant character in the book is the aforementioned Palpatine figure. I won’t name him to prevent spoilers, though his villainy was made clear early in the book. This was a contrast to how the actual Palpatine in the Star Wars prequels was portrayed. This is a good move by Mr. Walker because he doesn’t have to waste time with the suspense regarding the identity of this shadowy figure. Instead, we get to see his political machinations at play.

The characters are easily the strongest part of Reavers of the Void. The heroes are heroic, and the villains are villainous — just the way it should be.

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Story

Having discussed the characters, I now wish to talk about the story. Given that this book is the first of a series, the conflict started out relatively small. A group of space pirates led by the aforementioned Red Eyes aimed to kidnap Countess Gabriela Robin. Sent to protect her was our hero the Lord Roland himself.

This is a pretty simple setup, and one that was pulled off well. Later in the story we learned about why Gabriela was the target of the space pirates (which has something to do with the Nephilim).

The result was duels, firefights, Gundam combat, and space battles. And some political machinations, too. Yes, it’s as cool as it sounds.

As an aside, this book actually made me consider the mecha genre. I never cared too much about it, even though I was well aware of what Gundam is – I even have a cousin who was really big into it. After reading this book, I can see the appeal now.

I’ll leave the story at that because I don’t want to spoil the book.

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Conclusion

That was Reavers of the Void by Bradford C. Walker. It’s an all-around fun book; the setting is cool, the characters are fun, and the story is engaging.

As readers can see, I love this book. But I do have one concern, something that I cannot in good conscience ignore. This brings me to the fact that Reavers of the Void is supposed to be ‘Book One’ of a series. Where’s the sequel then? Even though the book came out in September 2019, almost four years ago, the sequel had not come out yet. Nor is there any release date for it. And believe me, I looked.

That being said, it’s important for readers to know that Mr. Walker has some medical issues that delayed his work on this series.

I didn’t mention this issue to rag on the author. Instead, this is something that prospective readers need to know. Yes, this book is awesome. However, it’s also part of a series in which its continuation I cannot guarantee.

But I don’t want to end this analysis on a negative, so I’ll say that I love the trend that this book had set. This book is the first explicitly Christian future I’ve seen in science fiction. I call this a trend because I can’t help but think of Carlos Carrasco’s Holy Terran Empire series2. However, I don’t know if this ‘Star Wars Christendom’ setting is an actual trend or if it’s simply a case of ‘great minds think alike’. Regardless, I honestly want to see more Galactic Christendom and less United Federation of Planets.

Please, make it happen!

Warning: There will be spoilers, though it’ll be very mild. This is the author’s first published book (sort of) and I want as many people to read it for themselves as possible.

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Introduction

I want to start by stating that it is impossible to separate the art from the artist. You just can’t do it. This is something that I have been alluding to in my reviews, though I only made it explicit in my analysis of Silence and Starsong:

The reason I brought this up in this particular analysis is because I got this idea from the author Isaac Young. While I intend to analyze his book The Matrioshka Divide, I want to quote from his article: “Why the Right Wing Needs to Abandon the Term Mary Sue”: (Young, 2023, Para. 10)

Having read the author’s writings both in Twitter and in Substack, I feel like I have a good handle on him. Even more so than all of the other writers whose work I’ve reviewed thus far. Ironic, given that he writes under a pseudonym.

Moving on to The Matrioshka Divide qua the book itself, I must confess that I wouldn’t bother with it if I hadn’t read Mr. Young’s writings beforehand. Why? It was the setting, but I’m getting ahead of myself. Even so, I gave this book a chance because I knew I could trust Mr. Young not to give me mind garbage.

I will be looking at this book from three angles: the setting, the characters, and the story.

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Setting

The Matrioshka Divide took place in the far future. In fact, it took place so far ahead in the future that readers were never given the date. It could be the 41^st millennium, for all we know. But unlike with the Imperium of Man, Old Earth is long gone. On the bright side, humanity had spread across the Milky Way Galaxy.

And now we get to the aspects of the world that I don’t particularly like. The first is the “transhumanist” (for lack of a better word) bent of the universe. Mr. Young presents us with a world in which people can choose their age, how they look, and so on.

Another aspect that I didn’t like was the ruling power of that world: the Free Exchange. The best way for me to describe them is as follows: imagine the most all-encompassing conspiracy theory that you’ve ever heard (lizard people, CIA, etc.), then imagine that it’s just not all-encompassing enough. That’s the Free Exchange. These creeps have perfected political science to the point where they can predict human behavior with great precision.

Some may object to what I wrote and say that this was meant to be a negative portrayal. That’s a fair criticism. I acknowledge that much of what I didn’t like about this book was on me. I’m not the biggest fan of dystopian setups.

Objectively speaking, I acknowledge that Mr. Young did a great job in portraying humanity under the Free Exchange. It’s not a dystopia per se, but it honestly comes close.

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Characters

In terms of the characters, The Matrioshka Divide has three viewpoint ones. I’ll be looking at those three characters in addition to the book’s main antagonist.

The first viewpoint character is Captain Samir Singh. This old veteran and legendary war hero also serves as the protagonist of the story. Haunted by events long past, he seeks redemption in one final mission. At some point since he retired from service, he had converted to Christianity (referred to in the book as the ‘Catholic-Orthodox Faith’).

I love Samir as a character. He is an inspirational character; I’d go to hell and back for this guy. I also like how his Faith and his quest for redemption was handled. Given how the character had been set up, it’s so easy to fall into the pitfall of cheap grace. Thankfully, the author had skillfully avoided that with Samir.

The next viewpoint character is Dr. Erika Terese. A literal high-IQ girl, Erika is an interesting character. Thanks to her smug scientistic schtick, I did not like her at all. Thankfully, the author took care to ensure that she’s not completely unlikable.

The final viewpoint character is the pilot, Miles Kieth. Out of the three viewpoint characters, Miles is the most down-to-Earth. He drinks, he swears, and he even got into a bar fight; he is the everyman. While Samir is a legendary war hero and Erika is a super genius, Miles is just a pilot who’s knee deep in the machinations of the Free Exchange.

Finally, we get to the villain of the story: Glen Tannis. An agent for the Free Exchange, this guy just knows how to manipulate people into doing his bidding. In a sense, he’s the personification of the Free Exchange. And that makes him the antagonist because it was clear early on in the story that the Free Exchange did not have the best interests of our heroes in mind.

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Story

Now we get to the story. I’ll let Mr. Young speak for himself:

This setup reminds me of Michael D. O’Brien’s book, Voyage to Alpha Centauri (my analysis): a ship was put together by a dystopian government, and they were sent to some faraway location wherein the crew ended up discovering something that would forever change their perception of the universe.

But make no mistake, The Matrioshka Divide is its own story.

One more aspect I’d like to add about the story is the planning and conspiracy carried out by all involved throughout the plot. This was to be expected, given what the Free Exchange is. But with all this scheming and planning and gambit-making, it is easy to forget that the best laid plans of mice and men often go awry.

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Conclusion

One foolproof sign of a good story is that it captivates you even if you don’t necessarily care for the premise. And The Matrioshka Divide is that kind of book for me. The setting, though well written, is not my cup of tea.

Where I found this book to be appealing is in its characters and story. The characters are great with Samir being the highlight for me; even the minor characters that I didn’t mention in this analysis were well-written. As for the story, I like how the mystery and intrigue were handled.

However, I must mention that this book ended in a sort of cliffhanger. Don’t worry, the main plot itself was resolved. However, there are still loose ends that remain untied. Normally, I wouldn’t bring this up since it’s spoilers but the author himself had posted a preview of this sequel. It’s called The Telos Razor.

But before you click on that link, make sure you finish The Matrioshka Divide first!

-Michael P. Marpaung

Warning: Actually, I’ll be really scrupulous with spoilers since I’m dealing with a new series. And one that was recently released, to boot.

Get the magazine issue on Amazon.

Introduction

There’s quite a bit of indie short story anthologies coming out this year. In all honesty, I’m still rather new to the “short story” scene. Right now, I’m reading The Book of Wonder by Lord Dunsany. Of course, I’ve also been reading short stories and flash fiction pieces here on Substack. They, of course, include the ones written by Joseph W. Knowles.

This brings me to the subject of this analysis, Silence and Starsong. This magazine is Mr. Knowles’ brainchild, and I’ll let the man speak for himself: (Para. 1)

That was their vision statement. Did the debut issue, released just last week as of the writing of this analysis, live up to it? We shall see.

Personally, I was looking forward to this. I’ve been following the magazine’s Twitter for quite some time. Also, they published one of my flash fiction pieces in their web site. And no good deed should go unrewarded.

I also would like to consider the human element. Mr. Knowles is an unapologetic Christian. The magazine wouldn’t even accept stories that attack Christianity. That’s a green flag for me since I like Christian fiction as I said in my analysis of Noah. Also, the personal life of the creator matters; it really matters, fiction or nonfiction.

Since this is an anthology, I’ll be taking a different tack with this particular analysis. Instead of doing my usual thing of analyzing the story’s setting, characters, and story, I’ll be taking a quick look at each individual story. Afterwards, I will give my top three. Finally, I’ll conclude by looking at the stories as a whole and how they fit together as an anthology.

This bears repeating: I’ll be really scrupulous with spoilers.

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The Stories

There are ten stories in this anthology:

1.     A Matter of Honor by Jason McCuiston

2.     A Wanderer of Ur by Gaston Nerval

3.     Archangel by Frederick Gero Heimbach

4.     Two Godly Fishmongers: A Tale of Strange Providences by Kevin White

5.     Free Lunch by S. Kirk Pierzchala

6.     Have Ye Offered Unto Me by Zachary Grafman

7.     The Gamer by Nathan Karnes

8.     The Secret of Phelim Darke by S. Kirk Pierzchala

9.     The Shadow of the Stain by Patrick Lauser

10.  Hidden Empire by T.R. Alexander

Story Number One

The first in line was A Matter of Honor. Mr. McCuiston’s story was a mix of action and horror. Taking place around the bloody Thirty Years’ War, our cast was made up of six hardened soldiers from both sides of that war of religion. And like a bunch of Renaissance frat boys that they are, they got themselves into some preternatural horror.

This was the most action-packed story of the anthology, and I can see why it’s given top billing. I like the characters. I don’t want to assume Mr. McCuiston’s religion, but as a Catholic I was impressed by how fair the Catholics were portrayed given that the narrator character is Protestant.

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Story Number Two

Moving on, we’ll look at A Wanderer of Ur. Mr. Nerval’s story took place in a distant past not too long after Noah’s Flood. The story centered on Thark, a Conan the Barbarian-esque character. This is an old-fashioned adventure story taking place in a Young Earth Creationist Hyborian Age.

Awesome!

As you can tell, I really love this story. I’m just a sucker for ‘extra-biblical fiction’ (I’m coining that term lol). Thark is an interesting character, and I’m looking forward to reading other works by Mr. Nerval.

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Story Number Three

Next, it’s Mr. Heimbach’s Archangel. The story took place in an alternate history where Tsarist Russia is in a Cold War with the United States. It’s Russia vs the US, except that the Russians are the good guys (no political jokes from me). The US have nukes, but Russians have something much more demonic.

Wait? How are they the good guys again? Read the story.

This story is very intense. It’s a mix of horror and theology, a ‘theological horror’ if you may. Also, the worldbuilding is both detailed and succinct, somehow.

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Story Number Four

Now we go to Two Godly Fishmongers by Mr. White. This one took place in “Merrie Olde England”. Two former friends turned enemies found themselves in a literal UFO. Yeah, crazy. This was the first primarily science fiction story.

Personally, it’s weird to call any time period of post-Henry VIII England as “merrie olde’, but that’s on me. Anyways, Mr. White did a good job in making the characters likable even if they’re very much flawed. And this story definitely inspired wonder.

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Story Number Five

Next up, Free Lunch by Mrs. Pierzchala. This story is what I would call a ‘mundane fantasy’ story. The setup was ordinary, but you know stuff was about to hit the fan. For some reason, the story also reminded me of Doraemon. If I have to guess, it’s probably because the main character Sally feels like a ‘gender swapped’ Nobita (I’m sorry for using that term).

Actually, I first dreaded reading this story after I read the blurb. I’m at a point where I just don’t want to bother with female protagonists. I was pleasantly surprised with how much I ended up liking the story and its protagonist. The setup is not exactly my cup of tea, but I still enjoyed it.

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Story Number Six

Now we go to Have Ye Offered Unto Me. Mr. Grafman’s story is a little hard to pin down in terms of genre; it’s not quite horror, it’s not fantasy, and it’s not adventure either. Anyways, it centered around a bunch of academics discussing a Bronze Age religious cult. Trust me, it’s more exciting than it sounds.

As someone who has gone through graduate school myself, I can somewhat relate to the characters in the book. At first, I didn’t really care for the main character Thomas who seems like a proto-Redditor. But by the end of the story, I ended up liking him. Fun read by Mr. Grafman.

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Story Number Seven

Moving on, we go to The Gamer by Mr. Karnes. Readers might notice there hasn’t been a “futuristic” story in this anthology yet. At first, this might be such a story. From the title, it sounded like it could be a Dot Hack-esque setting. But it turned out to be neither of those. Anyways, The main character is the titular Gamer. He’s not a particularly admirable character, but it makes sense for the story.

This is actually one of my favorite stories in the anthology. I want to write more on it so I can do the story justice, but I don’t want to spoil it. Just read the story.

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Story Number Eight

The next story is another one by Mrs. Pierzchala: The Secret of Phelim Darke. This one is a romance story (in the conventional sense of the word). But ladies, when your man’s name is Phelim Darke, you know something’s off with him.

Personally, I’m not the biggest fan of pure romance stories. Don’t get me wrong, I love romance subplots (otherwise, I wouldn’t write Inquisitor’s Promise). But I see romance in a story as a spice or sauce in the story meal: it’s a good part of the whole, but it doesn’t really stand on its own.

Or maybe it’s because I’m a guy. In any case, it’s well written even if it’s not my style.

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Story Number Nine

Next up, we have Shadow of the Stain by Mr. Lauser. This is a horror story taking part at an Eastern European forest (or maybe it’s Irish, just guessing from the character names). There’s someone or something lurking in the woods, and it’s hard to tell if that creature is evil or not.

Like a lot of horror stories, there’s a twist. Jokes aside, I like how Mr. Lauser handled the twist. On the other hand, I can’t help but get a little confused as the story seemed to jump around like Pulp Fiction. There was also a significant ‘time skip’ at some point during the story. I only brought this up to say that I was somewhat confused chronologically when I read the story for the first time.

But regardless, I enjoyed Mr. Lauser’s story. The characters are interesting, the heroes are likable, and the villains are despicable.

Good.

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Story Number Ten

Finally, we get to the final story: Hidden Empire. A horror story by Mr. Alexander, the intro is reminiscent of an H.P. Lovecraft short story. The short story centered on Joseph Cartwright, personal representative of the US President, as he audited the CIA. And he was in for quite the ride.

Readers will feel for Joseph and all the stuff he went through in Langley. But the way the CIA was handled was easily the best part of the short story. Since they were clearly the villains, Mr. Alexander had to make them interesting.

How did he make the clichéd ‘villainous CIA’ trope interesting? Spoilers, mate. Just read the story, it’s a good one.

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My Favorites

I like all of the stories, otherwise I wouldn’t be writing this analysis. But here’s my top three stories in the anthology:

1.     A Wanderer of Ur by Gaston Nerval

2.     The Gamer by Nathan Karnes

3.     Archangel by Frederick Gero Heimbach

I considered putting The Gamer as number one, but it doesn’t feel right doing so given that I have said very little about Mr. Karnes’ short story. As I have said earlier, I really love extra-biblical fiction and Mr. Nerval really scratched that itch. And Archangel was epic, for lack of a better word.

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Conclusion

Now we return to the vision statement of Silence and Starsong: to “[inspire] wonder and awe through stories of high strangeness and other modern fairy-tales for grown-ups”. Did Mr. Knowles et al. accomplish their mission?

I think they did. The stories are all interesting and made me think. And I don’t mean that in a pretentious sort of way. They all inspired wonder in one way or another.

One strange aspect of the anthology is how much horror is in it. I count about five, maybe six horror stories out of ten. Not a criticism per se, just an observation.

Anyways, I think it’s a shame that the anthology doesn’t have a proper futuristic fiction, but I’m willing to overlook this. Maybe next time.

-Michael P. Marpaung

But in all seriousness, I did enjoy this book. And so, enjoy this review. I mean analysis.

Warning: As always, there will be spoilers. Though I’ll do my best to keep them minimal. It’s also about Noah’s flood, so there’s nothing I can do to avoid that spoilers.

Get the book on Amazon.

Introduction

Ellen Gunderson Traylor is known as “America’s foremost Biblical novelist”. But as someone who likes ‘Christian fiction’, I didn’t know she existed until about last year. I was reading through Creation wiki about Noah’s flood when one of the articles mentioned this book. Being interested in the antediluvian world myself, I decided to give it a read.

Noah was a blast for me to read through. This is a book that doesn’t fit neatly into any single genre. The book’s Amazon page listed it as a ‘Christian Historical Fiction’, but this book also has elements of science fiction and fantasy.

There’s a lot to like with this book and with Mrs. Traylor as an author. I can see why she’s a bestselling author. The one thing I like the most in this book is how much research went into it. It’s as if someone had taken the things written in Answers in Genesis about Noah’s flood, mixed it with the most imaginative interpretation of what the Nephilim from Genesis 6 were, and then wrote a novel with it.

And I love it!

As always, I will analyze this book from three angles: setting, characters, and story.

Setting and Worldbuilding

I want to cover the setting first because it’s easily my favorite part of the book. The book took place prior to the events of Noah’s flood. That would be at a ballpark of around 3000 BC, based on the Septuagint timeline. Though I know that some people favors the Masoretic timeline. Still others believe in a ‘gap theory’ which puts the timeline further than the Septuagint timeline. This is what Mrs. Traylor holds to, or at least uses for the writing of this book.

In any case, this book takes place a long time ago. But despite that, the society of that time period is more technologically advanced than ours. Why? Because the book took place in Atlantis, as I have implied in the blurb. Though it’s called Adlandia in the book, which basically means ‘Adam’s land’.

Throughout the book, the readers are shown various places in Adlandia. The two most prominent ones are the coastal metropolis Sun City and the isolated mountain village Lamechtown. But there are also other places that were shown and mentioned.

The worldbuilding is this book is great. The author did a splendid job in showing the debauchery that exists in the Sun City and mainstream society. But the people of isolated Lamechtown are not saints either. There’s a reason why only eight people ended up getting into the Ark, after all.

There are also quick mentions of Adlandian politics in the background. Enough to incite wonder within the audience, but not too much that it drags the story.

Then there are the animals. There’s a supersized insect shown early in the book. Later on, there are mentions of genetic engineering; we even saw a mermaid. And yet the author didn’t make full use of Adlandian flora and fauna. I think it was a missed opportunity for Mrs. Traylor not to show a dinosaur or two in the book.

But other than that, the setting in Noah is great. In fact, it made me want to write my own antediluvian story.

Characters

Our hero for this story is the titular Noah, the Biblical figure known for his Ark. From the Bible, we didn’t really know all that much about him. We know that he’s a man of God, and of an incident that I will get into later.

But we can only imagine how it felt for Noah as he was building the Ark and then left behind the world that he had known for centuries as it was flooded. This is where Mrs. Traylor put in her interpretation of Noah’s character.

How was it? Did the author put in a convincing portrayal of Noah?

To be honest, I have serious reservations about it. Though I’ll admit that this was because of theological difference. Traylor is a Protestant, while I’m a Catholic.

In the book, Noah is portrayed as a street preacher, the kind that you might see in America when you’re waiting for the bus. Given that ‘the wickedness of men upon the Earth was great’, people didn’t take kindly to his message.

This book is an interesting study of how Christians might see Noah. As a Catholic, I see him as a proto-Pope. He would most likely had the charism that allowed him to carry the traditions that had been passed down from Adam through Enoch, and so on. Meanwhile, Traylor the Protestant see Noah as somewhat of a religious reformer. The book even brought up the sola fide issue which is an anachronism; I get that the author is trying to set up a reason for why Noah’s own people ended up turning against him, but it could have been done better.

As for Noah’s personality, I am more approving. Early in the book, he was shown to be an adventurous man. This was what set him on a journey with his friend Obad to the Sun City in order to rescue his sister from the clutches of Poseidon (I’ll get to him). And once he became a prophet, he was shown to be someone who wanted to save as many people as he could.

But Noah is not a perfect man, he has his personal struggles. One we can see early in the book was his racism. My dissident right-winger readers may cringe, but it is important to remember that this book was published in 1985. Anyways, Noah is a Sethite, a descendant of Seth. Because of this, he saw himself as a member of the ‘godly’ people in contrast to the Cainites, those who had descended from Cain.

This racism theme was made even more apparent as the Cainites were depicted as dark-skinned people. On the nose? Perhaps. In Mrs. Traylor’s defense, I think this was meant to be a refutation of the popular idea that the Nephilim were products of intermarriages between the sons of Seth and the daughters of Cain.

Moving on, this was resolved when Noah ended up marrying a Cainite woman named Naamah. This brings me to Noah’s family members.

As a whole, Noah’s family was done pretty well. Noah’s immediate family members like his father, brother, and sister were well written. However, the meat of the supporting cast is his wife and children. Naamah is written as a supportive wife to Noah. I think their romance is believable and handled well.

As for the children, much of the focus was given to Ham. As it turned out, Ham turned out to be quite the rascal. Meanwhile, Shem was the model son. Astute readers will see a Cain and Abel contrast between the two. Unfortunately, poor Japheth was the third wheel. Out of Noah’s three children, he had the least screen time.

Sorry, Europeans.

In terms of a villain, we have Poseidon. Yes, that Poseidon. The ruler of Sun City and the most powerful political leader in Adlandia, Poseidon’s seduction and kidnapping of Noah’s sister Adala was what set the stage for the plot. He was the antagonist for the book’s early parts. Later on, he became more of a background character. We see him every now and then, but he wasn’t taken care of until the flood itself.

I think it’s cool to have a literal pagan god as the villain of the book. It really showed the danger and how out of depth Noah actually was; and why he needed God.

Story

Now we move on to the story. It’s at this point where I have to make a pointed criticism about this book. It hurts me to do this, but this was the only way I can put this book to my series in good conscience.

I’m referring to the first chapter of the book. It’s uncomfortably sensual. At first, I thought it might just me, but I also saw similar criticisms of this book and other works by the author. It’s not pornographic, but it’s an uncomfortably read. I honestly haven’t revisited that chapter and I don’t intend to do so.

If you read this book, I suggest you skip the first chapter. The point of that chapter was that Noah’s sister got seduced by Poseidon. Just keep that in mind and start with the second Chapter.

(To be fair, I think the author intended to portray Poseidon’s lust in that chapter. And by extension, how the Nephilim could have come into being in the first place. Even so, I think she went too far.)

That aside, the story was well done. The first half of the book covers Noah’s adventures in the cities. Around the middle part of the story, Noah received instructions from God to build the Ark. And the second half of the book covers Noah’s efforts at building the Ark and the Great Flood itself.

Both parts of the story were done well. The first half showed why the flood was necessary to cleanse the Earth. It’s also a good use of the Atlantis myth, an advanced civilization said to be flooded because of their decadence.

The second half of the book was really heartbreaking. At this point, it is important to keep in mind that it took Noah about 120 years to build the Ark. When Noah first went about building the Ark, things seem optimistic as he had many people helping him. But as time goes, his allies either died out or turned against him.

By the time the flood came, it made sense why only Noah, his wife, his sons, and his daughters-in-law were the only human beings to made it out.

Afterwards, there was a denouement in which Noah and his family settled into the post-flood world. Ham’s issues with his father truly reared its ugly head when Noah got drunk after drinking wine. Traylor’s portrayal of the incident and what Noah said to Ham was a novel one, but it fits with how Noah had been characterized in the book.

Conclusion

Readers who read my previous analyses may notice that this was the first book that I criticized in depth. That’s because there’s a lot in the book that I disagree with. But in spite of it, I still think that it’s a worthwhile read. It’s a good example of a Christian work of fiction that’s imaginative while at the same time (mostly) stays true to the Faith.

The setting and the worldbuilding are where the book really shines. I take is as a given that a good speculative fiction is one that inspires wonder within the audience, and Mrs. Traylor did that splendidly in Noah.

As for the characters and the story, they’re pretty good too. The book made a believable attempt at portraying Noah, his family, his friends, and even his enemies. As for the story, it kept me engaged right until the very end.

Thus, readers, were the days of Noah.

-Michael P. Marpaung

Warning: There will be spoilers. It’s almost impossible to do an in-depth analysis of this book without spoilers. But I’ll try my best to mitigate them.

Get the book here. Or if you don’t like Amazon, you can get it straight from the publisher.

Introduction

Michael D. O’Brien is an interesting figure. A man of many talents, he is known in the world of writing for his Father Elijah books. But he’s not known for writing science fiction stories, with Voyage to Alpha Centauri being his first and (at the moment of this writing) only science fiction story.

How did Mr. O’Brien perform in his first foray into the genre?

Pretty well, I must say. Though I’m sure readers might expect my answer given that I only put in works that I like for this series so I will go into more detail.

I learned about the existence of Voyage to Alpha Centauri from a YouTube comment on a Reason & Theology video about aliens. I won’t get into the details out of fear of spoiling the book. To make a long story short, I finally decided to give this book a read.

It was a slow burn, which I had expected given what I’ve glanced from the reviews on Amazon. If you’re expecting to be thrown into the action quickly, you will be disappointed.

But it did not take long for this book to become a page turner for me. I finished this book at last year’s Lent. I’ve been wanting to talk about this book for a while, and I see this analysis as my opportunity to do so.

But the book’s ‘slow start’ brings me to the criticisms that I’ve often heard about O’Brien’s books: that they’re overly long. I haven’t read his more famous works so I can’t comment on them. But from what I’ve seen of Voyage to Alpha Centauri, I can understand where this criticism comes from.

On the other hand, the book’s length and detailed exposition on the characters’ lives are important in getting us to care about the events to come.

People who read my previous analysis may accuse me of contradicting myself given that I’ve gushed about Faith and Empire because of how it handled the protagonist’s backstory. Furthermore, the two books could not have been more different than one another once we put aside the fact that they’re both ‘Catholic Science Fiction’. Hence, readers might be forgiven for thinking that I’ve contradicted myself for liking both of them.

In my defense, Faith and Empire is a pulp fiction work while Voyage to Alpha Centauri is a ‘big men with screwdrivers’ story with a Catholic twist. Hence the blurb of this fiction analysis.

In short, I like them for different reasons. Just as I like ice cream for being cold and hot chocolate for being hot.

But let’s move on, shall we?

Like with my previous analysis, I will focus on the book’s setting, the characters, and the story.

Setting and Worldbuilding

Voyage to Alpha Centauri took place 80 years into the future. The Earth had been turned into a world government dystopia which seemed to be a combination of Brave New World and Nineteen Eighty-Four.

But our story does not focus on Earth, but rather on the spaceship known as the Kosmos. Holding 677 people in total, the Kosmos is a ship that can travel at half the speed of light. The goal of the Kosmos is to reach the Alpha Centauri system, ascertain the possibility of life on other planets, and then go back home to report everything that had happened.

Yes, this is a ‘hard science fiction’ story.

But thankfully for people like me, O’Brien was able to write a hard science fiction story that isn’t boring.

 The reason why I found this book to be a page turner (though I know that others may disagree) is because of the worldbuilding. While the story took place on the Kosmos, we learned much of the Earth based on the backstories of the characters in the book.

But I’m getting ahead of myself.

Eventually, the Kosmos reached Alpha Centauri and discovered an inhabitable world that the people named Mundus Nova (or Nova for short). Nova is a veritable paradise, but there’s a twist. In fact, the whole history of planet Nova is a twist. Thus, I will say no more on this.

Except that it’s a great twist, though the ‘big men with screwdrivers’ crowd will probably hate it.

You can’t accuse O’Brien for being a concise writer, but I found that he knows how to write scenes that will stick with you. For me, it’s when the protagonist was using the futuristic equivalent of Netflix. All well and good except that the people in the movies literally die. Basically, there were people signing up to be actors in these movies as the means to commit suicide. It’s a win-win situation for the parties involved as the studio can now have a ‘realistic death scene’.

The scene is never mentioned again but it’s such a vivid example of the dystopia’s culture of death that I can never forget it.

If I could choose a fictional universe to live in, Voyage to Alpha Centauri would be at the very bottom of my list (sort of, read on).

Characters

Moving on to the characters. This book has a diverse cast of characters, in more ways than one. I know that ‘diversity’ is a meme nowadays and for good reason. But for this book, it makes sense since the world government brought all of the best and brightest from all around the world to be in the Kosmos.

Our hero for this story is Neil de Hoyos, a Nobel Prize-winning physicist whose discoveries had allowed for the development of the engine that made the voyage possible in the first place. Neil is an interesting character. Though a fallen away Catholic, he could never shake off the religion of his youth. And even as an atheist, our hero still has enough virtue that readers will find him admirable.

Neil was not the type of man to take the world government’s nonsense lying down. In the story, Neil became the unofficial leader of a group of dissidents within the Kosmos. But he quickly found out that even in space, the government reigns supreme.

The readers will easily sympathize with Neil’s plight even if he’s very much a flawed figure. This is good since Voyage to Alpha Centauri is written in first person.

The supporting characters in the book are also pretty good. The first that I’ll mention is Pia Sidotra, Neil’s physician and the closest thing we have to a lead female. She was seemingly set up to be a love interest to our hero before their dynamic was thankfully changed into a father-daughter one.

This is good since Pia’s boyfriend Paul Yusupov the pilot is an absolute chad of man. If Voyage to Alpha Centauri was an action story, then Paul would be the protagonist instead of Neil.

As for the villain of the story, we have Elif Larson (Neil mockingly called him Elf). At first Elf seemed to be nothing more than an annoying social worker, very much dedicated to making sure that the world government is respected even in space. But he turned out to be more of a threat than our hero had expected.

Readers may find Elf and his cronies from the Department of Social Infrastructure (DSI) to be an all too familiar group. But I don’t want to be too political and nor do I want to be uncharitable, so I’m just going to leave it at that.

There are way more characters in the book, but I judged these four to be the most important to the story.

Story

Finally, we get to properly talk about the story. As I said before, this book is a ‘big men with screwdrivers’ story. This is the fourth time I’ve said that phrase, so I’ll explain. For this, I’m going to enlist the help of author and blogger Brian Niemeier who coined that term:

I suggest you read the whole article since it’s a great eye opener on science fiction as a genre.

Out of the six tropes of Campbellian hard sci-fi mentioned above, they were all played with in one way or another in Voyage to Alpha Centauri. For example, we can see that the heroes try to solve their problems with their wits instead of brawn. This makes sense since Neil is a scientist, not a soldier.

On the other hand, O’Brien brutally deconstructed these tropes. Needless to say, the story is about as far away from “scientific optimism combined with classical Liberalism” as you can get. And Neil’s attempt to solve his problems with his wits didn’t go all that well either.

Normally I’m not the biggest fan of ‘deconstruction’ or ‘subversion’. But I’m willing to make an exception for ‘hard science fiction’ because there’s just a lot of nonsense that its fans take for granted. The way I see it, O’Brien is not so much tearing down the sub-genre but rather uplifting it. It’s not subversive, it’s superversive.

But I digress.

As I said before, the story itself has a first-person narrative. But in addition, it was written as a series of journal entries. This brings me to how the story itself is structured.

The early parts of the book feels like a ‘slice of life’ story where we follow Neil as he interacted with the Kosmos and the people inside. As I have mentioned earlier, the book has slow start. You won’t get to the action immediately, so readers should be patient.

But then conflict started when Neil and his friends learned that the overbearing world government had been spying on them and everyone else in the Kosmos. This was a shock for everyone who had thought that they would be free from the ‘nanny state’ in space.

This initial conflict, seemingly small in scope would have great ramifications on the story as a whole. But I’m not willing to spoil that part of the book.

The story is great. I’m torn between saying more which will spoil the book and not saying more which may not do the book justice. I’ll just say that this book has everything: adventure, mystery, romance, action, tragedy, and even lightheartedness.

Conclusion

Voyage to Alpha Centauri is a fun adventure, though its slow start may frustrate a lot of people. To those people, I ask you to keep going. For me, the book really picked up when the ship finally landed on planet Nova. Meanwhile, I love the characters and wanted the best for them.

As for the setting, I know that there are people who don’t like dystopia or downer stories in general. I am one of them. Thankfully, the book doesn’t dwell on the darkness too much. The moments of light in the story are beautiful and made even more valuable by all the darkness that surround them.

This brings me to the epilogue of the book. As the readers will learn, Neil is not the only narrator in Voyage to Alpha Centauri. This epilogue, written like Neil’s journal entries, took place about 258 years after the main events of the story.

As you can tell, all previously established characters in the story are long dead at this point.

I know this is spoilers, but this epilogue is the reason why I love the book the way I do. If it wasn’t for the epilogue, I probably would have put this book down after reading it and never touch it again.

I’m going to stop right here because I don’t want to spoil potential readers. But I will leave you all with two things about the epilogue. First, it (and the book as a whole) proves the saying that “the night is darkest just before the dawn”. Second, the final page of the book has beautiful quote (pretty sure it’s not spoilers):

-Michael P. Marpaung

Warning: I’ll be as sparse with the spoilers as I can, but it’ll be there.

Get the book on Amazon.

Introduction

I learned of this book’s existence from JD Sauvage who reviewed it not too long ago. To summarize, he didn’t really find it to his liking; though he admitted that it was more on his part rather than on the author’s.

As for me, I have the opposite feeling. Let me tell you straight up that I love this book. Love it. Love it. Love it! I finished it in two days, and I probably would have finished it in one if I didn’t have to go to bed.

But I’m sure you’re not here to hear me gush about this book so I’ll move on.

Faith and Empire by Carlos Carrasco is to be the first of a series known as the Holy Terran Empire, God Willing. So how does it stack up as the first book a series? It’s interesting in a good way; it’s not like most of the novels that I’ve read before. The closest equivalent I can think of is Robert A. Heinlein’s classic military sci-fi novel Starship Troopers.

Admittedly, it’s been a while since I read Starship Troopers so my recollection of it is a little spotty. But it was the first science fiction novel that I ever completed, so I know much of that book by heart. Keep that in mind because I’ll be making that comparison from time to time.

The writing is very lovingly detailed. If you love description of military technology and battles, you will love it. Again, it’s just like Starship Troopers.

Int this analysis, I will focus on three aspects of the book: characters, setting, and story.

Characters

Zephyrinus ‘Zeph’ Zapatas is our protagonist in this tale. In many ways, he reminds me of Juan ‘Johnnie’ Rico from Starship Troopers (I hope you’re not tired of that comparison yet). Hispanic-esque name? Check. Going by a diminutive? Check. Everyman protagonist? Check. Wanted to serve in the military and ended up becoming a space marine? Check.

But calling Zeph a carbon copy of Johnnie would be a great disservice to his character. For one thing, Zeph is a son of the Church through and through. One thing that distinguishes the Imperial Marines from the Mobile Infantry is that the former required a vow of celibacy. As you might expect, that didn’t go down well with his girlfriend Jacinta.

By and large, Zeph carried the story from start to finish. The readers should expect this since the story is told from a first-person perspective.

But there are other characters worth noting such as Izzy, Zeph’s best friend in the corps who was known for his big appetite owing to his abhuman ancestry. Izzy serves as the comic relief character. There’s also Zeph’s aforementioned girlfriend Jacinta; their courtship is rather wholesome though ultimately melancholic.

The supporting characters of Faith and Empire are not what the sophisticates would call ‘deep’. But that’s a good thing; it keeps the story around our hero Zeph, and it keeps the writing crisp.

Setting and Worldbuilding

Moving on to the setting and themes of the book. Faith and Empire took place in the 51^st century. Like many science fiction settings, it has a long-collapsed precursor empire in the past known as the Dominion of Man. But Carrasco put a great twist on it where the current Holy Terran Empire isn’t some entity that arose after the collapse of the Dominion. Rather, the Dominion was defeated in a war with the Holy League Worlds. This set the stage for the collapse of the Dominion. Meanwhile, the Holy Terran Empire is the successor state of the aforementioned Holy League.

As you can tell, Carrasco’s universe is a very optimistic view of the future. This is something that you don’t see very often with contemporary Catholics.

If you want to know more about the world of the Holy Terran Empire, just read the book. The good news is that you’ll get all that I’ve described to you within the first chapter.

That’s one thing I can’t get enough of this book, it doesn’t waste your time. The whole book is only 121 pages (according to Amazon), and you’ll get thrown into the action rather quickly. It’s the power of direct exposition.

But the book’s short length doesn’t mean that it doesn’t have worldbuilding. It certainly does, but it’s not done in a way that’s tedious to go through. It gives you enough to be satisfied, but not too much that you’ll be wanting more.

As a side note, when I commented on Mr. Sauvage’s review of the book, I compared the setting of this book to the Galactic Christendom in Reavers of the Void by Bradford C. Walker. Having finally read this book for myself I must say that my assessment is a little off. Walker’s work is more like Star Wars while Carrasco’s is more like (wait for it) Starship Troopers. The former is space opera, the latter is military sci-fi.

The Story

And now we go to the story. The story starts as Zeph and his comrades is about to invade a system full of space pirates. This isn’t the epic space opera many might hope for, but it’s fitting given that the protagonist of the story is just a marine. Zeph isn’t the Emperor, a Prince, or in any way privy to the things that the higher ups in the Holy Terran Empire would know. He’s just a marine.

Perhaps that might change in the sequels, but I’m getting ahead of myself.

Suppressing space pirates was no walk in the park though. Zeph lost many comrades to nukes, lasers, and many other dangers. Despite their name, the Imperial Marines are no Astartes. They are very much mortal men.

One part of the story that readers might get caught off guard is how the conflict was resolved relatively quickly in terms of the book. The denouement pretty much started about 2/3rds in; a little strange. I like it but I can understand if people find that off-putting.

At some point, the book also shifted gears towards Zeph’s life before he joined the Imperial Marines. Here, we learned of our hero’s home, family, friends, and loved ones.

This is where Carrasco’s work differs the most from Heinlein’s. As I remember it, Starship Troopers started the book in medias res with the action but spent much of the early parts covering Johnnie’s backstory and how he ended up getting into Mobile Infantry. Meanwhile, Faith and Empire threw the readers into the mix immediately. And then, once the action was finished then we get to learn about Zeph’s character and backstory.

It was an interesting gambit by the author, did it work? I think it did. Origin stories in modern fiction are infamous. Carrasco was able to avoid the problem of “tedious origin story” by starting the action very quickly.

In the beginning, we only know two things about Zeph’s personality: he’s a faithful Catholic and he’s fearful of going into his first combat mission. As the story goes, we learn more about him. He even grows throughout the story (though I only noticed it after the fact, it’s a blink and you’ll miss it kind of thing). This culminated in the final part of the book which delved into our hero’s past.

Imagine if Zeph’s backstory was put in the beginning of the book instead of the end. First of all, it would be tedious to the max. More importantly, we wouldn’t care since we haven’t seen Zeph going through the valley of the shadow of death yet.

Conclusion

Faith and Empire is a solid work by Carrasco. The characters played their roles well. The setting is interesting with the worldbuilding being enough to whet your appetite but not too much that it becomes tedious. Finally, the story structure is an interesting experiment which I believe paid off.

After the book, there is also a teaser for the sequel. Remember when I said earlier that this series is more military sci-fi rather than space opera? The teaser seemed to prove my hypothesis as we see Zeph and his comrades suppressing the 51^st century’s equivalent of Antifa (not to get too political about it). Not exactly the big intergalactic war of nations or that epic battle that decides the fate of the galaxy.

But I might be proven wrong.

In any case, go read the book. It’s really good.

-Michael P. Marpaung