[I posted a link to this Blog on Baen's website, and Louis posted this response, authorizing me to crosspost it here]
Sorry, I can't be bothered to create an account on Amazon for 1 post.
So, I'm going to put my comments here. David, you are welcome to cross
post if you think anything I say is worth the effort. For those who
didn't take a look [you should!], the thread is mostly commentary on a
rather unfavorable review posted on Amazon. It seems - I haven't read
it - to have focused on 5 issues: the abbreviated style,
characterisation, 'Harald always wins', no list of characters, and lack
of drama, characters, story & setting.
!?!
I honestly wonder sometimes if people are reading the same book I am.
Which is, of course, the core of the Author's Dilemma: different people
will notice and overlook different elements, particularly stylistic
ones. David has already said that he may have overdone the laconic a
bit - I'm inclined to agree that it didn't fit all the characters, but
it does allow a _lot_ of story in a reasonably sized book. Story I
wouldn't have read if there weren't 'drama, characters, story &
setting' - 'nuf said. It's true that many of the characters are
sketched in broad strokes, but for the most part they still work, and
work well. The only two who didn't seem fully plausible to me by the
end were the King and, to a lesser extent, Anne - the laconic style
played David false here, because there just wasn't enough attention
paid to them at crucial points in the narrative, so actions and
decisions that are probably reasonable came out of thin air. Other
characters, such as the Emperor, of whom this could have been said
don't turn out to _need_ more detail to be understood.
A list of characters is, honestly, too trivial to merit notice. The
remaining point is that Harald always wins. This is something that is
going to garner a lot of agreement, given current tastes for unheros
and anti-heros, but even in terms of the book, it isn't really fair.
Harald's _side_, a little broadly defined, always wins, but in several
key sequences, Harald himself isn't even on stage. AAMOF, I was
thinking the other day that a better title for the book would be
'Beating the Empire', because Harald himself is practically sidelined
as an effective force at several points. The winners _are_ people
Harald has trained, a point he makes at the end of the book, but that
is simply a matter of how truly effective Harald really is, and some
people just are that effective in those ways. The complaint is also
unhistoric: any book about the Scipios or Belisarius could be subject
to it, but the fact is that they _did_ win. You could make the same
complaint about Wellington, if you started following his career at,
say, Vittoria. IOW, after he's learned how not to lose, just like
Harald has.
Anyway, I'll be happy to see more. Like others, I wouldn't mind seeing
the rise of the Order, but I'm even more interested in seeing Harald
and company bouncing around the succession struggle in the Empire. Just
try using about 10% more words, mostly for the Imperials. BTW, I didn't
find the Emperor's treatment of prisoners implausible: he wanted a new
province, not a bleeding sore.
regards,
louis r
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David D. Friedman sent the following posts to customers who purchased The Machinery of Freedom: Guide to a Radical Capitalism