fevered.earth

Category: Article

  • A Grand Admiral

    A Grand Admiral

    “Any idea who that guy with the red eyes is?” he asked Ghent.
    “I think he’s a Grand Admiral or something,” the other said. “Took over Imperial operations a while back. I don’t know his name.”
    Han looked at Lando, found the other sending the same look right back at him. “A Grand Admiral?” Lando repeated carefully.
    “Yeah. Look, they’re going—there’s nothing else to see. Can we please—?”
    “Let’s get back to the Falcon,” Han muttered, stowing the macrobinoculars in their belt pouch and starting a backward elbows-and-knees crawl from their covering tree. A Grand Admiral. No wonder the New Republic had been getting the sky cut out from under them lately.”

    Heir to the Empire

    We all love Heir to the Empire, don’t we? Timothy Zahn’s magnum opus of Star Wars fiction that introduced the world to the blue-skinned, red-eyed Admiral Thrawn, the Imperial Remnant’s one and only Grand Admiral. A Grand Admiral, I hear you say? Yes, a Grand Admiral. But if you forget the unique threat posed by a commander of such senior rank described above then don’t worry, Zahn’s sequel Dark Force Rising has one or two reminders for you:

    With a Grand Admiral in charge of the Imperial Fleet again, perhaps there was now a chance for the Empire to regain some of its old glory.

    “A Grand Admiral,” Ackbar said at last, his voice sounding even more gravelly than usual.

    “We’re dealing with a Grand Admiral, Han,” Lando reminded him. “Anything is possible.”

    “Great,” Han growled. “Problem is, with a Grand Admiral in charge of the Empire, we might not have that much time.”

    “Especially with a Grand Admiral in charge of the Empire,” Han pointed out. “If he catches you here alone, you’ll have had it.”

    Mara looked into those glowing eyes, beginning to remember now why the Emperor had made this man a Grand Admiral.

    A small shiver ran up Mara’s back. Yes; she was remembering indeed why Thrawn had been made a Grand Admiral.

    But he was a Grand Admiral, with all the cunning and subtlety and tactical genius that the title implied. This whole thing could be a convoluted, carefully orchestrated trap… and if it was, chances were she would never even see it until it had been sprung around her.

    “The glowing eyes bored into her face, the question unspoken but obvious. “What was here for me before?” she countered. “Who but a Grand Admiral would have accepted me as legitimate?”

    “The Empire’s being led by a Grand Admiral,” [Han] muttered. “I saw him myself.”
    The silence hung thick in the air. Mon Mothma recovered first. “That’s impossible,” she said, sounding more like she wanted to believe it than that she really did. “We’ve accounted for all the Grand Admirals.”

    …if the Imperials got their hands on the Katana fleet, the balance of power in the ongoing war would suddenly be skewed back in their favor.
    And under the command of a Grand Admiral…

    [Mara] took a deep breath, forcing calmness. She would not fall apart. Not here; not in front of the Grand Admiral.

    “If there is,” Mon Mothma interrupted firmly, “we’ll soon know for certain. Until then, there seems little value in holding a debate in a vacuum. Council Research is hereby directed to look into the possibility that a Grand Admiral might still be alive.”

    “With a Grand Admiral in command of the Empire, political infighting in the New Republic, and the whole galaxy hanging in the balance, was this really the most efficient use of [Luke’s] time?”

  • Gentle People: A Band Management Sim

    My current ongoing game development project is ‘Gentle People’, a sixties-era band management sim about nudging some bands towards putting out some hit singles, albums etc. Updates are currently paused while I pick through a large UI overhaul but the bones of the game are in place and quite fun to muck about with. It’s written in Rust using Bevy and compiles to WASM for the browser.

  • Books 3

    Another chunky list of books read. I’m off parental leave now so expect the pace to slow somewhat.

    Desolation Island – Patrick O’Brien

    The first of three whole entries for Aubrey & Maturin here, my appreciation of the books having flowered into a beautiful obsession for the month of September. This is the best of the three, with the dynamic duo being faced with overwhelming odds that somehow never seem contrived nor the escapes ridiculous.

    The Priory of the Orange Tree – Samantha Shannon

    I grew very frustrated with this around the halfway mark, as it became clear that what I found interesting in the book was not the material which was going to make up much of the rest of it. The root of the problem was me just not being enamoured with the core romance, but it’s also a book that suffers heavily from not really engaging with the conditions of its setting; say what you like for old man GRRM, he’d never treat the institutions of feudalism this lightly. Beyond that the climax borders on incoherent, and there’s a comical aspect to the one good dragon repeatedly getting the Worf treatment every time it turns up.

    Tower of the Swallow – Andrzej Sapkowski

    The light is at the end of the tunnel for Sapkowski, who in his torturous writer’s block has broken the glass over the big “non-linear storytelling” button. The result is a book that moves at least, even if it nakedly skirts the edge of resolving the grand game stuff and Geralt pretty much remains in statis for another book. Exiled philosopher Vysogota is a great addition to the cast, irritating naif Angoulême not so much.

    The Fortune of War – Patrick O’Brien

    Some slight straining of credulity here, both in the string of catastrophes that Aubrey and Maturin escape from unharmed, and then in the odd light-touch experience of being interrogated on suspicion of spying; it’s all a bit more silly than the series has been so far, if not unenjoyable. Despite an interminable foot chase, when Maturin does turn into Solid Snake over the course of the final chapters, God forgive me I did love it.

    The Surgeon’s Mate – Patrick O’Brien

    A very strange beast this one, with the characteristic naval action dominating the middle section, bookended (no pun) by Aubrey unwisely getting involved in an affair and Maturin unwisely leaning on the international neutrality of science, and a lengthy prison break from an infamous French castle. A clear improvement over The Fortune of War – you get the impression that O’Brien was much happier writing French villains than Yankee ones – and a delightful romp despite credulity now receding into the distance.

    The Red House Mystery – A. A. Milne

    A. A. Milne, of “Pooh” fame, tries his hand at writing a locked-room murder mystery. I don’t know if it’s my familiarity with the genre but I guessed te resolution almost immediately, but Milne’s dilettante detective Gillingham is charming enough that I didn’t skip ahead to find out, even if his Holmes and Watson bit is altogether too pleased with itself. Raymond Chandler famously raked this one over the coals for its purported authenticity; it is indeed quite silly, but a fun read regardless.

    Fictions – Jorge Luis Borges

    A collection of short stories that I confess I have been reading for years at this point. Glad to have finished it, Borges’ ability to conjure an entire setting in a handful of pages is utterly stunning and I’m a big fan of ‘magical realism’, whatever that is supposed to mean.

    Splinter of the Mind’s Eye – Alan Dean Foster

    An alternative sequel to Star Wars (1977) for a world in which it wasn’t enough of a success to justify the budget to do more space nonsense, or possibly even bring back Harrison Ford. The result is a fascinating historical artifact and an utterly terrible book, a tedious slog through some definitionally low-budget environments (in a book!) and the now unnerving experience of having Luke constantly noting how dazzling various parts of Leia’s anatomy are. Vader falls down a well.

    Lady of the Lake – Andrzej Sapkowski

    Sapkowski brings it home in style, though the final waffle about what was REALLY going on with the war, multiple-twist ending and all, is a bit much. Sapkowski’s ennui has matured into some intense misanthrophy by this point and it leads to some unique and measured views on (fantasy) wartime and prejudice. The number of abortive plot resolutions in the earlier books pays off here, a layered onion of competing intrigues over young Ciri being unravelled and confounded.

  • Books 2

    I’ve been reading lots more of those books!

    Pirate Enlightenment – David Graeber

    RIP to David Graeber, who died in 2020 just before the release of his incredible collaboration with David Wengrow, The Dawn of Everything, possibly my favourite ever book. Pirate Enlightenment feels very much like a chapter cut from that book – and make no mistake, it was nice to have more of anything, but its something of an extended digression and the evidence base is fairly weak even in the context of the miracles Dawn of Everything managed to produce from weak evidence.

    The Time of Contempt – Andrzej Sapkowski

    If Blood of Elves didn’t have a climax, this one is ‘Ooops – all climax’. I very much enjoyed Geralt’s Penn and Teller-esque lawyer friends in this one, and otherwise it’s all about the bloody farce at the mages’ gathering that takes up the entire middle of the book.

    Baptism of Fire – Andrzej Sapkowski

    Sapkowski has officially lost control of how to structure a novel at this point, and worse still his main characters are bogged down in an interminable trek through featureless swamps and forests. Eventually, with a chapter to go, Sapkowski snaps and teleports everyone into a more interesting setting, but all pretence that this is not one long shaggy dog story that started with Blood of Elves is gone.

    HMS Surprise – Patrick O’Brien

    O’Brien swings for the car park here, with lavish (and only slightly racist) depictions of Company-era India as a backdrop to Maturin’s pursuit of the hateful Diana Villiers.

    The Mauritius Command – Patrick O’Brien

    This one feels like a nice gentle comedown after the chaos of Surprise. Aubrey and Maturin doing normal things together, playing to their strengths, often funny, often thrilling. O’Brien repeats the trick of having a French commander who we never see or meet but who regardless dominates Aubrey’s monologues. It’s a good trick!

    Welcome to Dorley Hall – Alyson Greaves

    A black comedy experiment in how insane a setting and plot can be before the audience fails to have their hearts warmed by a plucky, struggling protagonist and a secondary cast with hearts of gold; playing on the same pitch as Dear Evan Hansen, somehow.

    The Name of the Rose – Umberto Eco

    Somehow I had never read this excellent monk-bothering murder mystery. Wasn’t expecting Baskerville (yes) to be quite so much of a Sherlock Holmes pastiche, but I greatly appreciated it. The book that made me look up the most Wikipedia articles about various heresies since Books of Jacob.

    The Traitor Baru Cormorant – Seth Dickinson

    This was apparently expanded from a short story and it feels it, with the different acts swinging wildly in pace from breakneck to painfully slow. None of that really matters though because Baru is a delight to hang out with, the archetypical “going to change the system from the inside” who is just a little bit too thrilled to be good at her job.