Peace Gene Wolfe - Review and Impressions

Gene Wolfe is my favourite author, and probably the most underrated author of the 20th century. Of his works I have read;

The Book of the New Sun + Urth of the New Sun

The Wizard Knight

The Fifth Head of Cerberus

Latro Soldier of the Mist / Arete

And some of his short stories. Most of his work is Science Fiction and Fantasy, although much darker and more thoughtful than is typical of genre fantasy.

Peace is something else. This is not SF or clearly genre literature. This is a slight give away, but it is really a horror novel. There will be a few minor spoilers in my comments below. If you want a book that's way cleverer than you are go out and read it.

Ostensibly this is a memoire of an older, possibly dying man about growing up in the mid west of the USA through the first half of the last century. Ignoring the Gene Wolfian clever mind games this is a fantastic novel with deep themes even at the superficial level. It deals with the evolution of America overtime from the defrauding of the Native Americans through to oppressive industrialisation. It explores the nature of memory and how we reconstruct them over time, it is concerned with the morality of its characters and society. In all of this the writing is beautiful.

However people don't discuss the above if you read reddit reviews for the novel. Another give away. The first memory we are narrated through is Alden Dennis Weer's (the protagonists) 5th birthday party. Amongst the glittery smiles and sunshine of childhoods memory he prepares to wrestle a boy near the top of some stairs. The narrative cuts to another memory. A few pages later we learn this boy died of a spinal injury. This is the pattern of the book, but most other grisly or morally questionable events are harder to detect. This is a horror story where the horror occurs off camera and we are left to deduce events from evidence scattered through the book.

The book is about 240 pages long but in practice you will want to read it twice. Lots of early memories in the narrative take on a whole new meaning once you know who the characters are and roughly what is transpiring.

Highly recommended.

Comments

Quick Looks: Cimean War Battles - Tchernaya River

A quick one today I traded off Across the Narva by Revolution Games (should post something on this) for an oldish (2000) copy of an S&T magazine. The mag came with two battles reprinted from the 1978 Quad game on the Crimean War. The full Quad also contained Inkerman and Balaklava, this magazine version just has Tchernaya River and Alma. Initial setup Early SPI games (and actually GDW and AH come to think of it) of the 70s tend to have lots of rules you already know. I go, U go, movement, fire, melee, rally, and most of the rules are standard. Command and control rules and friction of war arrived a lot later. To couter this I have added a simple house rule. For each division (units are brigates and regiments, about 2-8 per division) roll. On a 1 in 6 movement is halved unless the unit can charge, in which case it must charge the nearest enemy. A simple easy to apply rule for generating those light brigade charges. You could also easily convert this to a chit pull game by division

Quick Looks; Red Star / White Eagle

I generally hate it when people describe designs or ideas in games as dated, because many of the most innovative games are older than I am. Equally it implies there is something innately good about new designs, which I don't think there is. Dune is arguably the best multiplayer 'war' boardgame and the 70s basic DnD is in my view still the best RPG. I wasn't born until the late 80s and didn't discover these things to the mid 2000s so this isn't nostalgia doing my thinking, its just that some old ideas are better than new ones, despite our apparent 'progress'. Back when Roger B MacGowan did cool art house covers But having said all this Red Star / White Eagle is a dated game design. And this matters if you are looking at popping £70 on a new reprint of it from Compass Games. I am a wary cheapskate so I picked up a second hand copy with a trashed box of ebay for £20. It was worth it, but only just. Poles have just been creamed on the south we

Jena Campaign - Debrief - Lessons learned.

On the last Saturday of this past June I enjoyed one of the best learning experiences I have had in wargaming to put a positive spin on it. The day did not start well in character as General von Ruchel I arrived to the field 3 hours late having boarded the wrong train. When I arrived I discovered that my colleagues had spread our forces in a long thin line between the Fulda gap and Gera with no reserve. Control's game map The Jena campaign megagame, designed by Rupert Clamp was devised as a double blind map game. Each side of 10-15 players wrote orders for each division ordering it about a large map of central Germany. When battle was joined a divisional commander collected his regimental level counters and played a simple face to face tactical game. A step up the chain of command it was the army commanders (generals) role to devise the overall strategy for then the divisional/corps commanders and their chiefs of staff teams to implement. Or if you were on the Pruss

Lestrades_Game

Search This Blog