None Like Them Before, And None Like Them After – A Review of Blood & Beauty by Sarah Dunant

As I have mentioned a few times before, I am really, really fond of the Italian Renaissance, and in particular, that narrow sliver of time from the last decade of the 1400s to the very early years of the 1500s, during which the Borgia family came to power when their patriarch, the redoubtable and charismatic Cardinal Rodrigo Borgia, became Pope Alexander VI. During the time that Rodrigo Borgia sat upon the throne of Saint Peter, he did his level best to improve the lot of his family – not least the lot of his four favored children: Cesare, Juan, Lucrezia and Joffre. Of the four, two eventually became as famous (some say infamous) as their father – Cesare and Lucrezia would each occupy a place in history. Together with their father, they would come to define the corruption of the Church, as well as have a hand in the shifting face of not just Italy, but of Europe as a whole.

As a result, the Borgias have been the subject of much speculation, both in actual historical research and in fiction. What make them even more interesting is that much has been said about them, but it is difficult to filter the true from the fictional – especially when it comes to the more extraordinary claims that have been made about them. More contemporary writers, however, have taken a far more pragmatic view on the many contradicting reports and accounts regarding the Borgias, and therefore when writing about them attempt to balance all the stories to create a picture of the Borgias that they believe is a relatively balanced picture of that great family as it might have been before their image was tainted by rumor and slander.

There have been a lot of fictional adaptations of the story of the Borgias, not least of which is the ongoing TV series The Borgias, created by Neil Jordan, and the novel The Family, Mario Puzo’s very last novel (he died while it was in progress; the novel as it is today was completed by Carol Gino based on Puzo’s notes). It is the TV series, however, that has generated a significant amount of interest in the Borgias, and there has been a subsequent rise in novels about them. Among the latest is Sarah Dunant’s Blood & Beauty.

Dunant is a writer I’m very familiar with: I read her novel The Birth of Venus when I was in my undergrad, and I absolutely loved it. Soon after I finished it a friend gave me In the Company of the Courtesan, and I fell in love with that too. And since I had come to love her writing a lot, when Sacred Hearts came out I read that as well, and enjoyed it quite a bit (though I am slightly biased towards In the Company of the Courtesan in terms of which of the three books I favor most). It would be easy to assume that I would like her other books, but none of them interested me much – not because of the quality of her writing, but simply because I much prefer Dunant’s historical fiction. So when I found out just this year that she had written a Borgia novel and that it was already available, the first thing I did was to contain my excited squealing, and since I was between books when I found a copy, I started reading it immediately.

Now, it must be said that I have read quite a few books about the Borgias, both fiction and non-fiction, and I’m already quite familiar with how their story goes, from their meteoric rise to their equally meteoric fall. I’m also quite familiar with the most notorious accusations leveled against them. This means, therefore, that when I picked up Blood & Beauty I was already aware that there was absolutely nothing, plot-wise, that would surprise me. Most of the weight would be on Dunant’s characterization off the key players, and her writing itself. And in both aspects, Dunant does exceedingly, exceedingly well in Blood & Beauty.

One of the problems that confronts any writer of historical fiction is how to portray the actual people as characters, which is to say, to portray them as people. Non-fiction treatments of history do not deal with the emotions of the major players of any event, (perhaps) rightfully arguing that emotion clouds objectivity, and though history cannot be truly and completely objective, there must at least be an attempt to be so as much as possible. Historical fiction, however, must treat historical figures in a far more different manner: as realistic and believable characters, whose reasons for making the decision that they do, making the choices that they do, likely lie in a far more complex web of emotions, motives, and relationships.

Not all writers manage to carry this off well, but Dunant has managed to do a fine job of it in Blood & Beauty. As with her previous historical novels, she does her best work with the female characters: Lucrezia’s characterization arc is beautifully done, to be sure, starting her out as an innocent young girl and ending as a young woman with more steel in her spine and a sharp awareness of what her family truly does, with an exquisitely painful progression between the two, but it is with the less-famous characters that Dunant works her real magic. Giulia Farnese, for instance, is masterfully written: in so many other stories it is easy to dismiss her as just Rodrigo’s mistress, but in Dunant’s hands she becomes someone with a far more complex comprehension of what it means to be not only the mistress of a cardinal and then a pope, but of Rodrigo Borgia, specifically. Sancia of Aragon, as well, is easy to overlook unless she is written as the major character (as she is in Jean Kalogridis’s fantastic The Borgia Bride), but again Dunant takes the time to develop her into a sympathetic and relatively complex character. Even the fictional Fiammetta de Michelis, Cesare’s courtesan mistress, is given a life and certain complexity of her own. The time Dunant takes to give all these women lives and thoughts and emotions when the history books have a terrible tendency to elide these aspects – or elide the women altogether – is something I greatly appreciate.

As for the men, they too get a pretty good characterization treatment – at least for the most part. Dunant’s characterization of Rodrigo is a familiar one, but it is her characterization of Cesare that I especially like. The thing about Cesare is that it is difficult to find a good balance for his characterization, mostly because the accounts about him are very muddled. Does one portray him as extremely violent? A sex maniac? And how does one balance this with his obviously powerful intelligence, and the fact that he was also famous for caring greatly for his family? These choices vary from writer to writer, but I am especially fond of Dunant’s particular version of him: cold, withdrawn, but exceedingly cunning and very, very ambitious. There is no hint of the madness and extreme anger that some writers attribute to him, and the viciousness that some others claim he had is, though present in Dunant’s version, is significantly toned down and far more nuanced. She has also retained the deep-seated jealousy some historians and writers claim he had for his brother Juan, playing this jealousy into several moments of high drama that may have the reader squirming in his or her seat to read about them.

As for the less notable male characters, they do get their own moment in the spotlight: Giovanni Sforza, Duke of Pesaro and Lucrezia’s first husband, is given some interesting character development, as is Johannes Burchard, the Vatican’s Master of Ceremonies whose records would eventually become one of the primary sources of information regarding the Borgias. Therefore, with such careful attention given to the lesser characters, it makes me raise an eyebrow that she would not give the same attention to Juan, who is characterized as a spoiled brat and nothing more – which is how he is often portrayed in other books anyway. I was rather hoping for something a little more complex when it came to Juan, but that does not happen. Is it because he disappears from the historical record relatively early? Because he really, truly was that way and it is difficult to picture him as anything else because there is nothing that proves him to be otherwise? Because he needs to be that way so that Cesare can have something to be pissed off with his father about? If the argument here is historical accuracy, I offer the counterargument that this is a novel: Dunant could have written Juan with a bit more complexity without having to go against the historical record. Why she chooses not to do so makes me raise my eyebrows a little bit.

But what really makes this book, in my opinion, is Dunant’s writing. The novel is written in the present tense, which adds a sense of immediacy to the story, as if the reader was experiencing everything right alongside the characters. This has the welcome (at least to me) effect of making the reader not think of future events, especially if they are coming to this novel with previous knowledge of the Borgia story. And then there is Dunant’s talent at creating a sense of time and place, a sense of atmosphere, which she has already proven she has a gift for in her three other historical novels, and which she applies to full effect in Blood & Beauty. In her novels the inner palaces, the piazzas, and the churches of Rome come to life, in all their beauty and, admittedly, in all their stench too. This is augmented by little details regarding custom, dress, and food, thus allowing the reader to sink into the story itself and go with the flow – something that can be difficult to accomplish with a historical novel.

Overall, Blood & Beauty is a wonderfully-written addition to the ever-expanding fiction based on the Borgias: the characters are, for the most part, interesting and sympathetic, and the narration is an exquisite pleasure to read because of the quality of Dunant’s prose, which she uses to great effect to bring these characters and their time and place in history to life. Dunant does not end it with the death of Rodrigo, nor of Cesare, nor even of Lucrezia, and in the epilogue she explains that she might write a second novel to this one, covering the Borgias’ fall from grace. Whether or not this second novel does materialize, it is easy to be content with the tale of the Borgias as it is told in Blood & Beauty, and if it does continue, I will be right there to read it as soon as it comes out.

We Are What We Eat, and What We Used to Make What We Eat – A Review of Consider the Fork: A History of How We Cook and Eat by Bee Wilson

When one reads books about food, more often than not the book tackles the food, and the culture that produced it, and usually, this is enough for most readers. Whether one is reading a cook’s memoir, or a travel writer’s anecdotes, or even a cookbook, the book will likely primarily concern itself with the two things I just mentioned. There are also the micro-histories, books that cover the influence of a particular foodstuff on the course of history (there are excellent ones for beer and coffee that are readily available), and the broader tracts that attempt to look at how food impacts us today, particularly our health, and how it will impact us in the future.

However, in the midst of all this very interesting, thought-provoking, and cravings-inducing reading, there is almost no book that tackles the technology involved in actually making food. When talking about technology and food, one is more likely to encounter books on agriculture and the growing of food, as opposed to actual food preparation. Occasionally one may stumble across a book on molecular gastronomy that will talk about a sous-vide machine, or perhaps a specialized cookbook or micro-history explaining the importance of a wok or a tagine pot, but there hasn’t been a book that focused entirely on pots and pans and forks and spoons.

Consider the Fork: A History of How We Cook and Eat by Bee Wilson fills in this gap. In her introduction she discusses how she, like many readers interested in food and in the history of food, has not encountered a book about things like forks and spoons (or sporks, for that matter), and how those things have influenced not just how we eat, but also what we eat. Therefore, Consider the Fork takes a close look at the history of such familiar things as the cooking pot and the knife, while at the same time allowing the reader a glimpse at such esoteric items as cider owls and holdfasts: items which have gone as extinct as the dodo because there is no use for them anymore.

Beginning with pots and pans, Wilson then moves down through to the knife, fire (in all its “tamed” forms, from the bonfire used by early humanity to the sophisticated stoves and ranges of today), measuring utensils, food processors (and not just the electric behemoths we now know as food processors), cutlery, ice (in the form of the refrigerator and its predecessors), and finally the kitchen itself. Throughout each chapter Wilson explores not only how these inventions have altered over the years through to today, but also how they have shaped our food and, therefore, how we eat. Technology, Wilson states, not only changes how we eat, but also what we eat – and, therefore, shapes our culture in the sense that it shapes the way we look at food.

Nowhere is this made more clear than in the two most dominant pieces of technology in any home kitchen: the stove, and the refrigerator. Fire and ice: both have had an extremely important role to play in the way food is prepared and stored today, and therefore influence how we eat. Fire is quite obvious: heat transforms food, making it not only more delicious, but also more digestible. Anthropologists have theorized that when humanity learned to tame fire in the deep, dark past, and then used that fire to cook food, it allowed humanity to evolve from a cousin to chimpanzees into what our species is today by letting us derive more nutrition than what would otherwise have been accessible to our bodies by eating food raw – extra nutrition that would go to making human brains so big. It also expanded the repertoire of things our species could eat: for instance, some foods that would normally have been poisonous (such as cassava) become edible after a certain amount of preparation that often includes the application of heat – or cooking.

In her chapter discussing fire, Wilson focuses primarily on the act of roasting meat – something that means a very different thing today compared to what it meant in the Victorian Age, for instance, or even in the Medieval period. Back then, “roasting” was synonymous to “spit-roasting”: putting hunks of meat on a sturdy pole, placing them just so near a fire, and then laboriously turning that meat so that it cooks just so. This method is still in use today in some places – not least here in the Philippines, where the spit-roasted pig, or lechon, is extremely popular – but spit-roasting is a dying art everywhere because it is so very time-consuming. The master lechon roasters of the Philippines are few and far between now, and more often than not lechon is now made on automatic roasting machines. Nowadays, when one “roasts” something, one places it in an oven to, technically, bake. This is a difference that Wilson emphasizes in her book: to roast is to cook something over an open flame; to bake is to cook something in an oven.

As for ice, it is more often associated with the preservation of food (though it did not start out that way), as opposed to the transformation of it, but that too has changed the way we eat today. Prior to refrigeration people ate seasonally, and went to market everyday, buying only what was available in amounts that could be readily consumed within the day. Refrigeration changed that by allowing people to not only store fresh food for longer, but also allowing food from other places to travel greater distances without rotting. There were, of course, various methods of preserving food pre-refrigeration: salting, for instance, or pickling, or candying – but what is interesting is that these methods have not disappeared just because refrigeration has become widespread. This is a phenomenon that Wilson looks into as well: how some aspects of cuisine do not disappear just because a technology has come along that could conceivably make said aspect obsolete.

There are also a great many little bits of information scattered throughout the book: for instance, the disposable chopstick was created not in America (as I assumed), but in Japan, as a response to cultural taboos regarding utensils used for eating. Or that the gradual dulling of the dinner knife – and the gradual return to increasing sharpness in the form of the steak knife – was the result of not just changing cooking methods but also changes in table etiquette in upper-class dining rooms. Or that while the French use a great many specialized knives for cooking, the Chinese get on fine with just one – and that this is also an indication of the nature of French and Chinese culture, respectively. There are many more interesting tidbits, of course – such as how the introduction of the food processor changed haute cuisine in the 1960s-70s – scattered throughout the book, that will pique the interest of anyone who is interested in the history of food and the technology associated with it. Either way, the point that Wilson wishes to get across is consistent: technology changes what we eat and how we eat it, and will keep on doing so well into the future.

However, this book is not without its problems – primarily in its organization. While I have no complaints with the tone of Wilson’s writing, I do have some issue with the way she has organized the book. There is something very scattered about the way the sections are organized, as if each chapter were written independent of the other, and then arranged according to some indiscernible whim of either the author or the editor. One might assume that logically, a book on the technology of food and cooking would begin with fire and progress from there all the way down to cutlery – from the kitchen to the table, so to speak – but that is not how the book is arranged. As a result, the reader tends to jump from item to item, technology to technology, with no clear association between them except what said reader may already know from his or her previous experience. As I said, this can be problematic: since there is no clear line of progress, so to speak, it can be a bit jarring when one connects one chapter to the next. It’s not entirely too difficult – a testament to the lucidity of Wilson’s writing – but it does have a bit of a zigzagging quality to it that might irritate readers for whom lucid writing might not be sufficient.

Overall, Consider the Fork is a very interesting, and very insightful, book. Wilson states: “[w]e always patronizingly forget that great thought has always gone into how best to cook,” and this is very true. Perhaps because of their ubiquity we tend to forget about the tools that have allowed humanity to create the miracle of cuisine, and therefore we also forget how much careful thought, experimentation, and important accidents have gone into giving us something as simple as a sauce pot, or a wok, or a rolling pin, or even the knife, spoon, fork, or chopsticks we use at the table to consume what other technologies have allowed us to make in the first place. We also seem to forget how much those technologies have changed the culture of eating, as well: how a wok is different from a frying pan and thus has directed the trajectory of an entire culture’s cuisine, or how the choice of using chopsticks has done the same. Though there are some organizational problems to this book, it remains an enjoyable, and educational, read, and will surely satisfy anyone with even the slightest interest in food.

“The Unexpected Cannot Guarantee Success, But It Guarantees the Best Chance of Success” – A Review of The Vor Game by Lois McMaster Bujold

I love a good rogue – or I love reading about them, rather. I may have mentioned elsewhere that, prior to five or six years ago, I liked my protagonists to be heroic in the more traditional sense of the word: followers of order and justice, keepers of the peace – Lawful Good, to use the parlance of Dungeons and Dragons and other tabletop role-playing games. However, recently I’ve developed a marked preference for rogues: clever, street-smart, and whose loyalties and actions are defined not by the law or society or any kind of hierarchy, but their own selves and what they believe is right. I have grown very appreciative of characters who are capable of getting themselves out of any situation by talking themselves out of said situation, as well as the way they can treat the law and society in a very subjective manner while still having a personal code of honor.

There are quite a few rogues in literature, of course, and they seem to be quite frequent in genre fiction, especially. Fantasy is, naturally, populated by quite a few of them, but sci-fi has its own fair share of rogues, too. One of my personal favorites has to be Miles Vorkosigan, from Lois McMaster Bujold’s excellent Vorkosigan Saga, a series of military space opera that began with the novel Shards of Honor, and continued with the novels Barrayar and The Warrior’s Apprentice. I’d read Shards of Honor and Barrayar long before I’d gotten the idea of starting a book-review site, but I already had the site in place when I picked up The Warrior’s Apprentice and have a review for that book. This is fortunate, because the novel The Vor Game picks up where The Warrior’s Apprentice left off.

The events of The Vor Game happen some time (a couple of years) after the end of The Warrior’s Apprentice. Miles has graduated from officer school, and has been given the rank of ensign and an assignment to the remote, frozen outpost of Kyril Island – what is probably the most terrible assignment that could be given to anyone. However, Miles, being Miles, accepts it with minimal complaint – but Miles, being Miles, also gets himself entangled in a series of events that take him far from Kyril Island and Barrayar: events that lead him to a conspiracy that threatens his family, Barrayaran society, one of his closest friends, and which could potentially lead to a deadly, destructive war.

It must be said now that I have very strong feelings about this series, and about the characters in them. There is always a certain amount of investment involved when one reads a book, but the degree of investment can vary from absolutely none at all to extreme levels of investment. The latter is how I feel about Miles, and about the handful of supporting characters that surround him. Much of this devotion comes from the fact that Miles is precisely the kind of rogue I enjoy reading about, but severely hobbled by his own insecurities – insecurities he has had to deal with from birth, but which, paradoxically, have given him his roguish traits in the first place. This combination of wicked cleverness and vulnerability is a particularly enjoyable combination for me, which means Miles is right up my alley.

The Vor Game is, therefore, a great mountain of fuel for that particular fire, because it throws Miles several curve balls that challenge him both mentally and emotionally. These curve balls include the Dendarii Mercenaries, whom Miles brought together in The Warrior’s Apprentice, and then abandoned to continue studying to be a Barrayaran military officer. Amongst the Dendarii Mercenaries is his old friend (and love) Elena, who married and fell in love with another one of the Dendarii Mercenaries at the end of the previous novel. Miles’ reaction to her is interesting, both because he is still in love with her, and because Elena herself has changed from the way she was in The Warrior’s Apprentice. In Miles’ absence she has become (or perhaps has had to become) a strong, capable, and perhaps somewhat ruthless leader.

Miles, in his poor, broken heart, is uncertain as to how he should deal with this – or for that matter, how he should deal with being the leader of the Dendarii Mercenaries again, assuming his former identity of Miles Naismith. He brings it off with aplomb, of course, but it’s interesting to see how he finds being in that particular identity’s skin a bit uncomfortable because it doesn’t square with how he thinks a Vor, especially one in the military, should act.

This novel also introduces Miles childhood friend and Emperor of Barrayar, Gregor Vorbarra, as an active supporting character. Mentioned frequently enough in the last books, this is the first time we see Gregor take an active part in anything to do with Miles – except it’s quite obvious Miles would have preferred that Gregor stayed in the safety of Barrayar. But Gregor’s very much tired of living in a gilded cage – tired enough that he’s obviously depressive, and suicidal to boot. I find this portrayal of him to be interesting, and very much in keeping with the way he was raised, so I look forward to finding out what happens to him further down the line.

As for the antagonists, those are quite interesting too. There’s General Metzov, whom Miles meets while at Kyril Island, and is a perfect case what happens when people let days of glories past get to their heads. But Metzov isn’t the most interesting villain; that honor goes to a woman named Cavilo, who believes that there is no such thing as choosing between victory and defeat; instead, one must make choices so that, whatever the outcome, one always wins. Possessed of “a face like an angel, [and a] mind like a rabid mongoose”, it’s incredibly fascinating reading how Miles matches wits with her, and wins – but just barely. If I like my protagonists to be fantastically clever, I certainly like it when my antagonists are too, and Cavilo is one of the wiliest I’ve read about yet. I certainly hope she makes a further appearance down the line in the series, because it’d be incredibly fun to see how Miles deals with her.

Given these characters in play, plus events from previous novels, I think it’s safe to say that the plot is an enormous amount of fun. There’s an almost breathless quality to it, with very little time for Miles to think, and when he does it’s usually filled with him simultaneously plotting his next move and doubting himself. And of course, given how clever the antagonist is in this one, there are quite a few twists and turns, some of which I didn’t see coming – and I really like it when I can’t see the plot twists coming.

Overall, The Vor Game is another great example of why Lois McMaster Bujold’s Vorkosigan Saga has the readership it does: great characters, thrilling plot, and the promise for even more further down the line. Given the events that have happened in this novel, I’m looking forward to finding out just what happens to Miles, his friends, and even his enemies in the succeeding novels, though whatever might happen to them, I’m sure it’s going to be another excellent adventure.

A Lone Hunter in a Land of Not-Quite-Familiar Fairytales – A Review of The Last Wish by Andrzej Sapkowski

The first time I heard of The Witcher books, it was through the video games. I had heard that the games had gotten rave reviews, and when I found out that they were based on books (and not the other way around, interestingly enough), I though it would be a good idea to go out and read the originals before I got down to finding myself copies of the game to play. However, I was stopped cold when I found out that the books were, in fact, in Polish, and at the time there was no available translation. If I had known there were fan translations I might have settled for those out of sheer desperate curiosity, but since I didn’t know about those either, I was able to wait until copies of the official translation finally surfaced on my side of the world.

As of the moment, there are only two officially translated books available: The Last Wish, which is a collection of short stories, and Blood of Elves, which is the first novel in the series proper. Since the stories in The Last Wish precede the events of Blood of Elves, it was obvious that I ought to begin with the short story collection. And, as far as introductions go, I find The Last Wish to be, in its way, more than adequate.

The Last Wish is, as mentioned earlier, a collection of short stories about the life and times of Geralt of Rivia, the (in)famous witcher after whom the entire series is named. There is one overarching “frame story” titled “The Voice of Reason,” which shows Geralt in the temple of the goddess Melitele, having escaped to it after some very unsavory events, the details for which are scattered throughout the other stories in the book.

The stories alternate between “The Voice of Reason” and the other tales, and in some ways there is an interesting point to this. In the other stories, Geralt is presented as his job describes him: a witcher, and one with a rather unsavory reputation, going about his job as best as he can even if, most of the time, he gets the short end of the stick when it comes to promised rewards, or finds himself manipulated for other purposes than taking out the monsters a witcher is trained to fight. Take, for instance, in the short story “The Witcher,” wherein Geralt combats a striga and breaks a curse along the way, but who gets half his neck chewed off in the process (and is therefore the main reason why he’s at the temple in the first place) and no real (monetary) reward for his services. Or “A Question of Price,” where Geralt is forced to choose between a greater or lesser evil, but winds up losing either way. “The Voice of Reason” presents him as more vulnerable, which grants the reader an opportunity to view him without the mantle of the witcher that he wears around himself in the other stories.

One of the first things that struck me while reading these stories is that Geralt feels a lot like Hellboy from Mike Mignola’s fantastic Hellboy graphic novels – well, mostly in that both Geralt and Hellboy share a dry sense of humor and are outsiders who have much more in common with the things they fight than humanity at large. The difference, though, is that everybody loves Hellboy, whereas, in The Last Wish, almost everybody hates Geralt. Nowhere is this made clearer than in A Question of Price, where Geralt loses a friend at the very end of the story – not to death, but to the fact that this friend has seen the darker side of what Geralt does, and because he cannot take it decides to end whatever friendship they have.

Another thing that struck me about these stories is how often they reference familiar fairytales. The story titled “A Grain of Truth,” for instance, is essentially a re-imagining of the Beauty and the Beast fairytale to fit into The Witcher universe. And it’s not the only one: “The Witcher” references Snow White. “A Question of Price” is a nod to the story of Gawain and his wife from Arthurian legend. “The Last Wish” has a genie at the center of the story. And “The Lesser Evil” references almost every other fairytale the other stories missed, from Rapunzel to The Princess and the Frog to Rumpelstiltskin. There is, of course, absolutely nothing wrong with all these references and re-imaginings – in fact, they are ridiculously fun. It only makes me raise my eyebrow slightly in that there seemed to be so much borrowing done that it made me wonder if The Witcher universe had any “original” lore of its own.

As for Geralt himself, I find him quite interesting. He rather reminds me of a vigilante gunman from an old Western, who goes from town to town delivering justice and doing the jobs only he can do (and a few he gets roped into against his will), but in the end, being chased out of town because nobody wants him to stay around for very long because of his reputation. He has very, very few friend, and loses a few more every once in a while, but those who have stuck around are, for the most part, wonderful people – like Nenneke, the head priestess of the temple of Melitele, who shelters and heals Geralt throughout the story arc of “The Voice of Reason,” or Dandilion (and yes, that is how his name is spelled), the bard who got into a whole lot of trouble with Geralt during the events of “The Edge of the World” and “The Last Wish” and who still considers Geralt a friend despite those events. And then there is the mysterious Yennefer, introduced in “The Last Wish” and whose hold on Geralt is greater than anyone truly comprehends. All of them are fascinating, to a one, and will hopefully put in appearances of their own in Blood of Elves – because truly, if Geralt doesn’t miss them, I think I will.

Overall, The Last Wish is an excellent lead-in to The Witcher universe. By settling into the world via short stories, not a novel, the reader is not pressured to quickly absorb everything about this world, as would normally be the case with a full-length novel. It also appears to have put less pressure on Sapkowski’s shoulders, as well, since each story develops in its own way while showcasing various facets of Geralt, his friends, his enemies, and his world. As for the individual stories themselves, they are largely enjoyable to read, though the sheer amount of fairytale references may have some readers raising their eyebrows on occasion. Otherwise, though, this is an enjoyable read, and will allow the reader to decide whether or not he or she actually likes The Witcher universe enough before committing to the novel. For my part, I like it enough to commit, and I will be getting to it as soon as I acquire a copy of Blood of Elves.

The First Step in a Dark Hunt Through Gathering Darkness – A Review of Xenos by Dan Abnett

I suppose we have all seen them: those stacks and stacks of Warhammer 40,000 books in the bookstore, oftentimes with some pretty interesting covers – enough to briefly grab and hold one’s attention into looking at it for a while before, most likely, moving on. This is precisely what I have done very often before, since I have no knowledge of the shared universe in which these books are written, and I haven’t been curious enough about them to figure out where to even begin.

But then I met Steven. Hope introduced him to me at the first Homestuck Philippines meet-up I ever attended, having already befriended him and knowing I’d get along with him. This was indeed the case: Steven, Hope and I share a lot of interests, particularly in the kind of books we read – which was why he encouraged me to pick up the Warhammer 40K books. He claimed there was something for everyone in them, though they were primarily military sci-fi. Since I read and enjoyed Lois McMaster Bujold’s Vorkosigan Saga books, though, he claimed that getting in the Warhammer 40k books wouldn’t be too hard at all.

I like Steven, and so I took his enthusiastic recommendation as an endorsement of the series. I started trying to figure my own way around the many, many potential books, and at first I decided to start at the very beginning: The Horus Heresy – which also happened to be the longest-running (and still running) series in the entire shared universe. I read the first two books, then skipped to one of the later ones, and have since temporarily given up.

This is not to say that The Horus Heresy books aren’t good; they are, to a degree, but I found myself getting impatient with them. I talked to Steven again about my wavering interest, and he suggested that I read the Eisenhorn Trilogy. Thinking that there really was nothing I had to lose, I started on it with the first book, Xenos.

And I do believe I have finally, finally found something about the Warhammer 40K universe to enjoy, because this first book did very well in sucking me in and not letting go.

The premise of Xenos is thus: Gregor Eisenhorn is an Inquisitor of the Imperium of Man, and together with a small group of people with whom he has worked for years, he is tasked with rooting out heresy wherever he finds it in any of the Imperium’s territories. At the beginning of the novel he and his team are on the planet Hubris, where they have finally tracked down and cornered a wanted heretic whom Eisenhorn has been hunting for years. However, the mission goes awry, revealing that this criminal may be linked to a far larger conspiracy involving a noble family from another planet in the same area. Eisenhorn’s hunt to discover the truth underneath the conspiracy leads him to new friends, new enemies – and the discovery of a secret that will alter the course of the rest of his life.

The main problem that a lot of people will have, when they first pick this up, is comprehending the shared world in which this novel (and the two others that follow) exist. I know I have already mentioned that I like it when a sci-fi or fantasy novel expects me to work a little in order to comprehend things world-building and character development, but the same cannot necessarily be said of Xenos. When I began this I had two advantages: the first being that I could contact Steven to explain something I did not understand, and the second being that I had already read three other books from the shared universe before. This made piecing together certain concepts, like the idea of an Inquisitor or why the God-Emperor is so special a bit easier. For those who are using this book as their gateway to the rest of the Warhammer 40K universe, though, I would recommend accessing one of the two wikis currently available online, and using those as necessary.

However, once any hurdles regarding information are surmounted or worked around, the rest of the story is fairly easy to read, and actually quite enjoyable. Eisenhorn, who is both the main protagonist and the narrator (the novel is told in first-person point-of-view), is a character the reader will enjoy, both because he is an interesting character in his own right, and because he makes a pretty decent narrator. He is often sharply aware of his own flaws, and his wit is quite sarcastic too – qualities that, in my opinion, make for an excellent first-person narrator. There is also a notable attempt at objectivity in his tone of narration, one which suits his personality and his job, and which pleases me immensely to read. It gives a certain level of coolness, of distance to his tone, but also allows for moments of emotion, especially when he is talking about the other characters around him.

And now that I mention the other characters, they are for the most part an interesting lot, too – especially the ones on Eisenhorn’s team: Uber Aemon and Midas Betancore to start with, and then later on Godwin Fischig and Alizabeth Bequin. Of the four, I found Bequin’s development to be the most pronounced in this book, and therefore I found her more interesting than any of the others I’ve mentioned (except maybe Aemon, for reasons that the reader will likely find out on his or her own). I suspect – or I hope, rather – that Fischig develops further in the later novels; though he’s quite interesting in Xenos, his development is not quite the same as Bequin’s, and I would really like to see what happens to him later on.

There are, of course, a whole host of other characters aside from the ones on Eisenhorn’s team, including the antagonist/s. For the most part, they are fascinating characters, each in their own way, though the reader may find himself or herself raising an eyebrow at some of them that lack subtlety – or they may not. I prefer characters to be gray in their morality, or at least subtle in their motives (another reason why I like Bequin), and some of the crucial supporting characters simply do not possess either trait.

As for the plot, that at least I did not have any problems with. Nothing really came completely out of the blue for me for the most part, but it was enjoyable to read: a combination of adventure a la Indiana Jones and some interesting battle scenes quite reminiscent of some scenes from Star Wars and the most recent Star Trek movie. In particular, there was a description of ship-versus-ship fighting in space that had me sucked in there for quite a while – though mostly because I have read quite a few of the Aubrey-Maturin novels by Patrick O’Brian, and though Abnett wa describing ships in outer space, whereas O’Brian’s books are about ships at sea, it was easy to imagine the maneuvers since I had already had experience imagining O’Brian’s descriptions of sea battles.

Overall, Xenos is a fine introduction to the massive shared universe of Warhammer 40K, not least because it is well-written, featuring interesting characters and an equally interesting plot. However, readers who are using this book as their launch point into the Warhammer 40K universe and therefore have not read any of the other books may run into some comprehension trouble, because the book does not attempt to explain everything, or leave a hint that will allow the reader to figure things out for himself or herself. In such a case a quick Google search will bring up one of two Warhammer 40K wikis, either of which should serve to give the fledgling reader the necessary information to gain comprehension of what, precisely, is going on.