Moe Lane

From SM Stirling’s alternate history The Tears of the Sun. Background: …too long to explain; suffice it to say that the heroes are being a bit standoffish towards someone who was until-quite-recently an ally of one of the major villains. And the attitude of said heroes is not really flying with the local holy man:

The lama sighed and looked around at the others; the firelight picked out his wrinkles, like the hills and valleys of a mysterious country. Beyond gleamed the peaks of mountains where bear and cougar and tiger roamed, and men as savage as either.

“My friends,” he said gently, “self-righteousness is the fumes of decomposing vanity; it is the means the Devil’s Guard use to cloud the vision of those who truly love virtue. If someone is far along a journey to destruction, shall you hate them for waking to their situation, and turning about, and taking even a single halting half step back? Will that encourage them to take a second step, and a third? Or will it minister only to the darkness in our own souls?”

I know, I know: but nobody ever said being good was easy.

Moe Lane

And it’s about time, too. Unfair, no doubt: The High King of Montival is part of a series (the Emberverse*), which means delays. Still: out in a week.

And so Dungeons & Dragons Fantasy Roleplaying Game: An Essential D&D Starter (4th Edition D&D) is out this week. Err, it’s being switched out. You know what I mean.

Moe lane

*Short version: gunpowder, electricity, and most high-energy chemistry stops working one day – while at the same time not affecting actual people. This would drive scientists and engineers mad, except that most of them lived in areas which promptly started in on starving to death and the survivors had more important things to worry about. Essentially, adventure with a steadily-increasing fantasy quotient.

S.M. Stirling puts up the first chapters of whatever book he’s working on at the moment at his website, in the fully-justified belief that this will keep me sufficiently interested to buy the book as soon as it hits hardcover. It’s interesting to see the differences that occur between these drafts and the finished product, too.

The latest one is A Taint in the Blood, and it looks to be urban fantasy… only not, unless you consider psionics ‘fantasy,’ which they are and are not, depending on how rigorous the science is otherwise, so it’s more like urban horror, except that makes no sense… oh, just read it. It’s turning out pretty good so far.

It being Sunday, we remove Harry Turtledove’s Hitler’s War – which I will figure out how to acquire in a week or so; and bring in S.M. Stirling’s The Sword of the Lady, which I have an entire month to figure out how to acquire. It’s good for me, really. Teaches me resourcefulness.

Really.

Moe Lane

It’s called Age of Sail, and it looks like a historical blog discussing precisely that.

I came into Age of Sail fiction from the science fiction end of it, actually: reading S.M. Stirling and David Weber got me reading Patrick O’Brian and C.S Forester (I’m currently halfway through A&E’s Horatio Hornblower series, and enjoying it muchly).  And then, of course, there’s George MacDonald Fraser’s The Pyrates, which is required reading for anybody who loves old Hollywood swashbucklers (and who doesn’t).  So I guess I’m explaining why this is going on the blogroll…

Moe Lane

PS: OK, one last one: Naomi Novik.  For all your “Napoleonic warfare novels with dragons added; only, and this is really important to note, adding the dragons doesn’t make the whole thing suck horribly, or indeed at all” needs.

(Today’s writer: S.M. Stirling)

A lot of people love to hate this particular author – and, given his remarkable lack of suffer-fools-gladly, even by the standards of a genre where it’s practically a prerequisite for writing in it, it’s not entirely surprising – but it still remains true that Stirling’s a crackerjack writer. For this one, I’m just going to toss out a few authors & topics: if you’re already interested in any of them, check out the book associated with it.

• George MacDonald Fraser: The Peshawar Lancers
• The Southern Agrarians: Conquistador
• Patrick O’Brian: Island in the Sea of Time and sequels
• Edgar Rice Burroughs: The Sky People and In the Courts of the Crimson Kings

That should get you started: fair warning; all of those are alternate history.  I’m fond of the genre, you understand.