The Heft and the Anticipation: The End and the Death volume 1 by Dan Abnett

The End and the Death volume 1 by Dan Abnett is a big book, both physically, and for its place in Warhammer fiction. As you can see in the photo I posted last week, the book is quite large, larger than my copy of Don Quixote. That puts it in the company of the collected works of Alister Mclean, The History of the Russian Revolution by Trotsky, and a history of the scramble for Africa. Books that big are actually a problem for me. I have big hands, and despite that, the book feels like it is too much book. Thicker paper and denser material for the hardcover.  It reduces the enjoyment of reading the book when as I read it I can feel the balance changing. I like books that I can sink into and let all distractions fade away, and it is a little hard with The End and the Death volume 1. 

It is not like this book couldn't have been shorter. I am writing this before even the release date for the second volume has been revealed, so I have no idea if all of the story beats will be incredibly relevant, but many of them feel superfluous. This is supposed to be the culmination of the epic tragedy that is the background to Warhammer 40,000, and for most of the book it focuses on that, and when it has that focus it is great, but the sections focused on Fafnir Rann, and the Dark Angels can just be edited out, and I think this story would be improved. The audience is here not for the fighting on the surface between Space Marines but on the understanding that this book sets up the duel between the Emperor and Horus for the fate of the galaxy. There is enough here for a good volume 1, you can just trim it down a bit.

Up until this point I have been really negative, and the book has its problems, but I really enjoyed reading it. Dan Abnett has proven again that he is an excellent author, and he really delivers. The author takes the problem that hopefully everyone reading this book knows what the outcome is, and uses it to build to something bigger. Language is repeated effectively because of how he describes the world. Characters use the same language again and again because reality is breaking down, and in this new reality, those words are the most natural thing. It is a very striking use of repetition, and it helps build and build and build until the revelation that what it is building towards in the next novel is bigger than I expected. 

It is a good part 1, and a good example of what talented authors can do in tie-in fiction. The Warhammer 40k setting is not something that any of these authors made, but the Black Libary's best authors have shown that they can make great fiction out of it. The ratio of excellent fiction to action schlock is not as great as I would like, but a number of great books recently have me very excited for news about new releases. 

I am worried about what people new to the setting should read. My first Warhammer novel was also by Dan Abnett, and it was a much better introduction than this one. Reading this as your first Warhammer 40k novel is like watching Avengers Infinity War as your first experience with superheroes. It makes it difficult to recommend without the reader first undergoing a course in Warhammer 40k history and metaphysics. I don't exactly have a reading list prepared for the class, as a lot of it comes from some very well-researched and decently-cited Reddit posts. Black Library is cranking out books and I don't have the time or money to read them all. If you are deep into Warhammer 40k I would recommend it, but if not I would not pick it up. You would be so lost your experience would be terrible. 

Next time on the blog we look forward to the exciting world of wood heat. I don't want to give too much away, but I think it is going to be FIRE!

Not revolutionary : The American Indian Wars by John Tebbel & Keith Jennison

The American Indian Wars by John Tebbel and Keith Jennison has gotten me to consider why I have always been disinterested in US history outside of the World Wars and the Civil War, but it has not changed my mind on the subject. It effectively covers the Indian Wars, and in an impressively even-handed manner. Presented in its complexity and depth this area of history holds a passing interest, but after reading this I am satisfied, and it will likely be a long time before I pick up a history like this again. 

Cover is a little bland, I wish they had chosen something that pops.

Before I go into that I need to address a concern I had when I started this book. I read the front inside of the dust cover and the publication date and was concerned. I should have read the inside of the back cover as well, then I would be concerned about different things. One of the authors is part American Indian, but none of the authors are historians, being a journalist and an editor. As for its coverage of the tragedy of war, it is impressively even-handed. Massacres and brutality abound in frontier battles like this, and I have the impression that the reason more of the white massacres of Indians are described is because the whites won, and being on the winning side means you can massacre your enemies, not the other way around. The Carthaginians got destroyed rather than the Romans because the Romans won. 

It's a decent piece of artwork, but I like some works on back covers.

The American Indian Wars covers the subject chronologically and makes some interesting choices in its focus. Around half of the narrative takes place before the founding of the United States, and only 1/8th of the book covers the period after the Civil War. Marginalizing the main period people think of when they think of American Indians is a bold choice, but the authors present it persuasively. The period of initial contact was the period when the conflict was most equal. By the time the United States was an independent country its resources vastly outweighed any single tribe and was even able to overpower the larger groups of tribes assembled by charismatic leaders without too many difficulties. By 1865 the disparity was too great, and the flood of settlers could not be stopped. The whole book then takes the air of a great tragedy, as culture after culture is overwhelmed, and mistreated from sea to shining sea. It is hard to present the past accurately and not have a sense of tragedy about it. Nostalgia is a trap.

What The American Indian Wars did not do well is make me reconsider my disinterest in American history. I have been thinking about it, and I think it is because it feels so small. I know that is a weird thing to say about one of the largest counties in the world, bear with me. The tendency for isolationism is strong even in this history. Spain appears only to sell Florida, and there is no real mention of Mexico. How did the Mexican border affect the wars with the Apaches? The only powers of long-term interest in this book are France and Britain, and they still feel like sideshows. History has a greater impact when it can keep the wider causes and effects in mind, and address them in a memorable if cursory manner. Maybe I subconsciously connect the dots in areas I am more familiar with, but usually, the feeling is of smallness. 

Would I recommend The American Indian Wars? No, not for a moment. While a decent read, I am not satisfied it was a good history. I don't know much about the subject so I cannot state definitive facts, but it feels like it is not enough. If American Indians interest you there has to be a more modern book on the subject written by an actual historian rather than a journalist. I don't think journalists make good historians.

Now that, that is dramatic colors, I like it.

This has been delayed a bit because I ordered a book and I wanted to review it when I got it. I have not talked about it yet on the blog, but I am a big Warhammer 40k book fan and the Black Library has just released a book I have been really looking forward to has been released. The End and the Death Volume 1 by Dan Abnett is going to be the next book I review. I am looking forward to tearing into this brick of a book. 

The End and the Death is a huge book. Don Quixote for scale. 

Eight favorite books as of February 2022

Recently my mother asked me about what my eight favorite books were. At first, my reaction was "That's a weird number" but then I got down to thinking about it. Rarely do I think about what my favorite books are, and it was a bit of a challenge to come up with the number. But I persevered and was able to deliver a list to my mother that I feel stands up. I still do not know why she wanted it. I wanted to express my reasoning to myself, so this blog post exists. 

Before I get to the list section of this listicle, I wanted to give an honorable mention. That goes to Catch-22  by Joseph Heller. Catch-22  is the funniest book I have ever read, and that is its problem. It is laugh-out-loud funny from page 1, and I don't remember it ever really stopping except when it went to a dark place, and then it was straight back to comedy. But when I set down to read a book, I am not looking to bust a rib, I want a quiet moment to sit and engage with the ideas in the book and I cannot do that when I am constantly laughing. I first read the book in middle school, I had that problem then, and the last time I picked it up I still had the problem, so the humor holds up. The problem is that I am not really interested in comedy in my books beyond a brief chuckle, and Catch-22 is a dangerous book to drink hot chocolate while reading. So it ends up an honorable mention.

1.

Black May by Michael Gannon

Black May probably wins the award for the book I most often reach for absentmindedly when I am looking for a good read. When I find it on my shelves I always reach for it. A history of the Battle of the Atlantic centering around May 1943, Black May combines technical history with an excellent narrative. It covers the developments in technology, air patrols, and even interrogation and propaganda, and balances it with an excellent narrative that covers the battle of convoy ONS-5. Neither part seems like an afterthought, and every time I read it I feel I have a greater appreciation of what was needed to win the war with U-boats. It also makes me want a convoy commander video game. There are too many U-boat simulators. 

2.

The Face of Battle by John Keegan

The Face of Battle is a great read and an influential piece of history. John Keegan gives a view from the ground level of three great English battles, Agincourt, Waterloo, and the first day of the Battle of Albert, the first battle of the Somme offensive. There is a narrative section to give you the basic geography of the battle, but the focus is on the "face of battle", and what it was like to fight there. This covers not only the mechanics of battle, like how much smoke muskets made, or how armored knights were killed by groups of bowmen, but also the emotions of battle. How religious the armies were, how were the wounded cared for, and what kept men from running away all come up in this piece, and they all get the attention they deserve. It is not perfect, John Keegan was a professor at the leading British military college and it shows, but it is excellent. Well worth your time.

3.

The Storm of Steel by Ernst Junger

The Storm of Steel is a strange one. I have never owned a physical copy, but instead, I have an audiobook. Some might say that audiobooks are not real books, but they can get bent. Get your books in whatever format works for you. I like The Storm of Steel for its content, and not just for the excellent narrator Audible has. It is one of the great memoirs of the First World War, and the German-to-English translation has an excellent usage of language that makes the war very vivid. There is also a sense of authenticity that is nice to find in a memoir. Junger is proud of some of the things he is done, but unlike Infantry Attacks by Erwin Rommel, another German captain, there is not this sense of self-aggrandizement. Junger does some really stupid things, and even recounts a time when he broke down and cried in front of the unit he was leading. It is part of the complexity of Junger's character revealed by the book. Junger has a romantic side but also has romantic feelings about the least romantic war in human history. It is a strange combination that makes for a great read. 

4.

The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien

The Lord of the Rings is a classic that needs little introduction. I still manage to get a little more out of it every time I read it, and that is only helped by the wealth of secondary literature that surrounds a classic work. It is really rewarding to read something that suggests a different way to view a novel, and then to go back to the novel and be able to see that perspective and have it heighten your appreciation of both the novel and the author. The Lord of the Rings is much more rewarding to read this way than any other book I have come across.

5.

World War Z by Max Brooks

World War Z is an exciting experiment in fiction. Max Brooks manages to write a fictional oral history of a zombie apocalypse that delivers on the horror and humanity of that concept. I am not normally one for horror, but this book manages to deliver good horror in a very human way. There is also a great flow to the book. Brooks manages to make the book have very distinctive phases that each have a different feel. The mounting awareness of the pre-apocalypse, the desperate and confusing early days, a period of adaptation and consolidation, the triumph of humanity working together, and then some closing povs to dampen that triumphal spirit with a sense that the world will never be the same again. It has been a while since I read it, but I am sure it holds up. There is also a great fanfiction you should check out called "The way is shut" which explores what happened to North Korea fantastically. The fanfictions writer nailed the authors style perfectly.

6.

Mossflower by Brian Jacques

Mossflower is probably my most-read book. I was obsessed with it around third grade, and I read it on loop for a while. The story is Lord of the Rings lite. A small party quests for a mountain, and then there is a great battle at the end. I have reread it as an adult, and while it still holds up pretty well it is a children's story, simple and straightforward. I got a lot out of it as a kid because I was reading so fast. So fast that I remember on one of my rereads I started reading a fight scene I had no memory of. Therefore Mossflower, more than any other book on this list, is a nostalgia pick. A reminder of simpler days when I had the free time to read a book repeatedly.

7.

Three Armies on the Somme by William J. Philpott

Another book I have only experienced as an audiobook, Three Armies on the Somme is 26-and-a-half hours well spent. What makes it an excellent book is its narrow focus but broad coverage. That may sound like a contradiction, but what I am really trying to say is that it takes a holistic view of a very narrow topic. The book is about the fighting around the Somme River between 1914 and 1918, and its narrative can at points describe the fighting day by day, especially during the period we think of as the Battle of the Somme, but it also takes time to pull back from the fighting front and address how the fighting in this narrow geographic area affected the cultures and strategic situation of the nations involved. There is much more depth here than you would find in other history books, even other detail-obsessed books like The Road to Stalingrad, or Stalingrad (It is interesting that a lot of these kinds of books cover the Great Patriotic War, and date from the brief period that the soviet archives were opened up.). It is not for everyone, but it is a book for me.

8.

Tip and Run by Edward Paice

I stumbled onto Tip and Run while researching the German East Africa campaign for my honors thesis in college. In most of the books I had read about it focused on the German commander, Paul Von Lettow Vorbeck, and his skill in avoiding defeat despite the very long odds against him, holding out with minimal resupply and support for the whole war. What Tip and Run showed me is the consequences of that, and by doing that changed my perspective on war forever. In Tip and Run the war is anything but glorious, especially for the Africans caught between the British and German Colonial powers. This war was not a glorious struggle where a chivalrous and great man held off the British with only his wits, but a war where two uncaring armies created forced labor systems with no regard for the lives of the laborers to keep the fighting going in the worst theater of the war. Men who fought both in East Africa and in the trenches preferred the trenches because at least then they got a break from the marching. It is important that history reminds us that the past was not a better place and that nostalgia is a trap. Many want to go back to a time they feel was better, and it is important to remember that is a lie. Tip and Run destroys any feeling of nostalgia that so many other authors have tried to build up. 

So there you have it, my eight favorite books at this moment. I don't know when I would ever go back and revisit this. Hopefully, this is not my final list. I can think of nothing sadder then never finding a new favorite book for the rest of my life.

Technically A History - Confound & Destroy: 100 Group and the bomber support campaign by Martin Streetly

There is an interesting subset of military history that I think of as technical history. These are histories focused on the technical minutia of a specific topic, with little space given over to any other aspects. These produce a fascinating contrast to more usual history in that they almost entirely remove the human actors because that would detract from the various technical factors. Confound & Destroy: 100 Group and the bomber support campaign is definitely one of these, and is a great example of the type.

I don't feel that the photo does it credit, but red and black on yellow are not great colors.

The narrative covers the unit that supported the British and American bomber campaigns against Nazi Germany with jamming, chaff, and night fighters from before its inception to just after the end of the war. Unlike a more usual history that would have had accounts from the pilots and aircrew to add a little humanity and human interest to the book, Confound & Destroy has no interest in that. It has a lot of ground to cover to trace the technical and tactical developments as the British and Nazis strive for dominance over the night skies over Europe. The number of different radars, radar jammers, and night fighter techniques is extensive, as are the five appendixes that cover the equipment, the British and Nazi units, operations elsewhere, and both sides' aircraft. 

This book is brought to you by Jane's, makers of fine identification guides.

This is not a book for beginners. The device names and acronyms fly thick and fast, and missions are summarized in tables, rather than described in the narrative. This allows Confound & Destroy to cover a lot of ground, but it makes it more difficult to understand why things are happening. If I had not read (or listened to, Audible is great) books like Big Week by James Holland I would have had no idea about how the German air defense system worked, and why the British were employing these techniques. Ironically the appendix chapter on the Nazi air defense system covers this excellently and touches on the personalities behind it. This might be a product of the date that this book was written. Published in 1978, it is entirely possible that some British sources were still classified, even though the back of the book says it is based on the latest declassified documents. 

What the book does get across is the ever-evolving nature of radar technology of the period, and the constant need to adapt to the enemy's innovations with ones of your own. I just wish that it had been covered in a more engaging read. Hopefully, in the future, a historian will approach the subject again in a book that should be more readable, and probably more accurate. That is the funny thing about history, the latest books tend to be the best because they are building on what came before with the perspective gained by distance. It is just a shame that this area has not garnered that much attention. Would I recommend it? Yes, if only because I have not seen anything better, and it is very interesting. 

One of my older dice sets, that I picked up at a con while in college. Ahh nostalgia.

For the next book this blog will go back to its roots a bit, but still, stay in the new books section. I went to a book sale at the local library where they would let you get a bag of books for ten bucks on the last day of the sale, so I walked away with a significant number of additions to my collection. I wholeheartedly recommend going to the local library's book sales. I have 18 books in the new book section, so a roll of a d20 will determine the next subject. 

Look, I got yet more shelves. I still need more, I can never have enough.

I roll up a 14 and get Alexander the Great and the Logistics of the Macedonian Army by Donald W. Engels. Two strange coincidences, this book is also copyrighted 1978, and I am finishing up the audiobook Philip and Alexander by Adrian Goldsworthy. I am always glad for additional context. 

Big Guns, Big Mistakes: Million Dollar Barrage: American Field Artillery in the Great War by Justin G. Prince

It was a nice coincidence to finish this book on Armistice day. I wish I could say that I intended it, but that would be inaccurate, it was a nice coincidence that I was about done with the book and I had today off. It is nice to work at a company that recognizes holidays with time off. I got to enjoy some hot chocolate and a good book. 

I really love the color choices on this cover.

I really enjoyed reading Million Dollar Barrage by Justin G. Prince. The subtitle is not especially accurate. With a subtitle like American Field Artillery in the Great War, I would have expected it to cover the whole experience of American field artillery units in combat, but it instead did something much more reasonable. Justin Prince tracks the evolution of American Field Artillery (as opposed to coastal artillery a different branch) equipment and training before the war, how that translated to fighting the first world war, and what lessons they took from it after the war. There is one chapter examining the battle of the Meuse-Argonne as a case study but most of the book is on training and equipment. The author manages to make that interesting, helped massively by the short-sighted views of American leadership, and how unprepared they were for the type of war they were fighting. Incompetent fumbling can be a pretty entertaining read. 

Blurb is pretty standard.

Million Dollar Barrage has also got me thinking about great man history, which might seem a little strange. After all, this is not a book about a "great man", but a book about training systems and equipment acquisition. There are "trends and forces" going on that shape these systems, but the great men shape them too. That comes up here with General Pershing and others in the American Army's leadership, who wanted to train the American Expeditionary Force for open warfare, with an emphasis on open warfare, the light artillery piece, and the rifle rather than the aspects of trench warfare that the AEF would need to succeed in the trenches like indirect fire and modern combined arms. Many hours of training were wasted on training techniques that would not help on the battlefield, and that had to be made up for by training and experience in the field. But it was made up for. A "great man" made bad decisions, but the individuals that made up the AEF adapted, and eventually turned themselves into a modern army. The individual is important, but individuals in numbers are more important. No man is truly capable of being a force all in themselves. They can attempt to, but that relies on others accepting their will. Truly charisma is the most dangerous stat. 

Would I recommend it? Yes, I would. It is a bit specialist, but it is a good read, and it has some relevance to the inertia of modern bureaucracies. I could be entirely off the mark, as I am deep into World War 1 tactical minutia. It is well-written, and it was easy to keep up the momentum while reading it. If you are interested in how the AEF fought pick it up.

I have a note, too much yellow.

As for the next book, I am continuing to work my way through my recent purchases. I will be reading Confound and Destroy: 100 Group and the Bomber support campaign by Martin Streetly. I picked it up after I saw a passing reference to British night fighters operating over Germany during the combined bomber offensive. Imagine my surprise that after studying World War 2 for my whole life there was something I had missed. So I ran off to Amazon to find a book about it, and Confound and Destroy was the only book I found. So I am reading that next. See you then. 

False Advertising: Foucault's Pendulum by Umberto Eco

 It has been a while, hasn't it? I did not think it would take me this long to read this. It's a novel, it will be fun. It shouldn't take that long right. I was wrong. I had forgotten the experience of reading The Name of the Rose in college. I was seduced by the blurb on the back cover. I did not comprehend Umberto Eco. Of course, life also had its hand in delaying me. I had to bury my grandfather one week and celebrate the wedding of a friend the next. But, I found this book hard to read.

I don't have much to say about the cover, but I like it.

I enjoyed and breezed through the first 300ish pages. The book's opening is great. The mystery of the missing friend, the attempts to break the password by being cleverer and cleverer, and then the revelation that the password is No, and that the way to get to the truth was to avoid clever overcomplicated solutions and be simple is great hook when you have read the back blurb. The blurb promises a story about people in over their heads, who endangered themselves by being too clever.  The opening delivers on this really well. That momentum carried me forward for about 300 pages. But that is where my problems with the structure of the books dragged my enjoyment of the book down. 

Expectations are important, and this blurb sets the wrong one.

I feel like I would like this book better if it was two or three books. One that covers the blurb, one about a young boy's life in occupied Italy and how that shaped the rest of his life and a history of the Knights Templar conspiracies. That way these interesting ideas get their own space. The novel really has two protagonists, the protagonist in whose mind we exist, and Belbo, the protagonist of the occupied Italy story. Where these two stories meet is very awkward, and the themes do not seem to interact. So at 300 pages, when I felt the pace slow down and I was wondering when we were going to get to the thing I bought this book for in the first place, the editors inventing a conspiracy, I checked the page count. 641 pages. I was not even halfway done. That was a crushing revelation for my reading speed.

I dragged myself through the rest of the book. There are long sections that I found completely unengaging, and the language itself became more long-winded and introspective. The novel I thought I was getting appeared every now and then, but it didn't feel like enough. When it finally got to the part where the editors put together the computer program it feels rushed. There are other, less interesting, and more forgettable sections of the book that feel lavished with pages, but the thing that got me interested in reading the book feels a bit secondary. At the end, it feels even more rushed, and the danger they unleashed with their program that invents connections overtakes them far too rapidly to be interesting. When I was done I felt relieved. 

Would I recommend Foucault's Pendulum? Not unless you are a fan of classic literature, or prefer your novels more focused on thought and impression. If you liked Albert Camus I think you would be right at home, but it has been a while since I read anything by him. That idea got me thinking. I am not sure how well the novel traditions of France and Italy translate into what English readers of the internet age think of as a novel. It seems that modern novels focus more on telling an entertaining story than delving into some deeper meaning, and I am there for that. I doubt fictions ability to show the truth about humanity and the human condition because it is fiction. Someone made it up. Can fiction have meaning? Absolutely, but if you want the truth about human nature read a bunch of history books. 

The cover and title are great.

The next book for this blog is going to be another book I selected myself. Another project I set myself is transcribing my great-grandfather's diary from the First World War. He served with the AEF in France with an airplane squadron as a mechanic and observer and was trained in artillery. So, to better understand his experience I am reading Million-Dollar Barrage: American Field Artillery in the Great War by Justin G. Prince. Some good modern scholarship. I am looking forward to it. 

A real time capsule: U.S.S. Lunga Point CVE94 A Pictorial Log covering the ship's Career in the War against the Axis

 Hey Eric, wasn't your next post supposed to be for a completely different book, one on philosophy? Yeah, but I read this one instead because it was so much more interesting and it came to me in an interesting way. My grandfather recently passed away, the last of my three grandfathers. Grandpa was a hoarder, and what is more he had a lot of land in rural Wyoming, which only served to facilitate his hoarding tendency. Now it has fallen to my father to be the executor of the estate so he has been driving out there and coming back with truckloads of family heirlooms, and on the most recent trip, he also brought home this book. My family has no idea why he had it.

Very auster and serious cover on this one. 

My Grandfather didn't serve in the Second World War and as far as we know none of that side of the family served in the navy during the time. None of the names in the crew list are familiar to me. There are some pencil marks in the book to several names, but I don't know what they mean. Very mysterious.

If you can read the above or know one of the names with arrows let me know

What isn't mysterious is the purpose of the book. My dad has a book like this from his days in the navy. Ships would put together a cruise book to commemorate the voyage so people could look back on the fond memories. It is basically a yearbook for warships. In this case, it is almost exactly a year. The main part of this book runs from May 14th 1944 when the ship was commissioned, to May 14th, 1945 and commemorates the first year of the life of the U.S.S. Lunga Point, but because the war ended only a few month later there is a bit added on the end to bring the story full circle. 

U.S.S. Lunga Point was an escort carrier, a merchant ship hull with a flat top and elevators, the bare minimum needed to work as a carrier. Too slow to ride with the battlefleet and too short to launch the most modern fighters escort carriers were called expendable for a reason. They provided excellent air cover for merchant convoys or air support for landings. For most of its life that was the Lunga Points job. It was a veteran of the liberation of the Philipines, and the battles of Iwo Jima and Okinawa. It was a dangerous job, and the book has great first-person accounts of being shot down on Japanese-held islands and desperate escapes, and action photos of incoming Kamikazes. The real danger comes through in these sections.

But the book is pretty light-hearted. They are mostly inside jokes though. There is a lot of references to the smoking light being lit or going out that really confused my mother. It must have been constant. Also, the section of one sentence reminders must bring a lot of chuckles to those who were there but is a bit of a mystery today. In this way it accurately represents the experience of war. It is not combat all the time, it had the light hearted moments, and the moments of just people being normal. The joy of ice cream, the private jokes, the birth of children. The men and women who fought that war were not mythically tough, they were just normal people. So I would encourage you to take a look around your house for a book like this, and get a chance to connect with the past. While the past is a foreign country, the people there are humans like you and me, and not totally alien. Next time it should be back to the usual.