Ship Breaker is some really solid YA scifi, in a post-climate change world. Nailer is the lowest of the low, a ship breaker on the storm tossed gulf shore. His job is to go into the stinking and deadly bowls of fossil fuel age cargo ships and strip them for valuable metals. He dreams of the horizon, and watches the modern cargo fiber clipper ships sail past, but life is a brutal day to day struggle against starvation, accidental death, and the drug-addicted brutality of his knife-fighter father.

After a storm, Nailer finds a wrecked clipper with a dead rich girl aboard. She could be his ticket to a better life, or a sure death. Drawn into a web of corporate intrigue, Nailer has to escape, find allies, and fight for survival and a better life.

The ethics are YA stock, but the setting has Bacigalupi's magic touch, and since its YA story skips some of the more problematic stuff sexual assault stuff from the The Windup Girl.

((also, Book 200 for 2017. #BookRace2017 suckers!))

Space 1889 is a planetary adventure in the vein of Verne, Wells, and H. Rider Haggard. It's the 1889 that you vaguely remember from history, with a European peace and a scramble for Empire, trains and factories but only the most experimental cars. There are a few teensy differences. First, Thomas Edison invented a device in 1870 called the ether propeller, which allows travel in space. Mars, Venus, and Mercury have all been explored. Mars is populated by a decadent race in dusty cities along canals, with bands of wild nomads. Martian liftwood allows the creation of ships that can fly to an altitude where the ether propeller takes them into space. Mars is mostly dominated by the British. Venus is a swampy planet with dinosaurs, lizardmen, and efficient German plantations. Mercury has a livable river separating regions where lead vaporizes and air freezes. The setting seems ripe for adventure, with vast wildernesses to explore, principalities both human and alien to conquer, and many treasures to exploit.

The system is Ubiquity, a stat+skill dice pool where even results count as a success. There's an automatic success rule, which is good because the system seems extremely punishing. My analysis shows a decent chance of success at half your total rating, bad odds (p=0.3) one above that, poor odds (p = 0.1) two above that, and beyond that, forget about it!

I haven't yet played this game, so I do have some skepticism about the setting. There are hooks everywhere, but how do they catch? I'm not running the game, so less concerned. And as for Ubiquity, it's serviceable, but for a game based around expeditions and/or social status, could use some more mechanical heft there. Also, combat by the book involves rerolling initiative every round, which why?

When Gravity Fails is the best hardboiled cyberpunk you've never read. Marid Audran is a small-time hustler and fixer in the Budayeen, a red light district in an unnamed Arab city somewhere along the Mediterranean coast in the 23rd century. People still want the same old stuff, mostly sex and drugs, but the big technology is neural implants that give people temporary short-term knowledge and artificial personalities. Marid doesn't use them. His vanity is that he floats above the streets, that his natural brain is more than a match for the amped up thugs and prostitutes.

When his clients, friends, and other street figures begin dying, assassinated by a mysterious person wearing a James Bond personality, and an absolutely bastard of a psychopath, Marid has to track down the killer, and compromise every single one of his values and relationships in the service of Friedlander Bey, the crimelord who runs the Budayeen.

What's probably the best part of this book is how resolutely queer it is. It must have been supremely trangressive when published, and remains provocative today. Effinger based the Budayeen on the French Quarter in New Orleans, before it became a tourist theme park. The exotic dancers, bartenders, and prostitutes are treated with a surprising degree of tenderness. Marid's girlfriend is a trans woman, the whole Budayeen packed with people who have remade their bodies and minds in search of their better selves.

The best cyberpunk that nobody knows. The drug and sex crazy Middle Eastern setting of the Buyadeen sets this apart from the usual chrome and black leather crowd, while the tech level is accurately 'like today, but a little bit different.' Book 2 of the Marid Audran trilogy follows our now neuro-enhanced protagonist as responsibility is forced on him, as well as a deadly secret about his employer and the system of governance he controls.

***

I reread this when Amazon had a deal on the whole series. This is a definite step down from When Gravity Fails. I could remember that book vividly, but this one had a vague "oh yeah, that's when that happens." While the scenes are good, the over all plot just doesn't make sense. There's some kind of covert war between the two major crime bosses of the city, but it turns out there's an overall alliance over a covert plan to share organs to favor underlings. Marid is at the mercy of hardened kills and walks out a few too many times for me to believe it. And as an underling in an organization and new moddy enthusiast, he's much less fun than the hustler of the first book. Still, I'm excited for to see how the series ends.

Le Guin is a master of the craft, of course, even when turning something as ephemeral as fantasy young adult novel. Starting from the premise of "what were Gandalf and Merlin like as young men?", Le Guin traces out the early career of Ged/Sparrowhawk, a powerful mage in a deeply historied archipelago where knowing the true names of things gives you power over them. A prideful boast unleashes a terrible shadow into the world, and Ged has to go on a journey of self-discovery and mastery to restore the equilibrium. As elegant and simple as Shaker furniture, this book is a masterpiece for all ages.

Starship Troopers is a science fiction classic, a great military coming of age, and simply an incredible book.

You know the story. Boy joins space marines, learns how to use exotic weapons, meets interesting aliens, uses exotic weapons on them, becomes a hero. The story opens in media res, with a heart pounding combat drop and raid onto a planet held by the Skinnies, a secondary alien power. We meet the surface of the book: powered armor, atomic rockets, jump jets and flame throwers. But unlike a lot of military science fiction, this book is not about the battles. It's about the making of man, in high school, boot camp, barracks-room bull sessions, officer candidate school, and finally combat command.

I've never been in the military, but I read way too many combat memoirs and histories, and everything about war in Starship Troopers strikes me as exactly true, from the importance of building up esprit de corps, to the burden of command and the confusion of battle. It's a brilliant execution of the premise of "what does it take for infantry to survive on the modern atomic battlefield", and one that has inspired more than a few real military research programs in powered exoskeletons.

But Starship Troopers is so much more than that. It had been a while since I'd read it, and two things that I'd forgotten is how excited Johnny Rico is about everything. His enthusiasm for his world is infectious; you really want to see what happens next. Second is how taut the writing is. I don't think there's a single misplaced word in the first hundred pages, and the rest of the book slackens only slightly. This is Heinlein at the height of his powers as a wordsmith.

This book is controversial politically. I wouldn't go as far some people in calling it fascist, but Heinlein delivers body blows against some of the core conceits of liberal democracy, like universal voting and social work. Due to the basic flaw of an imbalance between authority and responsibility, society broke down in the late 20th century, helped along by a global war between an American-Anglo-Russian alliance and China. In the wake of this catastrophe, society was rebuilt by committees of veterans, which after several centuries has stabilized into a franchise granted by federal service. Service is probably military, but could be anything from hard labor terraforming to "counting the hairs on a caterpillar by feel." Anything to make it clear that the franchise is dearly bought.

This book is determined to drive through its core thesis that the only thing that matters is survival, but that the instinct to survive is best harnessed to moral sensibilities for the common good. That's the core ethos of the Mobile Infantry, in their extreme esprit de corps and mantra that "everybody drops, everybody fights." It seems to work, their organization is lean, self sufficient, unbelievable destruction, although I wonder how well it would hold up to the messy ambiguities of counter-insurgency and pacification rather than a war of extermination against the perfect communism of the alien Arachnoids.

This strong philosophical grounding separates Starship Troopers from its imitators, which postulate a universe of war without asking why. A second thing that's interesting is the lack of a gun fetish, aside from the Marauder Suit, which is mostly sketched at (you wear it, it's tough and can fly and has atomic rockets), there's very little of the overwrought descriptions of destruction that characterize the genre. As the book says, there's no such thing as a deadly weapon, only deadly people. Juan Rico is probably the nicest deadly person in fiction.

A Peace to End All Peace is a serious work of scholarship in understanding the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, and the foundations of the modern Middle East in the aftermath of World War I. It's deeply researched and painstaking in presenting the different views inside the British government. It is also somewhat scattered, difficult to read, and feels like it's missing key parts.

In 1914, it was obvious to all that the Ottoman Empire was on the ropes. Perpetually broke, technologically backwards, with major concessions to European powers over the rights of Christian minorities and the sovereignty of Egypt, and riddled with radical reformist secret societies, the Ottomans were ready for collapse. When the war came, and they aligned with the Entente, it would just take a few sharp invasions to topple the whole rotten edifice, at least in theory.

In practice, it was a different matter, as the Ottoman's repelled an invasion at Gallipoli, and another in Iraq. The Bedouin revolts promised by Arabian princes were expensive and ineffective, contra the self-made myth of T.E. Lawrence (which takes a knocking in this book). British policy was far from unified, even as events tilted towards them in 1918. The Prime Minister opposed the Minister of War opposed the Government of India opposed the Cairo Bureau opposed the Foreign Office. The bureaucratic infighting involved frequent changes of position, punctuated by major position papers, including the Balfour Declaration, which guaranteed a Jewish homeland in Palestine, the secret Sykes-Picot arrangement which divided up the Middle East between Britain and France, and a host of treaties and declaration of principles.

But truth is decided by the facts on the ground, and it is here, in the key period between 1918 and 1922 that the narrative loses steam. Immediately after the armistice, Britain had a million man army spread across the Middle East. They demobilized, and a multisided conflict between European rump armies, Bolshevik missions from Russia, a new ethnic Turkish army, and the Greeks lead to major battles. When the dust finally cleared, the Middle East was much as we see it today, with the building blocks of Turkey, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and seeds of the Israel/Palestine conflict. The British were left the inheritors of a system they no longer wanted or had faith in.

The Exile Kiss closes the Budayeen trilogy on an ambiguous note. The book starts like a rocket, when a formal dinner sees Marid and Friedlander Bey being kidnapped, hustled to the air field, summarily convicted of murder, and then dumped in the Rub al'Khali, the empty quarter of Arabia. Separated from all their resources, death will be a matter of days in the vast desert.

Of course, they run into a band of Bedouin nomads, living much as Bedouin have lived for centuries. Marid and Friedlander Bey wander with them for a while, witnessing tribal justice over a murdered girl. Then it's back to the good old corrupt Budayeen, to clear their names and get revenge on their political enemies.

As always, the Budayeen is beautifully drawn. But there's an odd slackness in the plotting. Marid never seems properly concerned about clearing his name until the very end, and there's no clear end to the covert war between Friedlander Bey or his nemesis. Marid finishes his transformation from independent hustler to criminal factotum, but he doesn't seem much of a worthy successor to the godfather. He lacks strategy, relying on the ability to punch his way out of a tough spot.

I'm pretty sure I bought this for a dollar because it was on sale. I still think I overpaid. In a short book that feels like it's digested pap from other business advice, Stanier tries to boil down coaching to seven simple questions. The basics are to ask "What's on your mind" as an opener, close with "and anything else?" and "what's the real problem for you here?" as a way to focus on real difficulties.

The advice is shallow, and not backed by any notable evidence or even anecdotes. The annotated bibliography at the end is the best part of the book.

Kershaw ably depicts the terror and struggle of the Second World War through the eyes of Felix Sparks, an officer with the 45th Division (The Thunderbirds) composed of men from the southwest. A poor boy from a depression mining town in Arizona, Sparks enlisted in the 30s, thrived in the army, and then was recalled as an officer for the war.

To paraphrase Sparks, getting promoted in the infantry is easy, all you need to do is survive. Now, surviving is the hard part. The 45th landed at Sicily, Salerno, the meatgrinder of Anzio where Sparks' company was ruthlessly destroyed in the Battle of the Caverns. They were reconstituted, and sent through the forgotten campaigns of the war-the invasion of the South of France, and another brutal mini-Battle of the Bulge in the Vosges Mountain, where his regiment was surrounded and destroyed by the SS. Rebuilt again, Sparks fought through Germany to liberate the Dachau concentration camp, where he personally intervened to prevent a massacre of SS prisoners. Sparks' principles got him in trouble with his commanders. He survived, had a distinguished career as a lawyer in Colorado, and spent his final years fighting gun violence.

I have some quibbles, like why would any World War 2 writer try to excuse even normal military operations of the Waffen-SS by the phrase 'they were just following orders', but this is an a great biography that reveals some corners of the war you won't see on the History Channel.