Past Imperfect, Future Tense

It's comforting to know that with all the problems plaguing our current society, things have always sucked, and always will. Wait, maybe that's not so comforting to you. But to me, it does relieve the mind a little to know that no matter what point on the timeline of human dominance I was destined to be born in, there was always going to be some sort of obstacle, so it's silly to pine for another era.

This was borne out in a pair of books I just finished, both of which revolved around a war waged to free citizens from tyrannical rulers. However, one was a non-fiction exploration of particular aspects of the American Revolutionary War, and one was the fictional conclusion of a series of futuristic outer space colony wars.

The first was Sarah Vowell's 2015 jaunt through history, Lafayette in the Somewhat United States. Students are often given pretty dry information regarding the War of Independence. They learn the names, the dates, the battles. The events were given some nice color (literally) in the Hamilton musical, but that was written more to entertain than to educate. This book strikes a nice balance between the two; as with all of Vowell's books, it adopts a light, humorous tone, but imparts actual information about the Frenchman who devoted his life to securing the freedom of a country across the ocean. What was he like as a person? Why fight for America when France had plenty of its own problems?

I really like it when history is approached in this way. It's still factual information, but the conversational delivery makes it a lot more pleasant to engage with than simple recitation of the where and when. I got a real sense of Lafayette and other 1770s figures as actual humans, rather than just as symbols or names on a park statue. Though it wasn't my favorite of Vowell's works (that'd probably be Assassination Vacation), this book is still a really fun read, and would make a good assignment in a high school history class.

The other book was Pierce Brown's 2016 sci-fi thriller, Morning Star, the final entry of the Darrow trilogy that kicked off with Mars Rising, and continued in Golden Son. I don't believe I've ever said this about any other trilogy before: The second book was actually the strongest.

In this final book, Darrow has been exposed as a Red operative, and he must gather his allies for one last stand against the Gold oppressors. There are some thrilling sequences, but there is also a lot of ticking of boxes to wrap up all the loose ends. Brown is very good at giving this universe a sense of scale (casualties are often counted in the millions, rather than the thousands), but by the same token, the story tends to suffer from the same problem that plagues Game of Thrones: What I call the Paper Doll Syndrome. If life if so cheap as to throw a bunch of them away on every page, how am I meant to get invested enough to care?

Though I sound less than enthusiastic, I did enjoy the series, and can see myself re-reading it someday, which is rare for a trilogy. Darrow is an engaging protagonist with relatable worries about being "the chosen one". His internal struggles are a hell of a lot more realistic than other books I could name. The battle scenes are legitimately thrilling, to the point that I could sometimes feel my heart rate increase.

A movie series is reportedly in development, and if it's done correctly, I can see it working pretty well. With some minor tweaks, this series could have easily been one of my favorite sci-fi works. As it is, it's still pretty good, and though you wouldn't use that as a pull quote on the jacket flap, it's high enough praise to put this above 85% of the other sci-fi I've read.

Lafayette in the Somewhat United States: B+
Morning Star: B