I Just Read About That…

SOUNDTRACK: PORTUGAL THE MAN-“Who’s Gonna Stop Me” (feat. “Weird Al” Yankovic) (2020).

Portugal. The Man and “Weird Al” (punctuation buddies, clearly) have worked together in various ways in the past.  But here is something totally weird for Weird Al.  He is providing serious verses to a serious song.

Portugal. The Man songs tend to be dancey and fun, but this song is quite serious (and the video is fantastic).

A quiet opening of drums and echoing keyboard notes.  The hook comes when the vocals speed up in the middle of the first verse.

There are some gorgeous “ooohs” and then Al’s verse comes.  Al obviously has a great voice–he can mimic anyone–he is perfectly matched to the original vocal line and his voice sounds great singing “sneaking out, jumping over backyard fences, we’re always looking for freedom.”

After some more of those haunting oohs, a loud drum fill introduces the second half of the song which elevates the song into a slightly more danceable section full of drums and voices.

And then comes the incredible hook of “toooooooo high!”  The vocal range from the deep “too” the soaring “high” is outstanding.

It sounds like Portugal. The Man are taking their music in yet another direction and this one is quite a good one.

[READ: October 10, 2020] Sixteen Ways to Defend a Walled City

I read a positive review of K.J. Parker’s “follow up” to this book called How to Rule an Empire and Get Away With It.  When I picked up that book, I saw that the back cover said it was the follow up to Sixteen.  I assumed that meant it was a sequel and that I should read Sixteen first.  Well, Sixteen ends pretty definitively.  It turns out that Empire takes place seven years later and while I haven’t read it yet, I think it’s good I read this one first.

Also, K.J. Parker is the pseudonym of Tom Holt, a fantasy author I have not read but whom I gather I would like a lot.  So it was a good thing to read the review of Empire.

Parker has written several trilogies as well as a few stand-alone books.  I bring this up because I’ve read that some of the characteristics of this story reference other parts of his stories (this is a stand alone story, but I guess there might be parts that refer to his other books).

Like, for instance, the blues and the greens. These are two of the dominant races in the book.  I had a hard time telling them apart because there was no real introduction of either group. It was clear they hated each other, but I couldn’t figure out why (which I assumed was the point). At any rate, another reviewer says that the blues and greens are part of his other books, so maybe they are explained elsewhere.

The City appears to also be a thing that Parker likes to play around with.  In this book, the City is run by the Robur, a dominating group who have successfully conquered much of the surrounding lands.

The reviewer Liviu sums up this situation rather nicely, so I give him credit for this quote (which I slightly edited).

the usual name for most barbarians is “milkface”, though the term is illegal under Robur law as is “blueskin”, the derogatory term the subjugated people of the Empire use for the Robur, though, while prosecutions for using “milkface” are non-existent (after all the Robur would never ever use such a term) the ones for using “blueskin” happen often since… the milkfaces are uncouth, coarse and deserve their roles as subjects and indentured servants.

Sixteen Ways to Defend a Walled City is written as the memoir of a Milkface named Orhun (which I assume means he’s white).  Orhun is, at one point, chastised for drinking from a fountain labeled “blues only” even after he has just saved the City from certain doom.

All of what we learn about the City we know from Orhun.  The story is written in first person and he tells us on many occasions that he is not a reliable narrator–he might just be making himself look a lot better as he tells this story.  Indeed, this story is his and it is the only existing account of the way the City was saved from a siege.

So Orhun is an engineer and his life has been full of (depending on how you look at it) good luck.  He survived many situations where most everyone else was killed.  He was either believed dead and left, or captured and taken as a prisoner rather than killed.  His backstory is rather complex as is the way he went form a nobody to being in charge of the City engineers.  He is a great engineer, but it is still surprising that a milkface could rise so high.

While Orhun and his team of engineers are out of the City, they come across a very bad scene–thousands of the City’s soldiers slaughtered and all of their possessions gone.  It can mean only one thing–whoever did this is heading to the City with the intent of taking it over.

Now Orhun has no real love for the City–he is not from there, he is not well regarded and he has made his fair share of enemies–but it is still where he calls home at the moment, and he does have a few friends, so he is going to defend it.

He brings his engineers back and warns as many people as he can that they are under attack.  The problem is that the chain of command has snapped.  Most of the leaders were out of the City (and many were likely killed in the many battles that the enemy is starting).  It even turns out that the emperor–whom nobody has seen except for his portrait on the back of the coins–is feeble and on his death bed.

Basically, Orhun has to get things started himself.  Thus, Orhun is able to use his cunning, his lying, and the few connections that he has to turn a cCity full of civilians into an impressive force.  He uses his engineering skills and his knowledge of all of the ins and outs of the City to secure important locations and to make sure he has the manpower to stave off their inevitable demise (because there’s no way his civilian army can do anything more than save themselves another day or week).  But if he’s the only one who knows the hopelessness of things, maybe people will actually try to fight.

Orhun has help–very important help–from a couple of important minor characters. There’s Nico, Orhun’s muscle and right hand man, and Lysimachus, the strongest man in the City (as judged by gladiatorial combat) who likes nothing better than to fight.

There’s also Aichma, the innkeeper.  Orhun told her murdered father that he would look after her, but not only does she not need looking after, she is more of a force to be reckoned with than Orhun is.  There’s also Sawdust, a young woman who is an amazing engineer.  She’s so good that men overlook that she is a woman.  So there’s some nice feminism here with these two chapters who have succeeded despite the inherent sexism of the City.

But how can these people with minimal military training possibly prevent this massive army from overtaking the City?  Well, the wall around the City helps (although the invading army will work to undermine it).  The fact that the City is a trading hub means they have a lot of supplies.  And once Orhun is able to convince the blues and the greens to work together (at least temporarily) instead of warring with each other, there’s a lot of cunning and underhanded ideas that Orhun can put to good use.

The twist comes when Orhum discovers who the invading army are.  No one could determine where an army that large had come from–they couldn’t have been hiding in the woods could they?  But the leader of this invading army has a personal vendetta to settle against the Robur.  This personal vendetta also helps Orhun because he is not a Robur.

This story is packed full of very dry humor.  I don’t know that I ever laughed out loud or anything–it’s not a comedy really–but a lot of the story made me smile knowingly, as Orhun dissects City life and bureaucracy.  In fact, Orhun has a perfect tone for this story–detached and expecting death but willing to work more out of spite than anything else.

Because Orhun is an engineer a lot of the story is taken up with the specifics of mechanisms–trebuchets, undersea blockades, collapsing tunnels and walls.  Parker keeps the story interesting by making these details factual and important without every bogging things down with too much detail. Plus the characters who do the work (Orhun is in charge and doesn’t “do ” anything) are enjoyable and compelling.  Orhun may be only an engineer, but he has learned a lot over the years and he has some great ideas for how to preemptively disrupt an attack.

There’s some fantastic twists and surprises thrown in.  Right up until the end.

I really enjoyed this and will certainly look for some other stories from Parker (and Holt).