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31 of 31 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Difficult - and Immensely Rewarding, August 20, 2003
This review is from: The Course Of Empire (Hardcover)
I found this a difficult book to read because it is so very well written. That's not a contradiction, by the way. Any book about alien contact where I spend the first third of it trying *NOT* to grind my teeth into powder over Jao callousness and Jao brutality has definitely involved me in the story. For the Jao have conquered Earth, reducing its population to sullen subservience, destroyed cities for the merest trace of resistance, and even wiped out Mount Everest to prove that they are not to be defied. The areas which resisted most strongly have been hammered into poverty and want, and there are places where no one who collaborates with the Jao dares walk unarmed or alone. But the Jao are not the monolithic Beast of the Apocalypse they seem to be, for one faction, known only as the Bond, has apparently engineered a situation they hope will resolve the mess, and so the tale begins, as a new Subcommandant arrives on earth, fresh from the equivalent of Annapolis... There is more to this book than the parts of the story which aroused my wrath, for these aliens are truly *alien*, and that provides the tale with its richness. John Campbell defined alien as "what thinks as well as a human, but differently" and the Jao are indeed different. From those differences arise the conflict, for how do beings who are engineered, rather than products of evolution, proud of their rationality, and involved in a war for survival against others whose alienness is so bizarre that meaningful contact with them is impossible, deal with the inconsistent, irrational, maddening and quarrelsome humans? For that matter, can, or will the Jao succeed in fixing the horribly botched first contact and conquest of the humans? Without breaking the very things that might make humans valuable partners in their ultimate quest for survival? And, if they can do so, how can they achive it without destroying their own species' unity, upon which the survival of all, Jao and human, must ultimately depend? All of the above issues and more come into play in this book and by the time the story ended, I found myself actually trying to think like a Jao, and see the universe from their perspective. Quite a change, I must say, from my "kill them all" attitude generated by the early part of the story. That change is a high compliment to the skill with which the story was unfolded before me. Both K. D. Wentworth ("Black/On/Black", "Stars/Over/Stars", "Imperium Game") and Eric Flint [website]BR>have shown themselves writers of the highest caliber, and this book, written by them as a team, is a credit to them both. I am grateful the book was so difficult and hence, so wonderful. Thank you, Kathy and Eric.
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23 of 23 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Give this book a HUGO: Course of Empire is brilliant, August 22, 2003
This review is from: The Course Of Empire (Hardcover)
Take two authors known to be among the most capable at creating believable and completely inhuman and nonhuman aliens, and ask them to write together. What do you get? You get creativity squared. You get _Course of Empire_ by Eric Flint and K.D. Wentworth. This book deserves nomination for the Hugo and Nebula awards. It is a deceptively old-fashioned plot: aliens conquer the Earth and what happens later. But the aliens are real _people_ -- not human people, but people nonetheless...and not one-dimensional cutout villains. The humans are real. The aliens are real, and the situation is entirely believable. Flint, while better known for alternate histories, began his writing career with the brilliant _Mother of Demons_ in which he created believable aliens out of giant landlocked squidlike beings...and got us to care about them and understand their motivations. Wentworth, likewise, known for her fantasies, is the creator of the fascinating Hrinn...neither catlike, nor doglike, nor bearlike, but a warrior animal race, intelligent, emotional, honorable. This book should be a breakthrough for Wentworth, who is amazingly underrated as an author...and deserves much better as she shows in _Course of Empire_. Put together, Flint and Wentworth develop the Jao. Very different than humans, human interactions baffle the Jao...just like the Jao baffle the humans who are their slaves. This is an awe-inspiringly good book, and should be read and enjoyed, over and over. Bravo!
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17 of 18 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
After the Invasion, December 7, 2003
This review is from: The Course Of Empire (Hardcover)
The Course of Empire (2003) is a SF novel about a Terra conquered by an alien empire. This conquest was the most difficult in the entire history of the Joa people; even after twenty years of occupation, the Terrans have not yet been assimilated. Resistance groups still operate in the mountainous regions and riots still occur in the more heavily populated areas. Many of the troops that should have been reassigned after the conquest have been retained to suppress the resistance.
After the conquest, the Narvo kochan was given the oudh to govern Terra and that clan selected Oppuk krinnu ava Narvo to serve as Governor of the planet. The governor and his staff have a low opinion of the humans and this disdain extended down to the lowest levels of the Jao military. Indeed, most Jao consider the humans to only be clever animals, whose behavior is insane and whose mentality is incapable of understanding Jao ways.
In this novel, Aile krinna ava Pluthrak arrives on Terra to assume his duties as Subcommandant for Ground Forces, accompanied only by his fraghta, Yaut krinnu Jithra vau Pluthrak. His presence causes a great deal of consternation, since the Pluthrak kochan may be the most prestigious clan of the Jao, with the possible exception of their Narvo rivals.
Aile becomes even more notable when he starts adding Terrans as well as Jao to his personal service. The first to be added is PFC Gabe Tully, a jinau trooper in the ground forces. Later Aile adds Willard Beck, a human technician, and then Nath krinnu Tashnat vau Nimmat, a Jao supervisor at the Pascagoula refit facility. When Yaut is sent to Jao country to gather information, he adds Tamt krinnu Kannu vau Hij, a Jao guard, to Aile's personal service when she acts rudely to him; she obviously needs the training and she seems to have potential. Later Aile adds combat veterans from both the Terran and Jao forces to his personal service.
The Governor holds a reception for Aile in the gubernatorial palace in Oklahoma City. There Oppuk taunts Aile, trying to goad him into a misstep, but Aile successfully deflects each challenge. Afterward, Caitlan Stockwell comments upon the interplay to Aile and he talks to her for a while before abruptly shedding his clothes and diving into the swimming pool. Later Aile learns Caitlan's name and identity as the only remaining child of the human appointed as President of North America. Caitlan then introduces Ed Kralik, a Major General commanding the Pacific Division of the jinau forces, to Aile (which is a blatant flaunting of Jao manners, but Aile is getting used to the human version of social customs).
This reception and the information subsequently provided by Jao combat veterans leads Aile to conclude that the Governor has become demented in his hatred of the humans. Aile begins to maneuver against the Governor in a type of traditional formal conflict called "advance-by-oscillation". This approach is a form of psychological operation similar to Dickson's Tactics of Mistake, which was derived partially from a fencing tactic of rapid engages and disengages that gradually draw the other blade out of line until the opponent is essentially unguarded. Aile starts to refute the official opinion regarding the humans in various ways, driving the Governor to wilder and wilder reactions, and then countering this erratic behavior by exposing his misjudgment. This tactic should eventually alienate the Governor from his allies, including his own kochan.
This story was inspired by a story from Christopher Anvil, possibly in the series collected as Pandora's Legions. However, Anvil wrote many other stories about the Earth being invaded by hapless aliens; the earliest to my knowledge is The Gentle Earth (1957), which contains many of the elements of the Pandora series.
However, the Jao have an entirely different concept of social obligations and relationships than the aliens in the Pandora series. The Jao have a social organization somewhat like the Hrinn, but without the separation of male and female. Their concept of usefulness as the primary social ethic is close in some ways to the Japanese concept of bushido.
This story basically takes off where Anvil's stories usually end, with the invaders realizing that they have caught hold of the tar baby or, to phrase it another way, they have a tiger by the tail. These invaders are basically good-hearted (but ruthless) defenders of all galactic life from the ravaging and incomprehensible Ekhat. However, the Jao have never encountered another sapient species with equal or better technology and have made a number of errors in their first contact and their subsequent treatment of the natives. Now they need to remedy their initial mistakes and convince the unruly natives to "associate" with their conquerors as do dependent sapients on other conquered planets.
This tale is mostly written from the point-of-view of the alien Jao, even when the principal character is Caitlan, for she is more than half Jao herself. Aile begins his task by listening to the natives and to Jao who have extensive experience with the natives. Both he and Yaut spend at least one rest period a day absorbing the language imprinting program, but find more puzzles than answers therein. Thus, he spends a good part of every day confusedly trying to understand the human mindset. Then he learns that the mindset of the human female is not quite the same as that of the male.
Highly recommended for Flint, Wentworth, and Anvil fans and for anyone else who enjoys tales of aliens being hoisted by their own petard and of belated attempts to establish positive relations.
-Arthur W. Jordin
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