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Ryan's Reviews - Conquistador by S M Stirling
- Thread starter AndyC
- Start date
- Location
- Derbyshire
This rather sounds like someone writing a plot containing what's supposed to happen in these sort of novels, rather than writing because that's what they think makes a good story.
Reading the review, I was reminded a lot of another sci-fi alternate history story: Guns Of The South. Don't know how close the two are, although the latter "solved" the problem of neither side being sympathetic by whitewashing (no pun intended) the Confederates and making the time travelers cartoonish puppy-kickers.
- Pronouns
- he/him
Hey, when you have villains as useful as Evil Eighties Afrikaners, you use them.
- Location
- NYC (né Falkirk)
- Pronouns
- he/him
It worked for Mel Gibson, why not for Robert E. Lee?
There are few villains as useful in the time-travelling toolbox as African mercenaries, especially the nominally competent white ones that are easier on your casting budget.
You're definitely right on the depth issue; I've found this to be the case with most if not all of Stirling's characters, especially in the Islander trilogy, where they seemed almost caricatures, or at best a hodgepodge of personality and physical traits put together with hefty doses of villainy or heroism. Stirling is excellent at setting and personal description IMO, but tends to bury the reader in such, adding to the character issues.
Minor note(s): I don't think Tully is African-American (at least I couldn't tell from the way Stirling describes him, though it might have sailed past me), yet the Henry Villers character who is, while a great showcasing of New Virginia's genteel (and not) racism, does add to the book's lack of character exploration and depth. I also believe the final scene showed a world where the Pleistocene megafauna still existed, though you're right about it ending the book on a somewhat more interesting note than its main story.
Minor note(s): I don't think Tully is African-American (at least I couldn't tell from the way Stirling describes him, though it might have sailed past me), yet the Henry Villers character who is, while a great showcasing of New Virginia's genteel (and not) racism, does add to the book's lack of character exploration and depth. I also believe the final scene showed a world where the Pleistocene megafauna still existed, though you're right about it ending the book on a somewhat more interesting note than its main story.
Stirling actually references Guns of the South directly in this book, both by mentioning the title and using names of the Afrikaner time travelers for one section; I suppose it was meant as another nod to Turtledove as a fellow AH author, like he'd done with the tuckerized Ian Arnstein character in the Islander series. I was a little perplexed by this at first, though it wasn't as annoying or blatant as his "reshaping" of a long scene from the movie Zulu for use in the last Islander book, laden with pro-USMC dialogue.
Bottom line: if there's one decent Stirling work IMO, it's probably Peshawar Lancers, with the short-story (prequel?) Shikari in Galveston along for the ride. The world of Conquistador ultimately comes across (as i think one character remarks) like the creation of someone who "read Tarzan too many times", with the Agrarians, CSA Lost Cause, and a whole lot of other shady stuff thrown in as well. Lancers and Shikari let you know from the start that they're meant as Victorian-esque, Kipling-influenced post-apoc adventure stories, which gives you a good idea of the attitudes, mores, and biases this entails, allows for grandiosity more than Conquistador's premise, and reinforces the excellent setting and personal description Stirling often employs.