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'Axis of Andes' review

The one-two-three punch of
Alba's last campaign and a victory when you already know he's going to be sacked as Colombia turns Ecuador into a colony, making everything he did pointless in the end; Perdita Diabla and her bloody rise; and Villarroel going to make a last battle, only nobody's turned up yet so he goes back inside, then Bastido won't follow the script, and he just gives up and gets the wine.
 
Villarroel going to make a last battle, only nobody's turned up yet so he goes back inside, then Bastido won't follow the script, and he just gives up and gets the wine.

That was the scene I mentioned in the review as 'one of the best darkly comic scenes I've read in any book, let alone just AH, for its depiction of a man caught up in a different story to the one he thought he was'.
 
The one-two-three punch of
Alba's last campaign and a victory when you already know he's going to be sacked as Colombia turns Ecuador into a colony, making everything he did pointless in the end

I liked how much Alba's legend is punctured in the last third of the second book. Like he achieves nothing in the end and when when seen from the incan perspective he's a much more of a limited figure and far more morally compromised than he appears from the hero worship he gets within the Ecuadorian army.

Is it Yanqui who has the throwaway comment that he's pretty sure Alba has never learned Quechua?

Blandon is something of a white saviour, I do wish we saw more of that front from the indian point of view, but its quite funny that he's introduced as the bad ecuadorian general to alba's good but is the one you'd rather meet as a native.

My favourite thing about this book is you think it's about Alba and the other fascist adjacent white landowners but the actual victors here are Jaguar, Diabla etc.

I do think he pulls a punch by not having an ecuadorian indian pov character, mind.
 
The Incans summit about war aims is, I think, the first time we get a chapter of politicians unsure about continuing war told as narrative. We see politicians discuss war plans and slag people off, but here are people discussing it there's a point and deciding "no" as characters, not ironic history text.

The discussion of Alba's vision also goes back to Flores line in book 1, that his problem is he kills too many - the Incans discussing the flaw in hitting so much you can't be forgiven but can't finish it off. And making text the subtext of the book each conflict births more.
 
Alba, old and weary and learning he's marked, saying it would have been better to just not bother about Oriente, it was worthless and fighting blew everything up.

Garth Marenghi declares this book lacking in cowardice.
 
Great review! I was very attracted to this when I saw it on the Old Country but found it impenetrable after a while because of the issues Gary addresses, but the plus points are all there.

Might consider trying again but just jumping into the second part!
I think part of the problem may be professional background - historically lawyers like Valdron and I have a tendency to go into exposition a whple lot when writing, though law school abd work increasingly frown upon such things more than absolutely necessary.
 
Of all the post-war "where are they now" scenes, you cannot beat Alba
having an Incan punk band named after him

Really loved your live read off this Charles. Fun to see an enthusiastic and insightful reaction to the book I'd just read.

Like I said I think it's a flawed book, it's sloppy in places, subtle as a brick and overloaded with exposition but it's very readable and very imaginative as a story. I enjoyed it a lot and I'm glad you also did.
 
Given how savage commentators can be about books, especially if they are self-published, I am never surprised that authors take steps to head off the arguments that what they say is not plausible. This does not simply apply to AH. Hilary Mantel has criticised fellow straight historical authors for including endnotes and bibliographies in an attempt to counter the harsh criticism that authors in that field face if they write anything which is deemed 'wrong'. Too often the critics are in fact wrong themselves, but for them the popular view, rather than the accurate one, is the way they judge everything. Until the most vocal online reviewers accept that there are legitimate alternative perspectives on actual history, let alone alternate history, we are going to continue to find authors seeking ways to head off at least some of the unwarranted criticism. Of course, for them to take that accepting view would be to deny them the power that they clearly relish. A lot of their attacks are less about making sure a book is 'right' and more about massaging their own egos. Still, that creates the context in which we have to work.
 
I quite like the endpoints, footnotes etc in AH and historical fiction because it's always fascinating to hear which bits you made up or massaged VS which bits are actually true, and the true bits are often "what???". So Bone Sharps, Cowboys, and Thunder Lizards opens with Othniel Charles Marsh being startled by a naked guy on horseback riding past his train who turns out to run the New York Herald, then runs into PT Barnum* to have an argument about the Cardiff Giant and Marsh grumpily decides to expose it as a fake - and Mr Naked, the Cardiff Giant exposure, and Marsh & Barnum knowing each other and first meeting on a train is all from history (with the fiction being Marsh seeing the guy and the exact nature of the conversation).

In their Fact & Fiction bit, you have "FICTION" being that "Cope probably never tried to impress... with his wealth by pretending he rode first class", but a guy calling himself "Sam Smith of the Rocky Mountains" is "FACT" ("there are even pictures of him!"), which feels the wrong way round!

In Axis of Andes case, "there was a big buildup to war between two countries with a modernised airforce but everyone went home instead" turning out to be real history is something that 'feels' made up but isn't, and the US ambassador
faking telegrams about coups to edge some changes in Bolivia
feels a bit fictional while actually being real (but the fallout is changed), while Argentina and Brazil's participation is
admitted in the footnotes to be engineered so they don't enter the war (except very late in Argentina's case and without proper buildup) because that would've forced the story to be different to the one he wants to tell, of states of a certain equality of power and ability going to war.


* Who always talks like this:

TL_FCBD_pg009.jpg
 
I think part of the problem may be professional background - historically lawyers like Valdron and I have a tendency to go into exposition a whple lot when writing, though law school abd work increasingly frown upon such things more than absolutely necessary.

Possibly. I think you may be on to something. I know in my work, it's important to lay out your process, you can't just 'voila!' a client, or opponent.

Part of it though, is just that the continent is so obscure to many North Americans, that I really did feel like I had to dive deep again and again.

And part of that, perhaps a really big part, is that I just love this shit. You write the book you really want to read.

I do have a penchant for the surreality of detail. You should check out my LEXX books, which would be brilliantly wacky and subversive alternate history, except that it all really happened.

But again, thanks everyone!
 
Wow! I didn't expect this. Thank you Gary for the review. And thank you Charles, for the wonderful play by play.

Good to see you on here. I've genuinely enjoyed your work a lot and will continue to check it out. I also reviewed Bear Cavalry on this site and was equally enthusiastic.
 
Have spotted a gaff though, as Markholtz
goes from being in an Ecuadorian prison in early December to a general back at the front being tacitly punished by Lima. Even if he got let out, going right back to his old position after a) failing b) acting without orders again is a leap

You got me. It slipped my mind. A well, a friend of mine, Steve Erickson, misplaced a character's gender in one of his novels. It happens.
 
Blandon is something of a white saviour, I do wish we saw more of that front from the indian point of view, but its quite funny that he's introduced as the bad ecuadorian general to alba's good but is the one you'd rather meet as a native.

The closest I could get to that point of view was Pablo. There was just literally no frame of reference for Blandon. It's like a family of Martians moved in next door and the wife was a terrestrial African elephant. It's just insane and colossal and sweeps you up as you struggle to get through day to day.

Blandon to me was the subversion of the 'white saviour.' He clearly sees himself in that role, at least sometimes, when he thinks in those terms. But what he really is, is a man who progressively loses his sense of identity. He loses all touch with any semblance of who he is or who he was. He prosecutes a war into alien territory based on his own narrowmindedness, and then as he loses his frame of reference, the compromises of each day, the landscape that he finds himself in. Despite his racism, he's compromised and compromised again, building an army of indians for his purpose but with a more broken idea of purpose. In the end he's not using Indians in his war, they're using him in their war. And arguably, his only accomplishment, as with Alba, is to overreach and bring ruin. By the time he dies, he's completely lost, and would be institutionalised. And perversely, Pablo and Montressor rehabilitate him after he's safely dead and turn him into an anti-colonial visionary.

I did want to write a Quechua from Ecuador, but quixotically, as Ecuador declines, the Quechua are allowed to go home and return to their isolationism. The war becomes just some inscrutable white man's think that they got dragged into, and thank the saints they aren't bothering us any more. There wasn't a lot of good ways in.

But truth is, there was so much to touch on, I could have written another half million words. And I was getting excruciating already.
 
Blandon to me was the subversion of the 'white saviour.' He clearly sees himself in that role, at least sometimes, when he thinks in those terms. But what he really is, is a man who progressively loses his sense of identity. ... By the time he dies, he's completely lost, and would be institutionalised. And perversely, Pablo and Montressor rehabilitate him after he's safely dead and turn him into an anti-colonial visionary.

It was noticeable that when it's Blandron going "the Indians should get all this land back", his war eventually stalls out and he dies mad & alone; then
the actual Indians do it on their own and win.
 
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