Review: The Tuloriad by Ringo and Kratman
Posted by Darwin - 17/10/09 at 12:10 am
I’d sworn off Ringo’s Aldenata universe. Really, I had. You see, though, I was at the library with my son as he pulled references for a college project and there, on a shelf of new arrivals, was The Tuloriad. “Okay,” I told myself, “I’ll just check out a page or two. It can’t do any harm, right?”
And I walked out of the library with The Tuloriad in my hands.
People like to hate Ringo and Kratman, especially those narrow minded and intolerant members of Denialists Universal, also known as the American Left. What you can’t deny, though (at least if you actually read the book instead of skim it for little word bites that you can then try to use to pretend you read it in a spittle-laced defamatory “review”), is that between them Ringo and Kratman do an excellent job of writing entertaining fiction. This comes out in the way that they hook the reader in the very beginning and don’t let them go to the end.
Honestly, I don’t know how much of this book was done by John Ringo and how much by Tom Kratman. I think in the main that I sense the Colonel Kratman’s continually improving style throughout. There are places where the voice seems to de-synch from the main, and I think that’s where Ringo might have had a hand. Both voices though, are engaging and character-driven. This isn’t a book that’s easily put down once you’re into it, as I found out to my bane during a series of later-than-I-should-have-been-up reads.
The overall gist of the book involves a refugee clan of the “evil” Posleen invaders, at last driven from earth. This particular clan, though, is led by the Posleen hero Tulo’stenaloor, the creator of a clan of “5 percenters”, i.e. a clan made up of the smartest of all the Posleen. In desperation, he accepts the offer of an escape ride from earth from a shady Indowy with obviously ulterior motives.
From that beginning we delve quickly into a two-pronged telling. First is Tulo’stenaloor’s mission to save his clan and, by extension, his race from extermination at the hands of vengeful humanity. The second is a rescue mission of a different sort: a human driven effort to save the very souls of the Posleen. This second course of the story includes a variety of characters from the Ringo-Kratman collaboration, Yellow Eyes.
The question of human religions in the face of alien contact is one that has been frequently touched upon but rarely well addressed. Especially of late, such occurrences are typically used to denigrate the very idea of religion (especially Christianity) in keeping with the worst instincts of “progressive” (i.e. Marxist/Leninist/trans-national socialist) indoctrination. The idea, such as presented in The Tuloriad by Ringo and Kratman, that religion is not only meaningful but potentially critical to the survival of a race is, in the current anti-anything-that-vaguely-smacks-of-traditional-conservative-values publishing community, not only novel but gutsy.
This is not to say that the book is some sort of proselytization as normally seen in the commonly hackneyed and overbearing attempts at preaching-fiction published in Christian book stores. In fact, the book has none of that. There are several meaningful discussions about religion, but no proselytization despite the overt goal of the second prong of the story. What you get, instead, is a story that reads as part mystery, part adventure, and part discovery. The flow of the story is organic, smooth, and easy to follow, especially if you’ve got even a little familiarity with Ringo’s Aldenata universe.
Overall, I found The Tuloriad very enjoyable reading. The characters and plot lines are engaging, and the overarching story arc had a definite beginning and end. Finally, my primary flag that denotes a good book went off: I was sorry there wasn’t more of the book to read when I was done.
Well done and boy am I glad I’ve still got my library card.
October 17th, 2009 at 1:40 am
Funny thing is, as someone on Baen’s Bar pointed out, that’s the most liberal/progressive thing I’ve written so far, at any number of levels.
John and I worked more closely on this than normal, and a good deal of the funny stuff (snorting VX, for example) is his. But I think if there are some odd voice changes it may have to do with a family tragedy that hit some time before I turned it in, while I was still finessing it.
Thanks, Darwin.
best,
Tom
October 17th, 2009 at 1:49 am
Thanks for dropping by, Tom. Hope that we get some more commentary going with this great book.
I don’t think that there were any “weird” voice changes during the thing and certainly nothing that broke the trance. There were just a couple of times where I thought, “This doesn’t sound quite like Tom anymore. I think John must’ve been in here. Na ja.”
As for the liberal/progressive thing relative to your other works, I’d agree. The handling of the religious aspects was done very well and, I thought, in a level-handed manner.
I’m afraid my frustration with the intolerance of some folks who obviously didn’t even read the book leaked out into my review.
October 17th, 2009 at 2:01 am
Well…to paraphrase somebody or other “the assholes will be with us always.”
Besides, what better illustration of the broad spectrum idiocy of the “brights” could I ask for than some of those reviews?
November 25th, 2009 at 2:11 pm
I just read this book, and it was great. Well-written, well-constructed, and the characters carried the message incredibly well without dropping into the mode of being “message carriers”.
The afterword, however, has actually somewhat sullied my enjoyment of the main book. Not because I disagree with most of the points in the essay, as such, but simply because whereas the book was a masterful showing of the messages involved, the afterword essay felt slapped-together and poorly thought-out. Like it was written at the last minute, and after a bad day of dealing with dislikable people.
I mean, guys, in the beginning you put Stalin’s USSR up as an atheist government, and then at the end you toss in the factoid of Stalin being “made into” a god. That’s just sloppy, because it leads to the clear conclusion that the USSR was not, in fact, an atheist state, but rather a theocracy focused on *the wrong god*.
Further, the use of Lepanto as an example of why faith is important is incredibly weak stuff compared to the example of the Swiss Guard on Posleen Prime shown in the book. And even then, the message of the afterword and the message of the book seemed to be in conflict, since the Guard pretty clearly state that the reason they’re going down is not Faith in Jesus and The Church, but rather their faith in “500 years of tradition”. Nevermind the fact that while Lepanto was a miraculous victory, it came after 400 years of failed Crusades.
And, as for preferring Spain of the Inquisitors to the Stalinist or Maoist regimes is great and all, but I think I’ll stick with my almost-ridiculously Secular Democratic Republic, thank you very much. Where the troops, be they Christian or Jewish or Muslim or Hindu or Atheist or Scientologist or whatever, swear to protect and defend the Constitution and the ideals of the Republic, rather than the Glory of whichever deity they’re involved with at the time.
Sorry about ranting, but like I said: I really enjoyed the book, and thought it was a brilliant bit of message presentation, right up until the afterword removed all the thoughfulness in favor of bitterness and “get it?!? get it?!?” style elbow-banging.
Plus, guys, come on. Hitchens is an idiot and Dawkins is an a-hole, but Dnesh D’Souza is *both*. The guy got completely demolished by Stephen Colbert, of all people.
November 25th, 2009 at 3:28 pm
Would it have made you happier if I’d called Stalin a “false god?” Is it not self evident that when man creates a quasi-god of another man, that god is false? And did you notice that, somehow, the atheist USSR survived Stalin?
The big advantage of using Lepanto, as opposed to the Swiss Guard on Posleen prime, is that Lepanto happened.
Everyone with two brain cells to rub together would prefer what we have - which is something less than secular: “Annuit Coeptus,” “In God we trust,” “Trust me, Sir, God governs the affairs of men” (Benjamin Franklin), etc., etc. - to either Mao, Stalin, or the Inquisition. That’s really not the point nor is it always the choice.
D’Souza may well be an asshole. But, if so, he is an asshole who demolished Hitchens in a debate on religion. Were Coleman and D’Souza discussing religion? If so, I haven’t seen it. If not, what does that have to do - Anything? Anything at all? - with an afterword on the power of faith?
November 25th, 2009 at 11:30 pm
It might have made me happier, but the underlying logic flaw would persist. Plus, I’d point out that both the USSR and Mao’s China made *the state* God… which made the state infallible, which is exactly what led to the worst abuses of the Papal Supremacy times, as well.
That’s beside my point, though. My point was that the afterword, by using Lepanto, D’Souza, and the fundamental secularism of the United States (”In God We Trust” may well be on the money, but no one judges the strength of that money on the basis of what God’s Prophet On Earth or whathaveyou might say), is a much, much, much weaker argument for the power of faith than the story in the book itself was.
Without this analogy being taken too literally (iow, I don’t consider the story or the message to be “a joke”), it was as if I’d just heard a really brilliant and effective joke, which the teller of then proceeds to badly explain while saying “get it?” every other sentence. It took a huge amount of the edge off of the effectiveness of the original presentation.
And D’Souza demolishing Hitchens is a little bit like crowing about which monkey won the tic-tac-toe contest.
November 26th, 2009 at 12:48 am
Well…I wrote it to sneer at arrogant “brights.” Enough of them saw the sneer and were annoyed enough by it to make _me_ happy. It did make me happy. So I guess I’ll just have to learn to live with your disapproval.
Suggestion for the future: If you should read any books with my name on them, stop reading when the story’s over. You are unlikely to like the afterwords, either for content or style.
November 26th, 2009 at 11:13 pm
Well, I guess if minimal effort for minimal achievement is what you were after, then I guess honest critique was a pointless endeavor for me to embark on. Nor was I intending to suggest that my little honest critique was meant to be taken as anything other than one person’s humble opinion.
I’ll probably still read the afterwords on your books, however, because even though I might not like them, I *do* like your style and skill at fiction writing, and in most cases where I’ve enjoyed an author’s work, I’ve also wound up enjoying their non-fiction essay writing as well. That wasn’t the case with this book, certainly, but as I said initially, that’s only because it felt like all of the effort and work that went into building the message into the narrative was not repeated at all in any way for the essay. It would take a lot more than one dissatisfying experience to make me give up on potentially enjoying a future afterword of yours.
I’m not sure I see the point, really, in capping off a well-written book with a poorly-written sneer at people who don’t matter much at all anyway, but it’s not my project and I wouldn’t ever think of telling you to not do whatever you want to do with your works. Seriously. I suppose I’m curious as to *why* the afterword feels so underdone to me when the book worked really well, but this is probably not the venue for me to ask, outright.
I look forward to reading your other works, at any rate.
December 3rd, 2009 at 12:58 pm
Oh, I don’t mind honest critique, and I think you were being honest. This has not always been the case with people “reviewing” my books. Look at the one and two star Amazon reviews for The Tuloriad and note that you can hunt around and find on line where someone put people who hadn’t read the book up to reviewing it anyway. Yes, as a matter of fact, after I saw that I rallied the Barflies to cancel out those spurious “reviews.”
One of these days I’m going to do an afterword on what I like to think of as parasitical philosophies. But that I mean philosophies that can only arise in certain types of societies, and proceed to wreck those societies so they’re replaced by others under which the parasitical philosophy is destroyed. Think cosmopolitanism, or pacifism, or - quite possibly - militant atheism.
One way to look at the afterwords is that they are, or will be, a cohesive whole - Kratman’s take on Life, the Universe, and Everything - and thus are not so much dependent on the book they accompany. Related? Yes. Dependent? No. Sometimes, they’re not even afterwords, whatever title I used, but forwards to the next book. Really.
Indeed, I’ve been asked to do a separate volume of them, and I may do that, once I’ve got another fifteen or twenty of them out there.