It’s a bit late, but I have a very good reason. The same reason, in fact, that has led me to only make a handful of posts since last year’s Summer Reading List. The wedding is a little more than two months away, we just signed the apartment lease today, and reading has to take a back seat to all of that. But I did get one finished, so here we go.

Fantasy

Title: The Eye of the World
Author: Robert Jordan
Genre: Epic Fantasy
Year: 1990

I’ve read a lot of fantasy novels, and a lot of series. Many of them are good: Sanderson’s Mistborn and the Stormlight Archive series; Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings. Some hooked me early, but faded as they progressed or stalled: Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire, Erikson’s Malazan Book of the Fallen. And there’s even the occasional one that I tried but gave up on, like Anthony Ryan’s The Draconis Memoria series.

I’ve never read the Wheel of Time.

I have heard of it, of course. You couldn’t walk into a bookstore in the 2000s without seeing at least a full shelf of Robert Jordan’s books. But I never gave it a shot. The cover art didn’t grab my eye. The descriptions and blurbs felt kind of opaque. The Wheel of Time, to me, struck me as a series intended for Wheel of Time fans. Since I wasn’t one, I didn’t bother.

Lately, fantasy has left me feeling a kind of burnout. The most popular entries are female-focused, and little more than softcore porn…when they stay softcore, anyway. What little remains once all the shades of gray and sparkly vampires and self-insert Mary Sues are taken away is mostly mediocre. Half of it is the same recycled assassin tropes, and I have half a dozen "loner assassin" books in my pile already. So I decided to go back to what’s considered one of the classics.

Let me just say that now I understand. Not why Robert Jordan is considered a classic, but why he’s seen as so divisive. The Eye of the World, the first in a 14-book series that had to be completed by Brandon Sanderson after Jordan’s death, is a book that’s very hit or miss. It has many flashes of brilliance mired in a sea of meh.

The setting itself seems like a fairly generic fantasy world to start. You’ve got your small villages somehow fifty miles apart, a population density more like 1800s Canada than medieval England. There’s a cosmic struggle between Light and Dark, with Dark starting to win. A shadowy cabal of mages serves as the power behind the throne, while most of the characters start out not knowing there’s even a throne in the first place.

The characters themselves also seem generic, although part of this can be attributed to the Tolkien effect: Jordan did, in a way, invent a whole new kind of epic fantasy. His characters are generic because they’re archetypes. Rand is the farmboy turned unlikely hero; never mind that his heroic transformation doesn’t occur until the penultimate of the book’s 50-plus chapters. His friends run the gamut from love interest to comic relief to token healer.

What’s good about the book is that worldbuilding. While the vast stretches of wilderness are very out of place, and some of the names are plainly ripped from real history—there’s a King Arthur, for example—what we get of the world does make it feel like something someone put a lot of thought into. Rand’s home village feels like a village, and its remoteness allows for a plausible explanation as to why he and his friends are so ignorant of the world. Which also gives the author a good excuse to explain it.

The overarching story is also interesting. Once again, it might seem plain and bland in 2026, but there wasn’t a lot of epic fantasy 35 years ago. The snatches of history, the glimpses of fallen empires, the brief meetings with other races, the perils of the Blight, those are genuinely interesting. I’d love to explore them in more detail.

But that’s where things start to take a turn for the worse. The Eye of the World just doesn’t do that. It’s around 900 pages in my astigmatism-friendly EPUB version, but it very often feels rushed despite its length. Most of the story happens on the run: Rand and the party are bouncing from village to town to wilderness, chased by the Dark One’s legions. They split up—Jordan clearly forgot the cardinal rule of a GM—and reunite after a brief chance to give multiple POVs a chance.

In the decade I’ve been writing Prose Poetry Code, I’ve often lamented my lack of skill in pacing a novel, but nothing I’ve written has ever felt as plodding, yet also as hurried, as The Eye of the World. It’s a literary sort of punctuated equilibrium, but with an odd inversion: the chase scenes are the ones that feel slow, while the respites in towns leave me out of breath.

Part of this, I think, is that there’s so little internal exposition. Moiraine, the wise witch you’d expect to be the lore-dump character, mostly keeps her mouth shut, except when she’s barking orders. Lan, who is totally not an Aragorn ripoff, trust me, often goes entire chapters without saying more than a single sentence. The rest of the group has no idea what’s going on, where they are, or even why they’re being chased. They’re villagers plucked from their rural homes and thrust into the wider world, and they’re utterly lost. So is the reader.

But they are the narrative characters, so their ignorance is ours. I do the same with my own books, so I can’t complain too much. On the other hand, I rarely write characters who refuse to inform. That’s an issue I had here. You mean to tell me that these seven or eight people were on the road together for weeks, but never once did the one leading them deign to say why? Yes, you can use worldbuilding as an excuse—there’s a cultural taboo against even naming the enemies—but that’s all it is. It doesn’t explain anything.

It’s also a serious clash between what the author is telling us about his world and what he’s showing us through the lens of the characters. Despite being so far out in the middle of nowhere that they don’t even realize they’re part of a kingdom (or the matriarchal equivalent), Rand and company have enough contact with the outside world that they know common songs, legends, and histories. It’s hard to square that circle.

So, to sum up, The Eye of the World is a seminal work of epic fantasy, one that deserves praise for kickstarting the subgenre. Yet it’s also a deeply flawed tale. It gives me the sense that Jordan didn’t know what he was writing as he wrote it. There are vast swathes of pages that could be left out with no harm done, while crucial details, things you would expect the characters to say or do or ask, are only mentioned in passing. Add to that a generally abrasive, know-it-all elitism from those who are supposed to be helpful, and a worldwide lack of empathy, and you’ve got a setting that makes me want to learn more about it, but puts me off reading anything else that takes place in it.

The Wheel of Time can keep on turning forever. I’ll just make sure to keep out of its way.

Under the wire once again. Today’s the last day, and I finished the last book last night. At last. I have reasons for my tardiness, and I hope to explain them in the near future. For now, let’s worry about reading.

Fantasy

Title: A Crucible of Souls
Author: Mitchell Hogan
Genre: Fantasy
Year: 2013

I think I’m starting to experience fantasy burnout. I was very critical of Brandon Sanderson’s latest book a few months back, and he’s my favorite author. Mitchell Hogan might be a great writer, but this book ensures he’ll never get high up on my list.

A Crucible of Souls is a fantasy novel. Usually, I’ll be able to qualify "fantasy" with some other subgenre. Martin and Jordan wrote epic fantasy. Sanderson sometimes veers into science fantasy, if of a different bent than Star Wars. Brian McClellan? Riflepunk. Peter Brett? You could almost call his post-apocalyptic fantasy.

Here, I’m just calling a book a plain, vanilla fantasy novel without any further qualifiers. I feel comfortable doing that because it’s a very…generic story. There are few cases where I just never got interested in a book—The Waking Fire is one such—but I can’t remember the last time I was genuinely bored by fantasy.

And that’s because there’s just nothing here. A lot of words, almost no substance. A plot that barely goes anywhere. A cast of characters that sometimes seems like D&D pregens. (The orphan boy with hidden talents, the female fighter to show diversity, the necromancer anti-hero…) This really is the most generic novel I’ve read in probably 30 years. And the ones back then were Magic: the Gathering tie-ins!

Just so I don’t spend the whole post bashing the novel, let’s talk about the good points. First of all, the magic system Hogan describes is built around wards and runes inscribed into various materials. It’s similar to the wards of Brett’s Demon Cycle series, but they feel a lot more science-y. Although the descriptions were barebones, my imagination visualized them as something more akin to schematics than anything. And the narrative does reinforce that image in a few places. Very cool to my rational and geeky brain.

Another aspect of the magic of this created world is the perceived difference between destructive and creative sorcery. Many of the "craftings" (my ebook copy inexplicably had this word italicized in every occurrence) are made from wood or metal, and they have a constructive purpose. They’re lights or security systems, in effect, which only adds to the engineer-like flavor. On the other hand, "destructive" magics are banned, prohibited, verboten, and considered downright evil.

Here’s where the author had a chance to make a positive statement, but punted. The sorcerers of the major city that is the focus for the book’s action have a secret police dedicated to stamping out any embers of alleged destructive sorcery. Naturally, they have to use this same forbidden knowledge to fight against it, but what they consider destructive is…odd, to say the least. Elemental magic is prohibited, because someone could use magical fire to commit arson, for example.

It’s the typical progressive argument against gun ownership, merely transplanted into a fantasy world. At multiple points, in fact, Master Simmon, the teacher character who leads this covert ops team—that’s not even an exaggeration—states that destructive sorcery is banned despite its positive benefits, because some people might use it for ill. In other words, because a random thug decided to shoot someone, the rest of us can’t defend ourselves.

Indeed, the idea of disarming the populace extends beyond that, as denizens of the city of Anasoma, even including their cops, are barred from carrying a sword in public. Civilians can’t even carry a club. It’s a liberal paradise, really, but Hogan doesn’t do much to show why that’s a dystopia to anyone with any sense. Even those seeking to invade don’t care about the politics.

But that’s because he doesn’t do much to show anything. The city is depicted as a cesspool of crime and violence; the main protagonist, Caldan, is mugged in his first week there. It’s a place where everyone is out for himself, everything is bleak and depressing, and we’re somehow supposed to care about it. By the end of the book, I didn’t mind if it was razed to the ground, along with the rest of the empire.

If I sound harsh, it’s because I expected more. A Crucible of Souls got great reviews, and was recommended by people I usually trust. I figured it would be a titanic clash of sorcerers, an epic setting, and all those nice things. Instead, it’s a very generic story. The characters are cookie-cutter. There’s very little worldbuilding. The subplots don’t really go anywhere, yet somehow get bundled up at the end in a bit of deus ex machina.

There’s nothing bad about this book. (Well, maybe some of the prose, but I’ve become a terrible critic of that in recent years.) The problem is, there’s nothing really good about it, either. Except for the magic system, which is genuinely interesting and would give me enough material for an entire series of my own, very little actually stands out. At times, it feels like an RPG campaign that got carried away.

And that’s fine, if that’s what you’re after. I prefer distinctiveness. I prefer books, even fantasy novels, that make me think, that make me consider angles and aspects I may have dismissed before. Failing that, give me a story that’s a fun ride.

Maybe Mitchell Hogan can pull that off. From what I saw in A Crucible of Souls, however, I doubt it. This is a rare miss, and the only reason I finished it is because I didn’t have time to read a different book. So the Summer Reading List for 2025 ends on a down note, alas. Fortunately, the rest of my life makes up for it, as you’ll see soon enough.

I know I’m cutting it close. I have real-life things I’m dealing with right now that are just a little more important, so bear with me. And wait a week or so for the details on those.

History

Title: The Storm of Steel
Author: Ernst Jünger (tr. Basil Creighton)
Genre: Military History/Autobiography
Year: 1920 (tr. 1929, reprinted 2019)

War is one of the most pointless and wasteful endeavors humanity has ever invented. And World War I was quite possibly the most pointless and wasteful of them all. But the tens of millions of men fighting in the trenches of France, the mountains of Italy, or the dozen other fronts didn’t think so.

They believed they were fighting for a righteous cause, and that cause was, to put it simply, nationalism. The French fought for France, to throw back the invasion. The Germans fought for Germany, for the Kaiser’s honor and to right the wrongs of 1870. The Americans, latecomers as we were, fought to show that America belonged on the world stage.

Much has been written about the strategies of the war, of the machines and machinations it spawned. I could fill my room with accounts of the Central Powers and the Allies, of the 40 years of alliances and deals that led a simple assassination to set the whole world ablaze. (I even read one of these, The Guns of August, last summer.)

As well, reams of paper and gigabytes of now-digitized data can paint the tactical picture. Which divisions went where, which trenches were attacked when. What happened each time new technology entered the battlefield, whether tanks, airplanes, or gas attacks. There’s so much information out there that Indy Neidell could make a 10-minute video for each week of the war, and he almost never went into any more than the most cursory detail.

But so much media—and, therefore, so much public perception—focuses on these high-level accounts, these broad, sweeping depictions of trench warfare as a new variant of Risk, that we forget a very important truth. These were soldiers, not pawns. Men, not machines.

We know the Kaisar and the Tsar. We know Hindenburg and Ludendorf, Foch and Joffré. We know Winston Churchill before his later glory days. But we don’t know much about the millions upon millions who served under them, the unnumbered dead buried in unmarked graves throughout the French countryside, or the ones who made it home and got to see the world turn upside-down. Only a scant few heroes ever rise enough to make a dent in the public consciousness: Alvin York and the Red Baron are probably the only two the average American can even name.

Ernst Jünger tells the story of these forgotten masses through his own experiences of the war. He’s German, and that means two things. One, since he writes from his post-war home, his narrative is laced with the knowledge that his side lost. Two, his is a story not often heard in Allied countries. Some of that is through ignorance. Some comes from outright malevolence.

Jünger served through almost the whole war, showing up in early 1915 and taking his final action only a few weeks before the armistice. His tale winds through 18 chapters, but only a few actual battles. He was at the Somme, for instance, just as one of my favorite authors had been. He took part—indeed, showed heroism—at Cambrai and during the Germans’ last great offensive in 1918.

His is an account of the war from a small perspective. Never rising higher than lieutenant, he wasn’t invited to division-level strategic conferences. He didn’t know what the Kaiser was thinking. And that’s what makes The Storm of Steel so impactful. Here is the account of a soldier. This is a man who didn’t have the whole story. All he knew was that Germany was fighting, he was German, and he was honor-bound to defend his home. Even if they were the attackers.

It’s an almost too-simple belief system, we might think today. Our society has been conditioned over the past 80 years to reject nationalism. Indeed, national pride is outlawed in some of the same countries that were victorious over Jünger’s 73rd Fusiliers, and he would weep with the knowledge that his glorious Fatherland wants to ban the only political party that remembers what it used to be.

World War I marked a change in the way warfare itself was done. It marked the last true use of cavalry, and the first of a mechanized military. But it also illustrates how the culture of war changed in modern times. We know of the Christmas Truce of 1914, when hostilities paused for one night on the Western Front, and the soldiers of the respective sides greeted each other in No Man’s Land. Something similar happens to Jünger’s unit in 1915, and he recounts that he and the British commander finished the night by formally re-declaring war.

That might not make sense. They were already at war, weren’t they? And they didn’t have the power to stop it. But this is Ernst Jünger’s central theme: honor. The soldier, he believes, should have a sense of honor. As a good Prussian man, he felt he could best illustrate by doing, and his narrative accounts in the book are full of asides about which actions were honorable and which were the mark of a coward. He’s his own biggest critic, too, pointing out where he failed to live up to the standard he set for himself, even when it made no difference at worst, or saved his life at best.

Honor is dead, according to the Sanderson book I read last year. In the real world, we would probably consider it on life support. But World War I gives us our last good look at battlefield honor in action. Part of that is because of the parties involved. The English and German soldiers were cousins, in a sense, while the French were neighbors. Yes, they had names for each other (I actually didn’t know "Tommy" was the German nickname for British soldiers until I read this book!) and traded insults, but they did so in the knowledge that they were fighting…fellow men.

After WWI, that changed. Propaganda was able to reach the critical levels of today. Even by World War II, not even two full generations after Versailles changed the world, dehumanization through mass media had already begun its work, and the 80 years since have only made things worse. This has even altered perceptions of the Great War itself; The Storm of Steel is considered a dangerous book by leftists, precisely because it shows what a German patriot believes. And we all know that German patriots are evil, right?

In the end, this was not the book I wanted to read this summer. I was sick all week, I saw it on my tablet, and I dove into it during my convalescence. And I’m glad I did, because it really is a great book about what, I must admit, has always been my favorite war from a historical perspective. Ignore the people claiming that it’s fascist, or that it promotes Nazism. Ernst Jünger doesn’t do any of that. All he does is tell it like it is. Soldiers fought for four years, killing each other by the millions, because they believed they were part of something greater than themselves. The reason that sounds crazy to us is simple: we just don’t believe that anymore.

And here we go. The first of the three this year was a total slog, and…well, you’ll see why. It’s not only because the last five weeks have been downright hectic.

Philosophy

Title: Republic
Author: Plato (tr. Sir Henry Desmond Pritchard Lee)
Genre: Philosophy/Political Science
Year: c. 360 BC

Consider essentially the founding document of political thought in general, Plato’s Republic has been considered a classic for centuries, and it is now the oldest book I’ve read. (I never actually finished anything of Homer, and even the Old Testament technically wasn’t written down until around the 2nd century BC.) Although it’s not on the official "Great Books" list, most people would probably assume it was. I did.

This is, in a way, the origin story of a lot of philosophy we simply see as background noise today. The allegory of the cave, which has become popularized in meme format the past few years, derives from Plato, and specifically Book VIII of this work. Many of the concepts of the Platonic ideal also find their genesis in Republic, or they are simply spelled out best here.

That’s really all there is to the work as a whole. It’s crafted as a conversation between Socrates and some of his pupils, patrons, and general audience members, with the idea that the master philosopher is, in effect, debating Thrasymachus, who serves as a kind of foil to get the action started. The subject of the debate? Who has the better life: a just man or an unjust one.

Simply looking at the world around us would lead us to assume that Thrasymachus has a point when he says that the unjust man is richer and more well-off. Name a billionaire whose money isn’t at least a little dirty.

Socrates, serving as the author’s insert—prose wasn’t as fully developed 2400 years ago—counters by saying that, while the unjust man may seem to have it all, he’s actually poorer in his spirit, and thus he will never truly be happy. From there commences a long and sometimes tedious dive into philosophy as Socrates converses with Adeimantus and Glaucon, two of his host’s sons; their purpose is sycophantic for the most part, offering little in the way of argument but much mumbled agreement with their illustrious guest.

You might be thinking, "Isn’t this book called the Republic? So where does the republic part come in?"

Well, I wondered the same thing. Part of the roundabout course Socrates takes to make his point is a digression into the forms of government, and a thought experiment of making a "perfect" state. His—rather, Plato’s—ideal is a monarchy run by a philosopher king. (You’ve probably heard that phrase bandied about lately, too.) In the Platonic ideal of State, everyone knows his place, no one is grasping or cheating, and it’s a very communal atmosphere.

It’s also joyless, as Plato explicitly ejects any worldly pleasures from his state, all the way down to the simple joy of familial love. In a way, Plato depicts a dystopia, then tries to sell it as a utopia.

That should be enough to disgust you, but bear with me. The part that people, including a lot of modern philosophers, don’t get is that it’s an allegory, the same as the cave. The ideal state represents the Platonic man. Not a system of government, but conceptualization of the perfect man. It’s at odds with the Aristotelian ideal of eudaemonia, and it’s very…call it proto-Stoic, because I see a lot of parallels from when I read Meditations a few years ago. There’s that same emphasis on eschewing the worldly for some nebulous "perfect" source of wisdom.

I can get behind that part a little bit, to be honest. But the language it’s couched in is opaque at best, and it shows how underdeveloped philosophy was in those early days. Plato has first-mover advantage, and that’s why his works are given a higher dose of respect than we would probably allow if they were more modern.

I’m not saying Republic isn’t worth reading. It is, if only because it’s a justifiable classic. You’ll learn from it, because you’ll see where so many concepts we almost take for granted originally came from. The Allegory of the Cave, after all, is the ultimate source work of everything from the Gospel of Thomas to The Matrix. The Myth of Er, which rounds out the book, served as inspiration for Dante’s Inferno and Milton’s Paradise Lost, among many others.

Republic is not, however, political science. It doesn’t describe how to achieve a perfect state, but a state of perfection. While that’s as unattainable as any Platonic ideal, it won’t stop us from trying.