Ambition, Tanaka Yoshiki

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language: Japanese (English tr. Daniel Huddleston)
country: Japan
year: 1985
form: novel
genre(s): science fiction
series: Legend of the Galactic Heroes, #2
dates read: 13.9.22-15.9.22

Ambition (tr. Daniel Huddleston) is the second novel of Tanaka Yoshiki’s 10-book Legend of the Galactic Heroes series. I read the first book, Dawn, earlier this year and was really impressed, and the second book definitely (with a few hesitations) lives up to the first.

fundamentally both books are just solid military sci-fi, in this case following our protagonists — the young Free Planets Alliance admiral Yang Wen-li and the Imperial Marshal of the Galactic Empire, Reinhard von Lohengramm — as they fight in parallel civil wars. the space battles are great — both for their satisfying strategies and for Tanaka’s uncompromising emphasis on the horror and stupidity of war, especially on the mass scale of interstellar conflict.

there’s a substantial shift in characterization in this book: where at the end of book 1 it seemed to me that there was still a bit of a margin to see Reinhard as “good”, by the end of book 2 he has crossed several moral event horizons, in keeping with what (thus far) appears to be Tanaka’s commitment to the idea that power corrupts and that anyone who actively seeks power should be regarded with — at best — profound suspicion. it’s clear that Yang is where the author’s sympathies lie, and he reminds me in some ways of Jedao from Machineries of Empire. I also — in terms of overarching plot — appreciate that the Terraists are clearly modeled on Christianity.

my main hesitation in terms of the construction of the book is about the characterization of Reinhard, because the panoramic view that we get of him — in contrast to our view of Yang, which is mainly through Yang, albeit distantly — leads, for me, to a sense that he’s “deeper” than Yang is: there’s much more high character drama in the Reinhard sections than there is in the Yang sections. this is a little unfortunate because, while I do think that we are unequivocally meant to see Yang as the “better” of the two, the result is that I can’t quite tell if the book wants us to see Reinhard as a cautionary tale about corruption or as somehow sympathetic (or even heroic) in spite of what he’s doing and what he’s done. I think it’s mainly the former, but the more involved characterization leaves me feeling like we “know” Reinhard better than Yang — and like on some level we’re still supposed to like Reinhard.

I wouldn’t necessarily be bothered by this (in fact I think it could be an interesting choice) except that the fandom things I have seen based on the anime suggests that people read him as the latter, and while I’m sure the anime is different from the books I somehow doubt it’s different enough to get around the fact that Reinhard is a blond-haired, blue-eyed aspiring galactic dictator from a space polity inspired by imperial Prussia with a certain Nazi flavor.

I also do wonder about Tanaka’s rejection of “convictions” out-of-hand. is there truly nothing worth sacrificing one’s life for?

the translation is, I think, still excellent overall, but I was more conscious here of malapropisms and the occasional awkard phrasing than I was in Dawn.

I’m excited to see how the series continues.

moods: adventurous, dark, reflective


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