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language: Japanese (English tr. Matt Treyvaud)
country: Japan
year: 1987
form: novel
genre(s): science fiction
series: Legend of the Galactic Heroes, #8
dates read: 16.6.25-20.6.25
Desolation, book eight of Tanaka Yoshiki’s Legend of the Galactic Heroes series, lives up to its name. after the last time we got a new translator I was a bit apprehensive, but Matt Treyvaud has done an excellent job, with just a few brief moments where the translation faltered.
this was by far the most emotionally intense novel of the series so far, and I don’t want to go into detail about why because it would be a major spoiler. in any case, there has been a huge plot development that I did not see coming and while I’m still not totally sure how I feel about it I am, nonetheless, excited to see what happens next. I think this might be the best book in the series to date? which I never thought I’d say, but while Dawn stands out as a single novel, Desolation is a masterclass in exploiting long-term character and plot development over a series.
and, in spite of the liberal aspects of the politics, the intensity of Tanaka’s and his characters’ commitment to democratic ideals genuinely does Get To Me. true democracy IS, as Admiral Bucock put it in Tempest, a mode of thought, and it DOES change how you look at and interact with the world.
this isn’t to say that the book is without flaws. the most prominent of these is that it’s full of names, particularly the names of fifty different Imperial admirals and government officials. to Tanaka’s credit, with eight books now behind us I do actually know who many of these people are, but. I’m going to be honest. after three paragraphs that name-drop twenty different people I do sometimes find myself thinking, “okay, I obviously know how von Reuentahl is, and I vaguely remember Lennenkamp — I could have dredged up his first name eventually even if it hadn’t shown up here — but who the fuck is Büro?”
in spite of the perhaps overabundance of characters, though, what makes this book stand out is precisely its character work, particularly in the second half. again I can’t go into a ton of detail without spoiling the big plot development, but some of the scenes in Iserlohn in the second half, in particular, are really moving. I did cry.
also — and I know I’ve said this before, but — I love the way Tanaka writes space battles. both the way he writes fleet maneuvers, making space combat accessible and fast-paced rather than getting bogged down in minutiae, but also the way he describes the violence of it. the focus on light and illumination but against a silent backdrop. the dichotomy between what for a moment could look beautiful, until you realize there are thousands of people dying. really good stuff.
I also have really enjoyed Tanaka’s increasing commitment to these books as speculative historiography, not only in the distant third-person narration but, particularly as the story has gone on, with more and more direct invocations of future historians, quotations from their work, summaries of scholarly opinion and discussions of disagreements in later assessments of the events it portrays. while some of the foreshadowing has been quite heavy-handed — re Julian, for example — he’s nonetheless done an impressive job avoiding actually giving the game away. it’s a fascinating balance of contingency and inevitability: we know that the events are, from the narration’s perspective, fait accompli, but they almost never feel set in stone. there is always — as Yang reminds us — another way things could go. we always have a choice.
really, really impressive. I’m so glad I persevered through the awful translations for books four to six.
moods: emotional, hopeful, reflective