Short Reviews for January 2025

Communities of Violence, The Not So Wild Wild West, The Fire Comes to Thérèse, Goldenhand

Communities of Violence: Persecution of Minorities in the Middle Ages, by David Nirenberg (320 pp; 2015)

Who should read this? People studying minorities in medieval Europe.

This's a look at the coeexistence of Christians, Muslims, and Jews in Aragon and its surroundings in the thirteenth to early fifteenth centuries. It gives the overall perspective, and then digs into several individual instances of violence.

There're some interesting pictures here. The summary of tensions between king and nobles over exactly who got to extort the local Jews, the description of ritualized riots on Good Friday (which Nirenberg argues rarely seriously harmed actual Jews), the analysis of the mystery play of the Fall of Jerusalem (where Emperor Vespasian was supposedly a Christian fighting to avenge Christ's death, and Pilate supposedly leading the Jewish defenders) - all were interesting and eye-opening to read.

But, the overall title oversells the book, and the argument is poorly woven together. Nirenberg's thesis is that violence against minorities is not necessarily on a spectrum leading to extermination. Throughout most of the book, I thought he had largely proven his case by counterexample - until his last chapter. There, he admits that after the Black Death, violence in Aragon did get much worse than he'd been describing in the book, and it did lead to violently exiling many Jews and Muslims. He weakly argues the previous violence didn't build up to this; it was rather the outside shock of the Black Death. But that's an unprovable argument, at least from the evidence he gives. So, I'm afraid his thesis is sunk and the book is reduced to merely eye-opening descriptions and anecdotes.

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The Not So Wild Wild West: Property Rights on the Frontier, by Terry Anderson (280 pp; 2004)

Who should read this? People interested in economic history, or history of the "Wild West."

Just like so many fun history books, this's a close look at people being people and setting things up together in an area of history that I hadn't really looked at since my childhood. Here, it's people in the American West, and unique sorts of property rights.

Anderson digs into things like "rights to graze this many cattle in this valley," or "rights to round up someone else's cattle but you need to compensate them," or "rights to follow this vein of silver," or contracts chartering wagon trains, which were invented by the people involved without any government action till after the fact if then.

He also looks into times it didn't work, such as the beaver trade which "trapped out" most of America too quickly with different sources not talking to each other fast enough. I can see how this worked after the fact - and I can marvel at how it worked so well for so long.

The other thing that I hadn't noticed till this book is how dynamic the West was. The beaver trade and Oregon Trail each only lasted a decade or two from their first tentative pioneers; the great cattle drives lasted longer but only by changing their destinations. The West was settled so quickly.

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The Fire Comes to Thérèse, by Allen Shoff (499 pp; 2016)

Who should read this? People intrigued by the premise, who don't mind a slow story.

This small-press Christian sci-fi novel follows a Jesuit priest sent to a newly-terraformed colony planet, where he founds a school and then much later gets caught up in trying to prevent an interstellar war from causing violence on that planet.

I wanted to like this book, and there's much to like in it - the setting, the interplay of characters, and the themes. But, it's told at a very slow pace. There's barely any actual tension until near the end; events happen with much time in-between and little need for our protagonist to make decisions. Even the politics leading to the war barely come up until halfway through. Nor do most characters grow during this plot.

So all in all, I'm glad I read this. It's almost impossible to find, but I was able to borrow a copy through interlibrary loan. Still, I wish the author had been able to improve his skills at pacing and dynamic characterization more.

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Goldenhand, by Garth Nix (368 pp; 2016)

Who should read this? People who liked Nix's previous books in the series and really want to read more in his setting.

When I was a teenager, I enjoyed Nix's Abhorsen trilogy, about a fantasy kingdom separated by a magic-blocking wall from what looks like Edwardian England. There're now more books in the series, so I decided to check them out... and I'm disappointed. I'm not planning to continue.

Here, Nix's characters - even the ones I remember from the previous books - are one- or two-dimensional at best. They feel shallow, acting out the plot while hardly ever showing real feeling or searching their souls to make a hard decision. Even when Lirael was risking her and her beloved's lives in an airless wasteland, I didn't feel her anguishing about doing it.

So, I didn't have anything to grasp onto in this book besides backstory. I wanted to sympathize with the protagonists, but I didn't see enough of them. The plot in itself is decently done, but not enough to carry the story by itself; I need better characters and motivations.

Now I'm left wondering whether my exciting memories of Nix's preceding books would hold up if I reread them today. I'm guessing they would - the kingdom-rebuilding plot there can hold up better with weak characters, and our protagonists have better excuses for weak character because they're just starting on their first adventures rather than already being veterans as here. But still, I'm remembering my sister found the first books weak for much the same reasons I've now found this weak - so I'm dubious.