In the 35 years since I graduated with an East Asian studies degree, I’ve read a considerable amount of Japanese literature. So, my little contribution to Fandom Pulse is a list of my 10 favorite novels, with the caveat that only one novel per author was allowed.
Japanese literature is like no other. What the wedding is to the English novel, the suicide is to the Japanese novel. Furthermore, the absence of Christian sexual mores, the cultural inclination toward passivity and fatalism, and the lack of an individualist hero tradition will tend to strike the average Western reader as strange and, in some cases, even bordering on the perverse.
But the technical skill of Japanese novelists, combined with their very different takes on the human condition, makes Japanese literature one of the most interesting and rewarding literatures available for reading on the planet. Below are my favorite books by ten different Japanese authors translated into English, since I don’t read kanji, and a list of my ten favorite Japanese novels would amount to little more than an incomplete bibliography of Haruki Murakami.
Read the whole thing there. And yes, I’ve read Natsumi Soseki, Ryu Murakami, Kenzaburo Oe, Banana Yoshimoto, and all the other big names. This is a list of my favorite novels, not the technically best or most representative, or most important.
The Dark Herald has taken his talents to the Arkhaven substack, and he’s gotten off to a blistering start with a comparison of Neil Gaiman’s derivative work to the woman from whose work he derived it:
One is the real deal and the other is a cheap knockoff of the original.
There is a Swiss Rolex and there is a Bangkok Rolex. There is Classic Coke and there is Sam’s Cola. There is the Mona Lisa in the Louvre and the one on Cousin Jimbo’s velvet blanket.
There is Tannith Lee and there is Neil Gaiman.
This has become vastly apparent to me this weekend while reading Night’s Master. It’s a funny thing about writers, we all have that one writer that made us want to write for a living. While learning the craft we discover our strengths and limitations. Some of us will eventually discover that we have surpassed our masters. In bitter truth, most of us will discover that we can’t due to the limitations of our innate talents but those who face this unpleasant realization do not resent the writer who inspired us.
Mostly.
Gamma males, on the other hand, live in a world blanketed by their resentments and can never bring themselves to give credit where it’s due. It’s too painful a truth to acknowledge. How can I be the secret king when there is all too obviously a real king? John Scalzi has never given credit to Joe Haldeman for his influence on his early work, although it’s clearly there. Neil Gaiman’s disdain for Tanith Lee went all the way back to when he was doing literary reviews. By Lee’s account, (which I will take over Gaiman’s in a heartbeat), he was pleasant, fawning and even obsequious during his interview of her for the Guardian. When he published his interview, Lee discovered that Gaiman had described her as “formerly attractive.”
On top of which, reportedly and according to Lee’s belief, he directly plagiarized entire paragraphs from her. I haven’t seen the direct evidence of the truth of the plagiarism yet, but I suspect that between the Dark Herald and me, we should be able to find it if, in fact, it exists. While I’m very familiar with the various tales of the Flat Earth, including the Secret Books of Paradys, which I own and have read repeatedly, and also own her Secret Books of Venus series, I’d never read a single Neil Gaiman work until after we launched Arkhaven and I was encouraged to read Sandman.
Which, you may recall from the streams I was doing at the time, struck me immediately as mediocre and derivative, as well as more than a little off-putting.
Anyhow, it’s no surprise that the Dark Herald is off to an excellent start at the Arkhaven substack. He’ll be blogging there henceforth, so if you’re accustomed to reading him at the store site, I’d encourage you to sign up for a free subscription there.
In other Arkhaven news, we received the test print of JDA’s Overmind omnibus from the new printer this weekend. The quality of the color printing is excellent, indeed, one could quite credibly say superlative. We’re placing an order for the initial print run of 75 leatherbound copies, so there will be a few extras available for sale when they’re ready. The Hypergamouse printing will soon follow. And two additional bonuses; the leatherbound comics will be sewn, and somewhat to my surprise, color edge printed.
I think I have stumbled upon why the godless sex perverts who made up an influential element of the science fiction crowd of the 1960s lionized and feted Roger Zelazny on the basis of a short story which not only isn’t anywhere nearly as good as his later work, but doesn’t stand up well over time in any context, be it scientific or socio-sexual.
The damning paragraph follows. Note the the Locar of which the patron saint of Gamma fiction writes is Ecclesiastes.
“And ours is not an insignificant people, an insignificant place,” I went on. “Thousands of years ago, the Locar of our world wrote a book saying that it was. He spoke as Locar did, but we did not lie down, despite plagues, wars, and famines. We did not die. One by one we beat down the diseases, we fed the hungry, we fought the wars, and, recently, have gone a long time without them. We may finally have conquered them. I do not know.
“But we have crossed millions of miles of nothingness. We have visited another world. And our Locar had said ‘Why bother? What is the worth of it? It is all vanity, anyhow.’
“And the secret is,” I lowered my voice, as at a poetry reading, “he was right! It is vanity, it is pride! It is the hybris of rationalism to always attack the prophet, the mystic, the god. It is our blasphemy which has made us great, and will sustain us, and which the gods secretly admire in us. —All the truly sacred names of God are blasphemous things to speak!”
No wonder science fiction and fantasy have devolved into diseased lunacy. Their foolish elite literally set themselves against God, and now they have reaped the inevitable whirlwind as their retarded heirs laboriously scribble their deranged fantasies about being gang-raped by gay dinosaurs.
I read 66 books to completion in 2024. The best novel was Before the Dawn by Toson Shimazaki, the best non-fiction book was a draw between Princes of the Yen by Richard Werner and Absolutely on Music by Haruki Murakami. The worst novel was an easy decision this year as John Kennedy Toole’s A Confederacy of Dunces was a long and tedious waddle through an extraordinarily unpleasant Gamma’s perspective. The best new-to-me author was Rika Ondu, as her Honeybees and Distant Thunder was very good indeed.
I’m hoping to actually write a few book reviews in 2025, starting with The City and Its Uncertain Walls, Haruki Murakami’s latest, which I’ve just finished.
The WoW Diary, John Staats 50 Years of Text Games, Aaron A. Reed Losing Military Supremacy, Andrei Martyanov Shitamachi Scam, Michael Pronko The Final Curtain, Keigo Higashino Disintegration, Andrei Martyanov The Wizard of the Kremlin, Giuliano da Empoli Strange Weather in Tokyo, Hiromi Kawakami The Nakano Thrift Shop, Hiromi Kawakami Monster Hunter: Vendetta, Larry Correia Monster Hunter: Nemesis, Larry Correia Monster Hunter Memoirs: Fever, Jason Cordova Monster Hunter Memoirs: Grunge, John Ringo Monster Hunter Memoirs: Sinners, John Ringo Monster Hunter Memoirs: Saints, John Ringo People From My Neighborhood, Hiromi Kawakami Dragon Palace, Hiromi Kawakami Practicing History, Barbara Tuchman House of Assassins, Larry Correia Destroyer of Worlds, Larry Correia Breasts and Eggs, Mieko Kawakami The Viceroys, Federico De Roberto Beer in the Snooker Club, Waguih Galil La Fleur de Illusion, Keigo Higashino Princes of the Yen, Richard Werner The Aosawa Murders, Riku Onda Dappled by Sunlight, Riku Onda Honeybees and Distant Thunder, Riku Onda The Jack Vance Treasury, Jack Vance How to Talk to Girls at Parties, Neil Gaiman The Ocean at the End of the Lane, Neil Gaiman Where Angels Fear to Tread, E.M. Forster A Confederacy of Dunces, John Kennedy Toole Araminta Station, Jack Vance Ecce and Old Earth, Jack Vance Throy, Jack Vance The Three-Body Problem, Cixin Liu The Dark Forest, Cixin Liu Death’s End, Cixin Liu Shogun, James Clavell Gai-Jin, James Clavell Noble House, James Clavell Gai-Jin, James Clavell Tai-Pan, James Clavell Disintegration, Andrei Martyanov Margin of Victory, Douglas MacGregor N.P.: a novel, Banana Yoshimoto Pirate Freedom, Gene Wolfe The Last Yakuza, Jake Adelstein The Dragon Waiting, John M. Ford The Speculative Short Fiction, John M. Ford The Sound of Waves, Yukio Mishima The Land of Blood and Honey, Martin van Creveld Un Lun Dun, China Mieville Absolutely on Music, Haruki Murakami The Forbidden Worlds of Haruki Murakami, Matthew Carl Strecher After Dark, Haruki Murakami The Complete Stories, Evelyn Waugh Newcomer, Keigo Higashino Before the Dawn, Toson Shimazaki Tales of the Sun Eater Vol. 1, Christopher Ruocchio Tales of the Sun Eater Vol. 2, Christopher Ruocchio Demon in White, Christopher Ruocchio City of Refuge, Kenzo Kitakata Invisible Helix , Kenzo Kitakata The Silent Cry, Kenzaburo Oe
Didact’s Mind wrote a very favorable review of the preliminary edition of A SEA OF SKULLS back in 2017. It would be interesting to know if he feels the completed work holds up to his initial perspective on it.
Vox Day has not merely matched George R. R. Martin’s fantasy writing skills and output. He has exceeded him, by miles, leaving old Rape Rape wheezing and panting in the dust.
In fact, I am willing to go so far as to argue that, with this book, Vox Day has catapulted himself into the storied and rarefied rank of writers that sits just below The Master himself.
That’s right, I went there. I just said that Vox Day has written a book that is nearly as good as J. R. R. Tolkien’s work.
Not as good. But not terribly far off, either.
From one fantasy fan to another, praise simply does not come any higher than that.
Vox’s accomplishment is made all the more astonishing by the fact that this isn’t even the completed book yet. It’s less than half of the full work. This book is already far more complex, more layered, and simply bigger in scale and scope than its predecessor. There are far more point-of-view characters, the battle sequences are way bigger, the size of the world that Vox Day is playing with is far greater…
The result is so good that it deserves to be called the finest high-fantasy book of its time.
Make no mistake: this now puts Vox Day right below The Master himself in terms of writing- right up there with C. S. Lewis, John C. Wright, and maybe two or three others. And that is an astonishing achievement, given that neither Tolkien nor Vox can rightly be considered first-rate fantasy writers.
One of the interesting things about the comparison between Tolkien and Day is that neither of them are really writers to begin with. Vox Day started out as a musician and a game designer. Vox himself will readily admit that his writing is not as good as Tolkien’s- because it isn’t. Yet Tolkien was a linguist, whose strong Christian faith and interest in Scandinavian mythology helped him create a fantasy world. The reason both Tolkien and Day succeeded, where so many dedicated professional authors would have failed, is because they focused on their respective strengths and wrote works of epic fantasy that played to them…
This book is, quite simply, an extraordinary achievement. With it, Vox has separated himself from all of his contemporary rivals and has clearly laid down a marker for everyone else to match- and I personally don’t think anyone will be able to do so for years, maybe decades, to come.
It’s entirely up to the reader to see if the most recent volume in ARTS OF DARK AND LIGHT holds up to the promise of its earlier and abbreviated release. But for my part, what I will say is that one reason it took me so long to complete the book and get it out is that I was determined to at least try to deliver something that was consistently at the same level as A THRONE OF BONES. I took PG Wodehouse as my inspiration here, as his work is remarkably consistent throughout a novel; he was quite purposeful in attempting to ensure that every scene and every page stood up well on its own. This required a significant amount of discipline in not permitting the story to expand willy-nilly in any direction that happened to capture my attention at the time.
As we’ve seen from George Martin’s failure to finish his epic fantasy, while it’s much easier to churn out words by following one’s momentary whims and exploring whatever tangent happens to strike one’s fancy, this inevitably leads to a wider scope and excessive perspective characters that will, sooner or later, render the story too large to write. One of the many geniuses of JRR Tolkien was his ability to keep his epic story tied very tightly to a fairly small number of key characters, keeping them in physical proximity to each other, and thereby preventing the story from continually expanding to the point that it escaped his ability to reasonably describe it.
Only time will tell, but in A SEA OF SKULLS, I believe that I successfully conquered the challenge of the middle book, which in any trilogy is always the hardest book to write because it has to expand upon the first book without exploding in a manner that renders closure in the third book impossible. It’s interesting that one seldom hears writers discussing these technical matters, but this is probably because the sort of writers who attend workshops mostly write short stories, while the writers who teach them are either self-promoters like John Scalzi or successful mediocrities cruising for starstruck young women like Neil Gaiman, neither one of whom could write epic fantasy if they tried.
Anyhow, for better or for worse, it’s done now and I’m on to the final volume in the series. If Didact’s Mind updates his review, I’ll be sure to post a link to it here.
In which a reviewer of fantasy books tries, and quite understandably fails, to finish reading the award-winning masterworks of one N.K. Jemisin:
I believe that the Broken Earth Trilogy specifically the fifth season which is the first book is so bad that it’s essentially unreadable. I don’t remember a book that I’ve read that I believe personally is as bad as this one, and it shocks me that not only is this book extremely popular, but every single book in the trilogy won the Hugo award for the best book. This is a beloved series that many people claim this is the best fantasy series of all time and I could not have a more contrary opinion to my feeling about this book.
The fact that a third of this book was written in the second person is a ridiculous, ridiculous thing. The second person does not work when it comes to books, it works in some other forms of media, it works in video games, it works quite well in video games where you can picture yourself into the main character and people are talking to you in that way, but in a book it comes off so odd that it’s off-putting and difficult to suck in. There is a reason that virtually no books utilize the second person, and it’s not because they’re not as smart as NK Jemisin that they haven’t been able to pull it off, it’s because it doesn’t work.
I believed, constantly, as I read this book, that Jemisin was trying to be too smart and it came off as ridiculous. The second person is horrible, the way that she writes is atrocious. At times where she uses these italics and bolds and all caps within the text to really drive home a point, to really make this strong emphasis, you shouldn’t have to rely on that to make a really strong point. It comes off as kind of crazy.
I thought the twist that was in this book, and there is a major one, and I still don’t know if it actually occurs because I didn’t finish the book. I got 95 percent of the way through, and I said ‘I cannot bear to finish this book’ but I’m about 100 percent confident that there is a major twist that happens at the end of this book that is so obvious that it becomes one of the most telegraphed and poor choices for a twist that I’ve ever read. I can’t say what it is, but I can say that myself, and I suspect a great many readers figured out what it is within the first 50 or so pages. It’s not so much that the twist is ruined, you know. I’ve figured out twists before and it’s disappointing, it doesn’t happen a lot for me. I’m not the smartest guy in the world, I’m oftentimes the last person to pick up on these things, and I really do like it that way. I prefer to be surprised, I don’t want to figure stuff out, I don’t want to be the smartest guy in the room. I want to be, you know, the dummy that is the last one to get it, but man, it’s obvious.
The problem is that the way that the book is structured with this bouncing around in a timeline is ruined because of the twist. It’s a really poor way to tell the story and the story would have been much preferable to be in a more cohesive, clear, linear fashion, and I don’t think that’s true for all books. I think some books that use time jumps and these different point of views and these things can be very very good, some of my favorite books utilize that, but I think the book sacrificed a great deal in quality to do this and it didn’t work. The twist did not achieve its stated goals.
Now when I’ve said this before, I heard a lot of people in the comments say ‘you’re supposed to figure it out.’ No, you’re not! That is a retrospective retelling of the events to try to justify what occurred in this book. Now the last thing I’ll say about a major reason that I disliked this book is the way that characters move on from traumatic events. I think it’s horrible, some horrible things happen in this book, and this book bills itself as being a tear-jerker and just very depressing and these bad things happen, and that that’s true for the large part, but the characters have these horrible things happen and they reminisce about them for a moment, and they take it in, and then they just move on. That’s crazy, that’s not real life. When horrible things happen people sit with them for great amounts of time, and maybe in later books they reinvestigate this, but in this first book, man, it didn’t work well.
So I can’t say enough negative things about this book and I am absolutely floored at how popular this book and this book series are.
The secret is that the book and the book series are not even remotely popular. By her own admission, N… K… Jemisin can’t making a living off them. This is the problem with manufactured “success”. It simply isn’t real, and no amount of fakery and propping up pets, poster children, and other imposters is going to fool anyone who actually knows what they’re talking about.
And yes, the reviewer is correct. One of the cruelest things I have ever done is inspire the SFWA crowd to demolish their own awards by handing a Best Novel award or two to N… K… Yes, I knew “the indirect backlash and overcorrection” would happen. Yes, it was intentional. But no, I never imagined that they would do it THREE straight years in a row. That really exceeded my expectations.
The only thing that would have been funnier would have been if they’d actually followed through on their rhetoric and given an award to Chuck Tingle. But even that would have been less damaging than what they actually did.
Whereas 2022 was primarily devoted to Japanese murder mysteries, I binged on two Italian detective series in 2023, one written by a Sicilian set in Sicily and the other by an American set in Venice. On the whole, I tend to slightly prefer Commissario Brunetti to Inspector Montalbano, but both series are thoroughly entertaining and well worth exploring. Of the 119 books I read in 2023, I’d say the best of those I read for the first time were From Caesar to the Mafia, Some Prefer Nettles, and Chronicles of a Liquid Society.
Caravan of the Damned, Chuck Dixon Westmark, Lloyd Alexander Kestrel, Lloyd Alexander Beggar Queen, Lloyd Alexander A Death in Tokyo, Keigo Higashino The Illyrian Adventure, Lloyd Alexander The Lake, Banana Yoshimoto Asleep, Banana Yoshimoto Lizard, Banana Yoshimoto Hardboiled Hard Luck, Banana Yoshimoto Novelist as a Vocation, Haruki Murakami First Person Singular, Haruki Murakami Black and White, Junichiro Tanizaki Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and his Years of Pilgrimage, Haruki Murakami The Shape of Water, Andrea Camilleri The Terra-Cotta Dog, Andrea Camilleri The Snack Thief, Andrea Camilleri Voice of the Violin, Andrea Camilleri Excursion to Tindari, Andrea Camilleri The Scent of the Night, Andrea Camilleri Rounding the Mark, Andrea Camilleri The Patience of the Spider, Andrea Camilleri The Paper Moon, Andrea Camilleri The Wings of the Sphinx, Andrea Camilleri August Heat, Andrea Camilleri The Track of Sand, Andrea Camilleri The Potter’s Field, Andrea Camilleri The Age of Doubt, Andrea Camilleri The Dance of the Seagull, Andrea Camilleri Treasure Hunt, Andrea Camilleri Montalbano’s First Case, Andrea Camilleri Angelica’s Smile, Andrea Camilleri Game of Mirrors, Andrea Camilleri A Beam of Light, Andrea Camilleri A Voice in the Night, Andrea Camilleri A Nest of Vipers, Andrea Camilleri The Pyramid of Mud, Andrea Camilleri Death at Sea, Andrea Camilleri The Overnight Kidnapper, Andrea Camilleri The Other End of the Line, Andrea Camilleri The Safety Net, Andrea Camilleri The Sicilian Method, Andrea Camilleri The Cook of the Halcyon, Andrea Camilleri Studies in Napoleonic Warfare, Charles Oman Forbidden Colors, Yukio Mishima The Jungle Grows Back, Robert Kagan The Return of History and the End of Dreams, Robert Kagan Quantum of Nightmares, Charles Stross The Pit of the Blind God, Chuck Dixon People of the Lie, M. Scott Peck Death at La Fenice, Donna Leone Death in a Strange Country, Donna Leone The Anonymous Venetian, Donna Leone Venetian Reckoning, Donna Leone Acqua Alta, Donna Leone The Death of Faith, Donna Leone A Noble Radiance, Donna Leone Fatal Remedies, Donna Leone Friends in High Places, Donna Leone A Sea of Troubles, Donna Leone Wilful Behaviour, Donna Leone Uniform Justice, Donna Leone Doctored Evidence, Donna Leone Blood from a Stone, Donna Leone Through a Glass, Darkly, Donna Leone Suffer the Little Children, Donna Leone The Girl of His Dreams, Donna Leone About Face, Donna Leone A Question of Belief, Donna Leone Drawing Conclusions, Donna Leone Beastly Things, Donna Leone The Golden Egg, Donna Leone By its Cover, Donna Leone Falling in Love, Donna Leone The Waters of Eternal Youth, Donna Leone Earthly Remains, Donna Leone The Temptation of Forgiveness, Donna Leone Unto Us a Son Is Given, Donna Leone Trace Elements, Donna Leone Transient Desires, Donna Leone Intervention, Julian May Jack the Bodiless, Julian May Diamond Mask, Julian May Magnificat, Julian May Marshal of Victory, Giorgy Zhukov Present Dangers, Robert Kagan, ed. The Long Goodbye, Raymond Chandler The Big Sleep, Raymond Chandler The High Window, Raymond Chandler The Lady in the Lake, Raymond Chandler The Little Sister, Raymond Chandler Farewell, My Lovely, Raymond Chandler Stupefying Stories 24, Rampant Loon T, Haruki Murakami Dead-End Memories, Banana Yoshimoto The Last Train, Michael Pronko The Moving Blade, Michael Pronko Tokyo Traffic, Michael Pronko Tokyo Zangyo, Michael Pronko Azabu Getaway, Michael Pronko Some Prefer Nettles, Junchiro Tanizaki Red Roofs and Other Stories, Junchiro Tanizaki Longing and Other Stories, Junchiro Tanizaki A Cat, a Man, and Two Women, Junchiro Tanizaki Levon’s Time, Chuck Dixon Levon’s Home, Chuck Dixon Season of Skulls, Charles Stross From Caesar to the Mafia, Luigi Barzini Things That Happened Before the Earthquake, Chiara Barzini Lord of Light, Roger Zelazny A Night in the Lonesome October, Roger Zelazny Between Planets, Robert Heinlein Red Planet, Robert Heinlein Tunnel in the Sky, Robert Heinlein Margin of Victory, Douglas MacGregor Pirate Freedom, Gene Wolfe Equal Danger, Leonardo Sciascia An Italian Education, Tim Parks Chronicles of a Liquid Society, Umberto Eco
I’ve finished A Sea of Skulls. Bought it, set out to read a chapter a night…which became two, and then three, and by the time I reached about the 1/3 point, I put the whole world on hold and finished it in two days.
As usual, your writing skill and style are impeccable–entertaining and engaging. For every plot thread closed you’ve managed to dangle three more…though, I think the next book will have to crack the planet and drain an ocean to top this ending.
Thoroughly enjoyable. I appreciated how the races have their own issues that so perfectly mirror modern ones, and enjoyed working out the foreign words from context. And I remain impressed by your skills–you managed to take a thoroughly repulsive Orc, turn him into a viewpoint character, and make him understandable, if not necessarily empathetic. I was convinced he was going to join Skuli any minute when he was ordered to throw himself onto the shield wall.
And, speaking of Skuli, his last quest was excellent. Here’s to the next book–unless, of course, you retire to the tropics and dump the whole thing into the lap of Brandon Sanderson.
I think Brandon Sanderson is too busy counting his crowdfunding money these days to be available to finish off anyone else’s epic fantasy series. So, I’ll just have to finish it myself.
UPDATE: The Didact graciously named A SEA OF SKULLS one of his best books of 2023:
Has he stuck the landing with the full version of Book 2?
Mostly, yes, he has.
ASOS has a few flaws to it, most of which relate to the difficulties in keeping the various plot-lines straight. You may have to go back and read the first book again to understand all the machinations behind the Amorran side of things – it has, after all, been eleven years since the first book saw the light of day, and quite a lot has happened since then.
The biggest flaw with the book has to be the ending, which definitely feels rushed and more than a little forced. I get the distinct impression that OBADSDL(PBUH) found himself getting lost in the details and realised this giant door-stopper of a book was getting really crazy – the full book will probably clock in at around 914 (!!!!!) pages, and that is a monumental text by any measure.
None of this changes a fundamental fact:
This is one of the best high fantasy books ever written.
High praise indeed. And while I never object to any reader’s impressions – they are simply what they are – in the interests of accuracy I will point out that the endings were neither rushed nor forced from my perspective, as they were always bound to take the various shapes they did by virtue of the character perspective limits. Remember, I’m not George Martin, and while I don’t do outlines, I do strictly limit how many characters get their own perspective and how many sections they get apiece. So, I always know roughly how much space I have with which to work in order to get to the close I have in mind.
You may notice that the word and page counts are almost identical to ATOB. That’s not an accident. And AGOG will be the same.
This isn’t to say one can’t reasonably criticize the particular sections of the story on which I choose to concentrate the detail. Perhaps it would be better if the middles were shorter and the ends longer. My choices are almost certainly suboptimal in some senses, and some characters get less “camera time” while others get more than various readers would prefer.
I’m not certain that democracy is definitely the worst form of government. Certainly, representative democracy is making a powerful claim to the title, and it’s true that the more the franchise expands, the worse the elected governments get. But it is certainly a lot easier to understand why the American Founding Fathers were so skeptical of the concept and determined to limit it.
Westerners have almost uniformly come to live under democracies. Drawing on both Republican Roman experience and the traditions of Greece, Cicero believed that democracy was one of the worst forms of governance possible, along with tyranny and oligarchy. Thomas Jefferson, in his own interesting way, expressed a similar sentiment. Listen to any Clown World heathen, like fake US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken, and within two or three minutes some platitude about democracy will be incanted with sacred solemnity. Lama masterfully walks his readers through the history of the Money Powers-driven West and the Powers’ absolute obsession with democracy. He exposes the clear pattern of the ruin of nations by eliminating religious and nationalistic controls and replacing them with democratic perversions, degeneracy, and usury. The end result, in France, America, or India, is a form of slavery and societal pillaging. That is why all attempts to democratize government, such as the US’s 17th Amendment, allowing for the supposedly “free” popular election of Senators, act to subvert freedom, prosperity, and true representation of and for the people. Lama mathematically demonstrates, on page 88, that “from a socioeconomic standpoint, democracy is the worse form of governance throughout history. That is natural, as it was made by the Money Powers for the Money Powers.”
As much as the book is a warning to those who need it and might hear it, it is equally an optimistic appraisal of where the majority of humanity stands moving forward in this century. In between and all around, a history is woven—from the ancient world, through the Middle Ages, through the horrors of the Enlightenment, across the financial capitalistic terror of Bretton Woods, ending with the emergence of multipolarity. Lama nicely sums up the where-we-are-now as follows, from page 20: “The current global geopolitical clash is in essence a struggle between the colonial powers wishing to preserve the Bretton Woods system that facilitates siphoning the wealth of nations and sovereign nations striving for independence and an end to a millennium of their oppression.”
The irony is that true democracy, in which citizen referendums are neither limited by elected representatives nor judiciaries, appear to be considerably better than the representative systems designed to fix the problems of mob rule. Indeed, as the Western “democracies” increasingly crumble under the mass invasions of the global south and east, history’s verdict may well be that democracy, at least in its limited and representative mode, is not a sustainable form of government.
This is a theory put forth by an SG reader. I made a few minor edits for clarity.
TLDR: We know that Bran is Sauron from the nature of A Song of Ice and Fire. ASOIAF is the Satanically-inverted Lord of the Rings, so the winner, by definition, has to be Sauron. QED.
Leaving that aside, let’s look at Bran as Sauron using LOTR, the Silmarillion, the Appendices, the Bible, and vampire lore. When we look at Bran as Third-Age Sauron we have to see him as inverted from the Dark Lord all-seeing eye in the movies. We also have to see Bran as Second-Age Sauron, aka Annataur.
Second Age Sauron is a very seductive figure who Tolkien writes as the Antichrist from the Book of Revelation. Also keep in mind that vampires are a representation of the Antichrist . Now that we’ve laid that ground work, let’s look at how we know that Rape Rape made Bran and the Three-Eyed Raven (3ER) into a combination of Sauron and The One Ring.
The Wall and the Land Beyond is the inverted Mordor. Mordor is fire and ash. The land beyond The Wall is a world of ice. The White Walkers are the Black Riders. The Wall is the Mountains of Shadow and the Ash Mountains which were either raised by Sauron himself or by Morgoth as a fortress against the world. The Wall was raised to protect the world from the Three-Eyed Raven. 3ER’s cave is Barad Dur. We see Sauron watching the whole world from Barad Dur and 3ER watches the whole world from his cave and sends out emissaries from his cave.
Bran/Sauron as vampire: In ASOIAF, in the Cave Bran eats acorn paste which is highly likely the ground up remains of his friend Jojen Reed. This was done to turbo-charge his powers. This is vampiricism of Bran consuming his friend to gain more power. This is likely also some kind of satanic Eucharist, to use the Catholic term which is appropriate here.
Sauron was portrayed as a vampire in The Silmarillion. When he was defeated by Luthien, Sauron turned into a bat and flew away. Bran also sacrificed others so he could live. We saw Bran sacrifice Hodor and Bran sacrifice a whole freaking army at the Battle of the Long Night. These are the actions of Sauron, who loves to sacrifice other to advance his agenda
Sauron uses the Palantir to spy on the whole world. Likewise Bran uses the weirwood trees and ravens to spy on the whole world, and likely cause chaos as well.
More of Bran as a vampire. Bran with 3ER had to be invited into the world of the living when they were permitted to enter Castle Black from the land beyond just like how vampires have to be invited in. This has correlation to Sauron in the Second Age where first he disguised himself as Annataur, the Lord of Gifts to Celebrimbor in Eregion. He presented himself as wise and beautiful. Annataur just wanted to “heal the world” aka “Tikkun Olam” from the damage of the War of Wrath at the end of the First Age. He always provided the Noldor with hidden knowledge.
Sauron/Annataur used this hidden knowledge that he provided to pit Celebrimbor against Galadriel and divided the Elves to prevent them from uniting before he destroyed Eregion. Sauron used the same trick against the usurper king of Numenor at the end of the Second Age. He allowed himself to be taken prisoner to Numenor where he corrupted the king and people.
Bran is the inversion of Annataur. Annataur cloaked himself in beauty, wisdom and hidden knowledge. Bran cloaked himself in weakness, autism, false humility and hidden knowledge. Bran uses his hidden knowledge to pit people against each other. The best example is how he used his hidden knowledge of Jon’s true identity to pit him against Dany. This was a major cause of driving Dany mad and making her burn King’s Landing, delegitimizing Jon as a contender to the throne and paving the way for Bran’s ascension to total power
In conclusion, Bran’s actions are Sauron’s action. Bran acts as vampire, Lord of Gifts and pathetically inverted Dark Lord in Martin’s satanically-inverted manner. But it’s all good because Rape Rape approves of Bran’s tax policy.
