I'm 148 pages into the 293 page The Lost Fleet: Dauntless by "Jack Campbell." And I'm enjoying it quite a bit.
It starts in the middle of some furious action (which has continued unabated to my present spot in the reading), yet it has still managed to flesh out several characters. And that's all good, of course, but I realized just what it was about this novel that had really caught hold of me when I read these lines this morning:
"Step by step, over the course of time, we grew to accept things. We grew to believe that the deplorable actions of the Syndicate Worlds justified deplorable actions on our part. Even I accepted this as an unfortunate reality of the war."
These words are spoken by a character who has come to realize how far down the slippery slope she has fallen due to the righteous outrage of Black Jack Geary--the Man From the Past.
These words are spoken by a character who has come to realize how far down the slippery slope she has fallen due to the righteous outrage of Black Jack Geary--the Man From the Past.
I read those lines while lending one ear to MSNBC's Morning Joe, on which Joe was talking about the effect that Trump's craven words and despicable actions have had on the people around him--the formerly honorable men who have stooped to lying (and worse) in service to the Trump Reich.
It seems to me that Dauntless is, at its heart, a novel about allowing the past to speak to the present. And about the necessity of making that allowance. The present is the brash and courageous young adult who we dearly need . . . and who dearly needs the wisdom and the perspective of an older soul. The past is that older soul, obviously. We ignore it at our peril.
And that is precisely the problem with the Trump and his administration. There is no respect for the past, only the brash arrogance of youth. Which might almost be funny in a septuagenarian . . . if it weren't so terribly dangerous.
We need a Black Jack of our own, for sure.
And that is precisely the problem with the Trump and his administration. There is no respect for the past, only the brash arrogance of youth. Which might almost be funny in a septuagenarian . . . if it weren't so terribly dangerous.
We need a Black Jack of our own, for sure.
2 comments:
The following sentence is like something I would write, except I would have also included a few spaces just one character too soon!
"the formerly honirabke men bave stooped to kying ..."
Oh, man, I have got to stop drinking and blogging. Just kidding--I'd never stop drinking. Actually, I was trying to do a post from my Smart Phone. I guess it's not as smart as I thought it was. And those little bitty keys, you know. Thanks for having my back, Brother!
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