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Victory of Eagles by Naomi Novik, book five of the Temeraire series. A historical fantasy series that takes place during the Napoleonic Wars in a world where sapient dragons exist, and each country has their own draconic air force as part of their military. It's tricky to talk about book 5 in a series without having a talk around the previous books, but I will say that I'm still enjoying the series.

I've read a few wrestling books and this was one of the better ones. It makes a good companion piece to Hitman providing a different angle to several events, wrestlers and territories covered in Bret Hart's book. As a criticism the general tone of the book is negative. Time is spent on numerous scandals and the book does not shy away from the grime of professional wrestling and the people within it.

Still good though!

Randin said:

Victory of Eagles by Naomi Novik, book five of the Temeraire series. A historical fantasy series that takes place during the Napoleonic Wars in a world where sapient dragons exist, and each country has their own draconic air force as part of their military. It's tricky to talk about book 5 in a series without having a talk around the previous books, but I will say that I'm still enjoying the series.

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I thoroughly enjoyed the Temeraire series, I wish there were more like it (that were not complete trash). Book 6 was the only book that was a pain for me, primarily due to
I finished the latest book in the Cradle series, Bloodline last week. It... was a disappointment? Way too much time spent on things that detracted from the series and not enough focus on the characters that have made the series good. I would rate it at a 4/10, while all of the other books in the series have been 6/10 or 7/10. If you like 'progressive fantasy' and/or martial arts magic, the series as a whole is good.

I am now reading 'Dead Sea' by Tim Curran.

King, Warrior, Magician, Lover by Robert Moore

I had a lot of trouble putting this book down. And when I wasn't reading it, I found myself thinking about it.

I think there is a great treasure trove of wisdom in this book. Wisdom that is, at this point in time, greatly needed in our society.

The mainstay of this book is that there are four facets of a mature psyche; the Warrior, the Magician, the Lover, and the King. All of them have their own realm of interactions and expertise. All of them exist within in all men. No man is any one archetype. You are a mix of all four.

Each of these archetypes has a strong point. The warrior is decisive and willing to fight for what he believes in. The Magician is thoughtful, creative and wise. The Lover is able to appreciate beauty and connect with other human beings. The King is the amalgamation of all four. He is the closest thing a man can come to God. He is the perfect ideal that we cannot achieve, but that we must strive for.

At the same time, each of these archetypes has a negative. The warrior is destructive. The Magician can be a trickster. The Lover can be addicted / impotent. The King can be a tyrant.

It is the duty of every boy to grow into the mature, positive version of these archetypes. Once there, it is a constant battle to remain on top of the negative aspects and not to lose ourselves to them.

That is the wisdom of this book. It gives you hope (along with a roadmap) on how you can become a better person.

Afterthought: Moore makes no bones about being a Jungian, and the influences of Jung are clear to see. The King archetype is Individuation; the refining of a Man until he reaches the strata of Demigod.

I recommend this book to any man with the slightest inkling that he is missing something in life, or he is doing something wrong and no one is telling him. I would also recommend it to any woman who seeks to understand men better.


Man and His Symbols by C. G. Jung

Having finished this book I am split between giving it 3 stars and giving it 4 stars.

First the good; it is a good introduction to Jung. But having read "Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious" I found a lot of ground was being re-tread. That being said, if you read this book before "Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious" you will feel as if you are climbing a staircase. I recommend that order. But there are some real good details in here that I didn't find in Jung's book. For instance, one of the under-studies goes into detail about the development of the Anima/Animus, and the four stages of each. That bit of information in itself was worth the read.

Now the bad; Jung's under-studies are not as talented in terms of writing as their teacher was. On top of that, there is a chapter in this book that is solely about Modern Art and how it comes out of the Collective Unconscious. While the end of that chapter was interesting, the rest of it had been near to snoozing.

Recommended to anyone trying to develop a greater understanding of Jung's ideas.

Modern Man in Search of a Soul by C.G. Jung

This is not the first book I have read by CG Jung, and because of that I have less to say about his good ideas. I have already ranted about them, integrated them and don't feel the need to repeat those thoughts.

So I will focus on the things in this book that I liked, and had not seen in his other books. The first half of the book focuses on psychology and it was a bit of a drag, but then I hit the chapter on Archaic Man. In my opinion this chapter is reason enough to buy and study this book. Never before have I encountered a text that so brilliantly describes how primitive people viewed the world; everything is subjective (and therefore quite a bit more poetic). Made a very strong impression on me.

What is more important, objective truth or subjective truth? Modern Man only accepts the Objective, and he does not seem satisfied with it. It is as if he is in a windstorm, and is wrapping himself with a blanket full of holes. All the while he tells himself that he is warm. Subjective Truth does more for your psychic health than objective truth does. Science cannot replace Religion. In the future I hope humanity finds a way to integrate the two ideas. Possible solution; Science explains the world, but religion explains the psyche.

Jung touches on this idea in the last third of the book. He recounts a story of how he was once speaking with a Pueblo chieftain, and the Indian say he did not understand white men. He said they were always looking for something, conquering and consuming with reckless abandon.

Jung goes on to say that the West has always been open to Eastern mysticism. Christianity came out of the East and entered Roman society. Islam is, more and more, coming out of the East and entering European society. This is because the West is too rational. It conquers and consumes the Outer World, trying to fill a void that only exists in the Inner World.

As with most Jungian ideas, they are not presented in an empirical fashion. You have to have a bit of worldly experience, along with a dose of faith, to accept them.

Walden by Henry David Thoreau. The book got mentioned in passing in another book I was reading, and I decided to finally give it a full read. Like, I imagine, just about everyone in the States, I'd had to read bits of it at some point in middle school or high school, but it was interesting to come to it now that I'm old enough to really grasp what he's talking about. For those unfamiliar with it, Walden was a book written in the 1840s over the course of two years by Thoreau while he was living semi-isolated in a small cabin that he'd built for himself out in the woods, on the shores of Walden Pond. The book itself doesn't have a super tight theme, but rather rambles a bit over Thoreau's philosophical musings over things like man's relationship to nature, that balance between working to live and living to work, and whatever else popped into his head while living out there. There's also sections dealing with more practical elements of how he managed living somewhat separated from civilization, and whatever other naturalist curiosities occurred to him.

A lot of the conclusions he reaches bounce between things that I found resonating with me, and things that struck me as goofy hippy bullshit. But overall, if you're in the mood for something with a philosophical bent, it's a worthwhile read. (And unlike most philosophical books, it's also a relatively quick read, which is nice.)

Collapse of Complex Societies by Joseph A. Tainter

Interesting book. The gist of it is that societies develop in order to solve problems, and as they solve those problems they grow increasingly complex. As they become more complex, they develop new problems that they must grow even more complex in order to solve. This all culminates in the Theory of Marginal Returns. Eventually, societies expend great amounts of treasure and energy into maintaining their complexity but get almost nothing in return. It is at this point that people within the society (sometimes) make the conscious choose to "collapse."

But collapse does not necessarily entail famine and disease and war. Collapse in this book means a de-evolution of complexity.

It is a good theory, backed up by a lot of empirical evidence. But I have a major problem with some of the things that the author writes in this book. He is too rational. Too logical. He does not account for how irrational human beings are.

For example, he details how our modern world (this book was written in 1988) is no longer an arena in which states can collapse. If one state did collapse, it would be absorbed into another or bailed out by an international financial institution. He claims that true collapse is no longer even possible, not for any rational reasons anyway. He admits that. He admits that he only thinks of the rational. Who has gone through life and witnessed that human beings, especially when gathered in groups, act in a rational way?

In 2021, this book feels like it is missing a major component. The author was born in 1949 and witnessed the Golden Age of the United States of America. He was raised in a society that generally upheld rationality and logic.

I think this book is in desperate need for a revision, which takes into account the collapse of the USSR, the Rise of China, and the American War on Terror. Add in the social upheavals in the USA as well. I would love to get this author's take on them as well.

That being said, I don't want to come across as too harsh. This is a good book. Dry at times, but filled with valuable information. It just needs, like societies in general, to be updated with new information. I recommend it.

Especially considering the chapter on the Fall of the Western Roman Empire is one of the most interesting takes on that particular history that I have ever read.

Afterthought: the Author also details how a society will often solve its problems by adopting a new energy source. He claims that in order to solve the problems that face the united world we live in, a new energy source will be found. But I wonder at that. Isn't this just more rational materialism? Not once does he postulate that we might need a new form of belief, religious or otherwise, to help us maintain societies.

Blitz said:

I'm so fascinated by the modern ignorance/arrogance of modern thinkers, the idea that we have reached a certain "intelligence" or "rationale" that will help us avoid "collapse"... Which with every passing day in the West becomes clearer, and clearer that it's an incorrect hypothesis. So many modern academics see the world, and human behavior in a Neoliberalism/market driven lens. That we are more rational, superior beings so the throes of ethnicity and social issues won't be a thing anymore.

The want for globalization and market harmony (egalitarianism in general), is so fucking strong that people raised in this current Western global hegemony are almost blind to the idea of ethnic strife etc... Even though human history is just absolutely littered with it.

Also do you have a brief Tl;dr of his take on the Fall of the Western Roman Empire? Going through my readings on Rome now and just curious on his take.

By the way, you just absolutely churn out books. I'm a slacker in comparison.

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I am right there with you. It is absolutely astounding how people think we have reached the End of History and that Democracy is the end-all-be-all. They also think that we can explain everything with rationality and logic. But there were very many people in my highschool who were in therapy or took pills. There were even more in my college who abused drugs and alcohol. It is clear that our people are suffering a crisis of the psyche but the rational, modern man thinks that religion and spirituality were just tools used by the elites to control the masses. They reject the very thing that could help them.

Fall of Rome - the reason why Rome was able to rise to such heights was because it engaged in a behavior by which it expended energy and gained treasure. This treasure could then be used to cover another expenditure of energy (a conquest) that would result in another pile of treasure. They did this so many times, plundering the treasuries of the ancient world, that their conquests effectively paid for all matters of State. The people of Rome were not even taxed for a long time!

But then they simply ran into the Theory of Marginal Returns. They ran out of places that were nearby and stuffed with treasure. The places that were stuffed with treasure were too far away to make the trip worth it. So then they 'calcified' into an empire. Now they had to tax their people in order to maintain their institutions and with create more institutions to deal with new problems. Again and again and again they paid for these new institutions by devalueing the money. They devalued to the point where the army was being paid with raw resources and manufactured goods. An Emperor only survived by allying himself with the army, and in effect the Empire became a Mafia.

He goes on to say that the Empire began to cannibalize the very things that made it effective. Taxes were never lowered (or nearly never), because the State had to maintain a large army and several government institutions. But after several wars and a few plagues, the peasant class couldn't keep up their birth-rate. Every time a family fell into poverty they would be thrown into jail, and not even people were being born to cultivate the arable land.

It got so bad with the taxes that when the Germans showed up the peasants would welcome them as liberators.

And those Germanic Kingdoms that superseded Rome were able to fight more effectively against the Huns for a lower cost. This was because they did not have the overbearing amount of complexity that the Roman State had (he does not go into details here).

Hope that was sufficient.

Also I work at a book-store and when no one is in the shop I just read, so I effectively read for 4-5 hours a day.

By the way, I ordered Aion (along with 2 other of Jung's books and one by Mircea Eliade), so I will let you know what I think of it when I finish it.

Storm of Steel by Ernst Juenger

Since finishing this book last night, I have been thinking quite a bit about how I would describe it to someone. I thought of it as a very German book; straight-forward and without any unnecessary fluff. Storm of Steel does not pretend to be anything that it is not. The author clearly set out to write a war diary. Not a story, but a diary. The book is a straight-forward account of numerous military encounters divided into chapters based upon where they took place. Very few dates are used. A great emphasis is placed on getting bombed, throwing hand grenades, and recovering from wounds. It is truly a shock-trooper story.

There is zero emphasis (or attention, for that matter) placed on anything beyond the "here and now." Ernst Juenger does not once talk about why the war occurred, or why certain battles are unfolding. He does not talk about the nature of man or the nature of violence. He does not even introduce us to his battle-comrades beyond a meager description of how they wear their uniform and their name.

Is this a negative? I do not think so. He presents the war, as he experienced it, without comment. You as the reader have to read between the lines and come to your own conclusions. In that way, this book is the literary equivalent of a statue of a man, well-built and armed for war, but without a plaque to tell you who he was and what he did. It is up to you to stare into his soul and see him for who he is.

That being said, it is clear that Juenger had a poetic soul. Sprinkled here and there in the book are little gems...

After a bombardment "great tongues of fire" crawl up trees.

In another bombardment Juenger is "chased by lightnings."

During one of the few quiet periods he is flooded by "narcotic scents" from nearby flowers.

During one battle he witnesses that, "a thousand quivering lightnings bathed the western horizon in a sea of flame."

In quite a few battles he describes individual soldiers as, "berserkers." And he describes his Colonel as "surrounded by a nimbus of confidence and authority."

The poetry is there. I just wish Juenger had let it run free.

Neuromancer

I read it, I think in highschool or maybe early college. It pushed me to get to Uni where the fabled internet awaited.

So much is so close to the now, and the little things that are wrong are endearing. Newspapers and payphones and no cell phones and such. Love the whole book.

When I grabbed it I was thinking I hadn't read it since school days but it was too fresh in the mind to be the case. I must have glossed over a good chunk of it when I read it young. The bits of japanese, and the old-money twisted european aristos that I understand now much better.

So much of the shit-side of the book's prophecy was fulfilled, and so much of the rest would have been better. I'd probably work alot harder if I knew I could spend the money on faster nerves (for playing shooter games of course!). Imagine the wisdom of age combined with cracked-out reflexes of a coked up korean kid. Maybe someday!

I was trying to find some new horror books/authors to read. started off with The Twisted Ones and The Hollow Places by Kingfisher. They are well reviewed etc. I find them to be kind of sort of bad. Also, they are the same book, literally, she wrote the same book twice. Of the two, The Twisted Ones is the better book. The set up to the central premise of The Hollow PLaces (hole in the wall leads to eerie place that shouldn't be able to exist within normal physics) reminded me of the 5 Minute Hallway from House of Leaves a bit, which was cool. But the rest of the book is not great.

Also checked out The Cabin at the End of the World by Paul Tremblay. I didn't like this one mostly because I just didn't find the rationale behind the antagonists to be compelling. I didn't find the dialogue to be realistic. I'm fine with ambiguity in an ending, the ending isn't something I have a problem with, and I get the central theme of the story about carrying on in grief. But the actual action part which should have been the horror or suspenseful scenes was just a slog, and it's just the antagonists repeating themselves over and over.

Reading The Only Good Indians right now, almost done, it's pretty good. I like how he eases the indian folklore stuff in without beating you over the head with it. At least yet.

The Bloody White Baron: The Extraordinary Story of the Nobleman Who Became the Last Khan of Mongolia by James Palmer.

There is little to say about this book. I have gleamed, from the internet, that some people hold this man up on a pedestal. I don't understand why, after reading this history.

Baron von Ungern was a mystic and a warrior, but he was also an emotionally immature psychopath with a philosophy that was as shallow as a tidal pool. Baron von Ungern was a vile boy. Not a man. I think he was an unsocialized male, who in any civilized society would end up in prison. But he was an aristocrat in a monarchy. He missed the boat on learning humility and empathy. The most interesting thing about him is the mysticism and ferocity, but wrapped up in a villainous bundle that is fighting against Bolsheviks. No good guys anywhere.

There was nothing heroic about him. There was barely anything interesting about him. No great ideas. No great actions. Even his capturing of the Mongolian capital seems to be more luck than anything else.

I am struggling to understand why this book was even written. It should have been, at most, a chapter in another book. Probably one of the most horrible books I have ever read. Not because of the writing, but because of the content. A bunch of Russians, having been robbed of their country and their future, seize a Mongolian town. What follows is a carnival of war crimes.

The only bright light in it all is that the elephant escaped from the local zoo and was found living in the wilderness many months later. It was actually the only bright or happy moment in the entire book.

Aion by Carl Jung

Very interesting book. But I will say, if someone wanted to get into reading Jung, I don't think this is the book that I would start with. This is the book you read in order to understand the concept of the "Self" in more depth. For that purpose, it is a very effective book.

The Self is the form of you that has integrated the shadow, the anima/animus and your projections. It is the elevated form of the Ego. Because of that, Christ stands as a good example of the Self. Or is it the other way around? The Self is Christ? That is a question that the early Christians and the Alchemists tried to answer.

Early on there is a very interesting chapter on the connection between Jesus and the Age of Pisces; the age of the two brothers. Early Christianity featured an older brother to Jesus; Satanael. Following this age of brotherly warfare, the next age in astrology is the Age of Aquarius, which is supposed to be the age of the Union of Opposites; an age of peace and happiness. Beyond destiny/prophecy, this could be interpreted as a sort of maturation of civilization, with the 20th century being the age of war between the brothers and the future possibly being a brighter, more peaceful age. Writing this from 2021, with the benefit of hindsight, things do seem to have been more peaceful since the end of the Second World War.

Interesting note. Jung writes that over time a belief will lose its metaphysical energy. It will no longer speak to the spirit of the times. Some will still cling to it but the majority will turn away. I feel like that is happening quite a bit in Christianity. If you wanted to turn people back to it, it would have to update itself in some way. The Cathars had a Good God and an Evil God.

Jung leads us back in time, through the age of the Alchemists and the Christian Gnostics, and shows us how they conceptualized the idea of the Self. And then at the end he does something very interesting, by relating the efforts of the Alchemists to some pre-scientific; science without microscopes, or the idea of a scientific method.

This culminates in a formula for self development (A = A -> B -> C -> D -> A), and the idea that Christ is the Atom. And then we get a little look towards the future. Jung states that Psychology and Physics will eventually expand their fields of research to such an extent that they cannot help but meet on some common ground, and form a new area of study where we look at the psyche with a greater focus.

I would recommend this to anyone who has finished Carl Jung's "The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious."