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weaselweader's review
2.0
“Apocalyptic. Sorry, but it’s looking very, very bad. The earth is under bombardment”
From the very opening sentence, RAGE OF ANGELS puts the pedal to the metal and never lets up. As alien invasion sci-fi rippers go, RAGE OF ANGELS provides INDEPENDENCE DAY, ENDER'S WAR, and WAR OF THE WORLDS, for example, with worthy, compelling competition that you most definitely won’t be putting down very often.
If the military technology and science in many places is assumed and left unexplained, it certainly never strays into areas that would be considered in defiance of known science or beyond credibility. Where the science is explained, it’s well done and it isn’t toned down for readers who might be less informed in math and physics. For example, “A mega joule is roughly the amount of energy in a kilogram of TNT, which doesn’t sound like a lot in terms of modern military weapons. But when you deliver that energy to a spot the size of a quarter in less than a tenth of a second, it’s sufficient.”
And like Tweel, the comical ostrich-like creature from THE MARTIAN ODYSSEY, Stanley Weinbaum's phenomenal response to John W Campbell's dictum "write me a creature who thinks as well as a man, or better than a man, but not like a man", Pearce’s extraterrestrials were not shallow anthropomorphized critters that merely happened to have green skin and six arms and legs. Indeed, Pearce took the much more intriguing route of never having his alien antagonists actually appear or speak at all. They simply waged war by computer from a safer orbital distance on an embattled and seriously outgunned earth. The reader is allowed to witness and perhaps mentally participate in the military brain’s intriguing attempts to determine the thinking, the culture, the motivation and the strategy behind the alien attacks.
Well, that’s the good news. And, as you might expect as soon as I’ve uttered that ominous phrase, there is also some bad news. In fact, three bits of bad news that I’ll lay out one at a time. Here goes:
FIRST: Pearce took the time to have the US brass carefully consider and analyze the military successes and failures of the armed forces from other countries – China and India, for example. But when it came to Canada, Pearce chose to have US armed forces enter Canada and take on the extra-terrestrials inside Canadian sovereign territory without even the slightest hint of consultation with or permission from the Canadian government. In the doing, Pearce also takes a couple of pages to gratuitously mock the Canadian military and the RCMP in a fashion that I’m sure any Canadian (this reader definitely included) would consider as more than mildly insulting. AND (as if that weren’t enough), Pearce manages to misspell the name of Canada’s capital city (“Ottowa”) and one of their most important military bases (“Pettawawa”)! And, no, it’s not just a typo because the error is repeated in several places! I wonder how American readers would react to a Canadian author writing about an unauthorized Canadian incursion into the USA outside of “Washingten” that also took the time to ridicule the ability of the American armed forces!
SECOND: When American defenses finally found themselves in a position of being able to examine the invader’s mother ship in orbit around earth more closely, Pearce made what I believe was an impossible plot mistake when he allowed his characters to “read” labels on the ET craft, “Others were labeled water tanks, Pressurized Internal Void (Living Space?), Power Generation (?), Bulk Storage, Transit Corridor (?) and a dozen other things besides.” In short, with no samples to deal with, no understanding of the invader’s culture and no Rosetta Stone to help, there is not even the remotest chance that human linguists would have been able to read any of the invaders’ technical labels like that!
THIRD: SPOILER ALERT: YOU’VE BEEN WARNED!
It’s only a single line in the novel’s closing paragraphs as the military considers their strategy after narrowly defeating the enemy and averting the destruction of earth. BUT it clearly illustrates two profoundly disturbing and deeply entrenched facets of American culture. “Buckley said, “First defend Earth, then hunt them down and kill them.” “Kill them all: God will surely know his own. Works for me,” Gauer agreed”.
With the self-important blindness of North American evangelical Christianity, the soldiers ignore the obvious, rational understanding that, if an omnipotent and omniscient god exists as they have defined their deity, then the aliens and their war on earth was part of that creation and the deity’s plan. God will surely know his own? I don’t think so, Mr Pearce. Evangelical Christianity is not well known for applying logic or critical analysis to an interpretation of their place in the universe. The self-righteous and sanctimonious attitude that a god has their back and gives his favored people their support above all others in the universe is, in two words, intensely irritating.
And “kill them all”? Wow, have American notions of imperialism, violence and never-ending participation in global conflict altered US sentiment to the point that anyone would consider complete genocide to be a suitable punishment for even the most hateful of defeated opponents. Not for a single moment, for example, do I imagine that the military considered killing all Germans to be a reasonable response to Hitler’s conduct during World War II. Even the ultra-heavy-handed economic retribution of the Versailles Treaty didn't come close to genocide.
END SPOILER
What would have been a rock-solid five star barn-burner is reduced, in my mind, one star at a time to, at best, a two-star illustration of American military and cultural attitudes that are at once hateful and abhorrent. I’m not sorry I read it but, after all is said and done, I didn’t enjoy it and I have to say that I’m left angry and disgusted. You’ll have to read it for yourself to see if you agree or think that I’m being overly sensitive. It’s worth noting in passing that I finished the final page on Friday, January 31, 2020, as the Republicans made the final vote to disallow calling witnesses to give evidence in Trump’s impeachment trial in the Senate. So it’s entirely possible that I was pre-disposed to feel as I did. After this political dust-storm has subsided (if indeed it ever does), perhaps I’ll come back for a re-read and see if I feel the same way.
Paul Weiss
From the very opening sentence, RAGE OF ANGELS puts the pedal to the metal and never lets up. As alien invasion sci-fi rippers go, RAGE OF ANGELS provides INDEPENDENCE DAY, ENDER'S WAR, and WAR OF THE WORLDS, for example, with worthy, compelling competition that you most definitely won’t be putting down very often.
If the military technology and science in many places is assumed and left unexplained, it certainly never strays into areas that would be considered in defiance of known science or beyond credibility. Where the science is explained, it’s well done and it isn’t toned down for readers who might be less informed in math and physics. For example, “A mega joule is roughly the amount of energy in a kilogram of TNT, which doesn’t sound like a lot in terms of modern military weapons. But when you deliver that energy to a spot the size of a quarter in less than a tenth of a second, it’s sufficient.”
And like Tweel, the comical ostrich-like creature from THE MARTIAN ODYSSEY, Stanley Weinbaum's phenomenal response to John W Campbell's dictum "write me a creature who thinks as well as a man, or better than a man, but not like a man", Pearce’s extraterrestrials were not shallow anthropomorphized critters that merely happened to have green skin and six arms and legs. Indeed, Pearce took the much more intriguing route of never having his alien antagonists actually appear or speak at all. They simply waged war by computer from a safer orbital distance on an embattled and seriously outgunned earth. The reader is allowed to witness and perhaps mentally participate in the military brain’s intriguing attempts to determine the thinking, the culture, the motivation and the strategy behind the alien attacks.
Well, that’s the good news. And, as you might expect as soon as I’ve uttered that ominous phrase, there is also some bad news. In fact, three bits of bad news that I’ll lay out one at a time. Here goes:
FIRST: Pearce took the time to have the US brass carefully consider and analyze the military successes and failures of the armed forces from other countries – China and India, for example. But when it came to Canada, Pearce chose to have US armed forces enter Canada and take on the extra-terrestrials inside Canadian sovereign territory without even the slightest hint of consultation with or permission from the Canadian government. In the doing, Pearce also takes a couple of pages to gratuitously mock the Canadian military and the RCMP in a fashion that I’m sure any Canadian (this reader definitely included) would consider as more than mildly insulting. AND (as if that weren’t enough), Pearce manages to misspell the name of Canada’s capital city (“Ottowa”) and one of their most important military bases (“Pettawawa”)! And, no, it’s not just a typo because the error is repeated in several places! I wonder how American readers would react to a Canadian author writing about an unauthorized Canadian incursion into the USA outside of “Washingten” that also took the time to ridicule the ability of the American armed forces!
SECOND: When American defenses finally found themselves in a position of being able to examine the invader’s mother ship in orbit around earth more closely, Pearce made what I believe was an impossible plot mistake when he allowed his characters to “read” labels on the ET craft, “Others were labeled water tanks, Pressurized Internal Void (Living Space?), Power Generation (?), Bulk Storage, Transit Corridor (?) and a dozen other things besides.” In short, with no samples to deal with, no understanding of the invader’s culture and no Rosetta Stone to help, there is not even the remotest chance that human linguists would have been able to read any of the invaders’ technical labels like that!
THIRD: SPOILER ALERT: YOU’VE BEEN WARNED!
It’s only a single line in the novel’s closing paragraphs as the military considers their strategy after narrowly defeating the enemy and averting the destruction of earth. BUT it clearly illustrates two profoundly disturbing and deeply entrenched facets of American culture. “Buckley said, “First defend Earth, then hunt them down and kill them.” “Kill them all: God will surely know his own. Works for me,” Gauer agreed”.
With the self-important blindness of North American evangelical Christianity, the soldiers ignore the obvious, rational understanding that, if an omnipotent and omniscient god exists as they have defined their deity, then the aliens and their war on earth was part of that creation and the deity’s plan. God will surely know his own? I don’t think so, Mr Pearce. Evangelical Christianity is not well known for applying logic or critical analysis to an interpretation of their place in the universe. The self-righteous and sanctimonious attitude that a god has their back and gives his favored people their support above all others in the universe is, in two words, intensely irritating.
And “kill them all”? Wow, have American notions of imperialism, violence and never-ending participation in global conflict altered US sentiment to the point that anyone would consider complete genocide to be a suitable punishment for even the most hateful of defeated opponents. Not for a single moment, for example, do I imagine that the military considered killing all Germans to be a reasonable response to Hitler’s conduct during World War II. Even the ultra-heavy-handed economic retribution of the Versailles Treaty didn't come close to genocide.
END SPOILER
What would have been a rock-solid five star barn-burner is reduced, in my mind, one star at a time to, at best, a two-star illustration of American military and cultural attitudes that are at once hateful and abhorrent. I’m not sorry I read it but, after all is said and done, I didn’t enjoy it and I have to say that I’m left angry and disgusted. You’ll have to read it for yourself to see if you agree or think that I’m being overly sensitive. It’s worth noting in passing that I finished the final page on Friday, January 31, 2020, as the Republicans made the final vote to disallow calling witnesses to give evidence in Trump’s impeachment trial in the Senate. So it’s entirely possible that I was pre-disposed to feel as I did. After this political dust-storm has subsided (if indeed it ever does), perhaps I’ll come back for a re-read and see if I feel the same way.
Paul Weiss