A Practical Guide to Conquering the World (Siege, 3)

”It’s not exactly chariot science.”

I liked the first two books of The Siege trilogy, I like K.J. Parker. Yet the third book has been languishing on my kindle since forever, for unclear reasons. This third book was satisfying!

I like Parker’s universe – it is strange twisted mirror of our “Classical” world. Rarely, there is magic (not in these particular books).

Felix is a translator at the Robur imperial embassy in the Echmen empire. He is in a pretty shitty situations, because of rumours of the City and the Robur empire falling (see previous books). A grand gesture of his saves him unexpectedly, and Felix ends up with a different embassy. Then more history starts happening. Lots of history. The thing is, Felix likes to read show more and he remembers things. He says ”I read about it in a book” a lot throughout this novel, as he makes plans and gets himself and others out of situations. As we follow Felix’s internal snarky monologue, things snowball, you know? Did I mention that Felix is a bit of cynical bastard? (Likeable, sort of.)

There is a lot of strategy, military logistics, other logistics, propaganda, politics, and religion. They take up a lot of space, but it is done well, as always with Parker. Sarcastic fun!

I noticed many similarities between this book and Devices and Desires trilogy. Don’t get me wrong, I like Parker’s ingredients and recipes. Now I have read so many of his books that I see patterns. It’s not a bad thing, just a different (perhaps less enthusiastic) way of reading. The patterns might have felt too familiar this time, but I will be seeing more Parker books on my kindle in the future, that’s for sure.

Quotes time!

”You shouldn’t have set out to cross the desert on foot,” I said.
”I didn’t. The horse died.”

”Luck, according to Saloninus, is like a cart full of diamonds perched on a very edge of a cliff. Best if you don’t push it.”

”Being a prophet isn’t something I’d recommend to the self-conscious. You get stared at an awful lot.”

”Old Echmen proverb: when falling off a high tower, try to fly. You never know your luck and what’ve you got to lose?” show less

I received this book from the publisher in exchange for an honest review

A man is forced into exile to serve as an interpreter. Then his home is destroyed, he is forced into servitude to people that despise him, then he has to lead a rebellion, and topple empires. Plus, he finds religion. Sorry, I mean, he founded a religion. Little wonder why his name is Felix (it means lucky).

K. J. Parker’s loosely tied-together trilogy “The Siege” reaches its conclusion with A Practical Guide to Conquering the World. And I do mean loosely tied-together trilogy. The basic premise is that in the Low Fantasy world there is an empire called the Robur that rules from their capital, the City. They are cruel and harsh people, think the Roman Empire on show more a bad day. So, obviously, they’ve made a lot of enemies that join forces and lay siege. The novels follow the consequences of that battle.

Prior knowledge of the first two novels is not really necessary. There are no returning characters. Yes, the events of the previous ones will be mentioned, but there are enough context clues to help the reader figure out what they’re missing. In fact, I skipped the second of the trilogy and found that made this reading experience rather delightful. Parker plays up the lack of knowledge transmission and how what people are told is rarely what happens, so going in blind kind of helps enhance that aspect. I knew just as much as Felix did about what happened to the City and the Robur.

The narrator, Felix, is engaging. The man has depths that constantly surprise the reader. You’re never really sure what his motives are and the reader gets a sense that it is because he’s not really sure what his motives are. He’s a clever man that puts together scraps of information gleaned from a library and creates amazing strategies and performs seemingly miraculous feats. His writings are witty and there are moments that caused me to actually laugh aloud. Also, he’s a total jerk that uses people around him.

While Felix is a great character, he’s about the only one. Every other character in the story is merely a cut-out. They are there for a while till they are tossed aside after they’ve served their usefulness. Some don’t even get real names. While I tend to dislike stories with such an abundance of flat characters, I find myself making an exception here. Since it is told in the first person, it reads less like a writing flaw and more like a look into Felix’s views on others.

What Parker lacks in characters, he more than makes up for it in an engaging look on religion. Felix becomes the Prophet (a mixture of Moses, Elijah, and Jesus). The story shows the power that religion has and how it can be abused to serve the needs of the one in control. Felix’s narration is very cynical on the nature of religion, but as the story goes on some questions are raised. What is Truth? If enough people say that he is the Prophet, then does that just make him the Prophet? What is a miracle? Sure he did miraculous things because he read them in a book, but the fact he found the right book, understood it, and implemented is rather miraculous.

In the end, I found A Practical Guide to Conquering the World to be entertaining, thought-provoking, and a little heartbreaking. A sure read to anyone who loves a fantasy story that tries to mirror real history, wants to discuss the nature of faith, or just wants to read about a jerk conquering the world thanks to the power of a library card. show less

The third book in K.J. Parker’s The Siege presents once again a story set in the same world as the two previous volumes, but this time not in the City we have come to know through the chronicles of Orhan the engineer and Notker the actor turned leader: here the protagonist is Felix (the lucky), a Robur national sent as a diplomatic envoy and translator to the Echmen empire.

Felix ended there under a cloud of disgrace caused by an ill-considered liaison which cost him dearly, both physically and socially, and all he wants now is to keep a low profile and read books: easier said than done though, because first he ends up saving the life of a Hus princess-hostage, who was going to be executed because of a grammatical misunderstanding, show more and then he’s in turn saved by that same princess once it seems that the Robur nation has been obliterated and that Felix is its only survivor. From that moment on, Felix - and the princess - will embark on a journey across the wide world that will lead them to meet its many different peoples, as the former translator starts what can only be termed as an incredible revolution that will change the balance of power through the application of an apparently unplanned conquest strategy.

The protagonists of Parker’s novels, despite their differences, share a common unreliability as narrators, and what’s more they make no mystery of it - Felix is indeed the one who seems to be the most open on the subject, in respect of his predecessors:

I really don’t understand why people go on about how wonderful the truth is. In my experience, all it does is make trouble.

This is even more true here because, as the story moves forward, we learn that what appears as a series of unconnected and unplanned choices ends up generating very serendipitous results that point toward a carefully orchestrated plan. Felix’s narration makes it all look quite accidental, or at the very least the product of inspiration drawn from one of the many books he’s read, but after a while it becomes increasingly difficult to believe that he’s not “encouraging” the outcome from the sidelines. Especially when he says things like this:

Everything I’ve touched I’ve translated, into one thing or the other.

To further muddy the waters, at some point he makes a mention of his offhand humorous approach to situations, drawing a parallel between it and the ink squids use as camouflage against predators, and adding that under the layers of that protective humor he’s quite scared, but given his unreliability as a narrator it’s not so easy to fully believe him.

All of the above turns Felix into a character that is difficult to relate to, and there are times when I felt quite annoyed with him - in a half-amused way, granted, but still annoyed, so that I could quite sympathize with the princess when she berated him and looked ready to use physical violence. And yet, the relationship between the two of them (which cannot turn into a romantic pairing because of Felix’s… unfortunate situation) is one of the narrative delights of the story, with the two of them forming a complicated partnership that nonetheless works on many levels and offers some very amusing scenes, like the ones where Felix translates her profanity-laden speeches into something more diplomatically appropriate.

What truly differentiates this book from its predecessors is that the story follows a journey/quest model rather than being set in the City, which offers the author the chance to have a lot of fun with the different names and customs of the many tribes our two fugitive travelers meet: the travelogue might look somewhat confusing because the book does not have a map, which might have made things more visually understandable, but it’s a minor inconvenience after all, because Felix’s tongue-in-cheek descriptions of these peoples, their history and above all their quirks, makes for an amusing sketch of this world and its inhabitants who, despite the outward cultural differences, seem to share a deep distrust of strangers - but also the inability to resist the translator’s quick tongue and powers of conviction.

At times, the long lists of places and tribes - complete with details about customs and laws - feels like too much information and one could be tempted to skip forward to get back to the main story, but I don’t recommend it, because you might lose some entertaining detail. Granted, these finer points might not be indispensable in the Grand Scheme of Things, but they are often too funny to be missed, like the long, drawn-out story about a man who wanted to make money by selling camels. And in the end, camels DO prove to be quite effective in battle… ;-)

In the end I had great fun with the Practical Guide, even though the third iteration of this series reserved little surprises as far as the outcome would be, but like the story it tells, what truly matters here is the characters’ journey and not its end, and in the course of that journey there is great room for fun and a few laughs - and we all need that, from time to time. show less

Having greatly enjoyed the first two books of this trilogy, I regret to admit that I was a little underwhelmed with the book that rounds everything out. Note that I don't say conclude, in that Parker introduces a new character (Felix the embassy translator), who suddenly finds themself trying to survive the fall-out from the events of the first two books; though the reader is given some sense about what happened after the earlier stories. Like the protagonists of the first two books, Felix also rises to the occasion, but his trials just don't feel as gripping, at least to me. This is not to mention that I think I see a better way to connect this novel to the previous books, in regards to Parker's agenda of drolly commenting on the show more fragmentary ways history comes down to us. show less

A follow-up (not exactly a sequel) to Sixteen Ways to Defend a Walled City and How to Rule and Empire and Get Away With It, this works fine as a stand-alone. The narrator and protagonist is Felix (whose name, he tells us, means 'lucky'), a translator living in a distant empire as a junior member of a diplomatic mission. Things go wrong, then they get worse. Felix is mainly interested in saving his own skin, but somehow that turns into uniting quarreling barbarians and toppling an empire or two. Oh, and he might be a prophet.

Dry, deadpan fun.

Учудващо, поредицата успя да се възстанови от спада във втората книга, което се случва рядко в поредиците, но все пак сме го виждали и друг път.

A Practical Guide to Conquering the World страда от типичния синдром на много умния главен герой, който за да може да изглежда още по-най-умен, при условие, че авторът не е такъв и не може да измисли точно много по-най-умни неща, с които главният му герой да блесне, всички останали хора и show more особено враговете на главния герой, трябва да са ако не малко нещо глупави, то може би умни, ама с дребни, но пък съдбоносни пропуски в мисленето, разсъдливостта или знанията, които да водят до измъчената, но съвсем предвидима победа на гореспоменатия три пъти само в това изречение (този беше четвърти) главен герой.

Въпреки това, самата книга е забавна и почива на достатъчно историческа достоверност (не в смисъла на конкретни събития, а по-скоро на въоръжения, армии и общо принципи на военното и политическо дело). Особено фин беше моментът, в който вражеските генерали просто решават да подкрепят нашественика, защото преценяват, че ще им е по-изгодно - нещо, което се е случвало безброй пъти в историята, но във фентъзи книгите незнайно защо всякакви войници са верни до гроб и се хвърлят на сигурна смърт с умопомрачителен устрем... show less

One Sentence Summary: An interpreter in Echmen, Felix suddenly becomes the only Robur left in the world and is taken in by the Hus, but he has a plan that involves more than just the Hus.

Overall
A Practical Guide to Conquering the World is the last book in The Siege trilogy, but can be read as a standalone. It follows the intentional and unintentional consequences of who appears to be the last Robur left in the world’s actions and decisions. Sometimes it felt cleverly choreographed and planned and other times it felt like a snowball effect. Either way, I liked how much the narrator’s bookish knowledge came in handy and how casual he seemed about a lot of things, but I also felt it was impossible to trust him and his motivations. show more Overall, this was an amusing read with an interesting and kind of 2-dimensional world, but with a narrator I can’t say I actually liked.

Extended Thoughts
Years ago, after a horrible and bloody experience that should have killed him, Felix is sent to the Echmen empire as a translator. Some time after that, he saves the life of a Hus woman, who eventually saves him in return when his people are essentially declared extinct and he’s marked for death. Completely unnecessary and unwanted by the rest of her diplomatic group, Felix finds himself spending the next few years doing little more than reading in the expansive library.

But it comes in handy when the Echmen conquer the Hus, making the woman who saved him queen of the Hus and her people enslaved. In order to free her people and get the rest of the Dejauzi groups (of which the Hus are only one) to conquer the Echmen, Felix must use all the knowledge and resources at his fingertips, but that’s only the start of his story to conquering the world.

A Practical Guide to Conquering the World is the third in The Siege trilogy, but can be read as a standalone. Having only read the second book previously, I’d say that’s fairly true. This third book follows the events of the second, but it’s narrated by a completely different character who didn’t even personally know the narrator of the second book. Considering I don’t accurately remember all the details of the second book, I didn’t feel I really needed them to figure out what was going on in this one.

I was torn between bemusement and exasperation while reading this book. It’s very tongue-in-cheek to me, but tended to rub me the wrong way probably because of how casual Felix treated everything. He had a lot of interesting ideas and a lot of luck, and a quick way with words and the interpretation of those words. It made it a little difficult to figure out if he was being sincere about anything. For much of the book, I just got the feeling he was shrugging everything off while everyone around him kept elevating his importance. I did like how he seemed modest and didn’t demand to be crowned king or anything, but I also couldn’t figure out if he was being sincere and honest or just using the people who suddenly believe in him to get whatever it was he wanted.

Felix was far from my favorite character, which was kind of a shame since he’s the narrator. There were times when he felt like a strategist, times when he felt like a coward, times when he appeared brave, and times when he just didn’t seem to actually care. The reader is only getting his perspective in his own words, so it felt kind of impossible to tell just how truthful he was being. It both drove me nuts and kept me amused. There were times when he appeared to be just doing things so casually, but it all also felt extremely calculated and there where times when he really did seem weary of everything and wanted to escape.

But what I did like about Felix and A Practical Guide to Conquering the World was how much it leaned on history and book knowledge. As a reader, I can certainly identify with Felix’s thirst of knowledge, and I felt this book really encapsulated how important reading is. So much of what he did came from what he learned of history and the world in books. I loved how much of what he did leaned on his book knowledge, and it really seemed to prove to me just how important libraries are.

However, a lot of the good and fortuitous things that happened to Felix and his “people” was down to world building. There are numerous countries and groups of people, all of whom are quite different from each other and have very different beliefs and ways of doing things. What they all had in common, though, was how they never diverted from them. They were steadfast in how they had always done things, so, by knowing what they were going to do because of history, Felix was able to throw wrenches at them to ensure his victory. It became a little annoying after a while that every group just behaved the way Felix expected. But it did nicely highlight the groups Felix worked with and their ability to adapt, trust, and try things a different way despite misgivings. Since the second book was restricted to the City, it was nice to see so many different groups and to explore more of the world. It all felt very 2D because each group never really varied what they had always done, but it was fun to learn the different ways they did things.

As much as Felix and his seemingly sheer luck and true disinterest in correcting people exhausted me, I really liked the Hus queen. Since her people do not freely give their names, she’s mostly referred to as she and her. She’s the one who worked most closely with Felix, who knew more of what he was about and what he was doing than anyone else. I kind of thought of her as his voice of reason, even if he didn’t always listen to her. Still, their relationship was fun and I wish there had been more of it, especially when he was translating for her. It felt almost like a sibling relationship with a lot of sufferance on her part; she could never really change his mind, but at least she could have her input.

Overall, I found A Practical Guide to Conquering the World to be not quite as much fun as the second book, but I appreciated how much book knowledge was used. I also found I couldn’t quite trust Felix and, even by the end, I didn’t feel I trusted him and his motivations. He didn’t really have anything to lose and seemed to have a great deal of luck, though I think a lot of it came down to semantics and interpretation. It was amusing in a tongue-in-cheek way, but not exactly my cup of tea.

Thank you to Angela Man at Orbit and NetGalley for a review copy. All opinions expressed are my own. show less