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A review by mburnamfink
The Mongoliad: Book One by Greg Bear, Neal Stephenson, Erik Bear
3.0
The Mongoliad is maybe two solid swashbuckling novellas, burdened by a bunch of cruft. The whole series was an experiment in serialized collaborative fiction based around historical weapons-martial arts by Neal Stephenson and a bunch of other authors. The good stuff are the descriptions of melee skirmishes, which are action-packed and tactical. Of the two main stories, I more enjoyed the intrigue of Cansukh, a Mongol warrior dispatched to the capitol of Karakorum to do something about the alcoholic depression of Khagan Ogedai Khan, and his struggle to survive an atmosphere of decadence and intrigue with the help of the Chinese tutor and slave Lian. The other story is a lengthy quest by Cnan, a female messenger, and 11 knights to cross the Mongol empire and assassinate Ogedai Khan. From a structural perspective, the problem is that it takes about a third of the book for these stories to actually start moving, a long slog of subpar materials, and both plots are barely advanced by the end, leaving plenty more the sequels.
But from a bigger perspective, I hate how much stuff Stephenson and his collaborators just made up for the story. The Baroque Cycle was tightly grounded in the actual history of the the period. The fictionalized viewpoint characters were a lot like real people, and spent a lot of time interacting with real people. 1241 is a fascinating year in European history, with various medieval knightly orders at the height of their power and the Mongols conquering the world. Rather than engage with real history, Stephenson and his collaborators choose to invent a fictional society of Binder messengers (what, are actual Silk Road merchants boring?), and the Ordo Militum Vindicis Intactae, a knight-errant brotherhood nominally Catholic, but with secret pagan origins, and none of the actual social ties that make real feudalism so interesting. I get that this lets them stretch their story out over centuries and avoid nerds saying "gnah, actually according to this source...", but it leaves everything disconnected.
The best summary of this story might be in the story itself. One of the Mongol Khans has decided conquering is boring and runs an open call gladiatorial game before invading Europe. A knight fights a samurai. The only objective is to buy Europe a little more time by distracting the khan. It's a really cool fight, but for little purpose.
But from a bigger perspective, I hate how much stuff Stephenson and his collaborators just made up for the story. The Baroque Cycle was tightly grounded in the actual history of the the period. The fictionalized viewpoint characters were a lot like real people, and spent a lot of time interacting with real people. 1241 is a fascinating year in European history, with various medieval knightly orders at the height of their power and the Mongols conquering the world. Rather than engage with real history, Stephenson and his collaborators choose to invent a fictional society of Binder messengers (what, are actual Silk Road merchants boring?), and the Ordo Militum Vindicis Intactae, a knight-errant brotherhood nominally Catholic, but with secret pagan origins, and none of the actual social ties that make real feudalism so interesting. I get that this lets them stretch their story out over centuries and avoid nerds saying "gnah, actually according to this source...", but it leaves everything disconnected.
The best summary of this story might be in the story itself. One of the Mongol Khans has decided conquering is boring and runs an open call gladiatorial game before invading Europe. A knight fights a samurai. The only objective is to buy Europe a little more time by distracting the khan. It's a really cool fight, but for little purpose.