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A review by mburnamfink
Sixteen Ways to Defend a Walled City by K.J. Parker
5.0
Sixteen Ways to Defend a Walled City is a lot of fun, with a sharp sense of humor and good use of historical analogies. Orhan is a colonel of engineers in a Byzantine Empire expy. While he's in the army, he builds bridges rather than kills people, getting the job done through solid technical design and bureaucratic trickery.
Orhan is procuring a large quantity of rope at a central naval depot when pirates attack. But these pirates aren't after gold and rum. It's a raid to steal military equipment and burn naval stores. In the name of efficiency, the Empire has stored military supplies at key depos, and fleets can't sail without rope and barrels which have all gone up in smoke. Over the next few months, more precise attacks cripple strategic points throughout the Empire.
By the time Orhan and his engineering detachment make it back to the City, they're all that's left. The local defenders have been annihilated, there's an enemy army on the doorstep, the Emperor is a vegetable, and all Orhan has to defend his city are a few thousand engineers, some corrupt city watch, feuding gladiatorial criminal gangs, and the stalwart landscapers of the parks department. It'll take every clever trick in the book, and some that aren't to save the city.
Orhan is a delight as a narrator, an ironic wit and technical man called far out of his depth in a crisis. The guiding principle of his life has been harm from his friends and gifts from his enemies, and each inversion adds to the fun of the book. And yeah, the Empire is a shitty place, racist, sexist, homophobic, unworthy of saving. These flaws make the book all the better. The things we love don't deserve our efforts to save them. Anybody who'd been the only sane man on a technical project will love this book, and I'm off to see how Parker's others books are.
Orhan is procuring a large quantity of rope at a central naval depot when pirates attack. But these pirates aren't after gold and rum. It's a raid to steal military equipment and burn naval stores. In the name of efficiency, the Empire has stored military supplies at key depos, and fleets can't sail without rope and barrels which have all gone up in smoke. Over the next few months, more precise attacks cripple strategic points throughout the Empire.
By the time Orhan and his engineering detachment make it back to the City, they're all that's left. The local defenders have been annihilated, there's an enemy army on the doorstep, the Emperor is a vegetable, and all Orhan has to defend his city are a few thousand engineers, some corrupt city watch, feuding gladiatorial criminal gangs, and the stalwart landscapers of the parks department. It'll take every clever trick in the book, and some that aren't to save the city.
Orhan is a delight as a narrator, an ironic wit and technical man called far out of his depth in a crisis. The guiding principle of his life has been harm from his friends and gifts from his enemies, and each inversion adds to the fun of the book. And yeah, the Empire is a shitty place, racist, sexist, homophobic, unworthy of saving. These flaws make the book all the better. The things we love don't deserve our efforts to save them. Anybody who'd been the only sane man on a technical project will love this book, and I'm off to see how Parker's others books are.