I\'ll have to read this: sounds like Ayn Rand with high-tech weaponry and, from what I can gather, an Ehrenisch sense of social values. Could be interesting as awful warning in the age of alt-right, trump and johnson. thanks!
Male, early sixties, Cranky old fart, at least two decades behind. So you have been warned. Functionally illiterate in several languages.
This has very little to do with Ayn Rand. Whatever her economic morality, she was very clear on the need to grow past religion, give everyone sexual freedom, and not deny anyone\'s autonomy. Like everything she preached, you can punch huge holes in how she applied these, but she considered herself closer to the sexual liberation movement of the time than any religion or social conservatism. The fact that her followers get lumped into the right shows how distiortionary the electoral system is in forcing all strains of thought into two camps.
Stories don't tell us monsters exist; we knew that already. They show us that monsters can be trademarked and milked for years.
It made Spacebattles and /k/ briefly agree that certain ideas aren\'t logical... Spacebattles and /k/!
If you see me I'm on an accidental Archive Binge.
> alt-right Mary Sue Self Insert
To be fair, I'd bet that a fair number of people who'd listened to the author for any noticeable length of time were then moved to suggest that he attempt vigourous Self-Insertion.
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Victoria: Fractally Wrong
I heard the phrase once in a review, and it's really the only way I can describe Victoria. It's fractally wrong. It starts off somewhat wrong, but the more you read, the more you see how every tiny detail is just wrong.
So at first glance the book is an alt-right Mary Sue Self Insert revenge fic. The armies of Christian Conservative Good casually curbstomping every flavor of liberal cause. Evil homosexuals, evil feminists, evil racist caricatures, evil environmentalists, evil college professors, evil federalists, all fall like grass before the lawnmower. The Nazis, they're okay if they could just shake that evil modernism, far superior to Dirty Commies any day. So far, so standard, but look closer...
Not only are the heroes steeped in atrocity, from human trafficking, to hostage taking, mass deportation, tarring and feathering an old man, torture, summary execution, nuking a US city, but the book is just badly written. New villains are introduced, only so they can easily be dispatched in the same chapter. Rather than a coherent narrative, the plot is a series of unrelated incidents of the Glorious Ascension of Victoria.
Don't even ask me how the titular state functions, between it's socially enforced Luddism, strong emphasis on state's rights, hangings left and right and most baffling of all, how it fought it's way of federal tyranny only to be owned in various ways by the Russians, Prussians and Chinese, a plot thread completely dropped when they engage in nuclear brinksmanship with China over enabling the Japanese conquest of Cascadia.
That's right, kids. Lind says no to federal power, yes to selling American land to foreign developers and assisting foreign invasions. Also to nuking cities as pest control to kill off the darkies.
I love how all the most horrifying bits are just casual offhand references. Like none of these things need to be discussed. "Sure, we sold thousands of women into slavery. Now let me tell you about trains!"
No. Just... No.