Ideal War may not be the best BT book out there, but it isn't nearly as bad as it's sometimes made out to be.
Yes, it's Vietnam in Spaaace straight - even says so in the foreword. No surprises here. And yes, the author and factchecking team somehow overlooked that the "backwater" world of Gibson is one of the FWL's 'Mech production sites... but you can handwave that by assuming the 'Mech production facilities are all in the capital city, which is pretty much a world of its own, and the rest of the planet is unimportant.
When read on its own I'd say it is an ok novel. It gets a notch better when seen in context of what came much later:
I thought the novel was great in showing how the Word of Blake became the murderous villains from the Jihad era. At this point in the timeline, they're a inhomogenous mix of ComStar dropouts lacking a unified agenda, with many different subfactions and sect leaders. All the three-dimensionality and undercurrents are here that the later WoB was sometimes portrayed as lacking, and under close scrutiny this novel reveals how things started to go wrong.
Thomas "Halas" Marik despite being sympathetic to the Word of Blake and the schism appears to hold very little stock in the Word of Blake faction and in many respects disdain. The only real reason he gave them shelter was because of Precentor Blaine - although likely also due to Thomas true history - being a ROM agent
The Word of Blake training, tactics and beliefs are verging on barbarism at every turn down to allowing a pilot with mental health problems run amok in a Hatchetman. The faction is totally out of control even then, although I had the Liberation of Terra campaign book (WoB/ComStar battle) I must admit this was my first time properly seeing the early Word of Blake (fiction really puts a face to them) before they were a part of ComStar that ran off and hid in the FWL before returning to Terra before starting a little war known as the Jihad. Now seeing them this early I'm not half surprised about some of the things that happened in the Jihad.
I'd say the key issue here is that there is no unified WoB faction. The WoB people on Gibson ("tens of thousands of religious zealots") are several distinct groups of people who have turned away from ComStar for very different reasons:
- You've got religious zealots following the Word of Blake religion under Blane (who are politically moderate);
- you have shell-shocked veterans from Tukayyid and Operation Scorpion who couldn't cope with the changes to the ComStar they bled for;
- you have ROM elements more interested in their own power politics than serving ComStar;
- you have a few individual alpha specimen with their personality cults such as Aziz, Arian or Starling;
- and any number of additional subfactions including the cabal involving The Hidden Worlds, and all that.
These are all lumped together under the "Word of Blake" label although at this point they are more factionalized than the FWL or the Fire Mandrills. Pretty much the only thing they have in common is that they turned their back on ComStar.
At this point, my take on things is that each of those subsects is too small and unorganized to survive on its own, hence they form a loose coalition (with all the dagger-in-the-back politics we see in this book) to survive, by means of "Thomas Marik" who is friendly to them and offers asylum in the FWL for all of them together. In return he is declared their Primus in Exile, which may have been part of the real Thomas Marik's plan to ascertain total control.
Blane, in this book, is portrayed in a positive light and disapproves of the atrocities committed on Gibson about which he was apparently kept in the dark by those factions who committed them. He goes to Atreus to ask "Thomas Marik" for help.
At this point things get interesting: Did Blane know about the Doppelganger? And if so, did he know that the Doppelganger was pretty much his own man by this time, and didn't drink The Master's Kool Aid anymore? Or did he genuinely think he was talking to Primus-in-Exile Thomas Marik?
Whatever the answer (which we may never get), the moderate Blane and the equally moderate Doppelganger sense that something is wrong and send Paul Masters to evaluate. They actually try to solve the problem, though their efforts fall tragically short.
1) Sir Paul Masters was Count of Gibson - after seeing how the Word of Blake trained and fought why did he ever let them keep their weapons on his new world? Why did Thomas Marik for that matter?
They may have sworn fealty to him but they cared not at all for the people of the world or the honourable combat Thomas and Paul were seeking.
Paul Masters was an outsider and percieved as something of an arbitrator in the conflict which was chiefly engineered by Regulus. The Word of Blake were not the guilty party, they were just the catalyst that made the ongoing guerilla war spin out of control; and being composed of shell-shocked ComGuard veterans, the WoB had the means and the inclination to shoot back in earnest, which made years of low-level guerilla warfare among the Gibson natives escalate and spin out of control within a year or two.
Masters uncovered the Regulan involvemet and gave the Regulans (their deniable "mercenary" assets under Col. Roush, to be precise) a slap on the wrists; we can assume this ended Regulus fueling the civil war fires on Gibson fortwith.
Word of Blake, at this point, had only been defending themselves, even though that had fanned the flames. They were reminded that they were guests on Gibson, not rulers, and with Masters installed as the new Count, nobody thought they had to be disarmed.
2) What happened to Sir Paul Masters? I know he went on Task Force Serpent and became Ambassador to the Clans. But what happened to him in the Jihad? Did he die before then? Or was he lost to the Clans when the Homeworlds went dark? Why did the Count of Gibson abandon his world for so long?
He is referred to as the "late Paul Masters" somehwere in the Jihad sourcebooks; I think it was Apollyon who said that. For all we know, Masters died though the circumstances are unknown at this point. Personally, I can easily imagine Masters died in a trial that some Clan warrior declared over some trivial matter.
Obviously by not dealing with the Word of Blake that's one of the reasons they grew as powerful as they did and how Apolloyn eventually got put in charge by the puppet government on Atreus.
Even more so, the fighting on Gibson brought the militant and ruthless elements to the fore while subduing the moderates. The guerilla war on Gibson is what forged the Word of Blake into the largely unified power it became and brought the killers to the fore. I reckon there are plenty of real-world analogies here, but I don't want to violate the forum rules.
Masters and the Doppelganger underestimated the Word of Blake; they never had a chance of reigning them in by this point in time. The moderates had been silenced, the WoB had learned the lesson that they had to fight their enemies with fire. And so they did.
Edit: Typos & copyedits
