Domination Of The Draka…
This is not a book review, rather, it’s just a few thoughts on the culture, and society of S.M. Stirling‘s Draka.
So I’m reading Marching Through Georgia, first of the Draka Saga. Short version, the Draka are descendants of Crown loyalists, and Hessian forces exiled to the African Cape, renamed in honor of Sir Francis Drake after the American Revolution, which is where this fictional world‘s divergence breaks off from our own history.
As I read, I find myself both repulsed, and enthralled by the Draka, who have adopted a very Nietzschean, and Spartan lifestyle. As a people they are both pragmatic, yet aristocratic. The problem is, as good as its written, and as interesting a world that Stirling has built, I can’t find myself being sympathetic toward any of the characters.
Wait, with one exception, the American reporter, this book has done what no one in the news media could do, make me feel sorry for a reporter, who clearly is off put by the Draka’s brutal regime, where the notion of liberty as we understand it has no place.
It’s a hard choice, who do you cheer for, when your choices are Nazis, or a group of people who will, when they have the upper hand turn around and conquer you? And make no mistake, as there is no doubt that the Draka have every intention of reaching out to conquer the United States at some later date when it will best serve them to do so. The only clear difference is that the Draka don’t seem interested in genocide, only slavery, and are very patient about their slow march across the Earth.
One thing I do find off-putting about the book is the serf accents, think Roots, or Gone With The Wind – I jump out of the book whenever a serf speaks, and I can’t help but think “Deep South“. Is that on purpose? But what bugs me is, the Draka should have just the same sort of drawl, yet they’re not written like that.
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Maybe the author finds such people as the Draka something that draws both his admiration and his sympathy – certainly a scary thought to me. Otherwise, why create a “tour de force” starring them? But such people would find a formidable enemy indeed in my own chief protagonist and his Special Forces. The Drakians would be so much the antithesis of everything that Alain Harper the Undying Singer stands for that his normal compassion even for his opponents might not even be tickled in its sleep. And when you face him in that frame of mind, you are in deep, deep guano, my friend.
Its as I said, I find myself repulsed, yet enthralled. I can only assume its like that for their creator as well.