#intergalactic empire

[ahb-writes]

"I know that if I dare to dream again, I'll only be setting myself up to fall harder when betrayal comes again."

"Rosetta Sereh Claudia" (in I'm the Evil Lord of an Intergalactic Empire #3)

[showmuskgoon-blog]

Who are the aliens, anyway?

There have been lots of movies and books that tell how humans from a distant future have an intergalactic empire with lots of planets from different stars that are thousands of light-years away.

The problem with that kind of empires is that, due to the impossibility of travelling faster than light, communications would be absurdly slow and difficult if not directly impossible. Just like on remote places on Earth, the people from those colonies would be isolated, with almost no contact with Earth or other colonies, and with a gene pool that can not be updated often enough with people from Earth. Also, taking into account that certain planets encourage certain traits through natural selection, each colony would create a new human subspecies which, in the end, would most definitely become a whole new species.

That means that each planet would have a different kind of humanoid alien with little to no similarities in culture, so basically a single species intergalactic empire is not possible.

That leads to a curious interpretation of the Fermi paradox (if there are so many planets, there must be a lot of aliens but, where are they?). Instead of asking where they are, we should wonder where they come from. Maybe one day humanity will create their own aliens and, perhaps, even be eventually destroyed by them.

[ahb-writes]

Book Review: 'I'm the Evil Lord of an Intergalactic Empire' #7

I'm the Evil Lord of an Intergalactic Empire #7 by Yomu Mishima, Nadare Takamine, Amy Osteraas

adventure

coming of age

isekai

nobility

science fiction

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

"An insignificant being like you probably can't comprehend this, but you're not the height of evil — humans are." (page 267)

Whoops. For all of Liam Sera Banfield's prattle over his purportedly dark, vile, egotistical, and perverted aspirations to surmount the nobility, manipulate the commonfolk, and wield a large military, the young man often falls short of his ambitions. But not this time. It turns out, when Liam finds himself in the context of the "have nots," and when he discovers people have no choice but to put their faith in him and his abilities, being "evil" is frightfully easy.

I'M THE EVIL LORD OF AN INTERGALACTIC EMPIRE v7 strips Liam of the convenience of being surrounded by kind enablers, well-wishing butlers, amicable maid robots, and fawning military officers. The pitiless ego that crowds out Liam's heart takes center stage in a novel that pokes myriad fun at its own genre, and exposes readers to a well-established but less-explored problem inherent to isekai literature: the hero summoning that goes woefully wrong.

A lot happens in this novel. And for the first time in a long time, readers will have an extraordinary time figuring out where to place their energy. When Liam is whisked away by a relatively inadequate teleportation circle, House Banfield falls into chaos in every conceivable way: mobile knights bicker, feud, and factionalize; presumably loyal government officials descend into debauchery; distant relatives emerge to lay claim the house's spoils; and, back at the capital, scowling figures scheme further shenanigans amid mounting fear over Liam's growing prominence. In brief, a wary conversation between Liam, Brian, and Amagi about how succession would be messy and dirty for the whole of House Banfield is proven damningly accurate in dreadfully short notice.

The best part about EVIL LORD v7 is that despite all of these troubles and mishaps, the novel is written with such calculating organization that everything is wrapped up all nice and neat by the end. Yes, the novel runs long at 475+ pages, but the book doesn't have any wasted space. The author deserves plenty of credit for forging, outlining, and interweaving smaller stories that all hinge on the comically overwrought and desperate nature of all of Liam's subordinates (and, in part, all of Liam's rivals).

But where does Liam go? That teleportation circle sends him to another world (same universe) and tosses him into the fray of the less industrious Erle Kingdom and it's life-or-death fight against Demon Lord Gorius. Liam knows he can defeat the demon lord and his minions with a flick of the wrist, so he decides to have some fun with this impromptu vacation. He calls this little trip a "transmigration to another world" (page 112), and treats it akin to an otaku fawning over a selfsame isekai narrative.

The Erle Kingdom's young queen is in a bit of a pickle, though. She finds herself with two heroes.

One is Liam, who is rude, arrogant, and very much a nihilist in practice. Another is a young Japanese girl with a striking resemblance to the daughter of the person who has since become Liam Sera Banfield (She couldn't possibly be the little girl from his former life, could she?). Kanami espouses confidence, empathy, and kindness, which earns her Liam's ire, but not without a mote of respect when it becomes clear she's operating on the philosophical paradigm her forsaken father once bequeathed in days gone by.

EVIL LORD v7 gives a very healthy spotlight to Liam's dark nature as evidenced by those who are wholly unaccustomed to his character. The pure villainy on display is starkly efficient, as well as a pure joy to read. Liam-the-summoned-hero suffers no fools. He abuses those without experience ("Valuing morality over ability was stupid," page 246). He rebukes those whose power falls short ("Can you hear the voices of the dead? If you can, listen closely, I think you'll find out just how brutal a human I am," page 269). And he demands clarity of hierarchy to weed out the incompetent ("The queen doesn't want to help her people [..] She only wants to help herself by appearing kind in other people's eyes," page 247).

But again, a lot happens in this novel. The increased focus on Claus Sera Mont, the awkward yet reliable knight constantly suffering from ulcers, is a delightful distraction. The expanded creativity of the Guide shows that his miscalculations can prove hilariously rotten. And the brief appearance of House Banfield's numerous hangers-on grant readers an opportunity to see what happens when Liam decides to take justice into his own hands.

❯ ❯ Light-Novel Reviews

[ahb-writes]

Book Review: 'I'm the Heroic Knight of an Intergalactic Empire' #1

I'm the Heroic Knight of an Intergalactic Empire #1 by Yomu Mishima, Nadare Takamine, Amy Osteraas

coming of age

isekai

light novel

mecha

military

science fiction

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Emma Rodman, without a doubt, is a terrible soldier. Her live-fire skills are so-so. Her tactical aptitude is subpar. Her mobile-unit piloting abilities are meh. And all her other scores at the military academy are decidedly "mediocre." Still. She graduates and earns the rank of Knight. Barely.

I'M THE HEROIC KNIGHT OF AN INTERGALACTIC EMPIRE v1 is a fun and interesting side story that isn't as overwrought as one might have feared at the outset. Much of the story of a luckless pilot finally earning her due, out in the boonies, is rote and preordained. But much of the story dynamics are open to creative interpretation and delightful throwbacks to other, related stories.

One shouldn't enter into Sub-Lieutenant Rodman's little world expecting much of the same skill and fortune that graced others in this universe. Indeed, Rodman's experience is quite the opposite: she's hard working but sees little benefit; nobody pities her misfortunes; she's intuitively aspirational; and the Algrand Empire and it's upstart House Banfield probably wouldn't change much if she didn't exist.

Still, it's a fun story. Rodman graduates House Banfield's military academy and aims to contribute to the upstart lord's growing army. Since Banfield is recruiting, educating, and training his own military (rather than importing recruits from regional nobles), skills ranking and estimates are all the rage. Rodman? She's a notorious "D-ranker," and therefore shuttled off Hydra, the home planet, and forced to serve in a random border region.

HEROIC KNIGHT v1 spends much of its real estate prepping and assembling the character relationships that surround Rodman and her crew of fellow outcasts. Perhaps readers don't need extended, waffling discourse from Colonel Claudia Beltran (Tia's adjutant), and perhaps reader's don't need splinter plots involving the numerous pirates Rodman's team stumbles upon when canvassing a presumably remote planet. However, it's clear the author wants to give Rodman's little world a fully lived-in treatment. Contrary to the events of the "evil lord" at the head of the house, nothing happens to Rodman by happenstance.

The book's action is rather solid, but sits squarely in the Third Act. The novel excitedly pulls copious references from mecha manga and anime of generations past and wields a few (boorish) archetypes to fill out the broader narrative. The combination has a bit of a retro feel and requires a lot of patience on the part of the reader.

For example, Rodman is assigned to the Melea light carrier ship, and her platoon members include a slob (Tim Baker, colonel), a perpetual drunkard and defeatist (Doug Walsh, warrant officer), a lazy corpsman (Larray Cramer, warrant officer), and a brilliant mechanic and scavenger (Molly Burrell, Pvt. First Class), who clearly enjoys just doing whatever she wants. These misfits rebuke and mistreat Rodman to the point where one wouldn't be wrong to accuse them all of being degenerate assholes and nothing less. It takes a few, classic, "underdog character surpassing all expectations" moments to shift the narrative into a more palatable direction.

HEROIC KNIGHT v1 more successfully pings mecha storytelling's more salient and desirable protagonist-featured, character-building notes. The best example of which is Rodman's constant failure under the strenuous eye of her academic leaders and more experienced superior officers. Nobody can figure out why such a dedicated and practiced young woman continues to receive mediocre scores. What's the deal? The answer grows increasingly obvious (i.e., stop questioning the quality of student, and start questioning the quality of the exam). After all, who wouldn't want an ambitious young woman with insane reflexes piloting an experimental mobile knight?

In terms of what this novel does better than the original novel series, the author is granted the leeway to focus more on military strategy and the odd, confusing, and shifting battlefield circumstances that necessarily force operations to change on the fly.

The amount of tactical banter and follow-up in HEROIC KNIGHT v1 is leagues beyond what occur in any Evil Lord novel. Readers enter the cockpit of Rodman's mobile knight, see what she sees and hear what she hears, and gain a respectable first-person perspective of the unit's capabilities and the consequences thereof. The fact that the young sub-lieutenant absolutely demolishes her own mobile knight while yet destroying all of her enemies is a comical, yet entirely realistic conclusion to draw, particularly when one views the lengths to which Rodman goes to secure victory for House Banfield.

❯ ❯ Light-Novel Reviews

[ahb-writes]

"I could take my subjects' hard-earned tax money and throw it around on whatever I so desired. If that wasn't evil, I don't know what was."

"Liam Sera Banfield" (I'm the Evil Lord of an Intergalactic Empire #3 by Yomu Mishima)

[ahb-writes]

Book Review: ‘I’m the Evil Lord of an Intergalactic Empire’ #3

I’m the Evil Lord of an Intergalactic Empire! (Light Novel) Vol. 3 by Yomu Mishima My rating: 5 of 5 stars Compelling in its thoroughness and entertaining in its simplicity, this novel series' cavalier invocation of randomness and gullibility for the sake of Liam's evil lordship fits together quite nicely. I'M THE EVIL LORD OF AN INTERGALACTIC EMPIRE v3 wields another academic sprint as its general backdrop, but during the next span of three or four years, Liam accidentally creates another mortal enemy, stumbles into romance with an ice queen, and sort of sets the stage for rerouting the power balance within the empire itself. EVIL LORD v3 routinely triggers these and other narrative events by way of happenstance. Liam is an overachiever. He's bored. He wants to hunt stronger pirates, he wants to engage a woman who adamantly refuses his advances (on moral grounds), and he wants to amass a fortune and military worthy of crushing all other nobles. Does he get what he wants? Maybe. But definitely not in the way he thinks. This book's charm rests in how superbly the author weaves the story's secondary and tertiary characters into motion to nudge and support Liam's fantastical view of the universe. House Claudia, for example, has been in ruin for close to 2,000 years (due in part to the empire's negligence and due in part to other noble's malfeasance). But Liam doesn't see a house in disrepair, he spies a dukedom without a leading man. Similarly, Liam's tendency to attract women of an exceedingly violent and overconfident caliber should be a problem. Except, these women are military specialists, infamous mercenaries, or noble adjutants. Every single one of them is willing to die for him, if for all of the wrong reasons. Not the he'd know the difference. It's all a matter of perception. And as readers of EVIL LORD v3 will come to find, the puzzle pieces clarifying which nobles support pirates and which puzzle pieces show corruption in the higher ranks of the capital all require a bit of sorting to make out the final picture. And as readers already know, Liam always finds his way to the final picture. Characterization is one of this novel series' highest qualities. In EVIL LORD v3, readers encounter a lazy imperial prince, a mage assassin with a grudge, a female knight with a mean streak, and a duchess-to-be. The lattermost, Rosetta Sereh Claudia, is an incredibly sympathetic character who loses almost everything, yet keeps pushing through. She's icy, sure, but only so as to better focus on what matters to her (and her declining house authority). Rosetta is reserved, tactful, and chooses her allies carefully. Liam falls for her because he wants an ice queen for a wife, but as everyone knows, for better or for worse, all ice queens thaw. Her character is less lovable at the end than she is closer to when she is introduced, but Rosetta's internal struggle is genuine. Another notable character is Marie Sera Marian, a female knight who awakens when Liam's scientists pull her and others out of stone. Marie is a bloodthirsty fighter. She's also loyal to a fault. Better to have her on the side of an evil lord than to leave her running about without a leash. Marie's demure façade hides a bevvy of hilarious curses and spit-takes that typically pour from her frothing mouth the second someone gets the better of her. One would think it's a tired trope, but somehow it works perfectly here. The fact that she wields dual chainsaw-lightsabers might also have something to do with it. In EVIL LORD v3, the cast is impressive, both in size and scope of integration. And its this cast of awkward, bitter, slyly vengeful, and outright humbling personalities that nudge everything into its proper direction. Liam isn't the only one making weird assumptions. For example, Serena, the spy maid for the prime minister, scrutinizes the young man everyday but sees nothing untoward in his actions. And so, when Liam skulks the battlefield piloting an upgraded Avid mobile suit and wipes out hundreds of pirates, readers may correctly assume the guy may is a bit ridiculous, but that doesn't mean he doesn't know what he's doing.

Light-Novel Reviews || ahb writes on Good Reads

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[ahb-writes]

Good karma isn't worth shit. It's all a lie. And if that's the case, then I wanna live for myself [..] I'll live for myself as a villain who tramples other people underfoot.

"Liam Sera Banfield" (I'm the Evil Lord of an Intergalactic Empire #1, by Yomu Mishima and Nadare Takamine)

[ahb-writes]

Book Review:  ‘I'm the Evil Lord of an Intergalactic Empire!’ #1

I'm the Evil Lord of an Intergalactic Empire! (Light Novel) Vol. 1 by Yomu Mishima My rating: 4 of 5 stars Outsmarting the devil by way of the benign. Saving the galaxy from bloodthirsty pirates with a little bit of luck. Amassing allies equally heartfelt and tenacious due in large part to naïveté. Liam Sera Banfield is the heavily indebted heir to a tiny planet on the outskirts of the Intergalactic Algrand Empire. I'M THE EVIL LORD OF AN INTERGALACTIC EMPIRE #1 is one guy's eager attempt to turn House Banfield into something respectable. If, perchance, in doing so, the Banfield name becomes synonymous with fear, lust, greed, sensational violence, and wealth beyond compare, then why not. It can't be that difficult to become an evil lord can it? Master Liam is thrust into a mishmash of enviable and unenviable predicaments. Abandoned by his parents at age five? Bad. Bequeathed the title of Count and a whole planet to rule on his own? Good. Zero political retainers, knights, and qualified men at arms? Bad. A motherly android girl, named Amagi, and a reliable old butler, named Brian? Good. EVIL LORD #1 is the ultimate novel about a man in dire straits making the best of a crappy situation. Liam desires to trample the weak and make his name feared and respected throughout all of the cosmos. However, to do so, he must first get his house in order. Debts to the empire. Regional construction. Consolidation of the defense armada. The more and more Liam learns of the intricacies of ruling his own planet, the farther and farther down on the to-do list goes the quest to become an evil lord. A handful of light novels thrive on pursuing the counter-expectational; that is, encouraging the reader to root for the protagonist, but counter to the narrative, in spite of the obvious storytelling clues dictating the story's apparent progress. Liam, spurred by the deceit and ego of others in his past life, desires little more than to turn things around and to trod on the weak and innocent in his new life. His rage is genuine and his intuition for what qualifies for worthy vengeance is good enough, if imperfect. It also turns out that Liam has a mind for high-level statecraft. He's good at assessing layered situations, aggressively pursuing rational solutions, and standing unafraid in the face of mounting difficulty. Liam doesn't quite realize it yet, but his new philosophy isn't to pursue ego at the cost of others' happiness, it's to guarantee a better life for anyone and everyone capable of making a difference. He is, in short, very busy en route to being "evil" (Liam: "Is it really this hard to be an evil lord?" p. 193). EVIL LORD #1, for the most part, delivers. One shouldn't read into the book's loglines too closely. "Evil" is a shifty, ineffectual term, and the novel's sense of scale and statecraft orientation is so awkward (and awkwardly massive) that the title's various storytelling tropes and oddities rarely appear as such. For example, in this universe, humans are slow-aging, living to be several hundred years of age (e.g., Liam looks like a 13-year-old boy by age 50). It's an interesting factoid that receives little to no formal explanation. How, indeed, would one go about living his life, as the ruler of a planet, knowing he had centuries to make it his own? For another example, one might dig into how or why a whole planet could be inherited by a five-year-old child. The political shenanigans behind the ordeal are awkward and forced. But then again, this is also a universe with redundant imperial weapons manufacturing facilities, highly adaptable artificial intelligence, and innovative technology for intergalactic transport and regenerative medicine. A bit of gnarly red tape should come as no surprise. This novel also rests rather comfortably in the niche array of titles that dabble more in the domestic sphere than they do in the areas of protracted action and adventure. Readers who want Liam to ram his understaffed armada down the throat of the empire will be sorely disappointed. Instead, readers will get a naïve and shifty, brooding teenager who is too smart for his own good. He can't smash the empire because his armada is in derelict shape. And he can't build up his armada because he doesn't have any money. And he can't accumulate any wealth until he manifests a serviceable world economy. And so on and so forth. This is how EVIL LORD #1 often goes. Liam is always three or four degrees off-center of what he truly wishes to do; he is abruptly sidetracked, and ultimately finds satisfaction in each minor achievement along the way. The guy wants to grow stronger, so he recruits a swordsman he doesn't realize is a stone-cold charlatan. However, because Liam is such an earnest student, he shows impeccable growth despite his instructor constantly feeding him absolute nonsense. Similarly, the young count desires to make an outdated and oversized mobile suit his vanguard mecha. And yet, despite the fact that the old tech requires numerous repairs, adjustments, and sweet nothings from an attractive mechanic, Liam's earnestness turns the lumbering old suit in an undeniably deadly force. Again, this is how the novel goes. What begins as a timid inquiry into something serious, even macabre, twists its way into the peculiar and the humorous. Because, it would seem, even for an aspiring evil lord, nothing ever really goes as planned.

Light-Novel Reviews || ahb writes on Good Reads