March-April 2026 Miscellany: Raging Wazirs of Angelic Khartoum

I have been reading, writing, and occasionally watching. 

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I re-read the Mortal Engines Quartet and gave my own particular take on twenty-five years of that series, hopefully improving the grade of TRACTION CITY DISCOURSE. 

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     Worldbuilding & Woolgathering and
     The Wishstone and the Wonderworkers (1990) and
     The Wazir and the Witch (1990) and
     The Worshippers and the Way (1992)

A return to Hugh Cook. As before, these were read in the wake of the False Machine two-part review of all ten of the Chronicles of an Age of Darkness. For those after a fairly quick introduction to the series, I could do worse than point you towards these two summaries with a smattering of comment by Adrian Tchaikovsky. I also read between posts The Women and the Warlords, The Walrus and the Warwolf and The Wicked and the Witless, but there wasn't the time or impetus for a post on them.

I don't have any new comments on Cook here, or anything much I'd like to add to the linked material. The main thing I would stress about Wishtone, Wazir and Worshippers is that they are set in contrast one to another. Wishstone and Wazir we will treat as one for these purposes, set against Worshippers.

To it: Wishstone is set on the baking, fertile remote island of Untulchilamon (which produces many exotic commodities), far from the centre of power of its nominal imperial ruler; Worshippers is set in Dalar Ken Halvar, city of the Silver Emperor - a notably dusty and infertile place with near-exhausted silver mines. Wishstone's protagonist is the callow youth Chegory Guy, an Ebrell Islander. Worshippers' is Asodo Hatch, a middle-aged man of some experience (thanks to the Combat College, experience and systematised knowledge barely any on the planet could hope to match), and a Frangoni - who have been pitted against Ebrell Islanders on the continent of Parengarenga. Chegory Guy struggles to unite with the object of his affections; Asodo Hatch has a wife, several children - and, in time, a mistress. 

Untulchilamon in Wishstone contains the city of Injiltaprajura, beneath which is the ruined spaceship-arcology of the Below; this is unmapped and poorly understood by those in the city above. Dalar Ken Halvar in Worshippers is home to the Combat College, of the same space-faring civilisation as the Below but intact, utterly familiar to many of the main characters and working sort-of as intended. This extends to the alien entities and machine-minds of the Below and the Combat College. 

Wishstone sees a constant confusion, a chaos of multiple moving parts, deceptions, miscommunications, bluffs, feints and ploys (something added to by the many metatextual elements). It's not that clear what Chegory Guy or Justine Thrug (who we may as well treat as the protagonist of Wazir) actually have to do to come out on top. Worshippers sees Asodo Hatch face off against Lupus Lon Oliver to become Instructor of the Combat College; if he can accomplish this - by fair means or foul - he will become basically secure. There's no ships arriving in harbour with parties of questing heroes or false government officials: his opponents are there and effectively obvious from the start.

At the end of Wazir Justina Thrug and many of the main characters leave Untulchilamon. This is sad - exile and flight from somewhere you once had power, from a bustling and prosperous city in the face of imperial power (as wielded by Ardarch III, Mutilator of Yestron - who sounds charming). But Untulchilamon was always a bit crazy - it could be actively unpleasant if you were an Ebrell Islander  - and Justina didn't really manage to improve the place much. Why not try elsewhere? Asodo Hatch wins the day in Worshippers beating out his opponents in the Combat College, subduing the city, curing his wife and even squaring the AI that has somehow maintained the Combat College through the millennia. But he has given up so much to reach that point that exile could well seem the preferable option - at least, for Hatch personally. 

Just as all that suggests, Worshippers may be the bitterest of the Chronicles since Wizards. In some ways, I'm surprised there weren't more Chronicles in this tone. But taking Wishstone and Worshippers together, we have Cook asking us something like this: Comic Defeat or Tragic Victory. The answer is not an easy one.

As in the previous review, I was interested to read Worshippers by reason of comparison with the setting and backstory of Punth: A Primer. Having done so - they're not as similar as all that. The remnant of a space-faring civilisation warps a society to their will in both, but the Worshippers-analog events in Punth happened centuries (perhaps most or all of a millennium) before the Primer was written. It's also noteworthy that the Combat College is following its original purpose  fairly closely, unlike whatever the Qryth are doing by this stage. 

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The Rage of Party: How Whig Versus Tory Made Modern Britain, George Owers, 2025

A quite recent book detailing English politics in the last decades of the seventeenth century and the first few of the eighteenth. Some of the highlights were familiar (Titus Oates, Marlborough, The Favourite, the Monmouth Rebellion) as were the broad strokes of nonconformist and Anglican, Jacobite and Hanoverian. But frequently histories dance over all this promptly in time for Queen Anne to die or concentrate on the War of the Spanish Succession, so view of the period firmly addressing domestic politics is welcome.

A warning: this is high-middlebrow history, though it still will occasionally drop in a sensationalist line one-line paragraph to round off a chapter or feel it has to define a halberd or refers to 'Carry-On Antics'. Further, whatever the merits of The Rage of Party, it still is making a bid for Relevance, with the introduction discussing the migration of Palatine Germans to England and the Tory bid to end Marlborough's 'Forever War' in Europe (and beyond) set against Whig vows of undying support for their Dutch and German allies. 

But, importantly, it doesn't get stuck in this mode. Whig and Tory swap roles as Optimate and Populare, but this maps poorly onto the present - and, more to the point, Owers provides a goodly number of instances where both sides employ both modes (or are made up of both types, in varying proportions). Other elements feel contemporary without very direct parallels having to be drawn: Defoe's Shortest Way with Dissenters is received as both a genuine and ugly attack on nonconformists and a piece of satire. Addison's Cato is warmly welcomed by both Whig and Tory, and plays to packed and hearty crowds applauding different sections, despite being from the pen of a committed Whig. An assassination attempt is made on Robert Harley, the Earl of Oxford and Tory Chief Minister via a rigged parcel - the Bandbox Plot, 1712 - and because it is privately thwarted, is regarded as a hoax (Jonathan Swift was there, and his private correspondence certainly suggests that it was real, and he was worried). As some of those names suggest, there is a flowering of literary patronage in the period.

The element that gets stressed - rightly - is religion. For all that an acquaintance with the Vicar of Bray will help, The Rage of Party will take you painstakingly through Occasional Conformity Bills and Tackers. The fame of Henry Sacheverell ought to be far better known, as a marker of the power of religion and the strange contortions of popularity and fame. 

I've enjoyed The Rage of Party for it's own sake, but it clearly has a bearing on The Rest of All Possible Worlds. Certainly, Malmery-as-written is fevered by the Rage of Party and hasn't blossomed to what it could be. Religion is less stressed by TRoAPW than it might be, for all that The Majestic Vision has been outlined, as have the Schools of Calliste that Teach It. While the Schools will have their political influence and effects, I suspect that politics in TRoAPW should foreground magical debates over religious ones. 'How dare you tax us so heavily to pay for more mages!' 'The systematic creation of mages divorced from their customary state will result in a tyrannical ruling caste of sorcerer-kings!' 'Magic should be for the people, not the Lords!'

Also, A Tale of A Tub is the equivalent of a Substack composed of equal parts political ranting and esoteric vignettes.

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In addition to diving into the riddle-games and vasty imagery of Solomon and Saturn, here's an essay on Carolingian Angelology, in which the ranks of the saints blend into the ranks of the angels. There's an obviously fantastical image there, though I wasn't expecting the use of the angelic hierarchy as a tool by the Emperor and the Episcopate. I'd certainly heard of folk saints and Guinefort the Holy Greyhound and so forth, but I'd taken it that the proper replacement was an approved sacred virgin or apostle or something - to say nothing of 'Angels in the guise of Martyrs'.

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I read (and approved of) Queen Mab's Palace, as well as several rather different forms of space travel.

...and speaking of Medieval space travel, this post somewhat resembles my own Faufreluches, categorising and cataloguing the Dying Earth subgenre. You will likely want to pick holes in some of it, though a line between The Night Land and Viriconium is sensible. One question being: Is Yoon-Suin Dying Earth? Certainly, Viriconium and The Book of the New Sun are in its Appendix N. But I'd argue that there is a mild but telling difference between a world where deeds and actions will be swallowed by the death of all (and many deeds and actions have already gone before) and a world where all deeds and actions will be swallowed by growth and fecundity and the weight of a thousand cycles of this in ages past.  

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The Troy Book of John Lydgate, partially employed in my last post also has a long section on armour as the Trojans arm for battle: Book III, line 40 or so onwards.

W[h]ere alle þe worþi noble werriours 

Of Troye toun to-gydre assemblid be, 

And many oþer to be-holde and se 

Þe famus knyȝtes arme hem in þat place.

And some of hem gan ful streite lace

Her doublettis made of lyne cloth,

A certeyn fold þat a-boute hem goth;

And some also dempte most surest

To armen hem for bataille of arest,

And dide on firste, aftir her desires,

Sabatouns, grevis, cusschewis, and voideris—

A peire breke, aldirfirst, of maille;

And some þer wer eke þat nolde faille

To han of maille eke a peir[e] bras,

And þer-with-al, as þe custom was,

A peir Gussetis on a petycote,

Garnyssched with gold vp on-to the þrote,

A paunce of plate, whiche of þe silf be-hinde

Was schet and clos, and þer-on, as I finde,

Enviroun was a bordure of smal maille. 

Like Chaucer, his near-contemporary, try reading it aloud (treat yogh - ȝ - as Y and thorn - þ - as Th: Þe famus knyȝtes arme hem in þat place -> The famous knights arm them in that place). 

So we see armour: 'Sabatons, greaves, cuisses and voiders'; a pair of breeches, made of chainmail. 

Choices of armour vary:

some wold armyd be more liȝt

In þikke Iackys curid with satyn;  

'rather be clad in a thick jack cured with satin'.

As do choices of weapons:

To welde hym wel, whan þat he schal fiȝt.

And some wiln han a target or a spere,

And some a pavis, his body for to were,

And some a targe, makyd strong to laste;

And some wil haue dartes for to caste,

Some a pollex, heueded of fyn stele....

A target shield, a spear, a pavise, darts, poleaxes..... 

And some a swerd his enemy for to mete.

And some wil haue a bow for to schete,

Somme an arblast, to stonden out a-syde;

And some on fote and some for to ride

Arraie hem silf, her fomen for to assaile;

Lydgate has no special knowledge of arms and armour, and openly proclaims it, suggesting that you may correct it as you prefer. This is not a technique likely to impress your PhD supervisor, but it's honest and interesting here.

I haue no konnyng euery þing to telle,

And vn-to ȝow it were to long to dwelle—

Where I faile, ȝe mote haue me excusid;

For in swiche crafte I am litel vsid,

And ignoraunce doþe my penne lette,

In her ordre my termys for to sette.

And oft chaungeth swiche harneis & devis;

And ȝe þat ben þer-in experte & wys,

Disdeyneth nat þat I speke in þis place

Of her armyng: for al is in ȝour grace,

Riȝt at ȝour luste to correcte euerydel.

An abridged and annotated version of the Troy Book is here; the arms and armour segment above is here.

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Khartoum, dir. Basil Dearden, 1966

This is not a very good film, while being a lavishly-funded epic; bad for different reasons than B-Movie blood and guts. It details the 1884-85 siege of Khartoum, and the conflict between General Gordon (Chinese Gordon, Gordon of Khartoum) and the religious leader Muhammad Ahmad bin Abdullah bin Fahal, known as the Mahdi. I've made no focused study of Gordon, but had encountered some of his life, his intransigence, his drive and notable Christian faith. Even setting aside his spectacular death, I suspect that the biographers would be making hay of him in any event. Obviously, do some reading of your own on the Mahdist War. (You may find a detailed summary of the film here).

To get one thing out of the way first: Laurence Olivier plays the Mahdi in brownface, adopting a silly high-pitched accent. This look unnatural against everybody else and doesn't work very well, but otherwise isn't that interesting (other than that it's a real contrast with more contemporary portrayals of Islamic revolts, and for every nineteen reviews that fulminate against it, you can find one that quite likes Olivier).

Gordon is played by Charlton Heston, with what I think is something of a cowboy affect. His defence of Khartoum has a touch of 'defend the frontier town' about it - though the film is quite clear that Khartoum is an old city, with a mixed population of Sudanese, Egyptians and Europeans. He is introduced on a train, which feels a rather Western touch (if without any Colonel Mortimer shenanigans) and later rides out alone into the desert to confront the Mahdi before the siege begins. His personal bravery, strict moral code and quiet defiance of Gladstone et al adds to this. But maybe I'm just reading back from an actor's biography. (Though actually, a Western transplanted to the Sudan might be interesting...)

The film (shot in Panavision) looks a bit sad in places. There's some good wide scenes of battle and fury and armies, though often there's a sad-looking insert with a backdrop for Charlton Heston; these scream 'Charlton didn't want to sit around in the desert'. The soundtrack is often quite what you'd expect, though there's a quote from 'Highland Laddie' that works as a sort of 'Anthem for Doomed Youth' with its contrast of youthly vigour and splendour - and a doomed expedition. To say nothing of the Scottish connection between 'Highland Laddie' and Gordon (as in Highlanders) himself.

The elephant in the room is Lawrence of Arabia, the dialogue of which references Gordon directly. They're trying to capture some of the same magic, but it's not as spectacular, not as impassioned. It lines up very nicely in some ways: the imperial ambitions, the desert war in an Islamic culture, the driven and eccentric protagonist clashing with his political masters. Gladstone and his ministers make multiple appearances, unlike in Lawrence - which drains something from the desert setting, and spells things out in a way that Lawrence didn't do so bluntly with Allenby and Dryden; although in fairness, the tangle of British involvement in the Sudan probably required a little more background for audiences than the First World War. Further, Gordon as an experienced colonial administrator and general can't well be compared to the callow lieutenant Lawrence. The brief, clumsy narration at the start of Khartoum is far vaguer and emptier than the reflections on Lawrence's life at his funeral. 

But there are the lines of a better story, with an often clumsy execution. Gordon's ruthless pre-film efforts to eliminate slave trade and bring peace to the Sudan have produced death and disruption, as the Mahdi notes - and cost him local allies. In theory, this ought to be a contrast of similar personalities: two messianic, highly successful, fanatical warlords, and how their respective cultures treat them. What if both sides had a Lawrence? What if both sides had a Kwasitz Haderach?  

(In theory, this is Feyd-Ruatha. But he's riding on the Baron's coat-tails - and while the Dennis Villeneuve film nods at his popularity, the freakiness of the arena scene, his blatant viciousness and the Nuremburg-like processions distract from this and imply something different with the propaganda spectacles. His moments of military competence are there, but it's never clear that he could found an empire or play the game of imperial politics. Cf. this assessment.)

But, alas, Heston's Gordon is somewhat too heroic; his popularity with the British public is never quite apparent enough to contrast with the Mahdi's dervishes and his clashes with Gladstone's representatives and the delays of Wolsey's forces don't have a good contrast in the Mahdi's ranks. Admittedly, this would have made the film longer and more complex, but if you are going to set yourself up as another Lawrence, such a thing is inevitable. 

Anyway, don't expect to be amazed - but do contemplate giving it a watch. Per one interview, it's a guilty pleasure of Martin Scorcese. And it was enough to make me write all that.