There is no going back for any of the characters in Evil for Evil, the second book of K. J. Parker’s Engineer Trilogy. Their world is coming apart and as the facades fall we gain insight into the men and women populating it. The war machine that the engineer, Vaatzes, is constructing -- with these people as the parts -- is coming together quickly and it will permanently alter everything.
Like its predecessor, Evil for Evil is a perspicuously written novel with a complicated story and complex characters. The politics of Mezentia, the manufacturing empire that dominates all the other nations, is brought to the fore. Also in the spotlight are the motivations of all the characters as they come to grips with a new power structure in their worlds.
Parker created complex characters in the first book of the series, Devices and Desires. They are characters with flaws, scars, doubts; people forced into difficult circumstances, often due to their own bad choices. We became interested in them all and the challenge for book two is to keep us interested and up the stakes for the characters. Challenge faced, challenge met.
There is Ziani Vaatzes, the engineer at the center of this storm. He was sentenced to death because he went beyond the engineering Specifications that are the gospel in Mezentia. But he escaped and set in motion a plan to be reunited with his family - a plan that will cost everyone around him dearly.
As he subtly manipulates events in Civitas Vadanis, the city of Duke Valens, he coldly distances himself from its people, preferring to think of them as savages. He grapples with the morality of the mechanism he manufactures and takes a peek into his past. He begins to see with clarity what brought him to this path. He is also brought face to face with the fact that what he hopes to accomplish via his war may no longer be attainable.
A significant new character is introduced: the very odd Gace Daurenja. He enters the story innocently and becomes a major presence - in fact, he becomes a match for the great engineer. Daurenja has as much engineering knowledge as Vaatzes and is just as driven on his own special project. But he needs Vaatzes help to finish his project, just as Vaatzes is forced to tolerate Daurenja assistance. Their schemes will intersect, whether they like it or not.
Article comments
1 - Sherwood Botsford
I read the first volume. I'm halfway thorugh this one. I will not finish.
I've decided to stop reading it because I don't like any of the characters. All of them are blinded by love to the point of either deliberately doing evil, or at best failing to do their duty.
The characters present themselves as having no choice. Wrong. They are making choices. They are making bad choices. They are doing evil.
The world of EfE is unconvincing. Cities don't exist in isolation. In the first volume this wasn't central to the story. In this volume the whole notion of taking a capital city on the road is silly:
* Most people living in a medieval city walk to where they need to go. Lots of mentioning of streets too narrow for wagons. Where did all the wagons come from? Rural areas? Right. How many rural farms have more wagons than they would need to use to move their own people?
* Even in modern times, evacuating a city is non-trivial. In a society wehre everyone owns a car. Or two. Or three. Some people will stay behind out of stubbornness, or desire to loot, or ignorance, or to stay with one who is too ill to move, or...
* The notion that you can be hard to find when moving multiple thousands of people by horse and wagon is absurd. About as easy to hide a cattle drive. 20,000 people with reasonable stuff is 5000 wagons. (Typical density of American covered wagons on their trip west.) 5000 wagons at 50 feet per wagon (Figure 12-16 feet of wagon 6 foot space, 6 feet of horse, and 20 -30 feet to next wagon is 250,000 feet-- about 50 miles.
Put 5000 wagons along a road and you will know they have passed. By the time the end of the line passes (about 3-4 days) the road will be 6-8 inches deep in manure.
10,000 horses. Lot of hay. Ok. Horses are self feeding, but access to water is going to be a problem.
Now admittedly that 20,000 figure was a guess. Pericles' Athens was about 12,000 citizens and 20,000 slaves. But there were small towns for miles in every direction. I can't see a viable duchy at being less than that, not when you have almost no local industry.
2 - Gray Hunter
Interesting commentary. Thanks for reading - my review, at least.