A sprawling story on the shoulders of two young men.
Creative Staff
Story/Art: Yoshiki Tanaka
Translation/Adaptation: Daniel Huddleston
What They Say
“The Golden Brat” Reinhard von Lohengramm, a military prodigy and admiral of the Galactic Empire, has ambitions beyond protecting the borders or even defeating the Empire’s enemies. He seeks to overthrow the old order and become a truly absolute – yet benevolent – dictator. His rival, the humble Yang Wen-li of the Free Planets Alliance, wishes to preserve democracy even if he must sacrifice his political ideals to defeat the Empire. Their political and military battles play out over a galactic chessboard in an epic saga fifteen centuries in the making!
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
While the list of things that I never thought would get brought over to the English speaking market gets shorter and shorter, the Legend of Galactic Heroes novels were pretty much near the top of that list. While I’ve never seen past the first twenty-seven or so episodes of the anime from a couple of decades ago, I’ve long held a love of this property because it appeals to me in a way few other works do. But that’s only through watching the animation and not seeing the source material itself. With Haikasoru having picked up the first three novels with hopes of bringing over more from the ten volume run that ran between 1982 and 1987 for the main series, it’s definitely exciting. I’ve had the book since it came out but I’ll admit I was afraid to read it for quite a while, only digging into it this past month.
The premise behind it is sprawling and engaging as we’re introduced to an empire some thousand or so years into the future where mankind has been in space and expanding. With turmoil as one would expect, one man forced events to create the Galactic Empire that controls a huge amount of territory and billions upon billions of people. Along the way, events lead to a group that escaped through a difficult part of space and over the decades created and expanded the Free Planets Alliance, which the Empire only lists as rebels and nothing more. The two sides have grown and worked numerous wars over the years, skirmishes to large scale attacks, all while a small planet-state named the Dominion of Phezzan works as a kind of intermediary of sorts, playing both sides against each other to their own advantage and ensuring that the sprawling war continues on.
The book works some properly large scale battles here with tens of thousands of ships at play and millions of lives as dangerous plans are put into motion on both sides. This may make the book feel a little dry to some as it’s going over tactics and the impact of it but it’s the kind of material that’s rarely presented in general in science fiction as the scale of it is just impressive. It harkens back to the tales of old from Greece and Persia, which were of course exaggerated to a large degree with the numbers involved, but it has that feeling of armies moving in patterns with precision over the space of days and days to achieve the goals. That introduces its own strain for the troops and commanders as they work through it and I love the tension that it brings to life because of it. It may not drill down into the lower ranks to show how it is with them as it’s very top level focused, but that’s part of what keeps this surprisingly streamlined and engaging. I can imagine a modern version of this keeping us with stories of all manner of people mixed up in this war but I really appreciate that it doesn’t try to do that here because that’s not what the story is. For those kinds of tales, I’ll dig into a lot of Peter F. Hamilton, for example.
While the cast expands significantly as it progresses, often with people whose lives are churned through the machines of war, its primary focus is are on two young commanders that are moving up through the ranks thanks to their strategic genius and a whole lot of luck. They’re on opposite sides and become rivals early on quickly enough but each has their own goal. The Empire’s Reinhard von Lohengramm is looking to seek revenge for his sister being taken as a concubine of sorts for the Emperor, something that he sees as an inherent weakness in the Empire itself that has grown corrupt. Yang Wen-li is a laid back man of the Free Planets Alliance looking to stay alive long enough to retire but his quick thinking and ability to see what Reinhard von Lohengramm is up to ends up raising his status far more than he ever expected and that keeps him stuck in things more than he ever wanted. Their tales are told across multiple worlds and engagements as well as the wonderfully delightful navigation of politics and military hierarchy. It’s these elements, combined with the tactical aspects, that drives it so well for me even if it’s given something of a superficial view simply because of how many moving parts are involved.
Haikasoru’s presentation is one that works very well overall, though I’m sure that people can find certain sentences or structural moments to quibble about. A few lines here and there that read a little odd as part of a translation of a book that came out over thirty years ago is not something I’m going to get all in a tizzy about. Translator Daniel Huddleston does a solid job here in conveying the feel of each side and the different personalities of the characters, but as I said, there’s a bit of a dry element to the book because of Yoshiki Tanaka’s own style. This isn’t a series that digs into the look of rooms, ships, or landscapes. Or even characters to some degree. But it opens up the imagination more than enough to fill in the gaps and that in itself is exciting. Haikasory’s physical presentation is really nicely done as well with a good paper stock and some classic SF artwork material for the front cover that focuses on the ships rather than characters, which again works to help the imagination.
In Summary
While the anime is something that showed me just what could be done with the medium back in my earliest days of fandom in the late 1980’s, the novels may be what makes me a complete convert into it. I’ve been worried about digging into the novels because you never know how nostalgia for a property will play when faced with the source material itself, especially coming from 1982. Yoshiki Tanaka has a particular style to be sure and I think Haikasoru and Daniel Huddleston got it just right. This is a very strong opening chapter to a large galaxy of intrigue, war, and character motivations that are just starting to take shape and I’m really curious to see just how far Tanaka grows as a writer over the course of it. What we get here is familiar from what I’d seen in the anime, though that series took its own liberties to humanize the cast as one would expect for the medium, but it’s engaging to see the details and nuance of it all here and it leaves me craving a lot more of it.
Content Grade: A-
Packaging Grade: B+
Text/Translation Grade: B+
Age Rating: 13+
Released By: Haikasoru
Release Date: March 8th, 2016
MSRP: $15.99