Lightning in a Bottle 4: "The Last Trumpet's Call"

Author: Cold in Gardez
Featured story: "All the Mortal Remains" (Top Ranked, 08 December, 2014)
Least viewed story at that time: "The Last Trumpet's Call"
Completion: Fully read

We've got a longer fic this time, so let's jump right in with a running commentary of my initial thoughts and impressions.

(1) First off, a guideline: Never start your story with a description of the weather. If "a dark and stormy night" has taught us anything, it's that yes: darkness counts as "weather"

(2) So! Many! Commas! I do love the rich, flowery descriptions, but surely some of these sentences can be better structured or arranged.

(3) Author used a row of asterisks instead of the "horizontal ruler" that comes built-in to Fimfiction. Thank you! That divider is too hard to see and it's lame and broken and I hate it.

(4) Author correctly uses words like "inured", "lintel", "gawping", "rimes", "wan", and "rent". (Not that kind of rent. The other kind.) I approve.

(5) Wait a second. There's all this delicious description of the scenery, and yet I have no idea what the secondary character, Cirrus, even looks like. He's a pegasus. And... male. Probably. Either there was no description, or it wasn't strong or reinforced enough to stick in my mind.

(6)

“Good morning, sir. Can I help you?” Her voice was pleasant, but her ears were tilted away. Cautious.

Ooh, body language with the ears. Always appreciated.

(7) ...Good lord, she's got a staff sling? Those things could have easily been considered a war crime back in medieval days.

Now that that's out of the way...

Technical Issues

I'd like to point out the following paragraph from chapter one:

I had a speech for this. I'd spent hours practicing it, especially that first line. How did it go, again? Something about our unit? I stared at her, lost, while the speech I'd carefully crafted and rehearsed and agonized over fled from my mind in tatters. My heart began to race, and my tail lashed against the clouds behind my. My wings flared, ready to pull me away, to escape.

Emphasis, mine. Notice how the sentence either isn't finished, or includes the word "my" instead of "me"? That's a pretty glaring, basic error.

I draw attention to this because, for the life of me, it's the one and only technical error I could find in the entire story. I'm not exactly a professional proofreader myself, but if your story contains only one mistake noticeable on the first read through I think you can safely call that a victory.

Another paragraph from chapter 2:

There are a spring and a summer, short though they may be, and sometimes, in the autumn, when the vast groves of aspen have turned yellow and gold, and the air is filled with the buzz of arctic bees making the final rounds of the season, and the world smells like fallen leaves and cold water and loam, the borderlands don't seem so bad.

There's seven commas in this sentence. I counted. I'm almost certain this is a new record. As much as I love the tone and descriptiveness of the narration, there were more than a few sentences with awkward pauses. Either reword the description to improve flow, convert paired commas into em dashes, or break the sentence into two smaller sentences.

I blinked away tears as snowflakes melted on my eyes and then looked back at him.

It sounds as if the snowflakes themselves are "looking back at him". Adding a comma would fix this right up and remove all hint of ambiguity. Yeah, this defenitely needs an extra comma.

...What? Don't look at me like that. I'm not a hypocrite!

Style and Voice

Despite my prior whining, this story does far more right than it does wrong. The descriptions are rich and vibrant, giving me all the detail I need to imagine not only the scenery and the action but--most importantly--the characters. The story's greatest strength is how it shows us the various personal conflicts and relationships being put to the test by this extraordinary series of events. This story weaves back and forth between two perspectives: we hear the protagonist's tale of a fierce battle that had terrible consequences, but we also see him as he struggles to recount this story to the parents of his departed friend. Both threads play off each other quite well, and echo similar themes of doubt and helplessness despite being utterly different in tone and action. Surprisingly, the latter thread (set in a perfectly mundane dining room over a hot cup of beverage-equivalent) is easily the more gut wrenching of the two experiences. We genuinely believe that facing down a horrifying monster might be easier than having to speak with a grieving loved one. The parents go out of their way to be polite and compassionate, but that only makes things worse for the poor protagonist: He knows full well that he's ripping a bandage off a half-healed wound.

Another of the story's strengths has already been pointed out in the comments by one PresentPerfect: this story has excellent world building. It gives us all sorts of insights into what Gryphon society is like, about the interracial politics between them and ponies, and even a few marvelous tidbits about the day-to-day operations of the magnificent sky-city of Cloudsdale. I especially love how the city is described as a seemingly-chaotic cluster of micro-continents, with whole buildings and neighborhoods drifting gently past each other on their fluffy, buoyant clouds (We're even told that this sort of consantly-shifting layout would drive earth ponies completely bonkers... heh). It has same sort of charm I'd expect from Old Venice, with gondolas gliding through a vast network of ancient canals. Miraculously enough, the world building never becomes a dull, tedious info-dump. This is much, MUCH more difficult than it sounds. The facts mesh neatly with the deeply emotional inner monologue of our hesitant, guilt-ridden hero. The protagonist, a gryphon, is clearly a fish out of water. We constantly get the impression that although ponies are welcoming by nature, he'll never truly belong here. And his thoughts on how gryphons physically compare to pegasus (good sight versus good hearing, for example) hints at his desire to impress the locals and prove his worth. Is this a selfish show of pride, or a genuine attempt to overcome racial tension? Or perhaps a little of both...?

Strangely enough, I don't quite feel that "world building" is the key issue here. What really matters to me is the "everyday slice-of-life" element. Whenever we're told something about this or that society, it's always in the context of "what matters to the average pony on the street." It gave me a sense that the city was a living, breathing place. It felt real and believable, almost a character in its own right. Heck, the city has more characterization than the indigenous species they encounter later on in chapter three. I don't really care about the exact sociocultural explanation about why little pegasus children can often be seen playing in the streets late in the evening. What matters is that there are children playing in the street. Even now, as I edit this review, I can see them flitting back and forth, laughing and yelling as they chase each other through gardens and across walkways. The fact that the author was able to slip an info-dump completely under the radar is a testament to their writing ability.

Pacing and Plot

Don't get me wrong. There were a couple things that bothered me about this story.

First is the pacing. For some reason, chapter three is twice as long as the others. As much as I wanted to know how it all turned out (which is an impressive feat when you hint at the ending right in the story description) I found myself having to push myself through chapter three. This isn't a systemic flaw: all the other chapters engaged my imagination strongly enough that they practically flew by. So what's wrong with chapter three? I initially assumed it was just the length. Looking back, though, there's a... well, let's call it a deficiency in the quality of active plot events. I know this is a story about a soldier who somehow survived a terrible battle. But when it comes right down to it, the battle itself is the least important part of all. This is actually a story about having to deal with loss, consequences, and questions with no clear answers. So I suppose it may come as no surprise that the description of the actual battle didn't keep my attention as well as it should have. I've no idea why... I genuinely wanted to be worried about the characters. Instead, I felt like I already knew what was going to happen and I was just waiting for the hammer to drop. It doesn't exactly help that I was a little disappointed by the way in which Cirrus turned the tide of the battle: he works the weather. That's about it. we're told he had a strong effect on the battle without ever actually picking up a weapon... but we never get a vivid description of it. We're just told that it happened. That's not even how he dies: I half expected him to tax his weather powers to the breaking point and then die of a tragic heart attack afterwards. Actually, I don't think we ever find out for sure how he died. He just kind of charges over the trench, and that's the last we see of him. Feels a little weak to me.

On a more specific note, I had a hard time believing that Corvus would blame himself for what happened. You know those action movies about one lone hero fighting the enemy singlehoofedly and saving the day? Utter garbage! No professional soldier fights alone! At the very least, you need supporting fire to cover your advance. Even a master sniper--potentially the most independant and antisocial of all combatants--works as part of a close-knit team: the shooter and the spotter. If there's only one soldier left, it's because everything went to hell and the battle has been an abysmal failure. And in any case, Cirrus was given an order to retreat. I have a hard time feeling sympathy for a soldier that got killed because he disobeyed a direct order and charged in alone. That being said, it's not an impossible scenario: sometimes, soldiers disobey orders. Sometimes, people can't choose between what's right and what's reasonable. And in Corvus' case, sometimes people suffer terrible guilt for things that aren't their fault at all. I find this ending a great deal more satisfying when I assume that everybody let their personal feelings get in the way of rational thought. Now that's something I can feel plenty of sympathy for. Was that the author's intent? No idea. Maybe I'm reading too much into this.

I only have one more point to make... and I might be in the minority here, judging from the rest of the comments this story has earned. I was expecting the ending to deliver a much harder gut-punch. There, I said it. I was expecting Corvus to keep one little tidbit of information to himself that, were it known, would set Cirrus' actions in a completely different light. Whatever it is, it'd be something Corvus would take to his grave. Maybe he found out that Cirrus was actually a traitor who sold them out to the enemy. Or maybe he lost faith in his commander and led the refugees to safety, abandoning his comrade in arms as they fled from the windigoes. Maybe he's still out there somewhere, living off the land as a noble savage. What if orvus finds Cirrus on the battlefield, greivously wounded, and begs for a mercy killing rather than live forever as a cripple? Can Corvus end his misery? Or maybe Corvus secretly developed a huge gay crush on him, chose the worst possible moment to finally share his feelings, and things got super-awkward between them when he realized Cirrus was unwilling (or unable) to return those feelings. Cirrus, now distant and alienated, then avoided him by swapping duties with another routine patrol that went on to be the first casualty of the windigo's initial surprise attack. Now, Corvus will never know whether they could have been more than friends... and whether he'd still be alive if he hadn't driven him away.

I'll admit that a lot of those ideas sound pretty heavy handed. Maybe it's just me, but I can't help but think about how I would end this story if I were the one writing it. As it is, though, it's a little too predictable for my tastes. The story's description told me everything I needed to know: Corvus lost a dear friend and has to face his bereaved parents. It turns out that's pretty much exactly how it goes. He died a hero.

The Verdict

I feel like I've run roughshod over a story I actually quite like. If anything, the fact that I have so much to say about it should be taken as a definite positive. Even taking into account the overused commas and the stretched-out third chapter, this was an excellent read and I heartily recommend it to anyone. Just the quality of the narrative voice alone should be enough to impress: the characters, locations and events are all given a gratifying depth, and the fascinating world-building is delivered in a brilliant but subtle manner that never once detracts from the immersion of the story itself.

Don't tell anyone, but I started this review series for two main reasons: I wanted to see what horrible shlock was hiding in the basement of otherwise popular authors, and I wanted to uncover hidden gems that may have gone unnoticed simply beause they aren't grimdark clop-fests. I can say without a shadow of a doubt that this is the first gem I've found so far. Do yourself a favor and check it out.

On that note, I've selected my next review. The current top-featured fic is about a horny Fluttershy who starts indulging in exhibitionism. Yes, there's a "Futashy" version. When I sorted the author's story list by view count, I could only find one that wasn't tagged for sex.

I always knew this day would come.

Comments

[horizon]

The Last Trumpet's Call is indeed excellent. It scored second place in Equestria Daily's recent Outside Insight competition (which explains some of its focus: the competition theme was an outsider taking a look at pony culture). It's criminal that it could be his least-read story.

[Cold in Gardez]

Thank you for the insightful critique. I always felt this story had some serious flaws, the pacing definitely being one of them. It was also the first story of any length I've written in the first person -- some of the awkward narrative stems from my unfamiliarity with that perspective. I've gotten a little better with it, I think; All the Mortal Remains was written in first-person, and it is a better story.

There was a reason why the story ended the way it did -- it is essentially my argument in a long-running debate with the incomparable Eakin. Here's a little thing I wrote on my blog about it:

Today's little aside isn't about Afghanistan. It's about the war in South Sudan, thousands of miles away. I've been studying it for years; I wrote my masters thesis about it. Part of it is in The Last Trumpet's Call.

South Sudan won its independence from Sudan three years ago. It was a long and messy process, but it ended peacefully with a vote for independence. The whole world celebrated the creation of a new state in June 2011.

Six months later, the country was falling apart.

South Sudan is home to many ethnic groups, but the two dominant are the Nuer and the Dinka. They are pastoralists – they wander with their huge herds of cattle, tens of thousands of them, from fertile place to fertile place, following paths set down hundreds of years ago.

These two groups have always raided each other for cattle and children. In years past, when their most advanced weapons were spears or arrows, such raids caused little damage. They were an accepted part of the social fabric. But when the Colonial era ended, and modern weapons like AK-47s began to appear, the raids changed in character. What was once a periodic bit of bloodshed became a profound ethnic conflict that saw both sides calling for the extermination of the other.

There is a town in South Sudan called Pibor. In early 2012, there was a United Nations garrison set up there. The UN mission was chartered for humanitarian purposes, as peacekeepers. That is important to note – the UN soldiers had no authority to enforce the peace, only to monitor it. They were under no direction to use their weapons on anyone except to defend themselves.

A few months earlier, there was a raid. Dinkas attacked Nuers, killing hundreds and kidnapping dozens of children. It happens.

As always, the Nuer found their revenge. They gathered a huge army and marched toward Pibor. Thousands of Dinkas fled before them. Some tried to take shelter with the UN garrison.

The UN had no room for them – theirs was a tiny post, and thousands of Dinka refugees were in danger. The UN allowed in the few that could fit and closed their gates.

Outside, hundreds were slaughtered. Maybe a thousand. No one ever counted, but the trail of bodies led right up to the UN compound's gate. When asked why they didn't try to defend the Dinka, the UN commander said what was obvious: they were outnumbered and outgunned. If they had tried to fight the Nuer, they would have died too.

“Then you should have died,” was my first thought, hearing that. They were soldiers; they had an obligation to protect those civilians. The fact that they may – or would – have died in the process should not have made a difference.

Other, wiser people disagreed with me. I had a long debate with Eakin on the topic, and he took the perspective that the UN soldiers had no reason to waste their lives. It simply would have added more bodies to the toll.

I'm not sure what I believe anymore. I know I'm not confident in my old answer. I think, were I in their place, I might have fought, but I'm not sure I would have been right to do so. There have been many other times, here in Afghanistan, where I've been a part of something that I wasn't sure was right, or I didn't take a stand when I should have. There have also been times when I did take a stand, and later realized I was wrong.

That's what The Last Trumpet's Call is about, in part. Not about being right or wrong, but about not always having the luxury of knowing the difference.

They're not marked anywhere on the site, but I have a few stories that I unconsciously think of as "Afghanistan stories." They're the ones I wrote during various deployments, and they reflect on my experiences there, and my thoughts on war in general. The Carnivore's Prayer, Salvation, For Whom We Are Hungry, and The Last Trumpet's Call all belong to that group. They're definitely the darkest stories I've written, and not the most popular, but I think they all say something important.

Thank you, again, for the critique. It's rare to get one that goes beyond the banal "Loved it!" or "I though it was meh." I'd love to see your thoughts on For Whom We Are Hungry, my other contest entry (and the one I actually won, too).

That said, don't let me interrupt your search for hidden gems :)

[Midnight Rambler]

I draw attention to this because, for the life of me, it's the one and only technical error I could find in the entire story. I'm not exactly a professional proofreader myself, but if your story contains only one mistake noticeable on the first read through I think you can safely call that a victory.

I noticed another one, which stuck with me because it was in such a painfully prominent place:

Cirrus let out his breath. “Now,” he said, as calm as a windless day.

All hell broke lose.

I only have one more point to make... and I might be in the minority here, judging from the rest of the comments this story has earned. I was expecting the ending to deliver a much harder gut-punch.

I don't entirely agree. For me, the punch was in these two paragraphs, and it was plenty hard:

I could imagine it; reaching out to take the spear, standing by his side no matter what might come. Fighting until our last drop of blood spilled out and froze. Dying as we had lived, as comrades, as brothers. I imagined myself doing the right thing.

But I didn't. I fled like all the rest.

I can see where you're coming from, though. If pervasive, immersive atmosphere-building (always quiet, introspective, slightly gloomy) is Cold in Gardez's strong point, satisfying endings are his weak point. I remember reading Small-Town Charm, and more recently All the Mortal Remains, and thinking: yeah, great story, but where did it go? What did the characters learn? How did the events of the story change them?

In that light, I would have liked to see one last conversation between Corvus, Cumulus and Aurora – one that isn't a framing device for Corvus's story. The main point of this story, as I see it, is Corvus 'ripping a bandage off a half-healed wound' (well phrased, good sir) and the guilt he feels over that. (Compliments to Cold in Gardez for how masterfully he gets that across, by the way – it's spelled out clearly, yet at the same time it feels subtle and unintrusive. Excellent job.) So some more closure on that point would have been nice.

At any rate, great review. It definitely gave me some more insight about this story: the meaning behind Corvus's comments about gryphon eyesight, for example, as well as the level of skill that went into the worldbuilding aspect. Thank you for that!

2648342

They're not marked anywhere on the site, but I have a few stories that I unconsciously think of as "Afghanistan stories." They're the ones I wrote during various deployments, and they reflect on my experiences there, and my thoughts on war in general. The Carnivore's Prayer, Salvation, For Whom We Are Hungry, and The Last Trumpet's Call all belong to that group.

The themes of war are obvious enough in The Last Trumpet's Call, but I'm having a somewhat harder time seeing them in The Carnivore's Prayer. Care to elaborate?

(I haven't read Salvation or For Whom We Are Hungry – yet.)

[Inquisitor M]

2648776 Definitely have to agree with you about the ending. Perhaps the innate subtlety isn't to everyone's taste, but the raw power of the ending overcame my reservations about the pacing (very similar to Duncan's). Possibly the reason I didn't enjoy it quite as much as either of you is that I found the content, rather then the execution, of the worldbuilding rather dull. I've always found all that weather-pegasus stuff to be silly and slightly aggravating – which is, of course, entirely personal.

[Cold in Gardez]

2648776

Thanks for catching those errors -- damn things always slip through the cracks somehow.

I can see where you're coming from, though. If pervasive, immersive atmosphere-building (always quiet, introspective, slightly gloomy) is Cold in Gardez's strong point, satisfying endings are his weak point. I remember reading Small-Town Charm, and more recently All the Mortal Remains, and thinking: yeah, great story, but where did it go? What did the characters learn? How did the events of the story change them?

You're actually the second person to say something along those lines in just a few days; that my weakness as a writer is in my endings. That is probably the first time I've heard such an overarching critique of my writing, and I admit it's put me in a very thoughtful mood. I want to deny it -- every writer, of course, wants to deny criticism -- but when I look back at my stories, I see that I do have a tendency to write inconclusive, vague and somber outcomes for my characters. Part of that is deliberate, in that real life doesn't always offer clean endings, but I also have to be honest -- while stories should be relevant to real life, they need not mirror it entirely.

I'll have to think about this.

[DuncanR]

2648954
I'm only on for a second, so I have to keep this brief.

I rember reading about how Monty Python, in their early days, kept running into the same problem: their skits were excellent, but the punchline always felt weak to them. In response, they decided to fix it by simply leaving the punchline out completely... a character will simply turn to the screen with a shocked expression, and let the audience figure it out themselves. It worked well, and simply increased the surreal nature of the humor.

Don't feel too bad. Endings suck in general.

[Door Matt]

(1) First off, a guideline: Never start your story with a description of the weather.

Alternatively, if you are British like me, always start your story off with a description of the weather.

It's how we all start our small talk after all.

[Georg]

2649441 Yes, but British weather has a running theme (in increasing order of occurance).
Bloody hot.
Bloody wet
Bloody hot and wet
Bloody cold and wet
(censored) cold and wet

[Loganberry]

I found this via this post on The City of Doors blog, and a very interesting read it was too. This happens to be one of the (too) few Cold in Gardez stories I've read (since I read all the finalists in the "Outside Insight" contest) and my own difficulty with it was an entirely personal one. I'm just not a huge fan of militaristic gryphons -- there's a story by InquisitorM, Pride, that was a fellow contest finalist and also had a similar problem. Since I'm a less detailed and thorough reviewer than you, I succumb to the temptation to give marks out of ten, and The Last Trumpet's Call got an 8 from me. On simple quality, it would certainly have been a 9, but I mark on enjoyment rather than trying to be objective, and I couldn't really enjoy this story fully, however much I could (and did) admire it. As far as the ending goes, Cirrus's fate was the one I'd expected, but I really liked the very last line.