JANISSARIES

Rating:
Summary: Kidnapped by aliens!
Review: Upon opening the book and discovering the illustrations, I was prepared for a cheesy space opera, especially since the story starts with space aliens abducting a group of mercenaries from the jungles of Africa. However, from this rather pedestrian opening, the author has developed an intriguing story.

Set against a backdrop of an old and large galactic civilization that uses humans as administrators and servants, this is a story of survival. One race of aliens is illegally kidnapping humans and transporting them to a secret planet to cultivate periodic crops of an intoxicating drug. The mercenaries are dropped, with their equipment, into the middle of a human culture trapped in the middle ages. Can they gain the control and cooperation of the exisiting human society and produce the drugs required by the aliens? Should they even try? Can they use their twentieth century knowledge to help the humans prepare for the impending climatic shifts?

This book includes interesting analyses of military tactics from various periods of human history, together with a unique setting and a plausible science-fiction story. It also provides interesting food for thought, especially regarding the proper uses of military power and the use of advanced knowledge to improve the human condition.

Rating:
Summary: Great Book
Review: What the customer reviews and the synopsis on "Janissaries" book flap (not written by the authors) fail to explain, is the effect of the new culture (technology) transported to Tran every 400 years. When new ideas arrive, all the existing civilisations adapt to the new ways. After knights arrived in c.1200, the Celts and the Romans develop feudal knights and Republican knights respectively in the 800 years to present. The Roman knights are the elite of Tran, out-matching even the feudal Spanish civilisation evolved from the first knights (but the Celts have got longbows).

When the leader of the c.1980 mercs drills the Celt peasents in pike, he is able to destroy Roman knights, who have never been beaten. The Romans, who have never known defeat, fail to break and continue to smash themselves against the pikes.

This is the same process which happened in our world's history. When Europeans fought other civilisations with black powder weapons, they quickly adopted the technology like the Moguls and the muslims in the East Indies (Indonesia). Our history shows what happens if the Romans developed knights. The East Roman empire (what the 19th century historians called the Byzantine empire) had the elite cavalry of its time. The cataphracts of the East Romans were a match for the Latin knights until the knights' armour was made heavier to protect against the longbow (and the crossbow?).

Leigh Southern

Rating:
Summary: Jerry's World (Tran)
Review: What the customer reviews and the synopsis on "Janissaries" book flap (not written by the authors) fail to explain, is the effect of the new culture (technology) transported to Tran every 400 years. When new ideas arrive, all the existing civilisations adapt to the new ways. After knights arrived in c.1200, the Celts and the Romans develop feudal knights and Republican knights respectively in the 800 years to present. The Roman knights are the elite of Tran, out-matching even the feudal Spanish civilisation evolved from the first knights (but the Celts have got longbows).

When the leader of the c.1980 mercs drills the Celt peasents in pike, he is able to destroy Roman knights, who have never been beaten. The Romans, who have never known defeat, fail to break and continue to smash themselves against the pikes.

This is the same process which happened in our world's history. When Europeans fought other civilisations with black powder weapons, they quickly adopted the technology like the Moguls and the muslims in the East Indies (Indonesia). Our history shows what happens if the Romans developed knights. The East Roman empire (what the 19th century historians called the Byzantine empire) had the elite cavalry of its time. The cataphracts of the East Romans were a match for the Latin knights until the knights' armour was made heavier to protect against the longbow (and the crossbow?).

Leigh Southern