jsmithborne's review
4.0
I really liked these short stories all set in the same world, connected loosely to the Studium. Lots of exploration of academics, power, relationships. Very male-centric--don't pick this up if you want lots of complex female characters. I didn't read the essays about weapons, armor, and castles (I think that's what they were about)--they were interesting for essays about war stuff, but not what I was shopping for, as it were.
wunder's review
1.0
I'm 2/3 of the way through and I'm done. Good craft, but the stories wander and don't resolve, which could be OK, but it doesn't pay off this time.
Now let's talk about the treatment of women. So far, we have two female characters, both exploited and murdered.
One is an unnamed prostitute who is charmed, raped, and has her life force stolen. There is a touching afterword where she dies a year later. Want to make this story better? Choose one of the novices from the Studium as a source. Show some life-long pain for the person who did this because they raped an innocent boy. But it is a woman, so not a big deal.
Next is a young noblewoman, named, whose skin is used to make parchment for spells.
I had a novel by K. J. Parker on my to-read list, but it isn't on my list now.
Now let's talk about the treatment of women. So far, we have two female characters, both exploited and murdered.
One is an unnamed prostitute who is charmed, raped, and has her life force stolen. There is a touching afterword where she dies a year later. Want to make this story better? Choose one of the novices from the Studium as a source. Show some life-long pain for the person who did this because they raped an innocent boy. But it is a woman, so not a big deal.
Next is a young noblewoman, named, whose skin is used to make parchment for spells.
I had a novel by K. J. Parker on my to-read list, but it isn't on my list now.
shewasonlyevie's review
5.0
Aptly named collection as they feel both academic and like exercises, story and essay alike. Parker had this incredible ability to make mundanity compelling. Standouts among this collection, for me, are “A Small Price to Pay for Birdsong”, “Purple and Black”, “On Sieges”, “One Little Room an Everywhere”, and “The Sun and I”.
Individual ratings...
01. A Small Price to Pay for Birdsong: 4.5
02. A Rich, Full Week: 4
03. Amor Vincit Omnia: 4
04. On Sieges: 4.5
05. Let Maps to Others: 3.5
06. A Room with a View: 4
07. Cutting Edge Technology: 4
08. Illuminated: 4
09. Purple and Black: 4.5
10. Rich Men's Skins: A Social History of Armour: 4
11. The Sun and I: 5
12. One Little Room an Everywhere: 5
13. Blue and Gold: 4
Individual ratings...
01. A Small Price to Pay for Birdsong: 4.5
02. A Rich, Full Week: 4
03. Amor Vincit Omnia: 4
04. On Sieges: 4.5
05. Let Maps to Others: 3.5
06. A Room with a View: 4
07. Cutting Edge Technology: 4
08. Illuminated: 4
09. Purple and Black: 4.5
10. Rich Men's Skins: A Social History of Armour: 4
11. The Sun and I: 5
12. One Little Room an Everywhere: 5
13. Blue and Gold: 4
metaphorosis's review
4.0
Metaphorosis Reviews
3.5 stars
I've noted before that K.J. Parker is a formulaic writer. He approaches each story with almost exactly the same blend of irony, fatalism, and humor. All his stories and novels have the same general feel. He gets away with it because it's an effective formula, and because there's just enough that's new to maintain our interest. He also introduces substantial and thorough background information.
This collection contains the first non-fiction I've seen from Parker - detailed essays on siegecraft, armor, and weaponry. They echo the detail that comes through in his stories, and confirm that Parker has dug deeply into his topics; he's not just looking things up on Wikipedia.
The stories work, in my view, better than the novels, because they provided more variability in setups and characters. The tone is consistent, but the scenery is more interesting. We also get some insight into the fairly vague magic system Parker has used in several pieces, and into the geography of Parker's vague shared world.
It's a bit of a mystery to me why I keep coming back to Parker, considering the criticisms above, but the fact is that while he is following a formula, he's following it really well. I'd wish for a lot more variation in tone, but the rest of the stories and characters is compelling and well constructed. One problem in reviewing an anthology, unfortunately, is that the stories all run together. Because of the flat tone, no one story is particularly memorable. That said, my favorites were:
3.5 stars
I've noted before that K.J. Parker is a formulaic writer. He approaches each story with almost exactly the same blend of irony, fatalism, and humor. All his stories and novels have the same general feel. He gets away with it because it's an effective formula, and because there's just enough that's new to maintain our interest. He also introduces substantial and thorough background information.
This collection contains the first non-fiction I've seen from Parker - detailed essays on siegecraft, armor, and weaponry. They echo the detail that comes through in his stories, and confirm that Parker has dug deeply into his topics; he's not just looking things up on Wikipedia.
The stories work, in my view, better than the novels, because they provided more variability in setups and characters. The tone is consistent, but the scenery is more interesting. We also get some insight into the fairly vague magic system Parker has used in several pieces, and into the geography of Parker's vague shared world.
It's a bit of a mystery to me why I keep coming back to Parker, considering the criticisms above, but the fact is that while he is following a formula, he's following it really well. I'd wish for a lot more variation in tone, but the rest of the stories and characters is compelling and well constructed. One problem in reviewing an anthology, unfortunately, is that the stories all run together. Because of the flat tone, no one story is particularly memorable. That said, my favorites were:
- A Small Price to Pay for Birdsong - largely because it deals with music, which is a bit of a change for Parker.
- Amor Vincit Omnia - because it digs a little deeper into the magic system the stories follow.
- The Sun and I - the most fully developed characters of the set, and an interesting look at the backstory to some of the other pieces.
adamantium's review
5.0
Quite a collection of scoundrels & scholars, often in the same man.
Can't get enough Parker lately. After this I'm very keen to get to some of his novels--I hope they're as funny, bleak, and human as his short stories.
Can't get enough Parker lately. After this I'm very keen to get to some of his novels--I hope they're as funny, bleak, and human as his short stories.
joaoeira's review
5.0
ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED AT FANTASY LITERATURE
K.J. Parker is a relatively recent discovery of mine, and she (?) is quickly becoming one of my favorite authors. Known for her dry cynicism, understated humor, and intriguing explorations of morality, her stories are set in a historically informed world fleshed out with Parker’s rich historical knowledge.
Collected here in her first anthology, Academic Exercises, her short fiction has so far won two World Fantasy Awards for her novellas “A Small Price to Pay for Birdsong” and “Let Maps to Others.” Included in this anthology are also three non-fiction essays on historical subjects such as siege warfare, and the history of swords, and armor.
K.J. Parker’s short fiction differs from her longer works in that they frequently feature magical elements, something that her longer works largely stay away from. Although some elements from her longer works are referenced in her short work, the link between them is tenuous and contradictory, making you wonder just how much is actually shared between them. I won’t comment on every story included in this collection and will instead offer a short description and appraisal of the ones that I found most interesting. Most of the stories included here can be found online at Subterranean Online, and at the end of this piece you will find the full table of contents, with links to where you can read them, when available.
Opening up the collection, “A Small Price to Pay for Birdsong,” one of her award-winning novellas, explores an interesting moral dilemma: If you could claim a masterpiece as your own without anyone finding out about it, would you do it? In his last hours alive, a genius composer, who has been sentenced to death, is visited in his cell by his professor, who, while being an expert in musical theory, is unable to compose any good music. The student has an unfinished Concerto, one that could very well be one of his best yet, but he doesn’t want to finish it and the professor is left with an unfinished masterpiece in his hands. The story develops in a remarkable way, but it ends rather abruptly in a way that I did not find very satisfying.
How do you kill someone who can’t be killed? In “Amor Vincit Omnia,” reports begin appearing of someone with the ability (the name given to the ability to perform magic) who has escaped unharmed from every attempt to have him killed. The Studium, the place where those with the ability study their craft, decides that these reports are worth investigating, since they all seem to point in the same direction: Someone has cracked the secret to Lorica, a theoretically possible, but almost impossible to perform, spell that imbues its wearer with an impenetrable defensive shield. It is the job of the main character then to confirm if Lorica has indeed been achieved, and if so, to kill this person. It’s an intelligent and suspenseful story, and it has an entirely satisfying, and incredibly clever, ending that made me grin like a madman when it happened.
“On Sieges” is the first non-fiction essay in the collection, out of three, and the one I most enjoyed. Siege warfare has always been an interest of mine and Parker is able to make the subject come alive with her words. It begins with how war was an important incentive for early civilizations to begin building cities, and ends up exploring how siege warfare was conducted throughout the ages. I wonder if there is a non-fiction book on warfare somewhere in K.J. Parker’s future. It would certainly be a worthwhile read.
My favorite story of the lot, and apparently Parker’s first novella, Purple and Black is told in a series of military dispatches between two friends, one the emperor and the other a governor tasked with securing the frontier. While you might think the structure constraints of telling a story through military dispatches would make impossible the telling of an interesting and compelling story, Parker is a seasoned enough writer to not only work around those constraints, but to thrive on them. As usual with her stories, several ethical issues are raised in a way that weaves them with the story at hand and its climax, namely the corrupting nature of power.
Imagine yourself with a group of friends, out of money and in desperate need of it. Assume for the sake of it that being an ethical person isn’t of much interest to you. What schemes would you arrange with them to get yourselves out of that predicament? How about creating a new religion? It’s an absurd idea but Parker’s story “The Sun and I” is perhaps the most important story in this collection for long-time K.J. Parker readers because this newly invented religion is none other than The Invincible Sun, a religious system which has been featured in many of her longer works.
I would be surprised if Academic Exercises doesn’t end up winning some awards. The collection features some of the most intriguing short fiction out there, by one of the most original voices being published today, and, fortunately, there is no indication that K.J. Parker’s output will be diminishing any time soon. Academic Exercises has that ‘unputdownable’ quality to it that made me want to read it even when I probably should have been doing something else, and its tiny faults don’t detract anything from its ingenious whole. A worthwhile read, even for readers who are new to K.J. Parker’s work.
K.J. Parker is a relatively recent discovery of mine, and she (?) is quickly becoming one of my favorite authors. Known for her dry cynicism, understated humor, and intriguing explorations of morality, her stories are set in a historically informed world fleshed out with Parker’s rich historical knowledge.
Collected here in her first anthology, Academic Exercises, her short fiction has so far won two World Fantasy Awards for her novellas “A Small Price to Pay for Birdsong” and “Let Maps to Others.” Included in this anthology are also three non-fiction essays on historical subjects such as siege warfare, and the history of swords, and armor.
K.J. Parker’s short fiction differs from her longer works in that they frequently feature magical elements, something that her longer works largely stay away from. Although some elements from her longer works are referenced in her short work, the link between them is tenuous and contradictory, making you wonder just how much is actually shared between them. I won’t comment on every story included in this collection and will instead offer a short description and appraisal of the ones that I found most interesting. Most of the stories included here can be found online at Subterranean Online, and at the end of this piece you will find the full table of contents, with links to where you can read them, when available.
Opening up the collection, “A Small Price to Pay for Birdsong,” one of her award-winning novellas, explores an interesting moral dilemma: If you could claim a masterpiece as your own without anyone finding out about it, would you do it? In his last hours alive, a genius composer, who has been sentenced to death, is visited in his cell by his professor, who, while being an expert in musical theory, is unable to compose any good music. The student has an unfinished Concerto, one that could very well be one of his best yet, but he doesn’t want to finish it and the professor is left with an unfinished masterpiece in his hands. The story develops in a remarkable way, but it ends rather abruptly in a way that I did not find very satisfying.
How do you kill someone who can’t be killed? In “Amor Vincit Omnia,” reports begin appearing of someone with the ability (the name given to the ability to perform magic) who has escaped unharmed from every attempt to have him killed. The Studium, the place where those with the ability study their craft, decides that these reports are worth investigating, since they all seem to point in the same direction: Someone has cracked the secret to Lorica, a theoretically possible, but almost impossible to perform, spell that imbues its wearer with an impenetrable defensive shield. It is the job of the main character then to confirm if Lorica has indeed been achieved, and if so, to kill this person. It’s an intelligent and suspenseful story, and it has an entirely satisfying, and incredibly clever, ending that made me grin like a madman when it happened.
“On Sieges” is the first non-fiction essay in the collection, out of three, and the one I most enjoyed. Siege warfare has always been an interest of mine and Parker is able to make the subject come alive with her words. It begins with how war was an important incentive for early civilizations to begin building cities, and ends up exploring how siege warfare was conducted throughout the ages. I wonder if there is a non-fiction book on warfare somewhere in K.J. Parker’s future. It would certainly be a worthwhile read.
My favorite story of the lot, and apparently Parker’s first novella, Purple and Black is told in a series of military dispatches between two friends, one the emperor and the other a governor tasked with securing the frontier. While you might think the structure constraints of telling a story through military dispatches would make impossible the telling of an interesting and compelling story, Parker is a seasoned enough writer to not only work around those constraints, but to thrive on them. As usual with her stories, several ethical issues are raised in a way that weaves them with the story at hand and its climax, namely the corrupting nature of power.
Imagine yourself with a group of friends, out of money and in desperate need of it. Assume for the sake of it that being an ethical person isn’t of much interest to you. What schemes would you arrange with them to get yourselves out of that predicament? How about creating a new religion? It’s an absurd idea but Parker’s story “The Sun and I” is perhaps the most important story in this collection for long-time K.J. Parker readers because this newly invented religion is none other than The Invincible Sun, a religious system which has been featured in many of her longer works.
I would be surprised if Academic Exercises doesn’t end up winning some awards. The collection features some of the most intriguing short fiction out there, by one of the most original voices being published today, and, fortunately, there is no indication that K.J. Parker’s output will be diminishing any time soon. Academic Exercises has that ‘unputdownable’ quality to it that made me want to read it even when I probably should have been doing something else, and its tiny faults don’t detract anything from its ingenious whole. A worthwhile read, even for readers who are new to K.J. Parker’s work.
moriaine's review
challenging
reflective
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.5
tempse's review
adventurous
dark
funny
informative
mysterious
reflective
sad
fast-paced
4.0
What an interesting collection of short stories! Some of them are intricate and comparatively long, others are concise and more straightforward. Some are fantastic stories, others are historical treatises on aspects of warfare. Most of the stories are set in more or less the same world, but they are all unique in terms of setting, themes, and plot.
What all the stories have in common, however, is Parker's characteristically sharp prose, which grabs the reader's attention from beginning to end. For a Parker fan like myself, it's also interesting to see how he develops certain themes, world elements, and aspects of his magic system in Academic Exercises, which he also uses throughout his other works.
I won't comment on every single story in Academic Exercises, but I do want to highlight six of them:
Hands down, my favorite stories in the collection are "Purple and Black" (5 stars), "Blue and Gold" (5 stars), and "A Small Price to Pay for Birdsong" (4.5 stars). They are all perfect examples of Parker's remarkable ability to tell a compelling story with brilliant characters in just a few pages.
The other set of notable entries is "On Sieges," "Cutting Edge Technology," and "Rich Men's Skin." These are short and interesting historical overviews of the development of siege technology/tactics, sword making/fighting, and armor making, respectively, set in our real world.
Academic Exercises contains some absolutely incredible 5-star stories, but also some entries that are closer to 3.5 stars for me. On average, this entertaining collection was a solid 4-star read.
What all the stories have in common, however, is Parker's characteristically sharp prose, which grabs the reader's attention from beginning to end. For a Parker fan like myself, it's also interesting to see how he develops certain themes, world elements, and aspects of his magic system in Academic Exercises, which he also uses throughout his other works.
I won't comment on every single story in Academic Exercises, but I do want to highlight six of them:
Hands down, my favorite stories in the collection are "Purple and Black" (5 stars), "Blue and Gold" (5 stars), and "A Small Price to Pay for Birdsong" (4.5 stars). They are all perfect examples of Parker's remarkable ability to tell a compelling story with brilliant characters in just a few pages.
The other set of notable entries is "On Sieges," "Cutting Edge Technology," and "Rich Men's Skin." These are short and interesting historical overviews of the development of siege technology/tactics, sword making/fighting, and armor making, respectively, set in our real world.
Academic Exercises contains some absolutely incredible 5-star stories, but also some entries that are closer to 3.5 stars for me. On average, this entertaining collection was a solid 4-star read.
wordfey's review
3.0
A brilliantly conceived and executed series of plots in a well-paced collection... in which there's pretty much just one male character, in one type of voice, repeated over and over again, sometimes in conversation with itself.
This is a satirical look at academia. One gets the sense that, in many places, the author is making fun of the fact that some of our written record is made of voices like the one he chose. But Parker/Holt's idea of academia as masculine and unvarying ultimately killed the book for me. As a caricature of academia, Parker's cynical, lazy elitists are only slightly less cringeworthy than the stereotypical nearsighted, tweed-and-bow-tie professor. And when you have all of your characters repeating tired tropes about women without variation for your entire book, when all of your female characters are demons or victims or useless or dead, when you make it literally biological that women get magic later in life--sorry, you've failed. I'm a medievalist by training and a classicist by subsequent study--I can tell you there are voices we fail to hear here, and that was the unfortunate choice of the author, not a reflection of history.
Now don't get me wrong: I gave this a decent amount of stars because the stories are entertaining, sometimes even surprising. But if character development matters to you, or you're an academic tired of certain tropes, it really isn't the collection for you.
This is a satirical look at academia. One gets the sense that, in many places, the author is making fun of the fact that some of our written record is made of voices like the one he chose. But Parker/Holt's idea of academia as masculine and unvarying ultimately killed the book for me. As a caricature of academia, Parker's cynical, lazy elitists are only slightly less cringeworthy than the stereotypical nearsighted, tweed-and-bow-tie professor. And when you have all of your characters repeating tired tropes about women without variation for your entire book, when all of your female characters are demons or victims or useless or dead, when you make it literally biological that women get magic later in life--sorry, you've failed. I'm a medievalist by training and a classicist by subsequent study--I can tell you there are voices we fail to hear here, and that was the unfortunate choice of the author, not a reflection of history.
Now don't get me wrong: I gave this a decent amount of stars because the stories are entertaining, sometimes even surprising. But if character development matters to you, or you're an academic tired of certain tropes, it really isn't the collection for you.
conradrader's review
challenging
informative
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
4.0