Wise Phuul

[Chaircat Meow]

Wise Phuul is the debut novel of this board's very own Roose Bolton's Pet Leech. I've just finished reading it on my kindle. It is definitely one of the more interesting fantasy books I've read in quite a while, primarily because of the world building. The setting, in so far as it mirrors real world history, is roughly WWI (or a bit before)* but takes place in the Viiminian Empire, a society built on necromancy. A dystopia, the Viiminian Empire is ruled by an elite caste of necromancers who control the dead and can't themselves be reanimated, while the rest of the population is liable for the 'death draft,' to supply the liches (zombies) to work the mines and factories. Anyway, yeah, good concepts well executed, imo.

I enjoyed the main character, Phuul, too, although the rest of the caste did not stand out particularly. The plot and story were good, and only got a bit ridiculous at the end where the Chancellor of the empire is killed by the protagonists with practically no consequences and it all gets brushed off.

So, this thread is about Wise Phuul and for people to post opinions/reviews.

If the author is around, and wants to answer questions, I'd be interested to know if he had any historical societies/empires that he used as inspiration for the Viiminian Empire and the northern principality.

*has a shout out to Sir Edward Grey at one point.

[The Marquis de Leech]

1 hour ago, Chaircat Meow said:

If the author is around, and wants to answer questions, I'd be interested to know if he had any historical societies/empires that he used as inspiration for the Viiminian Empire and the northern principality.

(Preamble - I'm a believer in Death of the Author, so take everything I say about the book with a mountain of salt. My interpretation is no more valid than anyone else's).

To answer your question: strictly speaking, no - I built the world off the implications of the magic system, and realised fairly early on that the Viiminian Empire would be centralised, bureaucratic, and decrepit. I also realised that it would also be strangely meritocratic (if all that matters is your ability to do necromancy, things like gender or sexuality won't matter). The North was designed to be everything the Empire isn't - in both a good and bad way.

In terms of real-world analogies, I think there's a bit of Imperial China in there (Imperial China, along with Ancient Egypt, represents humanity's longest lasting system of government, and the Viiminian Empire is nothing if not ancient). Perhaps also something of the late Brezhnev-era Soviet Union too (with even more corruption and decadence, but minus the revolutionary ideology). That shouldn't be pushed too far though.

Thanks very much for reading it!

[Rorshach]

I've read it, and enjoyed it. 

At the start, I didn't really like Teltö Phuul - he came across as too much of a wise guy. However, he grew on me during the novel, and was an interesting charachter. As Chaircat mentions, that's good, because the rest of the cast don't really stand out all that much. Perhaps because they all die off rather quickly

I was wondering as I read whether the Viiminan empire would have survived at all for the time it had existed - seems to me (at least, since the North is a stronger military power) that it should have crumbled earlier, rather than survive for centuries. Still, the setting felt new and interesting. 

 

[Chaircat Meow]

7 hours ago, Roose Boltons Pet Leech said:

(Preamble - I'm a believer in Death of the Author, so take everything I say about the book with a mountain of salt. My interpretation is no more valid than anyone else's).

To answer your question: strictly speaking, no - I built the world off the implications of the magic system, and realised fairly early on that the Viiminian Empire would be centralised, bureaucratic, and decrepit. I also realised that it would also be strangely meritocratic (if all that matters is your ability to do necromancy, things like gender or sexuality won't matter). The North was designed to be everything the Empire isn't - in both a good and bad way.

In terms of real-world analogies, I think there's a bit of Imperial China in there (Imperial China, along with Ancient Egypt, represents humanity's longest lasting system of government, and the Viiminian Empire is nothing if not ancient). Perhaps also something of the late Brezhnev-era Soviet Union too (with even more corruption and decadence, but minus the revolutionary ideology). That shouldn't be pushed too far though.

Thanks very much for reading it!

I see.

I have another question. Kind of about demographics.

I guess it must be the case that the Viiminian Empire can't get enough liches just by reanimating ordinaries once they die of natural causes, and so has to resort to the 'death draft' as well, killing a section of the population every year or so to generate new liches. So it must be the case that a corpse has a relatively small shelf life because otherwise the Empire would have a big pool of bodies to draw from (i.e. all those who've died without taking the Toast in the Empire's 8,000 year history). However, doesn't the 'death draft' shrink the Viiminian population and lead to major demographic decline? Or do you draft people who've already had children? We know that the Empire still has a bigger population than the North, although I suppose it is not clear if that was inclusive of liches or not.

Do you have a rough idea of how the Empire's population divides up percentage wise, i.e. % of necros, guildlings, ordinaries, liches, Mnomos ...

 

 

[Chaircat Meow]

Also, were Phuul's parents necromancers working at controlling liches in the ironworks/food factory, or were they guildlings or ordinaries? I assumed necros.

[The Marquis de Leech]

6 minutes ago, Chaircat Meow said:

I see.

I have another question. Kind of about demographics.

I guess it must be the case that the Viiminian Empire can't get enough liches just by reanimating ordinaries once they die of natural causes, and so has to resort to the 'death draft' as well, killing a section of the population every year or so to generate new liches. So it must be the case that a corpse has a relatively small shelf life because otherwise the Empire would have a big pool of bodies to draw from (i.e. all those who've died without taking the Toast in the Empire's 8,000 year history). However, doesn't the 'death draft' shrink the Viiminian population and lead to major demographic decline? Or do you draft people who've already had children? We know that the Empire still has a bigger population than the North, although I suppose it is not clear if that was inclusive of liches or not.

Do you have a rough idea of how the Empire's population divides up percentage wise, i.e. % of necros, guildlings, ordinaries, liches ...

There is a shelf life for liches (as seen in the Embassy, they do decompose), but I visualise the shelf life being somewhere in the region of twenty to thirty years.

The Death Draft is basically calculated in accordance with economic needs - the ordinaries can do labouring jobs too, of course, but unlike liches you need to pay and feed them. The Draft Boards would likely have enough demographic data to ensure a sustainable population; it wouldn't surprise me though if Imperial ordinaries tended to have bigger families (with support from the government), for fear of losing relatives further down the line. If there is indeed some level of compensation for Draftees, I can also envisage some very dark scenarios of gambling addicts and debtors selling family "under the table" as a last ditch way of escaping their difficulties.

I haven't done the population percentages, for fear of creating a non-sustainable demographic situation. Sometimes authors like to leave some room for arse-covering.

[The Marquis de Leech]

36 minutes ago, Chaircat Meow said:

Also, were Phuul's parents necromancers working at controlling liches in the ironworks/food factory, or were they guildlings or ordinaries? I assumed necros.

They're Necros. Otherwise Teltö's father would be much more forgiving of his "useless" son.

[MisterOJ]

So I am generally in favor of supporting board authors and just looked into buying this book, but...

I do all my reading on a Nook, and it appears the only ebook version available is for Kindle. Is that correct?

[The Marquis de Leech]

4 minutes ago, MisterOJ said:

So I am generally in favor of supporting board authors and just looked into buying this book, but...

I do all my reading on a Nook, and it appears the only ebook version available is for Kindle. Is that correct?

It's available for Nook here

[MisterOJ]

Okay, thanks. I just bought it.

And also, weird. When I went to the B&N website and searched for "Wise Phuul" it brought up a page that showed it only available as a paperback. It used to show all versions available. I wonder if their search has changed?

[peterbound]

I try to support the board.  I'll buy it. 

 

I'll be honest though, you're trying way too hard to be clever with the title, and the protagonist's name.  Is it a discworld/xanth thing you're trying to capitalize on?  Is it a satire/humor book?  I'm trying to understand what you are trying to do here before I sit down and read it.  

[Chaircat Meow]

10 hours ago, Rorshach said:

I've read it, and enjoyed it. 

At the start, I didn't really like Teltö Phuul - he came across as too much of a wise guy. However, he grew on me during the novel, and was an interesting charachter. As Chaircat mentions, that's good, because the rest of the cast don't really stand out all that much. Perhaps because they all die off rather quickly

I was wondering as I read whether the Viiminan empire would have survived at all for the time it had existed - seems to me (at least, since the North is a stronger military power) that it should have crumbled earlier, rather than survive for centuries. Still, the setting felt new and interesting. 

 

Well,  the north came off a lot stronger than the Empire in the first half of the book. However,  it got a bit more complicated when we learnt that the Empire is more populous than the north. I had assumed the opposite until then. 

It is not clear how strong the Empire is industrially. They seem to have a lot of factories and ironworks and so on,  but given the rationing the economy cannot be that strong unless they were going all out guns before butter which they weren't. The number of liches is going to give them a problem avoiding continuous downturns due to a lack of demand. Indeed,  if a lot of the workforce is dead and they are still short of food the agricultural sector is going to look a bit soviet. 

But the big problems seem to be the lack of the right gases to build the airships and possibly the low morale of the ordinaries. 

[Iskaral Pust]

Congrats RBPL on your debut novel.  I just bought a copy on Kindle.  I'll be back to tear you to shreds.

 

[Rorshach]

Btw, since the author is around, I was wondering if the Finnish-sounding names and umlauts is a tip of the hat to Tolkien? 

You may not be his biggest fan, but you're in the running

[KiDisaster]

Congratulations on your novel  

Any chance of an audio version in the future?

 

[The Marquis de Leech]

9 hours ago, peterbound said:

I try to support the board.  I'll buy it. 

I'll be honest though, you're trying way too hard to be clever with the title, and the protagonist's name.  Is it a discworld/xanth thing you're trying to capitalize on?  Is it a satire/humor book?  I'm trying to understand what you are trying to do here before I sit down and read it.  

No, it's not Discworld-style (at least I wasn't aiming for that), and apart from the title*, I can't recall any other puns. My two conscious literary influences were actually Clark Ashton Smith and Mervyn Peake (though people will probably spot others in there).

*The title refers to the book being about the protagonist's metaphorical journey - the name Phuul came first, and I figured out the title from there.    

[The Marquis de Leech]

7 hours ago, Rorshach said:

Btw, since the author is around, I was wondering if the Finnish-sounding names and umlauts is a tip of the hat to Tolkien? 

You may not be his biggest fan, but you're in the running

Indirectly. Finnish is a hobby of mine (why bother learning Quenya when you can learn the real thing?). I was even sufficiently geeky to introduce a Finnish-style vowel harmony system - a, o, and u never appear alongside ä. ö. or y in Imperial names (and vice versa, though Viiminian y is not pronounced like Finnish y). Oym could only be a Northern name. 

[The Marquis de Leech]

As for the comparative strengths of the Empire and the North - the Empire has one massive advantage over the North, namely the universal power to raise the dead and turn them against you. With that sort of ability, I had to devise areas of Northern superiority to keep the North viable.

The rationing is mostly an issue of trying to suppress domestic demand even further, since they've been having to export their way out of war reparations for the last half century (the analogy there being Romania in the 1980s, which introduced peacetime rationing to pay off the hefty debt it found itself with). It's why the end of war reparations would mean the end of rationing.

[The Marquis de Leech]

7 hours ago, KiDisaster said:

Congratulations on your novel  

Any chance of an audio version in the future?

That's up to the publisher.

[MisterOJ]

8 hours ago, Let's Get Kraken said:

And here I sit down and read a book first in order to understand the title. Nuts, huh?

So, you read books without having any idea what style they are in? Like, if they're a satire or a comedy or a straight up epic fantasy? Interesting.