Ordinary Human Language

by Brian Crane

Battle Cry of Freedom

It’s hard to comment on the explicit content of an 800 page history. What I’ll say instead is that I read it as a follow-up to What Hath God Wrought, that it was a page-turner and that I was fascinated.

Why did I not have a better knowledge of the Civil War from school? I was a talented student, industrious and eager to know everything, and yet, here I am reading this book and realizing I knew next to nothing.

On a separate note, reading this book, I had an odd thought: epic fantasy it seems to me is oftentimes something like mythologized, military history for people who wanted to imagine a world rather than know the past. That sounds like a judgment, but I don’t mean it to be. I’m just noting that formally, the narrative of Battle Cry and the narrative of something like the first Shannara book have a lot in common, even if the latter is much less complex.

Posted August 6, 2015