Part two of Lesley Blanch's Sabres of Paradise is takes us beyond beyond introductions and scene setting and places the reader in the middle of the push and pull of rebellion. (Though many scenes are still set and characters introduced in Lesley Blanch's signature prose). The Russians acclimate to fighting in the Caucasus and the people of the Caucasus hold fast under the relentless onslaught of Russian invasion. We discuss where Murid resistance frays in the examples of Hamzad Beg and Shamyl's own son, the early examples of guerilla tactics and counter-insurgency present in the Murid War, the and the terrifying counterfactual of horse-sized war cats.

Intro and outro Music: Laudanum by Velvet Cacoon

Mobile Suit Victory Gundam found yet another way to escalate many of the themes and motifs that defined Gundam. The young pilot is only 13! The main crew is such a scrappy resistance that their base of operations is a big truck! The battles depict more desperation and destruction from the perspective of people that simply want to live normal lives.

This was Yoshiyuki Tomino's first Gundam TV Show since 1987's ZZ Gundam and we could not have been more excited to return to that particular style of pacing, world-building and characterization.

This was easily one of our favorite iterations of Mobile Suit Gundam so far and we hope that you enjoy our rambling conversation about it as much we enjoyed having it.

Leslie Blanch's epic biography of Imam Shamyl and the Russo-Caucasian struggle that defined his life for almost 30 years is now mostly remembered for having been a major influence on Frank Herbert's Dune, but it's place as a classic of literary history-writing deserves to be celebrated.

Blanch's ambition to cover such a complicated period of time seems incidental to the passion evident in every exquisitely rendered sentence describing the Murid freedom-fighters and the mountains they call home. Blanch travelled the world, interviewing descendants of the characters in this book and combing through Russian military dispatches, not only to provide a thorough accounting of the Murid War fought in the early 19th century, but to convey the depth of passion this region and this conflict seemed to have inspired in all who crossed.

There are a ton of digressions through anecdotes, literary criticism, ekphrasis, and personal observations that might seem out of place in a traditional history, but are essential to the feeling this book plunges you into.

We had fun discussing Part 1 of this book in our meandering way and we hope you do too.

For more on Sabres of Paradise's influence on Dune: https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/the-secret-history-of-dune/

To email Pleasant Evenings Book Club: eveningspleasant@gmail.com