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The best art is that which, when you consume it, makes you want to create. The best books, the best music, is the one that pushes you to write, to pick up that pen or that brush or that violin and it makes you want to push something out of yourself that is just as raw as you feel.
This is a series of my favorite books that moved me to the point of creation. Poems are the shortest possible way to make something memorable. A few of the most beautiful fiction books on war and victory inspired me to write this poem.
You do not need a hundred pages and a series of carefully crafted scenes to get to the point. You can do it in a matter of a few succinctly out lines.
Here is a poem about war and victory, about rights and wrongs and failures, about winning.
Victory
Victory looks like a clock, ticking peacefully by as you gaze unblinking, overwhelmed,
Victory looks like time still left,
Like hope, like possibility
Or maybe its not victory at all,
but something humbler, gentler,
something less of a fire reaching ever heavenward and more of the warm glow of stove on which the spices and herbs mingle mildly, quietly.
Victory tastes like oranges,
citrus and tangy
and something more than just sweet.
Like the fresh peel of tangerine against the soft flesh of a hundred little juice bags, contrast, unnecessarily bright.
But you don't want the tangerine.
You don't want middle grounds and convenient solutions.
You want power and pride and potentially...everything.
You want everything without asking.
Hypocrisy runs a river in your world,
drenching every fickle foot.
And sometimes, just sometimes,
victory tastes like fire in my mouth and hot smoke in your eyes
as the river runs dry and the world begins anew,
an infant’s cry lodged in its throat
as flames swallow time and history and everything.
Victory tastes like ash, after.
But the damage is done and
maybe its better this way.
Maybe you have to lose something to bring into existence what I never had.
And maybe ash is all that lingers,
with fire and pain and sacrifice.
Maybe victory is a dead thing after all—
doomed by default.
So far, victory feels like something just a fragile foot away.
Something colourless and shapeless.
So far, victory looks attainable,
maybe even salvageable.
So far, victory is a thing to behold,
to revere and because of it, we persevere.
So far, victory feels like warm gloves stolen from pockets of stolen jackets,
because my hands are always cold
and my friends find it funny when I win a game of a long line of childish games.
My friends find it funny even if I lose.
They find it funny regardless of victory
and victory feels like not caring about victory.
Victory feels like warm hands and cold coffee
and laughter and tally marks that keep track
of who’s winning. Who is winning?
No one cares.
So victory doesn’t feel hollow and sharp
like the edges of a soft thing rubbed against too much ambition.
Victory looks like a clock ticking carelessly by,
conversation flowing underneath,
purple ink swirling on paper
that doesn’t burn away.
—Nidra Mrduvnak
This is a list of some of the best fantasy and science fiction books out there set against the backdrop of war.
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This Is How You Lose The Time War – Max Gladstone & Amal El- Mohtar
Red and Blue are rivals—assets of two different organizations. Red and Blue are pawns in a war spanning time and reality, nothing is permanent, nothing stays, not even the taunting letters of gloating that they exchange at the end of each battle.
The words burn away like the world does. Set against this background that never actually stays long enough to be called a background, set in a timeless, endless war. A time war.
“But wars are dense with causes and effects, calculations and strange attractors, and all the more so are wars in time. One spared life might be worth more to the other side than all the blood that stained Red’s hands today. A fugitive becomes a queen or a scientist or, worse, a poet. Or her child does, or a smuggler she trades jackets with in some distant spaceport. And all this blood for nothing.”
From the very beginning, this is not a war with ordinary stakes, but one that the characters can not merely escape. They are as much a part of the battleground as they are those who walk upon its ruins.
They are as much weapons as they are those who wield them. The story is an exchange of letters between two war enemies—a game of tally marks and taunting jabs. They quarrel, gloat, they threaten and they fight. Atleast, until they don’t.
“I must tell you it gives me great pleasure to think of you reading these words in licks and whorls of flame, your eyes unable to work backwards, unable to keep the letters on a page; instead you must absorb them, admit them into your memory. In order to recall them you must seek my presence in your thoughts, tangled among them like sunlight in water. In order to report my words to your superiors you must admit yourself already infiltrated, another casualty of this most unfortunate day.”
Blue
The ending is one of the best I have read in a while, hopeful and just miserly enough with words to hit hard.
Six Of Crows by Leigh Bardugo
Technically, this is not a book focused on war, though there is a fair amount of victory, but if you have not yet read this modern masterpiece, you absolutely must. Six thieves, one heist, and two books worth of morally gray characterization that leaves you wondering about right and wrong and what lies in between.
There is so much to think about when you wander past the intrigue and the banter and the heart wrenching morbid humanity that shines past every dialogue of every chapter.
Kaz Brekker is the mastermind, but not perfect—he is human and traumatised but not unwilling to pull himself together, never unwilling to improve, to survive.
This kind of dark, gritty hope is so rarely seen in the cliche tragic hero, but Kaz is no cliche tragic hero. He is a boy forced to grow old too soon in a cruel world, a man made by his mind and his determination alone.
Inez Ghafa is everything you would never expect her to be—tender, hopeful, always hopeful. Despite all of it.
Had she really thought the world didn’t change? She was a fool. The world was made of miracles, unexpected earthquakes, storms that came from nowhere and might reshape a continent.
Nina’s strength is disguised by pretty words and Matthias is the personification of growth itself—the proof that you can get past the prejudices and hatred you are raised into and see others for what they are, not what they’ve been portrayed as.
Wylan and Jesper compliment each other like two halves broken and joined again—one confident where the other is secure, one calm where the other is impulsive. This is the best rendition of a found family trope that I have ever seen.
“Do you know what Van Eck’s problem is?”
“No honor?” said Matthias.
“Rotten parenting skills?” said Nina.
“Receding hairline?” offered Jesper.
“No,” said Kaz. “Too much to lose. And he gave us a map to what to steal first.”
The City Between – W. R. Gingell
This is a series of 10 books and one of the most beautifully written and well plotted, but sadly underrated fantasy novel series I’ve ever read.
The series follows a human girl called redacted Pet as she is introduced to the World Between—a sort of middle path that leads to Behind, the world full of crazy supernaturals, goblins, trolls, twisted fae and volatile vampires included.
Most of us humans see the world in the human way. We see the human world: work, home, city streets, country lanes, seasons that come and go, and a few animals every now and then. Then there are those who see the world like Behindkind.
Between Homes (The City Between #5)
You probably don’t know what Behindkind are, so let me explain how they see the world. They see the human world as though it’s the creamy top layer of a trifle. ,f they want to, they can sink down beneath that layer into the custard—that’s Between, the space between the human world and the world Behind, where a walking stick could be a sword, and the nice little old lady next door could actually be a group of gremlins in a floral dress.
It is, once again, one of best renditions of the found family trope I have ever seen, probably even the best.
We have two traumatized Fae—Athelas and Zero—and one surly Vampire—JinYeong. Pet is their…well pet, but not in a wierd way, you know. Atleast, not wierd wierd.
Hi. My name is Pet.
Between Jobs (The City between #1)
It’s not my real name, but it’s the only one you’re getting. Things like names are important these days. And it’s not so much that I’m Pet. I am a pet. A human pet; I belong to two Behindkind fae and a pouty vampire. It’s not weird, I promise—well, it is weird, yeah. But it’s not weird weird, you know?
Full of murder mysteries and humor and some heartbreakingly profound lines, you’ll be left thinking after you finish this, contemplating victory and humanity and the fragility of life.
Stay tuned and if you need any more book recommendations, check out The Almanack of Naval Ravikant Will Make You Question Everything
