The Assassination of Brangwain Spurge
by MT Anderson
by MT Anderson
art by Eugene Yelchin
2018
The Assassination of Brangwain Spurge is a YA or middle-grade fantasy novel that mixes art and text in exciting ways and has a surprisingly complex critique of the way that militaristic governments misuse history to justify their wars. I was drawn to the book by the whimsical title and cover art, and by a quick flip-through that revealed that parts of the book are told in wordless sequential art. If anything, I feared it would be too twee, but while there is a certain lightheartedness to the telling, the story itself is fully aware and fully critical of how governments sometimes kill civilians, more-or-less on a whim, and call it preemptive self-defense.
Assassination is told with three kinds of chapters that don't alternate in any kind of strict sequence, but only according to the needs of the story. The very first chapter in the book is visual; only later do we fully understand what we've seen. The visuals are in black and white and remind me of 19th century lithographs. Each illustration is a full page, but they tell a sequential story, like the panels in a comic. These chapters depict the perspective of Brangwain Spurge, an elven historian who is conscripted as a diplomat to be launched via catapult to the goblin kingdom to deliver a present to their ruler. Many of the book's action sequences are shown this way, to good effect. To Brangwain, everything in Goblinland is giant, hideous, terrifying. It's not immediately obvious, but these visuals are more subjective and unreliable than we might expect.
The next kind of chapter is told in close third-person from the perspective of Werfel, a goblin academic chosen by his government to act as Brangwain's host and guide to the capital city. Where Brangwain starts out seeming like a negative stereotype of academia, vain, persnickety, overly serious, closed off, incurious, Werfel seems like more of a well-educated bon vivant, welcoming and hospitable, someone who appreciates elvish culture but really wants to show off all the charming local traditions, which Brangwain inevitably finds horrible. You begin to understand that things might look exactly as Brangwain sees them, and yet be experienced as nice - as traditional, familiar, even comforting - by the goblins, despite offending elven (and perhaps our human) sense of aesthetics. The majority of the book is told this way, and Werfel's perspective is clearly the one we're expected to feel most sympathetic to, even if we might initially expect to prefer elves over goblins.
The final sort of chapter takes the form of correspondence, dispatches sent from an elvish spymaster to the king of Elfland. The spymaster's voice is like an evil Bertie Wooster; he's a foppish twit who's set this whole scenario up in a misguided attempt to assassinate the goblin leader, using Brangwain as a patsy, an unwitting accomplice who thinks he's just there to report back on goblin magical infrastructure. Things don't go according to the spymaster's plan, primarily because he gave Brangwain two incompatible tasks - to snoop around suspiciously and to be a completely trustworthy courier of the elven peace offering.
The first half of the book is a bit of a comedy of manners, as Werfel attempts to show off all the things he's proudest of, Brangwain gets appalled and turns up his nose at everything, Brangwain courts disaster by spying ineffectually, and the spymaster brags to the king about what's going to happen when the goblin ruler receives the booby-trapped elven gift. And meanwhile Werfel and Brangwain argue about the millennium-long history of truly brutal warfare between the two sides. In Brangwain's mind, it's all very proper and justified, but Werfel's very aware of how much and how badly goblin civilians have suffered, and of how often the elves have been the belligerents. The elves are not as good as they make themselves out to be, and the goblins are not nearly as evil. Every one of these plots is careening toward disaster from the start, and they all come to a head when Brangwain finally gets to meet the goblins' ruler.
After that, in the second half, Werfel and Brangwain finally, haltingly work their way toward a kind of mutual respect and friendship, the spymaster scrambles to perform some damage control with the furious elven king after the first plan went awry, and the two countries find themselves on the brink of another round of mutually destructive warfare. All those plots come together in the end too, in a way that's quite satisfying, and that favors a just peace over endless bloodletting and conflict.
The next kind of chapter is told in close third-person from the perspective of Werfel, a goblin academic chosen by his government to act as Brangwain's host and guide to the capital city. Where Brangwain starts out seeming like a negative stereotype of academia, vain, persnickety, overly serious, closed off, incurious, Werfel seems like more of a well-educated bon vivant, welcoming and hospitable, someone who appreciates elvish culture but really wants to show off all the charming local traditions, which Brangwain inevitably finds horrible. You begin to understand that things might look exactly as Brangwain sees them, and yet be experienced as nice - as traditional, familiar, even comforting - by the goblins, despite offending elven (and perhaps our human) sense of aesthetics. The majority of the book is told this way, and Werfel's perspective is clearly the one we're expected to feel most sympathetic to, even if we might initially expect to prefer elves over goblins.
The final sort of chapter takes the form of correspondence, dispatches sent from an elvish spymaster to the king of Elfland. The spymaster's voice is like an evil Bertie Wooster; he's a foppish twit who's set this whole scenario up in a misguided attempt to assassinate the goblin leader, using Brangwain as a patsy, an unwitting accomplice who thinks he's just there to report back on goblin magical infrastructure. Things don't go according to the spymaster's plan, primarily because he gave Brangwain two incompatible tasks - to snoop around suspiciously and to be a completely trustworthy courier of the elven peace offering.
The first half of the book is a bit of a comedy of manners, as Werfel attempts to show off all the things he's proudest of, Brangwain gets appalled and turns up his nose at everything, Brangwain courts disaster by spying ineffectually, and the spymaster brags to the king about what's going to happen when the goblin ruler receives the booby-trapped elven gift. And meanwhile Werfel and Brangwain argue about the millennium-long history of truly brutal warfare between the two sides. In Brangwain's mind, it's all very proper and justified, but Werfel's very aware of how much and how badly goblin civilians have suffered, and of how often the elves have been the belligerents. The elves are not as good as they make themselves out to be, and the goblins are not nearly as evil. Every one of these plots is careening toward disaster from the start, and they all come to a head when Brangwain finally gets to meet the goblins' ruler.
After that, in the second half, Werfel and Brangwain finally, haltingly work their way toward a kind of mutual respect and friendship, the spymaster scrambles to perform some damage control with the furious elven king after the first plan went awry, and the two countries find themselves on the brink of another round of mutually destructive warfare. All those plots come together in the end too, in a way that's quite satisfying, and that favors a just peace over endless bloodletting and conflict.
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