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Safely You Deliver is Graydon Saunders' third book about the Commonweal. Unlike his previous two books, this is very much not an entry point: it follows, and has largely the same characters as A Succession of Bad Days. Comments below also assume familiarity with the prior book, although they contain no real spoilers.
Although we do encounter Reems again, briefly, this is no more a military book, or one about warfare, than its immediate predecessor. Formally, it has two main structural threads: the continuing education and, um, graduation, of the main characters in the sorcery school (which Halt continues to insist is not a school, thereby irritating at least one bureaucrat); and the adoption (on both sides) of a unicorn into their social group (Although not their working link). The unicorn, aside from being very much his own person (human-level sentient) stands in as well as a representative of life from outside the Commonweal which can nevertheless be, with work, accommodated within the Commonweal. As such, the thread of his growth intertwines with that of the students' growth.
One way to read this novel, the most obvious one, is the end of a bildungsroman, the passage from late youth to full adulthood, where the issues being dealt with are those of social incorporation into the broader adult society and the achievement of a degree of mastery sufficient to be self-supporting within society. Of course, "adulthood" and "self-supporting" have different shades of meaning when they involve making a metaphysical transition and becoming full Independents: this is a fantasy novel, not purely a novel of manners. "Social incorporation" also has a certain edge when the normal effects of becoming an Independent are to become less social -- and the progress of the central characters not only requires that they transform that model for themselves, but assist in providing a more general emerging social web for other Independents, a kind of extended family.
From another angle, thematically, it's about the maintenance of civilisation generally -- partly maintenance against threats but still more ensuring that sufficient resources are available to maintain it, and that those resources are used appropriately. What the students choose to do and what the emerging (to us) needs of the Second Commonweal are dance in counterpoint through the novels, with the risks associated with both recognized and skirted. The knife-edge on which the Second Commonweal stands becomes more apparent: it lacks the population base of the First Commonweal and is in a race against time to catch up to the productive capabilities required to maintain civilisation, while having to balance off the need to commit heavily in resources to basic survival at the agriculture and transport level. There are concrete external threats -- Reems -- as well as indicators that there may be more at work, not known or understood yet.
Conflict of the sort you would expect in a military fantasy is not only avoided but subverted: not only is such conflict as occurs more readily assimilable to weeding, but the in-work analysis after the event makes it clear that although it fixes an immediate threat it not only is unable to address the more general problems but may actually make them worse. (Oddly, Graydon is one of two Toronto authors whom I know who have recently expressed a concern to emphasize a "fighting-isn't-decisive in general" model in fantastic works: the other has made this a central theme in an under-contract-but-yet-to-be-published series which will not start coming out for a while.)
According to his progress reports, Graydon is moving more slowly on the next one (tentatively "Under One Banner") than he did on this, so it may be a while until the next installment.
Although we do encounter Reems again, briefly, this is no more a military book, or one about warfare, than its immediate predecessor. Formally, it has two main structural threads: the continuing education and, um, graduation, of the main characters in the sorcery school (which Halt continues to insist is not a school, thereby irritating at least one bureaucrat); and the adoption (on both sides) of a unicorn into their social group (Although not their working link). The unicorn, aside from being very much his own person (human-level sentient) stands in as well as a representative of life from outside the Commonweal which can nevertheless be, with work, accommodated within the Commonweal. As such, the thread of his growth intertwines with that of the students' growth.
One way to read this novel, the most obvious one, is the end of a bildungsroman, the passage from late youth to full adulthood, where the issues being dealt with are those of social incorporation into the broader adult society and the achievement of a degree of mastery sufficient to be self-supporting within society. Of course, "adulthood" and "self-supporting" have different shades of meaning when they involve making a metaphysical transition and becoming full Independents: this is a fantasy novel, not purely a novel of manners. "Social incorporation" also has a certain edge when the normal effects of becoming an Independent are to become less social -- and the progress of the central characters not only requires that they transform that model for themselves, but assist in providing a more general emerging social web for other Independents, a kind of extended family.
From another angle, thematically, it's about the maintenance of civilisation generally -- partly maintenance against threats but still more ensuring that sufficient resources are available to maintain it, and that those resources are used appropriately. What the students choose to do and what the emerging (to us) needs of the Second Commonweal are dance in counterpoint through the novels, with the risks associated with both recognized and skirted. The knife-edge on which the Second Commonweal stands becomes more apparent: it lacks the population base of the First Commonweal and is in a race against time to catch up to the productive capabilities required to maintain civilisation, while having to balance off the need to commit heavily in resources to basic survival at the agriculture and transport level. There are concrete external threats -- Reems -- as well as indicators that there may be more at work, not known or understood yet.
Conflict of the sort you would expect in a military fantasy is not only avoided but subverted: not only is such conflict as occurs more readily assimilable to weeding, but the in-work analysis after the event makes it clear that although it fixes an immediate threat it not only is unable to address the more general problems but may actually make them worse. (Oddly, Graydon is one of two Toronto authors whom I know who have recently expressed a concern to emphasize a "fighting-isn't-decisive in general" model in fantastic works: the other has made this a central theme in an under-contract-but-yet-to-be-published series which will not start coming out for a while.)
According to his progress reports, Graydon is moving more slowly on the next one (tentatively "Under One Banner") than he did on this, so it may be a while until the next installment.
