Watership Down

 According to its own author, Watership Down is simply an adventure story told to his own children about rabbits. I, for one, don't buy it. On one level, it absolutely is that adventure story - and one with heart and soul and spirit - but on another it serves as allegory for totalitarianism, for human spirit, and for those freedoms enjoyed in democracy.

It may surprise you that I hadn't read Watership Down until now; I suppose some would argue that I still haven't. It was my monthly listen on Audible, with Peter Capaldi providing the narration. For a fortnight, between work and home, I listened to the adventures of Hazel, Fiver, Silver, Captain Holly, and - my own favourite - Bigwig, actively hoping for short delays just to listen that little bit longer. For seventeen and a half hours I was engrossed in the tale of a hardy bunch of rabbits forging their new home on Watership Down. And every second was worth it.

A good book for children works for all readers. It works for both child and parent when they read together as a shared experience, and it's possible to admire the skill that goes into its creation. I'd certainly argue that listening to a story like Watership Down makes you feel a child again, but with adult sensibilities. Those things that drift over a child's head are absorbed by the adult, so the literary references, the historical placements, the epigraphs at the beginning of each chapter, and wider social context all find their mark alongside the qualities of the story.

And what a story. On the one hand, we have the rabbits who leave their warren to escape its destruction by men as part of a housing project, attempting to find their own home. They think they find it, only to discover that secrets are being kept by their new hosts, and they set out again to find Watership Down itself. As the new warren comes under threat, the greatest crisis faces the rabbits of the warren in the form of General Woundwort and the dictatorship of the warren of Efrafa.

A child will love the adventure and the characters; an adult will love the adventure and the characters, but on a different level. For this is no simple tale. Interwoven with the main plot is the lore of the rabbits, that of the spiritual El-ahrairah and his adventures, told through tales and legends. The world of the rabbits is so well-realised, the characters so well-drawn, that they are more human than many - perhaps most - characters and tales you'll find elsewhere.

This is Watership Down's greatest strength: the characters. You care for them, and they are real. Not real in the sense of being physically real, but in the sense that they matter. The fact that they are rabbits and not anthropomorphised rabbits actually helps; these aren't rabbits who make their own tools, they do real rabbit things - from eating their own tods to eating their own young. This isn't glossed over, which is to Richard Adams' credit; too many children's books sanitise reality rather than tackle it. One of the reasons Horrible Histories is so popular is because kids don't want to be talked down to about the world, and Watership Down certainly doesn't do that.

But the characters... I find it hard to put into words the quality of the characters. There are no characatures here. What we have are rabbits that have their dominant traits, it's true, but which are never beholden to them. They may normally show good judgement, but they can become prideful and learn from that. They may be able to inspire loyalty, but make mistakes. They may have a set way, but eventually come around to a different way of thinking. And it's this humanity to them that generates so much empathy and sympathy. This is true of every character in the book. Even minor characters firstly play their part, and secondly find themselves being so well fleshed-out that you can't help but support and hope for them. The main antagonist, General Woundwort, is no different; yes, he's mad, yes, he's very much a sociopath, yes, he's a mortal threat, and yet... and yet... He's still so human in his way. Parallels can be drawn between him and every dictator of the twentieth century, every strongman who used violence 'for the greater good', to use a term from another beloved book.

Better commentators than I have linked Efrafa to the dictatorships of the twentieth century - especially notably East Germany and the erection of the Berlin Wall 10 years prior to the publication of Watership Down - but it is worth mentioning. This in spite of the author's own insistence that this is just a book about rabbits. I normally listen to the author and I'm inclined to believe them as they know their own art, but I can't help but think Richard Adams was being coy for the sake of this being a children's book.

Should a very young child read this, or have it read to them? Probably not. But should a child of ten be allowed to experience it? Absolutely. This should be a gateway book to literature. As an adult I regret not reading it when I was younger, only to experience it anew as an adult so I could see both levels of Adams' mastery. As an adult, I absolutely loved what I experienced.

The Interest: How the British Establishment Resisted the Abolition of Slavery

A myth - one of many to do with Britain and her history - exists to do with slavery. Ask a man in the street about it, and they will more often then not proudly proclaim that 'Britain was the first country in the world to outlaw the practice.' What is true is that in 1807 Britain stopped its legal involvement - I hesitate to go as far as to say abolished, considering that other countries continued the trade - in the transatlantic slave trade. A grass-roots campaign, waged over twenty years, resulted in Parliament finally legislating to stop that particular aspect of the horrors of human enslavement.

Another myth exists to do with British involvement in slavery. That myth holds that from 1807 slavery itself was in decline in the British Empire. Once again, were you to ask the average man on the street (or, to use the legal jargon, the man on the Clapham omnibus) they would tell you that slavery declined to nothing, and that this was because of the benevolence of the British state.

The fact that neither of those myths are true would never occur to the average British citizen. That is through no fault of their own.

Recent times have seen the so-called 'culture wars' break out. Pitching what on the outside appears to be traditional orthodoxy, celebrating British achievements in a nationalistic fervour, against a 'woke' revisionism that simply attacks any kind of British achievement, they reached their apogee last summer, as the statue of Edward Colston was upended and pitched head first into Bristol harbour by - depending on which polar opposite view you happen to hold - concerned citizens determined to erase the stains of the past from modern life, or a rabid mob attempting to wipe out history. As for the powers that be, on one hand, we are told that slavery was a great evil and that Britain can be proud of stamping it out; on the other, we're told to respect the statues and monuments built to men who profited from the forced labour of their fellow man. No wonder many people take the simplest and shortest path to understanding, even if that understanding is fundamentally wrong.

As Michael Taylor demonstrates in this excellent book, the British state should take no pride in its role in abolishing slavery itself. Instead, the credit belongs to others: from the grass-roots campaigners in Britain who played a crucial role in twisting arms, to the enslaved men and women themselves who rose up to force the West Indian planters to live in constant fear of those they had incarcerated. The British establishment, for all it now tells us that it gave men and women their liberty, actively conspired against the abolitionish lobby. Only when it was politically expedient did Parliament legislate. And even then, it was only after reform at home.

Yes, many of the protagonists were products of their time. Take the Duke of Wellington. The hero of Waterloo, a decorated soldier, fighting in Britain's interests abroad and a pragmatic politician. He's a man who, if he was learned about in school, would have been learned about for those qualities; there's no reason to doubt them. But if we hold a microscope to him and view his achievements and qualities with modern eyes, we start to see how problematic he was. Yes, he emancipated the Catholics despite being personally opposed, but he was also a supporter of the West India Interest, the cabal of planters who wanted to keep slavery. He was opposed to reform. No democrat, he served the interests of a section of British society; a part, and not the whole. Also take William Gladstone. The Liberal PM of the mid- to late-nineteenth century has a reputation as a great statesman - alongside his unusual nocturnal activities - beloved by many in society. He was certainly more of a democrat than Wellington, and yet his family made its riches as a direct result of slavery. He was a supporter of slavery himself in his early years, when he was more Tory than Liberal. Yes, he may have reformed. Yes, his background may have informed his beliefs. But when you consider that these were the great and the good - the men who held power and refused to release it - it becomes all the more clear that the establishment resisted the ending of slavery.

Even today the establishment is squeamish about its involvement in slavery. There has been no unqualified apology for the evils Britain unleashed on millions of black men and women. In 2015, David Cameron - a relatively enlightened Conservative, as these things go, who had been responsible for the great social revolution of gay marriage, against his party and the Church of England's wishes - failed to make an apology on an official visit to Jamaica. Tony Blair had also failed to do the same. Despite both men acknowledging the evils of the practice, neither was prepared to ask for forgiveness for Britain from the descendants of those it had exploited.

What Michael Taylor exposes is how the British establishment has manipulated the realities of what may fairly be termed a genocide in order to suit its own ends. Despite the fact that it held up the abolition of slavery, we are expected to be proud of the fact that it eventually caved to overwhelming pressure against its own interests, and even then chose to compensate itself rather than those it had exploited, it has somehow turned the abolition into a great British achievement. In truth, abolition was against the interests of those in power until after the Great Reform Act 1832, when Britain underwent a process of democratisation that sidelined the West India Interest.

This is an important book, that serves as a refreshing counterpoint to official narratives. Taylor shows just how abolition was resisted at every step, and only took place when it was no longer in the ruling political class's interests to maintain the status quo. At every step, the institutions of Britain fought to uphold slavery. It's important that we understand this.

Summer of Night

 By the time you reach the end of a horror novel, all suspense has often been lost. Answers to the puzzle have been provided, and all that remains is the resolution. A good example of this is It, which rumbles along for 1,300 pages of increasing tension and drama, until the end, which resolves loose threads and gives us an ending that, as much as anything, reassures.

I say this not to lambast It - it has become one of my favourite novels, with memorable characters, pulse-pounding drama, a plot that wends this way and that - but to provide a contrast.

Dan Simmons has been someone I've held up as a master of horror for quite some time. If King's books shock and provoke occasional terror, Simmons' books linger and haunt. Song of Kali is like that, and it's like that because, unlike It, it doesn't give us the reassuring conclusion. It speaks to our fears that no, it won't be all right. King does that from time to time: Pet Sematary is just one example of him flipping the expectation that things will be all right on its head. But more often than not the survivors find themselves in a better place. The Stand. It. Even, to an extent, 'Salem's Lot and Misery. Simmons, however, gives us lingering doubt.

Take The Terror. Despite what seems, for a time, to be a cut and dried ending, there's the coda which throws doubt on so much, and lends to the horror from before. The sailors could have been all right. Francis Crozier saved himself, but did he betray his men into the bargain? And as for the Tuunbaq: is it ever really not a threat? Was it real, or spiritual? That uncertainty is as horrifying as any of the violence that went before.

And this is where Summer of Night is so successful. While perhaps not as accomplished or engrossing as It or The Terror - for one thing it's only 600 pages rather than 1,300 or 900 - it still fills the reader with a sense of doubt at the conclusion. This is after the constant dread in the build-up. There is a constant sense of danger. It's a book you can't let your guard down with; after all, if you're alone and you let your guard down, terrible things will happen.

Summer of Night bears comparison with It on a deeper level than 'it's a horror novel'. Like It, Summer of Night follows a group of children in a small American town as they battle a horror through a summer holiday. In this regard, it is arguably the weaker book: there's a bond between the characters in It that never quite seems present in Summer of Night, and the characters, unusually for Simmons, can be a little two-dimensional. On the other hand, the bond that is forged never quite feels safe, and this insecurity just adds to the horror.

Where Summer of Night excels, though, is in the uncertainty. The writing is superb, but at times it is somewhat vague. It sows doubt in the reader's mind. Is this really happening? Where King leaves the reader in little doubt - yes, this is scary, you're right to feel fear - Simmons always has that lingering sense that you could be wrong. Maybe there's nothing to fear. But then again, if there is... Unlike King, there's rarely a sense of catharsis when a threat has disappeared, simply another building tension. There can be no doubt at all that Simmons is a modern master of horror. He makes you feel uncomfortable.

I can highly recommend Summer of Night. Anyone with an interest in horror should read it for its small town America vibes and fears. It is a study in how to write horror, and how to leave the reader in fear and wanting more, even at the end.

One final thing before I depart: If you have not read The Hyperion Cantos by the same author, what are you doing? Your life will be better for it, particularly Hyperion and Fall of Hyperion.

The Reading Year 2021

2020 was a year. I got married. My wife and I found out we are having a baby. I suffered throughout from chronic depression. The world was locked down. At some point, I might have breathed.

Perhaps it's unsurprising, then, that I read more than normal. Time was one commodity that did exist in the first half of the year, moreso than in other years. In total, I completed 100 books, many of which were towards my personal target of reading more books either by people of colour, or about different cultures around the world. If you can't go out and experience the wider world, the least you can do is understand the experiences of others.

2021 is starting with something similar: A Corner of a Foreign Field is a book on cricket in India. But that isn't all: it's a book about Indian social and political history since about 1850. It's another book to help me understand another culture - or, I should probably be honest about this, about the many different cultures of India. Let's remember, the modern nation of India is a product of a colonial past, far more than it would have been if let to its own devices.

India promises to feature heavily in this year's reading. For Christmas, my wife bought me William Dalrymple's The Anarchy, a history of the East India Company and its corporate colonisation of the subcontinent. I also intend to read Michael Wood's The Story of India. A few new ideas will keep me going.

But other than that, do I intend to set targets? Not really. Setting myself targets, partly for my own self-improvement, probably puts me under more pressure than I strictly speaking need to put on myself. My only target is this:

ENJOY WHAT I READ.

This means a return to science fiction. This means completing those series which have been sat on the Kindle for months, or (in some cases) years (perhaps that means the Joe Abercrombie sitting in the background). It means reading Ann Leckie, Adrian Tchaikovsky, RJ Barker. It means returning to old faithfuls after years away. It means Foundation and The Farseer Trilogy. It means revisiting the Norman Conquest and spending time in Anglo-Saxon England.

Life is too short to read things I don't enjoy. May 2021 bring enjoyment.

The King in the North

 Sometimes a student will ask me what the point of history is. Normally, they'll be being a pain - and deliberately so - and they get a quick one-liner back. Sometimes, they'll be serious. History doesn't play a part in their life; they live in a present dictated by immediate need and want. Mum and dad work jobs that don't require an understanding of the past. It's the future that matters, not the past, surely?

I admit, this is a question I sometimes struggle with. No such struggle exists with my other specialism: law is the fabric that binds our society and manages acceptable behaviours. It imposes both obligations and entitlements. You study law to understand those rules and regulations, to understand how society can come to define itself by its values. You study it to understand the institutions of politics and power. You study it to reach an informed viewpoint on the absolute mess the government has made this week. It is easy to define law as the now, rather than the then. These are the rules, these are how and why they exist, this is what it means for you.

And then sometimes you read something that reminds you exactly why history is relevant, and exactly why every person should understand it. Max Adams' The King in the North is such a book.

'Hang on,' I hear you cry, 'this is a book about the seventh century AD. Surely it cannot contain anything of relevance to a world in the twenty-first? This is a time when England didn't even exist, except as a series of warring kingdoms where some of the greater kings competed for primacy for a spell. Christianity was on the fringes of people's understanding. How can such a book and such a time hold any kind of insight into modern problems?'

Oh, ye of little faith. A lesson in history is not a lesson just in fables and moral lessons; it never has been. History (somewhat ironically) teaches us that. It isn't a lesson in good triumphing over evil, of absolutism that can give us a good sit down and talking to in relation to just what Oswiu did in 658 that we need to carry forward in life - it certainly doesn't help us to become a hairdresser (as one of my students proudly proclaimed a few weeks ago). And no: we don't become a better person for knowing that there was a royal foundation at Dewsbury that was burned down, rebuilt, and then burned down again (although there are some who would claim some kind of grandeur by association - these people are idiots).

What we get is an understanding. We are citizens. We are expected to play an active role in our society - that society governed by the law that is so easy to define - and to do this we must understand both the rules and regulations that dictate our onw behaviours, but also understand how these rules and regulations came to be and to understand the values of our nation and the influences over them, as well as the interests of our nation, our class, and those around us based on the past.

And it doesn't stop there. History is about understanding motivation. And this is something Max Adams does brilliantly. The seventh century is not a time blessed with a deluge of primary sources; what little exists to illuminate the lives of those who lived then must be floodlit by cross-reference with archaeology, geography, deduction and, at times, good old-fashioned supposition. This is a book that reminds us of something: while the historical and geographical contexts change, basic human psychology and motivation does not.

It is because of this that, despite the lack of sources beyond the Venerable Bede (who is leaned on to such an extent it's a wonder The Ecclesiastical History doesn't break except where needed), the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle and the Annals of Ulster, Adams has been able to craft a remarkable history. Bede is dissected (or, at least, his most famous work is; it's quite clear in the book that the only people being dissected are Oswald, the titular king in the north himself, and Saint Cuthbert, along with hundreds of nameless Northumbrian, Mercian and Anglian warriors of the Dark Ages) and analysed, his motivations in his narrative unpicked and compared to other, less well-known narratives. He is placed in the context of the clash between British and Roman Christianity, along with his geographical and historical location in the ancient Anglo-Saxon kingdom of Northumbria. What comes from this judicious and critical use of sources is a truly wonderful work of history of relevance to us today, not only as a work of scholarship but as a reminder that Britain does not stand alone.

It's an odd lesson to take from the narrative of a king who reigned for only eight years, and that before the near-legendary Synod of Whitby. He reigned over only a small (relatively, at any rate) section of what is now England. Although Oswald became an overlord of other British kings to an extent, his overlordship crumbled on his death; it was his brother, Oswiu, who secured Oswald's legacy. What must be remembered is that Oswald was more than just his life, and this is brought home by Adams, who spends perhaps four chapters in total of the twenty in the book on the life of his subject. There is far more dedicated to the legacy of Oswald and the far-reaching influence that he had.

Born in around 604, Oswald was a scion of one of the habitual ruling houses of Bernicia, the more northerly of the two kingdoms that would later become Northumbria. His early life is obscure, but we do know that he was in exile in what is now western Scotland, at Iona, following the death of his father in battle and the assumption of the throne of the first Northumbrian Christian monarch, Edwin. As much time is spent on Edwin as Oswald, and with good reason: Edwin was at least as influential as Oswald in normalising Christianity. Perhaps without Edwin, there would have been no lasting Christian influence, no opportunity for Oswald to lay the foundations of the monastery on Lindisfarne (although, given Oswald's own Irish Christianity, I'd say that's pretty unlikely considering that Oswald's Christianity was more than the politically expedient skin-deep version worn by Edwin). What is certainly the case is that Edwin's rule laid the foundations for Oswald's, with only a brief diversion into paganism in between the two rulers after Edwin's defeat at the hands of Mercia in 632.

Adams paints the picture of the life of Oswald with consummate skill. This is no dry read; it is an absorbing book, written by a master of balance. Discussion of sources is lively and erudite. Human details are fleshed out with real insight into human nature and historical context. There are times when events and locations are obscured by the paucity of sources and Adams has to stray into supposition, but this only serves to enhance the book, just as the frequent diversions into descriptions of the landscape of Oswald's world add to the experience. It's a rare book that can have me referring to OS maps while reading, to get a real idea of the geography of events and to back up Adams' arguments. The use of modern landmarks also does nothing to detract from the history; these were real events that happened in real, identifiable (well, for the most part) places that remain unaltered, with the exception of the odd A road. The history of 1300 years ago is closer than we think.

The final thing that becomes clearer and clearer is the growth and interconnectedness of the world of ancient Northumbria. We can look at the obvious to start with: the union of Northumbria, as forged by Edwin, Oswald and Oswiu over the space of half a century or more created the first power of Anglo-Saxon England, before the primacy of Mercia in the eighth century, the conquest of the Vikings and the subsequent primacy of Wessex from the ninth century onwards. But this is more than just a local tale: Oswald received his education in the monastery at Iona, before earning his reputation in charge of a warband in Scotland. He became overlord of places as far afield as Anglesea and the Isle of Man. His death was on a battlefield a long way from his homeland, quite possibly in Wales, at Oswestry. In his lifetime trading networks continued to develop, shown by the suffix wic that can be found in places like Ipswich, Alnwick and other modern towns. These trading posts, impromptu since the fall of Rome, became more permanent, particularly around the coast as the North Sea Basin became more and more crucial to trade between continent and island.

This interconnectedness finds its most compelling evidence in the growth and consolidation of Christianity. We see the growing influence of the Roman Church. We see how the British Christians become more isolated, playing an at-best secondary role to the increasing rivalry between Irish and Roman Churches following the mission of Augustine in 597. We see the last hurrah - in this epoch, at least - of British paganism in the form of the Mercian Penda. And finally and most tellingly, we see how expedience leads to the Synod of Whitby and the political acceptance of the primacy of Rome over the Church of Ireland and the sidelining of the parochial in favour of the international. The arguments produced by Bede - in the early eighth century - could be applied to the twenty-first century almost without changing the wording. A small world, therefore, became larger and more enlightened by what can only be referred to as global connections. Oswald himself took on a European character after his death, with his martyrdom on the battlefield leading to a cult that took root as far afield as Switzerland.

I was engrossed and delighted by Adams' book. It has reconnected me with history in a way that was timely and much-needed, on both a personal and wider level. A book which had me captivated from the very first page has delivered a real treat. I cannot recommend it highly enough.

The Three-Body Problem and the Problem with Hard SF

Were this set in Glasgow, the three-body problem would undoubtedly involve a grizzled detective telling all and sundry that 'There's been a murder.' At least, it would provided the eponymous detective hadn't died and had the series continue without him.

As it is, The Three-Body Problem is mostly based in China and surrounds a problem in physics. That isn't to say there isn't a grizzled detective - there is - or that there aren't multiple bodies - there are - it just happens that the three bodies of the title are astral bodies, stars, and not mutilated corpses left by the River Tay for the police to get their teeth into.

When it was first translated into English, Cixin Liu's novel took the science fiction world by storm. It won the Hugo for best novel in 2015. It has swiftly found its way into the SF canon for its modern approach to hard SF, dealing with physics and maths on a theoretical level in a way that has fallen out of fashion in all but niche circles since the millennium. Outside of Kim Stanley Robinson and Stephen Baxter, it's been a while since I've seen hard SF enter the (relative) mainstream.

The problem is that hard SF relies on the science itself, which restricts it to a niche readership. My scientific knowledge is workable. I couldn't launch a rocket into space, but I have a working knowledge of the physics involved in doing it. Equally, I can suspend my disbelief when it comes to scientific concepts and ideas; if a writer can make it believable, I can believe it. It does, however, mean that hard SF that makes the science the very core of its being - and I'm thinking of Greg Bear's Darwin's Radio here, for the first time in a long time - can leave me cold. Another example is Fred Pohl's collaboration with Arthur C. Clarke for The Last Theorem. A working knowledge of Fermat's Last Theorem was needed to access the book. Although most people have a reasonable working knowledge of science at a basic level, I doubt too many have the breadth of theoretical knowledge of maths and physics to access books like those.

This isn't to criticise hard SF too much: I write as someone who has read and loved the subgenre for years. A quick glance behind me reveals Clarke, Asimov, Baxter, Anderson, Aldiss among less well-known authors. No, it's highlighting where it can fall down. The pitfalls that a writer can become trapped by - quite easily, when even masters have done it - are easier to avoid where they are known.

The best hard SF isn't SF where science is the main character. Science plays a critical, central role in hard SF, that's true, but it isn't the whole point of it. The point of the best hard SF is what happens around the science. Take The Last Theorem. It's a sadly clunky read by two grandmasters of science fiction, where the main character's obsession with Fermat leads him to being caught up in a global mission. The problem is that the drive of the plot is lost behind the explanations of what the theorem is and how it may be solved. The maths replaces the plot. Now compare to The Three-Body Problem.

I can't claim that The Three-Body Problem is the best science fiction book ever, although it is very good. This last few days have seen me spending more and more time with it as I've become more and more caught up with the story's momentum. Yes, the main character lacks agency and exists mostly for the reader to see the story through his eyes. Yes, there probably has been something lost in translation from the original Chinese (although Ken Liu has done a superb job in making this a very readable novel). And finally, yes, the narrative structure leaves a little to be desired. But, when all's said and done, the premise combined with the events in the plot make for a compelling tale.

At its heart is the three-body problem itself, a physics problem relating to the interaction between three sources of gravity. The interaction of those bodies makes it impossible to predict the movement of the three bodies and how they will interact with each other. This physical problem is dealt with in no small part through an ingenius fashion: a VR game called Three Body. Wang, our protagonist, finds himself involved with it, along with various attempts by other players to solve the problem and stabilise the atmosphere of a planet in a triple star system.

This on its own is ingenius. This, combined with the rest of the plot, makes for compelling reading, although there are some elements that don't make sense. Wang is a nanoscientist who finds himself embroiled in a global conspiracy which centres in China. It's a curious book, packed with original takes on familiar tropes. Perhaps it's the influence of the communist regime in China itself; this is very much a book that couldn't be written by a Western writer, and it's refreshing for it. That isn't to say it's unquestioning of the Chinese regime: there are clear criticisms present within Cixin's writing.

The science of The Three-Body Problem is a driving force, but it is the other events which make this a good book, not the science. We have theoretical physics, yes, but explained and applied on a level that don't make this book an indecipherable instruction manual. Hard as the science is, it is applied to the plot in a way that means it compels rather than repels the reader.

And this is how it should be. Science front and centre, but also within. The point is what happens using the science, not the science itself. It's a lesson most writers have taken to heart and used well, but it's also a fine balancing act. Even masters have got it wrong, by either hiding their science too much or by relegating events to a secondary role.

I look forward to reading The Dark Forest. It's been a pleasure reading hard SF with a really solid storytelling core. Long may it continue.

A Little Short for a Stormtrooper

 "I'm Luke Skywalker, I'm here to rescue you."

The title of the episode was a clue. The final instalment of season 2 of The Mandalorian, 'The Rescue', was a suggestion of more than just a mission to save Grogu from the clutches of the Imperial Remnant led by Moff Gideon. It was a chance to see the one and only Luke Skywalker back in action.

As cameos go, it was dramatic. The Jedi Master's assault on the Empire's Dark Troopers (there are far too many capital letters here; Lucasfilm should go easy on the proper nouns) was reminiscent of Darth Vader in Rogue One, a figure cloaked in black cutting a swathe through fearsome enemies made into little more than tin cans by the power of a Force-wielding master. There was even a nice little nod to Vader's action in crushing the throat of one rebel when Luke used the Force to crush an entire Dark Trooper. As demonstrations of power go, it was pretty awe-inspiring. Here, we see the power of a true Jedi for the first time in The Mandalorian. As good as Ahsoka's appearance earlier in the season was, she didn't quite have that raw power of Luke's appearance.

Plus, as viewers of The Clone Wars and Rebels know, she's not really a Jedi. She's a Force-wielder for the light side, but she's disaligned from the Jedi Order following events of season 5 of The Clone Wars (although her use in season 7 may suggest she's back in the fold, even if Rebels suggests she isn't quite, despite mentoring Kanan Jarrus and the still-missing Ezra Bridger). Luke Skywalker most definitely is aligned with the Jedi Order; as he says in Return of the Jedi: "I am a Jedi, like my father before me."

Twitter wasted little time in using this genuinely brilliant cameo to bash Rian Johnson and The Last Jedi. This, they suggested, was the real Luke: using his powers to reduce dread enemies of mere mortals to so much scrap, no doubt about the rightness of his mission to train new Jedi as he took Grogu away from Din Djarin. All hail Favreau and Filoni, saviours of Star Wars! If only, if only they had been in charge of the sequel trilogy.

They're entitled to their opinion, even if it's completely wrong.

The real Luke Skywalker is the idealist in A New Hope. He retains that idealism throughout the original trilogy. That spark of hope and determination not to let it go fuels him throughout and leads to him redeeming Darth Vader, by grasping hold of the good that is Anakin Skywalker and refusing to let go. But the real Luke Skywalker is also the embittered man of The Last Jedi, a recluse who has failed entirely to end the evil in the galaxy far, far away. The two are not incompatible; in fact, the one leads directly to the other and the Luke we see in The Mandalorian - powerful, confident in that power, unwavering in his mission - provides a critical bridge between the two.

Just to deal with the elephant in the room: I like The Last Jedi. I think it's a genuinely good piece of Star Wars media precisely because it doesn't go in for fanservice. It redefines much of what Star Wars has been about, and acts as a paradigm shift in the storytelling of The Force Awakens in the same way The Empire Strikes Back acted as a paradigm shift for the storytelling of A New Hope. You think you know this universe? Well, you don't. It's a bigger, subtler thing than you ever imagined, and things aren't going to go the way you think. The big problem with The Last Jedi is The Rise of Skywalker, which ripped up much of what had been set up to do something different to appease the moaning fans, and managed to make a bit of a hash of finishing the sequel trilogy.

One big thing we get from The Last Jedi is that our heroes are human (apart from Chewbacca, but that's because he's a wookiee). For all his chosen one powers, Luke is still a person and not a superman. He has the same psychological weaknesses and strengths as us all. There is no doubting his ability to make X-Wings levitate and read the future using the Force, just as there's no doubt about my ability to sit in front of a computer and annoy fandom. Where Luke fell down was nothing to do with his ability as a Jedi. It was entirely to do with that most human of all failings: overconfidence. Emperor Palpatine would laugh at this after Luke's rebuke in Return of the Jedi, particularly as it led to him forsaking his friends in favour of solitude.

The Luke we see in The Mandalorian is a Luke not long after those events. It has only been five years since the destruction of the second Death Star over the Forest Moon of Endor (again, that issue with proper nouns, Lucasfilm). Canonically, Luke is about 29/30 years of age. He is in his physical prime as well as growing as a Jedi. It is his mission to rebuild the Jedi Order for the good of the galaxy. When he appears on Gideon's cruiser, searching for Grogu, it is to fulfil this goal. So far as he is concerned, the big threat to the galaxy is gone; it's telling that we don't see him pay any attention whatsoever to Moff Gideon, the big bad of The Mandalorian, because so far as Luke is concerned Gideon just isn't a threat in any way, shape, or form. The man who has been the cause of so many problems for Din Djarin, Bo-Katan and company simply doesn't register on the radar of a Jedi Master, because he is so inconsequential. After all, the threat to Din has been swatted aside without really breaking any kind of sweat. We saw how Din struggled with one while Luke dispatched an entire platoon.

And this is where Luke's downfall can be found. His confidence that very little can touch him other than his great fear of the dark side leads to hubris. For a time, the dark side appears to be defeated. Nothing can prevent the rebuilding of the Jedi Order. Until, of course, the rise of Snoke and the seduction of Ben Solo.

Luke is not infallible, and that's the lesson he never learned. He had never needed to feel doubt in his mission because it never existed. Once the Empire had been defeated at the Battle of Endor, the dark side was no longer a threat and Luke could sit, safe and sound, in the knowledge that he was now the greatest power in the galaxy. He could gather Force-sensitive children, just as the Jedi had before the rise of the Empire. He could rebuild and train and preserve peace.

One thing that The Last Jedi makes explicit is that Luke has studied the original fall of the Jedi Order and found that it was entirely because of their hubris. What we see in The Mandalorian is the failure of Luke Skywalker to apply the same lessons to himself. Applying retrospective logic, he's also failed to heed Obi-Wan Kenobi's lessons about training Jedi.

What all of this means, when put together, is that Luke's characterisation in The Last Jedi is close to perfect. It is only after his discussion with Yoda's Force ghost that he begins to realise his own mistakes, not only in training the new generation of (now deceased at the point of a lightsaber) Jedi, but in his retreat from the galaxy. He does retain that idealism, but it's been hidden behind a cloud of mistakes and doubt about his mission. Like anyone who has never failed, Luke doesn't know how to deal with it when Ben Solo turns to the dark side. He sees the fault as his own and sees himself as the danger, learning from the previous fall of the Jedi that the Jedi themselves cannot be trusted because of their arrogance and hubris. It's this we see in The Mandalorian: all-powerful, assured in that power, ready for a fall.

As much as seeing Luke in all-powerful awesome mode is fantastic, it actually makes his character arc all the more believable and all the more compelling. Dave Filoni and Jon Favreau have not stuck two fingers up at Rian Johnson at all; instead, they have added a layer to an increasingly complex character who is much more human for his failings, and a much better character for it.