Originally published in 1988, John M. Ford is one of the most lauded unknown authors I've encountered in a while. Robert Jordan extolls his writing and Neil Gaiman says this book is "really f*** brilliant", but I just didn't find it particularly engaging. I read plenty of novels from previous decades, so it wasn't that it was 40 years old but rather that Ford is one of those authors who creates extremely complex storylines and can't quite weave an entertaining story out of it. There were passages where I was completely lost about how it fit into the main narrative, with brand new characters but no older characters to help bridge things. Fifty pages later, the main character - Dr. Nicholas Hansard - returns but it's still another 20+ pages before they meet, and it becomes clear how the new characters fit into the story.

The tale itself is very much up my alley, though; Hansard is a Cold War scholar and historian who argues geopolitical theory with various experts, politicians, and military experts over a long-running Diplomacy game. Except he's also a spy and when a completely new play by Christopher Marlowe is unearthed, it's up to Hansard to figure out whether it's legit and what it means before anyone else does. With assassins, government intrigue, a complex warfare simulation game to demonstrate an inexplicable secret weapon (or algorithm?) and so much more, there's a great story here, or possibly two. Or even three. As is, however, I found it a slog. Your experience may vary!

The dated nature of the narrative was, sadly a bit off-putting and made engaging in the story difficult.

What I so loved about Ford's THE DRAGON WAITING annoyed the daylights out of me here, which is the way the book leaps around and expects that you'll keep up. Maybe I was ruined for it because I'd just read the latest/last le Carré and who could compare, when it comes to spy-craft, to the master?

The Scholars of Night is a book that lives at multiple crossroads. Or perhaps that should be multiple turning points. The world was changing under pretty much all of the axes at which this book is written, and it was obvious to those in the story – as well as those with eyes to see in the real world – that the verities which they lived under were about to change dramatically even if no one knew at the time what the results would be.

When The Scholars of Night was written, and when it was originally published, the Cold War between the U.S. and the Soviet Union, which had been at various temperatures between below 0 Fahrenheit and barely above 0 centigrade since the end of World War II, was about to end. Not that it was actually thawing, more that one of the sides was about to undergo a seismic shift that would change the nature of the game entirely.

And it was a game, as the players involved in this story make very clear. It’s just that it was a game with very real and deadly stakes.

The other factor, that other crossroads, and one as it turned out with equally deadly consequences, was the continuing miniaturization and coming ubiquity of omnipresent and seemingly omniscient information technology. Personal computers had started their shift from hobbyist tinker toys to working business devices with the production of the IBM PC in 1981, while the shift of the U.S. Department of Defense’ ARPANET into the internet we know today was already well on its way.

The intellectual games of espionage and their deadly consequences were shifting from the domain of people who were good at solving puzzles to people who programmed computers to make decisions at the speed of light.

That gamesmaster, academic and occasional intelligence asset Allan Berenson is slated for death by one of those speed of light decisions, and that his protege Nicholas Hansard and Berenson’s lover, the agent known only as WAGNER, do their best and worst to carry out Berenson’s last plan through a combination of intelligent puzzle-solving, ruthless determination and willful blindness to its consequences is a perfect metaphor for the death and the life of one old Cold warrior and the world he knew entirely too well.

Escape Rating A: The story in The Scholars of Night is complex and convoluted and wonderful. No one trusts anyone else, no one is really on anyone else’s side, everyone is waiting for everyone else to betray them – with good reasons – and everyone is unreliable because no one is telling the truth about anything even when they think they know the truth.

Which they usually don’t. This is a story about lies and the lying liars who tell those lies to the point where no one really knows what the truth is anymore or whether the truth even exists. So the truth becomes a fungible commodity, and the lines between collateral damage and just damage are so blurred they don’t even exist any longer.

The way that the story echoes back and around to Christopher Marlowe, his work for Elizabeth I’s spymasters, and the dirty deeds that he participated in and covered up just makes the point with even more emphasis that espionage is always a dirty business. No one involved is on the side of the angels.

(In a peculiar way, The Scholars of Night is a bit of a readalike for A Tip for the Hangman, which covers Marlowe’s forays into spycraft more directly. At any rate, if you like this you’ll probably like that, and there’s enough of Marlowe in the background here to make it very much vice versa.)

The story of The Scholars of Night is not a straightforward one by any means. WAGNER compartmentalizes her plan to enact Berenson’s last play so very well that the right hand and the left hand never even seem to be in the same country or on the same playing field and the reader spends as much of the story trying to piece the clues together as the agent does. Certainly the agencies following her are always at least one step behind, and we often feel that we are, too.

On the one hand, this story feels historical. 1986 or thereabouts are a lifetime ago. So in some ways, the story feels prescient as Berenson’s last big play foreshadows both the end of the Cold War and the rise of intelligent machines controlling the world instead of intelligent people. And yet, the story was contemporaneous at the time it was written.

And excellently well done at that. Especially if you like puzzles as much as Berenson and WAGNER did.

This new edition comes to us with a fresh foreword by Charles Stross, endeavoring to explain the book’s continuing sociopolitical relevance in 2021. This — while full of valid observations — may leave new readers expecting something far drier and angrier than what follows. Ford’s story drips with murder and betrayal, but also with an open-hearted enthusiasm for history and an unflinching examination of our own complicated relationships, for better or for worse. It’s as worthy a read now as it was then.

(reviewed in Sci-Fi Magazine)

I’ve never read anything by this author before, so I was eager to check out this book, especially after reading the glowing preface by Charles Stross.

I remember growing up with the constant threat of nuclear war. So reading an John M. Ford espionage story set in the 1980s was an interesting step back to this time, with its references to WWII, and its Cold War fears and the suited, faceless people working together and against the other side, and the agents and double agents in the field.
Ford also included war games, and playwright Christopher Marlowe in this story, alluding to the man’s espionage work for the Crown, as well as one of his plays. All these details are skillfully woven into this 80s story, which kicks off with a Russian agent’s death, with the play functioning as both a motive and a guide to the agent’s complex plan.
The main character, Nicholas Hansard, an unwitting protégé of the murdered agent, is sent afterwards to authenticate an unearthed Marlowe play, with another, deadly Russian agent taking revenge on others, while putting the detailed plan in motion.

The story started off well, and had me engaged. Then a third of the way in, my interest began waning. I really think that much of the spy wrangling bogged down the action, which is weird, considering this story is about spies running around and finding things out, while their handlers handle situations and budgets and things. Also, Nicholas Hansard was a bit of a snooze as a character. Every time the action centred on WAGNER moving ever closer to her end goal, I was engaged. Then Nicholas would reappear, or spies in other parts of the world would be doing something, and my attention would wander. I read the whole book through, and what does it say that I wanted WAGNER to succeed?

So, I was kind of disappointed that I didn’t enjoy this more.

Thank you to Netgalley and to Macmillan-Tor/Forge for this ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Don't you just love it when a book gets reprinted? I know I do. It gives me a chance to notice books that I missed the first time around. In this instance, the book in question is actually older than I am, which is always pretty cool. The Scholars of Night by John M. Ford is getting republished by Tor Books and is perfect for all the mystery fans in the house.

Nicholas Hansard is a historical analyst who loves to delve into ancient documents and find the truth hidden within. It's a passion and a talent, and one that has brought him a fair share of attention.

Not to mention a second job. Unfortunately for Hansard, his latest exploration refuses to stay in the past, and it pulls him into a murder mystery that he was not prepared for. Yet there's no turning back once it has all been set in motion.

The Scholars of Night was such a fun and different spy novel (at least, for me). I love the idea of a scholar being sent on secret missions to stacks of old documents. There's something oddly endearing about that. That may just be the bookworm in me talking.

The novel itself was set in 1988, and you can see the influence of the times. Thanks to the Cold War vibe, there's this lingering threat, and it plays nicely with the more subtle parts of this spy thriller.
I'm going to give a lot of credit to Charles Stross' introduction (to the reprinted version, that is), as it really helped provide a lot of essential historical context. For me, it also helped to drive home how much John M. Ford was appreciated at the time.

This novel ended up being an absolute delight to read, with so many twists and turns (seriously, it's full of surprises). Once again, I'm grateful to have had a chance to read The Scholars of Night this time around.

I didn't realize this was a reprint of a book from the 80s when I requested it. It's witty, but it turned out to not be my cup of tea, and felt a little dated. The characters exist to serve the plot, which leads to them lacking depth. I'm sure some will enjoy this book, and I see why it is being reprinted, but I was a bit disappointed by it.

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<p>Review copy provided by the publisher.</p>
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<p>Dear Mike,</p>
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<p>Well, they've re-released another of your books in a lovely new edition. The cover is brilliant. I think you'd love it. The introduction to this one was easier to get through, because Charles Stross was talking about the Cold War rather than talking about you.</p>
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<p>But then there was the book itself, and you know what you did, Mike. You know all the things you left for us to find after you were gone. The lines about grief about the loss of a mentor--knowing you would understand how that hurt just when the thing that hurts is your loss. Gee, thanks for that, friend. (I mean, seriously, thanks for that. But also, ow.)</p>
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<p>The thing about this book is that we're always talking about how much you were ahead of your time. But Charlie was right to talk about the Cold War in the intro, because this is the book of yours that is most <em>of</em> its time. This is the one that reminds me that you live in the past now, that's what being dead means. I can't talk to you about the gender dynamics you portrayed and what you were thinking about them, some of which is pretty strongly implied and some is a little trickier to tease out. And I definitely can't hear what you'd think of them now, in 2021. Because this book is of its time, and that's where you live, and I don't live there any more, and I can't even visit you there.</p>
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<p>One of the things that delights me about this book is how keenly you've observed that one of the joys of spy novels is men's fashion. Women's, too, but you can find more of that in other genres. You had a note-perfect eye for what the end of the Cold War was wearing, and you juggled that in as you were doing the Christopher Marlowe and the war games and all the rest. And I smiled every time.</p>
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<p>And then the ending. Here, this part: <em>The children were growing up angry, without any help at all. If he could teach Paul Ogden to think through his anger--If anyone could teach that to anyone, then there was hope</em>. Oh Mike. Oh friend. Well, we'll just keep trying, on that front. Because I've got to tell you, the children have not stopped having cause for that since you wrote it. Since you left us.</p>
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<p>It's a book of very different battles than we're fighting now, Mike, but the overlap is definitely there. It's much more of a period piece than <em>The Dragon Waiting</em>, strange though that is to say. And yet it's so well-constructed, it's so well done, that I return to it again and again, for all the snapshots, all the moments, all the ways you handled tension in this book. And: this is the book that made me go read all of Anthony Price. Because it works in either order. Now it's out again, and the people who are missing you can read it again--and the people who missed you the first time around can read it too.</p>
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<p>I hope they do.</p>
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<p>As always, thanks.</p>
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<p>Marissa</p>
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The Scholars of Night by John M. Ford, I struggled with this book, and with the way the story appeared to me jump around with little explanation leaving me wondering who I was reading about now. I do think others will enjoy this book and thank you for giving me a chance with this book.

Well that was a completely bonkers read.

When I first asked to review this, I didn't realise it was a reprinting; I'm not enough of a Ford fan to know that he's passed on. Then I read Charles Stross' introduction, in which he talks about this being published in 1988 and setting out the political context for the younger audience, and I wondered what this was going to be like.

Completely bonkers, is the answer.

It's a spy novel,
It has a possibly-undiscovered Christopher Marlowe play.
It has scholars and spies and disaffected patriots and mercenaries and... just a most remarkable cast, and a complicated narrative that eventually makes sense, and PhDs playing Diplomacy and people making Marlowe jokes and war game simulations and BONKERS.

It's awesome. The only downside is that some bits (eg who knew who was who) got a bit complicated so reading it over a few days, I wasn't always sure of exactly what was known to various people. But it all came good in the end. Basically.

Huge fun.

I've owned a copy of the original paperback for many years. There are a few typos in this edition which I hope will be corrected in the final version.

Nicholas Hansard is an historian at a small US college. He plays 'live action' Diplomacy with Dr Allan Berenson and a small circle of friends and students. Both he and Berenson work for the White Group, a US agency. 2 documents are found: a WWII dossier that went missing when the courier died in action, and a lost Christopher Marlowe play found in an English country house. The first implicates Berenson as a double agent, the second Hansard is asked to authenticate after Berenson is assassinated. Unbeknownst to both sides, Berenson has been building a network of his own - to start WWIII. After his death, his lover takes over. It's a race against time to prevent this happening.

Written in the format of a play, the action is part flashback, part real-time and part dramatic reconstruction. A typical densely-plotted Ford novel, the story drags you in and keeps you there to the conclusion.

The book is due to be released this autumn - buy it!

I'm so happy that this book is being reprinted. It's a classic for sure. Though I'm slightly upset that I can't talk about the great John M Ford book that no one else has read, in a snobby manner anymore.. Though it may be hard to see the connection at first this book deeply reminded me of the work of Neal Stephenson. More so in the world building and the way that the author makes mundane things seem interesting. Its best to go into this book totally unprepared. A cold war thriller with many twists and turns. 5 out of 5.