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How the U.S. Won the War Against Japan

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By Mark Perry

• Aug. 28, 2020

TWILIGHT OF THE GODS War in the Western Pacific, 1944-1945 By Ian W. Toll

On the morning of May 8, 1945, Gen. George Marshall traveled from his Pentagon office to the White House to tell President Harry Truman that Germany had surrendered. “I’m glad to hear it,” Truman said, “because for a while there I thought we were fighting the British.”

The Marshall-Truman tale, though undoubtedly apocryphal, was repeated thereafter as a reminder that, during the war in Europe, the relationship between the British and Americans was so acrimonious that Marshall, and his British counterparts, feared their alliance might shatter. It didn’t, but a working knowledge of the fraught Anglo-American partnership remains crucial to understanding the European conflict. The same is true for the war against Japan, though for a different reason. There, the inter-Allied feuding that marred the war with Germany was replaced by a fractious competition between the United States Navy and the Army over resources, strategy and public acclaim.

It is a credit to the historian Ian W. Toll that this antagonism, played out through the personalities of Gen. Douglas MacArthur and Adm. Chester Nimitz , remains an important, but not crucial, subtext of “Twilight of the Gods,” the third volume of Toll’s superb trilogy on the Pacific War. In truth, as Toll implies, the MacArthur-Nimitz competition was never as enervating to the war effort against Japan as the American-British competition was in Europe. For good reason: By mid-1944, the United States war economy could provide both MacArthur and Nimitz with enough of what they needed so that the defeat of Japan, though it would cost more lives, was not in doubt. What’s more, the Army-Navy competition over strategy was driven by geography and not personality — with Nimitz hesitantly agreeing with MacArthur during a July 1944 conference in Hawaii (mediated by Franklin Roosevelt) that an American invasion of the Philippines was a military necessity.

Dispensing with the MacArthur-Nimitz meeting in his first chapter (it’s a good tale, but often told) allows Toll to turn his focus on the Navy, his true area of expertise as well as his enduring passion, and he deftly completes the portraits of Admirals Ernest King, Chester Nimitz, Raymond Spruance and William “Bull” Halsey that he provided in his previous volumes. What emerges is a study as detailed as it is unsparing, with King, Nimitz, Spruance and Halsey as pivotal to victory in the Pacific as George Marshall, Dwight Eisenhower, Omar Bradley and George Patton were to the victory in Europe. And while the names of these Navy giants do not roll off the tongue as readily now as those of their celebrated Army counterparts, they should — with Nimitz emerging as the true architect of America’s Pacific naval strategy and Spruance as his masterly, if sometimes overly careful, tactician. The rise of Nimitz and Spruance pushed the irascible King into the background, where he took on his proper role as the Navy’s key defender among the Joint Chiefs of Staff, with Halsey cast as Nimitz’s headstrong bad boy. But Halsey was not Nimitz’s Patton: Patton needed constant monitoring, but made few mistakes; Halsey was more pliable, but made mistakes galore.

The charge sheet against Halsey is long and complex, but is nowhere rendered more grimly than in Toll’s description of his “pattern of confusion, sloppiness and impulsiveness in basic procedures,” his “slapdash habits,” his penchant “to speak first and think later,” his persistent promotion of his own “glorified public image” and his questionable familiarity with naval aviation — a requirement, you would think, in a theater that featured carrier operations. But Halsey cultivated loyalty, and received it. Vice Adm. Roland Smoot, one of the Navy’s more acclaimed fighters, called him “a complete and utter clown,” while admitting that “if he said, ‘Let’s go to hell together,’ you’d go to hell with him.” Halsey was always on the edge of being fired, and knew it: “I am most apologetic for the present mix-up,” he wrote to Nimitz after one foul-up. “I can assure you that my intentions were excellent, but my execution rotten.”

As it turned out, Halsey’s rotten execution was nearly his undoing when, in October 1944, the Japanese lured him into a pointless pursuit of a group of stripped-down aircraft carriers during the Battle of Leyte Gulf. Once Halsey took the bait, the harrowing goose chase that followed left the rest of the American fleet vulnerable, an action that came to be known as “Bull’s Run.” Nimitz should have relieved Halsey, but didn’t: Firing him would have raised too many questions with an admiring public.

Toll’s expertly navigated narrative includes a number of new insights (the kamikaze strategy, for example, was more controversial inside the Japanese military than is generally acknowledged), as well as a new approach that hypothesizes the struggle between “sequentialists” and “cumulativists” inside the American military that, as Toll argues, “colored every phase of Pacific strategy.” The sequentialists, Spruance and Halsey among them, emphasized step-by-step tactical triumphs that would bring American forces to Japan’s shores for an ultimate invasion, while King and the Army Air Corps commander Gen. Henry “Hap” Arnold emphasized cumulative sea and air operations — the destruction of Japan’s merchant fleet, the strategic bombing of Japanese cities — that, they believed, would make an invasion unnecessary. Toll’s familiarity with this hitherto hidden tussle, while still incomplete, is elaborate enough to be provocative, which new historical ideas often are.

This makes Toll the fitting inheritor of a tradition of writing that began with the naval historian Samuel Eliot Morison , who in 1942 suggested to Franklin Roosevelt that he be assigned to document the Navy’s World War II battles as a “seagoing historiographer.” Unlike the Army, which sponsored the 78 invaluable volumes of “U.S. Army in World War II,” the Navy has never been keenly interested in its own history, which is why it hesitantly acquiesced to Morison’s request, and only because Roosevelt thought it a good idea. The Navy put Morison in uniform, made him a lieutenant commander, then dispatched him to the North Atlantic and Pacific as their official historian. While Morison’s resulting 15-volume “History of United States Naval Operations in World War II ” is celebrated as classic and definitive, it is neither. Rather, it is overly triumphalist — and long. Toll’s trilogy is a departure: It is exhaustive and authoritative and it shows the Navy in World War II as it really was, warts and all.

But no history of the Pacific War can be complete without presenting an intimate knowledge of Japanese naval and political decision-making. Toll does this too, showing a tactile command of the subject that puts Japan’s war in its proper perspective — as an unnecessary fight that, in retrospect, looks like a suicide mission. For the first five decades after the end of World War II, American historians debated whether the turning point in the Pacific War resulted from the Japanese Imperial Navy’s defeat at the Battle of Midway (the preferred choice) or the Marine Corps victory at Guadalcanal — which has recently gained an increasing number of adherents.

Still, time, reflection and a growing appreciation for the sheer weight of American resources (and now Toll’s three-volume work) have once again shifted that debate. Japan lost the Pacific War, as Toll suggests, from the moment the first bombs dropped on Pearl Harbor. In the war’s aftermath, the Japanese people, Toll writes, realized this when it was revealed that many of those who took them to war not only foresaw, but actually predicted, its outcome — and went to war anyway. The decision, Toll writes, was based on the assumption that the American people were too “soft” to wage war and, once attacked, would look for a way out. It was the most egregiously false assumption in the history of warfare — as Toll’s trilogy eloquently shows.

Mark Perry is the author of 10 books, including “The Most Dangerous Man in America: The Making of Douglas MacArthur.”

TWILIGHT OF THE GODS War in the Western Pacific, 1944-1945 By Ian W. Toll Illustrated. 944 pp. W.W. Norton & Company. $40.

REVIEW: Twilight of the Gods by Scott Oden

• Book Reviews
• December 5, 2023
• By Robin Marx

It is the year 1218, and deep in the wilds of Scandinavia there is a sense that Fimbulvetr, the final winter presaging Ragnarök, is at hand. While the Norse, Danes, and Swedes neighboring them have adopted Christianity, the isolated Raven-Geat tribe reject the so-called “Nailed God” and cling to the old ways. Though surrounded by enemies, the Raven-Geats have a protector known as the Hooded One, immortal herald of the Tangled God Loki. As Twilight of the Gods opens, hot-blooded teenage girl Dísa Dagrúnsdottir has just been chosen by the Fates to serve as the Hooded One’s new priestess. She is shocked to learn that the truculent and mercurial guardian of her people is a literal monster: Grimnir, last of the kaunr , what we would call an orc. As Dísa attempts to survive her new master’s cruel ordeals, a greater threat looms just out of sight. A haunted and deranged zealot fresh from the sack of Constantinople plots a new personal Crusade, one to exterminate the heathen Raven-Geats and unite the Scandinavian peninsula under the White Christ.

Twilight of the Gods is a book drenched in both grim Norse fatalism and blood & thunder heroics. The novels in the Grimnir Saga depict a North where the Old Gods are in decline. Grimnir is the last of his kind, and other once respected and feared supernatural creatures have likewise become relegated to the margins of the world or gone extinct entirely. The influence of Odin and the old pantheon wanes, displaced by the encroaching Christian faith. For Grimnir and many of the other characters in this book, there’s a pervading feeling that the war has already been lost, yet for various reasons they still gear up to fight one last glorious battle. And readers familiar with Oden’s other work, from the previous Grimnir novel to historical adventures like Men of Bronze and The Lion of Cairo , know that Oden can deliver that final battle with gusto. Simultaneously rousing and horrifying, the combats in this novel blend cinematic action with gory, gritty, down-in-the-mud struggle.

As with A Gathering of Ravens , appealing characters are another strong point in Twilight of the Gods . Oden treads a delicate line with his hero Grimnir; he must appear monstrous enough to feel like an “authentic” orc and not just a brutish costumed human, but not so repellent that the reader finds themselves unable to relate to the character or enjoy his exploits. Grimnir is bellicose, capricious, spiteful, and arrogant. He’s casually brutal and an unrepentant murderer. But he’s also an orc of his word, and never fails to repay a debt. In his dealings with humans, who Grimnir views as little more than animals, Oden also imbues him with a mischievous, amused paternalism. Grimnir may not have a heart of gold, but he’s not an outright villain, either. To preserve Grimnir’s mystique, Oden wisely provides primary viewpoint character Dísa as a counterbalance and foil. Imperfect and impetuous, and sharing more than a little of Grimnir’s arrogance, Dísa is an entertaining heroine to follow. Her undying determination is admirable, and it’s interesting to watch her learn when to push back against Grimnir and when to (grudgingly) accept his brusque guidance.

Despite the exceptional quality of the book, Twilight of the Gods had the misfortune of launching in February 2020, roughly simultaneously with the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. With all the societal upheaval, store closures, cancelled events, and supply chain issues that followed, I suspect unlucky timing and curtailed promotions prevented this volume from attracting the audience it deserved. Now is an ideal time to read Twilight of the Gods , however. Its conclusion will leave readers wanting more, just as more is about to arrive: The Doom of Odin , book 3 in THE GRIMNIR SAGA, is scheduled to be released on December 19, 2023.

Wholeheartedly recommended for fans of Vikings, orcs, Viking orcs, tough heroines, Scandinavian metal, and doomed battles against incredible odds.

Read Twilight of the Gods by Scott Oden

Born in Spain and raised in the United States, Robin Marx has lived in Japan for more than two decades. He works in the video game industry, handling localization and international licensing. In addition to over a dozen video games, his writing has appeared in a number of role-playing game supplements. He lives with his wife and their two daughters. You can link up with Robin over at: https://mastodon.social/@RobinMarx

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‘Twilight of the Gods’

The magisterial final volume of Ian W. Toll’s Pacific War trilogy

September 2nd marks the 75 th anniversary of the day the Japanese officially surrendered on the deck of the battleship Missouri in Tokyo Bay, ending World War II. Just over the railings, much of Tokyo was burned to the ground, as were many Japanese cities, the nation starving and completely beaten.

I first became fascinated by the war between the United States and Japan in the 1970s, when its history felt current: many veterans were still alive, and people were still fishing out the last stubborn Japanese soldiers from the Philippine jungles. I was 13 and the fierce battles between planes and ships on a vast blue ocean were thrilling to imagine. My great uncle died when he stepped on a Japanese landmine on Leyte Island. My step-father fought in five campaigns in the Pacific, manning twin 50-cal. machine guns to protect airfields. Even then, 35 years later, he preferred cloudy afternoons, because the Japanese “won’t strafe us today.”

At the time, with much information newly unclassified, histories of the conflict tended to recount which ships had been where, which planes had scored hits on their opponents, and which battles had decided the outcome. As the decades wore on, and my interest ebbed and flowed, I occasionally read the latest new history. The focus shifted: writers added novelistic details, rich visual descriptions, internal thoughts and motivations for admirals and sailors, and all manner of obscure diary entries and hitherto unexplored official histories. Battles and incidents that had once merited a line now got the full-book treatment.

Then, nearly 10 years ago, the author and historian Ian W. Toll published the first of what would seem to be–what surely must be–the definitive, three-volume history of the brutal four-year battle with Japan. I gobbled them up. How did Toll manage to distinguish himself from all those works that had come before? By collecting an astounding volume of information and elegantly putting it on the page; by wonderfully writing those battles that previous historians had thoroughly examined; and by going deeply into episodes that had received scant attention before. In the first volume, “Pacific Crucible,” for example, Toll gives an early U.S. raid on the Marshall Islands pulse-pounding narrative drive, while previous authors had rushed through it to get to big battles like Coral Sea and Midway.

The result is a remarkable body of work that allows one to viscerally experience how the war in the Pacific was not one war, but really three wars. It began as a three-dimensional, 360-degree naval and air chess game between professional navies, morphed into a titanic war of attrition, and ended as a an utterly unbalanced contest between the largest, most sophisticated war-making force the world had ever known and a desperate, starving, beaten nation, its own civilians caught miserably between their relentless enemy and their own delusional, selfish leaders.

Today, Norton publishes the final volume, Twilight of the Gods: War in the Western Pacific, 1944-1945. In the closing pages of the second book, “The Conquering Tide,” Toll foreshadowed the Gotterdammerung that Japan would face in the war’s closing year. In Twilight of the Gods he delivers it with stunning, exhausting, horrifying force.

From Kamikaze to Napalm

Twilight of the Gods–at 792 pages of text, the biggest of the trilogy–begins with a look at the role of press relations during the war and the delicate art of releasing bad news to the public, a theme that continues as a subplot. Both sides fight a public-relations battle, with characters like Gen. Douglas MacArthur playing directly to the media, while others shun the spotlight. Again and again, in both the United States and Japan, we see the answer is clear: it’s always best to put the truth out there for your people to see and hear. This focus on the partisan use of “facts” is indeed germane to our political discourse today.

We’re soon back in action at Peleliu and then the sprawling Battle of Leyte Gulf, the final true sea fight of World War II. Toll switches nicely from the 30,000-foot strategic view to the telling, in-close detail, like how sailors transferred their injured shipmates off the burning carrier Princeton by timing their tosses to the up-down ocean swells. The battles wrecks the Japanese. It essentially finishes their navy as a fighting force; from there it only gets worse for them.

The United States carrier force–alternately the Fifth Fleet or the Third Fleet, depending on who is in charge, Adm. Raymond A. Spruance or Adm. Bill “Bull” Halsey–has become an unstoppable Death Star, ranging around the Pacific with impudence. In “Pacific Crucible,” Toll had described balanced battles between forces with two or three aircraft carriers each; now the U.S. fleet has dozens, with the best planes and the best-trained flyers by far.

Japan, meanwhile, rushed young men aloft as quickly as possible, in planes that were fast becoming obsolete, to be shot down en masse . Yet the leaders wouldn’t give up, even as a nascent peace movement took hold within the government. The generals and admirals knew they were beaten but were ready to sacrifice as many of their sailors, soldiers and pilots–and eventually civilians–as necessary to convince the Americans that this fight was going to be too costly, and they should just negotiate a peace and go home.

These competing factors reach a fevered pitch with the advent of the Kamikaze, in which barely trained Japanese pilots – many of them college students – flew their planes into American ships, or died trying. The Kamikaze scored many successes, sinking or severely damaging dozens of vessels, including several big and valuable aircraft carriers, but they were nonetheless unable to hinder the U.S. fleet’s movement. A furious typhoon, which Toll harrowingly describes; you almost get seasick–causes almost as much of a setback for the fleet as the most frenzied Kamikaze attack.

Toll makes a strong case that, in the beginning of the Kamikaze program, the flyers, both new and veteran, were eager to volunteer. But as the war drags on, and the Allies get closer to the homeland, they begin to resist, or to at least question the strategy. More and more pilots turn back with mysterious engine malfunctions. One pilot does so nine times, and is executed. He was a graduate of the elite Wasada University. What a terrible waste: he was exactly the kind of person Japan would need to rebuild in the months ahead.

The true Gotterdammerung of this historical Gotterdammerung is the strategic bombing campaign against Japan. First we see the troubled development of the massive, four-engine B-29 bomber and its initial failures. Japanese civilians, it’s almost painful to read, initially “regarded the B-29s with curiosity, fascination and even admiration.”

But when Gen. Curtis LeMay determines that the plane’s most effective use would be flying low and dropping napalm-lined incendiary bombs on Tokyo, the interest turns to horror. That night is told in unflinching and ghastly detail: the streamer-tailing explosives floating to the ground and popping, the fires everywhere, the desperate sprints of terrified families seeking refuge when there was none. Fathers lose their children in the whirlwind; mothers and babies burst into flames. Michiko Okubo, 12, grabs the hand of a four-year-old girl and says, “Let’s get away from here together.” But flames quickly separate them. She recalls: “I have never been able to forget the feeling of her soft, little hand, like a maple leaf, in mine.”

It is hard to say who’s crueler: the American planners who knew what incendiaries would do to a city of wood and paper, and seemed to almost relish it, or the Japanese leaders, who implored their citizens to keep fighting when they couldn’t protect them. By the time the bomb falls on Hiroshima 146 pages later–again told in unflinching detail–Twilight of the Gods has more or less inured us to human suffering. But then again, at the time, much of humanity was equally inured.

Never Again

Reading about the Pacific War as a 54-year-old is quite a different experience from that of a 13-year-old boy. As the father of a 20-year-old college student son, I find tales of young pilots being shot down in flames not at all thrilling–in fact, they are deeply upsetting. As a writer and journalist with 30 years experience, I can all the more admire and appreciate Toll’s incredible breadth of reporting, his canny insights, and his smart way with words. Twilight of the Gods is not as taut as the first two books. A section on the home front didn’t seem to advance the scholarship and he probably could have cut it. And there’s a little sloppiness: a misnamed ship here, an awkwardly repeated phrase there. But, all in all, it’s an incredible work, an all-encompassing journey back to a war whose scale and ferocity is hard to imagine today.

My youthful fascination with the Pacific War led to a lifelong interest in Japan and its history and culture. I’ve managed to go three times, and I’ve made some strong friendships there. In October, 2015, I went to write a travel story for The New York Times and, on my last day, made a mad dash from Kyoto to Tokyo to Narita Airport and home. In Tokyo I met a friend, Sakura, at Tokyo Station. We had coffee and cherry pie at a place called Bubby’s.

Her grandfather had driven a truck in the Japanese Army during the war. Perhaps he was on the same island where my step-father shot at Japanese planes on sunny days. But now here we were, in the Tokyo outpost of a downtown Manhattan restaurant, eating a quintessential American dessert, so very close to where Curtis LeMay’s streamer-tailing bombs had set their fires. It seemed impossible to imagine that our nations, and our relatives, had once been at each other’s throats.

With his magisterial work Toll reminds us in extraordinary detail that they were, and in so doing makes the best possible case for making sure it never happens again.

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Wendell Jamieson

Wendell Jamieson, a former Metro editor of The New York Times, is an author and political consultant working in New York City. He is currently writing a book for Hachette Books with Joshua Miele, a scientist, accessibility advocate and Macarthur winner who was blinded in an acid attack as a child.

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Claremont Review of Books

• Book Reviews
• Digital Exclusive

Twilight of the Gods

If we avoid mining his plays for punditry and sloganeering, the Bard may help us find answers to our own questions.

Books  Reviewed

The Tragedy of Julius Caesar

The Tragedy of Antony and Cleopatra

Two summers ago, New York City’s Public Theater staged the assassination of Donald Trump. Their production of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar styled the title character as a Twitter-happy blonde bloviator whose gory deposition looked to many like a savage display of hostility toward the commander-in-chief.

Well-spoken cultural authorities emerged from the heavens to assure us that, of course, the play in no way endorses political violence. Harvard University’s Stephen Greenblatt, known for his popular scholarship on Shakespeare, called it “kind of amusing, in a slightly grim way,” that silly conservatives would get up in arms about a harmless instance of free artistic expression.

True, Julius Caesar leaves us suspecting that the conspirators’ ends may not have justified their means. But America’s artistic landscape has been relentlessly dominated by political revenge porn. Comedienne Kathy Griffin appeared in a 2017 photo op with a Trump mask made to look like the president’s severed head, and every awards show features a stirring call to resistance. Right-wingers may be forgiven for wondering whether the overwhelmingly liberal New York theatre community didn’t relish slaughtering the president in effigy.

More than anything, though, Caesar-as-Trump was a desperate grasp at relevance—a forced attempt to shoehorn a great playwright into a modern staging. Shakespeare’s play is concerned with the terrible dilemma that faces patriots when a real constitutional crisis necessitates drastic measures—not just when the guy in office happens to be unpalatable. Trump is no Caesar. Kathy Griffin is no Shakespeare.

What if, instead of making Shakespeare’s historical dramas into tortured analogues for our present moment, we considered them as earnest attempts to penetrate the issues of the past? That is the premise behind Jan H. Blits’s new annotated editions of the Roman plays: Julius Caesar , out last year; Antony and Cleopatra , which appeared this September; and a forthcoming Coriolanus . Blits treats the trilogy not as a parable for 16th- or 21st-century politics, but as a searchingly philosophical depiction of the pagan world’s anguished transformation into Christendom.

Blits, a professor emeritus at the University of Delaware School of Education, is clearly indebted to Shakespeare’s Politics (1964) by Allan Bloom and Harry V. Jaffa, as well as Shakespeare’s Rome (1976) and Shakespeare’s Roman Trilogy (2017) by Paul Cantor. These books gainsaid a trendy strain of historicist thought which held that Shakespeare could have no real insight into any time other than his own Elizabethan England.

By contrast, Cantor and Blits see in the Bard a serious scholar of antiquity grappling with the same question that haunted Edward Gibbon and Friedrich Nietzsche: how did the noble champions of Roman liberty succumb to the universalizing quietism which made both Augustus and Christ into plausible rulers of the world?

Blits therefore juxtaposes each play with primary texts from the Roman imperial period in notes at the bottom of each page. He frequently cites the 1st-century-A.D. essayist Plutarch, whom Shakespeare read carefully in Sir Thomas North’s translation. Blits points out that even small details (e.g., the “distinctive mincing diction” of the minor lackey Gaius Maecenas) are faithfully drawn from ancient accounts. Because these parallels between history and drama are so closely observed, the editions also reveal meaning and significance in moments when Shakespeare does depart from his source material.

For example: Shakespeare has Octavian, soon to be the Emperor Augustus, weep in public when he hears that Marc Antony, his ally-turned-nemesis, is vanquished. Plutarch’s Octavian hid his tears but, Blits argues, there is a reason why Shakespeare makes his budding monarch flaunt his magnanimity in victory. The trilogy as a whole contrasts such ostentatious demonstrations of egotistical benevolence with the old-fashioned Roman brand of Stoic fortitude and self-sacrifice. That venerable code of honor is passing from the world because Rome, in Blits’s words, “has ceased to be a city or a community.” Shakespeare saw in Rome’s massive territorial expansion the death of its old civic values: if Rome is everywhere then it is nowhere, too abstract to love or to die for.

And so, as Act V of Antony and Cleopatra opens with Octavian’s victory, Blits shifts to a new frame of reference: he believes that Shakespeare is now concerned less with Plutarch than with the Book of Revelation. Empire calls forth “a new heaven and a new earth” wherein all the universe must bow to one authority. Either men will worship Caesar, or they will submit their hearts to the gentle yoke of a strange new peasant king who comes barefoot from the East. Either Rome or Christ must now be all in all.

Ironically, Blits’s excellent reading of the play—so ostensibly distant from our modern Trumpian anxieties—turns out to be deeply “relevant” after all. What happens when a ragtag rebel nation sprawls outward into a globalist superpower whose newfound dominance dilutes the fellow feeling of its citizens? What force is strong enough to unite the hearts of countrymen separated by geographical and ideological chasms? These are Shakespeare’s real questions. They are also our own. If we avoid mining his plays for punditry and sloganeering, the Bard may help us find some answers.

Next in the fall 2019 Issue

What iran sees, a philosophe in full, practical wisdom.

Was Classic Rock a Sound, or a Tribe?

Steven Hyden’s book Twilight of the Gods argues that the appeal of the now-dwindling Baby Boomer guitar gods was only ever personal.

What was classic rock? The question sounds confrontational—how rude to put the Rolling Stones in the past tense when Mick Jagger is still honing his workout routine !—but, of course, the very name classic rock has always implied a was . In 1992, Nirvana jockeyed against contemporaries of their day, from Guns N’ Roses to Kris Kross, for airwave space. Today, “Heart-Shaped Box” still glowers on the radio , but often next to the pre–Kurt Cobain likes of The Who and REO Speedwagon. This process is necessarily morbid: What’s vital today will be interred tomorrow, under the euphemistic placard of classic .

So it might seem redundant for Steven Hyden’s Twilight of the Gods: A Journey to the End of Classic Rock to perch itself as a memorial. Hasn’t classic rock always been evaluated through the eulogist’s haze of time and sentiment? Then again, the urgency of Hyden’s task is clear. “I started writing this book around the time that David Bowie died, and I finished it around the time that Tom Petty passed,” writes the critic, currently on staff at Uproxx . “You want to know what happened in between? A lot of other rock stars went.”

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We now live in the era of the blockbuster obituary—a Tom Petty or Wolfe drops with at least the frequency of a Disney franchise movie—largely for simple demographic reasons: The Baby Boom has reached the beginning of the end of its trajectory. And the Boomers, as seen in the very label classic applying to the soundtrack of their primes, have excelled at overlaying the mantle of myth on stories whose ink was still drying. But the overlapping public funerals of the past few years have also been a forum for intergenerational probing of legacies. Just this week, it’s been made clear how cherished Philip Roth was by the writers who came up after him. But resentments have also been revealed, linked to the notion of important white men choking off pathways to acclaim.

Hyden’s book is a cheery, surprisingly modest contribution to such relitigation in the musical arena. The author is a 40-year-old who, as a Midwestern teenager flipping through the radio dials, came to worship Led Zeppelin and Bruce Springsteen. Thus, he occupies a special spot in the march of generations: neither enthralled by the kings of the ’60s because he lived through their reigns, nor rebelling against the ubiquitously worshipped music of his parents. A converted true believer—a living testament to the influence that classic rock is always said to have—you might expect him to earnestly reassert this music’s intrinsic greatness. A book like this could have been a middle finger to all those who cheer the supposed “death of rock” with accusations of racism, sexism, and stale nostalgia.

Hyden, though, is not a fight-picker. He ends up defining down classic rock, positioning it less as an essential art form than as a slowly dissolving tribe. The driving thesis seems to be that classic rock electrified folks like him not necessarily because of the brilliance of the musicianship, the evolutionary way it expanded its form, or the grand truths it told. Rather, the connection was personal. “I needed role models,” he writes, “and while Jimmy Page was unlike me in every other way, he did sort of look like me, which was enough.” That admission comes during an admirably self-aware passage about classic rock’s racial biases, and Hyden might not be mad if you came into the book thinking that classic rock was a last hurrah of straight-white-male centrality and finished the book still believing that.

He does toy with more formal definitions of classic rock , though. Early on, we’re reminded that the term derives from radio taxonomies, and that the divide that programmers made between “oldies” and “classic rock,” somewhat arbitrarily, drew a line in the mid-’60s. But he also suggests that intrinsic to classic rock is an emphasis on cohesive albums like The Dark Side of the Moon and Tommy . As a teen, what attracted him to classic rock was that it “felt like the opposite of pop music, which was proudly disposable and all about the here and now … whereas classic rock had roots that you could trace back as far as you cared to go.” The genre, he argues, began with Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band in 1967 and ended with Nine Inch Nails’s The Fragile in 1999.

These criteria—radio classification, album-length ambition, and an awareness of tradition and legacy—clearly aren’t watertight, though. Other genres have meaty, purpose-driven albums , as seen lately with Beyoncé and Kendrick Lamar (both of whom Hyden acknowledges). Other genres self-consciously evolve from old traditions and aim for lasting listenership, as seen, again, in Beyoncé and Kendrick Lamar . Moreover, if the album matters so much, why is classic radio—which divorces song from track listing—still the practical arbiter of the canon? Why is the most widely owned release by the Eagles, named by Hyden as the platonic classic-rock band, a collection of singles ? Why is there a chapter on Phish and the Grateful Dead, whose appeal is concert improvisation rather than studio recordings? And what classic-rock station is playing “Starfuckers, Inc.”?

The book feels designed to inspire quibbling such as this because it is, more than anything, a 289-page exercise in the joyful rock-fan pastime of bullshit theorizing. If you’re someone who loves debating whether AC/DC is still AC/DC when Axl Rose is singing, or whether Tom Petty and Bruce Springsteen briefly switched places as the top dog of “heartland rock” in the ’90s, Twilight of the Gods will be a feast. Ditto if you’re game to rehash the big stories: the simmering rivalry of Levon Helm and Robbie Robertson as seen in The Last Waltz , the unspeakable things Led Zeppelin are alleged to have done with a mud shark. Hyden purports to write about the concept of mythology, but he often ends up just basking in the ephemera rather than saying much new about it.

If the book is a corrective at all, it is to the rock criticism typical of the music Hyden writes about. Lester Bangs’s gonzo pyrotechnics aren’t to be found, but neither is the analytical sobriety of academics who dissect Bob Dylan. Hyden writes unfussily, enthusiastically, like a fan, and the only pretense on display is a not-entirely-convincing affect of barstool jocularity. Justifying why he’s not going to try to describe the sound of Led Zeppelin IV , he writes, quite unfortunately, “It’s like explaining why oral sex is an enjoyable pastime— don’t blowjobsplain, dude .” He then spends a bit of time hashing out which songs on the album are overrated and underrated, and finishes, “But that’s just the music. What really sold me on Zeppelin was the mythology.”

The mythology, bigger than the music? It’s a common knock against classic-rock fans that Hyden gleefully pleads guilty to. To hear him tell it, dishy biographies and salacious lyrics had a serious effect on his own life. The legendary hedonism of Jim Morrison is “(at least partly) to blame for all that time I spent in my 20s staring vainly into barroom mirrors while I drank and drugged myself into oblivion.” Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours , he says, was his teenage self’s first encounter with female subjectivity: “As dumb as this might sound, I had never even considered that a woman could be as into sex as a dude is.” Of Springsteen’s storytelling, he writes, “For those of us who have never had a good father-son talk with our real dads, these are more than songs—they’re the closest things we have to patriarchal advice about how to be a grown-up.”

Eventually, he acknowledges that it may be no coincidence that his idols were almost entirely straight white men. In one fascinating riff, he imagines a classic-rock canon that included black artists who’d been segregated away as “soul” singers. But his fixation on identity—the rockers’ and his own—helps explain the mentality that led to such sameness in the first place. And it doesn’t account for the imaginative form of listening that fans who don’t so easily see themselves in Jimmy Page undertake all the time—or that classic-rock diehards might want to try when approaching, say, hip-hop. Thus he’s still blinkered enough to write a paragraph about how “all rockers” set out to attract women to their concerts because, among other things, women “look glamorous when they’re sweaty—unlike men, who just look sweaty.” (Joni Mitchell, Elton John, and Queen, all of whom he acknowledges get short shrift in the book, might have a different take.)

On the big question of classic rock’s demise, he extends the argument that music is mostly a proxy for the listener’s own life.“When a rock star dies, what people are mourning is their own mortality,” he writes, and certainly it’s hard to argue against him: Whether you’re Bowie’s age or have simply lived a few decades in constant awareness of him, his loss throws time’s march into perspective. But something else might be dying out with the classic rockers, too: the uncontested dominance of straight white males as culture’s anointed overseers. Of course, it’s long been clear that the same transition animating America’s political fights is playing out in pop culture, and Hyden, to his credit, makes no calls for rock to be great again. He only asks we not forget what made this music so great to people like him, and offers hope that others may still find the gods they need.

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Twilight of the Gods : Book summary and reviews of Twilight of the Gods by Ian W. Toll

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Twilight of the Gods

War in the Western Pacific, 1944-1945 (Pacific War Trilogy #3)

by Ian W. Toll

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Published Sep 2020 944 pages Genre: History, Current Affairs and Religion Publication Information

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Book summary.

The final volume of the magisterial Pacific War Trilogy from acclaimed historian Ian W. Toll, "one of the great storytellers of War" (Evan Thomas).

In June 1944, the United States launched a crushing assault on the Japanese navy in the Battle of the Philippine Sea. The capture of the Mariana Islands and the accompanying ruin of Japanese carrier airpower marked a pivotal moment in the Pacific War. No tactical masterstroke or blunder could reverse the increasingly lopsided balance of power between the two combatants. The War in the Pacific had entered its endgame. Beginning with the Honolulu Conference, when President Franklin Delano Roosevelt met with his Pacific theater commanders to plan the last phase of the campaign against Japan, Twilight of the Gods brings to life the harrowing last year of World War II in the Pacific, when the U.S. Navy won the largest naval battle in history; Douglas MacArthur made good his pledge to return to the Philippines; waves of kamikazes attacked the Allied fleets; the Japanese fought to the last man on one island after another; B-29 bombers burned down Japanese cities; and Hiroshima and Nagasaki were vaporized in atomic blasts. Ian W. Toll's narratives of combat in the air, at sea, and on the beaches are as gripping as ever, but he also reconstructs the Japanese and American home fronts and takes the reader into the halls of power in Washington and Tokyo, where the great questions of strategy and diplomacy were decided. Drawing from a wealth of rich archival sources and new material, Twilight of the Gods casts a penetrating light on the battles, grand strategic decisions and naval logistics that enabled the Allied victory in the Pacific. An authoritative and riveting account of the final phase of the War in the Pacific, Twilight of the Gods brings Toll's masterful trilogy to a thrilling conclusion. This prize-winning and best-selling trilogy will stand as the first complete history of the Pacific War in more than twenty-five years, and the first multivolume history of the Pacific naval war since Samuel Eliot Morison's series was published in the 1950s. 32 photographs; 20 maps

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"Written with flair and chock-full of stories both familiar and fresh, this monumental history fires on all cylinders. WWII aficionados will be enthralled." - Publishers Weekly (starred review) "There is no shortage of accounts of the brutal island-hopping invasions (Peleliu in September, the Philippines in October, Iwo Jima in February 1945, Okinawa in April), but Toll's take second place to none...A conventional but richly rewarding history of the last war that turned out well for the U.S." - Kirkus Reviews (starred review) "No one has told the story of World War II in the Pacific, from beginning to bitter end, better than Ian W. Toll. This final volume concludes a brilliant trilogy. Elegant and supremely readable―don't miss the finest military history of 2020." - Alex Kershaw, New York Times best-selling author of The First Wave and Avenue of Spies "I've been a fan of Ian W. Toll's since his first book, Six Frigates , but this concluding volume of his Pacific War Trilogy has taken him to another level altogether. Twilight of the Gods grabs you from the beginning and doesn't let go until the very end―an epic masterpiece of military history." - Nathaniel Philbrick, National Book Award–winning author of In the Heart of the Sea and finalist for the Pulitzer Prize "In his masterly narrative, Ian W. Toll brings clarity and a stinging immediacy to America's long, bitter climb up the island ladder that led to Japan. With deft, incisive character sketches, Toll summons the leaders back to contentious life: arguing about what to do, making mistakes, bringing triumph out of disaster―and sometimes the reverse. This is maritime history at its best and most accessible." - Richard Snow

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Author Information

Ian w. toll.

Ian W. Toll is an independent naval historian, the author of Pacific Crucible: War at Sea in the Pacific, 1941-1942 and Six Frigates: The Epic History of the Founding of the U.S. Navy . Six Frigates won broad critical acclaim and was selected for the Samuel Eliot Morison Award, the William E. Colby Award, and New York Times "Editor's Choice" list.

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Twilight of the Gods

• By Steven Hyden
• Dey Street Books
• Reviewed by Michael Causey
• June 23, 2019

This musical elegy will have you shredding on air guitar in no time.

Millennials must be getting pretty tired of us by now. We men of a certain age who natter on and on about why 1971 was the best year ever in music , how crappy it is today, and why we feel sorry for youngsters born on the wrong side of the century divide who aren’t enlightened about Led Zeppelin.

Add Steven Hyden to that list. In Twilight of the Gods , he’s full of lament for the lost world of arena-rock concerts by the Who or Black Sabbath. He misses the edgy radio that, for all its cheesy disc jockeys and long wafts of inane commercials, was a driving force that helped guide us to good new music in a way online music services like iTunes and Pandora just can’t .

But just as the book begins to feel like riding on an oppressive cruise ship with performances by the remaining members of Def Leppard, Hyden makes clear he’s no ostrich buried in 1980s sand. He celebrates, for example, the excellence of Courtney Barnett, a fresh singer/songwriter from Australia. He astutely points out she’s in some ways a throwback with her left-handed Jimi Hendrix-style guitar look and Keith Richards hair, but brings her own modern sensibilities to her work.

“Unlike those guys, Barnett is a twentysomething lesbian who writes hilarious songs about being stuck inside your own head even as the world goes crazy around you,” Hyden explains.

He also applauds rock music’s more open attitudes today toward homosexuality and gender fluidity. Decades ago, Queen’s Freddie Mercury and, for a time, Elton John felt pressure to hide their sexuality from fans. Today, while there may well be some artists who remain in the closet, publicly stating one’s truth is no longer a guaranteed career-killer in rock ‘n’ roll.

Like so many things, music is about subjective taste. There is no law of physics that says Mozart is better than Salieri. It’s just that most of us believe he is. Ditto with rock. Speaking personally, Hyden won me over by appreciating the qualities of the Rolling Stones’ lesser 1975 effort, Black and Blue, and the weirdness of McCartney II, Paul’s strange record that sounds like a genius monkeying around with a new synthesizer in his basement. It is, and it’s great. Bonus points for Hyden: He agrees that Don Henley sucks.

Along the way, Hyden takes us on an insightful tour of Prince’s Paisley Park home; he’s fun when talking (without rancor) about interviews he’s done with bands he’s not crazy about (hey there, REO Speedwagon and Styx); and he’s downright Nostradamus-esque in anticipating Fleetwood Mac’s recent dumping of the prickly Lindsey Buckingham.

Loving him when the band’s album came out in 1977, Hyden has since changed his tune, as it were. “When I listen to Rumours now, Lindsey seems like kind of a jerk.” Apparently, Mick Fleetwood has made the same journey.

Hyden teeters on the edge of over-mythologizing arena rock but pulls back just in time when he acknowledges its many downsides. “I adore the mythology of stadium rock, but the reality of it kind of sucks. Only a fool would romanticize overpriced parking, bad sight lines, piss-poor sound, and the emotionally disconnected performances that are endemic to the stadium-rock experience.”

Those of us around in 2050 should be prepared for a deluge of books (or holograms or whatever) reminiscing about the golden days of Kayne, Taylor Swift, and the like. We’ll read about how music just hadn’t been the same since iTunes folded in 2035, to be replaced by digital music implants delivered to us by drones.

We’ll turn up our eardrum transplants, adjust our Lasik eyeballs, and activate our bionic necks to nod in sympathetic solidarity with the younger generation. Then we’ll be teleported back to our “late stage apartments” designed by IKEA and ask our caregiver to put the copy of Led Zeppelin IV we borrowed from neighbor Steven Hyden on our antique turntable.

We’ll remind her to play it loud. Then she’ll smile indulgently, awkwardly plop the needle on the turntable, and then gently ask us if we’d like butterscotch pudding again for lunch.

[Editor’s note: This review originally ran in 2018.]

Michael Causey is a cool (read: old) throwback DJ on WOWD 94.3 . He does play Courtney Barnett, though.

Support the Independent by purchasing this title via our affliate links: Amazon.com Powell's.com Or through Bookshop.org

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TWILIGHT OF THE GODS

by Ann Chamberlin ‧ RELEASE DATE: N/A

A richly satisfying third series entry with grand actions and emotions.

Norse deity Odin hunts for his two rebellious children in this third volume of Chamberlin’s fantasy series.

In their vibrant youth, Brynhild and Thora had been Valkyries, the warrior daughters of Odin, the All-Father of Norse myth. When they decided to leave his service to start families, the deity cursed them. Odin’s interference caused Thora’s grown children to kill Brynhild’s Christian husband, Siegfried. Now, in the valley beneath the Harz Mountains in Germania, the women join in the Northern people’s Midsummer celebration. Although the women are now elderly “crones,” Odin resents their perseverance, and he’s losing influence in the world as Christianity gains followers. With the help of ravens to spy for him, Odin, taking the form of an old beggar, tracks down his former Valkyries. Brynhild and Thora, meanwhile, plan to travel north to Dane-mark to rescue Yrsa, Thora’s daughter, from the captivity of her sexually abusive father, Helgi Halfdansson. (Readers unfamiliar with the ancient literature that serves as this story’s model may be shocked at how rape, by deities and others, is depicted as commonplace.) Odin’s pursuit grows more complex with the involvement of Attila the Hun and his warriors. In a world of dark mysticism and strange beings, Brynhild and Thora will need to summon their remaining Valkyrie strength to outmaneuver wrathful Odin. Chamberlin’s brooding, philosophical third series entry makes for a fine counterweight to the more garish use of Norse deities, including Odin, in Marvel comics and films. Many details will fascinate history buffs, such as that the Christian “sign of protection” had been a call to the “power of Thor’s hammer” until the new religion absorbed the gesture. Throughout, the prose offers lyrical moments, as when the “elongated hills of Dane-mark” are described as looking as if “some giant with a leaky sand bag” had created them. The characters also make intriguingly complex observations; for instance, Brynhild believes that “the death of a child” isn’t “half the sorrow” that “having to raise one in a brutal setting must be.”

Pub Date: N/A

ISBN: 978-1-954744-52-3

Page Count: 366

Publisher: Epigraph Books

Review Posted Online: June 30, 2022

Review Program: Kirkus Indie

FANTASY | GENERAL FANTASY | EPIC FANTASY

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BOOK REVIEW

by Ann Chamberlin

FOURTH WING

From the empyrean series , vol. 1.

by Rebecca Yarros ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 2, 2023

Read this for the action-packed plot, not character development or worldbuilding.

On the orders of her mother, a woman goes to dragon-riding school.

Even though her mother is a general in Navarre’s army, 20-year-old Violet Sorrengail was raised by her father to follow his path as a scribe. After his death, though, Violet's mother shocks her by forcing her to enter the elite and deadly dragon rider academy at Basgiath War College. Most students die at the War College: during training sessions, at the hands of their classmates, or by the very dragons they hope to one day be paired with. From Day One, Violet is targeted by her classmates, some because they hate her mother, others because they think she’s too physically frail to succeed. She must survive a daily gauntlet of physical challenges and the deadly attacks of classmates, which she does with the help of secret knowledge handed down by her two older siblings, who'd been students there before her. Violet is at the mercy of the plot rather than being in charge of it, hurtling through one obstacle after another. As a result, the story is action-packed and fast-paced, but Violet is a strange mix of pure competence and total passivity, always managing to come out on the winning side. The book is categorized as romantasy, with Violet pulled between the comforting love she feels from her childhood best friend, Dain Aetos, and the incendiary attraction she feels for family enemy Xaden Riorson. However, the way Dain constantly undermines Violet's abilities and his lack of character development make this an unconvincing storyline. The plots and subplots aren’t well-integrated, with the first half purely focused on Violet’s training, followed by a brief detour for romance, and then a final focus on outside threats.

Pub Date: May 2, 2023

ISBN: 9781649374042

Page Count: 528

Publisher: Red Tower

Review Posted Online: Jan. 12, 2024

FANTASY | EPIC FANTASY | GENERAL FANTASY | GENERAL SCIENCE FICTION & FANTASY

More In The Series

by Rebecca Yarros

More by Rebecca Yarros

From the Empyrean series , Vol. 2

by Rebecca Yarros ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 7, 2023

Unrelenting, and not in a good way.

A young Navarrian woman faces even greater challenges in her second year at dragon-riding school.

Violet Sorrengail did all the normal things one would do as a first-year student at Basgiath War College: made new friends, fell in love, and survived multiple assassination attempts. She was also the first rider to ever bond with two dragons: Tairn, a powerful black dragon with a distinguished battle history, and Andarna, a baby dragon too young to carry a rider. At the end of Fourth Wing (2023), Violet and her lover, Xaden Riorson, discovered that Navarre is under attack from wyvern, evil two-legged dragons, and venin, soulless monsters that harvest energy from the ground. Navarrians had always been told that these were monsters of legend and myth, not real creatures dangerously close to breaking through Navarre’s wards and attacking civilian populations. In this overly long sequel, Violet, Xaden, and their dragons are determined to find a way to protect Navarre, despite the fact that the army and government hid the truth about these creatures. Due to the machinations of several traitorous instructors at Basgiath, Xaden and Violet are separated for most of the book—he’s stationed at a distant outpost, leaving her to handle the treacherous, cutthroat world of the war college on her own. Violet is repeatedly threatened by her new vice commandant, a brutal man who wants to silence her. Although Violet and her dragons continue to model extreme bravery, the novel feels repetitive and more than a little sloppy, leaving obvious questions about the world unanswered. The book is full of action and just as full of plot holes, including scenes that are illogical or disconnected from the main narrative. Secondary characters are ignored until a scene requires them to assist Violet or to be killed in the endless violence that plagues their school.

Pub Date: Nov. 7, 2023

ISBN: 9781649374172

Page Count: 640

Review Posted Online: Jan. 20, 2024

FANTASY | EPIC FANTASY | GENERAL SCIENCE FICTION & FANTASY

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Morse, Lewis and Endeavour

Welcome to the morse universe, inspector morse: s7e3, twilight of the gods. review + locations, literary references, music etc. spoilers.

• by Chris Sullivan
• Posted on July 15, 2020 May 8, 2021

Hello fellow Morsonians and welcome to this review of episode 28, TWILIGHT OF THE GODS. This was the last episode of the last proper series of Morse. The next five episodes were all one off specials that were broadcast between 1995 and 2000.  I have already reviewed episodes 1 to 27. To read those reviews click this link Morse episode reviews. 

Before we get to the REVIEW please take the time to read through the following. Please take the time to not only subscribe here on my website but also on Youtube and Twitch.

I would like to say a huge thank you to those who have become Patrons of the site and also a huge thank you to those who have made donations. What do I mean by Patrons?

What is Patreon? Patreon is a membership platform that makes it easy for artists and creators to get paid. It’s a membership platform that provides business tools for creators to run a subscription content service, with ways for artists to build relationships with their subscribers, or “patrons”.

With Patreon you set up how much you wish to pay monthly. There are three tiers, $5, $10 and $15. It’s like paying for a magazine subscription. With enough support I am hoping to continue creating posts for many years.

Patreon primarily uses Paypal which is easy to join and a safe way to send money.  https://www.paypal.com/uk/home

Here is my Patreon account where you can read more about it,  https://www.patreon.com/morseandlewisandendeavour

Here is where to find me on Twitch;  https://www.twitch.tv/morselewisendeavour

Please subscribe to to my website. Subscribing to this website can be done in two ways.

If you have a WordPress account then click the ‘following’ button. If you don’t have a WordPress account then enter your email and click the subscribe button. Entering the email only means subscribing to my website you will NOT be creating a WordPress account. (WordPress are the company that I pay to use their platform).

To help run my website I have set up a Paypal account for donations. Thank you to all those who have made donations.

My Twitter,  https://twitter.com/Jag248RPA?lang=en-gb

My Twitch Channel;  https://www.twitch.tv/morselewisendeavour

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I have started my own Facebook page. It is primarily an extension of this website. I decided to start the Facebook page as there has been times when I have an update to a review post or some interesting news or information but it was all to small to make into a full blown post here on my website. So, come and join and keep up-to-date with all that happens in the Morse universe.

My Facebook Page;  https://www.facebook.com/groups/1084993125023468/

Thank you for taking the time to read the above.

———————————–

SPOILERS AHEAD!

Series seven, episode three., chronologically this is episode 28., first broadcast 20th january. 1993., where’s colin.

• twilight2-mp4

Colin is behind John Gielgud doing his best acting to date.

Directed by Herbert Wise. Herbert also directed the Morse episodes, The Daughters of Cain and Ghost in the Machine. Sadly Herbert died in 2015 at the age of 90.

Written by Julian Mitchell. Julian also wrote nine other Morse episodes: – Death Is Now My Neighbour (1997) – The Daughters of Cain (1996) – Cherubim & Seraphim (1992) – Promised Land (1991) – Masonic Mysteries (1990) – Ghost in the Machine (1989) – The Wolvercote Tongue (1987) – Service of All the Dead (1987) – The Silent World of Nicholas Quinn

One of Morse’s favourite opera singers, Gwladys Probert, is in Oxford to receive an honorary doctorate. A concert is planned which Morse has a ticket for. However, the opera diva is shot while taking part in a procession to honour not only her but another person receiving an honorary doctorate, Andrew Baydon. Baydon is a survivor of a concentration camp and a multi millionaire whose wife travels the world with the Welsh diva. A freelance journalist whose is in the process of writing an article on Baydon is found shot. Are the shootings linked? Morse and Lewis must determine if there is a link and what that link is. Why has Gwladys Probert’s sister Mari disappeared and left a note suggesting she is the one who shot Gwladys. Morse and Lewis must filter out the red herrings, lies, college politics and John Gielgud’s insistence on wanting his lunch.

REVIEW. (warning, this review will contain some spoilers)

Episode Jag Rating – out of 10.

During Gwladys Probert’s singing lessons she sings from Götterdämmerung, Act III, Scene 3 Finale (The Immolation Scene). Twilight of the Gods is the English translation of Götterdämmerung.

———————————————-

At around the 13 and a half minute mark in Morse’s car we hear Twilight of the Gods – Chapter 13 Third scene The Hall of the Gibichung.

—————————————-

At around the 14 minute mark the pianist plays a short burst of Military Polonaise Opus 40 No. 1 in A Major by Chopin.

———————————————–

At one hour and forty minute mark. A reprise of Götterdämmerung, Act III, Scene 3 Finale.

I have gathered together all the music played in the Morse series.

Click  Morse Music  to download the excel sheet.

Click  Morse Music 20th sept 2019  to download the above as a PDF.

LITERARY REFERENCES.

“Siegfried and The Twilight of the Gods” (1911) is Illustrated by Arthur Rackham. “Siegfried and The Twilight of the Gods”, as illustrated by Arthur Rackham, presents the third of consecutive published suites that were prepared to illustrate Germanic traditions and, in this case, it included extensive colour and monotone images to complete his interpretation of Wagner’s “Ring of Nibelung”.

Here are two examples of Rackham’s work.

At around the 18 minute mark Morse is doing a crossword. Lewis walks in and distracts him. Morse says, ‘You, Lewis, are the person from Porlock.’ The person from Porlock was an unwelcome visitor to Samuel Taylor Coleridge during his composition of the poem Kubla Khan in 1797. Coleridge claimed to have perceived the entire course of the poem in a dream (possibly an opium-induced haze), but was interrupted by this visitor from Porlock while in the process of writing it. Kubla Khan, only 54 lines long, was never completed. Thus “person from Porlock”, “man from Porlock”, or just “Porlock” are literary allusions to unwanted intruders who disrupt inspired creativity.

The wonderful poet Stevie Smith wrote a poem on Coleridge’s person from Porlock.

Thoughts about the Person from Porlock

BY STEVIE SMITH Coleridge received the Person from Porlock And ever after called him a curse, Then why did he hurry to let him in? He could have hid in the house.

It was not right of Coleridge in fact it was wrong (But often we all do wrong) As the truth is I think he was already stuck With Kubla Khan.

He was weeping and wailing: I am finished, finished, I shall never write another word of it, When along comes the Person from Porlock And takes the blame for it.

It was not right, it was wrong, But often we all do wrong.

May we inquire the name of the Person from Porlock? Why, Porson, didn’t you know? He lived at the bottom of Porlock Hill So had a long way to go,

He wasn’t much in the social sense Though his grandmother was a Warlock, One of the Rutlandshire ones I fancy And nothing to do with Porlock,

And he lived at the bottom of the hill as I said And had a cat named Flo, And had a cat named Flo.

I long for the Person from Porlock To bring my thoughts to an end, I am becoming impatient to see him I think of him as a friend,

Often I look out of the window Often I run to the gate I think, He will come this evening, I think it is rather late.

I am hungry to be interrupted For ever and ever amen O Person from Porlock come quickly And bring my thoughts to an end.

I felicitate the people who have a Person from Porlock To break up everything and throw it away Because then there will be nothing to keep them And they need not stay.

Why do they grumble so much? He comes like a benison They should be glad he has not forgotten them They might have had to go on.

These thoughts are depressing I know. They are depressing, I wish I was more cheerful, it is more pleasant, Also it is a duty, we should smile as well as submitting To the purpose of One Above who is experimenting With various mixtures of human character which goes best, All is interesting for him it is exciting, but not for us. There I go again. Smile, smile, and get some work to do Then you will be practically unconscious without positively having to go.

Ar around the 45 minute mark Morse mentions Plato to Lewis in relation to his work, The Republic. Morse says that Plato would not have poets in his republic as they were too dangerous. In Plato’s perfect world, all the poets would be outside the city gates, rag-ridden and limited to declaiming their harmful verses only to the other degenerate exiles (You know, the painters and actors). However not all poets were banished from Plato’s republic. The poets who write about virtue, especially virtue such as courage and honour that get the troops fired up for battle, they can stay.

At around the minute and a half mark the location is Brasenose Dining Hall with it’s many works of art.

On the far left,

This is Alexander Nowell, DD, Benefactor, Principal (1595), Dean of St Paul’s by an unknown artist.

Second from the left.

This is Sir Thomas Egerton (1539/1540–1617), Viscount Brackley, Baron Ellesmere, Commoner, Lord Chancellor of England (1603–1617), Chancellor of the University (1610–1617) by an unknown artist.

In the middle is,

Richard Sutton (d.1524), Knight, Founder by an unknown artist.

On the far right is,

William Smyth, Bishop of Lincoln, Founder, Chancellor of the University (1500–1503) by an unknown artist.

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At the luncheon the location is Trinity College.

The top painting is of Sir Thomas Pope (c.1507–1559), Founder of Trinity College, Oxford.

On the left is Portrait of an Unknown Man (formerly identified as Henry Ireton, c.1611–1651, Parliamentarian General and formerly attributed to Samuel Cooper, 1609–1672).

The painting in the middle is of Lady Elizabeth Pope, née Blount (formerly Basford, Later Paulet) (c.1515–1593).

And finally on the right is William Pitt (1708–1778), 1st Earl of Chatham.

At the beginning of the episode Gladys is giving singing lessons.

The location is Holywell Music Room on Holywell Street, Oxford.

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Around the minute and a half mark we see the display for the proposed new college.

This was filmed in Brasenose College Dining Hall.

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Around the four minute mark we see Mari and her boyfriend walking.

In the background you can see Christ Church College.

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At around the six minute mark the first victim’s body is found.

In the background you can see Newark Priory, River Wey, Ripley, Surrey.

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Around six and a half minutes the camera pans around Brasenose College as we listen to John Gielgud rehearsing his speech.

You can see Radcliffe Camera in the background.

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At the 19 minute mark we see Williams.

This is Magdalen College, Oxford.

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At around the 21 minute mark as Andrew Bayden’s helicopter flies overhead we see people gathering together.

This is Brasenose College.

Around the 22 and a half minute mark we see the parade.

This is Broad Street with the Emperor’s Heads in the foreground.

The parade moves from Broad Street through the Clarendon Building.

At around 28 minutes after the shooting the Dons, guests etc move into the Sheldonian Theatre.

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At around the 45 minute mark the Chancellor and Vice Chancellor are walking together.

This is Christ Church College.

Morse and Lewis driving to  at around 49 minutes.

The above location is Village Road, Denham, Buckinghamshire.

The Swan Inn is still there but now with a different sign.

The luncheon at 50 minutes.

This is Trinity College Dining Hall.

Around the one hour and 21 mark, Bayden is talking to journalists.

This is outside Brasenose College on Radcliffe Square.

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Around the one and a half hour mark.

This is Oriel College Dining Hall.

The home of Andrew Baydon.

This is Englefield House, Theale, Reading, Berkshire.

PUB LOCATIONS.

No pubs visited.

Actors who appeared in Twilight of the Gods and/or Endeavour and Lewis.

First up is Alan David who played Sir Watkin Davies.

Alan also appeared in the Endeavour episode, Cartouche as Lambert Kegworth.

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Next we have Robert Hardy who played Andrew Bayden.

The wonderful Robert Hardy also appeared in the Lewis episode, Dark Matter as Sir Arnold Raeburn.

Miscellaneous.

At around the 34 minute mark Morse and the Vice Chancellor are discussing Gladys Probert. The Vice Chancellor and Morse agree that Gladys is a better Brynhildr than Kirsten Flagstad. Flagstad was born 1895 in Norway and died 1962. She was a highly regarded Wagnerian soprano.

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Julian Mitchell the writer of this episode appears as the doctor in this episode.

On location photographs.

Photos copyright of Carlton.

Celia Montague who played Adele Baydon painted a portrait of Colin Dexter that was shown at his memorial service.

This is the only Morse episode where the voice behind the actor was not Janis Kelly. In this episode the voice of Gwladys Probert is Susan McCulloch. Here is a link to her biography http://www.classicalvoice.co.uk/Biography/biography.html

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Robert Hardy studied at Magdalen College, Oxford. His studies were interrupted by national service in the RAF, but he returned to complete a degree in English.

The photo below of Robert Hardy

was one of many that were taken at his Oxfordshire home in 1988.

The photo on the piano marked with an arrow

is one of Robert Hardy during his time working on the TV series All Creatures Great and Small.

The poster to the right of Morse’s head, as we look at it, is advertising Puccini’s opera Turandot.

The poster is widely available to buy.

The poster on the left I can only assume was created by the props department.

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The historian John Roberts suggested that the killing of Siegfried by Hagen, in the Götterdämmerung (Twilight of the Gods), with a stab in the back gave inspiration for the myth that the German Army did not lose World War I, but was instead defeated by a treasonous “stab in the back” from civilians, in particular Jews and Socialists. This connects with this episode with its unmasking of Baydon as a German officer and being shot by the Jewish Victor Ignotas.

During the lunch Baydon asks what is the most memorable college in Oxford. He says, Keble. John Gielgud as Lord Hinksey says that Keble College is the ugliest.

Do you agree that it’s the ugliest. Architecturally it’s certainly one of the most striking.

Thank you to Steve who spotted this, “I wonder if the character Gwladys is a veiled (or slightly veiled) reference to the Welsh soprano Gwyneth Jones who was a great Wagnerian, from what Ive read at least. They do mention jones in the episode, on the radio discussion.”

Oxford Colleges Used as Locations.

Brasenose college., oriel college., christ church college., magdalen college college., the murdered, their murderer/s and their methods..

Neville Grimshaw the journalist investigating Baydon. Shot by Clergyman Williams. Grimshaw had information that Baydon was not incarcerated in a concentration camp but was in fact one of the guards.

In Memoriam

Robert Hardy as Andrew Baydon. Born: 29 October 1925, Died: 3 August 2017.

Sheila Gish as Gwladys Probert. Born: April 23, 1942 – Died: March 9, 2005.

John Gielgud as Lord Hinksey. Born: April 14, 1904 – Died: May 21, 2000.

Jean Anderson as Lady Hinksey. Born: December 12, 1907 – Died: April 1, 2001.

John Bluthal as Victor Ignotas. Born: 12 August 1929 – Died: 15 November 2018.

Don Fellows as Lyman Stansky. Born: 1922 – Died: October 21, 2007.

Julian Curry as Alan Cartwright. Born: December 8, 1937 – Died: June 27, 2020

Joan Blackham as Helen Buscott

Robert Hardy as Andrew Baydon

Sheila Gish as Gladys Probert

Caroline Berry as Mari Probert.

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Jennifer Piercey as Mrs. Thompson

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John Gielgud as Lord Hinksey

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Jean Anderson as Lady Hinksey

Steven Beard as Florist.

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Kevin Whately as Detective Sergeant Lewis.

Julie Legrand as Brigitte de Plessy

John Thaw as Chief Inspector Morse.

Doug Bradley as Clergyman Williams.

Brian Bovell as Pierre

Billy Hartman as Police Sergeant

James Grout as Chief Superintendent Strange

Alan David as Sir Watkin Davies

Rachel Weisz as Arabella Baydon

Lynne Verrall as Librarian

Don Fellows as Lyman Stansky

Allan Corduner as Gentile Bellocchio

Celia Montague as Adele Baydon

John Bluthal as Victor Ignotas

Julian Curry as Alan Cartwright.

Harry Ditson as Simon Vavasseur

Paintings are from https://artuk.org/

Maps from Google.

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Author: Chris Sullivan

Up until a few years ago I was my mum's full time carer. She died in, 2020, of Covid. At the moment I am attempting to write a novel. View all posts by Chris Sullivan

85 thoughts

Interesting connections here: Robert Hardy’s name was Siegfried when he played in “All Creatures”; James Grout was also in the series (although I did not recognize him at first). He played a character named Grenville who always got Herriott soused.

Chris, I absolutely agree with you regarding the portrayal of gay people, especially that they are predators who will hit on any straight person. It is very cringe-worthy. This episode is not one of my favorites either but that doesn’t prevent me from watching it whenever I rewatch my Morse DVD’s. The only episode I do tend to skip, although I have sat through it twice is The Wench is Dead. I also agree with your take on the shooting. Implausible to say the least.

Just about every Morse episode contains a stereotype or two, so why single it out just because it happens to be a couple of homosexual characters in this one (actually Gielgud’s portrayal of Lord Hinksey is also grossly stereotypical here as well).

I agree that the voice coach coming on to Lewis was a bit egregious, and not very likely, but there didn’t seem to me to be anything the least unrealistic about the hairdresser. He is exactly the sort of character you could imagine hanging around Gladys Probert.

This is a pretty thin episode all in all. Padded out with too much opera singing and the Gielgud scenes added nothing to the story. I get the feeling that they were just so happy to get Gielgud into a Morse that they wrote a part for him to show him off without thinking very hard about what he was actually doing in this episode.

Chris, thank you for your thoughtful and astute review. Absolutely, the portrayal of the gay characters is offensive, and you’ve hit the nail on the head for why that is so. It made me curious about the screenwriter, Julian Mitchell. He is gay and has written some very subtle and moving films with gay subjects–notably Wilde, with Stephen Fry as Oscar Wilde. So is it internalized homophobia that made him create these characters?

And, yeah, the shooting plot doesn’t bear scrutiny.

I agree this episode would not make my top 10. So, when I rewatched it last week, I was surprised at how much I enjoyed it. I didn’t find it sluggish. Because Mitchell’s writing is vivid and there’s such a continuous thread of humor, I savored it. Gay stereotypes aside–ugh–the minor characters are so vivid, and the interactions so humorous: the dogwalker who detests Snap, the florist, Dr. Lyman (so great with his throwaway lines is Don Fellows!), and above all, Gielgud as Lord Hinksey. And those aren’t even the main characters, unless we consider Lord Hinksey one.

I could go on and on about the Morse-Lewis interactions in this episode, but enough from me.

It’s 1992, a different time especially for the gay community given the AIDS crisis, its not like today, also all of Gwladys Proberts entourage and the women herself are all over the top, deliberately, either fans whom adore her like Rachel Weisz and her mother, Adele or they are these very sycophantic over top campy gays. Do you really think that Julian Mitchell hadn’t met gay people like Harry Nitson’s character? What better person to know the kind of person that Harry Nitson is portraying than a gay man himself, and no doubt he has met some b***hy spiteful gay men in his time. Basically you cannot view a show made in the 20th Century, from a 21st Century perspective where we now have overdone Political Correctness which imo is destroying entertainment. As it happens Sir John Gielgud, he was a KBE btw, was gay and a very quite one at that, probably because when he started acting it was still illegal, and I thought he was wonderful in this, practically stole the show with the scene of him eating a cream cracker at lunch and talking. I definitely couldn’t do that myself, as I would end up having “coughing fit” if I ate and talked at the same time. Robert Hardy always seems to play bad guys, except for Siegfried Farnon in All Creatures Great and Small and I guess the character he plays in Lewis is good guy IDK as I haven’t actually watched Lewis as a series for many years, but Cornelius Fudge in the Harry Potter films and here he is a bad guy, I thought his accent was terrible but also could be deliberate as well. John Bluthel also a great actor and comedian, sadly no longer with us either. I think that this should have been the final series, because the “one off specials” just were not adapted very well in my opinion, and wasn’t keen on Day of the Devil let alone The Wench is Dead, which could have been great since the Novel is far better and award winning, in fact it was one of the first Morse novels I actually read. The budget wasn’t the same imo, like it had been up to this series.

Thank you Chris, for compiling another wonderful review and analysis, of this classic Morse episode. I noticed in the background behind you, while you were speaking, during your video, the book written by Bill Leonard, “The Oxford of Inspector Morse”. I bought that book, earlier this year, although it would seem, I acquired, a more updated version than yours, as it was called “The Oxford of Inspector Morse and Lewis”, published in 2008, which I found very interesting. You may remember, from my e-mail to you, a few months ago, I discovered Leonard’s book, contained some new filming locations, from the first two series of Lewis, you had not been able to decipher, in your excellent book, Chris. Anyway, that is not important at the moment, as I am not expecting you to reply in depth, to my e-mail, for many months yet, given all what you have been through, and all your hard work, on this website.

The reason I mentioned Leonard’s book, was that he chose “Twilight of the Gods”, as one of his three favourite Morse episodes, alongside “The Way Through the Woods”, and “The Wench is Dead”. As you have said yourself Chris, there is no individual, whose informed opinion is the correct opinion, and we should all, be able to engage in a lively and civilised debate, and if need be, agree to disagree, with one another. After all, in relation to the Morse universe, we are, of course, talking about the world of Oxford and academics, and they don’t always agree, do they?

As a result, I thought it was worth, relaying what Leonard had to say about this episode. I found myself, strongly disagreeing, with his view, of the portrayal of the gay assistants, to the opera singer, as you will, as well, Chris. Here is Leonard’s verdict:

“This episode has everything, vivid scenes, drama, and great views of Oxford. Founder-writer Julian Mitchell has cunningly represented the worst characteristics of both Town and Gown. The “Town”, or non-university, represented by Baydon, craves recognition and adulation. The “Gown”, is prepared to sacrifice its principles for money. There is a reminder that at one time the university administered its own laws. The detectives move with bemusement between the two sides. The script inspired bravura performances from John Gielgud and Robert Hardy, and hilarious support from the diva’s fawning assistants, notably the stylist Allan Corduner and the gay voice coach Harry Ditson, whose scene with Lewis is a comedy classic. The luminous beauty of future Hollywood star Rachel Weisz is a bonus. Trailed as the last Morse, 18.76 million viewers in the UK, watched it.”

I agree that many parts of this episode, make it extremely watchable, indeed. I have very much enjoyed this episode in the past, which was a kind of grand finale, in the final, full series of Morse, and I think, I would score it, 8 out of 10. However, I fundamentally disagree with Leonard, calling the scene with Lewis, a comedy classic, and I am surprised, he said that, but I suppose attitudes have changed. However, listening to you Chris, in your video, it seems you were nobly ahead of the curve, in terms of public attitudes, and stereotyping minorities, in society.

I wish I could be a little less long-winded in my comments, but that is all, from me for now. Thank you for all your hard work Chris, and keep safe and well.

I appreciated your observations, James, and did not find the comment long-winded. Thanks for the quote from Leonard; interesting.

Thank you, for your kind words, Mary Anne. I agree a great deal with your comments, this Morse episode is very enjoyable, and full of fun moments. I’m pleased to hear, you find it interesting, to learn of Leonard’s observations, about this episode. Thanks also, for taking the time to read my comments.

P.S. Thanks for including the full text of that wonderful Stevie Smith poem.

I will just add a minor correction to my above comments. I should have said, you were nobly ahead of the curve and public attitudes, Chris, in terms of disliking the stereotyping of minorities in societies, as far back as 1993, when you first watched this Morse episode.

Finally, I will include, part of David Bishop’s excellent verdict of “Twilight of the Gods”, from his book, “The Complete Inspector Morse”, which I wholeheartedly agree with. Here it is:

“For the fourth year in succession, Julian Mitchell comes up trumps, with the last script of a series. The joy in this episode comes from the little moments, the dialogue and the performances. John Gielgud steals all his scenes as a university chancellor who can’t stop saying the wrong thing – a trait for which Gielgud himself was notorious. At times this episode feels like a compilation of Morse’s greatest moments revisited, but the humour between Morse and Lewis, carries everything along. The tale ends with Morse contemplating a sabbatical, much like the show itself. But both would return, in time…”

Before I go, when we were speaking about Rebecca Front’s role as Supt Innocent, in the Lewis discussion on Twitch, yesterday evening, were the words you were looking for Chris, “a sounding board”. In the sense, that she was partly used, as a “sounding board”, by Lewis and Hathaway, so the viewers had the case or investigation, reiterated to them, for better understanding.

That is all from me. Thank you, and goodbye for now.

The word I was looking for regarding Innocent is ‘exposition’.

Thanks for the reply Chris, and for kindly telling me the word, you were looking for. I was way off the mark then! “Exposition”, that is a good word, I will remember that. Perhaps I mixed up the term, “sounding board”, which Kevin Whately has used, to partly explain his classic role, as Sergeant Lewis, to John Thaw’s Chief Inspector Morse. I hope, you also enjoyed reading my other comments, Chris, or should I say, my selective quotations, from reviews of this Morse episode, by Bill Leonard and David Bishop. I always look forward to reading your very informative and knowledgeable, critical analysis, of episodes in the Morse universe. Thank you, for all this great work. That is all for now, and keep safe and well.

Perhaps I should have said this before, but I hope you haven’t minded me, including interesting comments and quotations, from other eminent Morse analysts, to go alongside your own brilliant, critical reviews, Chris. I find it interesting to see, what David Bishop, or other published critics, have said, about certain Morse episodes, and by comparing it to your own excellent analysis, Chris, I feel this further enriches the discussion and debate, over each Morse episode. Thank you for all the good work you do, and goodbye for now.

Hi Chris. I didn’t quite catch the beginning of your Twitch discussion, on Wednesday night, but I have now. You were saying, that Twilight of the Gods, is an episode that has divided people in the past, there are those who love it, but also, some that really dislike it. I didn’t know that, and it would seem, I very much belong in the category, that really likes this episode. Before your review, I had this episode in my top ten, possibly scoring it 9 out of 10. However, I have taken your excellently made points on board, about the opera singer’s assistants, and the unrealistic nature of the attempted murder, through the window of the Bodleian library, and as I said before, I now score it, 8 out of 10.

Furthermore, I still believe, there are many fine moments, through this episode. The scenes filmed in Oxford, including its colleges, and the graduation procession, are some of the most beautifully shot, throughout the whole of the Morse series. It thus, has plenty of stunning Oxford scenery, fitting for a kind of grand finale, to the final ever, full series of Morse. In addition, it has two famous actors in Robert Hardy and John Gielgud, and they deliver great performances.

Finally, the humour between Morse and Lewis, in this episode, is top quality, which I really enjoyed. Although, I have one question, it is nice to see Morse in such a good mood, in “Twilight of the Gods”, but was there a causal reason, why all of a sudden, he wasn’t quite as grumpy and irascible, as he was portrayed, previously? I cannot think of one, therefore, as it could have been the final ever Morse episode, I assume the producers wanted the show to go out, in a more uplifting fashion. Consequently, John Thaw depicted Morse, as slightly chirpy, and rather more upbeat, than usual. As it turned out, thankfully, the show was merely, going on a “sabbatical”, before the five annual, one-off specials.

I must have lacked a little confidence yesterday, when I asked, whether you minded me, posting the views, of other eminent Morse analysts. Undoubtedly, you would have told me a long time before now, if you didn’t like me doing that. Your other good subscribers and commentators, on these pages, Chris, have welcomed me, including the thoughts of David Bishop and others, so I don’t know why, I was suddenly worried, about this issue. I suppose, I was slightly concerned, that you would have wanted to hear more of my own opinion, regarding this episode, rather than just the views, of those published critics. I have now, of course, in the paragraphs above, included, some of my own views. By the way, I just wondered, what you thought Chris, of David Bishop and Bill Leonard’s verdicts, on this episode? Possibly, I am asking too much of you, given all your hard work, creating this review, and I apologise, if that is the case. That is all for now. Thank you, and all the best.

Hi James. The main, and probably only, reason Morse was less moody, down and irascible was due to his having watched Gladys Probert the previous night. Also he was very much looking forward to the Opera that Gladys Probert was appearing in the night of the murder. It was as simple as that. I read Bill and David’s reviews many years ago and I didn’t reread them before my own review as I didn’t want to be influenced by anything they wrote. I think if people want to compare my review to David and Bill’s reviews then they are more welcome to though one’s own opinion would be preferable. I’m sure the majority of people who visit my site have copies of both Bill Leonard and David Bishop’s books. They will certainly have David’s excellent, The Complete Inspector Morse.

Hi Chris. That is very kind of you to reply, and thanks for answering my questions. I was perhaps guilty, of thinking a little too deeply, about whether, there was a professional or personal reason, why Morse, was more cheerful and perky than usual, in this episode. However, of course, the show started with Morse, passionately enjoying, a rehearsal, by one of his favourite opera singers. He was thus eagerly anticipating her showpiece performance, that sadly never came to pass, after she was mistakenly shot, with a bullet meant for Bayden, during the graduation ceremony, which left her, in a critical condition.

In fact, as I write this, I have realised, you could argue there was a personal reason, why Morse was so much happier than usual. Due to his deep interest and revenance for opera, Morse was “metaphorically” in love, with his heroine, the Welsh soprano star. He had an idolized view of her, and he bought flowers, to commemorate her upcoming, grand performance. Therefore, Morse was brighter and more high-spirited than normal, because he was in “love”, but not in the usual sense of a relationship. Unfortunately, this veneer of happiness would be tested, because as I have said, tragedy almost struck, with Gladys Probert, very nearly being killed.

The representation of beauty and ugliness, you mentioned Chris, is also shown, through the fact, that Morse, with his romantic notions, and love of opera, could not believe, anybody would want to kill Gladys. However, he finds out, from beneath the veil of her stunning performaces, she is a highly strung woman, with a ferocious temper, in everyday life. There are sordid secrets, in her personal life, depicted, through her difficult relationship with her younger sister, in combination with, her lack of tolerance at times, for all her assistants. At the same time, Gladys is all sweetness and light, when she is with, her devoted supporters, such as Bayden’s wife. This troubled public and private life, certainly illustrates her dichotomy between beauty and ugliness, and suggests the attempted murder, could have been aimed at her. The twist in the tale, is that in the end, she was not the intended target of the shooting.

What am I doing? I said I was guilty of thinking too deeply, only to then write all of that, above. Having said that, I hope, what I have just written, makes some sort of sense. Finally, thanks Chris, for discussing David Bishop’s excellent book, and that is a good idea of yours, not to read it, before creating one of your superb reviews, in case it could influence, your analysis. Anyway, thanks for taking the time to reply to me, Chris, and you do not need to respond to this message. That is all from me, and goodbye for now.

Anyone can, of course, reply to me, I’m just aware Chris, that you have kindly answered my many comments lately, so I do not wish to ask, too much of you. I slightly wonder, what you will think, of my latest, little analysis, but as I say, there is no need to respond quickly. Thank you for providing this platform, for comments, on your interesting website. Keep safe and well, and goodbye for now.

Love the review Chris, About the gay characters, think back to the 1990s. Gay characters were often portrayed like this. Think of “the birdcage” with Robin Williams and Nathan Lane, or any of Harvey Firestien’s movies. At the time I think many gays thought it was camp and it was played as an “in” joke. Today, mainstream gays want their characters to be played mainly without camp and to be seen as regular people. So I don’t beat the actors up for it, it was cutting edge at the time but as gay humor today it falls flat. Also the point of the scene was to make Lewis uncomfortable and show him as disparate from the artistic class and their hangers on. .

As to the assassination attempt, I agree it was not perhaps the best place and way to attempt it, but he did miss his target and almost got away. A person like Baydon isn’t easy to get close to, private estate, private security, private helicopter so I can see where the Victor Ignotus character may have taken what he thought was his best opportunity, and botched it hitting Gladys.

Hi Tom, You make two very good points about this episode. I think you are correct for pointing out that that is how gays portrayed themselves and were portrayed back in that time period. Although I’m sure it was funny then but it was an unsuccessful attempt at humor watching it now in 2020. You are also correct noting that the procession was the best place to shoot Baydon as that would be where he was most accessible. I hadn’t considered those two thoughts.

And James thanks for the insight into the episode from Bishop’s book.

Hi Kathleen. That is not a problem, and thanks for reading my comments. Alongside Chris’s excellent reviews, it is also interesting to hear the opinions, of informed Morse enthusiasts, like yourself, Kathleen. Thank you, and goodbye for now.

I haven’t seen this episode for a while but I recall being surprised at how long it took until it dawned on Morse and Lewis (or Strange for that matter, although Morse might have dismissed his ideas ) that Gladys wasn’t the intended target. You can excuse a certain amount away on Morse’s indulgence/infatuation with the Opera angle. But it’s not a great leap of genius, given the public setting to the shooting and the margin of error, to look at people around Gladys in the procession and see if any of them might have been a likely target. In this case, once you do that it’s pretty obvious that Blayden isn’t everyone’s cup of tea – so he might have a few enemies.

If I had to listen to anyone sing Wagner, I might feel like shooting someone, too. Morse had terrible taste in music.

We all can’t like the same thing(s), can we ? Variety, as they say, is the spice of life, Patricia. It’s also worth noting that Morse is a fictional character.

In Latin they say de gustibus non est disputandum (there’s no accounting for taste) and tastes may be different. There are Wagner Societies even in Britain. And what’s this about “fictional character”? So only fictional characters may like Wagner’s music? I am real and I like it, along with Italian opera and Mozart, like “Morse”.

You need to get some culture. Fun fact: Actor Kevin Whately’s daughter is an opera singer.

You make a very good point there, JulieB, and I partially agree with you. You may be pleased to know that an eminent Morse analyst, who I have previously quoted in my comments above, Bill Leonard, also concurs with you. In his book, “The Oxford of Inspector Morse and Lewis”, for his summary of “Twilight of the Gods”, he says, “In the Encaenia (honourary degree) ceremony, Morse’s heroine, Welsh diva Gwladys Probert, is shot. It takes Morse a long time to work out the shot was not meant for her. A war-victim had tried to shoot Andrew Baydon, so that his trial would expose the crimes of Baydon, as well”. As for my own opinion, I admit, it did take a fair while for Morse to realise this, although I do not believe, this majorly diminishes the quality of the episode. In fact, we have another occasion, if I remember rightly, where Lewis is thinking out loud in the hospital, the possibility that the attack on Gwladys was mistaken, and this was all Morse needed for events to slowly start clicking into place, in his brain. It was thus, one of those delightful, “Lewis, you’ve done it again”, moments. Anyway, that is all from me. Goodbye for now.

Whoever did the singing for Probert had a terrible voice. All that wobble . The best part of this episode was Sir John Gielgud.

Just a few musings.

‘Gwladys’ (not ‘Gladys’) Probert, having been born in Wales, may have been given her first name as a recognition of how beautiful a baby girl she was. The name Gwladys is synonymous with Gwladys ferch Daffyd Gam, daughter of a long ago Welsh King, who was considered to be a veritable & unusually beautiful woman during her time.

Not to be crude in bringing this up, but Blaydon had the horrible habit of calling every man he didn’t like a “knob head.” As a Nazi soldier he would have used the term (in German, of course) as a derogatory insult of circumcised Jewish males. As a Jew, that was immediately apparent to me very early on that there was no way Blaydon could truly be a Jew. Many Nazis who staffed the concentration camps were tattooed in the last few days before liberation to save themselves for capture & reprisals as Nazi perpetrators. Those Nazis who were tattooed are a disgrace to the memory of those many millions of Jews, Gypsies, other minorities & Gays who died horrible deaths in the concentration camps & to those still alive bearing witness to the truth of what happened as represented by the tattooed numbers on their arms.

Consequently, I did not enjoy this particular episode of the series. Perhaps I’m just being too sensitive, as it’s a truth that so many Nazis escaped punishment because of their tattoos, but it was just too easy to me to figure out that he was the intended target all along, not Gwladys, & that he was somehow involved in the killing of the nosy freelance reporter, as apparently the priest was a particular friend of his, though I actually expected that he may have killed the reporter himself instead of having a minion do it for him. Needless to say, I was pleased that he was found out in the end & got his comeuppance.

I’d be interested in your thoughts on this opinion.

Pamela, I had no idea about that term and its connection with Jewish men. While in nursing school, when I was very, very young and ignorant of such things, I worked with a Jewish doctor. He had two patients with number tattoos on their arms so I questioned him as to their meaning. (As is obvious I am not Jewish.) That was the first time I heard what those numbers stood for, never having been taught that in history classes at school. Well, this was a long time ago! I’ve read a lot of history over the years but somehow, until I saw this episode, either I didn’t realize or didn’t remember Nazis used those tattoos to escape. And you have confirmed that here. Blaydon was an obnoxious character and I’m glad they portrayed him as such. I, too, thought it obvious that he was the intended target.

You have made some very interesting observations, Pamela. Thanks for sharing your historical knowledge on these pages, which helps to further understand the episode, and come to judgement earlier, who the likely murderer would be. As someone who has a keen passion for history, I find it fascinating that the Inspector Morse series was not afraid to create storylines, which dealt with some of the most notable and horrific examples of human history. Two episodes spring to mind, “The Settling of the Sun, and the episode we are talking about, excellently analysed above, by Chris. The former is somewhat poignant at the moment, because yesterday was the 75th anniversary of VJ day. As we know, “The Settling of the Sun”, had a plot revolving around relatives of a former prisoner of war, seeking revenge, for the atrocities and torture carried out by the Japanese, on their relative, during the Second World War. While, “Twilight of the Gods”, had a storyline, involving the eventual identification of a former concentration camp guard, who was implicitly guilty of carrying out, heinous and repulsive crimes, having played a part in one of the most odious, shocking and abhorrent genocides by mankind, namely the Holocaust, during World War II.

I just finished the episode and wondered what was burning at the end. Somehow I missed. I also did not appreciate the gay stereotypes especially when being used to “hit on” Lewis. I totally enjoyed the cheerful Morse and was especially touched when he asked Lewis to give his regards to the wife (at the end). As I have seen the entire season and this is my second time through, I am dreading the last season of specials as I know they will be ending and I will cry cry cry. . . when I hear the beautiful music at the end of each episode, I find myself getting emotional. It’s remarkable that a series can evoke so many feelings for the characters that I have come to know. It’s also so nice to see that other people enjoy the series as much as I do. As always, I appreciate all of Chris’ diligent work in putting together this amazing site. I love engaging in conversations about the episodes.

Hi Stephanie, I feel the same way about the Morse series. It is my favorite. I love the characters, the stories, the acting, the music, the literature, well, everything about it. I can understand fully why Colin Dexter mandated in his will that no other would play Morse after John Thaw. No one ever could do it better or even match it. It is my go-to when I’m feeling down or when I want to imagine that maybe there could be real people like Morse in the world. Since I have the British DVD’s of all the episodes, it can never end for me!

It was one of the scale models for Baydon’s college.

The burning model is a reference to the final scene of Götterdämmerung, where Valhalla burns down and Brünhilde throws the Ring back to the Rhine Daughters, thus ending the chain of tragic events.

The thing that was burning was the model of the school for Oxford that Baydon was going to finance, with the architecture of the Mogul Empire that some were dreading having at the university.

So some efffiminate homoaexuals don’t behave like that? Lewis handled it with fine disdain.

The premise of this episode is ridiculous: one cannot strike anyone with a pistol from such a distance.

But Adrian, he missed his intended target. Surely, if one shoots toward a group of people, even from a distance of around 150 feet, one will hit someone.

This is the whole point, one doesn’t shoot to hit a group, this is insane

Adrian is right. There was little chance of hitting one´s intended target at that range, especially a moving target and a downslope shot. Particularly with that pistol, which is an ordinary service weapon. I belong to a pistol club full of competitive shooters and I don´t know anyone who would hazard to take that shot. Even I can be sure of hitting the group, but what´s the point in that? How does that punish an former Nazi camp guard? It´s insane, as Adrian says. Thanks, Adrian, sometimes I think I am the only one out there who notices firearm-related details.

Well, I will bow to your superior knowledge of guns and thankfully I have no interest in guns and never want to.

Good episode.

Morse really did have the very best, Gielgud, Hardy and Weisz (like Liz Hurley from an earlier episode on her way to stardom), and all merely passing through!

Ref the pistol, that was bit absurd. At that distance, angle and with a moving target the shooter would have had a better chance by throwing it. Utterly reckless to fire with a group and the character hardly fits the mould of someone who would risk others with such a tiny chance of success (and a pistol round’s energy at that range would very unlikely to be catastrophic).

It is an interesting point about Blaydon, easy for all of us to be condemn someone who collaborated with the Nazis “against their own”, but survival is a powerful drive and in such circumstances, which I find hard to imagine, who knows what we would do.

Morse does that it so many episodes – show us all the sides of the coin and leave it to our thoughts. It’s one of the reasons I love the series so much.

Hi Ant, You are so right on all points. It’s why I love the series too.

As usual, Morse gets the wrong end of the stick. And was unforgiveably rude to the head librarian. He was rude, period. Hardy and Gielgud outacted Thaw without saying a word.

Minor point. While Anna Russell was a comedian who used classical music and Gwlady’s a serious performer, did anybody else pick up that in the class at the beginning she used some of the attitude Russell used in her great “lecture” on the Ring Cycle? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CM33rgC2Fek

I;d rather hear Anna Russell’s Ring Cycle than have to suffer through the real thing.

As for the gay characters, surely the campest in-joke is when the Chancellor played by Gielgud says he loves Cole Porter and one of the other dons mutters something about he must be gay. Gielgud of course was gay.

All true Reid.

I wonder if the character Gwladys is a veiled (or slightly veiled) reference to the Welsh soprano Gwyneth Jones who was a great Wagnerian, from what Ive read at least. They do mention jones in the episode, on the radio discussion.

Good observation Steve I missed that. I have added your observation to my post under the miscellaneous section.

Thank you for making this information available.

I wonder if I’m the only person to be bemused that, just before the opening titles, we see Morse, in appreciation of Gwladys Probert’s performance, clearly shouting ‘Bravo’? Surely he, unashamed pedant that he is, would be aware that the correct form to applaud a female artiste would be the feminine singular, ‘Brava’?

Bravo is always acceptable.

No Cherry you are not the only one. I think of this every time I watch this episode. Morse would definitely have known better. Either the writer’s mistake or Thaw’s.

You can’t be serious, trying to shoot someone from such a distance with a pistol? The writer has no clue.

In the final scene, Morse drives past posters proclaiming the Gotterdammerung “Canceled”. Might that be a comment on the catastrophic end of the Nazi program in 1945?

When this episode was broadcast in 1993, there were still numbers of people alive who had experienced the horrors of the war. Now, with just the tiniest number of those people left, I wonder if this episode, especially the Lithuanian professor, has the same impact.

I love seeing Morse in such a good mood in this episode ! In the final scenes, John Thaw seemed to be channeling Alastair Sim from A Christmas Carol (when Scrooge is redeemed) with his playful, almost giddy behaviour.

Like Sheldon l loved seeing Morse in such an elated mood. A happy smiling Morse makes such a lovely change from the serious, cross angry character he can be. Viewing this episode second time around you can not help feeling sad for him, for his illusion that people involved in high art are lofty talented, committed characters who operate above the ordinary and mundane, will be shattered by the end of the episode, leaving our Morse disappointed, disillusioned and set adrift from all he has valued and held high throughout his life. The characters here are nothing short of magic. The ageing mega cantankerous chancellor determined to speak his mind is pure genius, every time he opens his mouth you know verbal gems will escape. The greedy, mean and unredeemable pure evil of Robert Harry’s character sadly casts a shadow over the episode for me. Hardy plays the part brilliantly but his wicked machinations do not let you sympathise with his character’s point of view. Death of Self remains my favourite…despite the top class characters that appear in this episode.

Andrea – I didn’t say that “only fictional” characters enjoy the music of Wagner. That’s absurd. I was responding to the other poster who said that Morse had horrible taste because he loved Wagner’s music. I merely pointed out to her that the character “Morse” was fictional.

John Gielgud and Robert Hardy make this Morse a thespian treat indeed! And the camp-as-a-row of tents gay chaps caused me as much a hearty guffaw as Brian Cant’s gay undertaker in the Midsomer Murders pilot episode. All it needed was for John Inman to appear and that scene would’ve been fabulous, darling. Wench is Dead – now there’s an episode that needs to be chucked into Bristol Harbour. In my humble opinion of course.

I wonder if the late Robert Maxwell was, in part, the inspiration for Baydon. Maxwell (very much alive in 1993) was an egotistical, megalomanic, terrible bully who terrorised his family and everybody who ever worked for him; he had murky East European origins, and was involved in educational publishing. He wasn’t a Nazi but he had pragmatic connections with communists and the security services, including, interestingly, perhaps with Mossad. (He’s interred in Israel.) I don’t think Maxwell ever killed anybody but he certainly persecuted journalists at great length. In Victor, there are echoes of the plea of these journalists for less restrictive defamation laws.

There is something to be said for the persecution of journalists. Too many of them are just activists with some kind of credentials.

Robert Maxwell died in 1991.

This episode for me is in my top 10, however at the same time I have always found the shooting unrealistic. I guess it was out of desperation, but all very convenient the staff room that nobody went into.

What makes this episode is in my top 5 is the music, the cast and Oxford looked superb with the procession. It was certainly an episode to go out on a high, but wasn’t a “forced” ending.

Morse sure is the gift that keeps on giving, because this is in the bottom 3 episodes for me (just ahead of ‘Settling of the Sun’ and just behind ‘Death of the Self’). A tedious mess. It looked like the series had gone out on a whimper but thankfully ‘Way Through The Woods’ came along

The final moments of this Morse 28th episode between Morse and Lewis represent a vibrant farewell of the original series, very emotionally touching!

I have just watched this on a patriotic well-contained streaming service- I subscribed solely so I can watch all of the ELM universe series in order. I remember Robert Hardy’s character having something of a ‘potty mouth’ as Americans might say. Yet this dialogue seems to have been removed. I just found some clips on youtube where he indeed does refer to people with somewhat colourful language. I am feeling very let down. I wanted to watch the WHOLE of the Morse universe in its entirety- not just what some sanctimonious censor decides is appropriate. How dare they. Now I am wondering what else in the Morse series has been removed? There are a few things I remember from Morse ‘back in the day’ that I have put down to false memory syndrome- for example in ‘Deadly Slumber’ ( I am fairly sure) I remember Morse going into a pub, ordering a pint and then leaving and the barman asking him if there was something wrong with the beer- and he replies that there’s something wrong with him- that scene seems to have vanished.

In any case this episode is for me probably my second least favourite, taking the place of the Greek one. It’s slow, implausible in so many ways- not least because the Robert Hardy character would still have only been a boy or a very young man at the end of WW2 and so many other reasons. Glad to see Gielgud- what a wonderful actor and almost 90 when playing this part- never did need the Labour Exchange.

The best thing about the episode is the lovely portrayal of Oxford in mid summer. Otherwise one to forget. It’s clear by this time Inspector Morse was kept going for viewing figures and had the budget for all the big names- but it was probably right to begin winding it down.

Only 5 Jags for me.

“Morse going into a pub, ordering a pint and then leaving and the barman asking him if there was something wrong with the beer- and he replies that there’s something wrong with him.”

I remember an episode like that. Husband and wife owners of a pub – more the wife – are saying rather spiteful things about a woman in the community. Morse finds it so distasteful, he foregoes his drink and leaves, and does say something to imply it is because of them. He doesn’t say it explicitly, but the husband gets the point and is angry with his wife. Just saw it last month, so it is still around. Found it: Season 3, Episode 1, The Ghost in the Machine, starting around 42:40. Morse doesn’t like the nasty and tactless things the woman is saying about the lady of the manor. I liked how he responded to that behavior.

I watched this episode for the first time late last night and was so blown away by the sophistication of its use of music that when it finished I went straight to my desk and wrote a 2300 words essay on it. I didn’t finish until 6 am! (I am a musician, one of those unusually idealistic and passionate ones like Probert’s accompanist in this episode, so these odd moods strike me sometimes!)

My respect for the people responsible for Morse’s music (not just but primarily Barrington Pheloung – I suspect he was behind most or all of the hidden things I spotted in this episode’s music last night) is sky high. I’m not sure you would see such care, craft and scholarly consideration being lavished on a TV soundtrack today. Perhaps I’m wrong.

I’ve never read any of the Morse critical literature, so I don’t know if anyone has ever written about these things before. I’m happy to post some of my observations if anyone is interested.

GHladys gets shot by (it looks like) a Colt 1911 with A silencer so there would have been no loud report. It is possible to hit A target at that range but unlikely that someone without much range time could do it, as the 1911 is not any easy pistol to get good with.

With a voice and temperament like Gladys’s, I’m surprised no one tried to shoot her.

I watched this again for the first time in many years and like many of you squirmed at the camp gay stereotypes. Hard to believe this was one of the last eps and was surely past the point at which such 70’s & 80’s backs to the wall puerile nonsense was history. I also renewed my perhaps contrarian dislike of what I would say was Robert Hardy’s over acting. Being with a strong cast that didn’t have to ham it up, Baydon just looked like a one dimensional trope. What a treat with Sir John G lapping up the opportunity. Much as I have reservations about this ep, I still enjoyed the drama of the shooting in its beautiful Oxford setting and the assured ease of our two heroes relationship. Laughed out loud with the Taj Mahal joke too

Between Hardy and Guilgud, Thaw was out-acted at every turn. ( And I think the Taj Mahal is ugly.)

I agree with you about Hardy’s acting in this. Overacting to say the least, it was cartoonish in my view.

Given that Thaw had a limited range, both Hardy and Sir John left him in the dust.

@Patricia C. Reiser – why do you continually slight John Thaw ? The man was a fine actor and remains an icon.

I am weary of the word ‘icon’, which originally is spelled ikon. That assumes a religious connotation. Thaw, to me , had a limited range whereas the classically trained Guilgud turned out to have a wonderful talent for comedy. And Hardy played a variety of roles over his career.

I am weary of the word “weary,” personally. Ta.

All right. Then I have had it with the word ‘icon.’

Hi Patricia. Let’s keep the comment section free from hostility. Thank you.

Hi Sheldon. Let’s keep the comment section free from hostility. Thank you old friend.

A variety of roles, all exactly the same. Shouty and over the top.

He played Churchill twice. No shouting.

Yeiser. My mistake.

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Twilight of the Gods: War in the Western Pacific, 1944-1945 (Vol. 3) (The Pacific War Trilogy) Kindle Edition

New York Times Bestseller The final volume of the magisterial Pacific War Trilogy from acclaimed historian Ian W. Toll, “one of the great storytellers of War” (Evan Thomas).

In June 1944, the United States launched a crushing assault on the Japanese navy in the Battle of the Philippine Sea. The capture of the Mariana Islands and the accompanying ruin of Japanese carrier airpower marked a pivotal moment in the Pacific War. No tactical masterstroke or blunder could reverse the increasingly lopsided balance of power between the two combatants. The War in the Pacific had entered its endgame.

Beginning with the Honolulu Conference, when President Franklin Delano Roosevelt met with his Pacific theater commanders to plan the last phase of the campaign against Japan, Twilight of the Gods brings to life the harrowing last year of World War II in the Pacific, when the U.S. Navy won the largest naval battle in history; Douglas MacArthur made good his pledge to return to the Philippines; waves of kamikazes attacked the Allied fleets; the Japanese fought to the last man on one island after another; B-29 bombers burned down Japanese cities; and Hiroshima and Nagasaki were vaporized in atomic blasts.

Ian W. Toll’s narratives of combat in the air, at sea, and on the beaches are as gripping as ever, but he also reconstructs the Japanese and American home fronts and takes the reader into the halls of power in Washington and Tokyo, where the great questions of strategy and diplomacy were decided.

Drawing from a wealth of rich archival sources and new material, Twilight of the Gods casts a penetrating light on the battles, grand strategic decisions and naval logistics that enabled the Allied victory in the Pacific. An authoritative and riveting account of the final phase of the War in the Pacific, Twilight of the Gods brings Toll’s masterful trilogy to a thrilling conclusion. This prize-winning and best-selling trilogy will stand as the first complete history of the Pacific War in more than twenty-five years, and the first multivolume history of the Pacific naval war since Samuel Eliot Morison’s series was published in the 1950s.

• Book 3 of 3 Pacific War Trilogy
• Print length 943 pages
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THE CONQUERING TIDE

"A gripping narrative of the central Pacific campaign…Toll is strong on the operational details of battle, but he is no less skilled at presenting something that is frequently missing from military histories, a well-rounded depiction of the home front on both sides." – Walter R. Borneman, New York Times Book Review

"A beautiful blend of history and prose and proves again Mr. Toll’s mastery of the naval-war narrative." – Jonathan W. Jordan, Wall Street Journal

"A lucid and learned exposition of the grand chess match between high commanders in the middle years of the Pacific War, vividly evoking the grit and gristle of its many horrors and triumphs. Ian W. Toll is a superb historian whose writing appeals to both the head and the heart." – James D. Hornfischer, author of The Fleet at Flood Tide

PACIFIC CRUCIBLE

"Vivid, fast moving and highly readable." – Ronald Spector, Wall Street Journal

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• ASIN ‏ : ‎ B07ZTSJGK8
• Publisher ‏ : ‎ W. W. Norton & Company; Illustrated edition (September 1, 2020)
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Ian W. Toll is an independent naval historian, the author of PACIFIC CRUCIBLE: War at Sea in the Pacific, 1941-1942 and SIX FRIGATES: The Epic History of the Founding of the U.S. Navy. SIX FRIGATES won broad critical acclaim and was selected for the Samuel Eliot Morison Award, the William E. Colby Award, and New York Times “Editor’s Choice” list.

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Video Game News, Reviews, and Walkthroughs

Gods of the Twilight Early Access Review | Promising Beginning

• November 14, 2023

Sri Kandula

Visual novels get a bad rap in the games industry. Often seen as the middle ground between reading a book and playing a game. And while I can understand the sentiment, I also think that the genre has some excellent stories to tell. I used to love visual novels and at a point in my budding YouTube career , they were a cornerstone of my channel. However, in recent years, I haven’t played them much. So I was curious when a code for Gods of the Twilight popped into our inbox. It wasn’t just an upcoming visual novel, it was the first few chapters of a visual novel launching into Early Access with a promise of more episodes and seasons to come. Though I originally just wanted to check out the first hour of a new visual novel, over the last few days, I’ve found myself coming back to Gods of the Twilight , and a total of 9 hours later, I am eager to see where this journey goes from here.

Gods of the Twilight tells the story of Farkas and Althea, two protagonists that you switch between during the duration of the game, who discover that they might be more than human. (For the sake of spoilers I won’t say any more.) The game presents you with the choice of who to play at the start but it’s more a selection of who you want to start with as you’ll likely spend equal time with both of them over the course of the game’s five chapters. The protagonists are sort of blank slates in the beginning with not a lot of character, but they take shape before you as you play. While Farkas is the hero I picked out of the gate, I have to mention how refreshing it was to see a character like Althea in the game. As an Indian-born person who had to move around a lot as a kid, I related to her quite a bit.

When it comes to setting, Gods of the Twilight takes place in a far future where ocean levels rise, swallowing up coastal cities, and seasons are no longer as clearly defined as they used to be. Most of the story is set in New Reykjavik, a cyberpunk city floating across the ocean, though you do go to the mainland later on. It can take a bit to come to grips with the game’s setting. It doesn’t quite lore dump on you and there is a handy codex to help provide more context to anything you might have a question about. But in the context of the first five chapters, I think the cyberpunk backdrop is a bit underutilized. There’s talk of human augmentation and Big Brother-style corporate surveillance but we don’t really see the purpose of that yet in the narrative. I understand the need to turn the clock forward as it’s significant to the Norse mythology hook that pulls the story forward, I just hope to see the cyberpunk elements used in a more meaningful way in the coming episodes.

To derail briefly, there is a trend in some modern animes where they will feature both 3D animation and traditional hand-drawn animation. While it can work thematically in certain stories, by and large, the look has never been my favorite. So it makes sense that I feel similarly about Gods of the Twilight . On one hand, the character artwork (which has the nice added detail of facial expressions during dialogue and even blinking) is great, and, paired with some of the similarly drawn action stills, makes for a cohesive art style that I wish the game fully committed to. Instead, a majority of the backgrounds in the game look like 3D renders. Most of them are fine but they rarely have the lively-ness of the rest of the art. The game does try to bring life to the scenes by switching between stills to create a sense of motion in the background, though even that did not really improve the experience for me personally.

This is partly also due to the fact that the sound design in Gods of the Twilight is often good enough on its own to support a given scene. There is a nice blend of diegetic sounds, dramatized sound effects, and music in the game. The background sounds are often enough to make an area feel lively and the punctual sound effects add to that in a nice way. The music, which consists of 13 tracks by AudioCreatures (Markus Zierhofer), frequently just plays on a loop based on what part of the game you’re in but it never got boring in my roughly 10 total hours with the game. The game mostly knows when to use sound and when to not, though a few unnecessary sound effects are the exception.

On the note of audio, one thing that’s special about Gods of the Twilight is that all the dialogue is fully voiced featuring talent like Amina Koroma ( Baldur’s Gate 3 ), Kelsey Jaffer ( Genshin Impact ), Atli Óskar Fjalarsson ( The Midnight Sky ), and Ellis Knight ( SMITE ). As someone who is used to reading every line in a visual novel, it took me a bit to get used to alternating between reading the narration and listening to dialogue but the performances started to grow on me and some of the characters grew to be rather endearing as a result.

Of course, the glue that holds everything together is the writing. Despite the occasional odd piece of dialogue, I really enjoyed both the narration and dialogue in Gods of the Twilight . The writing makes the game feel more like an anime and I think that is what made it so easy to binge through the five episodes available in Early Access. Before I knew it, I was 9 hours in, staring at an end-screen that told me to wait for the next episode. The game is planned to be a multi-season affair and the seeds for a lot of interesting ideas have been laid out in these initial episodes. Anyone hoping for a satisfying ending here will be disappointed, but, similar to how one might feel after the pilot episode of a new series, I am curious to see where the story goes from here.

Player choice is essential in a visual novel and it’s very present here. While I can’t point specifically to the moments that changed the trajectory of the story, I can still see generally how the narrative could have differed. Speaking tonally, for example, the choices I made in my first playthrough (which were fueled by a particularly flirty achievement) turned the game into an entertaining Love Island -esque drama show while experimenting with old saves got me to different results. The feeling of ownership in the narrative helps make each playthrough special and encourages replays. Another thing I liked in that regard is the way the game keeps your character in character, even when you aren’t controlling them. Minor spoilers for the rest of the paragraph, at a certain point, Farkas and Althea’s stories overlap and the characters make decisions based on the kind of choices you’ve previously made.

I have one big complaint and one related disclaimer to report before I wrap it up. I played through Gods of the Twilight on my Steam Deck and, in many ways, it was awesome. I could sit in a comfy chair or sink into bed while playing, similar to getting settled to read a good book. However, this also led to a really annoying bug where the game would freeze randomly, forcing a restart that often meant that I lost progress. There is a handy quick save button that I got into the habit of regularly tapping for every new scene but I can’t deny replaying through sections was not ideal. I am not sure if this was a result of me playing on the Steam Deck, but remember to save regularly either way just in case.

With the first five chapters available now in Early Access, Gods of the Twilight is off to a promising start. Though a blend of 3D and 2D animation didn’t work for me, the writing and performances definitely did. The game both reacts to and remembers your decisions and the result is an interesting narrative that will leave you wanting more. I only hope that the quality on display will be maintained in the coming months. Purchasing the Early Access version of the game will immediately unlock the first 5 chapters (along with Chapter 0 from the demo) as part of Season 1 of Gods of the Twilight . Season 1 is planned to be 20 chapters long with 5-6 chapters expected to release every 6-12 months. Because the game is only in Early Access on Steam , we will not be giving it a formal numbered score. But this is a game I will be keeping up with and I will share my conclusive thoughts after it comes to an end. In the meantime, be sure to check out our interview with Lead Developer, Ashley Micks, and Narrative Designer, Leandro Zantedeschi, about what it takes to make a good visual novel, how they find the balance between story and gameplay, and what to expect going forward with their new game.

Tags: first impressions pc reviews

Sri Kandula is the author of Nightmare from the Deep and The Lesser Evil. He is also the editor-in-chief at Respawn Station. He has been previously published on The Daily Collegian and is a former host of Pop Culture Corner on PSNtv. His post-apocalyptic short film What Remains is currently playing in festivals.

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2 responses.

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Speaking for the devs of this game, thanks for the thorough feedback!

The freezing bug you noticed is now fixed–it was due to us using an older version of Ren’Py as our engine, and it went away when we updated to the latest.

that’s great to hear, thanks for addressing the issue. best of luck with early access. i’m looking forward to playing the rest of the season!

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