I feel like this sort of competence is the main appeal of the TV series "Burn Notice", although it's often presented as simply being well-trained ("Anyone who works in espionage knows..." would be a common lead-in to some clever/competent plan)
I think Lord of the Rings is interesting here. I don't think Tolkien succeeded in making the competence of his characters legible to the audience (not to me, anyway), but he did, in fact, write them in a way that shows them being competent, and I very much enjoyed these series by an ancient historian explaining what is going on:
This is one of the reasons I enjoy A Practical Guide to Evil. The characters (typically) make plans that are clear to the reader and observably good ideas, both tactically and strategically.
The Martin (the film, at least, I haven't read the book yet) would fit too I think - I don't fully understand everything going on in general, but it makes sense and Mark comes up with smart, sensible solutions to a lot of the problems.
Huh. When I wrote a review of these I was focused on the parts where Thrawn does succeed by author fiat, and I was a little confused about why I had liked them (I wrote 'I enjoyed it, but in a different mood it likely would have annoyed me more').
But you're right, there are lots of places where Zahn does do this well, and now it seems obvious that that was what made the books compelling to me. Thanks!
You should read the Rogue Squadron and Wraith Squadron books! They're also Star Wars and also by this author and another author who collaborates with him, and they have a lot of the same sort of careful planning and ops and a team of people with different specialties that you can see them being interestingly good at.
At least in the first book, Francis Crawford of Lymond from Dorothy Dunnett's Lymond chronicles displays this sort of quiet competence pretty well (I haven't finished the whole series, but things do get a bit more stretched later on, imo)
I think Jim Butcher actually does this quite well. More so in Codex Alera than in the Dresden Files, but Harry has his moments too. (Granted, he does both the "magical genius" thing and the "clever improviser" thing far more often.)
> I’d really enjoy reading more books that have this sort of on-page, clearly established competence in their characters. Do you have any recommendations?
I'm assuming you've read HPMoR? If not, you should probably try that one. It has a lot of flaws, but oh boy does it do convincingly smart characters well.
If you have read it, there's a lot of other rational fiction now. I'm currently reading Doing God's Work (https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/25442/doing-gods-work), which is also pretty good in the convincingly smart people department.
I kind of disagree, one of my pet peeves about HPMoR is that it feels to me less "smart characters" and more "smart person writing characters", if that makes sense. They're still clever, but it's more contrived and less realistic than Thrawn. Kind of like the difference between Sherlock Holmes in BBC's Sherlock, and in Elementary.
I feel like this sort of competence is the main appeal of the TV series "Burn Notice", although it's often presented as simply being well-trained ("Anyone who works in espionage knows..." would be a common lead-in to some clever/competent plan)
I think Lord of the Rings is interesting here. I don't think Tolkien succeeded in making the competence of his characters legible to the audience (not to me, anyway), but he did, in fact, write them in a way that shows them being competent, and I very much enjoyed these series by an ancient historian explaining what is going on:
https://acoup.blog/2019/05/10/collections-the-siege-of-gondor/
https://acoup.blog/2020/05/01/collections-the-battle-of-helms-deep-part-i-bargaining-for-goods-at-helms-gate/
Lots of Discworld characters feel competent... Sam Vimes, Susan Sto Helit, Granny Weatherwax, Tiffany Aching...
This is one of the reasons I enjoy A Practical Guide to Evil. The characters (typically) make plans that are clear to the reader and observably good ideas, both tactically and strategically.
The Martin (the film, at least, I haven't read the book yet) would fit too I think - I don't fully understand everything going on in general, but it makes sense and Mark comes up with smart, sensible solutions to a lot of the problems.
Huh. When I wrote a review of these I was focused on the parts where Thrawn does succeed by author fiat, and I was a little confused about why I had liked them (I wrote 'I enjoyed it, but in a different mood it likely would have annoyed me more').
But you're right, there are lots of places where Zahn does do this well, and now it seems obvious that that was what made the books compelling to me. Thanks!
You should read the Rogue Squadron and Wraith Squadron books! They're also Star Wars and also by this author and another author who collaborates with him, and they have a lot of the same sort of careful planning and ops and a team of people with different specialties that you can see them being interestingly good at.
At least in the first book, Francis Crawford of Lymond from Dorothy Dunnett's Lymond chronicles displays this sort of quiet competence pretty well (I haven't finished the whole series, but things do get a bit more stretched later on, imo)
typo
"her needs" should be "their needs"
Have you read the Vorkosigan Saga? The main characters tend to be quite competent.
I think Jim Butcher actually does this quite well. More so in Codex Alera than in the Dresden Files, but Harry has his moments too. (Granted, he does both the "magical genius" thing and the "clever improviser" thing far more often.)
Is Macgyver competent or just magic?
> I’d really enjoy reading more books that have this sort of on-page, clearly established competence in their characters. Do you have any recommendations?
I'm assuming you've read HPMoR? If not, you should probably try that one. It has a lot of flaws, but oh boy does it do convincingly smart characters well.
If you have read it, there's a lot of other rational fiction now. I'm currently reading Doing God's Work (https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/25442/doing-gods-work), which is also pretty good in the convincingly smart people department.
I kind of disagree, one of my pet peeves about HPMoR is that it feels to me less "smart characters" and more "smart person writing characters", if that makes sense. They're still clever, but it's more contrived and less realistic than Thrawn. Kind of like the difference between Sherlock Holmes in BBC's Sherlock, and in Elementary.