No Delays for the Wicked: Difference between revisions

* Lewis acknowledges this again in ''[[The Chronicles of Narnia]]'' book ''[[The Horse and His Boy]]'' (set during the reign of the kids). [[The Evil Prince]] Rabadash is angered when Susan rejects his marriage proposal but knows that his country's massive armies can't cross the desert to reach Narnia. He decides to collect 200 horsemen in an attempt to kill the King of Archenland (Narnia's neighbor) and gain a foothold. Even then it apparently takes the better part of two days to get the men ready.

**[[Subverted Trope|That's actually pretty good]] for a muscle powered army as even if Colormen has a standing force, it would spare time to select men for a special ops mission that has such potential for backfiring and in any case there is no reason to be hurried as it was only the worst of luck that a spy willing to take the risk of travelling all the way to Archenland to give a warning heard about it, while they very much needed to get a hold of horses, fodder and enough water to get across the desert.

* Justified in ''[[Codex Alera]]''. At first, the obstreperous [[Obstructive Bureaucrat]] in a position of authority in the valley garrison looks like a [[Contrived Coincidence]], making things harder for the heroes and easier for the villains for no good reason. Later, though, we learn that {{spoiler|the bureaucrat is an innocent if incompetent guy, but the [[Big Bad Friend]] was so [[Crazy Prepared]] that before the story started he spent weeks sabotaging the valley garrison, including getting incompetent people reassigned to important places}}.

* The [[Cold War]]-era political thriller ''Pentagon'' is an [[Author Tract]] against the U.S. military procurement system, and [[Anvilicious]]ly examines the bureaucratic infighting and interservice rivalry that paralyzes America's military response to the chillingly efficient Soviet invasion of a Pacific island to use it as a nuclear missile base.