A tree of immense girth grows from a tufted shoot; a terrace of nine levels rises from a clump of soil; a journey of a thousand miles begins under the first tread.
--Laozi, Dao De Jing, ch. 64
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The Dragon Masters, Jack Vance (1962), 102 pp (hb).
I really enjoyed The Dragon Masters, although I'm not sure I can put my finger on just why. It won a Hugo Award in the "Short Fiction" category (this was several years before the Hugos settled on separate "Short Story," "Novelette," and "Novella" categories; it's longer than a short story, but not quite novel length), so I'm not alone in having liked it. The real Vance cognoscenti will probably nod knowingly and opine that Vance has just cast his spell on me, and I suppose that's as good an explanation as any.
The plot isn't very intricate, even for something of this length. The action all occurs on a small portion of a backwater planet, a remnant of a long-overthrown multi-planet human empire. The ascendant power in this corner of the galaxy is a saurian race that the humans simply call the Basics. The Basics have performed genetic experiments and alterations on their human captives, and enslaved the resulting creature types as their servants and soldiers. Several generations prior to the story, the humans managed to capture a number of raiding Basics, and they have since performed their own experiments, creating and breeding up several strains of "dragons" to serve as martial slaves.
There are three human factions, two contending communities living in adjacent valleys, and a mysterious group of "sacerdotes," a mystical bunch of seeming pacifists that wander around the edges while avoiding purposeful interaction with "normal" society. Joaz Banbeck, the leader of the stronger community, is crafty and has some grasp of strategy. Although the Basics have not made an appearance for several generations, Banbeck's attention to astronomical signs leads him to believe their reappearance is imminent. Ervis Carcolo, leader of the other community, is ambitious, impetuous, and not too bright; he doesn't really believe the Basics are coming back anytime soon, and what he really has his heart set on is cutting Joaz Banbeck down to size.
The language in The Dragon Masters is tasty, as is the atmosphere that Vance creates. The ending is ambiguous; it might be a stretch to call it even cautiously optimistic. Still, this was an interesting little story, even if I can't explain exactly why.
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The Charwoman's Shadow, Edward John Moreton Drax Plunkett, Lord Dunsany (1926), 241 pp (tpb).
Lord Dunsany is often spoken of as one of the "founding fathers" of modern fantasy, and this edition of The Charwoman's Shadow has a cover quote by Jane Yolen ("Lord Dunsany is the great grandfather of us all") and a short but suitably pretentious introduction by Peter Beagle ("To open this book is...to begin learning the true nature of enchantment from a master") to reinforce that message. Perhaps I'm missing some "true nature of enchantment" appreciation gene, but I just don't see it, at least not after reading The Charwoman's Shadow (I still have The King of Elfland's Daughter resting on my desk; I'm willing to give Dunsany a second chance, something I don't generally hand out to a lot of modern authors).
The Charwoman's Shadow is set in what is purported to be a Golden Age Spain, shortly before its decline into mundanity. A scion of the petit gentry, Ramon Alonzo, is greeted by his father with the disheartening news that although his sister Mirandola approaches marriageable age, recent family fortunes are such that her dowry chest sits empty in his chamber. Therefore, he charges Ramon Alonzo to seek out a magician dwelling in a house in a nearby wood, and from him learn the secret of transmuting baser elements into gold. Because Ramon Alonzo's grandfather, a boar hunter of great skill, once taught all he knew of hunting to the magician, Ramon Alonzo finds the magician willing to teach, for a fee, whatever Ramon Alonzo wants to learn.
The fee the magician asks is Ramon Alonzo's shadow. Although that doesn't seem like much of a price to him, in the magician's house is an elderly charwoman who has already paid the same fee, and having lost her own shadow long ago, she pleads with Ramon Alonzo not to give up his to the magician. A rather callow youth, Ramon Alonzo doesn't resist the bargain for very long, but after giving up his shadow, he starts to learn the value of what he's given up, and to plot to recover not only his, but also the charwoman's shadow. Meanwhile, back at the ranch, there's a subplot going on involving Mirandola's scheming to subvert her father's artless matchmaking and secure for herself a better matrimonial deal.
Although Dunsany's prose is not what I'd call truly archaic, it does have a certain stilted quality to it that I was never quite able to warm up to. Nor did the plot itself strike me as particularly interesting. I had a hard time being convinced that shadows, even in the context of the story, were all that important, and none of the characters really captured my interest (save perhaps, in flashes, the magician). There is one image/scene that I think is worthy of approving comment, and it's the final one, involving the magician and the departure of the Golden Age. It's a bit with some heft to it, but on the whole, this book just didn't really do it for me.
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Sharpe's Regiment, Bernard Cornwell (1986), 298 pp (tpb).
In the late summer of 1813, Wellington's army is resting up in northern Spain prior to the push over the Pyrenees into France. The South Essex, the (fictional) battalion that Major Sharpe is commanding (since The Powers That Be have yet to send out a replacement lieutenant colonel) is seriously depleted in manpower, and although the regiment's second battalion has supposedly been recruiting and training in England, and has promised to send a draft of replacements any day now, no one seems to know where they are or why they haven't shown up. If the battalion can't get brought up to full strength, it will have to be broken up and dispersed among the other units of the army. Wellington wants all the veteran units he can get, so he sends Sharpe, two of his officers, and Sergeant Harper back to England to pry loose some men.
Once in England, they wander into a recruiting scandal in which Sharpe's old nemesis (he has so many) from Sharpe's Eagle, Sir Henry Simmerson, is deeply involved. So Sharpe and Harper get to go undercover, re-joining the "lost" second battalion as raw recruits under assumed names in order to get the goods on the ring-leaders who are auctioning the recruits off to other needy units, rather than sending them where they belong. At stake is the continued existence of the regiment itself, as well as Sharpe's position commanding men in Wellington's army.
One of the persistent themes in this series has been Sharpe's naïveté regarding women, particularly beautiful women, and this weakness is on full display again here. He envies them, wants them as a symbol of something near-unattainable, and tends to put them on a pedestal, believing something that beautiful could never do anything really bad or hurtful. Here, it's Anna Gibbons, the innocent early-twenties niece of Sir Henry (and younger sister of a nasty young officer who was offed by Harper back in Eagle) who Sharpe becomes convinced he's in love with. Of course, she's in her own bad place at the time, so her judgment isn't all that clear-sighted either....
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Sharpe's Honor, Bernard Cornwell (1985), 315 pp (pb).
This book is the lead-up to the battle of Vitorio, a city in north Spain near the French border, in June, 1813. It was this battle that finally "threw open the door," so to speak, to allow Wellington's forces to assault the Pyrenees and invade into France, after several long years of fighting back and forth across the Peninsula. And, of course, Sharpe has to be there--that's the thing about fictional action heroes in historical settings, they get to be in on all the big battles. The lead-up that forms the plot of this book, though, is about the clandestine maneuvering surrounding a French plot to restore the hereditary king of Spain and leave the country, in return for having the king withdraw sanction from English forces and force them to leave the country, too.
The master plotter on the French side is Pierre Ducos, a nasty secret-agent type introduced last book (and now an implacable personal enemy of Our Hero). Also reappearing is La Marquesa (aka La Puta Dorada, or, the Golden Whore), the paramour from Sharpe's Sword. Sharpe gets caught up, mostly unwittingly, in the plotting, and is condemned at a kangaroo court, escapes hanging, and has to go undercover to winkle out details of the plot. His adventures include this amusing excerpt, when he undertakes to break into a remote convent to find La Marquesa, who has been involuntarily secreted there:
Sharpe smiled. "No, ma'am. American." He hoped Colonel Leroy would forgive the lie, and he was glad that he did not wear a red coat that was always thought to be the only uniform of Britain.
She frowned. "American?"
"I have come a long way to see La Marquesa."
"Why do you wish to see that woman?"
"Matters of policy." He hoped his Spanish was correct.
She tossed her head. "She will see no one."
"She will see me."
"She is a sinner."
"So are we all." Sharpe wondered why on earth he was swapping theological small talk with a Mother Superior. He supposed she was the Mother Superior.
"She is doing penance."
"I wish only to talk with her." [...]
"It is against God's law to see her."
"God will forgive me."
"You are a sinner."
Sharpe frowned. "I am an American!"
The Mother Superior turned away, her voice superb. "You cannot see her. Go away."
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Sharpe's Enemy, Bernard Cornwell (1984), 347 pp (pb).
More Sharpe, and this time, he meets up with a couple of old acquaintances, one a friend, more-or-less, the other an enemy, unequivocally. The action is set in December 1812, at a town guarding a pass near the north Portugal-Spain border. A large band of mingled French and British deserters has taken over and is terrorizing the town; they've also managed to seize hostages, including wives of both British and French officers. One of those wives turns out to be Josefina, the Portuguese lady of easy virtue with whom Sharpe briefly consorted back in Sharpe's Eagle. He's sent to take the demanded ransom to the renegades, and later, to command the rescue attempt. One of the "commanders" of the renegades also happens to be Obadiah Hakeswill, last seen escaping the wrath of Sharpe and Harper back in Sharpe's Company.
A decent enough little adventure. Sharpe's wife Teresa flitters onto the scene late in the novel, only so she can meet her accidental and tragic (to Sharpe, who is much broken up about it, consumed by guilt, and so on) demise. I've been indifferent to her character, so I caught myself muttering something along the lines of "good, clear the decks and move on to something more interesting in the petticoat line." Yes, I'm a shallow, heartless bastard.
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The Code of the Woosters, P.G. Wodehouse (1938), 222 pp (pb).
More of the adventures of Jeeves and Bertie. This time, it's a novel, not just a string of unconnected anecdotes. In fact, somewhat surprisingly, it's really very meticulously plotted. This particular adventure combines a series of interlocking problems and obstacles (almost all of which are, of course, quite ludicrous) that revolve around one another with all the zany intricacy of a Rube Goldberg machine. Bertie is still relying on Jeeves to bail him out at the crucial moment, while maintaining the amusing delusion that he's in charge:
I suppose that when two men of iron will live in close association with one another, there are bound to be occasional clashes, and one of these had recently popped up in the Wooster home. Jeeves was trying to get me to go on a round-the-world cruise, and I would have none of it. But in spite of my firm statements to this effect, scarcely a day passed without him bringing me a sheaf or nosegay of those illustrated folders which the Ho-for-the-open-spaces birds send out in the hope of drumming up custom. His whole attitude recalled irresistibly to the mind that of some assiduous hound who will persist in laying a dead rat on the drawing room carpet, though repeatedly apprised by word and gesture that the market for same is sluggish or even nonexistent.
The writing is, of course, first rate, and Wodehouse has a seemingly effortless sense of comic timing. I won't even attempt to unravel the details of the plot, save to note that it includes a stay at the country residence of a retired magistrate who despises Bertie (where most of the novel takes place) and involves a silver cow-creamer, a purloined constable's helmet, a journal of unflattering reflections, not one but two on-again-off-again marriage engagements, and the escaped newts of Gussie Fink-Nottle (or Spink-Bottle, as Bertie's Aunt Dahlia calls him). It also has minor adventures like this one, where Bertie and Jeeves set out to toss Stiffy (Stephanie) Byng's room in order to find the aforementioned journal, and end up being treed on the wardrobe by Stiffy's dog:
One doesn't want to make a song and dance about one's ancient lineage, of course, but after all the Woosters did come over with the Conqueror and were extremely pally with him; and a fat lot of good it is coming over with Conquerors, if you're simply going to wind up by being given the elbow by Aberdeen terriers. [...]
"I think you would find that if you were to make a sudden spring, his teeth would not enter into the matter. You could leap onto the bed, snatch up a sheet, roll him up in it before he knew what was happening, and there we would be."
"Yes, sir."
"Well, are you going to make a sudden spring?"
"No, sir."
A rather stiff silence ensued, during which the dog Bartholomew continued to gaze at me unwinkingly, and once more I found myself noticing--and resenting--the superior, sanctimonious expression on his face. Nothing can ever render the experience of being treed on top of a chest of drawers by an Aberdeen terrier pleasant, but it seemed to me that the least you can expect on such an occasion is that the animal will meet you halfway and not drop salt into the wound by looking at you as if he were asking you if you were saved.
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The Land of Laughs, Jonathon Carroll (1980), 253 pp (tpb).
The Land of Laughs begins quietly, in some ways almost resolutely mundane, and then veers firmly into the realm of the fantastic somewhere around its midpoint. It's narrated by Thomas Abbey, a thirty year old English teacher who has spent most of his life struggling in the shadow of his very famous father, a Hollywood movie star now deceased for some years. He teaches at a New England prep school, and the occupational hazards of pounding an appreciation for fine litratchur through the average teenage skull are beginning to grind on him more and more:
In February, the month when suicide always looks good to me, I taught a class in Poe that helped me to decide at least to apply for a leave of absence for the following fall before something dangerous happened to my brain. A normal lunkhead named Davis Bell was supposed to give a report to the class on "The Fall of the House of Usher." He got up in front of us and said this. I quote. "'The Fall of the House of Usher,' by Edgar Allen Poe, who was an alcoholic and married his younger cousin." I had told them all that several days before in hopes of stimulating their curiosity. To continue. "...married his younger cousin. This house, or I mean this story, is about this house of ushers..."
"Who fall?" I prompted him, at the risk of giving the plot away to his classmates, who hadn't read the story either.
"Yeah, who fall."
Time to leave.
Thomas has a favorite author, one who's been with him from childhood on into adulthood, and he has this slightly quixotic notion that he'd like to use his leave of absence time to write a biography--something no one else has yet done--of this author, Marshall France. By coincidence, Thomas runs into another Marshall France lover, a young woman named Saxony Gardner (I love that name), and before long they have struck up a relationship and decided to head off together to France's hometown of Galen, Missouri, where his daughter still lives, and see if they can get her permission and assistance to write this biography. They settle into the town, and then, and then, weird stuff starts to happen.
Contrary to my usual preference, I think I liked this book more when it was in its mundane phase, before the weirdness really hit. The weirdness is foreshadowed, and there's a premonition of gloom that kind of seeps around the edges, even before the subtle horror of the last stages fully blossoms (subtle, I suppose, not least because there are no ancient vampire covens, frozen zombies, eldritch terrors from beyond the grave, Elder Gods from the depths of space and time, or Grand Guignol style bloodbaths. It's not that kind of horror, okay?). It's quietly creepy, is what I'm trying to say. In addition to which, the central premise around which the town is built doesn't bear very close examination, in my opinion. I didn't mind that too much, though, since this is not the type of fabulist tale that relies on a meticulously constructed magic system for its narrative juice.
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The Iron Dragon's Daughter, Michael Swanwick (1994), 424 pp (hb).
Michael Swanwick is a prime example of one of those authors whose name would have remained perpetually indistinct to my browsing eye, sunk among the surfeit of names and titles that inhabit the shelves of the local brick-and-mortar mega-store (Borders, B&N, The Tattered Cover; take your pick), had he not been brought to my attention by recurring, approving mention on fora like rasfw. This is anecdotal proof that rasfw, in spite of the occasional morass of tedious bloviating that clogs (and all too often overflows) my filters, still provides a valuable service in the gem prospecting line, for it would have been a pity to have missed out on The Iron Dragon's Daughter. It tells a muscular, thought-provoking story, with an absorbing setting and memorable rather than admirable characters.
I'm not familiar enough with elf punk as a sub-genre to say whether Daughter qualifies, even on the margins--I suspect probably not--but the comparison slipped to mind, first because the world in which most of the story takes place is gritty enough for an entire trilogy of elf punk, and second because in that world, elves are the powerful aristocracy at the top of the social hierarchy, and not at all noble (as a character trait), altruistic, or nice. Reflecting further on the elf punk idea, I suppose it could be said that in a sense the "borderland" trope is in play, but Swanwick plays his cards fairly close to the chest in the explication department, particularly at the outset (and even at the end, he hardly ties things up in a neat bow, at least cosmologically speaking). I consider this a net positive; it makes the reader do more work, but it's ultimately more stimulating. There are tantalizing hints from the first few chapters that our world--or the analogue of our world--is involved somehow, but the ties don't become less muddy until well into the middle/end of the book.
Enough dancing around. What's it about? Most simply, it's the story of Jane, a mortal human changeling in a world populated by various flavors of fey: dwarves, giants, shape-shifters, hags, kobolds, ogres, trolls, and so forth. In this world, numinous power (okay, magic) not only exists, but interacts with technology, in ways, obviously, that it doesn't in our world. When the novel opens, Jane is on the threshold of puberty, a child laborer indentured to a foundry dedicated to building iron dragons. These dragons at some point take on life (a point the details of which, unless I blinked and missed it, are skipped over: whether their life and personality is due to a soul that enters the frame at some point, or to a particularly advanced computer AI (or some combination of both) is unclear). They are the fighter jets of this world, mated, when finished, to a half-elven pilot who directs them in combat. McCaffrey-haters may rest easy; these beasts are a welcome anodyne to the "dragons are our noble friends and protectors" wing of the SF guildhall, dedicated as they are to death and destruction and with nary a whiff of touchy-feely sentiment to be found.
The story follows Jane into adolescence and young adulthood, as she finds herself at-large in the big city, studying alchemy at the university. Throughout this time, she is linked, with varying degrees of fidelity over time, to a rogue, renegade (and thus in hiding) dragon. The dragon wants something from her, and as she learns more about herself and the world, the dragon's ultimate purpose is also uncovered bit by bit. Jane isn't particularly admirable, or even, on the surface at least, very sympathetic. This isn't a cosy little morality play, though, and she's mostly amoral anyway. What she is is interesting, and (generally) understandable. Did I mention the world is gritty? Yeah. It's understandable that looking out for herself in a cold cruel world gives her something of a rough edge.
What can I say about the ending without spoiling it all? Not a lot. Let me just say that in less-skilled hands, it might easily have turned into a "and then she woke up" fiasco (don't worry, it doesn't, in my opinion at least). What the book does throughout, with increasing intensity as it builds to the end, is play with questions involving metempsychosis, existence (reality vs. illusion), even divinity--without providing much in the way of answers, of course. I'm guessing that reading it a second time would uncover a number of things that I missed this first time.
Swanwick's writing is strong and assured, his prose smooth, muscular, and even elegant by turns. Although The Iron Dragon's Daughter is layered and requires thought to fully appreciate, it's not at all a chore to read. The world is interesting, if (repeat once more after me) gritty, and the story has somewhere to go; it has narrative flow and is compelling not only as a vessel of ideas, but simply as a tale well told. Worth reading.
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Briar Rose, Jane Yolen (1992), 185 pp (hb).
Writing about real-life horror seems to me to be an undertaking fraught with peril; it takes a deft touch to avoid what has to be the near compulsion to match the overwhelming savagery of events with a reportage that bludgeons readers with details until they are numb and, paradoxically, desensitized to the very pain and horror that the writer so desperately wishes to convey. In Briar Rose, Yolen has hit on a fresh and moving way of telling a story from the Holocaust. This book is one of a series of modern re-tellings of traditional fairy tales, and Yolen has set the tale of Sleeping Beauty around, amazingly, an extermination camp in WWII Poland. And amazingly, it works powerfully well.
The book interleaves two narratives. The first is a grandmother ("Gemma") of a Jewish family living in a Massachusetts town telling her three granddaughters the story of Sleeping Beauty. The second is set in the present, and follows the youngest of the three granddaughters, Becca, now in her early twenties, as she tries to carry out her last promise to her recently deceased grandmother, and discover Gemma's true history, a history completely unknown to her family. As Becca slowly learns new information in dribs and drabs, it becomes more and more evident that Gemma's oddly revised rendition of Sleeping Beauty--a tale the girls heard hundreds of times while growing up--is in fact a tale of a period in her life that she herself had long buried or forgotten.
It's all there--the princess, the handsome prince, the castle, the hedge of thorns, and the deep sleep like unto death, save that in this story, only the princess ever woke back to the world at the prince's kiss. This is a deftly written story, one that allows the horror to be approached and felt; moving without being desensitizing.
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Who's Afraid of Beowulf?, Tom Holt (1988), 206 pp (hb).
Another inconsequential but very fun little adventure. The details of the plot in this one are far less important than the tone, which is relaxed and humorous. Hildy Frederiksen, a bright young archaeologist specializing in medieval Scandinavia, is brought in to check out a burial mound that a survey team has stumbled over way up at the north tip of Scotland. As she investigates, she inadvertently wakes a crew of twelve 8th century Viking heroes that have lain at rest under a sleep spell for the last millenia-plus. Seems that back in the day, they were just about to vanquish an evil sorcerer-king when he escaped from the field of battle. So they went into suspended animation to await the possible return of their enemy (their in-house wizard has put a language spell on all of them, so they seem to speak in very colloquial English. Handy, that). Now, some cursory poking around shows that the enemy is indeed back, and about to take over the world (although the world could hardly be more oblivious) as the head of a multi-national corporation. Hildy quickly gets over her shock and signs on to the cause, and the Vikings (after properly amending her name, to Frederik's-daughter) take to her, too:
"That girl has brains," said Brynjolf hurriedly. "Brains are what count these days, it seems."
"Dunno what we'll do, then," said Hjort. "Never had much use for brains, personally. Messy. Hard to clean off the axe-blade."
"I reckon she's an asset to the team," went on Brynjolf. "As it is, we're strong on muscle and valour, but a bit short on intellect. There's Himself, of course, and that miserable wizard, but another counsellor on the staff is no bad thing. I reckon we should adopt her."
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High Fidelity, Nick Hornby (1995), 323 pp (hb).
Okay, I have to admit that I started this book with some faint but deep-rooted biases kicking around somewhere in the back of my head. I wanted to be fair and approach it with an open mind, but I couldn't quite rid myself of a lingering sneer arising from the conception I held that it was going to be about hip modern slackers doing hip modern slacker-ish type stuff. And then...and then, the damn book had to go and seduce me, in spite of the fact that there is indeed more than just a whiff of hip modern slacker ethos drifting through it. That's rather the point, in fact: the protagonist stumbling haltingly onto the first few steps to redemption from that ethos. I could feel myself being slowly converted over the course of reading it, until by the end, I found that I really, really liked this book.
It helps when starting out on High Fidelity to know that the narrator, Rob Fleming, is a prick. I'm sorry, but he is. And yet, God help me, I recognized in his discursive ramblings a truly disturbing number of insights into my own self. Oh sure, there were at least as many points of complete difference, but I realized fairly early on that if I were going to hash on him for foible A, while I myself was fully as culpable as he for foible B, well, my moral high ground was going to start looking pretty shaky, if not measurable in negative numbers. This doesn't absolve Rob of prick-hood, of course, or at least not right away--he has to work his own way out of that hole--but it does work fairly effectively at shutting up whatever sneering condescension is still mumbling around in the back of my head.
Rob is in his mid-thirties, and owns a used record store in north London, where he and his two socially-challenged employees/mates are wont to hang out, goofing on each other and making up obscure "Top 5" lists (like "all-time top five episodes of Cheers"). Rob kicks off his narrative, in fact, by listing his "desert-island, all-time, top five most memorable split-ups, in chronological order," not at all coincidentally because his current partner of several years standing has just split with him and moved out of his flat (she doesn't make the list, as he is at great pains to point out). It quickly becomes evident that Rob just doesn't quite have the whole relationship gig figured out:
Sometimes it seems as though the only way a man can judge his own niceness, his own decency, is by looking at his relationships with women--or rather, with prospective or current sexual partners. It's easy enough to be nice to your mates. You can buy them a drink, make them a tape, ring them up to see if they're OK...there are any number of quick and painless methods of turning yourself into a Good Bloke. When it comes to girlfriends, though, it's much trickier to be consistently honorable. One moment you're ticking along, cleaning the toilet bowl, and expressing your feelings and doing all the other things that a modern chap is supposed to do; the next, you're manipulating and sulking and double-dealing and fibbing with the best of them. I can't work it out.
That's another thing about Rob's internal monologue through much of the book: it's not always clear when his pronouncements are true insights, and when they're just self-regarding, self-absorbed whitewashes. Frankly, I think it's often the case that they're both--self-serving rationalizations that nevertheless have a kernel of truth or two buried in there somewhere. And then there's those observations that seem to cut through the bullshit and say something sad and penetrating about him:
Over the last couple of years, the photos of me when I was a kid, the ones that I never wanted old girlfriends to see...well, they've started to give me a little pang of something--not unhappiness, exactly, but some kind of quiet, deep regret. There's one of me in a cowboy hat, pointing a gun at the camera, trying to look like a cowboy but failing, and I can hardly bring myself to look at it now. Laura thought it was sweet (she used that word! Sweet, the opposite of sour!) and pinned it up in the kitchen, but I've put it back in the drawer. I keep wanting to apologize to the little guy: "I'm sorry, I've let you down. I was the person who was supposed to look after you, but I blew it: I made wrong decisions at bad times, and I turned you into me."
Rob's recently departed significant other Laura, while not perfect, seems to have a lot on the ball--a lot more than Rob, to tell the truth (although near the end, she provides a fairly credible explanation of just what it is she might see in him, one that makes us realize that seeing inside his head, and right after a break-up at that, might not have allowed us to see him in his very best light). The course of the novel is Rob coming to a slow, one-and-a-half steps forward, one step back realization that he really misses Laura, and that his tired, shopworn relationship truisms might just be in need of some serious revision. He is, in other words, painfully and belatedly starting to grow up. Here, for instance, is Laura gently informing him that he and his mates' lofty obsession with pop music authenticity isn't of very high priority when viewed through any lens that really matters:
"Whatever. I can see why you prefer Solomon [Burke] to Art [Garfunkel]. I understand, really I do. And if I was asked to say which of the two was better, I'd go for Solomon every time. He's authentic, and black, and legendary, and all that sort of thing. But I like 'Bright Eyes.' I think it's got a pretty tune, and beyond that, I don't really care. There are so many other things to worry about. I know I sound like your mum, but they're only pop records, and if one's better than the other, well, who cares, really, apart from you and Barry and Dick? To me, it's like arguing the difference between McDonald's and Burger King. I'm sure there must be one, but who can be bothered to find out what it is?"
The terrible thing is, of course, that I already know the difference, that I have complicated and informed views on the subject. But if I start going on about BK Broilers versus Quarter Pounders with Cheese, we will both feel that I have somehow proved her point, so I don't bother.
Because Rob's journey is so painful and uncertain, it's surprisingly uplifting when he finally starts to make real progress near the end of the book. The relationship, the coming together, the love story, if you will, actually feels earned, rather than (pace Heyer, much as I enjoy her) the easy natural outcome of the sparkling badinage at a few drawing-room rendezvous. This is a good book; I'm not ashamed to say that it's a lot better than I expected it to be.
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Lady of Quality, Georgette Heyer (1972), 247 pp (hb).
If the various Heyer bibliographies scattered about the web are to be believed, this is the last of her novels to be published prior to her death in 1974, and I think that its later compositional date perhaps manifests itself in a few places (or I could just be wrong, in the way that idle speculation often is). In particular, it seems more open about things sexual--although this is of course relative; euphemism is still the order of the day, but the euphemisms are more pointed, if that makes sense. Here, for example, is a bit from the very end, the heroine's thoughts upon being emphatically kissed for the very first time:
Not the most daring of her previous suitors had ventured even to slide an arm round her waist, for although she enjoyed light-hearted flirtation, she never gave her flirts any cause to think she would welcome more intimate approaches. She had supposed that she must have a cold, celibate disposition, for she had always found the mere thought of being kissed, and (as she phrased it) mauled by any gentleman of her acquaintance shudderingly distasteful. She had once confessed this to Amabel, and had privately thought Amabel's response to be so foolishly sentimental as to be unworthy of consideration. Amabel had said: "When you fall in love, dearest, you won't find it at all distasteful, I promise you." And sweet, silly little Amabel had been right!
Hardly either high erotica or the Kinsey report, and certainly not a patch on, say, Jacqueline Carey, to pick a recent example from the log. But compared, for example, to Heyer's own A Civil Contract, where the protagonists first start to feel and haltingly mention romantic stirrings after they've not only married, but had a child together, this seems downright bold. This is a book with a good side and a rather bad side, however, and regrettably, however nice this increased openness is in itself, it serves to rather starkly highlight the bad side.
The plot is quite simple; this is one of those Heyers where one knows pretty much exactly how things will shake out at the end within the first chapter or two. Miss Annis Wychwood is rich, independent, and beautiful (almost all of Heyer's heroines are described as at the least attractive, but we are left with no doubt that Annis is a nonpareil in the looks category). She has set up her own household in Bath, with a garrulous spinster cousin as a chaperone, and accepted that she will probably remain single, having reached the advanced age of 29 without ever feeling the urge to accept the various marriage proposals that have come her way. Then on the road outside Bath one afternoon, she picks up a young lady who is running away from her comfortable but restrictive home, and ends up taking her under her wing. This soon brings her in contact with the young lady's nominal guardian, an uncle whom everyone describes as "the rudest man in London." I dunno, he seemed more blunt and forthright than rude to me, but no doubt there are many nuances of Regency manners that pass right over my head. Naturally, sparks are struck--on several levels--and the obvious occurs (attraction, love, kisses, marriage proposals, shocked relatives, etc.).
Oliver Carleton, our Mr. Rude, also seems to be known as someone who has had various affairs with various women, and the surprising thing is that this turns out to be not just a nasty rumor to be eventually cleared up by our hero, but a fact freely admitted by him and calmly accepted by her. All Annis is worried about is not having a philanderer for a husband (perfectly understandable), and Oliver hastens to assure her that none of those women were settlin' down material, and once he gets hitched to her, he'll have not the least desire to mess around anymore. That grated some on my sensibilities. Worse, the whole situation rubs our noses in the flagrant double standard of the time: perfectly acceptable if he's been screwing around for half his life, but all involved would be shocked and horrified if she'd done more than get a peck on the cheek at any time. Well, that's the bad.
The good is that Annis really is, a lapse or two aside, a mature, independent, witty heroine. She's what Miss Taverner wants to be, but doesn't quite manage, and without The Grand Sophy's odious tendency to over-manage everything and everyone. More, the central relationship between Annis and Oliver, saving that double standard, is quite well-done; they argue back and forth believably and quite entertainingly. So, besides some lingering unease over the issues I mentioned, this is one of Heyer's better efforts.
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Sharpe's Sword, Bernard Cornwell (1983), 313 pp (tpb).
The central historical event of Sharpe's Sword is the battle of Salamanca (July, 1812), one of the major engagements of the whole Peninsular campaign. The bulk of this book's action, however, deals with the build-up to the battle. One of Napoleon's Imperial Guards, a (fictional) Colonel Leroux, has been sent to Spain to ferret out the identity of a spymaster whose continent-wide net of informers is doing appreciable damage to the French cause. Just after he has tortured the sought-after information out of a village priest, he is ambushed and captured by Sharpe's company. He gives his parole, but then breaks it and flees into one of the three French-held mini-fortresses at the corner of the British-occupied city of Salamanca. Sharpe and company are given the task of re-capturing Leroux when the fortresses finally fall to British assault; otherwise, Leroux will find the spymaster (who is resident in the city) and seize the contact information for the whole net.
I enjoyed this one probably as much as any in the series so far. For one thing, I found Sharpe's paramour to be the most interesting of the women he's been involved with so far, and their relationship by far the most nuanced. Sharpe also receives his most serious wound; in fact, he's consigned to the local hospital's hellish cellar Death Room, where the hopeless cases are sent to die (this book brings home the gawdawful state of early 19th century medicine), while none of his company or his friends know where he is at first. And the underhanded espionage-type maneuvering, while not particularly subtle or complex (Dunnett could get up something three times as complicated in her sleep), is still entertaining enough, and a nice change of pace from purely military adventure (although the simplified depiction of the actual battle at the end is well-done).
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Sharpe's Company, Bernard Cornwell (1982), 275 pp (tpb).
This episode takes place in the opening months of 1812. Napoleon still hasn't deigned to grace the upstart British with his presence; he's off preparing for his epic foray into Russia, leaving the care and feeding of Wellington to his Marshals and under-generals. Wellington's task at hand for this book is the taking of two border fortresses held by the French that serve as gateways from Portugal into Spain. Until he has control of these fortresses, the British will be unable to push forward. The taking of the first, lesser fortress occupies the first third or so of the book, while the siege of Badajoz (the second fortress) is reserved for the climax.
Sharpe has been a captain for a couple years now, but the rank was never officially confirmed by the home office. Now it turns out that the home office has finally gotten off its collective thumbs and decided to deny the promotion. Sharpe is back to being a lieutenant, and no longer in charge of his company and his men. Naturally, he's obsessed with getting back his promotion and his company. To further complicate his life, one of the two men responsible for flogging him back when he was a private in India, Sergeant Obadiah Hakeswill, suddenly shows up in the battalion at the head of a group of replacements. Hakeswill is a genuinely creepy, evil figure--half-sane at best, but vicious, cunning, and extremely adept at using the rules and regulations to his advantage.
Sharpe's Company shows just how ruthlessly bloody 19th century siege warfare could be. It's hard to imagine how men could throw themselves into the breach of a strong, well-defended fortress, with the very high likelihood of being mown down by the powerful artillery on the walls. Somehow they did it, though. Nor does Cornwell stint in describing the aftermath--the sack of the fortress town by the victorious troops, with the attendant rape, slaughter, looting, and drunkenness. It's an ugly picture. This book is interesting because of the personal stories of Sharpe and his friend Sergeant Harper, but it's somewhat overshadowed by the particular grimness of the context.
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Sharpe's Gold, Bernard Cornwell (1981), 248 pp (tpb).
Following the British victory at Talavera (see Sharpe's Eagle), British Peninsular forces nevertheless find themselves in a bad way:
The war was lost; not finished, but lost. Everyone knew it, from Generals of Division to the whores of Lisbon: that the British were trapped, trussed, ready for cooking, and all Europe waited for the master chef himself, Bonaparte, to cross the mountains and put his finishing touch to the roast. Then, to add insult to imminent defeat, it seemed that the small British army was not worthy of the great Bonaparte's attention. The war was lost.
One of Wellington's problems is that he's flat broke, and he needs a sizeable sum of money right now, or he can just kiss this whole "take back the Continent" lark goodbye and crawl on back to Merry Olde England. We don't actually find out why he needs a big bunch o' cash right away until the epilogue (spoiler for the historically unaware, like me before reading this: he needs it to complete the massive fortifications he's building around Lisbon, so he can retreat there and hold off the French armies while preparing to one day sally forth and kick their asses). Anyway, the regular Spanish army, nominally allies of the British, is mostly in tatters, but Wellington has fortuitously learned of a very large shipment of Spanish gold, meant for payroll purposes, that is hidden in a village not too far from his current encampment. The only problem is, it's behind enemy lines, in a nebulous area contested by French patrols and Spanish Partisan guerrillas.
Who's Wellington going to turn to finagle that gold out of the village and into his hands? Duh. Sharpe and his company are sent off with strict instructions to get that gold at all costs. In the course of doing so, Sharpe will butt heads with a deadly Partisan leader who has his own designs on the gold, start a relationship with a beautiful Partisan woman, and end up purposely blowing up one of his own side's fortresses.
This is an entertaining adventure, all things considered, although I didn't particularly warm to the character of Teresa (the beautiful partisan)--she seems to me a bit lacking in personality, her most notable traits apparently being that she's really tough, and she has a burning desire to kill French soldiers. And the win-at-all-costs nature of the mission is particularly brought home by Sharpe's decision to blow the magazine in the fortress, even knowing that it will obliterate a large number of men on his own side. It's a decision that may be acceptable under the "war is hell, and not doing it will be worse in the long run" calculus, but it makes it hard to really applaud the mission's success. It's certainly not a bloodless victory.
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Last of the Amazons, Steven Pressfield (2002), 396 pp (hb).
In Steven Pressfield's latest novel, he retains as his subject matter the ancient Greeks, while moving back in time a number of centuries from the Classical Age Athens and Sparta whose travails--against both the Persians and each other--were the focus of Gates of Fire and Tides of War. That move back in time leaves him bereft of the historiographical crutches of contemporaneous accounts by Thucydides, Xenophon, and their peers, and shifts his available source material farther back into the realm of myth and legend. Not surprisingly, this seems the most Homeric of Pressfield's books, and although here the gods never explicitly appear as characters, the siege of Athens, which takes up much of the latter half of the book, bears some close resemblances to the siege of Troy from the Iliad.
The novel opens with the narrative of an older woman called "Mother Bones." She proceeds to tell of the escape, when she was ten years old, of her captive Amazon governess from her family farm outside of Athens. This governess, Selene, had given her parole in exchange for the life of the Amazon leader at the close of the siege of Athens, over a decade earlier. Informed now of that leader's critical wounding back in the Amazon homeland--the steppes to the north of the Black Sea--she takes her charges, Bones and her older sister Europa, aside and imparts her testament, her life story, before violently escaping. Europa leaves the next day to follow in Selene's footsteps, and the outraged Athenians mount an expedition to catch them. Included in the posse is Bones and her older relative Damon, who was a member of the first Athenian expedition, led by King Theseus, to the Amazons, an expedition that sowed the seeds for and culminated in the siege of Athens by the Amazons and their allies.
The large majority of the book consists of the interwoven narratives, filtered through Mother Bones, of Selene and Damon, relating that initial Athenian encounter with the Amazons--first as friends and allies, then as bitter enemies--and the resulting siege. Besides the raw physical clash that ensues, there are a number of competing ideals that form the backbone of the book: freedom vs. constraint, city vs. nomad, barbarian vs. civilization, love vs. duty, loyalty to culture vs. loyalty to individual, etc. Pressfield's prose is, as usual, a pleasure to read, whether it be in service of the speeches of the contending parties, seeking to defend their ideals and way of life, or in the short, almost brutal descriptions of the chaos of war. Here, for example, is a bit from the discourse of Antiope, war queen of the Amazons:
"Does our guest imagine that the nations of tal Kyrte have stood, for want of intelligence or industry, incapable of building cities? We don't want cities! To dwell within such a press of humanity deforms the soul. Give us silence and solitude, which purify and concentrate the spirit. Shall we build temples to God? Why, when His cathedral compasses us day and night! Preach to us not of reverence, for we tread in God's footprints every step of our days, and account no trespass graver than to stray from His path."
"The life of the city has made men less than they were, not more. And as for your women, I have seen them, I am sorry to say. Is even one as beautiful as these? They are painted whores, your wives, who have bartered their souls for a place out of the rain and not even sold them dear. Your women are shells of what God intended and you know it, or you would not have crossed oceans to trail after us, moonstruck as calves!"
"Those gods to whom you erect temples, Theseus, are in my view but reproductions of yourselves, and laughable ones at that. Here is heaven before you! Seek no further, only hold still and annul the yammering of your 'reason.' I despise reason if it severs me from my soul and from God."
Pressfield's Amazons are supreme warriors, superior in skill and savagery to even the best of Athen's heroes. This is Athens before the well-trained hoplite and his phalanx seems to have really caught on, although as the siege proceeds, we see the beleaguered merchants and artisans of Athens begin to understand that the many standing together may, with discipline, hope to successfully oppose the intemperate charge, however skillfully made. As in his earlier books, Pressfield knows how to describe a battle:
By now, men of both sides were so exhausted that overhand blows could no longer be struck or fended. One simply fell against the foe and humped his guts upon him. The spear is useless in such a mob. The shortsword--that's the ticket. No need to plunge it hilt-deep. Just poke your man. Make him leak. Leave spear and longsword to heroes. Hang on to the pig-sticker.
Our fathers taught us the shield was a defensive weapon. We had learned better. When limbs turn to lead, a shield fights fine. Back your man against something and bash him with your bronze. Kick him. Smash the bones in his feet. If he falters, drive your shield into his face. Use the rim. Uppercut him. Onion-chop him. Break his spear arm. If you can't move, fall on him. Use your heels. Go for his temple. Punch his shins and knees. Break his nose. If he gets you in a chokehold, chomp a steak out of his arm. Spit blood in his face. Drive your knee where his fruit hangs. When he falls, stick him. Just once, that's enough. Now get out. Find your mates and form up. If you face the foe alone, don't play hero. Call for help and take him two-on-one. If he flees, let him. That is called victory. Thank the gods and get the hell out.
Last of the Amazons felt to me like it began slowly, and for a long while I wasn't really sure where it was going. It took a long time to settle on characters to like or empathize with very much. And yet the tale told here lingers. It's a story that's bright and vivid, unsentimental but quite sad. Well worth reading.
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Sharpe's Eagle, Bernard Cornwell (1981), 267 pp (tpb).
When I finished Sharpe's Rifles, I felt the urge to dive right in and see what happened next. The only problem was, I happened to be holed up in a Motel 6 in Danvers, Massachusetts, a couple thousand miles from the library where I had checked out the preceding volume. So that afternoon found me perambulating about the Liberty Tree Mall, looking for a bookstore and a bite to eat. Now, mall book stores may be a poor sort of creature in general, but I'm happy to report that the Walden's in the Liberty Tree Mall has a good selection of Cornwell, at least. Since these books read pretty quickly, I polished this one off the next day, while waiting for my flight to be called at Logan airport.
One initial disharmony that arises when reading these two books in the order that I did is that this was actually the first in the series to be published. In other words, this is a specific instance of the more general "internal series chronology" vs. "external publishing chronology" problem. Usually, I prefer to go by internal chronology, when possible; in this case it leads to a bit of mild dissonance in the opening chapters, when the background is sketched in and a few facts are related that flatly contradict or are hard to reconcile with the story presented in the first book. For instance, much of the first book was devoted to the growth of the relationship between Richard Sharpe and his sergeant Patrick Harper, from a state of hostility and physical confrontation to an unspoken friendship and mutual regard. Here, their partnership is taken as a fait accompli of several years standing, even though events follow with a gap of only six months or so (winter 1809 to summer 1809) in book time.
Sharpe and his group of Riflemen are attached to a new spit and polish regiment just over from England. Wellesley (soon to be Viscount Wellington following the action at the end of this book) gives Sharpe a gazette promotion to captain (has to be confirmed by the home office to be made official), and Sharpe takes command of a company in the new regiment. His colonel is a militarily incompetent martinet, and when the regiment is sent to blow up a bridge, an unexpected force of French cavalry manages to take the regiment's King's Colors (capture of colors apparently being quite a big deal in early 19th century warfare), and is only prevented from getting the Regimental Colors by Sharpe and Harper's bravery. Naturally, the politically connected colonel sends letters home making the ignominious loss seem all Sharpe's fault.
Sharpe knows the only way to keep his captaincy and his company is to do something spectacular, so for the rest of the book, he's fixated on capturing an "Eagle," the standard used by units in Napoleon's army. When his regiment is part of the battle at Talavera (which I believe was Wellington's first big victory in the years-long Peninsular Campaign), he finally sees his chance:
Sharpe walked in front of his men and looked at them. They squatted on the grass, their faces filthy, their eyes red and sunken from the powder smoke and strain of battle. They had done more than well. They looked at him expectantly.
"You've done well. You were good and I'm proud of you." They grinned, embarrassed at the praise, pleased by it. "I'm not asking a thing more of you. The Battalion's on its way here, and in a minute Mr Denny will take you back and form you up on the left as usual." They were puzzled, their grins gone. "Sergeant Harper and I are not coming. We think it's bad that our Battalion only has one colour, so we're going to fetch another one. That one." He pointed at the Eagle and saw the men look past him. One or two grinned; most looked appalled. "We're going now. Anyone who wants to come is a fool but they'll be welcome. The rest of you, all of you if you like, will go back with Mr Denny, and the Sergeant and I will join you when we can."
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Sharpe's Rifles, Bernard Cornwell (1988), 302 pp (tpb).
The opening decade and a half of the nineteenth century was a hugely important period in the history of Europe, hosting as it did the Napoleonic Wars and all their attendant upheaval. Small wonder that various authors have turned to that stretch of years to find grist for their creative mills. The fictional treatment of those wars with which I'm most familiar is Patrick O'Brian's Aubrey-Maturin novels, a marvelous series of twenty books of which I'm surpassingly fond. Although O'Brian deals peripherally with events on land, his overwhelming focus is on the British navy and its largely successful attempt to master the oceans of the globe. Bernard Cornwell, however, has written a series that deals with the British army's attempt to face down the master--the self-proclaimed Emperor, the brilliant general, Napoleon--on the Continent where, for a number of years, he was invincible in war.
The series revolves around Richard Sharpe, a tough, competent professional soldier of no family or fortune. As a sergeant, he saved the life of the future Duke of Wellington on a battlefield in India, and was given a commission for it. Unfortunately, officers raised from the ranks tend to be shoved into unwanted, unglamorous posts, such as quartermaster, by the hereditary gentleman's class that makes up the bulk of the officer corps. When Sharpe's Rifles opens, Sharpe is supply officer for a battalion of Riflemen (elite infantry troops) that is providing a rear guard for the tattered British forces that are being pushed out of Spain and back to Lisbon by the French in the winter of 1809.
Soon, Sharpe's company is cut off from the battalion, and he finds himself the only surviving officer, in essentially enemy territory, leading tired, hostile troops, and with little idea of how to get to safety. By chance, his path crosses that of a flamboyant Spanish noble officer and his men, who has his own wacky agenda and perceives that a company of British Rifles might be useful to his plans. Sharpe's group also runs across a British missionary couple (accompanied by their beautiful niece, naturally), originally out to bring salvation to the benighted popish Spaniards, but now just trying to get to the coast in one piece. It would be a poor imagination that couldn't make something of those ingredients, and Cornwell whips up a fairly entertaining adventure out of it.
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