I've a grab bag of books to review this week, starting with Baroness Orczy's The Scarlet Pimpernel, which I wanted to read to see if it was indeed, Batman with swords which the Wikipedia made it out to be. Let's get right into it.
My reviewer criteria. I like light, entertaining novels. I like smaller scale stories rather than epics. I like character focused novels featuring pleasant characters, with a minimum number of unpleasant ones. I greatly value clever and witty writing. I like first person, or close third person narratives. I dislike a lot of "head jumping" between POVs and flashbacks. I want a story, not a puzzle. While I am not opposed to violence, I dislike gore for the sake of gore. I find long and elaborate fight, action, and battle sequences tedious. Plot holes and things that happen for the convenience of the author annoy me. And I fear I'm a born critic in that I don't mind pointing out what I don't like in a story. However, I lay no claim to be the final arbitrator of style and taste, you need to decide for yourself what you like or dislike in a book.
Your opinions are always welcome. Comment below.
The Scarlet Pimpernel by Baroness Emmuska Orczy Orczy C+
Let's address the elephant in the room, this proved not to be Batman with swords. Indeed, not only does the title character play only a minor role, on stage anyway, in most of the story, but there is not one sword fight, indeed, not one fight scene at all. So what is the story about? Well, the Wikipedia entry states;
The novel is set during the Reign of Terror following the start of the French Revolution. The title is the nom de guerre of its hero and protagonist, a chivalrous Englishman who rescues aristocrats before they are sent to the guillotine.... (who is) a formidable swordsman and a quick-thinking master of disguise and escape artist. The band of gentlemen who assist him are the only ones who know of his secret identity. He is known by his symbol, a simple flower, the scarlet pimpernel.
Luckily for me, I did not reread this summery before I read the book, so I forgot who they identified as the Scarlet Pimpernel, (I've edited it out for you) and so I learned who it was, more or less as the Baroness intended, though before it was actually revealed. That made the story a bit more interesting. My advice forget the summery in its entirety, as it does not describe the book in any meaningful way.
The story is largely set in 1792 England, and the main point of view character is a former French actress, Marguerite Blakeney (nee St Just), the wife of a very rich and very oafish English aristocrat Sir Percy Blakeney - though it takes a couple of chapters of set up to get to her and Sir Percy who is an intimate friend of the Prince of Wales, i.e. one of the in crowd. Their marriage has fallen on ill times, though Sir Percy treats her with great respect, he would seem to have ceased to love her, and she him.
The plot centers around Marguerite, whose dear brother, is working with the Scarlet Pimpernel to smuggle aristocrats out of France during the reign of terror, even though he is both French and not an aristocrat. Indeed, having been beaten to a pulp for sending a note to the aristocratic girl he loved, he is a believer in the revolution, but feels that it has perhaps gone too far. In any event, his involvement with the Scarlet Pimpernel is discovered by a French agent in England and is used to blackmail Marguerite into helping him discover identity of the Scarlet Pimpernel and capture him while he is in France, as he rushes to save Marguerite's brother and the French aristocrats that the Marguerite's brother went back to France to help escape as part of the Scarlet Pimpernel's gang of helpers.
After the introduction of the setting and characters in the first couple of chapters, the story revolves around Marguerite's struggles to save her brother at the cost of betraying the identity of the Scarlet Pimpernel, and then her attempts to save him herself. It is rather overwroughtly written by today's standards, but I enjoyed it, even though it was not what I expected. I believe that there are something like 19 novels concerning the exploits of the Scarlet Pimpernel and members of his band of adventures, so maybe they include some sword fights. At least several are available from the Gutenberg Project where I downloaded my version of the story, so I might give them a try some day. We'll see.
When the Tiger Came Down the Mountain by Nghi Vo C+
This is a fantasy novella set in a fantasy version of China with were-animals, in this case weretigers. The story concerns a traveling cleric/scholar Chih who is escorted to a way station in a snowy mountain pass by a Si-yu, a scout who rides a mammoth. At the station they are confronted with three weretigers who intend to eat them, and Chih must tell his version of a love story between a human and a weretiger to the weretigers who, in turn, have their own version of the story to relate, in order to keep the tigers from attacking and eating them. Each learns from each other different aspects and different attitudes of the characters and the story as they knew it. It is a quick read of 80 pages, and is set in a world first introduced in her novel, The Empress of Salt and Fortune, and now includes a second novel, Into the Riverlands. I believe Chih is the central storyteller who links all the books of the Singing Hills Cycle of which Mammoth at the Gates will be the fourth. While I can not say for certain, since I have not read either of the other stories, I suspect that this series may follow the blueprint of Ernest Bramah's Kai Lung stories set in a fictional China that have Kai Lung relating stories to bet himself out danger, but I could be entirely wrong.
I have this story only because it was one of the free books TOR.com offered, no doubt to promote Into the Riverlands when it was released. In any event, if you like weird tales of sort of China with magical creatures, then you should like these books.
John Burnet of Barns, A Romance by John Buchan C+
This is Buchan's second novel, written when he was 23. It is a historical novel largely set in 1680's in the low lands of Scotland, with a brief section in Holland. This was a time of great religious strife in Scotland between the Scottish Calvinist dissidents and those upholding the official state religion of the Church of England and it saw the king's soldier hunting down these diehard dissidents for treason. The hero of the story, John Burnet falls afoul of his elder cousin, and after besting him a duel in Holland where the cousin was a captain in a band of mercenaries. On the cousin's return to Scotland where he pursues John's true love and spreads lies that has John branded as a traitor. John returns to Scotland to save his love and clear his name.
There is nothing Buchan likes better than describing the scenery of Scotland, and having his hero a hunted man, gives him great scope for doing so. He also paints a vivid picture of the time and place with a story filled with desperate action. A fine, authentic historical novel written in the style of 1898 if that's to your taste.
The Half Hearted by John Buchan D
This is Buchan's fourth novel, written when he was 24 and tells the story, in two parts, of a very accomplished upper class young man, heir to an estate in Scotland, Lewis Haystoun, who doesn't fit in with modern society. He is not driven, too good natured, doesn't know what he wants to do with his life and so is unable to commit to anything with his whole heart. The first part of the story, relates an ill fated romance, where his indecision, and in his view "cowardice," prevents him from wining the girl he loves, and who loves him as well, plus losing an election to parliament. The second half sees him traveling to the frontiers of India and foiling a plot to invade and start a native uprising there.
I have to feel that Buchan had ambitions for this book to be "important", since he spent great deal of words expounding on his philosophy of live by putting the words into the mouths of his various characters. Buchan, was a brilliant person, the son of a Scottish church minister, he won scholarships and awards, graduating from Oxford and going on to become the private secretary of a high British government official in South Africa for three years before returning home to become the editor of the Spectator Magazine and write more novels. He ended up governor general of Canada in the late 1930's. All the photographs of him I could find all show a tight lipped grim looking man. Thinking back, I have to admit that most of his books have a great deal of "intellectual" weight to them and that his heroes all tend to be the type of people that George MacDonald Fraser's Flashman would think fools; upper-class, idealistic, self sacrificing, very pro-British Empire, foolishly brave fools and knaves who built and maintained a colonial empire for several hundred years. At the end of the story, his half heartedness lost in his determination to save the British Empire in India, Lewis Haystoun becomes one of them.
I found the story a bit too "important" and ended up skimming a lot of book two of the story as it contained a lot of talk, long descriptions of the landscape and everything the hero did, as well as social comments that are long out of date. Plus the "threat" to the British Empire seemed too silly for me to take seriously. In short, I would not recommend this Buchan story to modern readers. His best one is The 39 Steps, and if you like the hero of that one, he appears in three more books written over several decades.
Honor of Thieves by C. J. Cutcliffe Hyne B (Republished as The Little Red Captain)
I found this book on my ebook reader, and while Hyne is one of my favorite writers, it didn't ring a bell - until I started reading it. It proved to be the first Captain Kettle story, a book I had read in paper many years ago, so my read turned into a reread.
I should say right at the start that if you are sensitive to racism, racist stereotypes, and nationalities referred to in the most demeaning terms, save the English in print, you should steer well clear of the Captain Kettle stories. The character of Captain Kettle is that of a tough, sharp tongued tramp ship officer who has to deal with crews that are composed of hardboiled characters, and does his job by ruthlessly dominating them with sheer will power and a belief that the English race is superior to all other races and nationalities. He makes that clear in how he treats everyone not English, white or not, at least in words, if not action. I do not know how much of the racism is a reflection of Hyne's attitude and how much is his effort to make his character authentic. In any event, I can accept this attitude as a reflection of the time in which it is written and the type of character the story centers on. I think it's an accurate portrait of the racism of 1895 and take heart in the fact that while we still a long ways to go for all people to view all people as one people, this type of book illustrates the fact that progress is being made, if not as fast as we would like.
The story involves a shipowner, Theodore Shelf, whose business is going under, in part due to the extravagance spending of his wife. She is bent on climbing the social ladder by having him made a peer. He meets a well educated and well traveled man, Patrick Onslow who knows of an undiscovered river where a ship may enter the Florida everglades, which in 1895 was a wilderness still inhabited by Indians, alligators and mosquitos. Onslow proposes to use this discovery to offer hunters access to the everglades using a ship as a home base, and then sell the land to would-be orange growers. Shelf, needs more money than that, and quicker, so he proposes another plan involving faking the sinking of one of his ships for the insurance money on the ship and its cargo. Captain Kettle, with an undeserved bad reputation, is hired to oversee the dirty work.
In this story Captain Kettle is a supporting character, but after this story was first published Pearson's Magazine, in an English monthly literary magazine, the editors asked Hyne to write more stories featuring Captain Kettle, which he did over the next few year, and continued to do so for until 1938, along with stories featuring a number of other nautical characters.
Coming next week, a review of two books by British writers of humorous stories and novels along with a brief discussion of how and why humor works and doesn't.
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