Believe me or not, when I found myself without a book to read, I reached over and down and picked out a Dorothy L Sayer's mystery - Busman's Honeymoon, A Love Story with Detective Interruptions. This is a book that I don't believe I had gotten around to reading back in the day, 40 years ago, when I was reading Sayers' Lord Peter Wimsey mysteries. The book itself is one of my more valuable ones, since it is the first printing of the first paperback version of this novel, the 1945 Pocket Book edition. The first printings of which (as noted on the copyright page) I found on eBay for $60 to $80. Anyway, I read the first part - a collection of letters concerning the marriage of Lord Peter and Harriet Vane, and then the first chapter... and it hadn't hooked me. These days I find Sayers writing rather too dense for me. And well, you can guess what happened next...
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 Summer of the Danes by Ellis Peters A (Of course)
I believe that I had remarked in some previous review that Peters often seems to include a murder mostly for marketing purposes, for she could've told a very similar historical fiction story without the murder to solve. And this story is a perfect example of this observation. While there is a murder, it is totally irrelevant to the story she's telling. Cadfael doesn't even solve it. It's just there to make this a "mystery." I don't miss the murders at all, so all's fine with me.
What this story is about is Wales, Welsh culture church politics, love and loyalty. Deacon Mark, who had been Cadfael's helper in the first couple of books, and who is now studying to be a priest, has been sent as an envoy to a Norman bishop newly installed in a vacant Welsh/English diocese, which has ruffled a lot of local feathers. Mark's bishop send him to deliver a welcoming gift and letter, and then to proceed to the other Welsh bishop with a gift as well, balancing everything out. Mark gets to take Calfael along on his mission, because Cadfael is Welsh and speaks the language, which Mark doesn't. A restless Cadfael is delighted to accompany his friend.
The Welsh king is visiting the new bishop at the time and it is arranged that they will travel with him on his way back to his castle and then on to Bangor to call on the Welsh Bishop. Before they set out, we meet one of the Welsh priests who has arranged a marriage for his daughter - celibacy at various times went in and out of fashion, and it was common for priests to marry in the Celtic Catholic churches. Anyway, his wife had recently died, so only his daughter remains to remind everyone that he had been married. And though he loved her, the new Norman/English bishop is from the Roman Catholic Church branch that doesn't condone married priests, and looking to his advancement with the new bishop, he hopes by shipping her off to a marriage some distance away the bishop will forget that he had once been married, and move up in the hierarch with the new bishop.
His daughter, on the other hand, resents being given away in marriage just to free her father of her presence. Still she sets out to meet her arranged husband, traveling with Cadfael and Mark, in the party of the Welsh king. However, she attempts to escape the fate her father has made for her even before she meets her would-be-husband. After Mark and Cadfael deliver their gift to the Welsh bishop in Bangor, Mark feels that they should spend a little time looking for this runaway bride, especially after word reaches them that a band of mercenary Danes from Ireland have landed in Wales. They had been hired by the King's reckless brother, whom the king had driven him from his holdings in response to rash murder this brother had commissioned. With a Danish Viking mercenary army at his back, the brother had returned to force his brother, the King, to reinstate him and his holdings.
Given a clue as to where the runway bride might have gone - a hermitage of a solitary woman/nun, Cadfael finds her - but they are quickly captured by a band of foraging Danes, made prisoners, and taken to the Dane camp where they are held for ransom. What follows is a lot intrigue, between the two Welsh royal brothers and the mercenary Danes, with the King trying to avoid bloodshed, even as the two armies face one another and his reckless brother does his best to make everything iffier, because that's who he is and what he does. Within this story there is also a sweet love story involving the priest's daughter who is determined to choose both her life and her love for herself.
All in all, a very interesting story of historical fiction that looks into Welsh and Irish Dane culture of the period and the ties of loyalty, even to one who may not deserve the loyalty.
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