Book Review Catch Up 3

Still catching up on reviews of books I've read but I think we're past the halfway point now. Ten more!

1. Halcyone

Elinor Glyn invented the term the “It-Girl” in her story It (unrelated to the Stephen King novel of the same name) and also became notorious for her erotic romance Three Weeks. This is neither of these, a much more conventional romance for the time. Halcyone is orphaned and brought up by her aunts in genteel poverty their secluded country home. She is tutored in Classics by their neighbour, Mr Carlyon, a former Oxford Professor.

His pupil John Derringham is an occasional visitor. He is having a very good political career with the Tory party, but has almost outrun his inheritance and as the novel moves leisurely towards its middle, is considering marrying a rich American divorcee, Mrs Cricklander. She happens to rent a house near Halycyone’s aunts (who refuse to receive her, as they are old-fashioned about divorcees). Nevertheless Derringham meets Halcyone, the two discover they are in love with each other and decide to elope, despite this wrecking his career due to poverty.

Obviously everything goes wrong; Derringham has an accident and succumbs to a fever after arranging for letters excusing his absence to be sent from London. Hearing nothing directly and learning about the letters Halcyone allows her step parents to take her to London to be introduced to society. Derringham discovers himself engaged to Mrs Cricklander (who employs a woman, Arabella, to tutor her in classics, politics etc to make her appear erudite, this relationship has some of the better jokes of the novel). However it seems the Tories are out and so Derringham’s Radical rival seeks to cut in.

This leads to a slightly complicated bit of business, but true love will out, and also their money problems are eased. Unfortunately the Radicals do get in at the next election, but you can’t have everything.

Read This: For a brisk 1912 romance novel with a few good period details, mostly clustered later as Halcyone is brought up very old fashioned
Don’t Read This: Even a brisk 1912 romance novel moves fairly slowly, and also there’s a lot of talking about classical tags
Out Of Copyright: And available online

2. Critical Mass

Science Writer Phillip Ball takes a look at the use of models in the social sciences. To get there he goes back through their use in physical sciences, and their origins, right back where we started in the study of society, politics and economy. There’s some good stories about the start of science and statistics, and an overview of the power and limitations of models of behaviour.

Read This: For some ideas of how people behave and also some remedial science and statistics
Don’t Read This: For the answers to everything.

3. Equal Rites

 A dying wizard tries to pass on his staff and wizardness to the eighth son of an eighth son. However Eskerina turns out to be a girl. The magic doesn’t care about that, so the local witch, Granny Weatherwax takes her under her wing and tries to teach her witching.

It doesn’t work out that way and something is watching and wants to take advantage of the magic.

An early Pratchett, if he has a target it’s lazy fantasy tropes, affectionately poking under the skin of some of them. Do magic schools need to be single sex? What if someone really should be there? If magic is dangerous, then what’s the opposite? Is more magic really a solution?

There’s some good jokes about country versus city life, and some even better ones that just come from nowhere (the nomadic water traders who can’t help but tell the truth and how everyone distrusts them because of it is excellent).

Read This: For a fun fantasy that is still slightly revisionary, while being a strong wizard coming of age story of its own
Don’t Read This: If you want seriousness without the ridiculousness pointed out

4. Hartmann The Anarchist or The Doom Of The Great City

In the far future year of about 1920 Mr Stanley is a gentleman of means who intends to stand for the Labour party at the next election, in part because rising inequality threatens revolution and he thinks that saving some part of the old constitution of Britain is worthwhile to avoid violence. However he has some contacts with more radical comrades, and so becomes aware that the notorious Hartmann, thought dead these ten years, is back in London.

It turns out he’s built an flying machine, and the book is such an early fictional depiction that it is described as an aëronef – a vessel powered by propellers, kept aloft by its wing-shape and also by the careful use of lifting hydrogen gas and sand ballast. It’s heavily armed, called the Attila and the sub-title of the novel is The Doom Of The Great City; Hartmann and pals intend to destroy London from the air and then have their anarchist cells prevent any reformation of the government.

Something of a curiosity; published in 1893 it assumes any European wars will be relatively minor things. The Attila, the first aerial war-machine, is initially successful but the army (and the navy) start to figure out how to deal with it. Also Britain and London are more resistant to bombing than Hartmann plans for; more prescient in this way than the technical details of the aëronef.

Read This: For an early airship adventure unafraid of getting down with the politics
Don’t Read This: For anything truly interesting to say about air-war or conservatism vs socialism vs anarchism
Out Of Copyright: And available online

5. Cowboy Angels

In an alternate America they discover the way to access other alternate Americas. Turing gates they’re called (Alan Turing emigrated to America, though also they don’t seem to have had a war?). The other realities are called sheafs, because small differences vanish as they’re unobserved, so there are a sheaf of possible histories. Some have Nazis, some don’t, and some don’t have humans (or at least not homo sapiens, there are ape men who make various appearances in the plot).

In this America, which calls itself the Real, they embark on covert and sometimes overt missions into other Americas in order to free them from various totalitarian regimes. Then, in 1980, Jimmy Carter is elected president and decides not to do this any more, concentrating on reconstruction of sheafs devastated by nuclear war. Adam Stone, a former operative of the Company, an inter-dimensional CIA, testifies about what the Company has done and retires to a farm on an uninhabited sheaf.

Then one of his former colleagues murders the same woman in six different sheafs and they bring him back. The Company may not be out of the covert war business.

Read This: For a thriller about different versions of America, both literal and metaphorical
Don’t Read This: If the movement between science fiction, thriller and wistful lost-Americana seems likely to frustrate you

6. Enola; or, Her Fatal Mistake

 My journey to this 1886 novel by Mary Young Ridenborough is almost unrelated to the actual story. As is well known, the B-29 bomber that dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima was named Enola Gay by the pilot Colonel Paul Tibbets. (Tibbets was the commander of the squadron and took over the plane relatively late, changing the name and relegating the previous pilot to co-pilot. Tibbets had got his command as possibly the best and most experienced pilot of the 8th Air Force in the UK and North Africa earlier in the war, hence his rapid promotion and appointment to the unit). Tibbets named the plane after his mother, Enola Gay Tibbets.

Mrs Tibbets apparently took her name from this novel. Enola, of course, is an anagram of “alone”, which does not really make sense in the context of the actual story. The novel itself has an alternative explanation for the origin of the name.

This otherwise forgotten novel was put on my list of 19th century books to look for thanks to the name moving from novel, to woman, to one of the world’s most famous aeroplanes. It made its way to the top when our friends at Netflix made a film called Enola Holmes, about Sherlock Holmes' sister. So far as I know this book has no relation.

So finally onto the book itself. Is it any good? No, not really. Enola grows up, get married to a man who her father disapproves off, during the American Civil War he cheats on her and they get a divorce. The book declines to offer much opinion on the war or slavery. In the second half she's cheated out of her inheritance but finds consolation in the Bible, including giving a short lecture on Temperance. It all comes good in the end. Her "fatal" mistake is credulity.

Basically the story of the life of a good-hearted, slightly naive woman, and the novel points out that true consolation is in the Lord and the Bible, that we should follow the advice of our parents, things were better back in the good old days (maybe not the slavery), and family and children are precious. Also lawyers are all cheats.

Read This: If you are still curious about the inspiration for the inspiration of the name of a notorious aeroplane
Don’t Read This: There are better novels from the period that reflect popular taste just as well
Out of Copyright: But not especially easy to find though you might try here

7. Mort

Death, a minor character in Pratchett’s previous Discworld novels, takes an apprentice named Mort. Having given him about two days training he then takes a break to figure out if this is all there is to lif... existence.

Mort, of course, goes wrong, saving the life of the Princess of Sto Lat. This sends history on the wrong track, but it tries to get back. Meanwhile Death’s adopted daughter Ysabell and his servant Albert variously plot with, about and against Mort as he tries to put things right, or maybe not, in the face of Death’s immense indifference.

It’s quite funny.

Read This: For an entertaining look at life, death, destiny and choice
Don’t Read This: If you’re not interested in Pratchett’s first attempts at dealing with the underlying meta-structure of the Discworld in comic fantasy novel form

8. The Dragonbone Chair

Simon is a servant boy in the Hayholt, the ancient castle that is the seat of the High King Prester John. Simon becomes apprentice to Dr Morgenes, the wise doctor/historian/alchemist of the castle. Prester John dies and his son Elias takes the throne; things start to go wrong. The weather is odd, Elias's brother Josua vanishes, and Pryrates the priest is doing strange magics while counselling Elias.

Simon discovers that Josua is being kept prisoner, and is forced to flee the castle. Along the way he comes across some of Dr Morgenes colleagues, and learns that the plot may go all the way back to the legendary storm king, the last elf to rule from the Hayholt. It seems that there are three swords that stand in the way; Memory, Sorrow and Thorn, each made in some way of materials that come from outside the world or against nature.

Tad Williams is unashamedly reacting to Tolkien, though he has a twist of his own for every element (elves, dragons, inheritance, rings, magic, even songs). His story takes a long time to get going and though it doesn’t precisely hang around, it’s in no hurry, willing to linger on every incident or location of interest. So much lingering that the final volume of the trilogy had to split in two for paperback because they didn’t (don’t?) print them that big.

Read This: For a big, slightly old-fashioned fantasy epic which has a variety of ideas riffing off Tolkien
Don’t Read This: If elf books annoy you

9. A Close Run Thing

Cornet Mathew Hervey manages to get himself arrested on the battlefield at Toulouse, and again in Ireland when he intervenes in an eviction (the bailiffs are about to collapse a cottage on the inhabitants). This might blight his career but fortunately he has slightly prominent friends and managed to impress the Duke of Wellington. He sorts out his lovelife by proposing to his romantic interest, but then Napoleon escapes from Elba and he fights at Waterloo, again impressing the Duke of Wellington. Everything seems pretty rosy in the end.

This is an excellently detailed book about serving as a light cavalry officer at the end of the Napoleonic Wars. The details are not merely the history and theory and practice of cavalry, but also relate to society, class, politics and even religion.

Read This: If you want a good stand-alone novel of cavalry action in both peace and war, and maybe the start of a series
Don’t Read This: If themes of honour and guilt and so forth in early 19th century style will put you off

10. Burning Chrome

Ten short stories by William Gibson. Three are explicitly set in the same future as Neuromancer and its sequels, mostly riffing off similar themes and settings, with crime plots and a noir-sensibility. A couple of others might be, or might not be in the same setting; they’re slightly more intimate stories, focussing more on character than on crime and setting.

Then there’s some wild ones, where he’s not covering the same general situation; of interest are the non-cyberpunk The Gernsback Continuum, a look back at old science fiction and The Belonging Kind, in which chameleonic creatures hang out in bars.

Still good stuff in here.

Read This: Some masterful science fiction, showing what 80s Gibson was thinking about when he wasn’t constrained by the requirements of his novels
Don’t Read This: If a bunch of gritty stories about grim low-lifes does not appeal