February was a cold, snowy month in Montreal with icy sidewalks and lots of blizzards. I was at home most of the month and didn’t go out much. I was teaching my online history of SF course, and writing, and then at the very end of the month I flew to Florence. I read seventeen books, a mixed lot, but some of them were outstanding.
The Fall of Gondolin, J.R.R. Tolkien (2018)
Fragments of the story of Tuor, extremely unfinished and contradictory, with only flashes of what one might want to read Tolkien for. I did not enjoy this much and can’t recommend it; the Túrin one is the only one that really felt worthwhile of these patchwork books.
Coming Home, Rosamund Pilcher (1975)
You start a book in the 1930s with a girl going to boarding school while her parents go back to Singapore and you know to brace yourself if you know any history at all. This was great. I had it for ages unread because it was long, and the last long Pilcher I read was meandering, but this one really worked—I could immerse myself and care about the characters and their fates.
This is a book with lots of history seen close up in human lives. The main love story has a fifteen-year age gap between the characters, but this is women’s fiction, not romance, so it doesn’t take up too much space on the page. I really liked some of the other things Pilcher was doing here. Content warnings for sexual abuse, but dealt with as well as possible in 1975, right at the beginning of being frank about these things in fiction. Period racism of the “non-white characters are just scenery” kind. I’m getting sadly low on unread Pilcher.
What Are Big Girls Made Of? Marge Piercy (1997)
Re-read. Terrific poetry collection by Piercy on the top of her form, covering her favourite subjects of politics, nature, sex, love, family in an insightful way. I love the way she puts things, the shining images she captures. Worth reading if you like twentieth-century poetry at all.
The Hanging Tree, Ben Aaronovitch (2018)
This one was really great, focus on Tyburn, don’t start here. I don’t think there’s anything else I can say. I am enjoying this urban fantasy series, the characters and ongoing story are excellent, begin at the beginning.
Under a Sicilian Sky, Lisa Hobman (2021)
Gah. I want my money back, this claimed to be a romance novel set in Italy but in fact the vast majority of it was set in Scotland, and in Italy she barely left the villa. Nor was anything else about the book enough to make up for it. Misleading title and cover to say the least.
The Last Slice of Rainbow and Other Stories, Joan Aiken (1975)
Joan Aiken’s short stories for children are a delight, and I was thrilled to see this volume available for Kindle and grabbed it. These are little whimsical fantasy stories full of surprises and strange charm. Definitely intended for fairly young children, but thoroughly enjoyable by anyone.
Love in a Mist, Susan Scarlett (Noel Streatfeild) (1944)
Re-read. This is the book where an American mother married to a British man and living in England is made fun of by the text for believing in Freudian analysis, but the English character thinks the child could have “an ordinary inferiority complex.” Psychology, we have come a long way. Mental health issues, we have come a long way. This was certainly an odd moment. Nevertheless, a fascinating read. It’s really about three brothers married to three very different women, plus their parents and children, and how the grandmother manipulates everyone for their own good—and because the author is on her side, it really is.
Arion and the Dolphin, Vikram Seth (1994)
The libretto for an opera that works well as standalone poetry, but not quite as good as Seth’s poetry that’s written as poetry. This is very short and I raced through it.
Ocean’s Echo, Everina Maxwell (2022)
Sequel to a book I haven’t read, but said to be standing alone, which I’d say it did. Space opera that’s very, very good at some things and oddly lacking in others. The characters and the intensity of their interaction were splendid and drew me in at once, the plot is somewhat implausible and overwrought, but in a way that’s more a feature than a bug, but the worldbuilding just didn’t make sense on close examination, and that was disappointing. I will not read the prequel or other books in this universe, but will look out for whatever she writes that is in a different setting that might hold together better for me. My main problem with this was when I found out this world of “architects,” “readers,” and “neutrals” had only been that way for twenty years—that’s just not long enough for a culture to get shaped this way, and my suspension of disbelief evaporated.
Goshawk Summer: A New Forest Season Unlike Any Other, James Aldred (2021)
Aldred is a nature photographer, and he had permission to film goshawks on the nest starting in March 2020, so that’s what he did. The book is a diary of the wildlife, the unfolding pandemic, natural history going on at multiple levels, reflections on the environment and human impact on it, in a place where the author grew up but can’t afford to live. Beautifully written and compelling. I loved this.
Shopaholic and Baby, Sophie Kinsella (2007)
The pregnancy of Becky Brandon, in which she does not confront her hoarding problem or her debt problem but does have a baby. Definitely start the series at the beginning. I don’t like Becky as much as I like most of Kinsella’s characters, but I’ve read all her non-Shopaholic books now. Bits of this were fun.
The Intellectual World of the Italian Renaissance, Christopher Celenza (2021)
This was so great, really; this was insightful and excellent and went from Petrarch right through, with excellent chapters on Poggio and Ficino, and really made me feel the changing angle through time. Readable and fascinating, I think it would be approachable by anyone. A really excellent read.
The Unfinished Clue, Georgette Heyer (1934)
Detective novel in which the identity of the person to be murdered was so obvious from so early on that I had more suspense about when it would happen than about who would do it. Heyer’s detective stories are slightly ponderous and nothing like as good as her Regencies, and never as good as Tey or Sayers, but when I haven’t read them before, so they have the virtue of being new to me.
The Hands of the Emperor, Victoria Goddard (2019)
Recommended to me by a friend who said it was ineluctably Canadian because it held “peace, order, and good government” to be virtues. This seemed so unusual in a fantasy novel (or any genre novel, really) that I picked it up. It’s long. Very long. And it’s good, and indeed, this is a rare book where government is a good thing. It’s also about friendship, and holding on to minority culture. It has a health service and UBI and yes, in a fantasy world with magic and an interestingly odd tech level, and a huge complex fantasy world. It’s not perfect, there are certainly parts of it that could have been tightened up, but on the whole this is a very good book that one can sink into and enjoy. The world needs more things like this. If you liked the kindness and quiet fixing things elements of Addison’s The Goblin Emperor, try this. And if you’re interested in political SF and thought-provoking social experiment SF, then definitely read it.
The Italian Fiancé, Victoria Springfield (2021)
A proper romance novel set in Italy! And this one had bonus aunt and nieces all finding love, and a side story about someone discovering her dead grandmother’s romance. Very enjoyable and fun.
John Hawkwood: An English Mercenary in Fourteenth-Century Italy, William Caferro (2006)
Did you know one of Edward III’s sons married the daughter of the duke of Milan, and Petrarch and Chaucer met at their wedding feast and John Hawkwood, mercenary, was also there? This is the biography of a mercenary captain, and contains many, many wars, which is a little tedious, but the beginning discussing the general situation of mercenaries in the period, the economics, and the social context, and the odd asides that happened in his life, make it worth slogging through the battles and complexities of politics.
Swallows and Amazons, Arthur Ransome (1930)
Re-read; I read it and reread it over and over as a child. The whole series is now available for the Kindle, and they’re good comfort reads. This is a book about two boys and four girls sailing two boats on Coniston in the Lake District. All the children are characterised well. The messing about in boats is great, the adventures are small-scale but adventurous. There is so much here that is still so good.
The colonialism and period racism, while very mild for the period, does really demonstrate how much everyone was soaking in it. The children play, in Cumbria in 1930, that they are explorers and pirates, and that the (white, local) population including their mother and baby sister are “natives” and “savages.” They did not mean to be unkind. They just found that a fun way of playing they were seeing the world, in a world where this was OK. If giving this children’s book to children, which there are many good reasons to do—not least that it’s a deeply readable, quietly feminist story about children being competent and independent—it might be a good idea to talk to them about this kind of thing first.
Jo Walton is a science fiction and fantasy writer. She’s published two collections of Tor.com pieces, three poetry collections, a short story collection and fifteen novels, including the Hugo- and Nebula-winning Among Others. Her novel Lent was published by Tor in May 2019, and her most recent novel, Or What You Will, was released in July 2020. She reads a lot, and blogs about it here irregularly. She comes from Wales but lives in Montreal. She plans to live to be 99 and write a book every year.
Are you thinking of rereading further into the Swallows and Amazon stories? And I think I’ve been convinced to read Hands of the Emperor, which I had been resisting because it’s long.
I see that the good Italian romance is at the end of the list, so I’m picturing it being read in Italy. There’s a special layer to reading a dream book (I think you started relentlessly pursuing Italian romances during the pandemic, when travel to Italy was impossible) in the dream location. I hope it added to the pleasure! (Although maybe it was read just before the trip)
Just for fun, allow me to mention this about the author of Swallows and Amazons:
Arthur Ransome was known to JRR Tolkien who sent him a manuscript copy of The Hobbit to ask for his comments. It’s too long ago for me to enumerate them here, but they can be found in an introductory note to the TARS Library Catalogue. (TARS = The Arthur Ransome Society)
I didn’t find Swallows and Amazons until I was an adult, but I loved it because I too grew up spending the summer on a lake (in Maine) and canoeing with friends who lived there year-round. I once tallied up all the familiar aspects of the story:
Swallows & Amazons My childhood
summer vacation at a lake?……………………………………………………..check
roughing it in tents?………………………………………………………………..no, but in log cabin with a trapdoor into the water
using oil lanterns?…………………………………………………………………..check
children finding local friends to share experience?…………………………..check
everyone sailing on the lake?…………………………………………………….check, but canoeing instead
sailing in and out around tiny islands?………………………………………….check, but canoeing instead
sailing after dark?……………………………………………………………………check, but canoeing instead
father away at work, mother and young one stay on shore…………………check
watching a passenger steamer make regular trips up and down lake?…..check, but motor launch not steamer
swimming together?………………………………………………………………….check
getting soaked in unexpected downpour(s)?……………………………………check
rowing across to get milk every morning?……………………………………….no, but occasionally canoeing across to get milk (or bread or eggs)
campfires?……………………………………………………………………………..occasionally
uncle who is a “pirate”……………………………………………………………….no, but uncle who was a pilot, and occasionally flew in just to visit and/or take us up for a ride
In additional to all these elements, the author’s note to the sequel clinched it by saying:
“Long ago, as children my brother and sisters and I spent most of our holidays . . . at the south end of [the lake]. We played in or on the lake or on the hills above it, finding friends . . . While away from it, as children and grownups, we dreamt about it . . . look for the North Star and, in my mind’s eye I could see the beloved skyline of great hills beneath it.”
Now that I’ve read about Arthur Ransome’s wartime activities, I still wonder if there’s some kind of code written into the series, but if so, I’m not informed enough to detect it.
Jo, I do have to offer one correction:
There are two books of this 12-book series that do not seem to be available separately on Kindle: Secret Water (8) and The Big Six (9).
Re: the prequel to Ocean’s Echo (Winter’s Orbit), I actually liked it much better than I did Ocean’s Echo, and was a bit disappointed in the latter. Winter’s Orbit is set in a completely different corner of the same world and does not contain any architects or readers.
While I believe the author described OE as less romance and more sf than WO, Winter’s Orbit worked better for me on both fronts. It shares the theme of kindness and nifty political negotiation leading to real change, but in a way that felt more believable to me, in part because the protagonists are most of a decade older than those in EO and it felt a lot more realistic that someone would actually entrust them with political power. There were also fewer ‘fantasy-like’ elements in the worldbuilding, which in my opinion were one of the things that worked less well in OE. Winter’s Orbit also features a good platonic friendship, romance tropes, and some engineering. It read like a first book in that it definitely felt more like a cookie than a meal, but what it did I think it did well and I enjoyed it from beginning to end.
Anyway, I enjoy these posts a lot each month.
Although I haven’t read Ocean’s Echo, from what I have read about it, it doesn’t seem to be a sequel to Maxwell’s first book, Winter’s Orbit, which I have read, enjoyed, and recommend.
I’ve not read Swallows and Amazons since I was a kid, but when I was I loved it. Like srEDIT above, it had resonances to my childhood, my grandparents lived by Windermere, so we spent many holidays in the Lake District. I should probably re-read them again. I did watch the film adaptation, which was such strong nostalgia it felt like a drug.
Regarding the Rivers of London series, I do wonder if/how Ben Aaronovitch is going to react to recent news about The Met. He does put a fairly friendly face on a police force that in the real world has a very poor reputation. (I do love the books though)
Oh, rats, no Secret Water? I’ll have to read the paper copy. And yes, I am intending to re-read the whole series.
Beth: I finished it on the plane, actually!
I’ve read Caferro’s book about Hawkwood; whenever I see a reference to a “palfrey” I can’t help but snicker to myself.
I´ve read the Hands of the Emperor a year ago (and indeed on a recommendation “If you liked Goblin Emperor, well, this is even better,” which I refused to believe, because how could it be? but I needed something at least half as good, or something a little bit like Goblin Emperor, so I tried it). I´m now halfway through At the feet of the Sun, latest book in the series. I´ve already read the rest, some of them more than once, HOTE at least three times. I´m trying to say, “friendship, good government, minority culture” is a way to describe it, but that is not all there is. I´m trying to say, to me, this book – series, world – is perfect. I love long books, kind characters, complex worlds – and this series gives me everything I ever wanted.
I read Swallows and Amazons when I was a kid in suburban New Jersey; the children messing about in boats, all on their own, were almost as fantastic to me as the Animals of Wind in the Willows messing around in boats. I did enjoy the “quiet feminism” aspect, where the girls are as competent as the boys, and furthermore are accepted as such by the boys without fuss, and assumed to have just as much right as the boys to go adventuring.
Re the Susan Scarlett book, your description– three brothers married to three very different women, and the grandmother who was always right– reminded me of Charlotte Mary Yonge’s The Three Brides— have you read that one? It’s about three brothers married to three very different women, but all of those brides eventually learn the same lesson: that their mother-in-law is always right (in spite of spending her days on the sofa in the morning room after one of those Victorian-fiction carriage accidents). We also learn that Feminism is bad, and that someone should rebuild the municipal drains before everyone gets cholera. It’s all very Yonge.
A Georgette Heyer I have never read – what a wonderful present for today. Better yet, my library owns it. Thank you so much, even if it’s not very good, it’s probably better than the current crop of “cosy mysteries”.
The Caferro sounds good – on to the list it goes.
Swallows and Amazons is great – as are the rest of the series. The “natives” issue is a bit of a stumbling block, as you say, and Missee Lee has a great deal of dialogue in the kind of broken English that isn’t really acceptable nowadays. Which is a shame, because it’s otherwise pretty good, and the character of the forceful pirate queen and aborted academic Miss Lee (based on one of the Soong sisters) is a great one.
@bluejo RE Rivers of London
I normally prefer to read an author’s works in the order they were written, but in this case I would suggest reading in the order the stories fall within the universe. That means stopping right now and backtracking to What Abigail Did That Summer before you proceed. There are also the short stories to slot in between various books.
@Tessuna – I came here to say this and you’ve said it better! I’m halfway through HOTE, having made my way through all the Greenwing & Dart books, and the first of the Sisters Avramapul. This huge, unfolding world is the best thing I’ve discovered in the last couple of years! Sadly these books are really hard and expensive to get hold of in the UK so I’m drawing HOTE out for the time being…
@12 – Hmmmnnn. Jo – this is a part of the Rivers of London series where things can get tricky, as novellas begin to appear to deepen the story. I’m perfectly fine with SrEdIT’s suggestion to read What Abigail Did That Summer, which I recall is a long novella. Abigail has shown up as a character several times in the series so far and this tells what she was up to while Peter was off in the countryside during Foxglove Summer. It is a fun story that deepens the world in general and the character of Peter’s niece Abigail, who has an unusual role within the series. So…I’m good with it. Not mission critical but it is an option.
You could also read the Furthest Station, another novella of a more condensed investigation by Peter within London. Again, not critical but enjoyable. Both could be palate cleaners before you dive back into the story in Lies Sleeping.
And then…you could consider doing the self-contained novella the October Man, which is an interesting short tale about what is happening outside of England as it becomes known internationally that there is a new apprentice in active training in London.
Or… you could skip them all and just focus on the main books. Your call.
I read all Heyer’s mysteries when I first discovered her in my teens, after I ran out of her Regencies. I remember thinking “These aren’t as good as the Regencies but they’re kind of fun.” That’s about all I remember!
The really Bad Heyer (besides My Lord John which I could never get through anyway) is her early contemporary romances — Instead of the Thorn, Helen, Pastel, and Barren Corn. I read 2 and a half of those before giving up (never did read Pastel.)
I’m happy to read the novellas, and thank you for letting me know the sequence.
I was somewhat troubled by the unacknowledged cultural appropriations of Hands of the Emperor, which though luminous really does need to be read through a #ownvoices lens. I would love your take on it Jo. I still havent worked out what I think about it!
Her books are great comfort reads, but… she really needs an editor. Not just to make them less repititous or leaner – there are some very strange structural decisions
The sequel, `At the foot of the sun’, completely undermines one of the major sources of charm of HotE, by turning Kip into a Campbell style mythic hero, rather than that much rarer beast, a revolutionary administrator. Still charming, still gentle, and you can see _why_ Goddard made the choices she did. But…
Coming Home is one of my favorite Pilcher books, the best of her longer books. My favorites, though, are her short works. She was a master of short stories, making you care about characters in just a few short pages of a magazine.
@13 _sharrow Thank you! I thought I’m having a bad English day (like bad hair day, but linguistically) and the “said it better” bit really cheered me up.
I suppose it was not easy getting those books here (Czech rep.) either; first time I had to order books to be delivered – but worth every crown.
@17 Anon I get that some books need better editors, I could name one or three such books, but it is not always a solution. I’m getting tired of all-the-same fast-paced books, where every nonessential word has been mercilessly cut in order for the book to be slim, cool and easy to read. Sometimes I think it means that the authors don’t believe in themselves – or their readers. And I wouldn’t cut even single sentence out of HOTE. I love it for its slow pace, the worldbuilding and wisdom and poetry. And the structural decisions. When a book takes me on holiday to a place such as Vangavaye-ve, I’m in no hurry to leave.
Hard to say, since I’m yet to finish At the feet of the Sun, but I rather think that Kip has never been just a revolutionary administrator. It is certainly the important thing for him to be, but as he is very humble, he underplays a lot the other side of him, which is a hero. He just talks about the heroic stuff as if it’s no big deal. (Not sure about the Campbell style hero; I don’t think he’s that predictable.)
I DNF’ed Ocean’s Echo, giving up after a 100 pages or so. I liked Winter’s Orbit a lot. It is a totally different book.
I’m rather fond of Georgette Heyer’s mystery novels, even though the general snobbery and classism is harder to take in a modern (well — 1930’s) setting than in the Regencies. No Wind of Blame and Envious Casca are the two I’d recommend; I always visualize Sydney Greenstreet for E.C.
I finished Ocean’s Echo, but it was a slog.
I am a big policy wonk that loves how good policy and systems (governance being one) can shape the world to be better and kinder. And this is the belief that has shaped my career. I picked up At the Feet of the Sun when I saw a review/description of this book on Tor that listed good governance, kindness, universal basic income, policy, and cultures, I immediately went and bought it.
I loved it then, and I love it now, and I have eagerly devoured all the books in this world. I love how Hands of the Emperor gives you a glimpse into a wider world, and then different books give you different glimpses or longer explorations into that world (or nine worlds, as it were). And I love how the writing styles feel so different depending on the little mini-series within the larger world-building.
If you liked The Hands of the Emperor know that the sequel is out and by the way pretty much everything else she’s written ties in somewhere but are written in very different styles. Also the books get better, the later entries in Greenwing and Dart are wonderful.
There’s a reading order flowchart on the wiki if you want help. But be aware there are massive spoilers on the wiki so be careful where you click.
https://nineworlds.miraheze.org/wiki/Reading_Order
Re: Victoria Goddard’s The Hands of the Emperor
She has a reading order page on her web site at https://www.victoriagoddard.ca/pages/reading-order. After HOTE, she recommends reading the short story Petty Treasons (which descrbes the first meetings of Kip and the Emperor) next, then The Return of Fitzroy Angursell, then At the Feet of the Sun.
For those experiencing difficulty obtaining her books, they are all available from her web site in various ebook formats at reasonable prices.
@24 Mike Cross: Reading order is key, because in almost every book there is one major spoiler for another one. But maybe spoiler is not the right word for it. I think reading HOTE before The Return of Fitzroy Angursell is the right choice – by the end of HOTE, I had my suspicions about Fitzroy – about where he’ll be returning from – and was utterly delighted, when first chapter of ROFA confirmed I was right. On the other hand, I read ROFA before Greenwing and Dart. Therefore I had extra knowledge about certain character in GaD books and enjoyed knowing something main characters don’t for most of the books. So I don’t think these are really spoilers – they don’t spoil the experience, they only change it.
@12. Agree. I didn’t but wish I had as it would have enriched my reading of The Hanging Tree
@@@@@ Tessuna: I’m a bureaucrat, getting closer to retirement, who loves spreadsheets and working with smart people who are also trying to do the right thing. I also live a long ways from home, with a family-by-birth who don’t really understand. Kip is very close to my heart.
I agree with you; Kip’s voyage after The Fall is fundamental to who he is, even if he doesn’t actually talk about it. The way it ended is so painful for him that I think he mostly tries to not think about it the voyage — until circumstances make that impossible.
As others wrote – Winter’s Orbit is a totally different book and works much better. It’s tight, less ambitious, and just flows much more naturally. Towards the end the believability starts to fray a little, but nothing like in the sequel. Really made me feel some feels whereas the sequel didn’t.
I love seeing Victoria Goddard mentioned here. I actually stumbled onto The Hands of The Sun by a Kindle recommendation and thought it sounded like something I’d enjoy. And I did. So glad to see it being mentioned here. And @garcia, loved your comment!! thank you!
I adore Joan Aiken and was so happy when The Serial Garden was published. I think I’ve been convinced to try Hands of the Emperor.
Chiming in on Winter’s Orbit; I enjoyed it very much. I was okay with Ocean’s Echo too, though, and as a worldview psychologist I was okay with the aspect you didn’t like; 20 years seems plausible to me. But I’m much more likely to reread Winter’s Orbit, which is only in the same universe because the author says so.
So to expand on the twenty years thing, lots of change and fads and attitude change can happen in twenty years. But imagine that the US had come up with genetic changes to make people superweapons as a response to 9/11, do you think that right now that and that alone would be how people defined their identity? It would be huge, it would have enormous effects, but it takes more time for something to get to be the most engrained fundamental thing about a society. People would still celebrate Christmas and other people would still say it should be happy holidays, right? Even if we were all superweapon antiterrorists? Maybe eventually we’d only celebrate things related to that, but not so soon.
I think this is a thing that becomes more obvious the older you are, how much change you go get in a decade, two decades, and how much stays the same. It’s easier to see as a smaller percentage of one’s own life.
John Hawkwood appears in the back story of Gordon Dickson’s Childe Cycle (especially in Chantry Guild), as standing at a beginning of the history Dickson imagines for us all!
I didn’t come into Swallows and Amazons until adulthood- it wasn’t in the US-ian childhood canon in my day. My favorite is Winter Holiday.
I’ve now read all the Susan Scarlett’s except Love-in-a-Mist and Pirouette. Babbacombe’s may be my favorite there, although Poppies for England is a close second.
The Swallows and Amazons books are all on Faded Page for free (out of copyright in Canada for sure, possibly elsewhere, I forget when Ransome died).
Re Hands of the Emperor, I enjoyed it very much, but I really think it’s cheating in how it portrays the use of power. It doesn’t quite say “dictators are okay if they’re good guys and know what to do,” but it gets way too close to that. To a certain extent I just don’t care, nor do I care about certain wild leaps in the world-building, but I can understand some readers hating it. I have read some of the Greenwing & Dart books and mean to get back to them.
I too thought of The Three Brides, but I would, wouldn’t i.
Ransome died in 1967, so it’s not 70 years yet. Csnada is 50 years after death.
#17 I totally agree with your comment: I was somewhat troubled by the unacknowledged cultural appropriations of Hands of the Emperor, which though luminous really does need to be read through a #ownvoices lens.
I really enjoyed Hands of the Emperor but felt very uncomfortable at the way the author had taken so much from the Pacific Islander culture and never acknowledges it at all.
I did enjoy her other series (Stargazy Pie etc) which is quite different, and also delves into politics but very differently.
@@@@@5
good point, though the books often show other police treating Peter (and Guleed) in a racist way.
@@@@@ Bluejo
agreeing that the novellas enhance the experience. Particularly impressive that Aaronovitch can change narrators’ voices so well. Abigail and Tobias sound completely different from Peter, and it’s amusing to see Tobias’ view of Peter is so different to Peter’s view of himself. It also helps to read some of the graphic novels, where Aaronovitch tells stories too short to fill a novel. Some of them are quite slight, however, and the art isn’t very good.
@37, 17, She acknowledges the source of the Vangavaye-ve quite openly in any interviews she’s done. She and her parents lived in the Trobiand Islands in Papua New Guinea, from which she drew a lot of the ecology and lifestyle in her book. I would not call this cultural appropriation at all, since that means taking surface aspects of a culture to use with no respect for the original culture. Respect for this culture is a main theme of the book!
I’m not a huge fan of this book because the main character is such a perfect guy who manages to create the impossible perfect government all on his own, and of course somehow not believe in himself and has his family not know how important he is even after telling them several times. Very Mary Sue-ish. It gets ridiculous especially in the last part of the book. But the first half to two thirds of the book is just lovely.
re The Rivers of London novellas–I join in with those recommending them. They are not essential to the main plot, but they are fun, and the different points of view, especially Abigail’s, round out the world nicely.
Theres also Tales From the Folly which collects short stories from around the Rivers world. I don’t think any of them take place after Foxglove, but fitting them into chronological order is a bit of a puzzle piece.
The short stories include A Rare Book of Cunning Device which was originally made for Audible & is free on Audible (maybe only with membership? I don’t know) and has my favorite magical device ever. Also–the audiobook form of these is awesome. Kobna Holdbrook-Smith (Peter’s books) & Shvorne Marks (What Abigail Did Last Summer) nail it.
As @38 says, the comics can be good, but they’re also pretty light weight and the art is not good, so I wouldn’t press them on someone (like Jo) who doesn’t like comics. The one I found the best was Detective Stories as it gives nice little shapshots into Leslie and Peter’s early days working together.
And if you sign up for Ben Aaronovitch’s newsletter, you’ll get occassional snippets, usually on holidays.
@39,@37 – yes,
These are anti-`literary novels’; complexity and details
are not present – the small and vivid incongruences that conjure an
actual inner life. The sentence structure is also simplistic, as is expected
for fables. But they go beyond fable to some kind of fan-fiction,
(this is another way of spelling the `mary sue’aspects),
the supposed inner life of Kip is consistent with a yearning teenager,
not a man in his 50s, undiminished by age, burdened and blessed
with experience and success, the weight of a long and complex life.
HotE#2 belongs in a tradition of `slash’ literature; gay male love reimagined
by straight women, often young ones. ‘At the feet of the sun’ tackles this
explicitly – making a case for ace relationships as its centerpiece.
However it chooses to do this by ditching the portrait of Kip as a radical bureaucrat
(missing HotE’s great charm – having Aneurin Bevan as a
folk hero, while relegating Winston Churchill to footnote marginalia ),
and having him a questing protaganist, a cross-cultural mix of coming
of age novels.
(I feel it also diminishes the relationship at the heart of HotE#1 –
the deep working friendship which morphed from master/servant, through
emperor/vizier to a relationship of equals. But others may feel this
is precisely what is being elaborated on.)
Great set pieces- pacific island Baba Yaga (mmph!) on the beach,
sifting wheat for gold, that punchline ‘send mature men on quests more
often’.
The first part of HotE forefronts micro-agressions and day to day racism.
But even small understandings of what it would mean to reconcile a `traditional’
mindset with the changes of modernity are absent. Though such a society is portrayed in the last third of HotE, perhaps.
With actual deities present (oh how delightfully different that would make the calculus)
the answers would change; the problem doesn’t. It is not just disapproving
racism and ignorance, or the empire’s cultural hegemony that are the issue.
This is part of why they are problematic from an #ownvoices perspective,
luminous as they are. I do not yet know what I think of this, though
— and it is not my culture and struggles that are being written and
rewritten here.
They are sweet in intent, and have great potential – even if
they are a bit of a hot mess.
Though how she needs an editor!! Or if not that, a confidant/reader.
Does she even talk to anyone about the structure of what she is writing??
Sometimes I wish we could just be told whether a book is good or not n it’s own merit, without all the statements about how much “better” things are now, or how “of its time” it is. Or is it no longer possible to read a book without viewing it through a “past is bad, only modern is good” lens. I don’t care how something deals with mental health by today’s standards. I care about the fact that mental health was even dealt with at all, in a time where it wasn’t common to see it. Or how about seeing a book firmly in it’s time period, and saying “wow, things were different, but at least this is giving me an idea of how things used to be,” instead of comparing it negatively to something more recent. After all, modern lit is really great about not offending anybody, but frequently really terrible at being good, memorable, or lasting.
I adore Victoria Goddard’s The Hands of the Emperor. We often get so much plot in genre fiction that character development gets short shrift, but The Hands of the Emperor is MOSTLY character development. I’ve read it twice already and expect to read it every year or so for the rest of my life … and that’s saying something when the book clocks in at 902 pages. :-)
If you enjoy Hands, don’t miss the sequel, At the Feet of the Sun. The author’s Greenwing & Dart series is fun, too; start with Stargazy Pie.
I reread the Swallows and Amazons series a few years ago. They weren’t well known in the US when I was a child (still aren’t, as far as I know), but I had copies handed down from my British cousins.
One thing that I appreciated, on rereading, is the portrayal of Susan Walker. In children’s adventure books there is often a character, usually the eldest girl, who plays surrogate mother to the other kids and has one foot in the adult world. Usually this character is dull and isn’t appreciated by the other kids. But Susan Walker is smart and competent and it’s repeatedly made clear that she’s indispensable; without her, there would be no adventures. And nobody calls her a wet blanket.
I also meant to say that I agree with your assessment of the racist and colonialist tropes in the book, which is more or less how I describe it when recommending the series to friends. It’s part of the fantasy in which the kids are embedded, and they reproduce it in the same way most of us reproduce what we’re taught. It’s noticeable that whenever they interact with “savages” they are always scrupulously polite.
The John Hawkwood bio I will definitely have to read, if only to add extra background detail to Christian Cameron’s Chivalry series, set in the late-14th / early-15th Centuries and following a fictional account of a knight, Sir William Gold, who in reality may well have been Hawkwood’s deputy. The wedding of Lionel, Duke of Clarence, is a key part of one of the later books in the series. Oh, and Petrarch also appears (there’s another book, thank you!, as do Chaucer and Froissart in the frame story that surrounds the narrative of the main character’s life
Swallows & Amazons I haven’t read in about forty years, maybe more, but I did read the whole series when I was somewhere around 8-10 years old!
I second the suggestion to take a look at the Rivers of London novellas and short stories as they all add depth to the main novels. Indeed, a few things that turn up in the later books make much more sense if you have read the novellas, the short stories and also the now quite extensive series of graphic novels, all of which are new stories, not just re-tellings of the earlier books in another format.
I loved The Goblin Emperor so I’m definitely up for any recommendations of similar books. Thanks for that!
For anyone interested in Hawkwood, I recommend Christian Cameron’s Chivalry series
We had extensive discussion here when I started Rivers of London, and the consensus was that the series made sense and was worth reading without the graphic novels.
I ran into Hands of the Emperor with a StoryBundle and my credit card has been complaining ever since. At the Feet of the Sun had bad saggy middle problems, but It Got Better, so it was worth trudging through our hero’s Bella Swann moments.
I’m a lifelong fan of Joan Aiken and recommend The Serial Garden. It’s a collection of all the stories about the Armitage Family.
I’m enjoying all the comments about Swallows and Amazons, which I first read when I was about 9 and have returned to many times since. I have written several articles about Ransome and the books and done my own book on his Lake District. Not sure if self promotion is OK here but if anyone’s interested I do have a Ransomeblog.
My personal favourites of the series are Winter Holiday and Pigeon Post. I think the introduction of the two additional characters (the D’s) is a masterstroke. Partly because Dick is a lot like the kid I was, but also because Dorothea is such an acute and empathetic observer. And the plotting is outstanding.
On a completely different tack, I love the Ben Aaronovitch books too, and totally endorse the praise for Kobna Holbrook-Smith’s amazing narration of the audiobooks. I’ve often wondered how well they would go down with overseas readers as they are intensely British.
Jo @48 – Yep. agreed then and agree now.
Chiming in about Georgette Heyer’s mysteries, I can recommend the Bolinda audiobooks narrated by Australian actress Ulli Birve. She really adds a lot to the sometimes pedestrian mysteries. I especially enjoy Death in the Stocks, They Found Him Dead and Duplicate Death. I agree completely that Heyer’s mysteries aren’t as good as the Regencies.
I adore Joan Aiken’s short stories, particularly the Armitage series. Finding The Serial Garden was a triumphant moment. Am I the only one who wonders if that poor little man ever found his way back to his princess again? (I don’t recommend Joan Aiken’s adult fiction, for the most part. It tends to be morbid. But If I were You is an engaging exception.)
My absolute favorite children’s author is Elizabeth Enright. Her Melendy Quartet (The Saturdays, The Four-Story Mistake, And Then there Were Five and Spiderweb for Two) and the two Gone-Away books, Gone-Away Lake and Return to Gone-Away would be right up your alley, Jo. Written in the 1940s and 1950s, they do acknowledge grown-up matters like WWII and even have one accidental death of a wholly despicable character, but otherwise they are pleasant, adventurous and happy books about nice children. Enright won the Newbery Award for Thimble Summer, her second book, but she got better.
The Swallows and Amazons series is endlessly re-readable and is all you say. One of my great Life Achievements is to accidentally book a family (every one a Ransome fan) holiday in the farmhouse which is the setting for the first book. Unfortunately my surprise at discovering this was too obvious for me to claim that I knew it all the time and it was a cunning plan.
You probably know this already, Jo, but Ransome was a childhood friend of E. E. Eddison and shared in their “pretend” games which were the roots of The Worm Ouroboros. An interesting way of reading the S&A series is that all the children are “reading” (i.e. fantasising) the world in different ways. Ransome’s technique is to present their actual and imaginative experiences as equally “true” experiences; not drawing attention to the “pretend” elements but presenting them as part of their entire experience, treating them absolutely seriously. But because each child’s personality is different, each brings a different imaginative filter to the raw material of the holiday — e.g. John and Susan are “composing” the narratives of “natives” and explorers, the more imaginative Titty is almost becoming Robinson Crusoe, the Blacketts are creating themselves as “Amazon Pirates”, and the “Ds” are observers, whose contributions to the stories are based upon analysis of the facts they see — Dick is a scientist, observing the natural world, Dorothea is an artist, perceiving the world as a book (or a melodrama, which is part of the joke). And two, if not three, of the books are outright fantasies made up by the children rather than “realistic” accounts of their holidays.
Interestingly, I first experienced Swallows and Amazons when it was read to us by a primary school teacher. I was not then living in the UK and had no idea of the geography of its setting, so much of the children’s “fantasy” went completely over my head and I “heard” it as much more “realistic” than it was. It might as well have been set in Rio, on an “inland sea” rather than in Bowness or Windermere/Coniston.
OT: Kari @@@@@ 54: Elizabeth Enright
If we’re going to trade favorites, then I have to give a plug for mine: Invisible Island (and 2 sequels) by Dean Marshall (Clara Deane Marshall). This book is also where I first read about Gollum, without having a clue that later I would run into him myself.