by TCW | Aug 25, 2020 | Book review
My choice for a book to review this week is a little strange because it’s a book I wrote. Well, not exactly – but I did write 10% of it.
Yes, it’s a book of short stories: Victoriana, produced by the Historical Writers’ Association together with Sharpe books. There are ten stories with the only common theme being that they are all set in the Victorian period. It was not only an honour to be asked to contribute alongside some rather better-known names – like Elisabeth Gifford and Hilary Green – but it gave me an opportunity to revisit James Brooke. When I finished The White Rajah, I knew there were so many more tales I could have told about James Brooke’s life in Borneo, but the sequel saw my narrator moving on to the Indian Mutiny (in Cawnpore) and there was no real chance to revisit Brooke. I’d always thought it would be fun to write some short stories about life in Borneo under Brooke rule and now I had the chance. I’m really happy with it, but I’m not going to review it here because That Would Be Wrong. You’ll have to read that one for yourself and make up your own mind.
As with every book of short stories there will be something that appeals to everybody and not everybody will like all of them. There were a couple that were definitely not my cup of tea, but I’m not going to single them out because I’m sure there will be somebody who will love them. Instead I’d just like to highlight some of my favourites.
Carolyn Kirby’s Ladies and Gentlemen is the best kind of historical fiction. It takes an actual event and the author uses her imagination to paint a picture that lets us understand the reality of a situation that, thank goodness, nobody in this country has to face nowadays. I’m being deliberately vague, because I don’t want to spoil the story. It’s not exactly a twist in the tail, but you will enjoy it more for not knowing what is coming next. It’s a stunning story and, given that Victoriana costs only £2.99 on Kindle, it justifies buying it all by itself.
Sophia Tobin’s The Unwanted Suitor is a disturbing tale with fantastical elements that leave you uncertain exactly what has happened but, despite this, it gives a wonderful insight into the way that marriage probably worked (or didn’t) for many “respectable” couples in the Victorian age.
Inevitably there are stories of Empire, reflecting not only how the British viewed the nations that they conquered but also something of how the colonial natives viewed the British. Elisabeth Gifford’s The Last Resort has an unusual take on the way that the British saw some of their colonial endeavours contrasted with how they looked to the natives. It takes a step away from the nowadays somewhat conventional view of exploiters and exploited and provides an interesting insight into the stories the British told themselves about the project of Empire.
A couple of the contributors, like me, have chosen to tell stories about characters who have previously appeared in books of theirs, but all the stories stand up well even if you have read nothing previously by the writers.
There are detective stories and romances. We visit Russia, Greenland, India, South Africa, and, of course, Borneo. It’s a lovely cross section of writers and writing about the Victorian era. Each story is accompanied with a brief interview where the writers talk about their background and inspiration. Some of them might well encourage you to look for more of their work.
Even without my 10% interest, I would be happy to recommend this book of short stories. At £2.99, really what have you got to lose?
by TCW | Aug 11, 2020 | Book review
Next week will see the publication of Fugitive, the latest of Paul Collard’s Jack Lark series. I call Jack Lark ‘James Burke’s big brother’ because both are a series of books about a British soldier, albeit Jack Lark is doing his soldiering half a century later than Burke. Like Burke, Lark moves around the world from war zone to war zone. Collard is more of a straightforward military history writer than I am and his battle scenes are brilliant and meticulously researched.
I’m marking the launch of Fugitive with an extended version of the review I wrote of his last book, The Lost Outlaw, for the Historical Writers’ Association.
The Lost Outlaw
Jack Lark has fought for the British in Crimea and India. He’s fought alongside the French Foreign Legion at the battle of Solferino and on both sides in the American Civil War. Now, though, he is facing a personal crisis. After a bullet nearly ended his life in the Civil War, does he still have what it takes to be a soldier?
There is a lot of existentialist angst at the start of this latest story, which really doesn’t suit Jack, who is not an overly reflective fellow. What gets him (and his readers) going is a good fight, but fortunately one comes along soon enough. When a beautiful, if clearly crooked, woman, finds herself on the wrong side of an ambush, Jack Lark finds himself forced back into action.
The temptation to fight was strong. He could feel the pressure building in his skull and in his chest, fear and desire mixing together to produce that peculiar, volatile cocktail that was more intoxicating than the strongest arrack or the most beautiful woman. The opportunity to reveal his talent was here and it was ready to be seized.
Jack agonises for almost a full two pages, but to the reader’s relief “he made his choice” and mayhem is duly unleashed.
The girl, Kat, turns out to be working for Brannigan, a waggon-train master who is taking thirty wagons packed with cotton from the blockaded Confederacy down into Mexico where they will be sold on to make their way to Europe. The cotton is, according to Vaughan, the businessman escorting the goods, “worth a king’s ransom”. Brannigan needs gun-slingers to defend it from bandits and Jack Lark is offered a job.
So we see a very different Jack Lark from in the previous books. Although the convoy is run with near-military discipline, he is no longer a soldier. He finds himself dealing with an intriguing mix of different characters. Brannigan is a sadistic bully, but a brave and competent leader. Vaughan is an enigmatic figure, constantly hinting at plots, but unwilling to commit himself to taking sides on anything. There is conflict with Brannigan’s right-hand man, Adam, jealous of Lark’s sudden arrival and there is the mysterious, but deadly Kat. I do particularly enjoy Kat, whose refusal to fall gratefully into our hero’s arms makes a refreshing change in this genre. I suspect we won’t meet her again after this book, which is a shame.
Along the way we meet other classic characters of the Old West: Dawson, the cavalry captain whose job is to keep the route safe, but who is not above taking a bribe to supplement his pay; and Santiago, the Mexican bandit. It would be easy for these to be mere caricatures, but Collard fleshes them out enough to make them real people. In the end, though, the story is inevitably episodic. There is a fight here, a betrayal there, a double cross somewhere else. There is a climactic defence of an old building, loosely based on a famous action fought by the French Foreign Legion (though you’ll have to be a dedicated military history buff to recognise it), but a hopelessly outgunned Confederate patrol is inevitably massacred almost to the last man and the very inevitability of the process detracts somewhat from the drama. Lark, of course, survives – just one more occasion on which he shows the kind of superhuman resilience that belongs rather more in fantasy than historical fiction. Still, this is Lark’s eighth outing and by now he has already demonstrated that he is no ordinary chap. In any case, if a little thing like being left naked and bound in a desert is going to stop him, then what will we do for the rest of the book?
In the pauses between the violence, we learn some fascinating facts about the economics of the War Between the States and there are interesting insights into life on the trail, but this is, first and foremost, an action thriller. As such, it definitely delivers. If you already enjoy the Jack Lark books, you will probably enjoy this one, but if you haven’t read any of them before you are best starting with one of the earlier, more straightforwardly military, stories.
by TCW | Aug 4, 2020 | Book review
I’m not a huge fan of Romantic Fiction, so the blurb for this book was not enticing:
Jane thinks he sees her as shallow and ill-educated. Theo thinks she sees him as a snob, stuffy and out of touch.
Within the ancient precincts of the university the first encounter between the conference planner and the academic is accidental and unpromising. Just as well there’s no reason for them ever to meet again.
It looks like the beginning of every trite and predictable chicklit romance. “My god, Jane, with your glasses you look quite intelligent.” “And you, Theo, once you’ve had a style makeover, could be the man of my dreams.” But I have “met” Gilli Allan online and I know how much she puts into her books which she prefers to think of as “contemporary women’s fiction” rather than Romance. So I snuck a copy onto my Kindle and decided to find out just how bad it could be.
And the answer is: not bad at all. In fact, it’s rather good. Her characters are properly realised with back-stories that are entirely credible and rather sad, but both Theo and Jane are trying to move on with their lives and overcome their emotional issues. They are active and engaging agents in their own lives, rather than the creations of a writer who knows that the path of true love can never run smooth until the lovers have overcome one or two largely imaginary obstacles to their happiness. In fact, neither Jane nor Theo is “looking for love”. Indeed, both are actively fending off unwanted suitors while concentrating on making successes of other aspects of their lives.
Jane is starting her own business as a conference organiser and Theo is trying to climb the academic ladder as an archaeologist. Gilli Allan knows a lot about both conference organising and archaeology and the details of the lives of the two protagonists are interesting and convincing.
As their work means that they begin to run into each other more and more often (she is organising a conference at the Cambridge college he is working at) so an unlikely friendship forms. Will it blossom into love, or will one of the various other potential romantic partners derail the affair before it has even started?
Gilli is a member of the Romantic Novelists Association, so a happy ending is more-or-less guaranteed. (One of the reasons I generally dislike Romantic Fiction is because most readers and writers consider that a happy ending is required.) Even so, I was not sure things were going to work out. The characters are complex, the back-stories elaborate. The story is told in the present tense, an affectation that usually annoys me but which works here because it delineates the main story from the quantities of back-story (past tense) that could otherwise get very confusing. There’s also quite a lot of plot. Actually, there are so many sub-plots I began to lose count, though I was never confused. All the characters, even the most minor, are clearly drawn so that even I couldn’t muddle them up. And Gilli keeps the plots so interesting. One rather important one centres on some sharp practice in a town planning department and the provision that should or shouldn’t be made for an archaeological survey before a supermarket is built. I’ve sat in on the odd local government planning controversy and it takes real skill to make them remotely interesting, but Gilli Allan does.
I’ve found this a difficult book to review because there is so much good stuff in it, but it seems to be scattered all over the place. It is a measure of the author’s skill that she manages to pull so many disparate strands together into a highly readable and wholly enjoyable book.
I do strongly recommend this, even if you hate Romantic Fiction.
by TCW | Jul 28, 2020 | Book review
David Klass has a background in Young Adult (YA) fiction. As far as I’m concerned, this is good thing. YA fiction grabs your attention. Plots are usually fast moving. Characterisation is far from two-dimensional, but the reader is usually spared angst-ridden internal monologues. There is often a subplot involving a contemporary social issue, but the protagonists are pretty much left alone to get the job done – whether it’s rescuing the Princess from the tower (or, because YA novels tend to political correctness, rescuing the Prince from the tower) or stopping the terrorists with the atomic bomb.
Klass has brought all these skills to Out of Time and the result is a fast, furious, and, for me, satisfying read. Although it should definitely appeal to adults, I did often feel that I was reading a YA book. Our hero, Tom Smith, is an FBI agent with father issues (YA novels often feature young protagonists with father issues) who has joined the FBI as a computer analyst but, as seems the way with these things, rapidly graduates to a field agent hunting down bad guys with gun and badge.
The bad guy is an eco-terrorist who has been blowing up environmentally damaging projects (with a bit of political assassination on the side). But is he really a bad guy? After all, he may kill the innocent men, women and children who are in the wrong place when one of his bombs goes off, but he’s doing it for a good cause, right?
It’s a superficially appealing argument, but it is wrong. In fairness Klass understands this and has one of his characters put the case against political killing very directly.
“Every terrorist thinks his cause justifies his actions. No one has the right to take the law into his own hands, and especially to spill innocent blood. Anyone who does that must be stopped.” He paused and then asked softly, “But, Lise, what if in this single very unique case, Green Man happens to be 100% right?”
There was a deep seriousness in her face when she answered. “I served two years mandatory military service in Israel. I’ve been to bomb sites, from attacks on opposite sides of the same issue. I’ve used tweezers to pick up blown apart little pieces of women and children. Nothing justifies fanatical extremism. Nothing. Never.”
This is a problem for the book because part of the dramatic tension is that we are ambivalent about the Green Man getting caught. Part of us wants him to get away with murder and return safely to his loving wife and two adorable children. We feel this even more strongly as occasionally the book works in details about the environmental disasters that we are unleashing on the world. Some of this is genuinely informative. For example, I had never realised that the process of fracking releases methane on a large scale and this is simply discharged into the atmosphere where it is a particularly potent greenhouse gas. If you started out knowing nothing about the environmental movement, you will end up much better informed – but would you really want to read a book which celebrates an eco-terrorist if you are not already pretty committed to his cause?
If you want a work of fiction that seeks to educate on environmental issues, you would be better off going to something like Michael Crichton’s State of Fear, which also deals with eco-terrorism. The arguments there are widely regarded now as wrong (Crichton was sceptical about global warming, for example) but he does provide footnotes and references and if you are proselytising quite as much as Klass is, then footnotes, or at least a long appendix, might be a good idea.
In the end, though, it’s unfair to judge this book as a substantial work dealing with either ethics or environmentalism. It’s fast moving, and largely convincing, with an environmentalist background and a bit of ethical discussion thrown in. I loved it and powered through it very quickly. (Klass has an easy writing style.) But I do really enjoy YA novels. Judged as a YA book, this is a definite winner and many adults will appreciate it as an exciting read. As an adult discussion of serious issues, though, it’s not really careful or considered enough.
by TCW | Jun 30, 2020 | Book review
I’m taking another break from plugging Burke in the Land of Silver (it’s really good, just buy it already) to give a bit of a lift to Graeme Cumming’s excellent Ravens Gathering.
When Graeme offered me a copy of this book I had to tell him it was not at all the sort of thing I usually read. It seemed churlish to refuse, though, so I loaded it onto my Kindle intending to give it a quick glance when I have absolutely nothing to do sometime around 2050.
I looked at the first page to make sure that the download had worked and I was drawn in almost immediately. Looking back, the prologue (yes, I know some people won’t read books with prologues but some of my own have a prologue, so get over yourselves) is one of the least satisfying bits of the book. When I first read it, though, all I was aware of was that the words flowed and the drama made me want to know what happened next. What more can you ask of a thriller?
I say “thriller” because it’s an exciting work of fiction without literary pretensions, but it’s difficult to stick it firmly into one genre. In the end, it’s a fantasy novel, but the fantasy elements are embedded in a lovingly created real-world setting. The whole story takes place in the village of Ravens Gathering, an isolated spot straight out of a horror movie. There is The Major Oak, a pub where the regulars have their own seats and the presence of strangers causes an immediate lull in the conversation. There is a village idiot and an ineffective vicar. There is a pub landlady who is a flirt and a post-office that is a hot-bed of gossip. All the characters are sketched with enough detail for us to remember them, despite the number of individuals featured.
Besides the central character, who is part of the mystery and touched by supernatural forces, making him too much of an archetype to be readily identified with, the story focusses on two incomers to the village: a failed property developer and his sexually voracious young wife. Despite the fact that there is much to despise about both of them, Cumming draws them as well-rounded and even sympathetic human beings and we come to care about them and their fate.
The detail of “everyday life” is carefully built up. When the police are involved, the book even moves in the direction of a police procedural crime novel until we are suddenly precipitated into a full-on fantasy which makes The Exorcist look a model of restraint. The thing is that by now we believe in the place and the people, so we are prepared to suspend our disbelief in an increasingly lunatic train of events that I’m not going to spoil the book by detailing.
If you are not generally in the market for fantasy adventures, but open-minded enough to give one a go, I strongly recommend this one. (But do feel free to buy a copy of Burke in the Land of Silver first.)
by TCW | Jun 23, 2020 | Book review
It’s been an exciting week, with the relaunch of the Burke series. Burke in the Land of Silver came out on Kindle last week, with the paperback following any day now. This means my blog has inevitably been ruthlessly focused on plugging my own books, but I’m taking a break today to write about another book that came out last week – Interviewing the Dead.
Interviewing the Dead is published by Sapere. I like Sapere books. They do a nice line in light historical fiction and, more importantly, they send me review copies. Interviewing the Dead is by David Field, the author of the Esther and Jack Enright series, a couple of which I’ve reviewed here before.
Field does a nice line in Victorian murder mysteries. I was at first a bit put off this one which seemed to be more fantasy than murder mystery: the dead walking among us, revenging themselves on Londoners because of the disturbing of a plague pit during the construction of the Aldgate Underground Station. (The station was opened in 1876: the London Underground system is a lot older than most people imagine.) It turns out, though, that I was simply taken in like the Victorian victims of this elaborate and deadly hoax. But how come honest men and women are seeing the dead rise from their graves?
It turns out that there is a totally rational explanation. Methodist preacher, Matthew West, teams up with Dr James Carlyle (a student of Dr Bell, the model for Sherlock Holmes) to help Detective Inspector Jennings solve the mystery. The plot allows a lot of fun contrasting the strictly scientific approach of Dr Carlyle with West’s more spiritual views on life. There’s a great deal of arguing about religion and the best ways to help London’s poor, which allows a bit of exploration of some of the social issues of the time. Carlyle’s daughter, Adelaide, provides the love interest. A strong, independent woman who assists her father in his lab work, she dabbles in politics and supports the suffragettes.
There are elements of liberal cliché in the approach to these social and political issues. The strong (but clearly lovable) independent 19th century woman struggling to make her way in a man’s world seems a fixture in books like this. I’m beginning to wish we could have just one heroine who only wants to run the house and have babies, not because these are admirable qualities but because they were, I think, quite common at the time. What with Adelaide wanting to go into politics and West’s sister trying to become a magazine illustrator, I think that the cutting edge of feminism is perhaps over-represented.
In the end, though, this isn’t a social history or a philosophical essay on the role of religion in late 19th century philanthropy: it’s a detective story and a pretty good one. There’s sufficient reference to social issues to embed it thoroughly in its time and Field has written enough Victorian detective stories to know his period. It reads well and the characters are sympathetic. If they sometimes seem caricatures of their “types” that is, I think, one of the difficulties of writing the first in any series. As readers (like the writer) become more familiar with them, there is room for growth and I expect they will become more rounded as the series goes on.
The plot is convincing (though perhaps more sophisticated than is entirely credible given the limitations of the villain when he is unmasked). Good triumphs; bad people get their just desserts; love may well find a way. In the end, what more can you ask for in a detective story?
