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.
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.)
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?
I’ve enjoyed work by Jasper Fforde before, so I was delighted when I got a copy of his latest, ‘The Constant Rabbit’ through NetGalley.
How to begin to talk about this joyfully eccentric work? I suppose the most important thing to say is that I absolutely loved it. Beyond that, it’s difficult to say anything that will sound remotely coherent to anyone who isn’t familiar with Fforde’s particular style of outlandish humour. This is a book set in a world populated, alongside humans, by anthropomorphic rabbits. The story is told by Peter Knox, who had met a rabbit, Connie, at university and fallen deeply in love. Not that his love was consummated or even, as far as he knew, requited. But when Connie turns up at the library where he volunteers for the six minutes it is open every fortnight, he wonders if he might ever be able to rekindle their relationship.
Things look up for Peter when Connie moves in to the house opposite. There are problems though. Connie, it turns out, is married and her husband, Major Rabbit, is a military veteran and crack shot. Peter earns his living working for RabCoT, the Rabbit Compliance Taskforce. RabCoT is part of the government response to the Event, when anthropomorphic rabbits first appeared. It is fair to say that the government’s prime objective is not to improve life for rabbits. Since the electoral success of UKARP, fiercely anti-rabbit, RabCoT has been enforcing increasingly restrictive rules governing rabbits’ opportunities in human society. RabCoT is aided in this by anthropomorphic foxes, created by the same Event. It is fair to say that Fforde does not view the foxes sympathetically.
Will Peter’s love ever be reciprocated? Will Connie’s husband demand satisfaction in a duel? (With pistols: notions of honour are very traditional in the rabbit community.) Will RabCoT succeed in rounding up all the rabbits to work in a MegaWarren, specially built on the Welsh borders?
It’s a surprisingly gripping story. There is rather more violence and rather less sex than you might expect in a story about rabbits, but there are fascinating details about Peter Lorre (who played Ugarte in Casablanca and had bulging eyes), the car driven by Jake and Elwood in The Blues Brothers (a 1974 Dodge Monaco), and the name of the character played by Jenny Agutter in The Railway Children (Roberta but known as Bobby). If random side-tracks like this are not for you, you probably should avoid this book. It even has footnotes (with more than a nod to Terry Pratchett).
Is this just random silliness, or is there a point to it all? The library that is open for six minutes every fortnight should give you a clue: “the UKARP Government’s much-vaunted Rural Library Strategic Vision Action Group had kept libraries open as to per their election manifesto, but reduced the librarian staffing levels in Herefordshire to a single, solitary example working on greatly reduced hours – which meant that each of the county’s twelve libraries could be open for precisely six minutes every two weeks.” Yes, we are maybe talking satire here. Maybe satire drives the whole story. Fforde gives us a further clue:
“The Event does have all the trappings of satire” I said, “although somewhat clumsy in execution.”
I’d say ‘unsubtle’ rather than clumsy, but given that we live in an age where we have a Prime Minister whose response to national disaster is to quote Latin very badly at bemused audiences, I think the time for subtle satire has long since passed. And if unsubtle satire suits you (think Spitting Image with less sympathy for the establishment and more furry animals), then this will suit you very well indeed.
It races on like a bunny in a marathon (yes, there is) and may sometimes get carried away with its own exuberance (there are what look suspiciously like traces of an entire sub-plot that has been excised leaving just some odd, unexplained details) but it holds together surprisingly well. I found the ending both unexpected and satisfying. And it has the advantage that, quite apart from the satire, it is genuinely laugh out loud funny.
Carol McGrath’s latest is a fictionalised biography of the life of 13th century Queen Ailenor, wife of Henry III. You probably know her (if you know her at all) as Eleanor but McGrath prefers the alternative spelling.
I knew practically nothing about the 13th century when I started this book and I was certainly massively better informed by the end. It is packed with politics and personalities as well as details of everyday life.
McGrath used to teach history and her knowledge of the period is evident throughout the book. It is a great primer for anyone wanting to understand the power plays of the medieval period and the importance of marriages to bind together the families that controlled the countries of Europe. At the top, King Henry’s marriage ties together England and Provence, just as his daughter’s marriage will, in time, bond Scotland to the English throne. Further down the social scale, the marriage prospects of the embroideress, Rosalind, are viewed by her tailor father as a way to further his business connections, as his own marriage with a widowed haberdasher has.
The web of family relationships that marriages produce can bind the prosperity of a tailor to the political success of an earl. The personal is always political, the political always personal.
The book reminds us that England and France shared ties of blood as well as economic and political alliances. Tracts of what is now France were the property of King Henry, while Scotland then was a foreign country. And over all, there was the Church, a separate and mighty power, able to mobilise armies as well as threaten excommunication to those who crossed it.
Money, too, was central to the relationships in this book. Money has to be raised so that money can be spent. The church must be taxed and God appeased by ever more extravagant buildings. Henry is building Westminster Abbey and the nation is paying for it. Unrest is calmed with acts of extravagant generosity but stoked when taxes are raised to pay for them. Earls are, essentially, bribed to support the king against other earls who will, in turn, demand bribes of their own.
It’s a chaotic, dangerous world, in which Queen Ailenor often retreats to shelter amongst her own ladies, dressed in the finest gowns, eating food flavoured with spices imported from thousands of miles away – a life of unimaginable luxury, not only intrinsically desirable but necessary if she is to retain the status and authority of her role.
McGrath’s book offers an insight into a lost world. It almost makes the world of today’s political and economic powers look sane by comparison.
While I’ve been self-isolating (one very mild case of coronavirus in the house, over now) I’ve had the chance to finish Robert Griffith’s Riflemen, a history of the 5th Battalion, 60th (Royal American) Regiment.
The first thing to say about this book, and the most
important, is that it is very, very good. Technically it’s not
the first history of the battalion, because a couple were produced early in the
19th century, but it’s the first modern history.
I’m not an academic historian, so I’m probably not the right
person to say how these things should be done, but this seems a remarkable
piece of historical research. Rob has spent a spectacular amount of time with
army pay lists and battalion details in the National Archives. This book is the
product of a considerable amount of original study. (I know that reviews don’t
normally refer to the author by given name, but Rob is a well-known figure on
the army historical research scene and calling him anything else just seems
odd.)
Rob Griffith presenting at the National Army Museum
The 5/60th was formed in December 1797. Originally made up mainly of German (or vaguely Germanic) soldiers, it introduced many of the practices that distinguished rifle regiments, from tactics to the green uniform at a time when most British troops still wore scarlet. The 5/60th served the British Army until 1818 when it was lost with a reduction of the number of battalions in the 60th. Its impact on light infantry tactics, though, remained for many years.
The 5/60th was formed at a time when the 60th operated mostly in the West Indies – regarded as part of the Americas, hence the American (later Royal American) regiment. It was because the regiment served mainly in America that it was seen as a safe place to man almost exclusively with foreign soldiers, often with their own foreign officers. Despite this, the 5/60 first saw action in Ireland during the 1798 rebellion. Later it saw active service in Surinam and garrison duty in Nova Scotia as well as the West Indies. It was the Peninsular War, though, that made the reputation of the 5/60th (though the 95th Rifles is the regiment best remembered nowadays, partly because of the efforts of the fictitious Sharpe). The battalion was awarded 16 battle honours for its campaigns in the peninsula and across the Pyrenees into France. It was still fighting at Toulouse when Napoleon abdicated in 1814.
I have to admit I did not find this
an easy read. It has over 400 pages and there are
three distinct but interwoven threads throughout. Firstly, it is the story of
the men who served. Rob provides an astonishing amount of detail about
individual men, from their lives before joining the regiment, through their
service with brilliant insights culled from court-martial records, to the time
and nature of their deaths. Detailed accounts are sometimes given of the
medical treatment they suffered (and I use the word advisedly) before their
deaths and these can make uncomfortable reading. I had the pleasure of
listening to Rob lecture on the men of the battalion at the National Army
Museum. In many ways it was better than reading the book, because anecdotes
about real people bring home the reality of the times so well.
The second strand is information that puts the battalion into the wider military context. We get details of the need to build up the army and how this was done, how men were recruited and trained, with a lot of detail on the tactics that were taught. There’s a discussion of the rifle and the way it was loaded and fired. (Lying down with your feet to the enemy and firing from that position is counter-intuitive but apparently could work.) We learn about garrison life in various colonial outposts and how officers lobbied for, or bought, promotion. There is a lot about life on campaign with details of provisioning, medical treatment and arrangements (or the lack of arrangements) for sheltering the troops. If you are interested in the nitty-gritty of life in Wellington’s army – mainly, but not exclusively, the light infantry – this is a must.
The second strand, in particular, comes and goes with whole chapters on various aspects of military life interspersed with a chronological account of the campaigns of the 5/60th, which are inevitably dominated by the Peninsular campaign. It helps, I think, if you already have some idea of Wellington’s war. I imagine most readers will, and when Rob is talking about a battle I know or I place I’ve visited, I found the accounts enlightening. Without that background, though, the incessant marching, counter marching, flanking, advancing and retreating can just become something of a blur. It’s massively better than my ‘O’ level history (where the Peninsular War, for some unfathomable reason, featured heavily) but still not nearly as clear as some fictional accounts. (Lynn Bryant’s Peninsular War saga, for example, gives staggeringly accurate and understandable accounts of many of the battles.) Riflemen does benefit from some nice maps, though occasionally significant details are missed off. Rob also adopts the standard use of differently shaded blocks to separate cavalry and infantry with colour distinguishing the British and French forces. Sadly, the maps are all in black and white, leaving room for considerable confusion and far too many jokes about shades of grey.
I have always been interested in how Wellington moved from the often defensive warfare, largely in the south and west of Spain, to taking the war to the enemy and crossing the Pyrenees and this book gives a good overview of this. I do understand now why so many writers seem to overlook what should be a dramatic end to the story of the campaign. In fact, the move into France seems to have been very scrappy with few clear victories and defeats and even more marching to and fro than in Spain, but now with the added bonus of extreme cold. I honestly struggled with this bit, but I don’t think it’s Rob’s fault. Almost 400 pages in, accounts of the tides on the Adour robbed me of the will to live. I think the soldiers (with rather more excuse) were beginning to flag too. A disproportionate number of the 5/60th died in these last weeks of the war while the French, fighting on their home ground with decent numbers of men, were unable to turn the tide. I think both sides knew the war was over and were by now going through the bloody motions without conviction. The weariness the reader may well feel at this point is probably a fair reflection of the subject matter.
Obviously I found some parts of this
book better than others and, for me, it could well have been a bit shorter. But
other people will be gripped by exactly the bits I skimmed over while they may
find the accounts of courts-martial (all gripping stuff in my view) irrelevant
and dull. The fact is that this isn’t really a book to read carefully
cover-to-cover (unless you are a very serious military history nerd, in which
case your dreams have all just come true). It’s the definitive history of one
battalion which had a disproportionate role not only in the war against
Napoleon but also in developing the infantry techniques of the British Army.
It’s an astonishing work of scholarship and an invaluable reference for anyone
with a serious interest in this period. If you have a passion for almost any
aspect of the British Army of the time, there will be something in this book
for you.
Robert Griffith is to be congratulated on this excellent work.
A word from our sponsor
My interest in the Napoleonic era stems from the research that I’ve done for my books about James Burke. Burke was real person and although most of his adventures are fictional a lot of research goes into making the backgrounds authentic (though nothing like the level of research that Rob Griffith does). Eventually it gets to the point where I spent more time writing stuff like this than I do writing fiction. (I am working on a non-fiction account of the background to Waterloo, if anyone knows a publisher who might want it.) Nobody pays me for writing these blog posts, although I do now accept donations if anybody wants to buy me a coffee. What I would really appreciate, though, is if you bought one of books. They are all available on Kindle and cost £2.99 or less.
