Books I Read In March

 Fiction

'Dangerous Women Part I' edited by George R.R. Martin and Gardner Dozois

This is the first of a trilogy of short story collections. I do not know about the other two volumes, they may improve. This one is largely a disappointment. The largest section is taken up by a 35,000-word story written by Martin set in his world of the Seven Kingdoms, many years before the A Song of Fire and Ice series. 'The Princess and the Queen' is about two women rivalling for the Iron Throne and the war this triggers. The trouble is, Martin approaches the story in the same way as he does with the longer series, i.e. with long lists of titles and locations of individuals. In his huge books there is space for this but in a novella you feel at times you are reading a civil service list. There are some dramatic battles between riders on dragons, but his still really burdens this shorter piece and is there so much any character development is a long way down the list.

Perhaps the best story is 'Raisa Stepanova' by Carrie Vaughn about a Soviet female fighter pilot in the Second World War and not simply the risks to her from aerial combat but from her brother going missing in action as the Soviet regime under Stalin assumed anyone missing had deserted. 'Second Arabesque, Slowly' by Nancy Kress is a not a bad but typical post-apocalyptic story in a New York where when most women have become infertile, tribes have developed scavenging among the ruins and a couple, overseen by the narrator, a nurse, wanting to take up ballet after seeing old footage of it. I read something similar but involving a concert piano, in a short story  'A Song Before Sunset' by David Grigg (1976) which I read back in June: http://rooksmoor.blogspot.com/2021/06/books-i-listened-toread-in-june.html 

'I Know How to Pick 'Em' by Lawrence Black is on in which the woman is a catalyst rather than protagonist. It is contemporary film noir kind of set up about a woman recruiting men to do a murder for her, but is less clever than it feels itself to be. In this collection it also seems wrong to include a woman whose agency is far less than she tries to make it. 'Wrestling Jesus' by Joe R. Lansdale, is similar. It actually features only the story of a woman until the end and it is more about an old wrestler and a young male victim of bullying he is training. To get in this collection is a real contrivance.

'My Heart is Either Broken' by Megan Abbott about an abducted girl and a mother whose story is not believed has that noir feel, but fits better in this book with a female protagonist yet one facing up to the debilitating effects of official disbelief. 'Shadows for Silence in the Forests of Hell' by Brandon Sanderson is what I had expected from this book. It is a science fiction/fantasy in that it is set in a world colonised by humans but with and old technology, creatures and a whole set of rules as if from a fantasy novel. It works well, both in highlighting the dangers of this world and how the two female protagonists deal with it as well as having that 'otherly' sense.

Overall, then this was rather a disappointment. If Martin had stepped back and simply edited, it would have been better. There are some gems in here, but the criteria for inclusion of stories seems very loose and as such what is in here too often seems wide of the mark.

'Flashman and the Pillar of Light' by George MacDonald Fraser

In the late 1980s, having enjoyed the movie 'Royal Flash' (1975) combining a kind of 'The Prisoner of Zenda' with genuine bits of German history, I read all the Flashman novels which, at the time, had reached 'Flashman and the Dragon' (1985). Subsequently, with this novel in 1990 and three others up to 2005, he added to the canon. MacDonald Fraser had started the series in 1969, expanding the life of a minor character from 'Tom Brown's School Days' (1857) by Thomas Hughes to be a skilled linguist, a cowardly and promiscuous soldier who managed to get involved in many of the great incidents of the 1840s-90s, both in the British Empire and elsewhere in the world. The mix of lots of historical research (there are pages of historical notes), cheeky humour, sex, battles and always a torture scene, made the books winning for over 20 years. I do think though, they are probably not well received now. The books are written in the first person of Harry Flashman who is upper middle class, but pretty crude and certainly imbued with misogynistic and racist attitudes. These fit the character, but I imagine few young people today would wish to read a book which so often features the word 'nigger' and a whole host of derogatory terms towards women and Asian people as this book jams in.

With that caveat, this book fits with the preceding eight. It features Flashman working as a diplomat-cum-agent in the Punjab in the lead up to and during the First Anglo-Sikh War 1845-46 at a time when British India was controlled by the British East India Company. The war in itself was bizarre and MacDonald Fraser, though at times bewildering the reader, does reasonably well in showing how the female regent Jind Kaur for her son Duleep Singh who was to be the last Maharajah of Punjab. Jind Kaur's brother, the preceding Maharajah had been murdered by the Sikh Army which had grown to 80,000 men. Jind Kaur sought to weaken the army in Punjab politics by giving it what it wanted - an invasion of British India, but in a way which would mean its defeat and the clipping of its power. Even this brief summary indicates the complexity of the situation. MacDonald Fraser does well in weaving Flashman into this story, making him the cause of some of the incidents, including ultimately the securing to the Koh-i-Noor diamond, the 'mountain of light' to the British crown jewels. The fact that Jind Kaur was a promiscuous drunkard allows him to include a lot of sex too.

The story moves at a reasonable pace, though not aided by the genuine complexity of what was going on in the region at the time. Added to that, not only does he make extensive use of epithets of the time, but Flashman and others use numerous Punjabi and Hindi terms, sometimes distorted by English usage, which requires a running glossary, though further highlighting the extent of the author's research. Overall, it was not a bad novel, but for the reasons given above it lacked some of the pace of the previous ones in the series. MacDonald Fraser is good a shining a light on parts of history that often get overlooked these days. I was fascinated to see how close the British came to being ejected from the Indian subcontinent at a relatively early stage. However, I would suggest to many modern readers, especially those liable to take offence at any use of colonial era language and attitudes to stay well clear of the book.

'The Elixir of Death' by Bernard Knight

This is the tenth book in the Crowner John series which brings the series up to covering 12 months as the first was set in November 1195 and we are now at November 1196. It is a bit of an oddity and as I have commented before might have benefitted from tightening up the narrative without so much riding back and forth across Devon. There are a series of apparently unconnected murders, from sailors on board a ship from France - including the husband of one of Sir John's mistresses - to a mutilation of a local lord whose head ends up being dumped in Exeter Cathedral. There is also a sub-plot around alchemy in an attempt to create gold for Prince John to fund a renewed uprising against his brother, King Richard. Bits of the story feel rather contrived, especially the involvement of Richard de Revelle, John's brother-in-law and disgraced sheriff; John's wife and one of his mistresses. 

The inclusion of Assassins from Syria, does not seem impossible, but all of these factors together seem like Knight taking it a bit too far in terms of coincidence and leaving out some of his usual cast might have benefited the story. As always the portrayal of medieval Exeter and Devon and references to the Second Crusade, do add a richness which I think aided the popularity of the books. At times I feel Knight tries rather too hard. Maybe he was driven on by an agent or publishers to include things that readers would expect, especially in the period following the success of  'The Da Vinci Code' (2003) and other books by Dan Brown that referenced medieval mysteries. I would rather that he had been guided by the approach of Ellis Peters.

'Against A Dark Background' by Iain M. Banks

I much prefer those of Iain M. Banks's novels which do not feature his galaxy spanning all-powerful Culture. Thus, this one featuring the survivors of a mentally-linked combat team, heading off in a single solar system to recover various rare artefacts, felt to be of the right scope. Indeed there was a lot in this book I enjoyed. The main character, Sharrow, is the female leader of the team, but also an aristocrat in the civilization's hierarchical structure. Due to actions by her parents, she is seen as an obstacle to the coming of the messiah of a particular cult who have just received permission to try for a year and a day to assassinate her. In the meantime, Sharrow seeks to bargain the release of her half-sister Breyguhn from the grim fortress prison of another cult. The team of five, reduced from eight in previous wars head across planets trying to get on the trail first of the book of  'Universal Principles' and with this then follow clues within it to the eighth and final Lazy Gun, a super-powerful weapon, perhaps concealed by Sharrow's father.

Banks presents an incredibly rich culture, with exotic cities built of ships or under and within a vast tree; immense fortresses and a wide variety of landscapes. The societies are diverse and richly described. There are odd, seemingly anachronistic elements such as people writing letters or even cheques and a pillbox hat and so on. You wonder if that was intentional among all the very advanced vehicles and weaponry. The main challenge is that there is so much imaginative stuff. There are so many different organisations, authorities, religions and creatures that it is hard to keep track. Yes the plot twists and twists again, which is great, but it becomes tiresome to follow who is tricking whom. Added to that Banks drops in flashbacks with minimal indication. As many of these involve members of her team as they are in the 'now' you can easily be reading something thinking it is about the current timeline when it is from years in the past. It is a little easier in the scenes with Breyguhn and their male cousin Geis, but not always especially when they feature in the 'now' too. 

It is interesting to see why certain things happen and there are important clues in the 'past' to understand actions in the present. However, sometimes you do wonder do we need to see when the group were last at a bar which is now a book shop. I have commented in the past how Banks's science fiction books often seem under-edited and the good qualities of this book would have been really highlighted if the jumping around in time had been handled far better even if with a tag, e.g. 'Above Nachtel's Ghost, five years ago' or something.

Another challenge is the tone. At times the book seems light-hearted, certainly when the team are trying to steal the the 'Universal Principles' which it turns out the King of Pharpech sits on at his coronation. Pharpech is a low tech society with quaint rituals and at times you feel is created for humour. Sharply different in tone are scenes in the Sea House, the grim prison where Breyguhn is held and certainly the long section where the team struggle against increasing odds along the shore of a fjord to reach the location of the Lazy Gun and suffer more and more at the hands of a competing team of mercenaries. The characters we have come to know well through numerous interactions and their thrilling and entertaining scrapes and now in a bleak existential crisis something like journey of Captain Robert Scott at the Antarctic. The reader is warned of the bleakness from the comments on the book, but they sit uneasily alongside the jokey almost spoof-like section in Pharpech. Added to that, not to spoil it too much but Banks bottles out and a machina ex machina means he steps away from what at times would seem the inevitable outcome, not just once but again and again.

This could have been a brilliant book. There is a rich imagination at work in the book which fascinates you. The story and the twists are engaging. The trouble is, as happens too often, Banks rattles through it unfettered; perhaps uncontrolled, thus you are left scrabbling after him across rapids, uncertain of what he is actually showing you as you hurtle past it. As a result, you cannot really appreciate the details or the plot as much as you should be able to do.

Non-Fiction

'Europe of the Dictators' by Elizabeth Wiskemann

This book, published in 1966, was often recommended to me. I have carried around a very battered copy for about 35 years and finally got around to reading it. Yes, it is dated. Writing such a book today I do not think a historian would speak about regions of Europe as being 'backward' or note every politician she mentions who happens to be Jewish. However, as a general survey of European history 1919-45, it remains incredibly astute. A lot of writers could learn how in a book of 287 pages in my edition she manages to actually get in far more detail than many larger survey books of the period. 

Just minor examples, she outlines the three Austrian banks that collapsed in 1931, outlining the connections between them, whereas most accounts only speak of one. She does not forget to describe what happened to both Slovakia and Ruthenia when Bohemia-Moravia was occupied by the Germans in 1939 and so on. That might seem not major issues, but having read numerous books on this period down the years, I learnt elements of value from this one. She does look at Europe, seeking to include what was happening in countries that are typically neglected, such as down to Luxembourg, let alone the Baltic States, the Nordic states, and so as well as the Powers of the era.

The other strength of this book is the style. It is brisk, almost energetic, and yet never loses that clarity. Even complex situations are explained very crisply. This is one of those history books that you can almost read like a novel. Yet, it is not pure narrative; the analysis built on the foundations of those details is there. Thus, I certainly regret not having come to this book sooner and would say, that despite its age, it remains one of the best survey history books on the developments in Europe at this time that I have read.