Recent reading

[regshoe]

The Shield Ring by Rosemary Sutcliff (1956). Starting off the new year with a Sutcliff again! This one is set among the Norse-Saxon people of the eleventh-century Lake District resisting Norman invasion, but it feels much more like a late outlier of the Roman and otherwise 'ancient' books than like her later-set ones. The main character is Frytha, a young Saxon girl who takes refuge in a northern Norse stronghold after her home in Lancashire is destroyed by the Normans; the Norse resistance are led by Jarl Buthar, who is Sutcliff's explanation for the modern name Buttermere. Sutcliff seems to struggle with writing a female protagonist here, in a way she certainly didn't with The Rider of the White Horse; she often leaves Frytha's perspective to follow the boys and men at war, and it really felt like Frytha's friend and implied love interest Bjorn got more narrative attention and character development than she did (even the dolphin ring is his heirloom!). But I liked Frytha and her story—she gets involved in the war, taking on somewhat masculine roles but in a way that felt plausible—and Frytha/Bjorn was pretty good as canon het goes (it's really written more like a slashy relationship between two male characters than like a typical het romance—right down to the never being explicitly confirmed as romantic!—which probably explains that). Also the significant landscape and nature descriptions are utterly beautiful as ever; there are a lot of curlews, which I especially liked. :)

An Inland Voyage by Robert Louis Stevenson (1878). RLS's first published book, an account of a canoe trip which he and his friend Walter Grindlay Simpson took along the rivers and canals of northern France. A while ago luzula and I were agreeing and lamenting that we couldn't find the charm of Kidnapped in Stevenson's other books—well, here it is, read this one! This is a very charming book, funny and warm and enjoyable (barring the occasional opinion on gender; incidentally, Stevenson met Fanny for the first time on this trip, but there's not a hint of that in the book). Stevenson recounts various humorous incidents in the 'voyage', and is ready to laugh at himself as well as portraying his surroundings and the people he meets with eloquent and imaginative humour. I liked his device of referring to himself and Grindlay Simpson by the names of their boats!

A Fourth Form Friendship by Angela Brazil (1912). A classic girls' school story recommended to me by edwardianspinsteraunt. I had been a little intimidated by Angela Brazil (pronounced to rhyme with 'dazzle', so Wikipedia informs me) because she wrote so many books, but it turns out they're mostly standalones and so you can easily dip in and out wherever. The set-up of this one is fairly simple: fourteen-year-old Aldred Laurence, who has heaps of potential in her academic ability and her character but a certain weakness for untruths, goes to school; she meets the aristocratic Mabel Farrington, who suddenly becomes very eager to befriend her... It turns out Mabel has heard a story about a girl who heroically rescued a toddler from a house fire and, for reasons of contrived coincidence, is under the mistaken impression that the heroine was Aldred. Will Aldred admit the truth, or will she continue to allow her school career and her genuine and significant friendship with Mabel to be imperilled by their treacherous foundation of lies??? The tension of this plot, and the comic school-story adventures that the girls get into on the way through it, are really good fun, and the sentimental friendship between Aldred and Mabel is adorable. All ends in suitably dramatic but ultimately happy fashion, of course. Really good stuff!

Temeraire by Naomi Novik (2006; published in the US as His Majesty's Dragon). I had osmosed the vague impression of these books as 'Hornblower-esque Age of Sail boat books, but with dragons', and so was slightly surprised to find that this first entry in the series starts with the main character, Captain William Laurence, being obliged to leave the Navy to go and be a dragon captain instead. It's very good fun fantasy; I really liked the dragon worldbuilding and enjoyed the twists and turns of the plot, and the prose, barring the occasional anachronism (everyone is saying hello to each other far too often) and Americanism, is engaging without being too jarringly modern (Novik likes her semicolons, of which I approve). And I very much liked Temeraire himself—the 'most special dragon ever' thing went a bit far, but he is endearingly ingenuous and noble, and he and Laurence are very cute reading together. Right, random nitpicks, in order of importance:

• I did not like the treatment of women, either on a worldbuilding or a character-writing level. I could absolutely buy that women would be dragon captains, if the dragons made it necessary; I could not buy that they'd be treated exactly the same as the male captains just as if it was an ideal modern workplace (in fact that was one of a few ways in which the 'separate world' portrayal of the Corps felt a little like an excuse to write characters with more modern sensibilities than would otherwise appear in a Napoleonic-era novel, which, why are you writing historical fiction, then?)—and going that far while still keeping women a definite minority seemed an odd choice. There are a couple of attempts at interesting female characters, but one's main story is an utterly baffling and barely-detailed romance with Laurence, the other also has an unappealing romantic storyline, and they have no relationship at all with each other (which is a shame, because based purely on character I think there'd be some potential in shipping them).
• Part of the book is ostensibly set in the Scottish Highlands (Laurence learns dragon-captaining at a training ground at Loch Laggan), but you really wouldn't know it from any of the description or cultural detail. In fact the whole book was lacking in local specificity or detail of setting, which was a big weakness.
• So are the different types of dragon naturally-occurring species or domesticated breeds? Why is the book so persistently and almost explicitly unclear about this???
• Why are the dragon coverts all wooded? I was confused by how Novik kept going on about 'clearings', but it seems like there are supposed to be trees everywhere else? You'd think they'd need more pasture land instead for all those sheep and cows the dragons get through.
• People in this book drink coffee so quickly! There are multiple occasions where hot coffee is served and a few lines later a character is finishing their nth cup. I hope they're not scalding their tongues too badly.
• I note with interest that the canonical AO3 tag for this series is Temeraire - Naomi Novik.

The Go-Between by L. P. Hartley (1953). I'd been aware of this for a while as a potentially interesting classic, but picked it up after phantomtomato recently reviewed another of Hartley's books and mentioned that it was very queer. It is that!—and it has a lot of interesting and complicated things to say about sexuality, class and the ways they clash, but what really struck me about it was the way Hartley perfectly portrays the odd specificity and idiosyncrasy of childhood mentality and imagination via the experiences of the twelve-year-old title character and narrator, Leo. There's also some precisely-observed portrayal of the ways adults treat children and the ways they fail them, and of the very specific culture of late-Victorian/Edwardian schoolboys (you can tell that Hartley was one!). Between the schoolboys, the Boer War background and the significant detailed cricket match, this may be of some interest to Raffles fandom. (Incidentally, can I not count?—either that baby was born very premature or it must have been conceived months before the significant ending scene, surely?)

Comments

[isis]

People in this book drink coffee so quickly! There are multiple occasions where hot coffee is served and a few lines later a character is finishing their nth cup. I hope they're not scalding their tongues too badly.

I'm charmed and amused that this is something you noticed!

I agree with your impression of The Shield Ring, which felt a lot to me like Sutcliff wanted to write a female protagonist but didn't really feel comfortable with it.

[osprey_archer]

It's been a while since I read The Shield Ring, but I remember that the book struggled slightly with the plot. Frytha is technically the main character but she's also not there for a lot of the battles, etc.

An Inland Voyage sounds like a delight. And Angela Brazil's books are so much fun. I don't know that I tend to remember them very well after I've read them, but they're always a good time while I'm reading. And the NAMES she comes up with - Aldred! Why not!

[muccamukk]

My dad really liked RSL's Trip with a Travels with a Donkey in the Cévennes, but I still have to get around to reading it.

I had a lot of trouble picturing things in the Temeraire series. Some of the dragon pictures were nice, but it all felt a bit fuzz. I also couldn't shake knowing it started out as M&C fanfic, and I kept playing "okay, who's that then?" even though she actually did a pretty good job not reusing characters.

[phantomtomato]

Oh, I’m so excited to hear that you read The Go-Between! It’s a quick read, isn’t it?

I agree that the way Hartley captures that particular age-experience, the cusp of adolescence, is so impressive. I think the novel felt especially queer to me because it conveyed the ways Leo’s appreciation for adults was beginning to change as he reaches this age—contrast his descriptions of Marian with those of Ted or Hugh. It doesn’t feel like Hartley is playing coy so much as showing us that Leo doesn’t yet recognize signs of his own attraction. Like so much else that summer, his sense of this part of himself is in transition.

[coffeeandink]

For The Shield Ring, I felt like the book started off with Frytha intended as protagonist, but switched to Bjorn partway through.

[sovay]

I had osmosed the vague impression of these books as 'Hornblower-esque Age of Sail boat books, but with dragons', and so was slightly surprised to find that this first entry in the series starts with the main character, Captain William Laurence, being obliged to leave the Navy to go and be a dragon captain instead.

Specifically they are dragonrider Patrick O'Brian. I don't know if there was ever an intervening fic stage or if she went straight into the original novels. I got about six books into the series before losing track of it and have been meaning to go back for the rest of them for almost a decade; I have a lot of problems with the worldbuilding, but love one of the secondary characters from the third book on. I did keep thinking the series should be queerer than it was, which is not actually a problem I have all that often, but here we are.

I haven't read it in years, but I remember loving The Go-Between. If the other Hartley was The Harness Room (1971), I will be really interested to hear what your friend thought of it.

[regshoe]

Yeah, that's about it. The Rider of the White Horse was only three years later, so perhaps this was an early stage in a quick improvement.

[regshoe]

Yes, there was a mismatch between the main POV character that she started with and the plot that developed, perhaps. (OTOH, Anne not being right there for the battles is not only not a plot problem but used to good effect in The Rider of the White Horse—it seems to be something she got better at!)

I must read more Brazil after this one! And I think Aldred is a lovely name, I will see what other names she comes up with for her heroines :D

[regshoe]

My copy of An Inland Voyage is part of an omnibus of travel writings that also includes Travels with a Donkey in the Cévennes, so I'll get to that one before long (I'm looking forward to reading more about the Cévennes, which was so memorable a setting for one of the Worrals books.)

I liked the descriptions of the different types of dragon, but struggled with the lack of setting. Hee, I don't know Aubrey-Maturin well enough to play that game—I suppose Laurence is Jack, and is Temeraire dragon!Stephen?—but I can imagine it would be distracting for a reader who did.

[regshoe]

I liked the prose very much—that sort of fluently precise but not overly-formal twentieth-century writing is especially pleasing to read.

Yes, that's true—I was also struck by the descriptions of Marian vs Ted in particular.

[regshoe]

Yes, it did feel like that! An odd mismatch.

[regshoe]

I'm not feeling hugely motivated to continue with the series, but I might do at some point. From a brief look at that AO3 tag I see the biggest ship is m/m between Laurence and someone who's not in the first book, which is certainly intriguing!

It was indeed The Harness Room, and the review is here. I will certainly try to read that one too.

[sovay]

From a brief look at that AO3 tag I see the biggest ship is m/m between Laurence and someone who's not in the first book, which is certainly intriguing!

If it's Tharkay, that is my favorite character! (If it's somebody else, that's fine.)

It was indeed The Harness Room, and the review is here.

Thank you very much! I have been curious about it since Valancourt reprinted it, but not yet managed to track it down.

[regshoe]

It is Tharkay! Well, perhaps I'll read more books so I can meet him :D

[luzula]

Oh, that's a Sutcliff I haven't read, and it seems a worthwhile one! And so does the Stevenson book.

Glad you enjoyed Temeraire! As for pasture land, yes, that's one of the major things I had to suspend disbelief about: having so many large predators must really put some pressure on the herbivore population. But one has to grant some suspension of disbelief with a premise like that.

Did your edition not have the in-universe essay at the end, with information about the history of the various dragon breeds?

[regshoe]

I recommend them both :D

Yes, I did think the consumption of sheep and cattle was a little bit implausible in itself. (As well as potentially unfortunate in its implications for the Highland setting in particular, another point of 'not bothering with setting-specificity').

Did your edition not have the in-universe essay at the end, with information about the history of the various dragon breeds?

It did! That's a big part of where I got confused, because it repeatedly uses both 'species' and 'breeds', talks about dragons of particular varieties living in the wild and being native to this or that part of the world, but also about selective breeding and freely crossing different varieties to produce new breeds. Looking at it again, the title mentions 'the Order Draconia', which I suppose would imply a number of different species?

[starshipfox]

I think the Temeraire books are worth reading if you are very invested in the dragon-human relationships, and in broader study of dragon society, and what it means to for humans to have a working relationship with a species that is their intellectual equal. Those were the themes I was most interested in, and I found that the series gave me pretty much what I was looking for -- but I know fans who were hoping for other elements of the series to be fully explored or developed were disappointed.

I've read a lot of school stories, but I think I've been consistently intimidated by Angela Brazil: it's interesting to hear that you can begin anywhere within her books!

[scintilla10]

Aw, the Angela Brazil book sounds like an entertaining romp!

[regshoe]

Though I would prefer them in a more detailed setting in time and place than we got in this book, I am interested in those things, so that sounds encouraging!

You can, and I can recommend beginning with this one :D

[regshoe]

It is that :D I'll have to read some more of her books sometime.

[luzula]

Sadly, I think Novik has not really thought through the taxonomy! Specifically, it seems unrealistic that they could mate so freely over what would surely be species lines.

[regshoe]

*boggles at the idea that anyone could not think through taxonomy*

Oh well—an opportunity for worldbuilding fix-it fic, perhaps? :D

[luzula]

Indeed! An incisive in-universe scientific essay critiquing the one at the end of the book, perhaps?

[regshoe]

I would read it!