More audiobooks, this time the first four Amelia Peabody novels, written by Elizabeth Peters and read by Barbara Rosenblat.
First, let me say that Rosenblat is a superb narrator, with amazing flexibility and precision (though maybe a hair too much drama). These have also been recorded by Susan O’Malley, but I read one review that said she doesn’t use a British accent for Amelia, which is just wrong. If you’re going to listen to these on audiobook, I highly recommend the Rosenblat recordings.
The first Amelia Peabody novel is Crocodile on the Sandbank, which I found charming. Like the rest of the ones I’ve experienced to date, it’s in first-person retrospective, framed as journals written after events have concluded. (I understand that some of the more recent ones depart from this format.) I knew I would like Amelia when, after rescuing a young woman in 1884 Rome and hearing how she was seduced and betrayed, the first thing she asked was what sex was like. (At the time, Amelia was a spinster who neither expected nor desired marriage.) Amelia and Evelyn, the young woman, go off to Egypt and end up on an archaeological dig, where they find adventure, love, and in Amelia’s case, a lasting passion for “Egyptology.”
The plot of this book is so slight as to be transparent, and I found the ending a touch unjust. But I enjoyed the characters and the Egyptology enough to get the second one right away.
When The Curse of the Pharoahs opens, Amelia and her husband Emerson are in England going slowly mad. Emerson refuses to be parted from their son Ramses (a nickname) to go dig in Egypt, but doesn’t think Ramses’s health is strong enough to take him with them. Emerson is teaching, and Amelia is helping with his academic work, but they are really very bored. And their son is an absolute terror. Enter a distressed widow, begging Emerson to take over the dig that her possibly-murdered husband ran; of course they take it (leaving Ramses with his aunt and uncle). I enjoyed this section for its non-typical, and very in-character, portrait of Amelia as a mother, but a little of Ramses goes a long way. I was glad to get away from him too, and I don’t even live with him.
The actual plot moves a little slowly, particularly at the beginning, but has a colorful cast of characters and some more good Egyptology (including the strong suggestion that they were this close to discovering King Tut’s tomb thirty years early). And I enjoyed seeing Amelia forced to acknowledge an error, even a relatively minor one—Amelia is very prone to declaring how sensible and perceptive and stout-hearted she is, and it gave me hope that the author saw her more clearly than that.
In the third book, The Mummy Case, I continued to get progressively more irritated at Amelia’s pronouncements about herself, as well as her tendency to not so much jump to conclusions as to fling herself at them headlong. I was also irritated that the vital clue to the mystery is a piece of Egyptology that I didn’t already know and wasn’t told by the book. Finally, Ramses went on the dig with them, and long-winded speeches in piping child voices are much easier to take in text than aloud. I was strongly considering taking a break from these at this point, but I saw that the fourth appeared to be closely linked, and then the fifth was back in Britain. I decided to stick it out for one more.
This was a mistake. I stopped listening to Lion in the Valley less than halfway through because Amelia was driving me nuts. For one thing, she was being more bossy than usual toward the young people she accumulates each book. For anther, a master criminal (Sethos) first appeared in the third book, and Amelia’s continuing obsession with this individual rather grates. When I found myself greeting her orations regarding “that genius of crime” or “the subtle machinations of that great criminal brain” with “oh be quiet!”, I decided that for the sake of my blood pressure it was time to stop listening and just skim the text to see what happened.
It’s a good thing I did. The ending is on crack. I was almost literally reading with my head averted because it was so very embarrassing.
Can anyone tell me which of the remaining books contain the Sethos plot, so I can avoid them? I would like to see if Ramses becomes human, and if they ever get any really good archaeological discoveries, but I just cannot deal with Sethos, even skimmed at speed.
Unfortunately, the ones you read are usually considered among the best. I was an early fan, and since I am a completist still read (or try to read) each book as it comes out. It takes me longer and longer to get around to it. I think Amelia is supposed to be read satirically, and that the Master Criminal plot is a tribute to the penny dreadfuls, but if you can’t swallow these two attributes, you might as well give up on the series, since you have yet to encounter the too stupid to live young woman who is supposed to be an extremely intelligent doctor. She is the one who really sticks in my craw. Oh, and I forgot to mention characters who are firmly tied to a historical background and forget to age. Glad to see you posting reviews again.
Elaine: thanks, that’s too bad–if I need to read Amelia satirically I don’t want to read her. Satire is not my preferred genre. Oh well–it’s too bad, I was hoping to have discovered a reliable source of lots and lots of audiobooks.
I’m rather sorry you aren’t enjoying the Amelia books as much as I do, but I can see how the genre might have elements that make you twitch. Peters is totally spoofing H. Rider Haggard and Indiana Jones at the same time. I also think that the audio versions would probably really ruin the books for me, since there are a lot of riffs on the Victorian sensibilities and novel plots. Ramses turns into a real person rather rapidly–and when he gets older, I admit I have a bit of a crush on him. The fifth book deals a lot with Ramses’s childhood dynamics if I recall correctly.
PiscusFiche: thanks, I’ll get the fifth Amelia book out the library, probably. I feel rather dense for not thinking that these are spoofs, but they’re really not packaged or presented that way. And I think Amelia would grate either way. But I’ll definitely approach the fifth one with this in mind.
A little background on the author: Elizabeth Peters also writes as Barbara Michaels. Her real name, as I understand it, is Barbara Mertz, and she turned to writing after realising that her PhD in Egyptology wasn’t going to be putting a lot of bread on her family’s table. She started off writing suspense romances, which are primarily written under the Barbara Michaels pseudonym, but her heroines got smarter and more sarcastic over a period of time. So she turned to writing mysteries with a bit of a spoofy feel to them under the Elizabeth Peters name. Vicki Bliss is actually my favourite of the Peters heroines, personally, although I don’t mind Amelia. (I don’t find her grating, but I can see how some of her more Victorian qualities and ways of elucidating and preaching at her family would get annoying. In later books, you get snippets and pieces of Ramses POV, which I find entertaining.) Try some of her other Peters books. I like the Vicky Bliss ones, as well as the standalones Legend in Green Velvet (which DOES date itself with a reference to Prince Charles, but which is otherwise quite amusing), The Camelot Caper (which actually ties into both the Vicky Bliss series and the Amelia Peabody books–a character who shows up in the Camelot Caper shows up in the VB series, and EP/BM has said before that Ramses is somehow related to this character) and Devil May Care are some of my favourites. The best of the Jaqueline Kirby books is easily Die For Love, which is a murder mystery set at a Romance Writers convention. (Although historical fans of Richard the Third and the two princes in the tower may prefer the Murders of Richard the Third.) All of these books are pretty tongue-in-cheek and fluffy-but-fun reads, although slightly less spoofy than the Amelia books. Again, let me reiterate: audio may ruin the effect. Hearing somebody pronounce “that genius of crime!” and other such rhetorical hyperbole could only grate over a period of time. Reading it, I feel, makes it much easier to digest.
PiscusFiche: thanks for the Peters information. I’ve been looking at the Vicky Bliss books–the paperback exchange has a late one. They’re present day?
Yes about the Vicky Bliss books being present-day. So are the Jaqueline Kirby ones. I find both more palatable over multiple exposures than I do Amelia. While I liked the Peabody/Emerson books long enough to go through the first eight, since then I’ve found the only of Peters’ novels I’m inclined to re-read are a couple of the Vicky Bliss books, a couple of the Jaqueline Kirby ones, and Crocodile on a Sandbank. I rather wish Peters would write another Vicky Bliss book, but one of the things I find aggravating about Peters’ writing style is that she differentiates her female protagonists from other women with very broad strokes, character traits that get exploited to a tiresome degree given enough books.
i dont know what is wrong with you people, the amelia peabody books are among my favourite books … and i have read alot. if you dont like a certain book dont brand it.. your opinion is not gospel and to be quiet honest there are more supporters of the book than those who are not. i think if you are irritated with the first book close it and dont read the other four and still complain… its ridiculous.