SPOILERS for The Mauritius Command; here’s the non-spoiler post if you got here by mistake.
Continue reading “O’Brian, Patrick: (04) The Mauritius Command (spoilers)”
O’Brian, Patrick: (04) The Mauritius Command (audio)
The Mauritius Command is the fourth of Patrick O’Brian’s Aubrey-Maturin novels, and somewhat reminscient of the first, in that it’s as much concerned with a third party (there, James Dillion; here, Lord Clonfert) as with either of Jack or Stephen. It is less episodic than the first, being the tale of the British campaign to take the two small islands of Mauritius and La Réunion, in the Indian Ocean off Madagascar, from which the French have been playing havoc on British trade. Jack is given command of the squadron (thanks to Stephen, not that Stephen wanted that known), and for the first time must command other captains against difficult odds.
I found this satisfying on the whole, though I found myself getting mildly confused about locations, and would have done myself a favor if I’d remembered that the book had a map. There are exciting bits, devastating bits, a nuanced and compelling psychological portrait of Lord Clonfert, and a small amount of continuing emotional development of Jack and Stephen after book three’s romantic happenings. Not as many high points as H.M.S. Surprise, but a worthy listen.
As usual, a spoiler post follows.
Christie, Agatha: Caribbean Mystery, A (radio play)
Since we first met Mr. Rafiel of Nemesis in A Carribean Mystery, I listed to that next. This is the one where an old bore asks Miss Marple if she wants to see a photograph of a murderer, stops before showing it her with a startled look on his face, and then ends dead. I don’t recommend experiencing these out of order; Miss Marple doesn’t ally with Mr. Rafiel until late in the book, and Nemesis has oblique but real spoilers for this story.
On its own, though, I’d be a bit dubious about this, as the big revelation that makes the mystery come together doesn’t seem physically plausible to me. Other than Mr. Rafiel, there isn’t too much memorable about this. (I do note that a sort of rough justice occurs with regard to one of the red herrings, which goes unremarked upon by the characters in the adaptation.)
Christie, Agatha: Nemesis (radio play)
I picked Agatha Christie’s Nemesis nearly at random of my “audiobooks” playlist; I’d recorded it a while ago and didn’t remember a thing about the premise. So it was a nice surprise to find a strong opening hook: Jason Rafiel, who Miss Marple met on a prior case, has died, leaving her a large sum of money—if she’ll solve a mystery for him. He’s not going to tell her about the mystery, but information will come her way, and their code word will be “Nemesis,” which is a reference to the prior case. (Of course, in the radio play at least, no-one ever uses a code word, so it feels rather contrived.)
At this point, I was quite interested, but as the adaptation continued, I began to have some misgivings about this premise. Mr. Rafiel posthumously maneuvers Miss Marple into places where she can learn about the mystery, forcing her to find out everything herself, and I found myself tempted to conflate him with the author—and then I got annoyed with him and Christie for withholding information and making us jump through hoops. It’s hard to tell from the adaptation how much Mr. Rafiel knew or suspected about the mystery; maybe he guessed a lot and was directing Miss Marple accordingly, or maybe he was just spectacularly lucky.
This is probably one that’s better read, though for subtler reasons than the my previous quibbles with the adaptations for radio.
Quinn, Julia: (01) The Duke and I
I bought a Palm Z22 recently, and its software bundle had some sample e-books, including Julia Quinn’s The Duke and I. This reminded me that I’d gulped down a number of Quinn’s books some months ago, and then left them in a desk drawer at work and never bothered to log them. So I dug out The Duke and I and re-read it during a wait at the car dealership.
Possibly I should have re-read it some other time, because while there’s nothing actively wrong with it, I spent most of my time noticing the ways in which the author contrived to get the characters together and then apart: pretending to be involved for practical purposes; a forced marriage; a big secret; an irrational fear. This is the first of Quinn’s series about the eight Bridgerton siblings, and as I recall each book stands alone fairly well (in contrast to James’ Four Sisters series, which I suspect of extending one sister’s plot over several volumes, and what is it about Regencies and sibling series these days?). Since this one lost its charm for me on a re-read, I may not bother with the rest, and just bring them home and shelve them—except perhaps for the fourth (Romancing Mister Bridgerton, and how I wish romance novels had better titles), which I recall as being a nice story about working at friendship and at writing.
James, Eloisa: (02) Kiss Me, Annabel
Eloisa James’ Kiss Me, Annabel is the sequel to Much Ado About You, and like that book it was light lunchtime reading. I preferred the middle, relatively-plotless interlude best, where the two protagonists actually, you know, get to know and like each other. Other than that, I don’t have much to say about it, except that I think I know where book three is going (the same place I thought after book one), and I’m rather dubious about it.
Christie, Agatha: Moving Finger, The (radio play)
Another Agatha Christie novel adapted for radio, this time as a five-parter (2.5 hours): The Moving Finger, in which a friend calls Miss Marple in after a spate of poison-pen letters results in a death. Judging by the reviews on Amazon, in the novel Miss Marple doesn’t show up until fairly late; the play restructures matters so it starts with her arrival, and she gets a recap from the novel’s point-of-view character. This worked fine for me, but may be distracting for those who read the novel first.
This is a nicely psychological mystery, and while I guessed whodunnit fairly early (I may be getting used to the way that Miss Marple, or perhaps Agatha Christie, thinks), I found it generally satisfactory. The romantic subplot at the end was decidedly not to my taste, but at least it was over quickly.
Resnick, Laura: (01) Disappearing Nightly
On New Year’s Day, Chad and I were in Barnes & Noble looking to spend some gift cards. I was browsing the shelves and spotted a new book by Laura Resnick, Disappearing Nightly. Pretty much all I needed to know was this quote on the back from Jennifer Crusie: “A paranormal screwball comedy adventure. Light, happy, fantastically funny!” Well, that and my prior knowledge of Resnick’s work; I used to read her category romances under a different name, and I recalled that she did comedy well (she’s also written some more recent romances and some Big Fat Fantasies, which I haven’t read yet). I read the first couple of pages, bought it, and stayed up too late to finish it.
This is just fun, pure and simple. The first person narrator, Esther Diamond, is a chorus nymph in the off-Broadway musical Sorceror! and the understudy for the lead female role. The musical is built around a magic act, and one night the Disappearing Lady act works far too well. Esther is warned off taking the missing actress’s place by Max, a member of the Magnum Collegium:
“The Great College?” I guessed. “What was that?”
“It is . . . ” He shrugged. “A varied group of individuals united by a common interest.” . . .
“But what is it? What is the group’s common interest?”
“We confront Evil.”
“Well,” I said. “Hmm. Uh-huh. I see.” If someone ever tells you he’s a member of a worldwide club whose mission is to confront Evil, I defy you to come up with a pithy reply on the spot.
It turns out that there have been multiple disappearances, all during the vanishing part of magic acts. Max contacts the performers, an affectionately motley bunch, and Esther organizes their attempts at figuring out what’s happening and why. There’s skulking, red herrings, disguises, booby-traps, a cute cop who really don’t want to have to arrest Esther, and, of course, confronting Evil. I should note that the book teeters on the edge of a tone-content mismatch during the confrontation with Evil; on reflection, I think it gets away with it, but I did have to stop and think about it, which is sub-optimal. That’s my only quibble with the book, though.
This is the first book in a series, though it entirely stands on its own, and I definitely will be snapping up the next as soon as it’s out in December.
ObDisclaimer: Yes, this is published by Luna, but it’s not a romance; the relationship with the cute cop is a definite subplot and if you ignore the spine, you’ll never know it was published by *gasp* a subsidary of Harlequin. Girl cooties at a minimum, honest, so don’t let that stop you from reading it.
Willans, Geoffrey: Down With Skool!
Down With Skool!, written by Geoffrey Willans and illustrated by Ronald Searle, is one of the diaries of Nigel Molesworth, a student at an archetypal 1950s British boarding school. I’d been vaguely aware of the phrase “as any fule kno,” but other than that I knew nothing about these until Down with Skool! appeared in the mail as a gift from my sister-in-law.
This is very, very silly. Molesworth takes his readers on a tour of life in a boarding school: headmasters, masters (teachers), classes, parents, and school food (including a longish fantasy on the revolt of the prunes—”‘Exactly,’ sa the sensitive prune. ‘Why should we revolt them all the time? Why canot they revolt us?'”). To my surprise, Molesworth’s extremely, err, personal spelling and punctuation only tripped me up a few times; I spent most of the time reading giggling quietly to myself.
For some reason, I am particularly fond of the section on math lessons, which includes this bit that nearly had me waking Chad up:
To do geom you hav to make a lot of things equal to each other when you can see perfectly well that they don’t. This agane is due to Pythagoras and it formed much of his conversation at brekfast.
Pythagoras (helping himself to porridge): Hmm. I see the sum of the squares on AB and BC = the square on AC.
Wife: Dear dear.
Pythagoras: I’m not surprised, not surprised at all. I’ve been saying that would come for years.
Wife: Yes dear.
Pythagoras: Now they’ll hav to do something about it. More tea please. There’s another thing — the day is coming when they’re going to have to face the fact that a strate line if infinitely protracted goes on for ever.
Wife: Quite so.
Pythagoras: Now take the angle a, for xsample.
(His wife suddenly looses control and thro the porridge at him. Enter Euclid: another weed and the 2 bores go off together)
(I think I got all the misspellings in.)
The book is also heavily illustrated, with, for instance, “Scenes in the life of Pythagoras”. Though the stalking of the lazy parallelograms amuses me, I like the portraits best; they are wonderfully expressive.
Though I know a teeny bit about boarding-school life from reading other novels, I can’t say I really felt I needed that knowledge; though the context changes, things like Molesworth’s reaction to memorizing poetry are universal:
In other words frankly i just don’t kno it.
Also quite frankly
I COULDN’T CARE LESS
What use will that be to me in the new atomic age?
Occasionally english masters childe me for this point of view o molesworth one [*] you must learn the value of spiritual things until i spray them with 200 rounds from my backterial gun. i then plant the british flag in the masters inkwell and declare a whole holiday for the skool. boo to shakespeare.
[*] His younger brother is Molesworth 2.
I think this is particularly good if you’re in school (I certainly would have been tempted to call various people “utterly wet” and “a weed” if I’d had the phrases), but I enjoyed the heck out of it and, thank goodness, I am no longer a student.
Kaye, M.M.: Ordinary Princess, The
M.M. Kaye’s The Ordinary Princess would be one of my favorite books if I’d read it when I was, say, ten years old. Reading it for the first time now, I found it charming but unsurprising and pitched a little younger than I prefer.
As is traditional in the country of Phantasmorania, all fairies are invited to the christening of a seventh royal daughter. (The royal family always has daughters. Travelers, we are told, object upon hearing this that the country has a king; the townspeople respond, “Ah yes; but by tradition the heir to the throne is always the youngest son of the eldest princess. It’s very simple.” It’s a quietly tongue-in-cheek book.) Princess Amethyst Alexandra Augusta Ataminta Adelaide Aurealia Anne doesn’t have an evil fairy show up at her christening, but she does have a somewhat cranky water fairy get dehydrated while delayed in traffic.
Old Crustacea put out a long bony finger and touched the seventh princess’s pink cheek. Then she looked at the King and Queen and the resplendent guests and the six little sister princesses, each more beautiful than the last, and finally she looked at the huge pile of glittering presents and the list that the Lord High Chamberlain had made of the gifts bestowed by the other fairies.
“Hmm!” said the Fairy Crustacea. “Wit, Charm, Courage, Health, Wisdom, Grace . . . Good gracious, poor child! Well, thank goodness my magic is stronger than anyone else’s.”
She raised her twisty coral stick and waved it three times over the cradle of the seventh princess. “My child,” said the Fairy Crustacea, “I am going to give you something that will probably bring you more happineess than all these fal-lals and fripperies put together. You shall be Ordinary!”
Amy grows up gawky and somewhat tomboy-ish and not at all beautiful, until her parents quite despair of marrying her off. They finally decide to hire a dragon to lay waste to the countryside, on the theory that when a prince kills it, he’ll have to marry Amy, Ordinaryness and all. Amy gets wind of this, disapproves strongly, and runs off.
After a couple of months of living on nuts and berries in a forest (and taming a squirrel and a crow—fortunately this period is skipped over, because it’s a bit eye-roll inducing), Amy finds that her dress is falling apart, and takes a job as the thirteenth assistant kitchen maid in a neighboring country’s palace to earn the money to replace it. She meets a nice young man who calls himself a man-of-all-work while cleaning up after a banquet, and if you can’t spot where this is going, you’ve never read a fairy tale before.
This was published in 1980, so I can’t really blame it for not surprising me. Since then, things like Patricia C. Wrede’s Enchanted Forest Chronicles or Will Shetterly’s “The Princess Who Kicked Butt” have worked similiar terrority, and I happened to read those first. But this is a nice premise told with a sweet and simple charm, and would probably be great for a ten-year-old new to the genre.