{"id":105,"date":"2002-02-25T21:48:54","date_gmt":"2002-02-26T02:48:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog-test\/?p=105"},"modified":"2002-02-25T21:48:54","modified_gmt":"2002-02-26T02:48:54","slug":"hope_anthony_pr","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/2002\/02\/hope_anthony_pr\/","title":{"rendered":"Hope, Anthony: Prisoner of Zenda, The"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a> <\/a> <\/p>\n

After finishing The Phoenix Guards<\/cite><\/a>, I was in a bit of a fix as to what to read next. I wouldn’t be able to get my hands on a copy of its sequel, Five Hundred Years After<\/cite>, until the weekend; the same for Swordspoint<\/cite> or anything else I could think of that might scratch the same itch. So, with some trepidation, I got Anthony Hope’s The Prisoner of Zenda<\/cite><\/strong> out of the library. Yes, it’s a classic adventure novel, and it appears in A College of Magics<\/cite><\/a>, but I haven’t had good luck with classic adventure novels, after all.<\/p>\n

I found this moderately enjoyable. It’s a touch hard to view the plot seriously, because the basic premise (random person forced to impersonate monarchy; hijinks ensue) has become so thoroughly part of the basic toolbox of plot (as has its reverse, monarchy impersonates random person). They are pretty good hijinks, though, and there’s a nifty villain. The narrator’s tone is sometimes a bit light and detached, and he is not unaware of life’s absurdities, but his emotional involvement comes through towards the end (making it a more serious book, I think, than The Phoenix Guards<\/cite>). I got pulled in enough to speed through the book, which wasn’t too hard as it’s quite short. (Alas, the narrator is also a sexist pig, and though the heroine does get a shining moment, it just points out how restricted women’s options were at the time.)<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, I can’t read the sequel, Rupert of Hentzau<\/cite> (the nifty villain). I avoided reading my copy’s academic introduction until I was done the book, being well aware of the tendency of academic introducers to cheerfully spoil books left and right—but I didn’t expect it to spoil the sequel, too. Hmmph.<\/p>\n

[Both The Prisoner of Zenda<\/cite> and Rupert of Hentzau<\/cite> are in the public domain and can be found online in a number of places, such as at the Literature Network<\/a>.]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

After finishing The Phoenix Guards, I was in a bit of a fix as to what to read next. I wouldn’t be able to get my hands on a copy of its sequel, Five Hundred Years After, until the weekend; the same for Swordspoint or anything else I could think of that might scratch the … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Hope, Anthony: Prisoner of Zenda, The”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48,78],"tags":[245],"class_list":["post-105","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-general-fiction","tag-hope-anthony"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/105","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=105"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/105\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=105"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=105"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=105"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}