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This is one of the few cases where a condensed adaptation works better than the original novel -- "Five Red Herrings" has always been one of Sayers' most tedious detective stories, and I found this dramatization a lot more successful than my last read of the novel. (I note that they do exactly as I suggested in my original review and simply don't attempt to hide the clue about the white paint; this really doesn't give away anything about the case (Wimsey contrives to watch all the suspects painting, but doesn't mention why until his exposition at the end), while making the plot device a lot less annoying!) Even the infamous string of rival theories at the end becomes magically non-boring once you've got actual people delivering them and enthusing over them.

I did miss the scene where Gowan is revealed to be completely ridiculous in appearance without his grandiose beard (Wimsey alludes to his potentially 'looking like a skinned rabbit' after being shaved, but the dramatisation doesn't mention that this isn't a mere allusion to the lack of hair, but to his unfortunate facial features). I wasn't aware of any other missing elements, and the audio background of cars, trains, wind etc. does a good job of setting the scene. I also enjoyed the selection of period tunes on the soundtrack, many of which I recognised!
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This was billed as 'a Gothic novel' and I suppose it is. The main protagonist is a young woman who has just lost her fiancé in the Crimean War, and who is seeking to distract herself with a suitably exhausting labour; the one she takes on is the education and civilisation of a feral small boy, who happens to be the neglected heir of a horrible old aristocrat living in a crumbling and sinister mansion surrounded by overgrown woods to which local superstition attributes monsters (or at least vicious guard-dogs). Lord Stanyon was once a dissolute Regency buck, who in his crippled old age has defied his family by marrying an uneducated peasant and producing a son to spite his heirs-presumptive, but the boy --thanks as much to the equally evil manservant's malignity as to his father's scorn for his wife and child-- is not only filthy and illiterate, but half-deaf and backward in his development as a result.Read more... )
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Finally getting round to reviewing this one, which has been sitting on my bedside table waiting to be reviewed 'properly' since I finished it in June last year! I have to say I'm not sure what the significance of the title "A Fire of Driftwood" is, since it doesn't appear to refer to any of the stories in the collection -- presumably it is intended to evoke the idea of random items gathered together under the same cover?


I read this book shortly after Georgette Heyer's "Pistols for Two" and couldn't help comparing the two, in terms of both being books of short stories by authors much better known for their best-selling full-length novels. I feel that Broster definitely wins out in terms of this comparison; possibly it helps that most of the stories in this volume are not in the same genre as her better-known work, but even those which share the same themes and settings as the novels are much more successful as miniatures in their own right than I found Heyer's short stories to be. Read more... )
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I was a bit sceptical at the end of my review of "Ninth House" as to how desirable a sequel was likely to be, but I went to the trouble of seeking out a copy of "Hell Bent" and then paying repeat visits to the library until it was finally back on the shelves for me to borrow. Unfortunately, as I had feared, this book isn't nearly as successful as its predecessor; it's not *bad* as such, and as with the previous volume I consumed it more or less non-stop in a couple of days of breathless reading to find out what happened next, but on its own it definitely wouldn't have inspired me to go looking for more in the same vein.Read more... ) I'd probably still be up for a sequel to see if the author can recapture the spirit of discovery from the first book, but overall this one felt more like generic urban fantasy, and from the indications in the final chapters I'm not optimistic that a concluding trilogy volume is likely to be any less so.
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I was surprised to discover a copy of an Elizabeth Goudge book I'd never even heard of, let alone read. But I did have a suspicion that as with "The Castle on the Hill" there might be a good reason for that, and unfortunately I was right.

Read more... )
The first moment at which the book actually rang true to me wasn't until halfway through the whole thing, at the very end of Book 1, when it takes a sudden turn into horror: the agony of betrayal and the dreadful idea of possession and the past coming back to haunt you carry an actual emotional punch in the way that none of the preceding romanticised material does. And then Book 2 is like suddenly coming out of a fog; everything clicks into place as soon as we get into the 1745 story, which one suspects is the aspect the author really wanted to write in the first place. Read more... )
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This book is a prime example of what Josephine Tey memorably stigmatised as the Victorian art of "writing forsoothly" ("Friend Dickon, ye have certain matters on hand, unless I err? Well, prithee be about them incontinently. For here I be with the choice of all good company, two tough old shipmen; and till that ye return I will go warrant these brave fellows will bide here and drink me cup for cup"). The dialogue of the entire novel -- although mercifully not the surrounding narrative -- is constructed in this laboured cod-Chaucerian style, and while it's easy enough to get your eye in, provided you are already familar with this sort of language, it's pretty obvious why it fell out of fashion. Read more... )

But the adventures are thrilling, even if they are episodic in nature and rather convey the impression of having been made up with every installment. One thing that feels very realistic is the completely arbitrary nature of any York/Lancaster allegiance for most of those involved; Dick ends up fighting for the Yorkists more or less at random, having started off by following his guardian to the Lancastrian side, and by the end of the book has already had enough of battle and ambition.
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The first book of this fantasy trilogy was good but not great; this sequel still falls slightly short of 'great', but it is definitely better. I wasn't nearly so conscious of technical issues with the writing, and this volume turns out to focus directly on one of the things that had bothered me about its predecessor -- the fact that Damien supposedly serves a Church that bans the use of the fae to affect the planet, yet proceeded to spend the entire story doing just that, while the whole Church business, having been introduced at the start for local colour, was basically ignored as soon as it became inconvenient.

The entirety of "Black Sun Rising" was in effect a side-quest undertaken for motives that don't seem wholly adequate (and with various elements, like Tarrant starting to teach Ciani 'mechanical' sorcery to replace her lost inborn abilities, that don't seem to come to anything); in "True Night Falls" Damien the paladin is dealing with an actual threat to the Church he serves, even if he is doing so without the authority or permission of his superiors. And we get an insight into *why* the Church opposes the use of 'sorcery', not out of blind religious prejudice but for very practical reasons, and are given a vision of what can be achieved thereby... before Damien discovers at what cost.Read more... )
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This is... pretty good for a self-published book, but it does look and feel indefinably like a self-published book. (After finishing it I looked up "Godstow Press", and it is indeed owned by the author, which confirmed the impression I'd had from the moment I first picked it up. )

The protagonist, Togidubnus, is a man caught between two cultures, the son of a British client king who was sent off in childhood to be brought up in Rome as a hostage with the promise that he would become a proper Roman citizen. Conveniently for the historical narrative he rubs shoulders with Seneca, Claudius and Vespasian, beds Messalina (about whom the author appears uncertain whether she ought to be revisionist or not) and is then sent back to Britain with the mission to persuade the local rulers to surrender to Claudius' intended invasion without a fight. He has before him the example of Vespasian, who comes from thoroughly Romanised Iberian stock, and the dubious example of his Gaullish grandfather, who may or may not have betrayed both sides according to whose bards you listen to.Read more... )
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Sabatini's books tend to fare better on screen than on the page, but it has been sufficiently long now since I saw "Scaramouche" -- which enchanted me on first viewing -- that I have forgiven the original novel for not being the novelisation of it that I had at that time expected.Read more... )This is not the story of a young man who seeks out the best swordsman in France so that he can learn to defeat his mortal enemy in a duel (although ironically enough this is pretty much precisely the tale that Moreau spins when seeking employment with a fencing-master to save himself from destitution!) It's not a sparkling romp that culminates in a dramatic duel in the theatre. It's a rueful tale of fate and estrangement and family.
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Judith lives in a dismal industrial town as a member of an apocalyptic cult, but that is the least of her problems. She is being bullied at school, her father doesn't seem to love her any more, and worst of all, when she speaks to God, God has started speaking back. And having access to divine powers, however much it may initially have seemed like the answer to her prayers, turns out to make matters much, much worse. Read more... )
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I'd told myself I wasn't going to read any more Leigh Bardugo novels after increasing disappointment with the previous ones I'd encountered; I picked this one up without noticing the author's name and was thoroughly hooked before I eventually realised that this was the same writer! [Edit: it turns out I had her confused with Laini Taylor; in my defence, there are too many authors writing YA fantasy with titles like "Shadow and Bone"/"Daughter of Smoke & Bone"...]

I really don't know very much about the American university world, so I have no idea how accurate the depiction of student life is, but the premise is an intriguing one: the famous US fraternity clubs are actual real magical fraternities Read more... )

And then there is Alex Stern, who just happens to have been born with an ability that most members of Lethe can only attain via a difficult and dangerous potion, and which is desirable enough for their purposes that they are prepared to fast-track her into Yale University despite her lack of academic qualifications (where she is now struggling to cope with her normal student workload as a result)Read more... )I liked this book a lot more than I would ever have expected, and couldn't put it down, despite its length. The world building is fascinating, at least to those who know little of American academia, and there are a lot of compelling minor characters - from the Bridegroom to grumpy Dawes and Alex's roommates - who get developed in unanticipated ways. Alex isn't a very likeable character, but then I don't think she is meant to be: the book doesn't make the mistake of demanding the readers regard her as a persecuted innocent, and she is more relatable for it. Darlington, 'the Gentleman of Lethe', is a delight, and I couldn't help sympathising with (and wincing for) Alex's chronic sleep deprivation as she keeps trying to fit two full-time sets of commitments into one while preserving her cover!

I might even seek out the sequel...
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"The Elusive Pimpernel" in an odd sense serves as a sequel in parallel to *both* the original novel "The Scarlet Pimpernel" and to its follow-up, "I Will Repay"; it is far closer to the former in setting and content, being a return to the familiar characters and tropes of the original hit, and yet the beginning of the story directly references the events of "I Will Repay", and uses Juliette Marny and her family jewels as a trigger for the main plot. Read more... ) Orczy evidently decided that Chauvelin was far too good a character to waste; it is hard not to feel a certain sympathy for him (small and slight in build, highly intelligent, isolated among his colleagues, and vulnerable not to physical danger but ridicule) and while the format of the genre means that he is always doomed to lose, one feels that this tug of appeal is almost certainly intentional on the part of the author. In the opening scene with Robespierre we are given quite a new perspective on Chauvelin, being told that he had once been part of the ruling group alongside Robespierre, but that the latter had subsequently consciously attempted to sideline him as a potential threat because he was not only "keen and clever", "trusted and respected", but "possessed all those qualities of selfless patriotism" which the other, characterised as "the most ambitious, self-seeking demagogue of his time", conspicuously lacked: in other words, Chauvelin is a danger because he genuinely embodies those virtues for which Robespierre, famously dubbed 'the sea-green Incorruptible', is known in public.
Read more... )
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I flicked through this little book in ten or fifteen minutes (I'm a speed-reader and was skimming what is already a short volume), attracted by the title, but was sufficiently struck by it to continue all the way to the end. All the stuff about "Be kind to yourself", dancing to joyful music, and "Tell yourself you are a worthwhile person even if you don't believe it" doesn't work (I don't believe that sort of thing if I hear it from someone else, so definitely don't believe it when I am myself mouthing the words and know that I am lying with cynical intent), and the advice "Don't worry about the environment, just throw everything away, use disposables if necessary and start with a clean slate" is completely impossible for me (though I can see the liberating mental effect -- and there are probably uncompleted projects that I should simply get rid of rather than vainly hoping to return to some day) But the practical advice is, much of it, practical.
Read more... )
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"Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord-- I will repay."

This book was billed in various editions as 'Further Adventures of the Scarlet Pimpernel' and 'A Scarlet Pimpernel Story', but in fact as a sequel to the enormous success of the original Scarlet Pimpernel novel it is a somewhat unexpected choice; the Scarlet Pimpernel himself has little more than a walk-on role, and the main character is an idealistic Citizen Deputy in the National Convention who is denounced to the authorities by a young aristocrat in revenge for events that had occurred before the Revolution. It's a bold development on Orczy's part, if nothing else, and I suspect may have disconcerted the contemporary audience as much as it disconcerted me when I first read it as a child, for in her next book she returns to the old set-up of Sir Percy squaring off against a returning Chauvelin in order to save the captive Marguerite. But this one is quite a departure, and I can appreciate it now more than I did on my original reading. Read more... )
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I don't normally listen to audiobooks (they are too slow a method of ingesting literature). However, this pair of cassettes were in danger of being disposed of as obsolete, so I thought I'd give them a listen first. Read more... )

I definitely recognised large chunks of this audiobook, and Hugh Laurie reads it admirably. However, overall as with most adaptations I'm left with a subsequent desire to revisit the original; one always tends to prefer the version first encountered. (It did take me years as a child to reconcile myself to the original version of "The Count of Monte-Cristo" rather than to the simplified plot of the dramatisation we had on a single LP!)
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I originally picked this book up because it promised to cover precisely the material (Royalist resistance against Napoleon between 1800 and 1802) for my current fanfic that I was having trouble sourcing much information on elsewhere. It wasn't particularly helpful in that respect, probably because there really wasn't very much useful resistance going on at that point -- but its very existence is an interesting phenomenon in itself. Unfortunately that doesn't make it a terribly good book, especially considering its inordinate length: 750 pages in paperback plus extra editorial material.

As a long-lost novel by Alexandre Dumas (Author of The Three Musketeers and The Count of Monte-Cristo! proclaims the cover) it is, I'm afraid, little more than a historical curiosity. Read more... )
The youngest survivor of an aristocratic family who were all executed in turn for their Royalist activities, Hector de Sainte-Hermine takes up the cause in his turn and sacrifices the happiness of his impending marriage to renewed hostilities against an increasingly autocratic Bonaparte. He is not, however, a particularly effective guerilla and is rapidly caught, whereupon his sole hope is to follow his brothers into death without bringing further disgrace upon his unhappy fiancée. However, Fouché, the devious minister of police, contrives instead to have him forgotten in jail and finally released once Bonaparte has become the Emperor Napoleon, by which point Hector has seen the error of his ways and consents to serve the glorious new empire, giving his loyalty to France rather than to the exiled Bourbons for whom his family sacrificed their future.

And that is basically the entire plot. The rest of the novel consists of Hector under multiple aliases travelling around the fringes of history and impressing everybody with how incredibly good he is at everything -- he is supposed to be a tragically romantic figure mourning his lost love and doing his best to get himself killed, but unlike, say, Athos, who is likewise noble, handsome, reticent about his past, and emotionally scarred, he remains very much a cipher rather than engaging the reader in any way. Read more... )
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I have very mixed feelings about this book. The premise in itself intrigued me (a parallel-universe French Revolution where magic is real and it is magicians being blamed for crop failures and strung up from lamp-posts), and the idea of a magic system based on *sorrow* is very original; it both leads to magic being associated with suffering for the user, thus making its use less inviting, and, humans being what they are, gives rise to the temptation to develop techniques for mining the suffering of other people to fuel your own power, thus giving magicians in general a bad name.Read more... )
My main gripe with it is that the book turned out to be very clearly flavoured as a 'Young Adult' novel. If you want to write Strong Independent Female Leads, the French Revolution is a pretty good place to do it, and I've read a couple of seriously good historical novels by women writers that do just that: Hilary Mantel's "A Place of Greater Safety" and Madge Pierce's "City of Darkness, City of Light". But this book simply doesn't convince on that level. Read more... )
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A brilliantly written evocation of Georgian England, London and its theatre, as could perhaps only have been achieved by an author who was also himself an actor. He writes with enormous skill and understanding, despite the challenge of portraying the talent of a comedian whose side-splitting performances were simply so topical and of their era that if quoted verbatim they are, as he acknowledges, no longer at all funny. Instead Ian Kelly manages to convey convincingly the effect they had upon Foote's contemporaries, and the performer's supreme talent as an impressionist - attending one of his hot-from-the-headlines comedy entertainments, with Foote himself playing multiple roles, must have been like an episode of "Dead Ringers" (one cultural comparison Kelly doesn't actually make, though it is very much his thesis in this book that this era saw the dawn of modern media and celebrity culture).Read more... )
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I was intrigued by the concept of this one (blurb: In the near future, a disaffected civil servant is offered a lucrative job in a mysterious new government ministry gathering 'expats' from across history to test the limits of time-travel. Her role is to work as a 'bridge': living with, assisting and monitoring the expat known as '1847' - Commander Graham Gore. As far as history is concerned, Commander Gore died on Sir John Franklin's doomed expedition to the Arctic, so he's a little disoriented to find himself alive and surrounded by outlandish concepts such as 'washing machine', 'Spotify' and 'the collapse of the British Empire'. With an appetite for discovery and a seven-a-day cigarette habit, he soon adjusts; and during a long and sultry summer he and his bridge move from awkwardness to genuine friendship, to something more. But as the true shape of the project that brought them together begins to emerge, Gore and the bridge are forced to confront their past choices and imagined futures. Can love triumph over the structures and histories that have shaped them? And how do you defy history when history is living in your house?)Read more... )

I would still rate the book as four stars out of five, because those elements in which it is really interested it does do very well, and the authorial context is irrelevant to the work itself (the recent craze for censoring works based on the perceived misdeeds of their creators leaves me completely bemused). But I'm afraid it's not as outstanding as I hoped at one point it was going to be... ultimately, I think, because the ending *ought* to be emotionally devastating and -- for me at least-- for whatever reason it just wasn't.

(Apparently the BBC is going to make it into a TV series https://www.bbc.co.uk/mediacentre/2024/the-ministry-of-time
And I shall probably watch it, just as I did watch "The Terror" -- and do genuinely prefer the fictionalised 'flashbacks' to the Franklin expedition in this book to the version in that one!)
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This book is basically "The Red Shoes" meets "A Chorus Line" or the love-child of Jackie Collins and Harold Robbins, a behind-the-scenes expose of ballet life: ambition, manipulation, back-stabbing, love affairs and friendships gone sour ... and it's really good. Read more... ) I think where it really scores, at least for me, is the three-dimensional even-handedness with which it handles the characters - the novel opens in Steph's point of view and she is probably the nearest thing we have to a main protagonist, but we get a moment of revelation where pretty much everyone is concerned in which we see the world through their eyes and understand that they are doing what seems to them the right thing where their own values are concerned.

For the older generation, there are still memories of the Nazis and the Second World War - for the very oldest, the Russian Revolution still echoes, and the lost age of Imperial ballet. Marius Volmar is a 'sacred monster' along the lines of Boris Lermontov (and very probably based on the same real-life model) who deliberately manipulates both Steph and Chris for his own ends, but he does it not because he is a sadist but in a quest to restore a long-lost Tchaikovsky ballet scene which for him is the Holy Grail, a device that in fact forms the framing structure for the entire plot. Read more... )

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