strange and random happenstance

Enola Holmes and the Boy in Buttons by Nancy Springer
Published by: Wednesday Books
Publication Date: June 22nd, 2021
Format: Kindle, 21 Pages
Rating: ★★★★★
To Buy

Joddy is the boy in buttons. The jolly little urchin dressed up at the office door. There to greet Enola and run whatever small errands she needs tending to. He's sweet and overly differential. He's a constant in Enola's changing life as she no longer has to go to work in disguise. She's taking classes and expanding her mind with education. In other words, her brothers are now on her side and not trying to hunt her down. But Enola does have a hunt on the horizon. Joddy takes ill and Enola sends him home. But his family is so desperate for money that they can't afford for Joddy to miss a day of work, so they send his younger brother Paddy in his place. The uniform is ridiculously big on him, but Enola is game. If this little one wants to work her door, more power to him. But the next day he doesn't show up and Enola is worried. She decides to go looking for Paddy. She never realized how far Joddy walked every single day for a steady paycheck. This makes Enola's heart ache and her need to find Paddy even more desperate. But when she finds just the buttons, torn off from his uniform she is very concerned. If anything happens to him this is her fault. Paddy will be found if it's the last thing she does.

This short story is a wonderful dip back into the world of Enola Holmes before the first new book in over a decade came out. It reintroduces us to favorite characters and shows us what Enola has been getting up to. But what I really loved is that this story connected back to that which really turned me into a Victorian nut, Michael Crichton's The Great Train Robbery. That book made me wild for anything Victorian. I admit now that it's not the best of Crichton's books. In fact the movie, also done by Crichton, is far better. But I loved all the weird little Victorian details I learned about, in particular the importance of a snakesman. As Urban Dictionary puts it, mentioning Clean Willy from the book I might add as the exemplifier, a snakesman is a "person of the criminal sort adept at finding his or her way into or out of a building. Usually someone of small stature able to fit through tight places." So wouldn't a small child be the best snakesman out there? Stands to reason.... So long as that child plays ball and is willing to be a criminal.... And that's why this short story was so great, it went in an entirely different direction than I thought it would but was still wonderfully Victorian to me.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Adaptation, Child, Criminal, Enola Holmes, Enola Holmes and the Boy in Buttons, Joddy, London, Michael Crichton, Movie, Paddy, Poverty, Sherlocked, Snakesman, The Great Train Robbery, Uniform, Urban Dictionary

The Dark Days Club by Alison Goodman
Published by: Speak
Publication Date: December 14th, 2015
Format: Paperback, 544 Pages
Rating: ★★★★★
To Buy

When Lady Helen Wrexhall's parents died she thought that would be the biggest upset to her life. Her and her brother became orphans on the suffrage of their Aunt and Uncle Pennworth and life moved on. On the eve of her presentation to the Queen, Lady Helen assumed the only stumbling block to making a good match and avoiding a scene in front of royalty would be the lingering scandal of being the daughter of Lady Catherine, the Countess of Hayden, a traitor to the crown, but she was wrong. Lady Helen's life is about to change irrevocably and the only hint she has is her friend Delia Cransdon being ruined. Helen has always had an uncanny knack of reading people and she knows her Aunt Leonore is hiding something from her. Because the story will be the talk of the town Aunt Leonore agrees to tell everything to Helen as a warning and also because she has a love for the dramatic and Gothic. After two unsuccessful seasons Delia ran off with a man named Trent three days prior. Instead of heading to Scotland and an elopement, they were found in Sussex. Mr. Trent shot himself in the head and as he died, according to a groom from a nearby public house, he was lit from within. Mr. Trent must have been a ghoul to leave poor Delia ruined and covered in his blood.

Helen's first instinct is to rush to Delia's side but her Aunt makes it very clear that all of society has cut poor Delia and that Pennworth in particular will have no whiff of anything untoward happening to Helen. So Helen must go forward with her plans for the season. Presentations and balls and card parties and calling on friends, all while forsaking a dear friend for the sake of respectability. Yet her Uncle Pennworth has a secret, his side of the family also has a notorious member, Lord Carlston, who fled England three years prior because he was accused of murdering his wife. The fact that her body was never found didn't much matter to society. On the day of her presentation Lady Helen and Lord Carlston's paths will cross and he will take something very precious from her, a portrait of her mother, a portrait she foolishly brought to court because who brings the picture of a traitor when being presented to the Queen? Yet the Queen hints that perhaps all of society is wrong about Lady Catherine. There are so many questions swirling about in Helen's mind she soon realizes that the only one who might have any answers is Lord Carlston. As the two get to know each other she realizes the world is full of monsters and she was put on earth to destroy them. But will her destiny destroy her future?

The way the magic systems work in the Regency Magic genre can be broadly placed in three categories. The first and most common is that everyone knows about magic. Magic is a part of everyday life and it's just accepted and we get on with our story. The second is that the knowledge of magic is held by a select few, sometimes secret societies, sometimes families, but our heroine, and let me here point out that in Regency Magic it is almost always a heroine, is already in the know but gets drawn further into the magical world over the course of her story. The third and rarest category is the one in which our heroine is completely oblivious to magic and is thrust into this new world with no prerequisite knowledge and has to learn everything. The Dark Days Club falls into this rarefied third category and it made me giddy. Over the years of devouring books written in the Regency Magic genre it's very rare that a book or series feels fresh. They are usually just reassembling the same building blocks into a new and lovely picture, but it's still the basic building blocks. Here though I felt revitalized! Here was something new! Instead of being annoyed reading exposition about the already known magical system here we were on the journey with Helen learning all about Deceivers and Reclaimers and it made the book that much more visceral a read.

Alison Goodman doubled down on the originality in that instead of going to the fairy standby she chose a different path. Again, not that I have anything against fairies, with the time period they make sense with the romanticizing of the time period, but sometimes it's nice to not have fairies if you know what I mean. The Dark Days Club is far more demonic. This is why I really loved this book, it was Regency Buffy the Vampire Slayer. And if you're not rushing to the bookstore to pick this series up with that one sentence, I'm sorry, but I don't think we can be friends. Helen becomes a chosen one, she's a Reclaimer, like her mother before her, that has been gifted with supernatural powers, such as increased strength and hearing, and that habit of her of reading people? Well that would be so she can figure out what people are really Deceivers in disguise. Because Deceivers are the name given to the four kinds of demons in Helen's world. And what I really think is clever about naming them Deceivers is that it ties back into the Prince of Darkness, Satan himself, the Prince of Lies, the Great Deceiver himself! There's just so much more at stake when the upcoming war of good versus evil isn't again Napoleon or some fairies but is against the very denizens of hell.

This willingness to embrace the darkness of the Regency period is what sets this book completely apart from all other books I've read in this genre. When people think of the Regency period they think of Jane Austen whose writing has a universality to it. Yet to me sometimes making a book precisely about the time period is even more of an escape. And instead of just sticking to the broad strokes most authors do, such as Napoleon, with a few daring to expand to the social unrest of the time, we get specificity for 1812. We get to see the social unrest through the Luddite riots in the north, we see the dark underbelly of Regency England, we see the pee cups that girls about to be presented used behind screens at court when they were about to be presented to the Queen. And seriously, those pee cups answered a lot of questions I've had over the years wondering if people just had larger bladders in the 1800s... because me and that pee cup would have become very good friends what with my nerves. Though for me the part that had me wringing my hands with almost maniacal glee was the inclusion of the Ratcliff Highway Murders. These gruesome real life crimes have captivated people from those like Helen and possibly even Jane Austen herself who would have devoured the tale in the penny press to mystery writer P.D. James who wrote about them in The Maul and the Pear Tree. And as I'm sure you know, I love me a good true crime. This combination of fantasy and reality is what really sets The Dark Days Club apart.

Yet none of this would matter if the book didn't have characters we love and hate. Despite the fact I could probably rage against Helen's Uncle Pennworth for hours I will instead concentrate on my favorite character, Helen's lady's maid, Darby. Darby is the heart of this book. Not only does she ground the narrative for us readers by asking the questions of Lady Helen we would as if we were in her shoes, such as are Lady Helen's powers evil, but she drives the narrative with her coming to terms with this new world order. For Darby it all starts out small, worrying about one of the house maids who has gone missing, and this one question, this one small investigation, catapults her and Lady Helen into this new world. What's more, once a part of this world she doesn't question the rightness of it. For every Reclaimer, they have an assistant they share their powers with, their Terrene. This person grounds them, quite literally, and that is what I connect to with Darby. She is so practical, so down-to-earth, that she is the perfect sidekick, companion, Terrene, to Lady Helen. Plus her tendre that she develops for Lord Carlston's Terrene Quinn, for me, this is the true love story of the book. Not Helen and her choosing between Lord Carlston and her brother's best friend the Duke, it's all about Darby and Quinn, two people whose place in life might have precluded finding love.

Finally though I have to go a little off book, well not so much off book as to another book... Michael Crichton's The Great Train Robbery to be precise. This book holds a special place in my heart because my binge of Michael Crichton's oeuvre is really what made me the reader I am today. There are so many memorable scenes in that book that were later brought to life in Crichton's own adaptation starring Sean Connery that I will forever think of them as the pinnacle of a successful action sequence. One such scene that worked just as successfully on the page as on the screen is when our delightful villains have to break a snakesman out of Newgate Prison using a public hanging as distraction. This scene is a scene that I don't think will ever leave me for how taunt if made every nerve in my body. Therefore I was very excited when the action of The Dark Days Club took us to a public hanging at Newgate Prison, and not just a fictional hanging, but the execution of John Bellingham who had assassinated the Prime Minster Spencer Perceval. This melding of reality and fiction was just perfect and the taut action took me right back to the time when I first read The Great Train Robbery. The crush of the crowd, the frenzy, the mania, all of it came together perfectly to not only make me remember why I love reading so much but why I love this book so much. I seriously can not wait for the next installment!

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Alison Goodman, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Deceivers, Demons, Lady Helen, Michael Crichton, P.D. James, Ratcliff Highway Murders, Reclaimers, Regency Magic, The Dark Days Club, The Great Train Robbery, True Crime

The Great Train Robbery
Based on the book by Michael Crichton
Starring: Sean Connery, Donald Sutherland, Lesley-Anne Down, Alan Webb, Malcolm Terris, Robert Lang, Michael Elphick, Wayne Sleep, Pamela Salem, Gabrielle Lloyd, George Downing, and James Cossins
Release Date: February 2nd, 1979
Rating: ★★★★
To Buy

Edward Pierce is planning to steal the Crimean Gold shipment. Despite the need of finding and duplicating four keys to get into the two Chubb safes on the London to Folkestone train, the true challenge is that no one has ever stolen anything from a moving train. With the help of his old friend and screwsman Agar and his lady Miriam, they slowly acquire the knowledge of the keys locations and plan on how to copy them. Pierce is willing to go to any length; be it pimping out Miriam, seducing spinsters, betting on dogs in ratting matches, breaking men out of Newgate prison, dead cats, house breaking, and murder, nothing will stop Pierce succeeding in his quest for the gold. Whatever obstacle that is thrown in his path he will find some way to circumvent or eliminate it. The Police themselves couldn't stop this even if they tried, and they have tried; because as Pierce said at his trial, "I wanted the money."

Because of the success of Jurassic Park in the early nineties, most of the adaptations of Crichton's books occurred after that milestone. Crichton's back catalog was rife for the plundering in the hopes of finding the next big hit. The sad fact is Jurassic Park was a bit of an anomaly, with the quality of the adaptations and their box office revenue steeply declining. Every one of the adaptations was trying to emulate the success of Jurassic Park and this often led to absurd additions and bad robotic apes. The adaptations rarely stayed true to the books which made my discovery of The Great Train Robbery that much more exciting. I would in fact go so far as to say of all the Crichton adaptations this captures the book it's based on best while translating it to another medium. This should be of little surprise because Crichton wrote the screenplay and directed it as well, but sometimes it is amazing how blind authors are to creating the best movie versus slavishly sticking to their book. But beyond all that, The Great Train Robbery doesn't feel as if it was made to be a blockbuster, it was made to be a great film and because quality was chosen over kitsch it stands up over time.

What I love about The Great Train Robbery is that an American writer was somehow able to make a quintessentially British Film. Yes, a great deal has to do with the casting, but it goes beyond that. The pace, the sets, the dialogue, the very fiber of the film exudes England. Perhaps this is why the movie works? I've never really thought about this, but the majority of Crichton's films are so American in their way, in other words, out to get the big bucks. The truth is that America doesn't hold the exclusive rights to making movies, despite how much Hollywood might control the global marketplace. Some of the best films, the films of truly high quality, come from outside the system. Now, I wouldn't quality this film as art house cinema, because it doesn't have that feel. But does anyone else find it weird that in this day and age art house cinema is coming to mean more and more a quality film versus something with superheroes? So, if we go by that definition, yes, it is art house. It's unabashedly British with true quality and with a quirky vibe reminiscent of Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory and I loved every minute of it.

There is a truth universal to my life and that is British films of the 60s and 70s are a comfort to me. Being raised in the 80s I spent my Sundays with my grandparents watching British television shows and movies from the previous decades on PBS. My parents raised me on movies like The Wrong Box and instilled in me a love of Upstairs, Downstairs. All these shows had a distinct look, a way that they denoted the Victorian time period, with bright colors and garish wallpaper patterns. Just from set design you can pick out a British film of this time period with relative ease. In fact, when did we decide, as a collective whole, that the Victorian period was more sedate? Did the love of pastels in the eighties make us forget that just maybe the seventies color schemes were right and that maybe, just maybe, movies like The Great Train Robbery depicted this bygone age better? Whatever the cause for the change, when I see these colors on screen I'm a little kid again sitting around working on puzzles of Victorian Dollhouses and all is right in the world. It's like a happy pill or a sedative, just start playing the fun music and look at the wallpaper and contentedly sigh.

The one thing that Crichton did do in his adaptation is that instead of doing a serious heist he went for more the comedy/farce angle and I think this really pays off. There's an infectious joy that permeates the film which is completely captured in Sean Connery's roguish grins. This movie shares a spirit animal with The Wrong Box and has the madcap zaniness that is the hallmark of the best British films of this time period. The only thing I do question though is sometimes Crichton's overt us of sexual innuendos falls horrendously flat. The young Mrs. Trent flirting with Connery as Pierce works to an extent because her character is obviously a woman of the world trapped in a loveless marriage. But it's the subtler "bolts" and "screws" while talking about the faux ruin that works, when erections come into it, that's a shade too far. I like that the film doesn't desexualize Victorians as has happened over time, but talk of the train heist arousing Connery more then his paramour... a shade too far.

Though the truth is everything in this films comes down to Sean Connery. And in particular Sean Connery on that train. More and more films don't allow their stars to do stunts. Usually its insurance related. But the sad fact is that this takes something away from the film. Whether it's the bad body double in a loose wig or just a shot where you can obviously see it's not the actor, something is lost. Films are stories that rely on a suspension of disbelief on our part and gaffs with stuntmen and women take us out of the story. Even recently watching the new version of Far from the Madding Crowd I was distracted whenever the camera zoomed out to show Bathsheba riding her horse along the clifftops. It was clearly not Carey Mulligan. And this little slice of reality came in and took away some of the magic of the film. Let's then look to the awesomeness of Sean Connery. The character of Pierce, for obvious dramatic reasons versus the more practical reason of a lock on the outside of the guard van, has to go along the top of a moving train. Connery did this. Sean Connery ran along the top of a moving train! It doesn't get more badass then that! Come for the comedy, stay for Sean Connery proving that even if his name isn't Bond anymore, he's still just as badass as Bond.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: 70s, Adaptation, British Cinema, Far from the Madding Crowd, Heist, Jurassic Park, Michael Crichton, Sean Connery, Stunts, The Great Train Robbery, The Wrong Box, Trains, Upstairs Downstairs, Victorian, Willy Wonka

The Great Train Robbery by Michael Crichton
Published by: Dell
Publication Date: May, 1975
Format: Paperback, 266 Pages
Rating: ★★
To Buy (different edition than one reviewed)

Edward Pierce plans to steal the Crimean Gold shipment. This won't be an easy heist. Firstly, he plans to steal the gold from a moving train. Secondly the gold is in two Chubb safes requiring two keys each, for a total of four keys needed. Thirdly, he doesn't know where the four keys are located. Finally, he is willing to take his time to get it right, meaning it's more then a year till he will see the gold and there is a lot of outlay of cash in the meantime to get the right people for the job and to keep them in silent ignorance. With his screwsman Agar ready to copy the keys they set about finding their marks. Two of the keys are held in the railway office, which will be a problem in itself, and the other two are held by men who work for the bank and these are their marks. Even if they succeed in getting all the keys copied and getting them all to work, a year is a long time and changes might happen to the accepted routine of the gold shipment. There could be simple changes to the timetable, or there could be massive changes, like the safes being overhauled. And even if they get away with it, whose to say they won't be eventually caught? This is an audacious scheme that could go down in history, one way or another.

If, prior to reading this book again, you were to ask me what are my top Crichton books I would have replied without hesitation, Congo, Sphere, and The Great Train Robbery. These I have gone back to again and again over the years. The Great Train Robbery easily solidified my obsession with Victorian England and set me on the path to a historical fiction addiction that has never let up. I remember it as an action packed thrill ride with just the right amount of historical context. This is not a phrase I would use anymore. The book hasn't changed in these intervening years, but I have. My reading tastes have expanded and been refined and what was once a thrilling read came across as disjointed and almost laborious. The best example I have by way of comparison is when I re-read all of Jane Austen's books. I had a very distinct hierarchy that was blown to bits when I picked them up again. Northanger Abbey surged from last place to be near the top, whereas Mansfield Park declined. But there was no more precipitous a decline then Emma. Ranking in the top three Emma became my most hated of all Austen, her behavior, while amusing and laudable to a teenager, annoyed the heck out me the more "grown up" me. The Great Train Robbery is the Emma of Crichton; oh how far it has fallen.

When I was younger I was very gullible when it came to books, which is very odd when you realize what a skeptic I am in regard to everything else. But if a book said it was "true" I believed it. Therefore when William Goldman said that his book, The Princess Bride, was an abridgement of the book of the same title by S. Morgenstern I believed it. In fact I spent probably a good few years annoying people in my belief and my desire to get a hold of the "real" book as I saw it. Yes, this might be naive, but what can I say, I was a teenager without the vast resources of the Internet. Therefore it was a logical conclusion that I assumed The Great Train Robbery with Crichton's desire to always make his books "real" actually happened. I was totally flummoxed that the only "Great Train Robbery" happened in 1963. I was convinced this couldn't be right. Thankfully I have been redeemed a bit in this belief by finding out that there was the "Great Gold Robbery" that Crichton based his book on, so I was partially right. Why I felt the need to have this truth I don't know, but it made the book something more to me.

The facts and figures that are sprinkled throughout the book lend veracity to it. When I first read The Great Train Robbery it was my first book that presented history in an approachable manner. I learned more truths then most textbooks print, and that might be why I so wanted the heist to be real; the glamor of a story provides a more interesting world any day. But re-reading it all these facts and figures actually don't lend themselves to the narrative. They might have educated me at one time by now all they do is interrupt the narrative flow. As for the narrative itself? Well, there isn't that much story, which the facts and figures do a good job of disguising. Also, what I found very aggravating this time around was that so much of the "history" and the "commentary" went beyond the timeline of the heist, aka 1854-1857. The book references events, periodicals, and statistics so far in the future, some more then a hundred years in the future, that it lacks the feeling of "now" and makes it more academic. Crichton has always had a problem balancing narrative with an overabundance of facts. In the middle of his career he seemed to find a happy medium, but at the beginning and again at the end of his career he let the research overpower the narrative and us readers are left feeling bored waiting for the story to resume.

What I found most annoying though was Crichton's desire to use the argot of the time. But instead of lending character and flavor to the book he seems to be using it to purposefully obfuscate the story. The language at times gets so bad that characters don't understand each other and what they say has to be translated. Say what? If your own characters don't understand each other then how does the story work exactly? How am I to understand what they are saying? Everything needs to be explained and this makes the narrative, what there is in between the plethora of facts, even more clunky. The only reason I can think for Crichton to do this was that the historian in him took over. He had all this vast research of facts and figures that he kept throwing into the heist narrative he obviously must have had reams of research as to the argot of the criminals living in The Holy Land. So instead of dumbing the book down to make it palatable, ie legible, he made the language 100% realistic and decided that either he would explain it or just leave his readers muddled. As someone who reads a lot of books with slang and argot, I have to say he really let the ball drop on this one. It doesn't work, and hence The Great Train Robbery's swift decline in my definitive ranking of his books.

But there's also a part of me that wonders, was the book Crichton's end goal for this story? He was already doing films at this time. In 1973, two years before this book came out, he wrote and directed Westworld. The rights to The Great Train Robbery were bought right when the book came out. Within three years the movie was already in pre-production with Sean Connery attached. Crichton would eventually direct it and it would be released in 1979. If you look at the book not as a book but as a treatment for a film it makes far more sense. The narrative, minus all the extraneous historical details, is a quick, fast, and fun heist. But in order to translate it from page to screen you would need to know all these extraneous historical details in order to capture the time period just right. Yes, the details lend reality to the book, but as they are presented in the book they don't work. If Crichton had wanted to write the best book he could there would have been more integration, more cohesion. BUT if he was looking towards another medium as the end goal? Why bother? Just lay the facts out, have the narrative interspersed, and wait for the time for the film to be made. This theory makes sense of the book in my mind. It also makes me very excited to watch the movie again to see if this theory of mine holds up...

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Argot, Congo, Crichton Celebration, Emma, Heist, Historical Fiction, Jane Austen, Michael Crichton, Movie, Sean Connery, Sphere, The Great Train Robbery, The Princess Bride, Victorian, Westworld, William Goldman

Valour and Vanity by Mary Robinette Kowal
ARC Provided by the Author
Published by: Tor Books
Publication Date: April 29th, 2014
Format: Hardcover, 320 Pages
Rating: ★★★★★
To Buy

Jane and Vincent have been accompanying Melody and her new husband on their wedding tour of the continent. Leaving the newlyweds at Trieste, Jane and Vincent take ship to Murano. Lord Byron has given the Vincents an open invitation to visit him in Venice, which is a nice cover for what they plan to do in Murano. They have long wanted to visit the famed glassmakers there after their discovery about weaving magic into glass to make it portable and not tethered to the earth in a fixed locale. The couple hope that with improved techniques and materials they can get reliable results. Yet as Napoleon rallied and invaded Belgium when they were first experimenting with this idea, they are once again derailed by outside influences.

This time they are set upon by pirates who, while ransoming them and hence not enslaving them, take all their possessions and leave Vincent with a nasty concussion. Finding Byron away from home they are struck with the realization that they are destitute. A kind man from the infamous boat journey takes them in and gives them everything they could need till either Byron returns or they are able to alert their families. Only sometimes kind men have ulterior motives and the Vincents could be in far more trouble then they could even guess. In fact pirates might be a welcome relief. Just don't tell Jane's mother about the pirates, she'll never forgive Vincent.

There are few authors out there which I will drop everything for. Phone calls go unanswered, emails pile up, work deadlines get stretched to breaking point. If it wasn't for the fact that food keeps me going and therefore keeps me reading I don't think I would remember to eat. Even on a re-read of these books I have found myself reverting to these habits that are usually only employed when I first hold the book in my hands. My love of these books has grown and developed over time, much like the books themselves. They are no longer just Jane Austen fanfic with magic, they're so much more! The books are part history, part fantasy, part alternate reality, there's just so much to love about them that I really can't stress enough that you should go out right now and get yourself all the books, because the first won't be enough.

So what keeps me coming back to Mary's series, seeing as I have just devoured the first four books in quick succession yet again? Aside from the fact that I love anything Regency (ahem Regency Magic) and Mary captures the feeling of the time period by sprinkling in historic details without inundating us with information, she has created a world where the magic just works. I'm not talking about works as in you say a spell and wow a light goes on, or even that it's successful in that something magical happens, I'm saying in the way she has created how magic is done just makes sense. The way magic resides in the ether out of the visible range and is brought forth and woven into something visible, either temporary or lasting, just works, it makes sense. Add to that the manipulation of ether outside the visible spectrum, such as cold and hot, as being dangerous, and the system just clicks into place.

As an artist myself, the way you think creatively, the way work takes a toll on you physically and mentally, Mary just nails it. While Jane would blush if I went into specifics, the issue with her "flower" I totally get. There is such a simpatico going on between me and Jane with our feelings and our physical beings that I am right there with her every step of the way. While yes, there is this part of me going, Jane is me, there's a happier part of me going Jane is Jane. She is an amazing heroine, she doesn't just have a spine, she has spine enough for both her and Vincent, supporting them through their trials and hardships, making plans, taking names, befriending nuns, it's just perfect.

And those hardships. Mary perfectly captures the day to day struggle of someone who once didn't have to worry about where the next meal will come from. The shame of being less then you were and being indebted to others and having your name sullied. Wondering if there will be shelter, if there will be food, if you will be warm. Valour and Vanity shows the flip side of Regency life. It's not all ballrooms and magic, it can be working on the street in danger of fainting just hoping to bring money home for some food or wood for the fire. And the scene where Jane buys a bar of soap. The fact that a bar of soap can be such a luxury and such a source of contention. But I can say, there is something so amazing that something as small as a little bar of soap that can subtly change your outlook. But I do also look at Jane's life and think, I am glad I grew up knowing how to cook and clean. There can be something said for self-reliance.

Now speaking of those nuns... they are just one of the many aspects that made this book so awesome. The blurbs comparing this installment to Ocean's Eleven aren't wrong. Only I would personally choose Ocean's Twelve, having seen it twice in theatres it's a better movie for many reasons; it has an awesome soundtrack, has a part in Italy, I believe even in Venice, has an amazing Chachi joke, makes more fun of itself with meta humor, and has Eddie Izzard. Here we have glamourists, nuns, pirates, puppet shows, disguises, the Eleventh Doctor, breaking and entering, there is just so much awesome that it's hard to pinpoint what makes it work so well unless you count the fact that everything works so seamlessly together.

The thing I found interesting is you don't really think of heists starting before this past century. Sure there were pirates and brigands and all number of baddies who did all number of innumerable nasty things, but the heist feels like a more modern invention. In fact the definition of heist shows the word being an Americanism from the twenties and even references cars to define it. Aside from Michael Crichton's The Great Train Robbery, while being Victorian in conceit, but still very much a product of the seventies, I can't think of a successful book that combines a 19th century setting with an elaborate heist. For this alone Valour and Vanity should be held extraordinary and a must read, if not for every other reason I mentioned. Oh, and of course, me being a pusher for this series. Go on! You know you want to read it...

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Byron, Eddie Izzard, Glamour, Heist, Jane Austen, Magic, Mary Robinette Kowal, Michael Crichton, Nuns, Ocean's Eleven, Regency Magic, The Great Train Robbery, Valour and Vanity, Venice

Valour and Vanity by Mary Robinette Kowal
ARC Provided by the Author
Published by: Tor Books
Publication Date: April 29th, 2014
Format: Hardcover, 320 Pages
Rating: ★★★★★
To Buy

Jane and Vincent have been accompanying Melody and her new husband on their wedding tour of the continent. Leaving the newlyweds with their parents, Jane and Vincent head to Murano. Lord Byron has given the Vincents an open invitation to visit him in Venice, which is a nice cover for what they what to do in Murano. They have long wanted to visit the famed glassmakers there after their discovery about weaving magic into glass to make it portable and not tethered to the earth. The couple hope that with improved techniques they can get reliable results. Yet as Napoleon rallied and invaded Belgium when they were first experimenting with this idea, they are this time set upon by pirates who, while ransoming them and hence not enslaving them, take all their possessions and leave Vincent with a nasty concussion. Finding Byron away from home they are destitute. A kind man takes them in and gives them everything they could need till either Byron returns or they are able to alert their families. Only, sometimes kind men have ulterior motives and the Vincents could be in far more trouble then they could even guess. In fact pirates might be a welcome relief.

There are few authors out there which I will drop everything for. Anything other then reading their newest book is considered nonessential. Phone calls go unanswered, emails pile up, work deadlines get stretched to breaking point. If it wasn't for the fact that food keeps me going and therefore keeps me reading I don't think I would remember to eat. Mary Robinette Kowal has become such an author for me. What began as a strong like has developed into a deep love with her Glamourist Histories. Any chance I get I'm recommending them to people and have so far converted quite a few of my bookish friends. My goal is for complete conversion (say it in a scary cyberman-esque voice). I think this goal is possible based on how these books have grown and developed over time. They are no longer just Jane Austen fanfic with magic, they're so much more! The books are part history, part fantasy, part alternate reality, there's just so much to love about them that I really can't stress enough that you should go out right now and get yourself all the books currently available, because the first won't be enough.

But what is wonderful about Mary Robinette Kowal beyond her writing is that she interacts with her fanbase and while still maintaining the proper author reader relationship she opens up her writing and her process to her readers, giving them a glimpse behind the curtain. In this day and age if an author wants to create a lasting impression on a reader and fortify her following they couldn't do better then to emulate Mary. Back in November I was beyond thrilled because for NaNoWriMo Mary was looking for Alpha readers for the fifth installment of The Glamourist Histories currently titled Of Noble Family. I was doing little dances of joy when I was approved, but more then that, because I had read the series all along Mary included a copy of the forth book, Valour and Vanity. She sent me the email on November 14th and by November 17th I had already devoured every single line. I didn't think that she could surpass my love of Glamour in Glass, which is the second book in the series and my number one read of 2012, but I think she might have. The only problem I faced was that getting to read the next book, Of Noble Family, in installments wouldn't really work for my voracious appetite. So, showing amazing fortitude, if I do say so myself, I waited until the start of the Beta read and over another long weekend I took it all in.

So why you're asking am I so enamoured of these books? Aside from the fact that I love anything Regency and Mary captures the feeling of the time period by sprinkling in historic details without inundating us with information, she has created a world where the magic just works. I'm not talking about works as in you say a spell and wow a light goes on, or even that it's successful in that something magical happens, I'm saying in the way she has created how magic is done just makes sense. The way magic resides in the ether out of the visible range and is brought forth and woven into something visible, either temporary or lasting, just works, it makes sense. Not just that, but as an artist myself, the way you think creatively, the way work takes a toll on you physically and mentally, Mary just nails it. There is such a simpatico going on between me and Jane with our feelings and our physical beings that I am right there with her every step of the way. While yes, there is this part of me going, Jane is me, there's a happier part of me going Jane is Jane. In the previous book, Without a Summer, I felt that Jane's voice was lost a little. She became more wishy-washy. She was constantly in doubt and lacked a spine. Here she doesn't just have a spine, she has spine enough for both her and Vincent, supporting them through their trials and hardships, making plans, taking names, befriending nuns, it's just perfect.

Speaking of those nuns... they are just one of the many aspects that made this book so awesome. The blurbs comparing this new installment to Ocean's Eleven aren't wrong. Only I would personally choose Ocean's Twelve, having seen it twice in theatres it's a better movie for many reasons; it has an awesome soundtrack, has a part in Italy, has an amazing Chachi joke, makes more fun of itself with meta humor, and has Eddie Izzard. Here we have glamourists, nuns, pirates, puppet shows, disguises, the Eleventh Doctor, breaking and entering, there is just so much awesome that it's hard to pinpoint what makes it work so well unless you count the fact that everything works so seamlessly together. The thing is you don't really think of heists starting before this past century. Sure their were pirates and brigands and all number of baddies who did all number of innumerable nasty things, but the heist feels like a more modern invention. In fact the definition of heist shows the word being an Americanism from the twenties and even references cars to define it. Aside from Michael Crichton's The Great Train Robbery, while being Victorian in conceit, but still very much a product of the seventies, I can't think of a successful book that combines a 19th century setting with an elaborate heist. For this alone Valour and Vanity should be held extraordinary and a must read, if not for every other reason I mentioned. Oh, and of course, me being a pusher for this series. Go on! You know you want to read it...

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Byron, Eddie Izzard, Glamour, Glamour in Glass, Jane Austen, Magic, Mary Robinette Kowal, Michael Crichton, NaNoWriMo, Ocean's Eleven, Of Noble Family, The Great Train Robbery, Valour and Vanity, Without a Summer

Pirate Latitudes by Michael Crichton
Published by: Harper
Publication Date: November 24th, 2009
Format: Hardcover, 320 Pages
To Buy

The official patter:
"From one of the best-loved authors of all time comes an irresistible adventure of swashbuckling pirates in the New World, a classic story of treasure and betrayal.

The Caribbean, 1665. A remote colony of the English Crown, the island of Jamaica holds out against the vast supremacy of the Spanish empire. Port Royal, its capital, is a cutthroat town of taverns, grog shops, and bawdy houses.

In this steamy climate there's a living to be made, a living that can end swiftly by disease—or by dagger. For Captain Charles Hunter, gold in Spanish hands is gold for the taking, and the law of the land rests with those ruthless enough to make it.

Word in port is that the galleon El Trinidad, fresh from New Spain, is awaiting repairs in a nearby harbor. Heavily fortified, the impregnable harbor is guarded by the bloodthirsty Cazalla, a favorite commander of the Spanish king himself. With backing from a powerful ally, Hunter assembles a crew of ruffians to infiltrate the enemy outpost and commandeer El Trinidad, along with its fortune in Spanish gold. The raid is as perilous as the bloodiest tales of island legend, and Hunter will lose more than one man before he even sets foot on foreign shores, where dense jungle and the firepower of Spanish infantry stand between him and the treasure. . . .

Pirate Latitudes is Michael Crichton at his best: a rollicking adventure tale pulsing with relentless action, crackling atmosphere, and heart-pounding suspense."

So, despite being surrounded by friends who dislike him, I must proudly say, I love Michael Crichton! He is one of the reasons I became such a bibliomanic... instantly devouring his whole back catalog once I was able to find all the books (Electronic Life being the one that was elusive for so long, but an old computer manual does not a trilling book make). Anyway, this book was found on his computer after his sudden death from Cancer. No one knows when it was written, but I don't care really! It's a new Crichton novel when I thought I'd never get another. Even if it's not his best it will make me fondly recall all the wonderful hours spent reading his books. Sure I haven't really loved a book of his since Prey, but when this man was on, he was on! So, in anticipation of cracking open the spine of his latest novel I bring you my favorite of his books:

5) The Lost World - Any book that starts out with the line from The Princess Bride: "He was only mostly dead" is wonderfully amusing to me. Plus, Michael wrote this for Spielberg to make a sequel for the successful Jurassic Park, and then what does Spielberg do? Not use the book at all and make a total piece of crap. Dinosaurs on the mainland? Youngish overly athletic adopted daughters? Total BS! Plus the forced watching of this by Amtrak as the only other form of entertainment besides Leave it to Beaver, the edited version, makes my blood boil! Yes it's been over ten years... guess what? Still bitter! Also I'm now oddly concerned that my computer has a secret agenda... why is Spielberg in the spellcheck?

4) Sphere - Creepy under water dealings with possible aliens, will keep you up late into the night to see what is going on. The movie did not do it justice.

3) Congo - Wonderfully creepy African adventure, which again was destroyed by filmmakers. Once Jurassic Park was a hit, every Crichton book was pulled off the shelf and given a make over in film, and most were horrendous. This I think was the worst. They took a logical scenario, of an ape who can learn sign language and her interpreter and made the interpreter her nanny and had her have a speaking glove! "Amy sad, Amy, Amy, crap!" (Say it in a bad femalish/childlike computer voice).

2) Travels - This non fiction book is fascinating. The best part in my mind though is his description of climbing Mount Kilimanjaro in Africa, it inspired me to maybe one day do the same. To see the curve of the Earth from solid ground, just awe inspiring.

1) The Great Train Robbery - His best movie AND book! Well, he did adapt the book himself, so no surprise there that it was therefore good. The book is just a fascinating portal into Victorian England and just an amazingly detailed plotting of a heist. Plus, awesome movie with Sean Connery, Donald Sutherland and Lesley-Anne Down. Makes all other movie heists pale in comparison!

Posted by Miss Eliza at 2:10 AM 2 comments  

Labels: Congo, Jurassic Park, Michael Crichton, Pirate Latitudes, Sphere, Spielberg, The Great Train Robbery, The Lost World, The Princess Bride, Travels, Tuesday Tomorrow

Today marks the day I've been away from my cat the longest, and in true macabre Charles Addams fashion, I thought I'd do a little something about the history of mourning. A few years ago I was in New York around the time of Halloween. I had always wanted to go to the Merchant House Museum, and yes, mainly to pretend I was in Upstairs Downstairs, seeing as the house still stands as it was back in the 19th century. But what was fortuitous was that for Halloween the house had an exhibit up on the traditions surrounding mourning in Victorian society. Because of Queen Victoria being in mourning for 40 years the Victorians developed some truly fascinating customs surrounding death, from proper behavior for women and men to clothing and even to bee keeping.

The behaviors that the bereaved were expected to participate in were delineated by your sex. Men only had to be in mourning a short amount of time, literally weeks with just a black crepe armband, so that they go off and marry again so their children wouldn't be motherless and they wouldn't be lonely. Whereas women were expected to be in mourning for two years! The first year and a day, they were in "full mourning" where you weren't allowed to mix in society and wore only black without ornamentation, the next nine months, called "second mourning," you were allowed some jewelry. The final three months you were in "half mourning" and could switch up your clothing with a little lavender and go round to your friends house and a few gatherings deemed socially appropriate. Of course this two years in mourning lead to a great demand for nice and fashionable widow's weeds, because if you are bereaved, at least look good. Also some women, like Victoria, chose to stay in mourning the rest of their lives, and what's the point of that if your clothes are hideous.

"Telling the Bees" is a tradition that is still practiced by some bee keeper's today. You had to tell your bees of the death immediately upon the passing of a family member. Sometimes there were elaborate bells you chimed as you walked out to the hives, but the important thing was that you went to them and whispered the name of the dead to them, and then tied a piece of black ribbon around the hive. If you did not do this the bees would swarm and leave. Also, oddly enough, this has been documented to happen.

Other random, bizarre and disturbing facts of the day:

There were professional mourners, those provided by the undertaker to stand about and add an air of dignity. I believe Monty Python parodied this quite well.

If you were a suicide you were to be buried at a cross roads with a stake through your heart, to stop your ghost from wondering, but smacks of vampirism to me.

Who people were depended on length of mourning, sister, brother or child. You had to mourn children the least, probably due to infant mortality of the day, because then you might be in constant mourning.

People had a great fear of being buried alive, due in fact to several real incidences. In supposedly comes the inventor Bateson. Bateson is said to have invented a belfry, that was a small bell on the top of a coffin which had a rope attached to the deceased hand, so if you were in fact still alive, just go a ring it and up you come. There is a funny scene in the movie The Great Train Robbery dealing with this.

Corpses for medical research did not legally exist at this time and the "Resurrection Men" came in to fill the void. For two guineas a cadaver of a recently deceased person could be "obtained". If you were caught exhuming a body the punishment was seven years transportation. But if the other person on your person didn't have any clothes on you were usually let off because they didn't think you'd dug them up or were apparently smart enough to just leave the clothes behind. The movie The Doctor and the Devils written by Dylan Thomas deals with this.

Oh and lets not forget photography of the day! People rarely had money to spend on pictures, so when a loved one died, they usually spent money on a picture to remember them by. So yes, those are dead people in the pictures with your ancestors. Occasionally called Post Mortum Photographs.


For more interesting information of this time period, check out the book What Jane Austen Ate and Charles Dickens Knew: From Fox Hunting to Whist - The Facts of Daily Life in 19th-Century England by Daniel Pool

Posted by Miss Eliza at 2:17 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Charles Addams, Charles Dickens, Daniel Pool, Jane Austen, Merchant House Museum, Monty Python, Mourning, Queen Victoria, Spot, The Doctor and the Devils, The Great Train Robbery