Sir Percy Leads the Band by Baroness Emmuska Orczy

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Sir Percy Leads the Band This is one of the many sequels to Baroness Orczy’s classic historical adventure novel, The Scarlet Pimpernel. The story is again set during the French Revolution and at the beginning of the novel, in January 1793, King Louis XVI of France – now known simply as Louis Capet – has been found guilty of ‘conspiring against liberty’.

With their former king sentenced to death it’s a dangerous time for the French aristocracy, and Sir Percy Blakeney and his men are in France to help the La Rodière family avoid the guillotine. Knowing that his old enemy Chauvelin will be determined to track him down, a disguise is necessary – so Sir Percy becomes the fiddle-playing leader of a disreputable band of musicians entertaining crowds of revolutionaries in a tavern near the Château de la Rodière. This means Percy and the League of the Scarlet Pimpernel are ideally placed to be able to protect the family when the mob decides to attack the Château…but could someone within the League be about to betray their plans?

After reading (and loving) The Scarlet Pimpernel last year, I wanted to try another book in the series. I wasn’t sure which one to choose as I’ve seen a few different recommended reading orders, but I decided on this one as it is set immediately after the events of The Scarlet Pimpernel. I enjoyed it but it wasn’t as good as the original book. With all the action taking place in France, this means we don’t see anything of Sir Percy’s wife, Marguerite, which I thought was a bit disappointing as their relationship had formed such a big part of the story in The Scarlet Pimpernel. Marguerite was not a particularly strong character but I connected with her more than I did with either of the two female characters in this book, Blanche Levet or Cécile de la Rodière.

We do spend a lot of time with the other men of the League of the Scarlet Pimpernel. I remembered some of them from the previous book – Lord Anthony Dewhurst, Sir Andrew Ffoulkes and Lord Hastings – but there was also one who was new to me, St John Devinne. From the start it seems that Devinne is distrusted by everyone except Sir Percy and as Percy has previously proved to be so good at judging people and situations, the reader is made to wonder who is right and who is wrong. A lot of the novel’s tension and suspense comes from waiting to see whether he is going to betray Percy and the rest of the League.

Sir Percy Leads the Band was entertaining enough but I didn’t think it was anything very special and there’s really not a lot more I can say about it! Although I didn’t like it as much as The Scarlet Pimpernel it won’t deter me from trying some of the other books in the series at some point. Maybe those of you who are Scarlet Pimpernel fans can tell me whether it’s best to continue reading the series chronologically or if there’s another order you would recommend.

War and Peace Readalong: March and April

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warandpeace2013

This year I’m taking part in a year-long group read of War and Peace, hosted by Amy and Iris. I had fallen behind with the reading in March (which is why I didn’t post an update for that month) but I managed to catch up again in April.

After struggling with February’s very war-dominated section I’m now enjoying the book again and I’m pleased that there does seem to be more balance between the war scenes and domestic scenes than I had feared at first! I also made things easier for myself this month by doing what I should probably have done from the beginning and printing off a character list to keep beside me while I read – although as I get further into the book I’m finding the number of characters less overwhelming and easier to keep track of anyway.

Book 1 Part 3

This was the section I really should have read in March. In the first half of this section we return to Russian society and rejoin some of the female characters we haven’t seen since Part 1, including Princess Helene, who marries Pierre, and poor Princess Marya, who turns down the chance of happiness for the sake of her father. In the second half we are with the army again, before and during the Battle of Austerlitz. Although I still don’t think the ‘war’ scenes of War and Peace are ever going to be my favourites, I found these easier to follow and understand than the battle scenes in Part 2 (see my comments from February). They still feel a bit chaotic and confusing, but that’s probably the point!

The most memorable parts of this section for me were Nikolai Rostov getting his first glimpse of Tsar Alexander, and Andrei Bolkonsky meeting his hero, Napoleon. The scene with Napoleon shows how we can build people up in our minds to be something they’re not, which can lead to disillusionment when we finally meet them and discover they are ordinary human beings like ourselves. In Rostov’s case the fact that he idolises the Tsar so much means that when he finally gets the chance to speak to him he is too awestruck to approach him and ends up regretting a missed opportunity.

Book 2 Parts 1 & 2

And this was April’s reading. There was a lot happening this month, including a birth, a death and a duel! With Nikolai Rostov coming home on leave, we are also reacquainted with the members of the Rostov household, including Natasha and Sonya.

From these two sections, I thought some of the scenes that stood out the most were the ones where Pierre, after leaving his wife, meets a mysterious stranger at the station and makes the decision to become a Freemason. There are a few chapters devoted to this part of the story and they had a slightly surreal, otherworldly feel in comparison to what we’ve read so far. I also thought Pierre’s discussions with Andrei were interesting, with Pierre explaining how much happier he has been since he stopped being selfish and started considering other people, and Andrei arguing that his actions could actually be making things worse rather than better.

Towards the end of this month’s reading we return to the ‘war’ when Rostov rejoins the army and feels the same joy on being welcomed back to his regiment that he felt on being welcomed home by his family. But this time, rather than facing chapter after chapter of military tactics and strategies (the reason I wasn’t enjoying the book in February) we are shown more of the human side of war, as the men begin to suffer from starvation and illness. Rostov experiences more of the disillusionment I mentioned earlier when he visits the wounded Denisov in a military hospital and is shocked by the way the patients are being treated.

I really enjoyed April’s two sections and found them surprisingly quick to get through. And we’re now 33% into the book, which is very encouraging!

Shadow on the Crown by Patricia Bracewell

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Shadow on the Crown When King Æthelred II of England loses his wife Ælfgifu, he looks across the Narrow Sea to Normandy for his next bride. Duke Richard of Normandy has two unmarried sisters and it’s the younger, fifteen-year-old Emma, who is chosen. In return, Æthelred requests that Richard closes the harbours of Normandy to Swein Forkbeard and his Vikings, the enemies of the Anglo-Saxons.

From the moment Emma arrives in England in the year 1002 and learns that her new husband has not bothered to come and meet her, she knows her marriage is not going to be a happy one. Soon Emma hears of the rumours surrounding Æthelred’s claim to the throne and the older half-brother who died under suspicious circumstances and she begins to understand that she has married a troubled, paranoid man. But dealing with her husband is not the only problem she faces; she also has to cope with the hostility of her stepsons, the æthelings (heirs to the throne) Athelstan, Ecbert and Edmund. Because she has actually been crowned Queen of England, any children of Emma’s will inherit the throne ahead of the æthelings – the children of Æthelred’s previous wife, who was never crowned.

Another person unhappy with Emma’s arrival is Elgiva, daughter of the Northumbrian ealdorman Ælfhelm, who was hoping to become Queen herself. Elgiva soon becomes one of the villains of the novel, consumed with jealousy and plotting Emma’s downfall. The only bright spot in Emma’s life is her relationship with Athelstan, the eldest ætheling, whose feelings for her are changing as he gets to know her better. But with a brutal, violent husband and a woman who will do anything to steal her crown, Emma comes to realise that the only way she will be able to wield any power is to have a child of her own as quickly as possible, a son who will be the future King of England.

I loved Shadow on the Crown. The writing is beautiful and it’s hard to believe it’s Patricia Bracewell’s first novel. It also made a nice change to find an author choosing to write about a period of history that isn’t covered in historical fiction very often. Before reading this book I had only a vague knowledge of this period and I enjoyed learning more about life in the early years of the eleventh century – an era that is fascinating to read about, but definitely not one I would have wanted to live through myself! It’s difficult to comment on the accuracy of a novel when you know so little about the period concerned but the book does include an interesting author’s note explaining which parts of the story are based on fact. Bracewell has used the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle as one of her sources and includes some excerpts throughout the novel, which adds to the feeling of authenticity.

Sometimes historical fiction can work well when it’s written in the first person but this one is written in the third person from several different viewpoints and I think it was the right decision. It allowed us to see events from more than one perspective – from Emma’s, Elgiva’s, Athelstan’s and Æthelred’s – and while I liked Emma from the beginning, being able to get inside the other characters’ heads meant I could understand them better. Æthelred’s feelings of guilt and terror, haunted by the death of his older half-brother, Edward; Athelstan’s inner conflicts, torn between love for Emma and his desire to be king; Elgiva’s envy of Emma and her bitterness at not becoming queen – being given some insights into all of these things helped me to see why these characters behaved the way they did.

Shadow on the Crown is the first in a trilogy of books about Emma of Normandy and I’m already looking forward to the second one. This book only covers the period between 1001 and 1005, so there is still a lot more of Emma’s story to come!

I received a copy of this book from the publisher via Netgalley for review

Like This, For Ever by S.J. Bolton

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Like This For Ever Although I don’t read as much contemporary crime fiction as I used to, S.J. Bolton is one author whose books I always look out for. This is the third in her Lacey Flint detective series (or the fourth if you include the novella, If Snow Hadn’t Fallen, which I haven’t read yet). After the events of the previous book, Dead Scared, Lacey has been recovering from her traumatic experiences and is still not ready to return to work. But when young boys start going missing in Lacey’s area of London and their bodies are discovered in the river a few days later drained of blood, Lacey finds herself drawn into another mystery – despite the attempts of DI Dana Tulloch to keep her out of the investigation. However, Dana’s team are making slow progress in solving the crime as whoever is committing these murders does not appear to have a motive and doesn’t seem to fit the typical profile of a serial killer.

The house next door to Lacey’s is the home of eleven-year-old Barney Roberts and his father. Being the same age as the other boys who have disappeared, Barney and his friends are following the case very closely on Facebook. As his father always seems to be working late leaving Barney at home on his own, he has plenty of time to keep up to date with the latest news on the crimes. As Lacey gets to know her young neighbour better she grows concerned for this intelligent boy who is so obsessed with the murders and who still seems to be grieving for the mother who vanished from his life seven years earlier. Can Lacey help Barney find his mother? Will the murderer be caught before he or she has time to kill again? And what is the true identity of the mysterious Peter Sweep, who always seems to be one step ahead of the police?

Bolton’s standalone novels, Awakening and Sacrifice are still my favourites (I loved the gothic elements of her earlier books), but I do like the Lacey Flint series too and Like This, For Ever is the best so far, in my opinion. I found the mystery in this one very difficult to solve – there were several times when I was convinced I knew who the murderer was, only to be proved wrong, wrong and wrong again! I was completely taken by surprise by most of the plot twists (and there are a lot of them). I should have remembered that nothing is ever as it seems in a Bolton novel and if things appear too obvious, it’s usually because they are.

Lacey herself continues to be a flawed and fascinating character and in this book she is more isolated than ever, refusing to allow anyone to get close to her – including Mark Joesbury, another recurring character, with whom she has a very turbulent relationship. In the previous two books, Now You See Me and Dead Scared, Lacey was narrating in the first person, but this story is told in the third person which I thought allowed the real Lacey Flint to be even more obscured from the reader. And with Lacey not at work and on the outside of the investigation, we spend more time getting to know the other members of the Major Investigation Team – especially Dana Tulloch, though I’ve never found Dana a very appealing character and in this book I really disliked her because of the way she was treating Lacey. I did love the character of Barney, the eleven-year-old-boy with a gift for finding everything else apart from his missing mother, and for me he was the real star of the book.

S.J. Bolton’s books can sometimes be very dark and they can sometimes be gory. I tend to avoid this type of crime fiction but am happy to make an exception for Bolton. I didn’t think the gory parts in this book were too excessive, so if you’ve coped with any of her other books you should be fine with this one. While my preference is for historical or vintage mysteries and the traditional methods of detection, it can’t be denied that modern technology opens up lots of fascinating new ways to both commit crimes and solve them. The use of social media, especially Facebook, features very strongly in the plot and we are shown how it can be of help to the police as a source of information and discussion, as well as causing problems when people decide to abuse it.

This is my favourite of the series so far but if you’re new to the Lacey books I would probably recommend starting at the beginning with Now You See Me and reading them in order so that you can get to know the characters and the relationships between them. If you do choose to start with this one, though, it shouldn’t be a problem as Bolton has taken care not to spoil too much of the previous novels. Now I just need to find time to read Blood Harvest, the other S.J. Bolton book I still haven’t read.

Please note that the US title of this book is Lost.

I received a copy of this book via Netgalley for review

The Scent of Death by Andrew Taylor

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The Scent of Death I’ve been looking forward to reading this book, having enjoyed some of Andrew Taylor’s previous novels, including The American Boy (An Unpardonable Crime in the US), so I was pleased to find that The Scent of Death was a similar type of historical mystery, though set in a different time and place.

The story begins in 1778, during the American War of Independence. Our narrator, Edward Savill, is an English clerk who has been sent to Manhattan (an area still under British rule at that time) to investigate the compensation claims of Loyalists who have been dispossessed of their property. Before Savill’s ship even arrives in the port, he sees a dead body being lifted out of the water. Soon another body is discovered – the body of Mr Pickett, a man who has connections with the Wintours, the family Savill will be staying with during his time in New York.

While Savill worries about the people he has left behind in England – his cold, distant wife and his beloved daughter – he also finds himself becoming embroiled in the lives of the Wintour family. As he gets to know Judge Wintour, his invalid wife and his beautiful daughter-in-law Arabella, whose husband is missing in action after the Battle of Saratoga, he starts to suspect they are covering up some secrets. Who killed Mr Pickett and why? Whose is the child Savill hears crying in the night? And what is the mysterious ‘box of curiosities’ he has heard so much about?

One of the things I like about Andrew Taylor’s historical novels is that he makes a real effort to use language appropriate to the time period throughout both the dialogue and the narration. I read a lot of historical fiction and there are a surprising number of authors who make no attempt to do this at all; there are very few who do it as convincingly as Taylor. He doesn’t use any jarring modern words or phrases and it all adds to the atmosphere and authenticity of the story, so that I could almost believe Edward Savill really was an 18th century English gentleman narrating his adventures to us. Remembering that this novel is set in the 1770s, we are also given a range of different opinions on slavery rather than the author just projecting 21st century views onto all of his characters, which would have been unrealistic.

As with Taylor’s other novels, you can never be sure which characters can and can’t be trusted. From Mr Townley and his clerk, Mr Noak, who nursed Savill through his seasickness on the long voyage from England, to the enigmatic Arabella Wintour herself, some of these people turn out to be friends and others enemies. I didn’t actually like any of them apart from Savill himself, but that wasn’t a problem at all – I’m sure we weren’t supposed to like them and were intended instead to get a feel for the hostility and suspicion Savill encountered everywhere he went.

The vivid, atmospheric settings are another strong point of Taylor’s novels. I don’t have much knowledge of the American Revolutionary War and Taylor does such a great job of portraying life in New York during this period: the variety of different people, including soldiers, spies, refugees and slaves, who had made the city their home; the overwhelming heat of summer and the intense cold of winter; and all the danger and intrigue of a city at war. Savill’s investigations take him into the heart of Canvas Town, an area of slums where many of the city’s criminal gangs have settled after it was destroyed by fire, and also away from New York, to the ruins of Arabella’s family plantation, Mount George.

But this was not a perfect book: while parts of it were exciting and absorbing (especially Savill’s journey into the dangerous, lawless ‘Debatable Ground’) and the short chapters made it easy to keep reading, the story moved forward very slowly and at almost 500 pages it felt too long – although admittedly it would be hard to see what could have been taken out. I did enjoy it, though, and while I did come close to solving the mystery, there were still some surprises and plot twists towards the end of the book. So, this was not my favourite Andrew Taylor book and unlike The American Boy will not be one of my books of the year, but it was definitely still worth reading and I hope it’s true that we are going to meet Edward Savill again in a future novel.

The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas (re-read)

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The Three Musketeers One of my goals for 2013 was to re-read more of my favourite books, something I’ve been neglecting in recent years. Well, here we are in the middle of April and so far I’ve only re-read one!

The Three Musketeers may be the title, but our hero is not a musketeer when we first meet him at the beginning of the novel, in the year 1625; his name is d’Artagnan and he’s a young man from Gascony in France, on his way to Paris where he hopes to join the King’s Musketeers under the command of Monsieur de Tréville. On his arrival in Paris, d’Artagnan encounters three of the musketeers – Athos, Porthos and Aramis – in one of those wonderful openings to a book that once you’ve read you’re unlikely ever to forget.

Soon d’Artagnan and the three musketeers become the best of friends, and when d’Artagnan meets and falls in love with Constance Bonancieux, one of the Queen of France’s ladies, all four of them are drawn into the intrigue surrounding the Queen’s affair with the powerful English nobleman, the Duke of Buckingham. With the King’s advisor, Cardinal Richelieu, hoping to expose the affair, Constance, d’Artagnan and his three friends become targets of the Cardinal and his spy, the beautiful Lady de Winter. But Milady, as she is known, is hiding a secret of her own and if d’Artagnan discovers the truth, he and Constance could find themselves in even greater danger.

I first read The Three Musketeers five years ago and when I finished it I had intended to read the other books in the trilogy (the second is Twenty Years After and third is the three-volume The Vicomte de Bragelonne/Louise de la Valliere/The Man in the Iron Mask) but as so often happens other books got in the way and I never did get around to continuing with the d’Artagnan series. And so when I made my list for the Classics Club I put all of them on there – along with a re-read of The Three Musketeers as I thought it would be a good idea to remind myself of the characters and story before embarking on Twenty Years After – and anyway, I never need an excuse to re-read a book that I enjoyed so much the first time!

I love Alexandre Dumas and although The Three Musketeers is not my favourite of the three novels of his that I’ve read (that would be The Count of Monte Cristo) I still think it’s a wonderful book with some great characters. The musketeers all have such different personalities: the aristocratic, melancholy Athos, the loud, brash Porthos, the fastidious would-be priest, Aramis, and of course, the brave, passionate d’Artagnan. Everyone will be able to pick a favourite musketeer, and mine is Athos. In her recent post on The Count of Monte Cristo, Lisa compared the character of Edmond Dantes with Francis Crawford of Lymond from the Lymond Chronicles by Dorothy Dunnett (two other great fictional characters, by the way); I agree, but I can also see some of Athos’ character traits in Lymond too, especially during one of the most memorable set pieces in the book, where the four friends eat breakfast in a fortress surrounded by enemy soldiers because it’s the only place they can find to talk in private.

It seems five years is a good length of time to wait between re-reads of a book. I had forgotten enough so that I could be surprised by the twists and turns of the plot, but remembered just enough to be able to look forward to some of my favourite parts: the breakfast scene I mentioned above, the episode with the Queen’s diamond studs, and especially the sequence of chapters in the middle (entitled Porthos, The Thesis of Aramis and The Wife of Athos) which is just a joy to read. The friendship between d’Artagnan, Athos, Porthos and Aramis is so inspiring and heartwarming (all for one, one for all!) and this is why, for me, there’s a change in the tone of the book when towards the end, the focus switches from the musketeers to Milady and I don’t enjoy the final third quite as much as the first two thirds.

Now, a note on the translation. I read the Wordsworth Classics edition of The Three Musketeers which uses the first English translation by William Barrow in 1846 (I think this is also the one used by Oxford World’s Classics). I would be interested to try a newer translation, such as Richard Pevear’s, to see how it compares – and also because I’m aware that the older translations altered certain parts of Dumas’ original text because they considered it too sexually explicit for Victorian readers. I can see that some readers today would probably find the Barrow translation too literal and antiquated but I didn’t have a problem with it at all; I actually quite like the way the sentences are constructed and I think it has a certain romantic, old-fashioned quaintness about it.

I’ll be moving on to Twenty Years After very soon!

Life After Life by Kate Atkinson

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Life After Life Do you ever look back on your life and wish you had done something differently? Do you sometimes regret the decisions you’ve made and wonder what would have happened if you’d chosen another path through life? I’m sure we would all answer ‘yes’ to those questions, but unfortunately most of us only have one chance to get things right. But Ursula Todd is not like the rest of us. If things don’t work out the first time, she does have the chance to go back and try again…and again…and again.

Ursula is born one snowy night in February 1910 with the umbilical cord around her neck. Darkness falls and she dies before the doctor has time to arrive. We turn the page and it’s that same night in February 1910 again. This time the doctor is present and she survives, but this is only the beginning of Ursula’s journey through life. Every time she reaches a turning point, she must be sure to make the right decision – otherwise darkness will soon fall once more and Ursula must return to the night of her birth in 1910 and have another attempt.

As we follow Ursula again and again through some of the major events of the twentieth century – including both the First and Second World Wars (there are some very atmospheric scenes set in London during the Blitz) – she slowly grows in wisdom and learns from her previous mistakes, even without being fully aware of what is happening to her or why. Gradually she develops a sort of intuition or déjà vu that allows her to draw on her past experiences, and this is used to particularly good effect in an early sequence of chapters in which she has several attempts at preventing the maid, Bridget, from going to London and catching Spanish flu.

Apart from Ursula herself, the characters who are almost always there throughout every version of the story are the members of the Todd family – Ursula’s brothers Maurice, Teddy and Jimmy, sister Pamela and parents Hugh and Sylvie – and the servants, Mrs Glover and Bridget. Izzie, Ursula’s wild and irresponsible aunt, also plays a significant role in many of the storylines. Other characters come and go; people who are an important part of Ursula’s life in one existence barely appear at all in another and it’s fascinating to see how something as simple as a chance encounter in the street (and the way she reacts to it) could completely alter the course of her future. Sometimes Ursula is unable to change the outcome of a particular event no matter what choices she makes; on other occasions even a small action has huge consequences.

Life After Life is a very clever, complex novel; I was so impressed by it! With such an unusual and complicated plot it could have been a disaster, but it wasn’t; I thought everything worked perfectly and although I found it confusing at first, after the first few chapters I knew I was going to love the book. It’s actually much less repetitive than you might think and fortunately we don’t have to go right through the entire story from the beginning each time Ursula is reborn! I sometimes felt a bit distanced from Ursula, maybe because in each of her lives she makes different choices, has different ambitions and motives, so is not exactly the same person she was in a previous existence – but that didn’t stop me liking her and hoping things would work out better for her the next time darkness fell and she went back to that snowy February night yet again.

This is the first Kate Atkinson book I’ve read and having enjoyed it so much I will be looking out for her other books now. I understand that her earlier novels are very different to this one but I would still like to read them and would welcome any recommendations.