A disputed inheritance - among dragons

Tooth and Claw, Jo Walton

There may be some gushing in this post.  I have a new favorite book - the kind that inspires book evangelizing.

Honestly, books like this are the reason I started blogging.  For the last few days I've been carrying this around, just absolutely enchanted, brimming over with the fun of such a clever story and such endearing characters.  I kept wanting to hand it to people and say, "You should read this, it's marvelous, it's Framley Parsonage, with dragons." But I'd have met at best that all-too-familiar look of polite incomprehension (because while everyone knows Charles Dickens, or at least A Christmas Carol, nobody knows Anthony Trollope), or at worst, some version of "You read such, um, different books" (where "different" = "weird").

Actually I'm indebted to blogging for my introduction to Jo Walton in the first place.  I started with her "Small Change" series after reading Jenny's review of the first, Farthing.  I learned about this book from Claire's review, which included the magical words "Inspired by Anthony Trollope's works."  That was enough to add a copy to my TBR shelves.  I've mentioned before my fondness for dragons, and even casual readers of this blog have probably noticed my attachment to Trollope and his novels.

Initially, I admit, I didn't see a connection to Framley Parsonage.  As the story opens, the Dignified Bon Agornin is dying, and his family and heirs have gathered.  Bon has risen from genteel poverty to wealth and status, though the upper ranks of society cannot forget his wealth came from trade (including the new-fangled railroad that runs across his property), and that he essentially bought his title.  His eldest daughter Berend has married into the nobility, and her husband Illustrious Daverak will hold the estate after Bon, as part of the marriage settlements.  Bon's oldest son Penn is a parson, with a living held from his old friend the Exalted Sher Benandi.  His younger son Avan, making a career for himself in the capital city of Irieth, is not yet strong enough to hold the estate.  There are two unmarried daughters, Haner and Selendra, clutch-mates who dread a separation, for whom homes must be found.  They and Avan inherit their father's gold, but it is not enough to provide good dowries.

While all agree on the division of the gold, there is a dispute about Bon's other legacy: his body.  It is only by consuming their own that dragons grow in size and power.  The upper classes frequently eat dragonflesh, because they are charged with culling the weak and unfit, particularly among the new dragonets on their vast estates, which assures their continued dominance.  For most dragons though, the bodies of their parents may be their only chance of the magical dragonflesh.  Penn believes that his father meant his body, like his gold, to go to his younger children (except for his eyes, the traditional parson's perquisite).  Daverak disagrees, seizing a large part of the body for himself and his dragonets.  Deprived of his most important legacy, Avan decides his only recourse is to take his powerful brother-in-law to court, a decision with serious consequences for their entire family.  Haner is now living with Daverak and Berend, who are trying to arrange a suitable marriage.  Selendra has gone to live with Penn and his wife Felin on the Benandi estate, where the dowager Exalt' Benandi is not amused by her son Sher's growing attachment to the parson's beautiful but impecunious young sister.  (Unlike Mark Robarts, Penn disapproves of hunting and avoids signing his name to bills he can't afford.)

The story moves between the different branches of the family, and between the great city of Irieth and the country estates of the nobility.  This story absolutely stands on its own, but familiarity with the Victorian era definitely adds to its pleasures.  (I also thought there were a few Austenesque touches, like when Sher calls at the parsonage and finds Selendra with her two nephews, one of them clinging to her back, though unlike Captain Wentworth he doesn't have to drag them off.)  Jo Walton gives us a fully-realized world, with a complicated history that isn't fully explained, which I enjoyed piecing together.  She has a confidential narrative voice here that reminds me very much of Trollope.  And she creates vivid characters that drew me into the story right from the start.  It seemed clear from the first chapter that Daverak would not be the hero, and I grew increasingly concerned about Haner, living in his home, like so many women in the 19th century without resources or rights, dependent on male family members to care for her.  With the somewhat bleak endings of the "Small Change" books, I was a little apprehensive that my favorite characters would even survive uneaten, but in the end as it should, all comes right, love triumphs and virtue is rewarded.

Really, this is a marvelous book.  My only regret is that it doesn't form part of The Chronicles of Benandishire.

Debutantes & fascists

Half a Crown, Jo Walton

This is the third book in Jo Walton's "Small Change" series, set in a world where Britain made peace with Germany in 1941 and then itself turned toward fascism. Where the other two books (Farthing and Ha'penny) are set in the 1940s, this book is set in 1960. Hitler and his Reich still dominate the Continent, the sole power now that an atomic attack has neutralized Russia. The United States has also been hit with nuclear weapons, leaving it demoralized and even more isolated. In Britain, as delegates from the remaining world powers are arriving for a conference, meant to bring peace and a new world order, the government is preparing to open its first death camp. No longer will it have to send Jews and other undesirables to the Reich's camps on the Continent.

Peter Carmichael, a familiar figure from the previous books and now commander of the Gestapo-like Watch, has his hands full trying to ensure the safety of the delegates, including Hitler. (The Watch is meant to be the the terror of Britain's population, but every time I see the word I think of Sir Samuel Vimes and the Ankh-Morpork Watch, with its dwarves and trolls and Nobby Nobbs, and it rather spoils the menace for me.) Outwardly a loyal servant of the government, Carmichael also runs an "Inner Watch," an Underground Railroad to rescue innocent victims and get them safely out of the country. As a gay man, living with his lover Jack, who acts as his manservant, Carmichael himself could become the target of the Watch if he were outed, which is the weapon his superiors use to keep him in line and working for them.

All of this takes place during the start of the social season. Among the debutantes preparing for their presentation is Carmichael's ward Elvira Royston, the daughter of his sergeant, who was killed in the line of duty. Carmichael has sent her to the best schools, including an exclusive finishing school in Switzerland, and he has helped her achieve her dream of entering Oxford. His position and his money have induced the mother of a school-friend to present her, though Elvira is "not quite." One night Elvira and her friend Betsy accept an invitation from an eligible young bachelor to go to a fascist parade and rally, led by the "Ironsides." She thinks of it as a patriotic and fun evening out. But the rally turns into a riot, as speakers and a charismatic young singer from Liverpool challenge the Prime Minister, Mark Normanby, and his government as weak shadows of Germany. In the chaos, Elvira is separated from her friends and arrested. Using her guardian's name for protection draws him into an increasingly complex political situation and endangers them both. As unrest with the Normanby regime grows, rumors swirl around the Duke of Windsor, in London for the peace conference. Could he be plotting to regain the throne? It is a bad time to have one's loyalty in question, or to be suspected of subversive activities - and there are informers everywhere, even in the Watch.

As in the previous books, Walton tells this story in chapters that alternate between third-person narrative, focused on Carmichael, and a first-person narration, in this book Elvira's. I did not find her as engaging a narrator as Lucy in Farthing and Viola in Ha'penny. Unlike those two, Elvira has grown up in fascist Britain, it's all she has ever known, and she doesn't question it. She is completely focused on getting to Oxford, though I can't imagine that there is much academic freedom in the universities of this Britain. Her experiences as a prisoner and a target of the regime do open her eyes to some of its horrors, she learns empathy for her fellow victims, and she comes to understand that she has never really known her "Uncle Carmichael."

Like Ha'penny, this book is more of a thriller than a mystery, and it is the fastest-moving and most complex of the three. I think it is also the bleakest, as we see the human cost of the regime (like Betsy, I am haunted by the fate of one small child, part of the Ironsides' parade). There are wheels within wheels, as Carmichael and Elvira move around London, both constantly at risk of arrest and worse. The tension and the stakes keep rising - and then suddenly comes a most improbable ending, one that left me thinking "Huh?" and with a raft of questions (from non-spoilery reviews like Jenny's over on Shelf Love I knew that the ending was problematic, but I was completely unprepared for it). I really think that Jo Walton owes us another book, to tell us what happened next.

The play's the thing

Ha'penny, Jo Walton

This is the second in Jo Walton's trilogy of books, set in an alternate world where the course of the Second World War took a very different turn than in our own.  While America sat out the war, England made peace with Germany in 1941, the "Farthing" treaty negotiated by political and social leaders with fascist leanings themselves. Hitler now rules the Continent, though the Reich is still at war with Stalin's Russia (there is no mention of Japan or the situation in the Far East).  The first book in the series, Farthing, which I reviewed back in November, evokes a classic Golden Age mystery: Sir James Thirkie, the leader of the "Farthing" set, is murdered during a country weekend at the home of Lord and Lady Eversley.

Ha'penny opens with a compelling first line: "They don't hang people like me."  The speaker is Viola Larkin, one of six sisters, the famous (or infamous) daughters of Lord Carnforth, who are clearly meant to invoke the Mitford sisters.  One married Himmler because she couldn't get Hitler, another is a communist, the youngest married the Duke of Lancashire.  The oldest, killed in the Blitz, was the first wife of the now-murdered James Thirkie.  Viola has escaped her family and its constraints to a successful career on the stage.  As the story opens, she is offered the role of Hamlet in a cross-casting version of the play.  The director confides that the opening night will be a gala, with Adolf Hitler himself in the audience. Later that day, Viola learns that the actress chosen to play Hamlet's mother Gertrude has been killed by an explosion in her home.

Assigned to investigate the explosion is Inspector Peter Carmichael of Scotland Yard.  Carmichael solved the murder of Sir James, but he was forced by his superiors to help frame an innocent man for the crime.  These superiors now know that he is gay, and in their virulently homophobic society this makes him vulnerable to pressure and even blackmail. As in Farthing, the story is told in chapters that alternate between Viola's first-person narration and third-person from Carmichael's point of view.  He investigates the actress Lauria Gilmore, who the evidence suggests was building a bomb in her home, which exploded and killed her.  Viola, meanwhile, finds that there is more than just the play connecting her to the dead woman. 

To say too much about the plot risks spoilers.  Unlike Farthing, though, this book is more a thriller than a mystery.  It reminded me so much of John Le Carré's The Little Drummer Girl, also centered on an actress, Charlie, who is recruited for a very different and difficult role.  Like Le Carré and like Josephine Tey, Walton vividly evokes the world of the theater, and I found the play itself unexpectedly fascinating.  The director casts Hamlet as a woman:

"Consider Hamlet, daughter and heir to Denmark. How much more likely that her uncle would usurp? How more more difficult that she assert herself?  Hesitation would be much more natural than for a man. Her relationship with Gertrude, with Claudius works perfectly. Horatio wishes to be more than a friend . . . Laertes too, Laertes is Hamlet's true love, which makes the end sing. In fact, the whole play makes much more sense this way."

I enjoyed watching the cast work out this version of the play, as they thought through the different emphases, the changed relationships.  And this book made me want to re-read both Hamlet and The Little Drummer Girl.  I have the third book of the series, Half a Crown, already on the TBR stacks (and I recently added a fourth of Walton's books, Tooth and Claw, which Claire from A Captive Reader described as "Trollope with dragons" - but that one will have to wait til the end of the TBR challenge).

A far from cozy mystery

Farthing, Jo Walton

While reading a review of Farthing over on Shelf Love, I had the immediate and oh-so-familiar feeling of "I need to read that," which sent me looking for a copy.  I'm very glad that I did, because this is a seriously good book.  It is a country-house mystery, set in England in the spring of 1949, but it is far from the traditional "cozy."  In this England, a peace treaty with Germany in 1941 ended the Battle of Britain, bringing the country "Peace with Honour."  Hitler rules the Continent, though the Reich is mired in a seemingly-endless war with Russia.  The United States, under President Lindbergh, holds to its isolationist line (after reading Anne Morrow Lindbergh's diaries, I think she would have been an invisible and personally miserable First Lady).  In Britain, despite the peace, economic conditions are precarious, and anti-semitism is rampant, as are xenophobia and homophobia.

As the story opens, Lucy Kahn and her husband David are spending the weekend at Farthing, the country home of her parents, Lord and Lady Eversley.  The house has given its name to the Farthing set, a group within the Conservative Party, one of whom, Sir James Thirkie, negotiated the "Peace with Honour."  The set, while influential, has moved to the fringes of power but hopes to return to the center.  Lucy, however, has taken a step almost unthinkable for one of her class and position by marrying David Kahn, a Jew, over the objections of parents, friends, the press and even the general public.

The first chapter is in Lucy's voice, and she is an immediately appealing character.  Her voice draws the reader into the story from the first page. She describes herself as "scatterbrained and not really very bright," but the reader sees her as clear-sighted, loyal, loving - and brave.  She is also plain-spoken, to a fault sometimes, and her attempts to catch her own words back are touching and revealing.  Lucy's chapters alternate with those focused on a second character, Inspector Peter Carmichael.  His chapters are in the third-person, which creates a distance from the character, in contrast to Lucy's.  Carmichael is a complex character whose background is gradually revealed.  It is only at the end of the story that the reader learns why he was assigned to this case.  He is sent from Scotland Yard to investigate the murder of Sir James, found in his bedroom with a yellow Star of David pinned to his chest by an antique dagger.  On that evidence alone, David Kahn immediately becomes a suspect, such is the prevailing anti-semitism and the fear of anarchists (many of them Jews, in the public mind).

To say more about this book risks spoilers.  And while the mystery itself is interesting, it is Jo Walton's  alternate history and the England it produced that are so fascinating, as are the characters, particularly Lucy.  My only quibble is a factual one: Sir James, a baronet, would not sit in the House of Lords.  Since much of the story turns on his career in politics, it seems a strange error.

This is a three-book series, and I am very much looking forward to the next one, Ha'penny.