I confess that the thought of the likely reactions to my grand exits of the past two nights...pleased me greatly. Anyone who had doubts that I truly was Fitzroy Angursell might well still prefer to believe me a madman instead; but at least they could hardly deny that I was a madman with style.[p. 82]
It's difficult to review this without spoilers -- indeed, even the publisher's blurb gives the game away -- but I imagine there'd be added joy at the revelation, very early in this novel, of just what renowned poet, anarchist and mage Fitzroy Angursell, late of the Red Company, has been up to in the 30-odd years since his 'spectacularly bizarre disappearance'.
I picked this up after The Hands of the Emperor, which I adored: The Return of Fitzroy Angursell, though delightful, is a very different novel. Told in the first person by the infamous Fitzroy, it's an exuberantly picaresque adventure, full of swashbuckling and derring-do, grand exits, serendipitous encounters, lost cities, curses and kindness, and gleeful subversion. There is a lot more plot here than in The Hands of the Emperor! Or perhaps there are simply more events ... Fitzroy is fascinated by the stories he hears, and he's fascinating in and of himself, even without the mythmaking that's kept his story alive, and the mystery of his disappearance, and his quest for ... well, perhaps it really is simply for what he is and for where he belongs.
Is he a trickster god? Perhaps. Is he a liar? He tries to avoid lying ('the greatest truths, most plainly spoken, are the least likely to be believed'). Is he truly Fitzroy Angursell? (He's wearing the colours associated with the famous revolutionary.) Whoever or whatever he is, he has verve, and the joie de vivre of someone given a new lease of life, and some very refreshing views. I look forward to meeting him again.
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