2021/013: Captain Vorpatril's Alliance -- Lois McMaster Bujold

“So, have you become a security risk, Vorpatril?”
“I don’t know, sir,” said Ivan, as honestly as possible. “Nobody tells me anything.” [loc. 4168]

I bought this several years back, but have only just got around to reading it: it was perfect for my customary late-winter reading slump, in which I tend to crave either rereads, cheerful romances or fanfic. I think this is the last of the Vorkosigan books that I hadn't read, but late January in lockdown was absolutely the right time for it.

This is, in short, a romantic novel about a marriage of convenience. Ivan Vorpatril is enjoying his usual comfortable lifestyle -- low-risk employment, bachelor-about-town, content to be treated as an idiot if it makes his life easier -- when his cousin Byerly asks him to engineer a meeting with Tej, a young woman who's fleeing homicidal enemies and, more recently, the local security forces. Tej is alone in the world after a rival House moved in on her family: her only companion is her friend Rish, a genetically-engineered dancer with blue skin. Tej has reached the end of her resources when Ivan offers marriage as temporary protection, and Rish gets the benefit of his protection too. But Byerly has an agenda of his own: and when figures from Tej's past collide with Vor high society, the consequences are ... unexpected.

Ivan, here, is a very Heyeresque hero: good-looking, courageous, kind-hearted and much less stupid than his behaviour might suggest. (Someone online compared Ivan to Prince Harry, his loutish youth behind him, marrying an 'unsuitable' bride now that the social pressure for a grand wedding has lessened. Brilliant, except I just don't see Ivan as a redhead.) He has never shown any sign of wanting to be married before, but thinks he might be enjoying it. Byerly, on the other hand, whose effete habits and air of dilettantish dissolution conceal an excellent brain and a surplus of secrets, is more of a dark horse, though it's harder than he expects to deceive Rish.

Confession time: I do not find Miles Vorkosigan himself especially engaging. The books in this series that I've enjoyed most tend to be those which focus on other characters. (As we shall see.) And it's a very long time since I read A Civil Campaign, so I'd forgotten all about Byerly Vorrutyer -- who, to be fair, is not a major character therein. But despite Captain Vorpatril's Alliance focussing on Ivan, Byerly was the character who appealed most to me.

I very much enjoyed Ivan and Tej's romance, and Byerly and Rish's ... liaison, and the heist, and the further insights into Vorish society. Also, as usual with Bujold, there are strong themes of feminism, prejudice, misunderstandings between parents and children, and the disastrous effects of boredom on intelligent minds. I am happy to report that there is not much Miles, but a great deal of Alys and Simon, herein. Great fun, and an excellent excuse to indulge in a reread of a few more Vorkosigan books ...

2021/012: A Beautiful Poison -- Lydia Kang

She sighed and let her fingertip run over the chemical formula for cyanide. By God, it was a thing of beauty and simplicity. One nitrogen and one carbon atom married together with three bonds. Not one, not two. Cyanide demanded a trifecta of irresistible gravities. Such a thing of dark beauty created from the basic matter of life present in all living creatures. [p. 36]

Murder mystery set in New York in 1918, near the end of the First World War and at the beginning of the Spanish Flu. The story opens at a party celebrating the engagement of Allene Cutter to wealthy, brash Andrew Smythe Biddle. The glitterati of the Gilded Age are in attendance; and so are Allene's childhood friends, Jasper Jones (dropped by the Cutters when his family lost their money) and Birdie Dreyer (dropped by the Cutters due to some secret scandal involving her mother, formerly Mrs Cutter's companion). Allene is a chemistry nerd; Birdie works in a factory painting watch dials; Jasper is a hospital janitor, trying to save enough to take medical exams. When one of the guests, gossipy socialite Florence Waxworth, falls to her death on the staircase, it quickly becomes clear to the three friends that this was no accident. But who left the note -- 'You're Welcome' -- in Allene's chemistry book?

This was a good, well-constructed whodunnit: my guesses as to the identity of the murderer were all wrong! Kang's depiction of the class-based tensions between the three young protagonists, each trapped by circumstance and constrained by family, was well-executed and compelling. I was pleased that some class barriers weren't overcome: that, though justice was served in a sense, the old inequalities persisted. Impressively, despite each of the protagonists carrying some of the narrative, there were still surprises at the climax of the novel -- and that those surprises did not feel forced or dishonest: no sleight of hand here.

I acquired this book in 2017 and I don't recall there being much emphasis, in the promotional material, on the role of the Spanish Flu. It's barely mentioned in the first two-thirds of the novel, though after that it becomes an overwhelming and cataclysmic element of the plot. At least the flu, unlike Birdie's mystery illness -- radium poisoning, which the author notes in the Afterword wasn't really understood until the 1920s -- was recognised by those exposed to it.

2021/011: Hide Me Among the Graves -- Tim Powers

“My patron,” said Trelawny, “would like to do again what she did in A.D. 60.” [p. 262]

On paper (ha, or on Kindle) this should have been a novel I adored: Pre-Raphaelites, vampires, Boadicea (sic), subterranean London ... But somehow it didn't click. This might be a case of right book, wrong time: it might be that Hide Me Among the Graves is a (more or less standalone) sequel to The Stress of Her Regard, of which I recall little other than disliking it. Or it might simply be the cat-ghosts, which distressed me.

The vampiric spirit of John Polidori, formerly physician to Lord Byron, is haunting -- and inspiring -- his niece and nephew, Christina and Dante Gabriel Rossetti. Worse, he plans to possess a young girl, surprise daughter of a veterinary surgeon and a now-reformed prostitute who's known to Christina. And Polidori is not the only threat to them, nor the most impressive.

The relationship between Christina and Polidori is abusive, unpleasant and likely metaphorical: the curse that's visited upon Dante Gabriel's wife Lizzie intersects nicely with known history. The sense of a magical underlay to ordinary life is very well done here, though Powers' supernatural London occasionally felt somewhat thin. I did like the reworkings of 'Bells of St Clements' as ancient invocations: but I'm not convinced that Thames water is as salty as it would need to be for one element of the plot to work. Maybe in Victorian times ...?

It's hard to pinpoint why this didn't really work for me. Powers' prose is vivid and inventive, and his plot well-constructed. I knew enough of the real history of the Rossettis to appreciate how the fantastical elements wound through it. The characterisation -- especially of the original characters, Cavendish and McKee -- is solid, and the magical system coherent enough that I suspected one of the twists from early on. (Sadly, like quite a bit of the plot, it involved a woman being tricked or compelled into sexual activity. Hmm, that might have something to do with my lack of enjoyment.) In terms of ancient, inhuman entities interacting with historical figures, I'd rather reread Powers' Declare.

This is, incidentally, the second novel I've read this year (the first was Affinity) where one of the characters has a house on Cheyne Walk in Chelsea.

2021/010: In the Company of Thieves -- Kage Baker and Kathleen Bartholomew

I know that history can’t be changed. But it can be lied to, and it’s no better at identifying a fake than anyone else.[loc. 4525]

I very much enjoyed Kage Baker's 'Company' books, about the corporate entity called Doctor Zeus, and uni-directional time travel (you can only travel back in time: the return journey is the slow route, one day at a time) and the historians, preservers and specialists -- all immortal cybords -- who carry out the Company's assignments and sometimes side-missions of their own. It's over a decade since I read any of the series, though, and I'd forgotten some of the detail. This anthology of short works, edited (and in one case completed) by Baker's sister, was at once a pleasure and a disappointment.

Disappointing, as several of the Amazon reviews mentioned 'The Women of Nell Gwynne's' but that novella (which I'm eager to read) is no longer included in this collection, though there is fossil evidence of its former presence in the Contents section. I was disappointed, too, that some of the introductory paragraphs (not to mention the title on the title page!) featured typos, and could have done with proof-reading.

There are five works herein. 'Hollywood Ikons' is a new story featuring Preserver (and Literature Specialist) Lewis and Facilitator Joseph, set in Hollywood in the Second World War. This story was completed by Kathleen Bartholomew from Kage Baker's notes, and I have to say it's a very smooth co-authoring, no seams visible.

'The Carpet Beds of Sutro Park' is a bittersweet story about a defective cyborg (he can't communicate, but wanders Los Angeles in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, 'a bee collecting the pollen of my time') and a woman dying from cancer. (I liked this one a lot.)

'The Unfortunate Gytt' is a Gothic adventure featuring Edward Bell-Fairfax, Rosslyn Chapel and a new initiate.

Mother Aegypt features a pre-modern con artist, Golesco, and the immortal Mother Aegypt, about who he understands nothing. I was not much better off, as -- although one character's idiosyncrasies rang a bell -- I couldn't recall enough from the novels.

And completing the collection, the novella 'Rude Mechanicals', which I'd already read (review here. As usual, I had forgotten enough of it to be entertained all over again ...

Certainly not a bad collection, but really only 'Hollywood Ikons' and 'The Carpet Beds of Sutro Park' were what I actually wanted. Though now I'm terribly tempted to reread the entire Company series ... and I am, again, disappointed to discover how much of Kage Baker's work is available only in high-priced physical formats.

2021/009: The Morning Gift -- Eva Ibbotson

‘I want to live like music sounds,’ she had said once, coming out of a concert at the Musikverein. [p. 12]

Reread, though I don't think I've read this since the last millennium, and (as usual) I recalled only the broad outlines of the plot.

Ruth Berger grows up in 1920s and 1930s Vienna, the adored only child of a university professor and his elegant wife. She falls in love with music at an early age, and subsequently with her cousin Heini, a gifted (though egotistical) pianist. Her idyllic childhood is terminated by the Nazi Anschluss in 1938: Heini is in Budapest and Ruth's parents en route to London, but Ruth finds herself alone in occupied Vienna due to an unfortunate mix-up with visas.

Luckily there is a white knight at hand: a friend of the family, paleontologist Quin Somerville, who offers Ruth a marriage of convenience so that she can escape Vienna on his passport, and be reunited with her family. Of course the marriage will be dissolved as soon as Ruth is safe...It is probably not a spoiler to say that, like so many 'convenient marriages' in fiction, this marriage is not dissolved, despite several major miscommunications and the competing charms of Heini (for Ruth) and the sleek, ambitious Verena Plackett (for Quin, who is oblivious).

The charm of The Morning Gift is less about the romantic element than the characters and their situations. Ruth is an extrovert, amiable and sociable and fascinated by people, the kind of girl who knows someone's hopes and fears and secret joys an hour after meeting them. She's educated, intelligent and passionate about the natural world, whether the physiology she studies at university (how unfortunate that Quin is one of her lecturers) or the glories of the landscape surrounding Quin's ancestral home on the Northumberland coast. Her parents and her uncle and aunt, accustomed to the refined and cultured life of the Viennese upper middle classes, are adjusting slowly to life as refugees in their squalid Belsize Park lodgings, frequenting the Willow Tea Rooms where Ruth ends up working. Each of the older generation has a plot-thread of his or her own, from Uncle Mishak's radishes to Quin's snobbish aunt. There's a real sense of community among the dispossessed immigrants, and I believe it's based on Eva Ibbotson's own experiences.

A cheerful, comfortable, amusing read, with just enough drama and (temporary) despair to keep the plot moving, and plenty of personable individuals with their own sub-plots. Beauty, kindness and compassion triumph, despite the looming horrors of the imminent war. Ibbotson described her romantic novels as being written 'for intelligent women with the flu': I think they're a pleasing distraction against many ills.

2021/008: Crooked Heart -- Lissa Evans

It was as if her life was being deliberately unpicked, the seams parting, the whole thing dropping shapelessly to the floor. [p. 198]

Prequel to V for Victory: I didn't find this one quite as enjoyable, perhaps because it's set at the beginning of the Second World War rather than the end, or perhaps because Vee, in this novel, is rather less likeable than in the later novel. As, to be fair, is Noel, who after the death of his godmother is sent to St Albans as an evacuee, or -- from where Vee's standing -- a lucrative little earner. He even arrives with an introductory food parcel!

Vee, struggling to make ends meet, lives with her feckless, uncommunicative son and her mute, obsessively letter-writing mother in a small flat. They grudgingly make space for Noel, and he becomes involved in some of Vee's less above-board enterprises. Sharp, unscrupulous Vee and bookish, idealistic Noel, it turns out, make good partners: inspired by the crime novels that Noel loves, they end up exposing a criminal who (unlike themselves) preys upon the vulnerable and helpless. Eventually, too, they find a place of safety together, where they can live as family: and they commit one last (is it last? is it hell) criminal act to secure that refuge.

But that's just the plot: this is the story of two difficult individuals, cleverer than those around them, forming a lasting relationship -- one that's stronger than the ties of blood that Vee has fought to preserve. Interesting how in some ways this summary reads like the summary of a romance: there's nothing like that going on, nothing sordid or inappropriate, just ... two lonely people together. And yes, I know that line is from a love song.

It's the little details of life during wartime that bring Crooked Heart to life, the reek of sweat and urine in a tube station the morning after a night of air raids, the 'vinegar and fireworks' smell after a bomb has hit, the unremarkable corruption going on everywhere all the time, the whale-meat sold as cod. There's a strong sense of the ridiculous, of people trying to cling to the banalities of pre-war life and the comforts of bureaucracy. But I did feel that this was a far bleaker novel than V for Victory, and I wonder if I'd have read that if I'd read this first.

2021/007: V for Victory -- Lissa Evans

...all was quiet, a full moon prinking the frost so that the ruined houses looked like cliffs of quartz, and then, as she’d stood listening, her breath fogging the view, there’d been another blast, this one preceded by a noise like a rifle crack, and followed by a flood of orange light above the rooftops to the east.[loc. 893]

This is a sequel, though I was only vaguely aware of that fact when I started reading, and I didn't find the story difficult to follow even though I didn't know the previous histories of the protagonists. It's autumn 1944: Noel Bostock is fifteen, growing up in the Hampstead boarding house kept by his Aunt Margery, whose name isn't Margery and who isn't really his aunt. Noel never knew his parents -- the surname he uses is his deceased godmother's alias from her suffragette years -- and he's never quite taken to conventional life. It's possible to read him as 'on the spectrum' or simply very intelligent: his thirst for knowledge is fulfilled, to some extent, by the lodgers, who teach him Polish, maths, and so on, and he is becoming an excellent cook. (Just as well, since Margery -- Vee -- is not especially gifted in that area.)

Vee herself is the second in the triumvirate of protagonists: she has a murky past and a precarious existence. Like everyone else, she is struggling with the deprivations and dangers of life in wartime London, but when she witnesses a traffic accident and ends up in court to give her account of events, she has more to lose than a few hours of her time.

The third of the protagonists is Winnie, an Air Raid Warden who's trying to hold onto the memory of the man she married at the start of the war, who's now in a prison camp. Winnie (a former member of the Amazons, the girls' club founded by Noel's dead godmother) has a twin named Avril, who's Winnie's polar opposite -- sophisticated, elegant, privileged -- and who has just written a rather steamy novel about a female Air Raid Warden ...

Vee contemplates the possibility of romance, Noel finally meets someone he's actually related to, and Winnie wonders if the Romeo she married has turned into the editor of Homes and Gardens ... and their stories converge, overlap, ricochet, in ways that are both satisfying and credible.

And it is almost the end of the war, though the characters don't know it, though the rockets keep coming and London's in ruins. I was very appreciative of the final chapter, which wraps up the stories and shows us the long-awaited victory in a wealth of mundane detail: a man sitting on a raft in the Mixed Bathing pond, playing the clarinet; a Dalmatian with a Union Jack tucked into its collar; 'no drums, no bells, no fireworks or sirens'. I think it's the details (not all of them pleasant) that drew me into this novel; the actual plot is fairly slight but the characters hum with life, and their concerns are ordinary despite the tensions of the time in which they live.

After this, I bought and read the prequel -- one of the prequels, as it turns out -- Crooked Heart...