I made a tally of said sensational acts attributed to me. All right, I had rescued a mermaid from a burning building, and I had slain a dragon, and the two of my university friends who had so far shown up had been a beautiful cross-dressing Indrilline spy and an Imperial Duke, and I had broken a curse on the bees of the Woods Noirell, and I had been involved in the strange matter of the disastrous Late Bastard Decadent dinner party given by Dame Talgarth, but that was incognito, as was the small matter of the cult to the Dark Kings sacrificing cows at the Ellery Stone, which Mr. Dart and I had witnessed. The rest of the rumours were totally wrong. [p. 34]
What can I say? I'm hooked, and I like the characters, and I like Goddard's prose in these books: light and cheerful, witty and mannered, treating events of great significance with no more or less gravity than a borrowed fountain pen or an early-morning run. The tone is utterly different to that of The Hands of the Emperor and other works featuring Cliopher Mdang; it's less riotously headlong than The Return of Fitzroy Angursell; I admire Goddard greatly for the versatility of her voice.
Whiskey Jack opens with Jemis Greenwing in prison for 'murdering Fitzroy Angursell in the form of a dragon'; he can't recall anything between his morning run and his imprisonment, but he is shortly joined by two villainous-looking vagabonds, with whom he escapes to the greenwood, where the three encounter a merry band and another of Jemis' friends from university. Onward -- via an honestly terrifying river, an unexpectedly innocent relative, a suspiciously competent Honourable, a number of mysterious letters, an examination of the card game Poacher and its prognostic uses, and a lingering curse -- to the Winter Assizes, and a cheerful and optimistic finale.
Luckily there are another three novels ... watch this space!
Fulfils the ‘Featuring an Inheritance’ rubric of the 52 books in 2023 challenge.
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