2016/63: Think of England -- KJ Charles

The actual life of a gentleman spy, it seemed to him, consisted of sneaking about, breaking the rules of hospitality and generally being anything but a gentleman, and the only mysterious foreigner around was da Silva. He was probably the closest thing Peakholme had to offer to a sultry seductress, come to that.[loc. 556]

The year is 1904, and Boer War veteran Archie Curtis (nephew of Sir Henry Curtis, who appears in King Solomon's Mines) is attending a country house party in search of answers about the disaster that ended his military career and killed his friends. Was it bad luck, or sabotage?

His dislike of fellow guest Daniel da Silva -- foreign, dark-eyed, flamboyant and a poet -- is immediate and apparently mutual. But this is a romance, and while it eschews many of the more annoying tropes, opposites definitely do attract.

Think of England is utterly charming. The growing respect and friendship (as well as attraction) between Archie and Daniel is nicely paced, and Charles doesn't shy away from the difficult issues of same-sex attraction in Edwardian England. Archie doesn't identify as queer, and struggles with his urge to treat Daniel as more than just a furtive liaison.

Meanwhile, the two become embroiled in a dastardly plot that involves blackmail, hidden cameras (it's a very modern country house), the defense of the realm, corruption in high places. Daniel's frivolous exterior turns out to conceal nerves of steel, and Archie discovers new purpose in life.

Also there are canonical lesbians.

I read this on a friend's recommendation, and was impressed enough to read several more novels by the same author in quick succession. I have to say I like Think of England, with its discussions of poetry and lockpicking and psychotherapy and Boys' Own adventures, more than the others: I think it's because I like Daniel and Archie as characters.

2016/62: Fencing with Death: A Vintage Mystery -- Elizabeth Edmondson

'You did brilliantly in the written papers, I have to tell you, but the interviews let you down.'
'Why?'
'Chip on your shoulder a yard high and ridiculous left-wing fancies sprouting out all over you.'[loc. 317]

It is not to my credit that it took me about half the book to work out that I'd read it before, albeit under a different title: Losing Larry. Yep, pretty much everything I wrote back then still stands. I liked Larry a bit more this time around (possibly because I'm six years further removed from my own youthful idealism?), and I still think Edmondson is* a warm and witty writer. The ending of Fencing with Death is not wholly satisfactory, but it does grant a kind of freedom to the novel's protagonist.

* or was: I was sad to read of her death in 2016.

2016/61: Brideshead Revisited: The Sacred and Profane Memories of Captain Charles Ryder -- Evelyn Waugh

'...It seems to me that without your religion Sebastian would have the chance to be a happy and healthy man.'
'It's arguable,' said Brideshead. 'Do you think he will need this elephant's foot again?'[loc. 2198]

Incredibly, I had never actually read this: having been deterred at an early age by the 'classic' label (for which I blame an education system that inflicts 'classics' on adolescents before they are mentally or emotionally ready to appreciate them), and never having seen the classic BBC adaptation (beloved of many of my university friends) I just ... didn't. After all, there were so many other books to read.

Sebastian Flyte was born into privilege and acts, on occasion, like a spoilt child. Middle-class Charles Ryder is drawn to his company, but can't help (and possibly isn't aware of, at the time) judging him. It's an affair as intense as any grand romance, whether or not it is actually a sexual liaison. Charles sets himself (again, perhaps not consciously) against the Flyte family, and loses. Later in life -- though before the framing narrative of Brideshead in wartime -- he begins to appreciate just how profoundly Sebastian's Catholicism has shaped his life.

If I'd read this sooner, I might not have appreciated the growth of Charles Ryder as a character: I might have been too fascinated by the golden youths basking in the idyllic Twenties [yes, I know they weren't actually idyllic] and dismissed the more sober and mature reflections of Charles the husband, Charles the soldier, Charles the convert as a fading or lessening of the person he had been. Instead, I found myself thinking about Brideshead Revisited for quite a while after I'd finished reading. Perhaps I'm still thinking about it.

2016/60: Wicked Gentlemen -- Ginn Hale

When I had been very young, I had snuck up from Hells Below to drift up into the open night. I had thought that it was my kingdom. For a few weeks I had thought that perhaps I was the secret child of an angel. I had floated up into the frigid mists of clouds and imagined that the moon, shining above me, was my promised halo.

It's three hundred years since the Covenant of Redemption, which pardoned Lucifer's angels and gave them the promise of salvation for themselves and their descendants. Belimai Sykes is one such descendant -- 'Prodigal', those with demon blood are termed -- and has achieved an uneasy equilibrium between his second-class status as a Prodigal and his (intermittent) career as an investigator. Mostly, he spends his time alone in his room, high on ophorium and regret. He is a person with a past.

Into his present comes Captain William Harper of the Inquisition, a quasi-religious order responsible for policing the city of Crowncross. He, and his brother-in-law Dr Talbott, have a case for Sykes: but Sykes' help does not come cheap.

Wicked Gentlemen comprises two linked novellas, one from Sykes' point of view and one from Harper's. Sykes' voice is the more appealing, because he has a richer sensorium and a darker past, but Harper's perception of him is intriguing.

Class, religion, the thin veneer of respectability: Ginn Hale has created a very interesting setting for this M/M romance. The characters are three-dimensional, and though the plot is full of romance tropes -- not least 'opposites attract!' -- the setting confers novelty on them.

2016/59: Europe in Winter -- Dave Hutchinson

"Europe is inherently unstable. It's been in flux for centuries; countries have risen and fallen, borders have ebbed and flowed, governments have come and gone. The Schengen era was just an historical blip, an affectation."[loc. 5535]

Third in the series -- trilogy? or will there be more? -- that began with Europe in Autumn and continued with Europe at Midnight. I liked Europe in Winter a great deal though suspect I need to reread the entire sequence before I can make sense of the ways in which the various plot threads weave and tangle together.

The Community has ended decades of isolationism and has laid a transcontinental railway line -- 'not so much a mode of transport, more a lifestyle choice' -- from Spain to Siberia. There are problems with bringing down borders, though. Some people would much rather keep the outsiders outside. And other people might make their living from facilitating illicit crossing of said borders. Thus, a terrorist attack on the Paris-Novosibirsk Express.

Meanwhile Rudi, erstwhile chef and Coureur du Bois, has managed to infiltrate Dresden-Neustadt, and has made a number of disconcerting discoveries -- about the Community, about the Patrons, about the Line and about himself. It's a complex and incomprehensible reality, so of course Mr Hutchinson throws further spanners (or, more likely, kitchen implements) into the works. Characters from the previous two novels (or people very like them) reappear: rival powers exchange hostages: old-skool spies do old-skool spy stuff straight out of Le Carre: a man with amnesia is travelling on forged papers, carrying a photograph from the 1919 Versailles peace conference: and Rudi begins to uncover the identity of the Coureur mastermind who's turned his life upside down and inside out.

With hilarious consequences.

I've struggled to write this review because there is simply so much plot: an unfolding fractal landscape of connections, identities, loyalties, topography. Then I happened across the perfect description of this novel: the bastard son of The Third Man and Inception (from The Eloquent Page). Yep, that sounds about right.

2016/58: Fool's Run -- Patricia A. McKillip

"I learned something strange. When you run, you run backwards, you never reach the future. The past runs faster than you and waits for you to reach it. You have to walk out of danger, out of the past. Because you look back when you run, but you look to the future when you walk."[loc. 1737]

Reread: I absolutely adored this novel when I first read it, but haven't revisited it for years. Having recently read Kingfisher -- which reminded me of Fool's Run in its mythic resonance and its relatively sparse imagery -- I wanted to reread this and see if my memory had become rose-tinted.

As usual with rereads, it was interesting to see what I remembered and what I didn't. Last time around, I think I was more focussed on the band and the romance: this time, I found the story of Jase -- unwilling King of an Underworld which is actually an orbitting penal colony -- fascinating. The echoes and distortions of the Orpheus myth are still impressively intricate, and critical of the source: the future, with its First World Government and its Sectors and music from all eras, seems much further away than it did in the Eighties.

Irritatingly, this ebook publication has a problem with typos: specifically, the word 'colour'. We have 'the brilliant colourcoloured lights'[loc. 807], 'a pair of colourrose-coloured cube-sticks' [loc. 1316], the 'colourcolourless or of all colours' [loc. 2198]. And this is, as usual with McKillip, a book full of colour: gold, rose, amethyst ... even Viridian, the surname of the woman whose quest for more light affected so many of the characters.

I wish McKillip wrote SF more often.

2016/57: A Little Familiar -- R. Cooper

That was one of the problems with dating ordinary humans; eventually it became necessary to either tell them the truth or break up with them. Relationships with them could be done, of course, with the right sort of person, the kind already inclined to gaze longingly at full moons, the ones who searched for fairies when they saw a circle of mushrooms, or ran toward breaking waves instead of away from them.[loc. 44]

Piotr Russell is a powerful witch, but his very power makes him lonely: he can't face a relationship with an outsider, and all the witches and magic-users he knows are paired up or otherwise ineligible. Instead, Piotr keeps to himself and channels his energy into providing for his coven: he's an excellent cook and gardener, and he bestows blessings liberally.

Piotr's ancestors have sought solace in the companionship of their familiars -- yet when Piotr is approached by Bartleby, a 'human familiar' who has no magic of his own and yet is capable of augmenting another witch's power, Piotr rejects him, because he is old-fashioned enough to hope for love as well as expedience. And surely Bartleby, gorgeous and gregarious, can never love him ...

Okay, you can probably see where this story is going: it doesn't surprise, but it is sweet and warm and often funny. Also quite short. It wasn't quite the 'pairing of equals' that I prefer in my M/M romances: Bartleby is described in terms that, while not feminising, do present him as more fragile, fey and lacking in agency than Piotr. I did like the setting, though, complete with the ghost of Piotr's great-aunt in the parlour.