Where Beowulf Gets a MG Makeover

Beowulf: Dragon Slayer by Rosemary Sutcliff
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Rosemary Sutcliff is known for her historical novels and retellings aimed mostly at young readers (we would probably call most of them MG, but you could argue YA for them, too). And she was very successful at this. Here is the retelling of the Anglo-Saxon epic Beowulf, and I thought it was excellent. Not perfect, IMO, but definitely well done and very entertaining.

This is still a slim book--she hasn't made Beowulf into a long novel. More like a novelette, actually, and with the fine drawings it reads very fast. She has embellished the story somewhat, adding sensory details and some exposition that wasn't in the original, and I love it all. The land around Heorot seems like a place people live instead of a fairytale village. The hall itself is finally kind of visible to me. The battle with Grendel seems more plausible and real. And there are a lot of such details, none of which do damage (as always, IMO) to the original story.

She has removed a couple of digressions, and I think that's wise. They don't really work for a modern audience, especially young readers, and they only slow down the narrative. Otherwise, the whole story is here. The only thing I felt it lacked was a bit more added in; every ounce of world-building she includes improves the story, and I feel there was room for about twice as much as she did. In fact, the story rolls along almost too fast (here and in the original) and could have used a little more breathing space. It could have been 20% or 30% longer without doing the pacing any harm at all.

But what she did really works. The language is still stately and feels old fashioned, but it's nicely comprehensible for average to good readers of a young age. I found it entertaining as an old man who already knows the story, so I'm pretty sure this would work with a lot of kids.

Of course, the only reason I even know of this 1962 book is because it was put on the discard rack at the school where I taught and I picked it up. I think most of the other copies of this book have met a similar fate. Like so many books, I suspect a new edition with a modern cover could be successful again, but there's little chance of that.

Alas.

Recommended for MG (especially) or YA readers who like historical adventures with a touch of supernatural. Or for readers of any age, honestly. I liked it.

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Where Mordaunt Faces the Pirate

The Works Of Sir Walter Scott, Bart: The Pirate by Walter Scott
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I don't really give half-stars, but this was right between a 4 and a 5 for me. I'd rather give it 4.5.

I liked it quite a bit, and found it hugely informative. I expected it to be more tropical, with a lot more time on ship, and was disappointed at first that almost the whole novel takes place on the main island in Shetland, but that ended up being a really cool setting for the novel. (I think it's meant to be set in the 1700s, probably 1720s, but it could be later.) I've never read anything set there, or in the neighboring islands of the Orkneys, and it was an education. Now I can picture them as they were--their stark beauty, the independent inhabitants, their way of life, the history of the people (both Norse and Scots), and more of that sort. I liked how the setting was a kind of character in the novel.

It's also an interesting and entertaining story. Scott often tells excellent adventure stories, and this is partly in that mold, but it's also about half "novel of manners," taking place largely in a few upper-class homes. Much of it takes place during a long celebration at the home of the wealthiest landowner, the father of the two most sought-after young women, and it has the feel of something you might find in Austen or Eliot.

As you often see in a Scott work, the most striking feature of the novel is its characters: the blunt but generous nobleman, Magnus Troil; the witch-like Norna; the reclusive stranger, Mr. Mertoun; his athletic and well-liked son, Mordaunt; the shipwrecked stranger Mordaunt saved from drowning, Cleveland, who is the eponymous pirate; the beautiful and romantic Minna and her practical sister Brenda; the tiresome poet, Claud Halcro; the Scottish reformer, Triptolemus; and many more memorable characters. Though the style is ornate and the tone is romantic and adventurous, I found these characters surprisingly round and dynamic, especially for the time. Even when the mood turns Gothic, there was plenty of realism shining through, and the characters continued to seem largely plausible and real.

We do, by the end, find real pirates on a real ship, with actual cannons getting run out, and townsmen gathering their weapons to defend themselves, and there's some excellent pirate action. But despite this, and despite the name, it's more about eerie Norna's machinations and the strange way fate works itself out. And I was actually surprised at the ending, though it was very satisfying.

There is a plot, btw. Mordaunt loves one of the young women, and he was well received in her father's home, but Cleveland spreads lies that Magnus Troil is too ready to believe, putting him on the outs. Mordaunt and Cleveland become rivals and then enemies, even though they each saved the other from drowning at different times. Romantic Minna dreams of Viking times and loves Cleveland despite (and partly because of) his violent past, though many around her want to save her from a rogue like him. And Mordaunt actually loves the younger sister, though Norna insists it's his fate to marry the elder.

It's good.

Recommended for readers of 19th century adventure novels. This is one of Scott's better books, too, IMO.

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Where Beowulf Gets Poetic

Beowulf by Seamus Heaney
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

(I am reviewing the translation, not the original.)

I thought this was awesome, an excellent, modern version of a very old poem.

Seamus Heaney attempted to give the reader a true translation of Beowulf, providing the modern reader a poem as nearly comparable to the original as possible. It is rendered in natural English though still in verse, nearly line-for-line translating from Anglo-Saxon. (The original Anglo-Saxon is given on the left, the modern version on the right. I read the right.) He uses appropriate poetic language, too, and explains in the introduction the work he did to find the right vocabulary so as to give the modern reader a taste of the original while still being comprehensible. I think he did that very well.

He also gave us an approximation of the Anglo-Saxon meter, with each line (usually) breaking into two parts (where you might pause briefly), with an instance of alliteration on either side. For example:

"Then this roaming killer came in a fury
and slaughtered him in Heorot. Where she is hiding,
glutting on the corpse and glowing in her escape..."

We find "killer" on the left and "came" on the right; "him" and "Heorot" on the left, "hiding" on the right; and "glutting" on the left and "glowing" on the right.

He manages to keep this Anglo-Saxon alliteration rule in mind in almost every line, though not completely. You can find a few without it. But he didn't want to twist the language too much, so I approve of his balance.

The language here, as I said, is decently poetic, though it leans toward comprehension overall. Older versions may sound more elaborately poetic, but I found this very comprehensible while still sounding like poetry. I think it's a good mix.

Recommended for those who want to see if they might like Beowulf more than they did back in school. I think you will like it better.

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Where Beowulf Gets Modernized

No Fear Beowulf by Unknown
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I generally enjoy and approve of the "No Fear Shakespeare" books, and though this one is not Shakespeare it's just as well done. If someone is reading Beowulf and needs resources, I would absolutely recommend this book.

Unlike the other books in the series, the "original" text here is actually a translation. I can't find who did it or when, but it's technically still modern English although it is archaic sounding. The original Anglo-Saxon is not presented here. This is what the older translation sounds like:

But here in Heorot a hand hath slain him
of wandering death-sprite. I wot not whither,
proud of the prey, her path she took,
fain of her fill. The feud she avenged
that yesternight, unyieldingly,
Grendel in grimmest grasp thou killedst,--
seeing how long these liegemen mine
he ruined and ravaged...

The (even more) modern version, the "no fear" part, is like this:

"A wandering demon has taken him, and who knows where she is now, eating his flesh. She has come to avenge Grendel..."

To be fair, the modern version cuts out quite a bit--it's always about half as long as the original. But I think it does all it needs to in order for a modern reader to clarify what's happening when the older version is a bit dense. Leaving out the poetic bits shortens it a lot.

Though it isn't the point of the book, I still really like the old version, or at least I do when I'm understanding it correctly. Its use of alliteration is very catchy ("proud of her prey, her path she took" and "Grendel in grimmest grasp," etc.) and does a lot of what the Anglo-Saxon original did. There are tons of versions of Beowulf, and the version here does it justice, IMO. If you want poetry, this is poetry. And if it's a comprehension aid you want, the modern translation part is perfectly adequate--which is all it needs to be.

Recommended, especially for students of the text.

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Where Judge Dee Solves the Maze

The Chinese Maze Murders by Robert van Gulik
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is another entertaining mystery in a successful series.

Just like other titles in the series, the magistrate Judge Dee is faced with three separate mysteries, all coming in at about the same time, and so he is working on them all at once. It's also typical (though not universal) that he's arriving at a new posting, discovering a bunch of messed up stuff left by the previous magistrate. Here, it's a crime syndicate oppressing the people like a land baron in some westerns. Without troops or a regular police force to back him up, Judge Dee has to use some clever trickery to hold off the powerful criminal organization before he can even start to unwind all the knots in the mysteries.

It's interesting to see in this novel that Judge Dee is wondering if he should keep working in his profession, which takes a toll both because of the unending nature of the work as well as the ugliness of it, tracking down murderers and the like. He's considering giving it up, going back where he came from to farm a small plot of land. I wouldn't blame him at all. Because he has to oversee both the questioning, which at that time included whipping and torture, as well as the sentencing, which could be brutal, the reader might wonder if he's brutal himself. It appears not. He does his job, but he doesn't enjoy the cruelty.

His insightful methods are a lot of fun, but his assistants are perhaps even more entertaining. They're kinda rough guys (reformed highwaymen and conmen) who are fiercely loyal to the judge. They risk a lot and show a ton of ingenuity on their own to track down clues and people. Between them, we get the whole Sherlock experience: amazing deductions, clever disguises, danger, and some self-defense with martial arts. Lots of fun, but there could be a bit that triggers people; like many of his books, the crimes here are not just murder but also include elements of SA. FYI.

(That's what mysteries are about, right? Bad guys doing bad stuff, then getting caught by good guys. But such stories are not for everyone, of course.)

As always, good if not great, which is just about as much as you can hope for when you open a book. So far I've enjoyed them all and look forward to reading the stack I just bought.

Recommended for historical mystery fans.

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Where Lord Byron Is the Suspect

Riot Most Uncouth: A Lord Byron Mystery by Daniel Friedman
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Wow. My 5-star rating is way over the average, which sits right at 3.

I'm shocked at that result. I thought this was a really great novel. (I see a bunch of disgruntled Byron stans gave this a 1. But the most common score was a 5. I get it now.)

At the beginning, I almost DNF'd the book. Lord Byron is the main character, and as most people know, he was kind of a jerk. Mad, bad, and dangerous to know. Probably worse than that. And here, he is portrayed as an absolute malignant narcissist--which he might or might not have been. The Byron in the novel is a horrible man whose only virtue (besides being a good writer, I suppose) is that he generally is honest about himself, not pretending, for example, when he's seducing a woman, that he will ever love her or take care of her or anything noble. Most of the time, there is no sign of virtue, though. He is an asshole and uses his status as a club to injure people that mostly don't deserve his cruelty.

I don't like books with characters I have no sympathy for. That's my biggest turnoff in reading and in movies. Somehow, though, he became, by degrees, more sympathetic to me, and I started to care about him. Then I got into the story. (A similar example: Al Swearengen, in Deadwood, is a dangerous, callous, homocidal prick, but he's also smart and funny and strangely compelling. I should hate to watch him, but I don't.) Anyway, I can't totally explain why I found Byron sympathetic after all, except I guess he's also really smart, and when he's horrible to bad people it is pretty fun.

This is a mystery novel, which is one of my favorite things, and it has all the usual bits: a crime, some suspects, the gathering of clues, additional crimes, danger for the MC, and so on, but it also seems bigger than that. In part, that's because we get a lot of flashback scenes with Byron's childhood, especially revolving around his father, and the story is framed as a much older Byron revisiting the story from his university days. In terms of time, the novel is wider than the mystery, but thematically it's wide, too, touching on mental health and family relationships and the privileges of nobility, and so on, and feels in some ways like a mini-biography. I thought it worked.

There is a satisfying conclusion to the story, and though the older Byron narrating the last chapter casts doubt on some of the exact details of the mystery's end, it feels like it doesn't really matter.

Yes, he's a terrible guy, so I totally understand those who couldn't keep reading. And the mystery is bloody and violent, so that might spoil it for others. But from a certain perspective, there's a lot to laugh at here, not to mention a wild mystery to solve, and I really enjoyed reading it.

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Where Orlando Loses It but Gets It Back

By Ludovico Ariosto - Orlando Furioso (Oxford World's Classics) (1999-02-12) [Paperback] by Ludovico Ariosto
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

If you've got the time, this is amazing.

Partly, I wanted to track down whatever stuff Don Quixote had been reading, see what he loved so much, and this is one of those chivalric stories (a long epic poem, actually) that he supposedly read. And yeah, it's very cool. I'd like to have a chat with Don Quixote about it.

This poem by Ariosto is the continuation of another Italian poem--Orlando Innamorato, or Orlando in Love, [or Roland, actually, to use a more familiar form of his name], written by Boiardo--but that poem was less successful and has received much less attention over time than this continuation. The Orlando here is the same Roland we might know better from The Song of Roland, the story of Charlemagne's withdrawal from Muslim Spain back to France, where Roland and his men, the rear guard of the army, are ambushed by a Muslim army (or a Basque army, depending on the version) and Roland is reluctant to use his horn to call for help. This epic brings together many of stories found in other forms that are collectively called the Matter of France, mostly stories of Charlemagne's knights. The so-called Matter of Britain, mostly King Arthur stories, is thrown into the mix.

In general, this tells how certain key knights (including women, several of whom are nearly unbeatable) participate in the war between North African Muslims on the one side, who are trying to take Paris, and the multi-national force of Christians led by Charlemagne, who are trying to defend it. Most of the story, though, follows individuals as they go on separate quests and fight strangers and save maidens or warriors or whoever from monsters and sorceresses and all sorts of bad guys, especially the type who will stand on bridges and challenge all comers. The story starts with Orlando in love with Angelica, though she doesn't love him back (because they drank from different magic streams in the original poem by Boiardo) and he is chasing after her. Other knights are just as in love with her, which she doesn't enjoy. The "furioso" part of the book (meaning crazy, not angry) comes in the middle when Orlando learns Angelica has fallen in love with someone else and has gone off to live with him. (She leaves the story at that point.) He loses his reason, rips off his clothes, and starts tearing up the countryside, killing people everywhere he goes.

(The English knight Astolfo goes to save Orlando, with direction from a kind sorcerer. He rides a hippogriff to Africa, where he helps the Christian king Prester John with his harpy problem and has many adventures, eventually being allowed to ride Elijah's flaming chariot up to the moon where lost things, like Orlando's wits, can be found. He eventually restores them to Orlando, who as a result no longer loves Angelica.)

One of the best passages, earlier on in the poem, tells how Angelica is captured (even though she is a top fighter) and is chained to a rock like Andromeda to be a sacrifice to the sea creature called an orc.

The orc, seeing the shadow cast by the spreading wings flitting here and there across the water, left its certain prey awaiting it on shore and started a furious chase, curving and coiling, after the elusive one instead. Ruggiero dropped down and struck a blow, like an eagle dropping from the sky when it has spotted a snake weaving through the grass, or lying on a bare stone in the sun...

Ruggiero--supposedly an actual ancestor of the poet's patrons, the Este family, even though he was a Muslim--defeats the orc and rescues her from the rock with the help of the hippogriff that Astolfo later rides to Africa. He gives her a ring of invisibility and she uses it to go hide from all the guys trying to find her.

So many modern fantasy elements and tropes are found here that, with a little revision and updating of some 500-year-old stylist things, it could be on the shelves beside LotR or Wheel of Time or Mistborn books. Like a grandpa fantasy near it's descendants.

The original ~40,000-line poem in Italian was in ottava rima stanzas, which rhymed abababcc. There are English versions that attempt a similar format, but that's a terrible thing to do to a nice poem. This translation is given in prose, split into paragraphs, written in a way that doesn't do violence to the poem's meaning. The only sign of the original format is a / placed between stanza breaks. This translation is very readable with only a hint of quaintness, and it has an extensive annotated index in the back for those of us who need help remembering who is Brandimart (a knight who is Orlando's best friend) and who is Bradamant (a female knight who ends up marrying Ruggiero) and things like that.

I read this in tiny pieces. That worked for me. I don't know about other readers. In any case, I really enjoyed it. 5 stars.

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