Where Mademoiselle Faces Impossible Choices

Count Hannibal: A Romance of the Court of France by Stanley J. Weyman
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This is a historical romance (in the older sense) set in France during the Huguenot purges, written right around 1900. I found it very entertaining and engaging, as well as thought-provoking--in part because I can't agree with almost anyone in the novel. But I still liked them, sort of.

Count Hannibal--Monsieur de Tavannes, or just Tavannes, mostly--is veteran of many foreign wars, a devout Catholic, a servant of the crown, and a real bastard. In real life, he took a leading role in the murder of Huguenots in 1572, a crime probably instigated by Catherine de' Medici rather than her son the king, but enthusiastically endorsed by most noblemen in the north and most of the Catholic lower classes. However, he saves mademoiselle de Vrillac, a beautiful Huguenot woman he's been kinda hitting on, in a gross way, despite the fact that a she's intended for M. Tignonville. That man is not too brave, and in the moment his betrothed needs him most, when the mob is surging throughout Paris, looking for Huguenots, he's trying to find the woman he hopes will be his mistress. (She won't. She despises him.) Murderous Count Hannibal, though, protects her and her household from the crowd, and eventually Tignonville as well, but will continue to do so only if she marries him. If she remains principled, it means not just her death, but all those others, including Tignonville. Not much of a choice. It's the worst kind of extortion, though it's presented like a kind of mercy.

Her choice in that moment, and her even more crucial choice in the last few pages of the novel, are the center of plot. There's lots of travel across France and secret messages and ambushes and intrigue, very readable stuff, but the real story is the moral and ethical struggle of this one poor woman and the choices she has to make in the midst of incredible cruelty, mayhem, chaos, and murder. How can anyone be a good person, an ethical person, in a place and time where the rules of society are so perverse? Also, how black can the marks against you be before your redemption is impossible?

The one virtue that seems to be universally admired and adhered to is the sanctity of giving your word. The only exception I can think of in the novel is a moment of exceptionally high stakes--is it permissible to break your word to save half a city? I think the answer the book arrives at is yes, though it's a tussle.

There's a lot to think about, but it's hard to discuss it without giving up every spoiler. It's an old book and not many people are reading it, but if you like Dumas, you probably would like this, so I don't want to ruin it for those people.

Recommended.

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Where Suleiman Can't Trust Anyone

Suleiman the Magnificent - Sultan of the East by Harold Lamb
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I love Lamb's historical retellings/novels/life stories/biographies, but this one is a little less dazzling. It starts great, but it gets less and less compelling through to the end. Still pretty good, still pretty easy and pleasant to read, and worth the time, but not as fun as others.

Lamb writes hybrid books, ones that could be novels or biographies or something else, and I like the novel type most. This starts that way and then slowly turns into a biography. The last 30 pages are about developments after Suleiman's death, which was the hardest and densest part to get through. but for that part, I would have probably given this a 4.

Lamb does an amazing job popularizing the history of figures and places that are usually given too little coverage in American history classes and media, and I give him a ton of credit. His research and writing are excellent. I definitely learned a lot about Suleiman and the way the Ottoman Empire expanded and threatened Europe during his lifetime. It answers a lot of questions I had about that time period. And, as always, it's a pretty good read.

I just feel like this book, if he had novelized it a bit more, made it a little more like some other biographical novels of his I've enjoyed more, it would have worked better. As a biography, it's fine.

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Where It's Pretty Exciting, Actually

The Flamingo Feather by Kirk Munroe
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This isn't for everybody--but I really liked it. It's a very entertaining adventure novel in the vein of Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson or Last of the Mohicans if Alexandre Dumas had written it instead of James Fenimore Cooper. I thought I was gonna hate it when I came across the archaic language in the dialogue; Rene's uncle greets him this way on their first meeting: "In good sooth, Réné, thou'rt a likely lad; and if thy heart be as true and bold as thy face promises, we'll soon make a man of thee such as even thy noble father would approve." It continues that way, but it stops feeling obtrusive, and I just rolled along with the narrative.

This has the flaws so typical of books penned by white writers in the late 19th century (first published in 1887), including some of the prejudices that would have been considered socially acceptable at the time, such as using words like "savages" to describe them, or assuming the reader was a fellow Christian who would smile at the natives' quaint beliefs. This unfortunate tendency is most noticeable when talking about whole groups of natives. However, when dealing with characters one at a time, they come off very differently.

The author treats individual natives as unique, with a variety of temperaments, abilities, goals, and personalities, capable of heroic and noble actions on the one hand as well as cruelty and deceit on the other. Munroe grew up on the frontier in the 1850's (Wisconsin, actually, in a log cabin) where he had some firsthand experience with Native Americans, and it becomes clear in the book that he was a genuine admirer of native people, sympathetic to them, aware of their many accomplishments, and that spirit of common humanity mitigates much of the negatives. (IMO. YMMV.)

The story and the action are excellent, speeding along with very little pause almost from beginning to end. The young man joins his uncle on an expedition to the New World, leaving France in 1564; they meet several native groups; they build a fort; as a group, they face disease and hunger and enemies; Rene and his new friend, Has-se, face personal enemies; there is war, and escape, and rescues, and mutinies, and chases up rivers and through the swamps of Florida. The bad guys are torture-you-to-death bad, the good guys are die-for-you good, and it's all exciting and fun to read. The conclusion I found to be satisfying and fitting for an adventure story like this.

TBH, I thought it was all made up at first--French Huguenot settlers in Florida in the 1500's?--and though the author takes liberties with history, in broad outline, it turns out it's all true; Fort Caroline really existed, and it really got wiped out by the Spanish. And while this fictional account adds a romantic sheen to a brutal time--which I well know--it still makes me want to learn more about what really happened and what life was really like in that region in those days, and it colors in a big dark spot on my knowledge of history.

So, bearing in mind all the usual caveats... good book. Recommended for readers of adventure novels.

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