Where Ghosts Are Laid to Rest

Historical Romances of William harrison Ainsworth Rookwood by Ainsworth
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is a flawed but entertaining historical novel from an author I usually really enjoy. I don't love everything here, and I have quibbles, but I can't give him a 3. This is enough fun it still has to be a 4.

Most of his novels are historical romances in the same vein as most of Alexandre Dumas or Sir Walter Scott. They're well-researched, exciting, action and adventure novels, though they have pretty high diction and read a little stuffy. I don't mind that. The historical settings and castles and swordplay and escapes are all very fun. This one is a bit different though.

First of all, this one is intentionally filled with gothic elements. We spend a lot of time in crypts, talking about spooky curses and murderous ancestors. The gothic bits come and go, though, and we spend most of the time in action, with disputed wills and secret marriages, with songs and highwaymen and thief-takers, but then get back into Castle of Otranto territory. It's a bit uneven--but that's okay.

Another difference in this novel is how it feels like two stories jammed together. We have the Rookwoods, with half-brothers disputing their inheritance, with relatives attending the old lord's funeral, and one beautiful cousin seemingly destined for one of the half-brothers. The other part of the story is about Dick Turpin the highwayman, with a long scene in the middle where he is chased from London to York. It has nothing to do with the Rookwood manor or anything that went before, except that Turpin was present for some of that. (I hate that he rides his amazing horse to death. No excuse for that. I liked him as a character until then.)

Then back to the Rookwood story. It ends well, IMO, but in the middle we have characters acting so strange that I can't account for their motivations. Sybil, a Roma girl, loves Luke Rookwood, and he loves her, while his half-brother loves Eleanor, their beautiful cousin. But as soon as Luke sees her, he falls in love with her and is done with Sybil. Sybil meanwhile was ready to marry Luke, then said no (when he found out he was the rightful heir) then tricked him to marry him, then was going to kill Eleanor, but then instead killed herself........

Sorry for the spoilers.

There are many more instances of characters behaving oddly. I think we're meant to assume that the curses and prophecies talked about in the beginning have an effect on the characters, pushing them down certain paths, rewriting their wishes, but I could be making that up.

And yet the book is very fun to read, very brisk, with some characters to admire and to hate, with lots of great action. I like that the curse on the family is finally laid to rest, thanks to poor Sybil who saw what had to be done. I could have said this was a wild ride of a 3, but I think I'd rather call it a quirky 4. A curious reader who is new to Ainsworth might just read book III chapter 14 to the end of book 5, which is almost everything with Dick Turpin and his long ride to escape the thief-takers, full of close escapes and amazing action. That bit could probably be a novella all on its own.

Recommended for Ainsworth readers. Others should probably start on another novel.

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Where the Governess Finds Love and Mysteries

The Secrets of Hartwood Hall by Katie Lumsden
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I enjoyed this novel, especially the last 80 pages or so, and though I wasn't loving it much in the first half, I'm rooting for the author, so I'm glad it took off. (IMO.)

The writing is very good, all through. And the characters are well-realized for the most part. I like the slow release of characters' histories, and I'll admit that I was surprised at one reveal, and thought it was better than what I was expecting. I wish the main character had been a little more active and empathetic earlier; she definitely improved. But I struggled through the pages with Margaret being blackmailed and just living with it. Of course, it is a theme throughout the novel that women are often trapped and made powerless, so it was probably intentional, and it matches the dynamic so often found in Austen novels or Jane Eyre or Agnes Grey. But Margaret is portrayed as especially timid or retiring, and I found it hard to admire her for much of it, as well as less fun to read.

When the mysteries start to be revealed, the MC starts being more active, showing more backbone, and for me it becomes a lot more fun to read. And though the ending isn't everything I hope for in such a novel, it makes perfect sense, and I have no real complaint.

(Okay, I do have a complaint. The Victorian sense of place, of class or station, of one's social position, is so noxious to me that, even though it's historically accurate, I cringe every time characters remind themselves and each other of what isn't possible--who is or isn't allowed to cook, and who can show emotions, and who can comfort whom or sit down to a meal together or sit together at church or consider marrying. It feels so toxic and contrary to human happiness that I get irrationally angry.)

Overall, this is a well-written, cleverly-plotted novel, promising other interesting books to come. And the author (based on her youtube channel) seems like such a pleasant person, I hope she has great success. A second novel is out, so I'll be looking for that one.

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Where Emily Saw Something Nasty in the West Chamber

The Mysteries of Udolpho by Ann Radcliffe
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I found this entertaining and interesting, even surprising, and the language is often striking and sometimes beautiful. As a big fan of old timey Romantic poetry, I can get behind the descriptions of waterfalls and mountains and raging rivers hidden away on trails frequented by bandits. (I couldn't make myself read the poems scattered here, though, where she rhapsodizes on wind and nightfall or whatever.) And the gothic stuff, with many towers and dangerous castles and the like, has got a great vibe. I'd say the vibe was the heart of the book and probably the best reason to read it still.

I won't say that it's generally fun like a modern mystery or bestseller type novel. It is sometimes, but most of the time it is slower than that, and needs to be approached differently (if you want to enjoy it, I mean). This is like if Jane Austen had a baby book with Bram Stoker, or George Eliot with Sir Walter Scott, where we have both action of a sort and a novel of manners. It's like a roller coaster that goes really slow, or a slow-burn romance that spends most of the middle on a different story, one that's all gothic and no romance. : ) It's not a rollicking read, but it does supply some decent action, some maybe-ghosts, a couple dollops of romance, and a bunch of intrigue. I'm okay with the mix.

It could, however, be about half as long without missing anything. We get virtually the same scene over and over--the same reflections, the same conversations, the same fainting spells. This is why I think it's rather like a really, really, really long song. It has a bunch of verses that are pretty similar, with about a dozen choruses that repeat every few pages. (Valancourt asks if he has any hope with her; she tells him he must go. Over and over.)

To sum up the plot--Emily is sent to live with an uncaring aunt when her parents die, where she falls in love with Valancourt, and soon the aunt marries a very scary Italian guy, Mantano. Then Emily is dragged away with them, first to Venice and then to the famous Castle of Udolpho, where much of the spooky, frightening stuff happens. All along, her aunt's new husband is terrifying, and we eventually realize he's hooked up with bandits and criminals and is probably a murderer. Emily's aunt dies, leaving her totally alone in a castle in the wilderness, and Mantano presses her to sign over all of her inherited lands and holdings, threatening her. Emily fears he will kill her either way, but she does eventually sign the papers. All of these actions happen over hundreds of pages of repeated conversations, repeated threats, and nearly identical inner monologues. If the author could have cut out the repeated stuff, we could have had a much trimmer book. Alas.

There's a lot of Scooby Doo type mysteries with non-supernatural explanations, but there are also many genuine life-threatening dangers, so the stakes are real here even if the ghosts aren't. There are also wild, long-held family secrets that get squeezed out over the course of the novel. And the love story is a good model for a lot of later novels, with misunderstandings and rash judgments, and--spoiler... skip ahead a few lines if you don't want to see... still a spoiler coming... here it is--the happy ending that we got was almost a surprise to me. I liked it.

I found this well worth reading. I was disappointed I couldn't find a hardcover copy for a reasonable price (like on eBay) and finally had to read it from a paperback. I wonder if there's a movie.

If you read Jane Austen and are curious about the various horrid books and overwrought gothic novels they talk about in Northanger Abbey, take a look at this one. You might enjoy it. I liked it enough to go track down some of the others.

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Where the Giaour Gets Revenge

The Giaour: A Fragment of a Turkish Tale by Lord Byron
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

It's hard to find a nice, readable copy of this poem.

Kind of impossible.

The only things I could find were online versions--a terrible way to read poetry--and random collections, which in my opinion have more than the whiff of the classroom and are just about as sexy as a scribbled on circa-1970 middle school algebra textbook with the cover ripping off. It is its own thing; it deserves its own covers, rather than sharing them with unrelated works of every type.

So I had to copy and paste and format and print my own copy and sew it up and glue it between cardboard covers I wrapped in muslin that I dyed purple and let everything dry. It's pretty warped and wonky, but it's a book, about 50% mess, 50% cool.

Then I could read it.

I liked it, and I wished there was more of it. It tells an actual story in bits and pieces, out of order, and more context rather than less would have made it more easily comprehensible, but even as is I found it engaging and affecting. The Giaour is a man, a non-Muslim in (what I understand to be) Turkish-occupied Greece who falls in love with a beautiful woman in the harem of Hassan, a powerful man. The poem introduces us to beautiful Greece, then through the eyes of a fisherman we see the dangerous Giaour on horseback, on his way to killing Hassan. Then we have, out of order and from different POVs: Hassan's death at the hand of the Giaour; Leila dropped into the sea, drowned in a bag, by Hassan; Leila escaping the harem dressed as a Georgian page; the Giaour facing Hassan; and then the Giaour holed up in a monastery, living out the rest of his short life in a cell.

Nothing announces the shifts in time, forward and back, nor the change of POV, so it's a bit of a mystery. But there's a lot of power in his language, and I have always liked the rhythms that Byron gave his lines, even when I wasn't very interested in poetry in general. (Some people don't care for his "Destruction of Sennacherib," but I often used that in classrooms full of reluctant readers and it worked well. Especially with good narrators on youtube.)

A nice passage, in the Giaour's own words:

The cold in clime are cold in blood,
Their love can scarce deserve the name;
But mine was like the lava flood
That boils in Aetna's breast of flame.
I cannot prate in puling strain
of Ladye-love, and Beauty's chain:
If changing cheek , and scorching vein,
Lips taught to writhe, but not complain,
If bursting heart, and maddening brain,
And daring deed, and vengeful steel,
And all that I have felt, and feel,
Betoken love--that love was mine,
And shown by many a bitter sign.

The poem is dark and rhythmic and even a bit Gothic, with the suggestion that he might be cursed for his crimes to return as a vampire to destroy those he loves. Fortunately he loves no one...

It's not surprising to read that this inspired Poe to some degree. Poems like "Annabel Lee" or "The Raven," with their macabre and Gothic feel, their regular rhymes, and their powerful rhythms, seem like relatives to this one. There's a definite family resemblance.

This isn't a short poem, but at 1300 lines it's not terribly long, either. (It's about 60 short pages in my edition.) :) Definitely short enough and strange enough and cool enough that it should still be getting attention, IMO--and not just in dusty old textbooks.

Read if you like poetry with love and swords and danger and the ocean.

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Where I Liked Some Ingredients but not the Cake

The Sinister Mystery of the Mesmerizing Girl by Theodora Goss
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

It's okay.

Seriously, I really enjoyed the first book in the series. I rather liked the second, though it was (IMO, as always) a lot too long. But there was so much I liked that I bought the third, intending to love it, and I gotta say--I didn't.

There are still so many things I admire. I love the whole conceit of putting together all these female characters from stories mostly focused on other characters; of them finding a way to survive as a family in an overtly patriarchal society; of their investigating strange mysteries and crimes. I like Mary, Diana is kinda funny, I have sympathy for Justine, I am charmed by Mrs. Poole, and most of the others have their moments. And I really like the intrusive comments, with the various characters breaking in as if the book is a performance that they're interrupting with objections and arguments and the like. I liked that all the way through, especially the pitch to buy the books.

But the pacing is deadly. The story is so cozy and the arc is so flat that I barely cared what happened (except for the scene in the British Museum, which was pretty good). There's almost no mystery, no tension, no excitement; we see bravery and hard work, but nothing awesome. These characters all have skills and abilities, and they're not entirely forgotten, but they're underused. I want to cheer for Justine doing something noble that requires strength or Mary solving a hard riddle that no one else can make sense of or Catherine doing what only a puma woman could. We get Diana picking locks and the like, but it's not much.

(And for god's sake, if you're gonna put Sherlock in your book, don't have him unconscious for half the novel and in captivity for the other half! He was wasted.)

Anyway, I liked the book enough to give it a passing 3-stars evaluation, and I liked the series, but if I'm honest it wasn't much fun to read past the middle of the second book. I started this one with high hopes, intending to read it straight through, but started leaving it on the desk day after day as it dragged, reluctantly picking it up from time to time over many weeks.

I have no doubt others will see virtues I didn't.

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Where I Liked It Way More Than Expected. Good News!

Hammers of Ulric by Dan Abnett
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I enjoyed this a lot more than most the reviewers I looked at. That's weird. I thought it would be the other way around.

I have tried many times over the years to get into one of those long fantasy game tie-in series with 100 or 150 titles--the kind written by multiple people--and I just can't do it. I'll sort of like one or two titles and try others, and I always end up thinking it wasn't worth my time, that they aren't fun, that they fall flat. They usually feel like imitation fantasy, with half the enjoyment and all of the tedium. It's disappointing, because I think if I did like them, I would have a huge library of stuff to look forward to. You know, if you were on a desert island and had to pick just one series, wouldn't it be good to get a really long one?

Not if they are no good.

I had never read any Warhammer ones but finally got curious enough to overcome my misgivings and take a look, and I really liked this first one. Good news! Then I read reviews and found most people didn't like it for the reasons I did.

So, like I say, weird.

Anyway, for my money, it works. I like how this novel begins as if it's a series of short stories. I like how they gradually come together as a whole novel. I like how I am interested in many of the characters. (That is ALWAYS the downfall for me with the other series--I never care about the characters at all. They're always universally horrible people or colorless, boring, and unsympathetic. Not my thing, obviously.) I like how the characters work together, supporting one another, becoming allies. I like how it's not all action, but has a little romance, a little horror, a little of this and that. I like how, when the action builds, it builds a lot.

Books out of multi-author series for me in the past have always been 2/5 stars, or 3/5. I had hopes this would be a 3 or even a 4. But I really liked it! It was fun! What else could I ask for? All the stars.

I thought it was clever. I enjoyed picking it up. Other people felt different. Maybe I'm doing it wrong. But since I bought one of those omnibus books with two more novels in it, I'm gonna try to do it wrong a couple more times.

Looking forward to it.

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