The Prisoner of Zenda is an adventure story published in 1894. It is in the public domain, so I downloaded a free copy of it from Feedbooks.
Our hero is Rudolph Rassendyll, a young Englishman of the noble classes with a comfortable income and very little ambition. He explains that it is well known in the family that a few generations earlier, a visiting prince of Ruritania had an affair with a lady of his family, and that influence appears periodically by throwing up a Rassendyll who is tall, red-headed, and with a dominating straight nose. Rudolph is not displeased to resemble the Ruritanian branch of the family, though his sister-in-law views it with distaste as a constant reminder of scandal.
His sister-in-law presses him to do something useful with his life, and so he decides to take a holiday abroad. On a whim he chooses Ruritania as his destination, and arrives on the eve of the coronation of the new king, Rudolph. While traveling through the small city of Zenda on his way to the capital, his meets and is befriended by his distant cousin who will be crowned king the following day. They are surprised to discover that they could easily be twins. Unfortunately the Ruritanian Rudolph's brother, Michael, wants the throne for himself, and he drugs the king to prevent him being able to attend the coronation, which would open the door for Michael to be crowned instead.
The king's loyal retainers press the English Rudolph to fill in for his cousin at the coronation, until he is revived and able to take the throne himself. Unfortunately in the meantime Michael takes the real Ruritanian Rudolph captive, and the English one must continue the ruse until he can be rescued.
The Prisoner of Zenda is a rip-roaring adventure tale. There are gunshots and swordfights exchanged numerous times as our hero and his friends wrangle with Michael's men, who are determined to see him dead. Meanwhile it is necessary to figure out how to somehow spring the true king from Michael's fortress and, bowing to public pressure, to court the lovely Princess Flavia, with whom he falls in love.
This is a fast-moving, compulsively readable story. In that respect, it reminds me of The 39 Steps by John Buchan. On the other hand, it was also an interesting trawl through a romanticized version of the Victorian psyche. We had a bit of British exceptionalism, in which English Rudolph turns out to be a better king than Ruritarian Rudolph would have been, thus inspiring the admiration and loyalty of those who know his secret. The lovely Princess Flavia also falls in love with English Rudolph, though she did not love Ruritarian Rudolph. And then there were ideas about royalty, and how important it was that the right prince ascend the throne, and that his more popular brother not do so. And Hope brushed up against the idea that English Rudolph, who had proven himself a wise ruler, might end up keeping the throne, if the real king were killed before they could rescue him. But then that idea was fairly quickly dismissed, because our Rudolph is a decent fellow and genuinely believed that the accident of birth that bestowed a kingdom on one man was important and must be upheld. I am glad that he was a decent fellow and wanted to rescue his cousin, but I am less impressed with his true belief in the institution of hereditary rule.
Further, Rudolph and Flavia fall in love with one another, but of course they can't have one another, once his secret is explained to her. It is her duty to marry Ruritarian Rudolph, for the good of the country, and English Rudolph understands completely, because he had always figured they could never be together. They exchange rings and swear their love for each other, and part ways forever. Rudolph looks forward to seeing her in heaven, thus somewhat referencing the Victorian morbid fascination with death. I suppose that this sort of mindset must have been necessary in a time when many of the upper classes married people they didn't care about. However in a sense I can't help but consider it as evidence of what a messed-up place Victorian England was, that it was considered noble and good and perhaps even romantic to watch the woman you love marry someone of higher social standing than you.
Despite my meditations on Victorian culture, I nevertheless found The Prisoner of Zenda an entertaining read. And one of the reasons I read old novels is to get a sense of the time and place. They can be quite educational--the author mentions something in passing that was commonplace at the time, and I go scrambling to Wikipedia to learn about it. Yesterday's word (not in this book, but in a hundred year old mystery I was reading) was macadam, which is a paving process that seems to have been the predecessor of the chip-seal paving that my city uses to prolong the life of the streets.
Tuesday, September 13, 2011
Saturday, September 10, 2011
The Bird of the River by Kage Baker
I've gotten behind on my blogging again. I read this a week ago, so hopefully I can remember it clearly enough to write a coherent entry.
The Bird of the River is the third in a fantasy series by Kage Baker. I love the first, The Anvil of the World, which is a set of stories about a killer trying to find another career. I was less enthusiastic about The House of the Stag, which fills in some of the backstory of the setting, talking about how the demon lord and the earth mother goddess got together. I didn't know about The Bird of the River until someone mentioned it at Worldcon last month, and I made a note to track it down. Baker died last year, and I had thought there would be no more from her--and, indeed, this appears to have been published posthumously.
The novels are set in a place (which I have heard may be a fantasy version of California) in which there are two races of people who often don't coexist harmoniously. The Children of the Sun are humans. They are clever, industrious, and destructive. The Yendri are a more peaceful, plant-focused race with California sensibilities. They live in the forests and are great herbalists and are always concerned that the Children of the Sun are damaging the earth.
In The Bird of the River, our protagonist is a teenaged girl named Eliss. She has a mother who is a drug addict, and a younger brother who is half-Yendri, which causes all sorts of problems for them because many of the Children of the Sun don't like the Yendri at all. Eliss forces her mother to apply for a job and, despite the fact she is an addict and there are doubts about whether she can do the job, she is hired on by a river barge called the Bird of the River. The Bird travels upstream, clearing snags where trees have fallen into the river and can cause hazards for the boats that travel it. They clear the snags and harvest the wood, which is valuable because the Yendri won't allow anyone to cut down the trees where they live.
Quite early on their trip up the river, Eliss's mother dies. The captain allows Eliss and her brother to stay on board and join the crew, and they accept. As time passes, Eliss starts to mature into a young woman, and finds a new home for herself. It is a coming of age story, except that it didn't annoy me as much as they usually do. There is also a plot involving raiders on the river and tracking the movements of a murdered nobleman to figure out where he died and who killed him.
I have to say that I enjoyed The Bird of the River, in spite of it being a coming of age story. It lacks the humor that I loved about The Anvil of the World, and the stakes here are much smaller than they were in the two previous books. This is a story about young people finding their place in life, not about the rise and fall of races. But it was an entertaining read, and very enjoyable.
The Bird of the River is the third in a fantasy series by Kage Baker. I love the first, The Anvil of the World, which is a set of stories about a killer trying to find another career. I was less enthusiastic about The House of the Stag, which fills in some of the backstory of the setting, talking about how the demon lord and the earth mother goddess got together. I didn't know about The Bird of the River until someone mentioned it at Worldcon last month, and I made a note to track it down. Baker died last year, and I had thought there would be no more from her--and, indeed, this appears to have been published posthumously.
The novels are set in a place (which I have heard may be a fantasy version of California) in which there are two races of people who often don't coexist harmoniously. The Children of the Sun are humans. They are clever, industrious, and destructive. The Yendri are a more peaceful, plant-focused race with California sensibilities. They live in the forests and are great herbalists and are always concerned that the Children of the Sun are damaging the earth.
In The Bird of the River, our protagonist is a teenaged girl named Eliss. She has a mother who is a drug addict, and a younger brother who is half-Yendri, which causes all sorts of problems for them because many of the Children of the Sun don't like the Yendri at all. Eliss forces her mother to apply for a job and, despite the fact she is an addict and there are doubts about whether she can do the job, she is hired on by a river barge called the Bird of the River. The Bird travels upstream, clearing snags where trees have fallen into the river and can cause hazards for the boats that travel it. They clear the snags and harvest the wood, which is valuable because the Yendri won't allow anyone to cut down the trees where they live.
Quite early on their trip up the river, Eliss's mother dies. The captain allows Eliss and her brother to stay on board and join the crew, and they accept. As time passes, Eliss starts to mature into a young woman, and finds a new home for herself. It is a coming of age story, except that it didn't annoy me as much as they usually do. There is also a plot involving raiders on the river and tracking the movements of a murdered nobleman to figure out where he died and who killed him.
I have to say that I enjoyed The Bird of the River, in spite of it being a coming of age story. It lacks the humor that I loved about The Anvil of the World, and the stakes here are much smaller than they were in the two previous books. This is a story about young people finding their place in life, not about the rise and fall of races. But it was an entertaining read, and very enjoyable.
Sunday, September 4, 2011
It's All About the Bike by Robert Penn
I got this through LibraryThing Early Reviewers, and it has taken a couple of months to get around to reading it. There are so many things in my to-read pile, and this one wasn't the most interesting.
It's All About the Bike is the author expressing his lifelong love affair with the bicycle, pulled together by the thread of having his dream bike custom-built for him. With each chapter he takes on a piece of the bicycle, talking about the history of the part and why he is choosing the specific brands he is. In several cases he visits the factories or workshops where the parts are made. Penn is a traditionalist, liking the solidity and tradition of builders and companies that have been in the business for a long time. There is nothing wrong with that, but to the cycling population there's also nothing particularly surprising or interesting about choosing a steel frame, a Campagnolo Record groupset, a Brooks saddle, and Continental tires. All are reliable and widely agreed to be good. But they are not unique or special in any way--heck, I'm a much less serious cyclist than Penn, and I have a steel bike with Campagnolo components and Continental tires, and tried a Brooks saddle before deciding it wasn't for me. Though there was one thing notably missing from the work, and I'm a bit curious why he didn't talk about pedals.
So I'm not entirely sure who Penn is writing this book for. He talks about the parts without sufficient images for it to be clear to someone who isn't already quite familiar with bikes, so I don't think it would work so well for non-cyclists. I suppose it is probably written for fellow cycling enthusiasts, then. But most of things he says about his bike he is building -- about the importance of good fit, and the component choices he made -- are not exactly going to be surprising to people who love bikes. There are some interesting bits about the history of the bicycle, and one particularly good section when he visits California and talks about the beginnings of mountain biking, but I'm not sure that those alone are sufficiently interesting to make the book worth picking up for another cyclist. Perhaps it is intended to appeal to the cyclist's inner geek, who loves bikes so much they just love talking about them. I could see myself reading a book like this in the middle of the winter when I couldn't be out riding, to give me a little hope that warmer days are coming again. But I still don't think there is enough interesting content to make it worth buying.
It's All About the Bike is the author expressing his lifelong love affair with the bicycle, pulled together by the thread of having his dream bike custom-built for him. With each chapter he takes on a piece of the bicycle, talking about the history of the part and why he is choosing the specific brands he is. In several cases he visits the factories or workshops where the parts are made. Penn is a traditionalist, liking the solidity and tradition of builders and companies that have been in the business for a long time. There is nothing wrong with that, but to the cycling population there's also nothing particularly surprising or interesting about choosing a steel frame, a Campagnolo Record groupset, a Brooks saddle, and Continental tires. All are reliable and widely agreed to be good. But they are not unique or special in any way--heck, I'm a much less serious cyclist than Penn, and I have a steel bike with Campagnolo components and Continental tires, and tried a Brooks saddle before deciding it wasn't for me. Though there was one thing notably missing from the work, and I'm a bit curious why he didn't talk about pedals.
So I'm not entirely sure who Penn is writing this book for. He talks about the parts without sufficient images for it to be clear to someone who isn't already quite familiar with bikes, so I don't think it would work so well for non-cyclists. I suppose it is probably written for fellow cycling enthusiasts, then. But most of things he says about his bike he is building -- about the importance of good fit, and the component choices he made -- are not exactly going to be surprising to people who love bikes. There are some interesting bits about the history of the bicycle, and one particularly good section when he visits California and talks about the beginnings of mountain biking, but I'm not sure that those alone are sufficiently interesting to make the book worth picking up for another cyclist. Perhaps it is intended to appeal to the cyclist's inner geek, who loves bikes so much they just love talking about them. I could see myself reading a book like this in the middle of the winter when I couldn't be out riding, to give me a little hope that warmer days are coming again. But I still don't think there is enough interesting content to make it worth buying.
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