Carla Nayland Historical Fiction: An Involuntary King, by Nan Hawthorne. Book review and Book Giveaway

Carla Nayland Historical Fiction: An Involuntary King, by Nan Hawthorne. Book review and Book Giveaway

People of the Lakes, by Kathleen O'Neal Gear and W. Micharl Gear

People of the Lakes

Kathleen O'Neal Gear and W. Michael Gear

The First North Americans series, Book 6

I read People of the Lakes for my online book chat group, Let's Read Historical Novels, which as it happened quite lived up to its purpose here: to get readers, including me, to read novels outside their usual fare. (By the way, you are more than welcome to join us -- we meet every first Tuesday of the month at 9 PM Eastern.) The novel takes place in the Mississippi Valley about 2,000 years ago. I didn't know if I would like something so far, both geographically and temporally, out of my "comfort zone". I absolutely loved it.

It is the story of a Mask which allows the person who looks through it a glimpse of and access to Power, the power, that is, of many Colored Crow, the brother of First Man, mystical beings who influence the lives of the people who worship them. A Dreamer, Green Spider, receives instructions to become a Contrary and save the Mask from impending destruction. He gathers a crew to help him, and they head by canoe to Niagara Falls. In the meantime, a magician named Tall Man and the wife of the last man the Mask helped destroy, Star Shell, re on their way there to throw the mask over the falls. TThe latter encounters opposition in the form of Robin of the Blue Duck clan, who wants the Mask for his own ambitious use. Green Spider and crew rescue a young woman named Pearl and thereby earn the retributive anger of Wolf of the Dead, who was to be her husband. The chase is on.

People of the Lakes is an exciting story, n ail-biting at times, but more than anything it is one of the sort of Heroes' Journey tales where the journey molds the characters into either the best or worst they can be. You really don't know who are "the Good Guys" in terms of the fate of the Mask until the very end. As a result you keep reading to find out and are richly rewarded with getting to know the appealing, archetypal and well drawn characters of Otter, Black Skull, Silver Water and Pale Snakes in addition to the questers. Their transformations I found touching and enlightening. Anyone who reads this blog on a regular basis knows I am into the characters and their relationships in any novel, and this one was pretty much perfect in that regard.

If there was anything I did not like about People of the Lakes it was the frequent use of modern terms. I did not expect the characters to run around saying "Me heap big warrior" but the ease with which they threw out expressions like "matrilineal" and "patrilineal" was rather jarring, and when Black Skull, a gruff and seasoned warrior Green Spider colorfully calls "Killer of Men" comments to Otter, a sort of traveling salesman, that he assumes the latter's compromising manner helps "facilitate the trade" with other clans, I had to stop and laugh. Black Skull, even if he lived now, just did not strike me as the type who goes to human potential workshops...

The novel has a message about preservation of archeological materials that quite convinced me, as the prologue involves the ranger in charge of a national park with the book's characters former dwellings is fired from his position for opposing the building of a highway through it. A bit pat, but nevertheless I plan to learn more about the organizations seeking to preserve the sites of early North Americans.

I read this novel on a cassette book from the National Library Services for the Blind, and since a gap due to a twisted tape on one cassette meant I missed the same length of time in four sides, I appreciate my new digital talking book machine all the more, if that's possible.

Sharpe's Company, by Bernard Cornwell

Sharpe's Company

Bernard Cornwell

Once again, if you saw the movie, Sharpe's Comapny, you missed most of what happens in the novel.    Sean Bean and Daragh O'Malley aside, the novel is so much better you will be astounded.

Sharpe's Company  begins with the siege of Cuidad Rodrigo where Sharpe's colonnel is badly wounded.  A new guy, Colonel Windham, is his replacement and poof goes Our Hero's gazette as a captain.  The renewed Lieutenant Sharpe loses his comapny and, worse, has to watch his men bullied by an old nemisis of his, Sgt. Obadiah Hakeswell, the man who cannot be killed, or so he believes since a hanging when he was twelve failed to off him.  If you have read the novels set in India, you will know that Sharpe failed to kill him too, hard as he tried.  The man is a predator and more than a little bats.  He steals from everyone and puts the blame on Harper who must endure a vicious flogging.  In the meantime the massively welll defended city of Badajoz is resisting Wellingfton's efforts to breach its walls.  Sharpe, wanting to be a captain again, begs to be allowed to lead the Forlorn Hope, the first attackers into a breach and almost always die.  But he has gooked up with Theresa again, learned he has a daughter, and wants to live.  While the movie makes the breach and British victory relatively straightforward, in the novel  Cornwell describes the whole complex and daunting siege.  He also tries to explain how the degradation and destruction of a besieged city happens.

I have one great big complaint about Sharpe's Company.  At the beginning you learn that it is a year after the last novel, Sharpe's Battle, and in the meantime Sharpe and Harper have been in England and Sharpe has met and fallen for Jane Gibbons.  Now wait just one cotton-pickin' minute!  I saw that movie.. and it happens a lot later.. and there is no equivalent novel.   Something that significant and the introduction of a couple other characters seems to be to be worth depicting.  Perhaps Cornwell is keeping that plot for another novel.  All this going back and filling in gets rather confusing.

Otherwise, Sharpe's Comapny  is a detailed and compelling depiction of one of the most amazing of Wellington's many and amazing victories in the Pennsular War.  As I mentioned, it was a far more elaborate battle than the one depicted in the movie.  Hakeswell is a satisfying villain to hate.  You get to see Harper  on his own a bit.  His own love interest, not called Ramona here, but rather Isabella, shows up in this novel.  We het to attend SDharpe's wedding to Teresa and see his joy at being a father.  And we get to see him being impulsive and a rogue and uncompromising and clever.  What's not to love?

We purchased this copy of Sharpe's Company  which my gusband and I read together.

Bring It Close, by Helen Hollick

Bring It Close: Being the Third Voyage of Cpt Jesamiah Acorne and his ship, Sea Witch
Helen Hollick

This is the third of Hollick's Jesamiah Acorne novels I have read, and while I enjoyed the two others, Sea Witch and Pirate Code, this one is the winner!  This is an involving, exciting, and historically fascinating novel.  I highly recommend it for anyone who likes a little witchery to counteract the blood and gore.  No, really, I mean it.. this is a ripping yarn in the best sense of the phrase.

Bring It Close: Being the Third Voyage of Cpt Jesamiah Acorne and his ship, Sea Witch starts with Tiola, the witch, heading to North Carolina to help deliver a baby in the same town where the infamous Edward Teach, Blackbeard, is living at the time.  In the meantime, Jesamiah sails back to his childhood home in Virginia.  It gets a little confusing here, as both Tiola and Jes have encounters with Blackbeard, who, it seems, literally sold his soul to the devil in exchange for invulnerabiliiy to death.  Besides Blackbeard, Jes's dead father causes Jes some grief in person.. ghost person.  Tiola, it seems, is helping the old man get in touch with his neglected son so he can set things straight.  How the ghost intends to set things straight is not quite what he has told Tiola however.  Tiola can't use her white witchcraft to contact or help Jes as the dark magic surrounding Blackbeard will get her and those around her if it detects her presence.  Sad subplots and mistreatments of Jes and Tiola are part of this story which has you anxious throughout but has a most satisfying ending.  And wait until you learn the secret about Blackbeard and Jes that the ghost imparts!

You can tell when reading Bring It Close: Being the Third Voyage of Cpt Jesamiah Acorne and his ship, Sea Witch that Hollick is thoroughly comfortable with her characters by theis novel.  Oddly I find the connection between the two lovers, Jes and Tiola, a trifle obscure, but I suppose just knowing its there was enough for me.  This novel is taut and complete, the characters quite well drawn and the many stroylines, complex but not confusing, riveting in themselves.  Hollick says she had the most fun writing this one of the Sea Witch series, and it shows.  It's just a damn enjoyable book.

Hollick knows her sailing terms and uses them skillfully and appropriately.  One reference to the pirates being glad to be involved in something "positive" aside, I can promise you will get lost in this tale of high adventure on and off the High Seas.

The publisher of this novel sent me an electronic copy which I read on my Kindle in exchange for this review

Katherine, by Anya Seton

Katherine

Anya Seton

Katherine Swynford's story is one of the great factual love stories in history. In a nutshell, the intensity and lasting nature of the love the great duke, John of Gaunt, had for her is so clearly real that no historical cynic can deny it. Gaunt, the Duke of Lancaster, son of King Edward III, brother of the great Edward the Black Prince, and father of Henry IV, defied all convention and made himself subject to the scorn of his society by marrying Katherine, his mistress and the mother of his illegitimate Beaufort children, though she was without portion and a commoner by birth. I just can't see how this story can be interpreted as anything but real love.

The novel Katherine, by Anya Seton, was one of the first historical novels I read as an adult. It impressed me in my late teens or early twenties, and aspects of it impressed me now, older, wiser, and more familiar with the in's and out's of historical fiction. For one thing, the two situations from the book I most remember I appear to have remembered completely wrong! I remember John showing up at Kettle Thorpe and having to help Katherine delivery her first child; in fact, he just showed up in time to keep the crazy old lady from stealing the child. I have a distinct memory of John and Katherine poisoning her husband, Hugh, but though he was poisoned, they did not do it or even know it was done. Since these two scenes always struck me as unpleasant or at least unlikely, discovering they aren't in the book was a relief.

So here, for the three people in the entire world who haven't yet read this novel, one of the best beloved in the genre, is the story. Katherine leaves the convent school to take her place at court with her sister Philippa, who is betrothed to Geoffrey Chaucer. She knows she will marry, but it all happens too fast. The dour Hugh Swynford wants her, portion or not, and he gets her. In the course of their unhappy marriage Katherine falls in love with John of Gaunt, the Duke of Lancaster, who falls in love with her as well. They have some sweet time together after her husband dies and before John marries Costanza of Castile. The affair is not much of a secret, but Katherine decides that all the ill fortune John has is because of their great sin. After his palace Savoy is torched by the Peasant Rebellion, she cuts it off from John. When Costanza dies, John shows up at Katherine’s door asking for another chance, and for her to marry him.
While I was reading this book I happened to add John's birthday to my Today in Medieval History blog. It is a testament to how well John's and Katherine's passionate love for each other is written that I found myself staring into the face of a portrait of him I found, looking for what Katherine must have seen herself. And I think I saw it.

I did not like this book as much as I did at 19 or 20. I found the childhood abandonment issues Seton dumped on John rather self-indulgent and preposterous. I suppose she decided he needed some childhood trauma to explain some of his impulsive acts. I just couldn't buy it. I also tired quickly of Katherine's neediness. SHe is portrayed as strong and unafraid of what others think of her, but then every time John forgets to drop her a line she is convinced "he doesn't love me any more!" Seton also has her heroine go from good little convent girl to mistress unable to see her actions as sin without much to support the transition. The later transition after she leaves John is far better done.

I was surprised to find a few anachronisms but none were all that important. Her handling of people with disabilities was even handed, I thought, but like so many other authors she couldn't seem to resist commenting on people's fatness. With Joan of Kent there was even a smug feel to her never referring to Joan without pointing out she had gotten fat. Ok, Ok, we get it. At least fatness was not equivalent to evil in this novel.

This was the first book I got from the Library for the Blind on the new digital cartridge intended for use with the new digital talking book machine. It was a delight to use.