David Gemmell: Dark Moon (1996)

Edition: Bantam, 1996
Review number: 634

Dark Moon is not a particularly successful fantasy novel. It is set in a world originally inhabited by the extinct Oltor, who were exterminated after inviting the gentle Eldarin and ferocious Daroth to share their lands when their own worlds were threatened by catastrophe, continuing in their altruism to add humans to the list of intelligent species. For the moment, the Daroth are no more, having been imprisoned by the magic of the Eldarin, before a war of racial hatred leads to the destruction of the Eldarin in their turn and the release of the Daroth once more.

It is a contrived tale of individual heroism (as many fantasy novels are, to be fair), with a trite environmental message - the great crime of the Daroth and to a lesser extent of the human race is that they wear out the magic of the land. The best bits of the novel are reminiscent of David Eddings, but it never truly holds the interest.

Jonathan Sumption: Pilgrimage (1975)

Edition: Faber & Faber, 1975
Review number: 636

A fascinating study of the defining feature of the Middle Ages, its devout Catholicism, Pilgrimage views its subject through the aspect of it which provides the book's title. There are deliberate limitations to keep the book within manageable bounds - concentration on the period between 1100 and 1500, an emphasis on France and England rather than Germany, and interest in popular religious belief rather than the abstract theological arguments of scholars. Some important parts of medieval religion are sketchily covered as a result, though these are subjects easily accessible in more general histories of the period: the development of monasticism; the relationship between the papacy and Holy Roman Emperor (and, more generally, between religious and secular authority); the crusades (except in relation to religious enthusiasm and the invention of indulgences, both topics of great relevance to the history of pilgrimage in the later Middle Ages).

The importance of pilgrimage is really that it is probably the principal distinguishing feature of (popular) Western Christianity in this period. Its development and debasement - from a penance for serious sin to tourism and an indulgence to be gained by visiting particular shrines to obtain early release from Purgatory to an indulgence gained by cash payment - show much of the character of medieval belief as it developed and fed into the reaction against its excesses of the Reformation and Counter-Reformation. (The Reformation is not an important a theme in the book as it perhaps could be, and relating what Sumption says to the ideas of Luther, Calvin and other reformers is an interesting exercise for a reader with some knowledge of developments in the sixteenth century.)

Pilgrimage is also one of the areas in which it is possible to gain an insight into normally unrecorded, popular ideas about Christianity as opposed to those of the theological schools. It is of course a relative extreme of enthusiasm - a lot of the evidence for the beliefs of the common people is gained through official condemnation of its excesses - and the picture it points to is not particularly surprising - a greatly simplified and superstitious version of the intellectual subtleties of the church's official views - but it is of great interest none the less.

Alexander Kent: Enemy in Sight! (1970)

Edition: Hamlyn, 1971
Review number: 635

Another one of Kent's conventional naval adventures starring Richard Bolitho. Reading three or four of these in a few months makes them seem quite tedious in the end; the background plot details may move on (a new rank for Bolitho, for example), but everything else about them is pretty much the same.

In this particular case, there are fairly obvious problems with the plot, in the specific way in which Bolitho shows his brilliance in contrast to the incompetence of a superior. Stationed with the vessels blockading revolutionary France (to prevent an invasion of the British Isles), Bolitho spends almost all of the novel chasing backwards and forwards across the Atlantic after a French admiral allowed to escape by the indecisiveness of the commodore commanding Bolitho's assigned squadron. A continuous series of amazing and unlikely deductions enables Bolitho to divine what the escapee plans to do next and mount an attack. Each of these is foiled by the commodore until a wound prevents his interference. None of the mental leaps is really justified, and the contrast with the bafflement of the other British officers is almost comical.

Slipshod and poor, Enemy in Sight! does not reach the standards of the rest of the series, which is usually craftsman-like if never inspired.

Leslie Charteris: Prelude for War (1938)

Alternative title: The Saint Plays With Fire
Edition: Severn House, 1979
Review number: 633

To Leslie Charteris, it was clear well before 1938 that the posturing and aggression of the various continental dictators would lead to a new European war. The rise of the right in Germany had been attacked in the Saint stories before Prelude for War, and there had been an outspoken attack on Franco's methods during the Spanish Civil War.

Prelude for War, then, begins with a blistering attack on the Fascists of France (and, by implication, Britain) and the stupidity of those who believed in what they said. It is an attack from the point of view of an individualist (as both Charteris and his creation were) at those who are willing to give up the right to their own point of view at the urging of a demagogue. It is such a serious and strong attack that it rather overbalances this otherwise light-hearted thriller.

Thieves' Picnic and Prelude for War are the last two Saint novels to be retitled, and the only two where the new title has as much connection to the content as the original. The Saint Plays With Fire is rather a good title, for it refers not just to Simon Templar taking on the forces which brought about the Second World War, but to the way that the story begins, with the Saint attempting to rescue a man from a burning manor house, only to be unable to reach him in time because his bedroom door has been locked and the key taken away. When he discovers who the (now dead) young man was - a prominent Socialist agitator - and that the rest of the house party are staid right wing pillars of society, Simon begins to feel that something serious is going on. The involvement of the Sons of France soon becomes clear, but not why they are connected with the murder.

The attack on Fascism is a slight miscalculation from a structural viewpoint, but Prelude for War is one of the most interesting Saint novels.

Hammond Innes: The Strode Venturer (1965)

Edition: Collins, 1965
Review number: 632

Naval officer Geoffrey Bailey becomes involved in the affairs of the Strode Shipping Company which ruined his father's competing line when he receives an offer for the shares left him by his mother that will enable him to live comfortably. It is only after he has resigned from the navy that he is advised that the conditions of his mother's will do not allow him to sell the shares. He has, however, received an offer from one of the Strode brothers who run the company of a job with them, but when he visits the company he discovers that this was not communicated with either of the two elder brothers actively doing so. Bailey is given a job, though, because he has seen Peter Strode relatively recently in Aden; Peter is really the black sheep of the family, and his brothers want him to be tracked down so that he can be forced to play a part in the company affairs.

Much of the action of the novel takes place in steamers (including the Strode Venturer of the title) passing to and fro across the Indian Ocean, mainly in stretches of water which are among the least frequented in the world, and partly in the Maldives. This part of the novel is based on a journey made by Innes himself, and is the product of his sympathy for the Adduans of the southern islands and their attempts to escape domination by the north. (This journey is one of those described in Sea and Islands.)

Despite being based on Innes' own journey, the Indian Ocean scenes of the novel come across as rather artificial, never gripping the imagination as much as the boardroom manoeuvrings back in London. I'm not sure that the plot hangs together - it seems to me unlikely that the discoveries made by Peter Strode will turn around the fortunes of the company, at a time of a decline in British shipping in general. This leaves a feeling at the end of the novel that it has been unconvincing, despite some excitement.

Ernest Hemingway: A Farewell to Arms (1929)

Edition: Jonathan Cape, 1957
Review number: 631

Novels about the First World War tend to concentrate on the Western Front. I have read a few about the Eastern (notably Solzhenitsyn's August 1914), but A Farewell to Arms remains unique to my knowledge. It is the first person narrative of an American volunteer in the Italian army, fighting in the mountains between Italy and Austria in some of the most obscure campaigns of the war.

In the past, I have never read anything by Hemingway, being rather put off by his macho reputation. One thing I had frequently heard about him, though, is that is prose is of remarkable quality. This is something which strikes the reader (when they pause for thought - it is too good to intrusively insist on its quality) all the way through A Farewell to Arms. While sticking to quite a limited vocabulary, it has a poetic quality: every word has a purpose. Descriptions are particularly terse. It is a style which owes more to top class journalism than to earlier fiction and is still striking today after seventy years of imitation.

The plot of A Farewell to Arms does not fit in with the macho image that Hemingway deliberately cultivated. Rather than being a tale of heroism at the front, most of the reminiscences of the narrator are set in hospitals behind the lines, in a desperate retreat when the Germans break through, or in flight as a deserter to Switzerland. The reader comes to care for Hemingway's central character, who is a very ordinary person, much more pushed around by events than shaping them.

Of course, by volunteering at a time when the USA was neutral to serve in another country's army, the narrator is a would-be hero. But the war in which he fights is far from heroic, and he himself fails (and is ironically decorated for bravery when wounded). He falls in love in hospital, but even this interferes with the performance of his duty as a soldier and in the end brings him nothing but misery, instead of proving the inspiration that the reader might expect.

J.D. Robb: Rapture in Death (1996)

Edition: New English Library, 1998
Review number: 630

How will the NYPD operate in fifty years' time? That is an interesting if unanswerable question. Robb's series featuring Eve Dallas takes most of the obvious answers - greater reliance on computers, for example - and creates traditional murder mysteries from them. In this case, a series of motiveless apparent suicides makes Dallas suspicious, particularly when it is discovered that the victims all have a mark, like a burn, in the same part of their brain. The investigation centres around the use of subliminal mood enhancement in virtual reality (a topic which has itself interested several science fiction writers), and produces a novel which is enjoyable and undemanding.

This series straddles the two genres of crime and science fiction, but there are problems with both aspects of this novel. The detection is by no means police procedural despite appearances, and is rather more intuitive (like a traditional crime novel), and the solution to the mystery is rather unconvincing.

From a science fiction point of view, the problem with Rapture in Death is that it is set as far as fifty years into the future. Much of the computer, entertainment and other technology described in the novel doesn't seem as far away as that to me; maybe ten or fifteen years. And the computer technology, in particular, is not very imaginative. I suspect that well before 2050 computers will be used far more proactively in policing than as the databanks (without voice or thought interaction despite the use of them in Robb's virtual reality machines) depicted here. (Mother of Storms, by John Barnes, is a much more convincing portrayal of the future use of computers.)

Nevertheless, an enjoyable read, best seen as a novel about the near future rather than one set fifty years from now.