Flash for Freedom - Chapter 13

Flashman spends most of Chapter 13 laying on his stomach, being shot in the backside will do that to you.

Cassy is looked after and sent off to Canada. Flashman actually says that of many of his ladies he formed less of a connection with her. I think partially because she used him as much as he uses others. There was also how driven she was when it came to getting her freedom and how she appeared to the socially progressive minded women who were determined to see her a free and independent woman.

Once again Abraham Lincoln can see right through Flashman. He doesn't for a moment believe he's a naval officer called Beauchamp Comber, but it suits his purposes to have everyone think he is, so he goes along with it. He also refers to Harry as a rascal, which is a rather mild word to use for someone who is a self confessed cheat, liar, coward and bully. Despite how hard he's tried to avoid it Flashman is sent back to New Orleans to testify against John Charity Spring and his employers. Flashman's testimony is now the only way they can convict anyone of anything. Mrs Spring threw all the documents overboard. Spring is claiming that the Balliol College was built in Baltimore and owned by a Mexican, they can't get him on slavery because the girls on board weren't chained at the time and I doubt most of them could speak enough English to testify to anything in any case.

Flashman's real problem is that if Spring and Co can prove he isn't Comber then he's going to be charged along with them. If he doesn't testify the Americans will probably lock him up for refusing to do so. He's not sure of what to do until he receives a visit from Spring's lawyer who strongly suggests to him in veiled language that he can save everyone and himself by lying under oath.

Theft of Swords by Michael J. Sullivan

Michael Sullivan is one of a growing number of writers who found an alternate route to being picked by a major publisher (in this case Orbit). He self published his 6 book series The Riyria Revelations and after success online Orbit took a chance on him. They bought the series and put it out in 3 omnibuses, each containing 2 books. The first of these is Theft of Swords, which collects The Crown Conspiracy and its sequel Avempartha.

The Crown Conspiracy is to be honest rather cliched, it's almost as if the author read Diana Wynne Jones Tough Guide to Fantasyland and used it as the template for writing their own book.
Ruritainian type pre industrial world, check.
Warrior hero with a hidden past and a heart of gold, check.
Sarcastic thief type sidekick, also hiding a dark secret, check.
Naive young prince who needs to be shown the common side of life before realising how best to rule his kingdom, check.
Pretty, spunky young princess, check.
Sheltered cleric, whose wide eyed wonderment at the world around him provides comic relief, check.
Eccentric old wizard with far more power and information than at first believed, check.
A group of well connected villains, one of whom is a blademaster, check. Actually all the villains were missing were black hats, the occasional evil laugh and thin moustaches to twirl.
Now having said all that I actually enjoyed The Crown Conspiracy, yes it was cheesey and yes it relied heavily on cliches and walked some pretty well trodden territory, but it hung together remarkably well and was highly enjoyable to read. Michael Sullivan makes a few debut novelist mistakes, but he showed potential and left the reader wanting more, although The Crown Conspiracy is quite self contained. I like old fashioned adventure novels and that's exactly what The Crown Conspiracy is and at no stage does it pretend or attempt to be anything else.

Avempartha is a little different, I get the impression it was written some time after The Crown Conspiracy, it is less self contained and very clearly part of a larger ongoing series. Michael Sullivan has also improved as a writer and has come to know his characters, especially the two principals of Hadrian and Royce, better. The writing flows more and there are less things that pulled me out of the story.

Whereas The Crown Conspiracy was an old fashioned matinee adventure, with a few mentions of magic, a dwarf and an elf thrown in to remind readers this was a fantasy, Avempartha is surer of what it is. There are two stories which later converge and connect, but the biggest one of them concerns Hadrian and Royce agreeing to protect a village from a Beowulf style monster. I have no idea if Michael Sullivan really based this on the old English legend, or whether I'm just thinking that because I'd recently read John Gardner's Grendel, and it was fresh in my mind, but there did seem to me to be a lot in common with these two tales. Admittedly the beast plagueing Dahlgren; a rather dragonish creature called a Gilarabrywn, isn't like Grendel, but it acts in a similar manner.

Readers were treated to reveals about Hadrian and Royce, and the author wrong footed me when he unexpectedly killed off a character I thought may have made it to the end of this book at least.

Although people groan when they hear that The Riyria Revelations feature dwarves and elves, Sullivan has taken steps to make them differ somewhat from those written about by Tolkien and his imitators. Readers don't see many examples of either species in Theft of Swords. The snarky, but talented dwarf Magnus largely takes the role of comic relief in Avempartha, that was filled by cleric Myron in The Crown Conspiracy (I missed Myron in Avempartha, his observation that children really appear like small, drunk people was both startlingly accurate and laugh out loud funny, I hope he has a larger role in future adventures), and gives the impression that Sullivan's dwarves are somewhat more street smart and more mercantile than the dwarves Tolkien, Feist and Brooks wrote about. The elves in Theft of Swords are an underclass, they're reduced to begging or performing menial tasks to keep themselves alive, in some places they're enslaved and having elven blood is nothing to be proud of, but rather something anyone unfortunate enough to be in that position will do their level best to hide.

In terms of language use Sullivan does have a tendency to drop modern slang into his dialogue and it brings me out of the narrative briefly, so I hope that goes away in the future. I also hope he doesn't use anything resembling 'ye olde English' again. I was willing to overlook dotty old wizard Esrahaddon's mangling of it, because he's eccentric to start with and he's been imprisoned for many centuries, but the Gilarabyrwyn made the same mistakes, might be an idea to drop it now.

Despite it's failings, and my criticisms, I do like The Riyria Revelations and want to see what Michael Sullivan does with Hadrian, Royce and Princess Arista in future volumes. In this day and age when fantasists seem determined to outgritty each other and see who can come up with the most morally bankrupt anti hero, it's rather refreshing to read a story where the good guys aren't afraid to be good and the bad guys are genuinely bad, that has no pretensions about what it is and isn't afraid to present itself as exactly that.

One little note of amusement to me personally. There's a castle in this book called Essendon castle. I'm not sure where the author got the name from, maybe he made it up, but down here in Australia, or more specifically where I live in Melbourne, we have a suburb called Essendon and it's also the name of a successful and popular Australian Rules Football team that were originally based in the suburb. It makes me chuckle every time I read it.

Flash for Freedom - Chapter 12

Flashman and Cassy think they’ve got it made, they’re home free. Harry even reflects back on his journey: JC Spring, the slaving in Africa, Abraham Lincoln, the underground railroad, George Randolph, the Mandevilles and even the hellish experience in the back of the wagon. It’s all over, in very short order he’ll be heading back home to Elspeth and squeezing Morrison for every penny he can get. Yes, improbably, Harry had managed to hang onto his incriminating documents implicating his father-in-law in highly illegal activities.

This is all of course until he inquires of another passenger when they might be arriving in Louisville. He is told that the boat isn’t going to Louisville, it’s going to St Louis, they’re on the Ohio river, not the Mississippi. Missouri is a slave state, Flashman and Cassy are in no way out of danger. Cassy’s reaction is quite extreme when told, she even throws things at Harry. Harry realises his mistake. When he encountered the deaf old character at the port, the man only heard the word Louis and directed Harry to the St Louis steamboat, not the Louisville one.

Flashman placates Cassy, telling her that if they just lay low they can get passage from St Louis to Pittsburgh and they’ll still be free. They take a hotel room in St Louis and Harry ventures out to buy some necessities and a revolver and chances to see a wanted poster for he and Cassy. They’ve only got descriptions, not pictures, but they do tend to stand out. His alias of Tom Arnold is mentioned, so he changes this to Fitzhoward (no idea where that one came from) and they head off as soon as possible.

St Louis was a major port in the 1840’s and as such the city teems with a multitude of types, it was also a bit trading place, so it’s filled with all sorts coming and going, a great many of them heading west to search for gold in California. The author does a good job of describing the place and when reading one feels as if they are really there.

George MacDonald Fraser makes a note in the back that Flashman is as always maddeningly vague on dates, but this one seems to take place in early spring of 1849. Their boat has to put in before it’s intended destination and this makes both Harry and Cassy extremely anxious. They go to a hotel to stay until they can arrange for a ferry, but run into a group of slave catchers. They’re lead by a character who calls himself Buck and they’re looking for Cassy and the man who sold her. Cassy loses it and runs, Harry goes after her. Due to the time of year the river is still partially frozen and the two of them go across it, Harry gets shot in the backside in the process, it seems rather fitting that most of Flashman’s wounds are a result of him running away. If this passage sounds similar to people that’s because it is. It’s very similar to a part of Uncle Tom’s Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe, and Fraser suggests that she used stories of Cassy and Flashman’s escape from the slave catchers for her anti slavery classic.

On the other side of the river they’re in a free state, but the slave catchers can and have come into those territories and legally removed escaped slaves and taken them back to their owners. Harry heard about Abraham Lincoln’s appearance at an event where the slavery question would be discussed, and he thinks if he can see Lincoln, the statesman will remember him, and offer them refuge and protection. That’s largely how it plays out, once Harry remembers what alias he was using when he met Lincoln, and even has the former lawyer facing down six armed slave catchers. Flashman muses that the speech he gave them was even better than the Gettysburg Address, once again teasing readers with a mention of the Civil War packets that unfortunately were never written.

Cassy’s free and Flashman is out of any immediate danger, but Lincoln will still want testimony in court from him and Harry went on the run in the first place to avoid that, so he’s not out of this just yet.

Flash for Freedom - Chapter 11

In chapter 11 of Flash for Freedom Flashman is shackled, tossed in a wagon and taken off for sale somewhere. Things look pretty grim. He’s not alone in the wagon, he’s sharing it with a woman called Cassy.

At first looks Flashman thinks Cassy is white, and she’s probably more white than negro, but in the southern US states back then, a drop of negro blood counted more than any white blood, and you were racially classified that way. Cassy was what was generally referred to as a musteefino, or mustee, the plan was to pass Flashman off as the same. Initially Cassy refuses to believe that Flashman is white, scornfully telling him that ‘most of us stop saying that when we’re 10 years old!’ A look at his hands, more specifically his fingernails, convinces her of the truth.

Cassy’s story is one of the saddest I can remember reading in the Flashman books. She was born free, the daughter of a Creole father and his slave wife. He already had two sons by the time Cassy and her sister were born, and her mother raised the boys as if they were her own. When Cassy’s father died the boys repaid that kindness by selling their sisters and stepmother into slavery. Cassy found herself the property of a New Orleans madam, but she was not Susie Willinck, much crueller, and the terrified girl (she was 13 at the time) ran back to her brothers, who promptly imprisoned her and arranged for her to be returned to her owner. As punishment for running Cassy was taken to a ‘whipping house’ and given 10 lashes (the sentence was reduced in view of her age). One of the observers admired her courage and gave her a dollar. She got the receipt and was told by the madam to keep it as a ‘reminder’. She still has that receipt and her bill of sale in her possession when she meets Harry. I found the receipt very moving, written in a clumsy unlettered hand it reads: ‘Wensh Cassy. Ten lashys. Wun dollar.’ I don’t know if George MacDonald Fraser based Cassy’s tale of woe on a real account or a number of them, but it was very touching and sadly I don’t doubt that things like that did take place. The ‘whipping house’ concept was new to me (a place where owners could take their errant slaves for correction), but again it too was probably horribly real.

Between them Cassy and Flashman come up with a plan to get free. To be honest it’s mostly Cassy’s idea, generally Harry’s female accomplices are far more intelligent and resourceful than he is, which makes sense as he’s mostly bluff and bravado. The way she disposes of the two men who were transporting the pair of them actually scares Harry a little, but then given what she’s gone through he does understand it to an extent. Cassy initially suggests they take to robbery until they can get to freedom, but Harry has always baulked at that particular option, most of it is his natural cowardice asserting itself, but as he rightly points out, the robbery option is going to bring them unwanted attention and pursuit.

It is again Cassy who has the next idea in their audacious bid for freedom. She suggests that Harry pose as her master and auction her off to the highest bidder. Once she’s been paid for, he purchases passage on a northbound riverboat and she’ll escape from her holding pen and the two of them run to freedom. It seems risky, but it’s a decent if dangerous plan with a lot that could go wrong, however Harry has no better ideas and Cassy is certainly game. Her main problem is that she doesn’t trust people, especially men, white men in particular, so putting trust in Harry is hard for her. She does so because she has no other option. Harry’s largely bound to her for his own safety, so will see this through, scared though he may be.

The first problem is that the ticket seller at the riverboat is largely deaf and Harry can’t be sure he’s got the message across that the boat is bound for Louisville. He simply has to hope that the man heard him and told him the right thing. Again at the auction house there’s another conversation which clearly indicates that to the white slave owning populace their coloured workers were simply cattle. It’s really extraordinary to read it and it makes me shudder every time I realise they’re talking about people here.

Cassy fetches a good price and someone even tells Flashman that had he sold her in a bigger town he could have doubled his money. Once the transaction is completed, he goes shopping and sends someone to buy the riverboat tickets, this is a mistake he owns up to in hindsight, but then he did have to buy clothes for himself and Cassy so that she was less likely to be recognised. Cassy is late in getting to their renedevous, escaping was more trouble than she’d reckoned with and she was very nearly caught, plus they’ve got slave hunters out looking for her. With a mixture of threats and promises Flashman manages to get the girl to pull herself together and on the riverboat they fall into bed together.

Despite how clever, determined and courageous Cassy was I could never warm to her as one of Flashman’s ladies. I knew she wouldn’t betray him, but she was different to many of them. They were thrown together, he never pursued her and she never seemed to mean all that much to him, even though he admits she was very beautiful. A lot of their interaction seemed to be business as usual. I have to admit when I first read Flash for Freedom though I was worried that Harry may lose his nerve and leave her high and dry.

They seem safe now, so the book should be close to finishing, but it’s not, so what else can possibly go wrong now?

Flash for Freedom - Chapter 10

Although Chapter 10 of Flash for Freedom is not the longest chapter in the book it is one of the most eventful.

Having escaped the riverboat with his skin still intact, unlike the luckless Randolph, who if the gun blast didn't kill him, the boat's paddle certainly did, Flashman has a decision to make. There are two banks he can make for. The shortest swim will put him on the Arkansas side, but that will be where he's most likely to be looked for, so he makes for the Mississippi bank.

Flashman's original intention is to work his way to the nearest port and then see if he can somehow scrape up passage home. Things don't work out quite that way and Harry finds himself living the life of a vagrant and cursing George Randolph's name with every breath. I have to say I agreed with him, if only Randolph had swallowed his pride for a few days both he and Flashman would have pulled it off and both been free to live the rest of their lives. I also wondered what had happened to the other 5 slaves with Randolph and how they had fared after the jig was up.

Harry hears of a plantation called Greystones who's driver has up and left for the diggings to make his fortune and decides to apply for the job. What he doesn't realise is that driving is a euphemism for overseer. It doesn't really make a lot of difference, even though it isn't what Flashman envisaged himself doing. Unsurprisingly for a bully Flashman makes a good overseer. He likens it to bullying the fags at Rugby, something else he was also good at.

Harry makes the best of his time at Greystones, the plantation owner; Mandeville, likes getting drunk with him and he installs a slave girl as his housekeeper and bedwarmer, although he does own she's not much good at either. The fly in the ointment comes in the form of the plantation's mistress; the elfin Annette Mandeville. Harry comes in from the field to find that Mrs Mandeville has ordered the girl be flogged. Harry's none too happy about it, but he accepts it as a spat between mistress and slave and installs another girl. However she meets the same fate. It's time for Harry to find out what is going on.

He had inklings that Annette Mandeville was greatly dissatisfied with her husband. She was well born and raised, her husband is a great deal older than her and while wealthy he is poorly educated and crude. Harry also believes he doesn't satisfy her in bed either. One thing leads to another and Harry and his mistress wind up in bed. One thing about Annette Mandeville ensures that Harry never forgets her. She wears boots and spurs to bed. Harry is acquainted with a hairbrush (Royal Flash), but not spurs. Eventually they are discovered by her husband and it all hits the fan.

The cuckolded plantation owner is all for stringing Harry up until a friend suggests a much worse fate. Harry has a dark complexion, he's passed for Indians and Afghans in the past. Mandeville's friend says that they can pass Harry off as a negro and living his life out as a slave would surely be a fate worse than death. Do you reckon things can get any worse?

Flash for Freedom - Chapter 9

Flashman and George Randolph are loaded onto a riverboat for their journey to Ohio and freedom for George. In order to carry off their deception George has been shackled with 5 other negroes. The other 5 are free employees of Crixus and as committed to the abolitionist cause and the underground railroad as their employer is. One gets the impression by the way that they act like slaves being transported that they're relatively experienced in exercises like this and they are certainly less likely to be discovered in their deception than George, who doesn't seem to realise that his cooperation will be required to get him away.

A lot of the chapter talks about riverboat travel back in the golden ages of the form of transport. It's something that I think George Maconald Fraser would have liked to experience properly. Flashman certainly seems to enjoy it. He's less complimentary about the Mississippi itself. There is at least one tantalising mention of his Civil War experiences, this time on the side of the Union, as he quotes Ulysses S. Grant about the Mississippi: 'Too thick to drink, and too thin to plough. It stinks.'

The only real problem Flashman has is from Randolph. He simply refuses to behave like an owned man, demanding things of the overseer and speaking back to the man. It's obvious he's a good deal more edcuated than the overseer, and that seems to anger the man more, although he can't administer any punishment without Flashman's say so. The fact that Flashman in his guise as wealthy Englishman Prescott, wont actually do so, casts suspicion not just on George, but Flashman himself. Harry tries to reason with George, but he pigheadedly refuses to accept that his actions could unmask them all and never get him to freedom.

Despite George's behaviour things seem to be going along well until in a panic George tells Flashman that a man by the name of Peter Omohundro has boarded the boat. Omohundro is a slave trader, and he once sold George to a former master. If he recognises George then the game will be well and truly up. Flashman tells George to keep out of sight if he can and he will try and keep an eye on Omohundro. It does at least have the effect of ensuring that Randolph will pull his head in.

Fate conspires against them. Omohundro isn't on a buying trip, so doesn't have any real reason to visit the slave decks, but tells another traveller that he never misses an opportunity to see the type of slave the other man has. It's rather unsettling to read these men talking about people like they're cattle, and in fact I think Omohundro even refers to them as cattle at one point. It's rather stomach turning to think of really.

Unfortunately the impression George has made on the overseer leads the man to urge Omohundro to look at Flashman's coffle. He recognises George and the game is well and truly on. A panicked and desperate George tackles Omohundro and goes over the side. Flashman's last view of the man is him being hit by the paddle steamer's wheel, it's possible he was also shot. Flashy goes for the other side of the boat and dives into the Mississippi.

One cautionary note about this chapter, the 'n' word was thrown about very regularly during it. It's always used in context, but it seemed rather excessive to me.

Grendel by John Gardner

Grendel by John Gardner is the second of the G's. It's a rather interesting and unusual book.

As the title suggests it's related to the old English epic poem Beowulf. It takes the interesting approach of using the monster of Beowulf; Grendel, as the narrator.

Readers are privy to Grendel's thoughts and observations as he watches the people he torments. There's a lot of philosophising, most especially when Grendel meets a dragon. Whether this is the same dragon from the Beowulf legend is never explained, although it seems reasonable to think it may be, that is if it's not a figment of Grendel's active imagination, which at times is quite childlike.

The story covers what was happening with Hrothgar prior to Beowulf's arrival. The only warrior who really challenges the monster is Unfreth, but Grendel humiliates and makes fun of him. The book ends with Beowulf inflicting the mortal wound that killed Grendel.

It may have been intended to portray Grendel as somewhat sympathetic, but it didn't really work for me. I never bore Grendel any great animosity in any case, I just assumed that to a large extent he was simply following his nature. It's a clever idea and handled very well by Gardner. I found myself liking the character of the dragon most although he appeared only briefly. I liked his portrayal of the powerful, dangerous, gold loving creature as a rather cantankerous professor type. Gardner spent most of his life in academia and I do wonder if the dragon was based in part on an old teacher, one for whom he had a healthy respect and fear, of course when your teacher can breathe fire that would have the tendency to breed respect from their students.

For something similar you could try Beowulf, I believe there are translations or recreations in the old English, although these days that's uninteilligible unless like Professor Tolkien you have studied it. Beowulf was a huge influence on Tolkien and he studied it at length. I don't know if he ever read Grendel, it would have been interesting to find out what his thoughts were. It came out two years before Tolkien's death, so he possibly could have read it, although I find it unlikely. Roger Lancelyn Green did some great collections of myths for younger readers and he covered the Legends of the Norsemen, which is the type of thing Beowulf and therefore Grendel were based on. Curiously another work that I tend to liken to this one is Mark Lawrence's 2011 debut Prince of Thorns, that too is told from the point of view of a very unsympathetic protagonists, and I'm sure you could argue that in his own way Prince Jorg Ancrath is every bit as much a monster as Grendel is.