Flashman in the Great Game Chapter 8

A lot of Flashman in the Great Game reads more like conventional historical fiction than the irreverent romps we’ve come to expect from Harry Flashman. Chapter 8 is no exception. It covers the siege of Cawnpore and does it pretty straightly.

Harry twisted his ankle on the way into Cawnpore and in a turn of unFlashmanlike behaviour he digs in with everyone else and tries to do his duty. He even comments on it. Ordinarily the slightest injury gives Harry the excuse to take to his bed, and complain loudly about it. Admittedly everyone in Cawnpore was in such dire straits that this was impossible, but he doesn’t even whine about it. He doesn’t take the opportunity to even flirt with pretty young Bella Blair. He does consider going native and making a break for it, but reasons that if he’s caught by the pandies it’ll be worse than what he’s going through in Cawnpore.

He does meet up with East, and somehow manages to make it look like East lit out on him on the way out of Russia, and did the dirty on him. In some ways he did, but Flashman makes it sound a lot worse than it was, and effectively ruins East’s reputation.

East comes to him and apologises and admits that his actions were partly driven by what Harry did to Valla (see Flashman at the Charge), because he was smitten by her. Harry refuses his apology, tells him that he is not forgiven and shatters any illusions he may have had about Valla by letting young Scud know exactly what the nature of his relationship with the Cossack’s beautiful daughter was. I felt kind of wrong about that. I couldn’t stand Tom Brown. I tend to side with Harry on that. Okay he went over the top with Brown, but seriously the little snot was annoying. East I kind of liked, he wasn’t Harry’s sort at all, but he wasn’t a bad bloke. He didn’t deserve what Harry did to him.

The defenders are broken by a mutineers charge and lay waiting for the inevitable doom.  

Blackout by Mira Grant

Blackout is the 3^rd and final book of Mira Grant’s zombie apocalypse Newsflesh trilogy.

WARNING: there are going to be serious spoilers for the first two books in the trilogy Feed and Deadline. If you don’t want to be spoiled for those then stop reading right here, and read them before coming back. We are now entering Spoilerland.

Blackout picks up pretty closely following the end of Deadline, and the shocking coda for that book is resolved in the first chapter. Blackout continues the fight of brother and sister blogger team Georgia and Shaun Mason and their team at The After End Times to expose conspiracies and bring down governments in the process. Old friends return: the unflappable Anglo Indian Newsie Mahir Gowda, the trigger happy Irwin Rebecca ‘Becks’ Atherton, super rich Fictional Maggie Garcia and the dedicated Alaric Kwong. As with the last book they’re all with Shaun at the lab of the trilogy’s mad scientist Dr Shannon Abby, trying to find out just what hell happened when Florida was hit by a team of zombie infected mosquitoes.

You will notice I mentioned Georgia Mason. How can this be you ask? George contracted the Kellis Amberlee virus at the end of Feed, began to amplify, and was shot dead by her adoptive brother Shaun. The coda at the end of Deadline suggested that George may return. She does sort of. Is she dead? Yes and no. You’ll have to read the book to find out what that actually means.

Mira Grant employed a slightly different narrative technique for Blackout. In Feed the story was 1^st person from George’s point of view. In Deadline it was Shaun. Blackout is also told in 1^st person, but it’s broken into chapters featuring both Shaun and Georgia. Shaun and George really aren’t a lot different. I’ve said before that they’re largely one person inhabiting two bodies. So the narrative works when they’re apart, when they collide and are working together Mira keeps the two person PoV narrative going, but entitles each chapter either Shaun or George. Just as well, because at times I did have to flick to the start of the chapter to work out just who was talking. This technique also necessitates a bit of double handling, but to the author’s credit she has managed to keep it to a minimum, and it doesn’t affect the flow of the story too much.

I felt Deadline suffered from two problems. One is fixed in Blackout, the other remained. The first problem was readers were given too much of ‘this is what happened last episode’. Mira Grant has worked on that, and while some exposition about the events in Deadline is necessary, especially to bring George up to speed as she was absent for that book, it’s not overdone and the reader doesn’t feel the need to just skip ahead, while thinking ‘Yeah, I know all this, I read Feed.’ The second issue for me was Shaun’s regular reiteration of ‘yes, my dead sister talks to me, and I talk back, but I’m not totally crazy.’ This returns, it continues even after Shaun and George’s paths converge. It needs to be said, but not as much or as often as it is.

Feed completely blew me away, and it remains one of the best things I’ve read in the past few years. I was less enthusiastic about Deadline, although it was one of the better books I read in 2011. Blackout is a thrill ride, even when there’s not that much happening. I loved the excursion to see the mysterious forger the Monkey. I liked seeing old friends from the previous two books return, not just the bloggers. I adored the super exclusive swanky hotel the Agora, and I seriously want to stay there. At times it does come in handy to have a girl who’s parents are multi billionaires on staff.

Blackout is not without it’s problems, but they are minor and do not detract from the book’s sheer sense of scary fun. It is a fitting end to the trilogy, and it does actually end properly. Mira Grant sees to that and ties everything up in a neat bow. If you’ve been following the story you’ll wind up reading the last page of Blackout feeling thoroughly satisfied. I would recommend reading the last few chapters of Deadline at least before starting Blackout just to familiarise yourself with what happened, because there were a couple of bits early on where I was ‘when did that happen?’ Newsflesh: the zombie apocalypse trilogy for people who don’t normally read zombie apocalypse fiction.   

The Lost Continent by C.J Cutcliffe Hyne

The last of the H’s, boy they’ve taken me a while to get through!

My enjoyment of C.J Cutcliffe Hyne’s classic The Lost Continent may have been spoiled by my own preconceptions of it. Due to the similarity of the titles I got it confused with Conan Doyle’s The Lost World. I haven’t read The Lost World, but I did see and enjoy the 2001 TV movie. The way the book started also wrong footed me into believing it was going to be more about a search for Atlantis, rather than what it actually is.

The book was originally published in 1900 and had some success due to the interest in Victorian society about the legend of Atlantis. Like many books of its kind it begins with a couple of adventurers; one an archaeologist, finding evidence of some lost civilisation on a mountain in the Canary Islands.  The narrator is sent the story as translated by the archaeologist that they discovered.

The documents they found were an account of the destruction of Atlantis (the lost continent of the title) written by a scholar, priest and warrior by the name of Deucalion.

I was probably a bit grumpy with the book, because once it got into Deucalion’s story I realised it wasn’t what I had been expecting, and it also failed to hold my interest. I suspect this is also partly because the book was written and published in the late 19^th/early 20^thcentury, and I’ve read and seen works since that have improved upon what Cutcliffe Hyne did here. I find that to be a bit of an issue with the older works on the list. They often do seem to have been improved upon, and don’t always stack up well against what has come since the original kicked off the ideas.

It’s a fairly tedious description of an Egyptian and Greek influenced society, and there’s also some nonsense about Deucalion having ruled over a kingdom in Yucatan (I guess that’s an attempt to explain the presence of the ziggurats and Egyptian influenced architecture and customs in Central and South America), they later mention the ‘tin islands’, which is how Deucalion escapes the destruction, I assume this is the Canary Islands, as that’s where the translator found the account.

It’s rather hard to warm to any of the characters, they all have significant flaws and Deucalion comes across as a fairly unsympathetic protagonist. He’s arrogant and chauvinistic, he’s also narrow minded and intolerant. He makes a really boring narrator, too. Everything comes across very dryly and fails to inspire any real feelings for him or the characters. By the end I was actually rather glad Atlantis sank into the sea.

Unfortunately The Lost Continent didn’t do it for me. For other tales of lost worlds or civilisations you could try Conan Doyle’s The Lost World, Jules Verne’s Journey to the Centre of the Earth or The Mysterious Island. There’s a lost civilisation in H. Rider Haggard’s She and the work that reminded me most of The Lost Continent, although I enjoyed it far more, was Wilbur Smith’s The Sunbird which is set both now, following an archaeologist uncovering a lost Carthaginian civilisation, and then with the story of the civilisations head priest mirroring that of the archaeologist.       

Red Seas Under Red Skies by Scott Lynch

Warning: there will be significant spoilers for The Lies of Locke Lamora in this review. If you haven’t read The Lies of Locke Lamora, first of all why not? And secondly you definitely should before reading the review, besides it’s a really great book and you won’t regret it.

In one way I was fortunate that I was a little late to The Lies of Locke Lamora party, it meant that when I finished it, the sequel Red Seas Under Red Skies was already out, so no waiting, which is always nice to a committed fantophile.

After I’d read Red Seas Under Red Skies I saw a poster advertising it which said how did you top The Lies of Locke Lamora? The answer was easy, just add pirates! Put simply that’s an excellent review of Red Seas Under Red Skies, but it really doesn’t do it justice, nor is it entirely accurate.

My expectations were high, because I’m not at all ashamed to say that The Lies of Locke Lamora is one of my favourite books ever. I didn’t think Red Seas Under Red Skies could top it, and to be totally honest it doesn’t, well not for me, anyway. Don’t get me wrong here, it’s still a great book, it’s head and shoulders above many other things out there, and it’s a good deal better than a lot of sequels as well. It’s a Scott Lynch tale of the Gentleman Bastards, so there’s action, violence, profanity and tragedy. It is at times also uproariously funny.

The story picks up a couple of years after the end of The Lies of Locke Lamora. Locke and Jean have left Camorr and are in the midst of pulling another job in the not so far away kingdom of Tal Verrar. The con involves the owner of a decadent gambling establishment with the wonderfully alliterative name of the Sinspire. The owner; a dapper chap by the name of Requin was a little too like Capa Barsavi for my liking, but I did like his bodyguard/lover; a ruthless scarred lady with a mechanical hand (shades of steampunk there) called Selendri. The intervening time is filled in by means of the interludes, which return from the first book after a fashion, I always liked the tales of ‘little Locke’ that were in the first book, but many found them a little intrusive. That’s one thing Red Seas Under Red Skies has over it’s predecessor, the interludes aren’t quite as self indulgent or as unnecessary as they were in the opening book, that was never my opinion, but it’s something I have seen others say, maybe they were used to the style by the second book.

Things are bubbling along quite nicely until the secondary storyline; the one with the pirates, comes into play. I enjoyed it, it was a great swashbuckler, the superstition about never putting to sea without a cat onboard was at times very funny, but the whole thing just seemed to be an unnecessary complication. It gave Jean a girlfriend, there were lots of swordfights and nautical talk. It brought back memories of Pirates of the Caribbean (the films, not the ride), but most of the time I had this nagging thought of what about the Sinspire and the Requin job?

The book does return to that and like in The Lies of Locke Lamora, Jean and Locke, Locke especially, are revealed to be not half as clever as they think they are, and are pretty neatly outsmarted by their mark.

Frustratingly it does end on a cliffhanger, with Locke condemned to a seemingly certain slow death by poison. There is a 3^rd book; The Republic of Thieves, but your guess is as good as mine as to when it will be published, as the author has been beset by personal problems almost since the publication of Red Seas Under Red Skies.

As I said it’s a damn good book, but it could have been edited a little more tightly. I think of two particular sections which could have been cut and not caused undue suffering. They seem to exist because the author felt they were good idea at the time. The Salon Corbeau section would have made a good short story and could have even been expanded into a novella, but it felt a little out of place here, and to my way of thinking the exchange between Locke and Jean and a dim witted, but opportunistic thief served no useful purpose, and wasn’t even all that funny.  The other thing that the book lacked was Camorr. I’ve regularly said that Camorr was like this extra bonus character in The Lies of Locke Lamora, and whilst Tal Verrar is an interesting place it doesn’t have Camorr’s soul, nor does it make the same connection with the reader. With the Sinspire storyline, the occasional side excursion, the pursuit of the Bondsmages (oh yeah they’re not at all happy about what Locke and Jean did to the Falconer in The Lies of Locke Lamora) and the pirate storyline, it just seems like there’s a little too much going on.

Red Seas Under Red Skies is well worth reading, but it isn’t quite the experience The Lies of Locke Lamora was. Fingers and toes crossed that The Republic of Thieves isn’t too far away.

Flashman in the Great Game Chapter 7

A lot of chapter 7 of Flashman in the Great Game is more of the same from the previous chapter.

Jhansi did not escape the conflagration that was engulfing India at the time. The first half of the chapter is given over to descriptions of the atrocities in Jhansi. They’re very similar to those Flashman has seen elsewhere in the country. The main difference with this one is that Flashman didn’t see it first hand, but has to settle for Ilderim’s lurid commentary, told in his lyrical middle ages Arabic. A point of interest was that Fraser chose to lay the blame for what actually did happen in Jhansi squarely at the feet of the Rani. In actual history she always protested her innocence in these matters, there is considerable doubt about her innocence, and obviously Fraser sides with that camp.

Due to his attachment to Lakshmibai and his encounter with her Harry says that what Ilderim is telling him can’t be true. Ilderim puts Harry’s reluctance to believe down to his infatuation with the Rani. What he doesn’t understand is why Flashman is besotted with Lakshmibai when she’s one of Harry’s many conquests and he doesn’t feel that way about all of them. This brings up two points. My belief is that of all the many women Harry has encountered and bedded he only really had feelings of love for three of them. Elspeth of course, Lola Montez and Lakshmibai. Takes Away Clouds Woman may also qualify, but it’s hard to tell with her.  That feeling is why he can’t believe Lakshmibai would preside over the sort of massacre, which included women and children, that Ilderim tells him about. The other point is that I think it’s highly unlikely Harry ever slept with the Rani. He was very drunk that night and she was veiled for much of it. Even he says she moved like a nautch dancer, and I think that’s what she was. A lady Lakshimbai hired to impersonate her and make it easy for her assassins to take care of the British diplomat she saw as a threat. Harry would however go to his grave believing he shared a night of passion with Lakshimbai herself.

Harry, Ilderim and the big Pathan’s men decide to go to Cawnpore to join the British garrison there fighting against the mutiny. On the way they encounter a group of irregulars. They’re composed of former civilian British clerks and businessmen and a handful of loyal Sikhs. They’ve banded together for the express purpose of hunting down and killing mutineers. They initially think Harry’s an enemy, and dressed and looking the way he is, along with the company he’s keeping, little wonder. He’s only able to escape becoming one of their victims by remembering the first name of the son of one of the band, whom he was named as the godfather of in Flashman, young Flashman O’Toole, that was a nice little touch, putting that in.

It’s rather disturbing to see the relish with which these civilized men pursue their vengeance. Understandable, but still disturbing. They’re attacked when not far from Cawnpore and only the courage and strength of Ilderim Khan saves Harry’s life. Once safe behind British lines Harry is offered that most genteel of British customs; nuts or a cigar as a rifle is thrust into his hands. Flashman looks down the line, and wonders if he’s not dreaming, because not too far from him is Harry ‘Scud’ East.

Princess Knight Part 1 by Osamu Tezuka

Osamu Tezuka's somewhat ground breaking work; Princess Knight, was a bit of an excursion down memory lane for me.

My original introduction to the concept was as a cartoon. I don't remember it being in black and white, but considering that I watched it as a very young kid (I can't have been over 5 or 6) and we didn't have colour TV until I was at least 7 I must have watched it in B&W whether it was actually colourised or not. Judging by the dates it was made and going on a lot of other Japanese cartoons of the time such as Gigantor it probably wasn't coloured.

I always liked the show, it was loud and bright and silly and loads of fun. I could only vaguely remember it, but the concept was basically; a pretty and spirited young princess pretends to be a boy and has adventures, she also had an odd little assistant, who tended to hinder her as much as he helped, and was intended as comedy relief.

I wasn't even aware that they'd ever published as a manga until I saw the first volume in a bookstore a few months ago. I don't read a lot of manga. My main problem with it is that it's generally in black and white, and I like my comics to be coloured, unless they're things like Cerebus. It sounds like a really silly bias, but it's not the only reason. A lot of manga is really full on with the action, it's written and drawn very cinematically. I find there's too much going on and it makes my eyes spin and my head hurt.

The idea behind Princess Knight is, for it's time, quite revolutionary. Before Princess Sapphire of Goldland is born a mischievous angel by the name of Tink gives a scheduled to be born baby a blue heart which makes it a boy, before his mischief can be uncovered God gives the baby a red heart, which makes her a girl.

The duality isn't really that bad a thing for the kingdom of Goldland. Their laws say that the kingship can only pass to a male heir. If the King and Queen of Goldland can't produce a male heir, then the throne will pass to the completely unsuitable son of the evil Duke Duralumin. So that although Sapphire is born a girl, her blue heart means that they can quite successfully pass her off as a boy until they can find a way around their ridiculous law. As punishment for his part in the mess Tink is sent to Earth to watch over Sapphire.

Most of the action takes place after Sapphire turns 15. She's spent her life being raised and behaving as a boy, while knowing she's a girl. Duke Duralumin and his henchman Sir Nylon have spent most of that 15 years trying to prove that Sapphire is female, not male, and put Duralumin's useless son Plastic on the throne.

Things really get interesting for Sapphire when the handsome Prince of Silverland comes to Goldland for a tournament and falls for Sapphire in her guise of a 'flaxen haired maiden', and competes with her boy persona for superiority of arms. The King dies by accident, Sapphire is unmasked and along with her mother and Tink becomes a wanted fugitive.

From this point on Sapphire's life is a whirlwind. An evil sorceress wants her girl heart, the Prince of Silverland is pursuing the 'flaxen haired maiden', while continuing to fight with Prince Sapphire, and then the pirates led by the dashing Blood get involved.

It's confusing and funny, it has moments of high tragedy and low farce. Osamu Tezuka writes the whole thing with his tongue planted firmly in his cheek. It's actually a delight from start to finish. It's great because there's a second part that immediately follows this.

Will Sapphire choose Blood or the Prince of Silverland? Will she kill the sorceress and break the spell that has turned her mother to stone? Will Tink ever get back to Heaven. Will Sapphire keep both or hearts or give one of them up?

I'm really looking forward to reading Part 2. Be great to see the animated series to make a come back in the modern era either as a series or even a full length feature. The world may not have been ready for it in the 60's, it is now.

Red Seas Under Red Skies Read along week 5

All good things must come to an end, and so it is with the Little Red Reviewers read along of Scott Lynch's Gentleman Bastards series. There are seven books planned, but as yet only the first two have been published, so this will be the last set of questions. The final set of questions are from Lynn of Lynn's Book Blog. If you haven't finished the book I recommend doing so before reading as there will be spoilers.

1.    Oh my god, such a lot going on I thought the showdown between the Poison Orchid and the Sovereign was brilliantly written and they were holding their own until Utgar and his nasty device turned up.  Well a lot of you had kind of predicted it, and I suppose we’d been let off too easy so far in terms of deaths of well-liked characters  – but come on,  did you expect something like that?  And how on earth will Jean ever recover?


No, it blew me away. I didn't see that coming. I don't know what I thought would happen, after all it's a Lynch book so it can't possibly end happily, that's just crazy talk, that is, but I kind of hoped it would. Jean is tougher and harder than Locke in a lot of ways and I'm more confident that he'll recover and move on more than I would be if positions had been reversed.

2.       The deceit, the betrayal, first Rodanov and then Colvard.  Even now I’m not entirely sure I understand Colvard – Rodanov was never keen on the oath but Colvard seemed okay with it all and yet in this final deceit she was more devious than Rodanov – what do you think was her motive?

I don't know that they really need a strong motive. They're pirates. Killing and deceiving is a way of life. It would probably be more surprising if there hadn't been another double cross.

3.       Merrain – such a puzzle, no real answer, the mysterious tattoo, the determination to kill everyone to keep her identity and that of her master a secret.  Does anybody have any ideas where she’s from and what she’s up to exactly and who the hell is she working for??

Merrain is a mystery wrapped in an enigma. I have no more idea about her now than I did at the start of the book. I think (hope) she'll pop up again in another book and we'll find out more about her and what she is, who she's working for, if anyone. I said all along she's running her own game, it's just what it is that we don't know.

4.       Finally we get to the point of the GB’s latest scheme, all that elaborate planning for two years, fancy chairs, gambling, dust covered cards, abseiling lessons – all for one gigantic bluff. I loved the diversionary tactic here but having finally reached the end of the story and, more to the point, the end result – do you think the GB’s are as clever as they think they are?

I don't know that both the GB's really think they're the smartest guys in the room. Locke definitely does, but Jean is slightly more modest and level headed. To answer the question, no Locke is not as smart as he thinks he is, no one could be.

5.       I must admit that I liked Requin and Selendri – particularly at the end – I don’t think Requin will go after Locke and Jean, he was even sort of cool and composed about it all, in fact he came across as a bit pleased with himself because he had the last laugh.  Plenty of good characters this time which did you enjoy reading most about this time?

They're a bit of a double act. They read better together than solo. I liked and loathed each of them for different reasons and in about the same measure. If pushed I tended to prefer Selendri, she was original. Requin was too much like Barsavi for mine. If asked who I liked most in the entire book it's Zamira, her I really loved. If she had died instead of Ezri I would have been devastated. I really hope Locke and Jean run across her again in the cycle.

6.       Finally, a triple barrel question, I know I shouldn’t ask this BUT, on reflection do you have a favourite between LoLL or RSURS??  And why?  Are you going to pick up Republic of Thieves?  And, where do you think Lynch will take us to next??


For me it's always Lies. I love Lies, it's one of my favourite books ever. Why? It's just so totally cool. It's all so fresh and new, and it has that amazing setting of Camorr. Red Seas is a good book, head and shoulders above a lot of what comes out, but it's rather fragmented. There's just a bit too much going on. It's almost like it's two separate books or stories jammed into one and they don't quite hang together as well as they could.
Am I going to pick up Republic of Thieves? Is the sky blue, is grass green? Of course I'm going to pick up Republic of Thieves! I've been waiting for Republic of Thieves ever since I first finished Red Seas Under Red Skies. If you go to Scott Lynch's website, there's a couple of goodies there, at least I think they're still there. One is the prologue to Republic of Thieves, where you get to meet a certain young lady for the very first time. There was the opening chapter to the book floating around for a while. I read it at the old Gentleman Bastards fansite: camorr.com, but I'm not sure if the site is still active. A search may uncover the chapter. It's a beauty so if you get the opportunity to read it I recommend doing so. Fingers and toes crossed that we see Republic of Thieves sooner rather than later.