Hugo Ballot Review: The Tainted Cup, by Robert Jackson Bennett

Hugo Ballot Review: The Tainted Cup, by Robert Jackson Bennett

by Rich Horton

This is the fourth of the 2025 Hugo finalists for Best Novel that I have read. Robert Jackson Bennett is a writer I have heard of before, but have never read. His first novel came out in 2009, and he has received a good deal of attention for his work -- two novels, Mr. Shivers and American Elsewhere, won the Shirley Jackson Award for Best Novel, and two of his series (Divine Cities and The Founders) have been finalists for the Hugo for Best Series. The Tainted Cup is the first book in a new series, Shadow of the Leviathan. (The second book in the series, A Drop of Corruption, has already appeared this year.) It is a fantasy detective novel, and I'll confess that I was happy to hear that -- it sounds like fun. (And I recently read another fantasy detective novel, Lisa Tuttle's The Curious Affair of the Somnambulist and the Psychic Thief.)

The narrator is one Dinios Kol, who has recently been appointed Assistant Investigator to the Iudex Investigator for Daretana, a remote canton of the Kahnum Empire. This investigator is Anagosa Dolabra, a decidely eccentric woman of middle years. Din, meanwhile, is a youngish man, though a bit old to still be an apprentice -- his appointment as Ana's assistant is conditional, dependent upon successful completion of his apprenticeship. 

The current investigation is of a spectacular murder -- the first exciting assignment Din has had. (The first four months of his time with Ana involved tedious dealings with financial fraud cases.) Ana has a disability -- she is unable to tolerate excessive sensory stimulation, and she spends most of her time in her rooms, often blindfolded. So it is up to Din to handle the physical investigation -- but he does have one ability that will help -- he is an "engraver", and has perfect memory of everything he sees and hears, so can report precise details to Ana. This ability is due to an "apothetikal" modification -- a sort of fantastical plant based biotechnology. There are many such modifications, mostly used by the Iyalets, the four main branches of Empire service: Din's branch, the Iudex, are the criminal investigators; the Apothetikals are the masters of biotech; the Engineers maintain the Empire's infrastructure, and the Legion is the military. Apothetikal modifications include tremendous strength, enhanced vision, great powers of calculation, and many more. 

What Din finds in this investigation is that a certain Commander Blas of the Engineers had been visiting a house owned by the Hazas, a powerful "Gentry" family; and that suddenly a plant "bloomed" inside his body, killing him horribly. This plant is "dapplegrass", which grows so quickly that when it was first invented it destroyed an entire canton before it was contained. Ana and Din soon learn that in the neighboring canton of Talagray ten more engineers have been killed, also by dapplegrass, and some of them were working on the seawall that protects the Empire from being overrun by the incredibly huge leviathans in the oceans. It's very clear that these murders must be solved quickly, especially since the breach in the seawall caused by the dapplegrass blooming within it leaves Talagray vulnerable to a leviathan -- and the wet season, when the leviathans approach the shore, is upon them. 

Ana and Din head to Talagray, and start investigating, even as more murders are discovered. There is clearly some sort of conspiracy at hand, and there are plenty of suspects, including the Haza family, a cabal of Engineers, discontented exiles from the canton that had been overrun by the dappleglas, and even potentially members of the team assembled to help with the investigation. Din continues to perform the active work of crime scene examinations and interrogations, while Ana analyzes what is found, makes brilliant deductions, and strategizes next steps. It is a true race against time, and we get to know Din and Ana better and better, as Din makes some remarkable discoveries about his own abilities, and we get hints of a past for Ana. Of course they do solve the crime(s) -- and the solutions are pretty satisfactory (though there is some coincidence, and perhaps Ana's deductions are somewhat implausibly brilliant.) 

The real fun of the book is the mismatched pair at its center. Ana is a pure delight -- cranky and demanding but funny and honest; while we really come to like Din, a poor boy making good despite personal difficulties. Other characters -- especially the fiercely honest military veteran Tazi Miljin, and Din's love interest Kepheus Strovi (they don't get together until the end but I could see from when they first met where that was going) are interesting as well. The magical* inventions are neat too -- Din's special abilities, the various apothetikal modifications, the nature of the leviathans, the scary "twitch" -- really well done. 

Where does it rank on my Hugo ballot so far? Roughly third out of four -- pretty much on a level with T. Kingfisher's A Sorceress Comes to Call but behind Kaliane Bradley's The Ministry of Time and Adrian Tchaikovsky's Alien Clay; with the difference coming down mainly to science fictional interest and ambition. All four of the novels so far have been at least very enjoyable reads. 

*(I can easily imagine this book recast as science fiction -- what is presented as magic here could have been given a scientific justification, admittedly not a terribly convincing one.)

Review: In This House of Brede, by Rumer Godden

Review: In This House of Brede, by Rumer Godden

by Rich Horton

Rumer Godden was one of the great mid-century British women writers who tended to get ignored a bit because, well, women's fiction (and the tendency to denigrate it as purely middlebrow.) Other examples: Barbara Pym, Margery Sharp, Elizabeth Jane Howard. She was, to be sure, quite successful commercially -- nine books became movies, and her books sold quite well. Novels like Black Narcissus and The River (and their associated movies) remain well respected. Below is the potted bio I wrote the last time I covered Godden:

Margaret Rumer Godden was born in England in 1907, but was largely raised in India (her father was a shipping executive.) She spent some time at school in England, but mostly lived in India until after the Second World War. She ran a ballet school in Calcutta (now Kolkata) for twenty years. She converted to Catholicism in 1968 after many years of study. Ballet, India, and Catholicism are all recurring subjects of her books. She wrote some 60 books -- novels, children's books, memoirs. Her elder sister, Winsome Ruth Key Godden, was also a novelist (writing as "Jon Godden"), and the two collaborated on some memoirs late in life. She married twice, the first time unhappily, the second time much more successfully (though she has been quoted as saying she never really loved any man but Mr. Darcy from Pride and Prejudice!) She had two daughters. She was named an Officer of the British Empire in 1993, and died, a month short of her 91st birthday, in 1998.

That potted bio just above notes her conversion to Catholicism in 1968. The novel at hand, In This House of Brede, was published in 1969. It is set at Brede, a Benedictine monastery for nuns (that is -- not a convent.) Godden herself spent three years living just outside a monastery -- partly to research for this book, but also, I assume, as part of her studying Catholicism. I should note that I myself was raised Catholic, and I often find myself admiring Catholic fiction, particularly perhaps fiction by converts -- Gene Wolfe and Graham Greene are two other examples.

The novel opens with Philippa Talbot, an highly respected member of the British Civil Service, suddenly resigning her position. Many of her fellows at the organization are shocked -- she was greatly admired and clearly going places. But she herself has been planning this for some time, and her boss, Sir Richard, as well as her close friend, McTurk, have been told for years that she intends to become a nun. She had had an affair with the married Sir Richard, and had broken it off (though they remained friends.) We learn that she had previously been married, but her husband died in the War, and her very young son had also died, in circumstances she won't discuss. 

The rest of the book covers about 15 years of her life at Brede -- a couple of years as a novice, followed by time as a junior sister, but -- perhaps inevitably though not without personal struggle -- eventually rising to a position of authority. There is a lot going one besides Philippa's story -- the death of one Abbess and the difficulties the new one has; a serious financial difficulty caused by the old Abbess; issues for several of the incoming novices, which in some cases mean they have to leave, and in other cases are resolved only after torturous personal discovery; the installation of a beautiful new altar; literary works by a few nuns; an effort to help establish a new Benedictine monastery in Japan; intricate examination of the personalities of the various nuns, and their conflicts with each other, the petty jealousies and so on -- plus a slight hint of Lesbianism, and also a side plot about abortion (for someone outside Brede.) We also, eventually, learn the details of Philippa's history.

It's a beautiful novel, really. The characters are exceptionally well captured, the writing is lovely. It's a long book, well over 600 pages in my edition, a 2005 Loyola Classics reprint, though it's probably only some 160,000 words -- long, but not as long as 600+ pages would general indicate. (The book was originally published by Viking -- Loyola Press is a Catholic publishing venture, as the name indicates.) At any rate, for all its length, and despite its constricted setting, it is never boring. It succeeds completely as a description of monastic life, and as a convincing argument for its value. We really do understand that these women are living fulfilled lives, and are variously happy or sad according to their natures and the vicissitudes of their lives. A few events seem somewhat convenient, particularly the resolution to Brede's financial crisis, but so be it. A book much worth reading. 

Hugo Ballot Review: Alien Clay, by Adrian Tchaikovsky

Hugo Ballot Review: Alien Clay, by Adrian Tchaikovsky

by Rich Horton

My next review of a Hugo nominated novel is Alien Clay, by Adrian Tchaikovsky. Tchaikovsky (real name Czajkowski -- publishers asked to change it because the composer's name is so familiar) has been publishing SF and Fantasy prolifically since 2008. He has been nominated for the Hugo six times -- twice each in the categories Novel, Novella, and Series. He won for Best Series in 2022 but declined the award after the hugely questionable nomination ballot counting issues were revealed. This year he has two novel nominees (the other is for Service Model) and another series nomination, for The Tyrant Philosophers. I have read some short fiction (including "Dress Rehearsal", which I included in by Best of the Year collection for 2017) and one novel: Children of Time, which I found quite impressive.

Alien Clay is also pretty impressive. Tchaikovsky is fascinated by unusual biology -- that certainly was central to Children of Time, and it's central here. The narrator, Arton Daghdev, is a scientist -- a biologist with great interest in ecology, but he has been exiled to a work camp on the exoplanet Kiln. It seems Earth is now dominated by an authoritative government called the Mandate, which among other things tightly regulates science -- only science that supports the Mandate's view of the universe is allowed. Daghdev was as outspoken as he could get away with, until he crossed a line and got sent to Kiln. He was also a real revolutionary, but hadn't been caught at that.

On Kiln he is assigned to Dig analysis, and is also contacted by the head of the camp, Commandant Teloran, who is reasonably well-educated, thought still a tool of the Mandate, and who wants Daghdev to participate in the effort to find the missing "Builders" -- the species that supposedly left a series of structures behind that seem the result of intelligence, especially since there are symbols written on the structures that seem an alphabet of sorts. Daghdev is well aware that any appearance of collaboration with the Commandant will result in ill treatment from his fellow prisoners, so he doesn't directly help him, but he is fascinated by the scientific question.

Soon he realizes that Kilnish life is very differently organized than Earth life, and almost every creature they find is a composite species, with several different individuals cooperating to survive. This sort of thing is very much not approved by Mandate science -- but it's also clearly the key to unlocking the secrets of the planet and the "builders". Daghdev gets in trouble eventually for two reasons -- one, he openly mocks the absurd attempts of the leading scientist on Kiln to manipulate the data they show Teloran in order to fit the Commandant's prejudices, and, two, he joins a resistance movement among the other workers at the camp, who aim to oust the Commandant and steal a spaceship to return to Earth. And thus Daghdev, with several of his allies, is demoted to "Excursions" -- a very dangerous group, as these are the people who make field visits to Kilnish sites, with purposely substandard equipment. Kiln is a very scary environment -- but ... this is also a way to actually study Kiln up close. 

I've left a lot out for spoiler avoidance. But it's a very enjoyable novel. It's a bit of a slow burn -- the first half or so is spent on rather overdone descriptions of how terrible the Mandate is, and how bad things are on Kiln, etc. etc. I think this could have been somewhat cut -- but also it's fair to say that Tchaikovsky has developed an appealing voice, or prose style -- rather sarcastic, full of quite clever images, and fun to read. His prose doesn't sing -- but it does maintain an effective "patter", if you will. So I was never bored -- and once Daghdev joins "Excursions" the book picks up dramatically -- his final expedition is tremendously exciting, and the promised revelations about Kiln and the "builders" and all are science-fictionally fascinating (though I did figure out the general shape of things pretty quickly -- which isn't really a bad thing, some books of this nature are puzzles in a way, and are satisfying to solve.)

Quite a good SF novel, and real SF too -- as of now (but I have three novels to go) it is second on my Hugo Ballot. 

Review: Dragonflight, by Anne McCaffrey

Review: Dragonflight, by Anne McCaffrey

by Rich Horton

Our book club discussed Anne McCaffrey's Dragonflight this week, which prompted a long overdue reread on my part. I had first read it way back in my Golden Age, or technically shortly later -- when I was 14 or so instead Peter Graham's 12. I believe I read the 1968 Hugo winner "Weyr Search" first, in Isaac Asimov's second Hugo Winners anthology, or perhaps in Nebula Award Stories Three, and I read the sequel, "Dragonrider", in Nebula Award Stories Four. I am honestly not sure at this remove that I read Dragonflight back then -- it comprises "Weyr Search", "Dragonrider", and an additional novella length story that fits in between "Weyr Seach" and "Dragonrider". (This story seems to have originally been called "Crack Dust, Black Dust" but was never published separately.) Back then I think I may have assumed that there was no new material in Dragonflight. I did go on to read the first sequel, Dragonquest (1971), but never continued to any further Pern stories. By the time The White Dragon came out in 1978 I was in college, and I suspect I simply didn't have the time to read it. (I do remember that it was one of the earlier SF novels to get prominent front of store placement in the Waldenbooks where I still worked part time -- and indeed The White Dragon did become a New York Times bestseller.)

Anne McCaffrey (1926-2011) began publishing SF in 1953 with a story in Hugo Gernsback's odd late return to SF edition with Science Fiction Plus, but didn't sell any more stories until "The Lady in the Tower" (1959) and "The Ship Who Sang" (1961). She published a couple more "Ship" stories in 1966, but while those drew some attention it was "Weyr Search" that made her name. It appeared in Analog for October of 1967, and "Dragonrider" quickly followed, a two part serial, in December 1967 and January 1968. The novel Dragonflight came out in 1968. "Weyr Search" won the Hugo for Best Novella (in a tie with Philip Jose Farmer's "Riders of the Purple Wage"*) and "Dragonrider" won the Nebula for Best Novella. McCaffrey was the first woman to win a Hugo for fiction, and was tied with Kate Wilhelm as the first woman to win a Nebula, as Wilhelm's "The Planners" won for Best Short Story the same year that "Dragonrider" won. Dragonflight was McCaffrey's first novel, and two more novels followed in 1969 (The Ship Who Sang (fixed up from the stories) and Decision at Doona) so her career was well established, and she proceeded to publish dozens more novels in a variety of series -- not just Pern, but the Ship seres, Doona, Crystal Singer, and more. Much of her later work was in collaboration with various writers, including her son Todd. She was named an SFWA Grand Master in 2005.

I have to admit that in later years one reason I never returned to Pern was an impression I had that it had become, essentially, pure traditional fantasy; and also that much of it was YA. The latter is somewhat ture, but not entirely, but I am told (by other book club members) that the main sequence of Pern novels is quite definitely science fiction, and does some interesting things with technological developments, and also with SFnal rationales for the abilities of the dragons. Pern has often been cited as an SF/Fantasy edge case, perhaps unfairly -- largely because for many people dragons = fantasy. The Pern books can also be called a sort of Romantasy precursor -- especially to books like those in Rebecca Yarros' Empyrean series, which feature dragons and dragonriders. That said, while there is definitely romance in the Pern books I've read, it is less prominent than in Romantasy (as far as I can tell) and there is certainly less explicit sex.

As for Dragonflight -- as noted, I had read it decades ago, but I really recalled fairly little. For this reading I read both the two original novellas in their magazine publication and the book version. I will say that the differences between the books and the novellas are quite minor (except for the added section in the novel.) There are a few changes at the sentence level, either thanks to the book editor, or to McCaffrey doing revisions. It did seem to me that even by the magazine version of "Dragonrider" her prose was improving -- she was still a fairly new writer, even in her early 40s, so it's not surprising that she was getting better. 

There are two primary viewpoint characters in the novel. Lessa is a scullery maid at Ruatha Hold, but secretly she is the only survivor of the ruling family of the Hold, the rest of whom had been massacred by Lord Fax a decade earlier. Lessa, just now reaching adulthood, is plotting to have Fax killed so she can reclaim her hold. Meanwhile F'Lar, a bronze dragonrider from the only remaining Weyr, Benden, is Searching for a new Weyrwoman -- a woman with the telepathic ability to bond with a Queen dragon; as the old Queen is about to die, and her bonded Weyrwoman is incompetent. F'Lar's Search has not been promising, but at last he comes to Ruatha, despite being told that there is no one left of "royal" blood. Well, you can see where that's going, and indeed, F'Lar does manage to recognize in Lessa the abilities he needs, while she is able to manipulate F'Lar to confront Lord Fax ... Along with this, we learn that the Holds and some of the dragonriders do not believe that the "threads" which the dragons and their riders burn away are a threat any more.

The subsequent story concerns Lessa's first couple of years at Benden Weyr, learning the historic lore of the dragonriders, and her and F'lar's ascension to leadership, even as the two of them still don't get along well. Then it is time for the threads -- and we see the desperate attempt of the limited number of remaining dragons and riders to fend them off. F'Lar and Lessa -- particularly Lessa -- come up with a rather clever method of fighting the threads despite their depleted numbers. I'll leave that secret to the readers to discover. 

There is the skeleton of a really interesting novel here, but I don't think McCaffrey pulled it off. The prose is erratic -- as I said, it improves, but McCaffrey really wasn't a good writer at this time. The central romantic relationship just doesn't come off -- there is no chemistry between the leads, and it all seems forced (literally so, at times.) Some of the conflicts are too easily resolved, some don't convince, and the pacing is off (to some extent because of the structure compelled by the novel being written in three parts.) I do think a complete rewrite, keeping the same basic story but fixing the issues I mention, could be pretty effective. And I believe the later novels in the long series got better.

I know these are books many people love -- and Dragonflight was a book I quite liked when I was much younger. But I think this is a book that hasn't held up -- even if later books work much better. 

*("Weyr Search" tieing for the Hugo prevented Harlan Ellison from a clean sweep of the short fiction Hugos that year -- "Riders of the Purple Wage" was from his anthology Dangerous Visions, as was the novelette winner (Fritz Leiber's "Gonna Roll the Bones"), while Ellison himself kept two other Dangerous Visions stories from winning -- his "I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream" beat out Larry Niven's "The Jigsaw Man" and Samuel R. Delany's "Aye, and Gomorrah".)

Review: Major Arcana, by John Pistelli

 Review: Major Arcana, by John Pistelli

I have been busy the last couple days and will be for the next couple so I haven't finished my next planned review (Dragonflight, by Anne McCaffrey), so I figured I'd post a link to my review at my Substack of John Pistelli's Major Arcana.

Review: The Brothers Lionheart, by Astrid Lindgren

Review: The Brothers Lionheart, by Astrid Lindgren

by Rich Horton

The Swedish writer Astrid Lindgren (1907-2002) is by far best known for Pippi Longstocking (1945) and its sequels. I encountered these at about the age of 10, but didn't continue to any other books by Lindgren, though she was very prolific. The novel at hand, The Brothers Lionheart, was first published in 1973 in Sweden, and in 1975 in English (translation by Joan Tate) -- so it's not surprising that I never knew of it as I would have been 15 or 16 when I could have possibly seen a copy -- and by then I was not reading much YA fiction. The first I heard of this book, actually, was just the other day when Farah Mendlesohn happened to mention it on Facebook. She praised it wholeheartedly, and many others echoed that praise. I figured I ought to give it a try.

The story is told by Karl Lion, a frail boy, about ten years old. He is unable to do much of anything due to his health, and he idolized his older brother, 13 year old Jonathan, who is very popular, beloved by his teachers and by the other children, and who is also very devoted to Karl, whom he calls Rusky. He tells Rusky stories, for example stories of Nangiyala, where the sagas come from and where you go when you die. And then a tragic event happens -- there is a fire, and the building where Karl, his mother, and Jonathan live burns down. Jonathan rushes back into the building to save his brother -- and jumps out of a second floor window at the last minute. Karl is saved, but Jonathan dies of his injuries, reminding Karl at the end that he'll be OK -- he'll be in Nangiyala. Soon after, Karl dies as well.

And, indeed, Karl finds himself in Nangiyala, in a house with his brother, in a place called Cherry Valley. They are very happy there -- it is an idyllic place, where no one goes wanting, and there is cooperation and community. Both brothers, of course, are fully cured of illness and injury. Karl gets to do the things he has always wanted -- to camp, and fish, and ride horses. But there is a shadown -- Cherry Valley is happy, but a neighboring place, Wild Rose Valley, has been conquered by Tengil, the evil leader of a harsh nearby country, Karmanyaka. Tengil fiercely oppresses the people in Wild Rose Valley, using the mysterious threat of Katla -- the nature of which we don't know until near the end of the book -- to keep them in line. 

There is a resistance movement, and there is a desire in Cherry Valley to come to the aid of their neighboring valley. And Jonathan -- now called Lionheart -- is a leader, along with an older woman named Sofia. Another rebel leader, Ortvar, is imprisoned by Tengil, and Jonathan realizes he must find a way into Wild Rose Valley, and help the people there rise up against Tengil. So he leaves -- and soon after, Karl has a dream which convinces him that he must come to his brother's aid. And despite what he considers his lack of courage, he finds a way to Wild Rose Valley, fortuitously encountering some of Tengil's men on the way -- along with a traitor from Cherry Valley. Karl convinces the guards that he is from Wild Rose Valley, living with his grandfather -- and when they ask him where his house is, he luckily sees a likely old man living alone and claims him as his grandfather -- and wouldn't you know it, this is the same man who is helping Jonathan hide from Tengil!

Things continue as we might expect -- Jonathan has dug a tunnel out of Wild Rose Valley, and he and Karl use to escape and head for Karmanyaka, and for the cave of Katla, where Ortvar must be imprisoned. The two boys bravely make there way to the cave, rescue Ortvar, face down the terrifying Katla, and return to Cherry Valley, to rally the people for the final battle against Tengil.

In many ways this is a pretty typical children's portal fantasy. The broad outline of the plot resembles many other examples -- from minor works such as X. J. Kennedy's The Owlstone Crown to major works like C. S. Lewis's Narnia series. And, indeed, encountering this book as an adult I found some aspects disappointing -- the way things work out is in many ways too easy, too convenient. While there is definitely stress and tragedy in the battle to overcome Tengil, it still feels -- implausible, I guess. But on thinking it through, the strength of the novel lies elsewhere. It is an afterlife fantasy, through and through, and there's a reading available where it is all in Karl's mind, or perhaps a subcreation of both Karl and his Jonathan. And there are no compromises -- death is death, there is no return. Jonathan is a pacifist -- and this has consequences. And Nangilaya is not the only place in the afterlife -- there is also Nangilima ... The best scenes of this novel are truly moving. And the depictions of courage, of the moral response to villainy, of brotherly love -- these strike home. I have to say I think I'd have loved it uncritically had I found it when I was 10 or 12 (which of course I could not have.) Coming to it now -- it didn't strike me as strongly, but I'm still glad to have read it. 

Review: A Ladder of Swords, by Gilbert Parker

Review: A Ladder of Swords, by Gilbert Parker

by Rich Horton

I haven't read as many "Old Bestsellers" (the original focus of this blog) in recent times as I used to. (For my purpose, "Old Bestseller" primarily refers to popular fiction of the first half of the 20th Century.) But one writer I knew I'd get around to trying at some time was Gilbert Parker. And when I did my recent Victorian Fiction quiz, I realized that I really didn't have any Canadian writers featured -- and that that was primarily because I have read very little Victorian-era fiction by Canadians, and those I have read, such as Ralph Connor, are really too obscure for a general interest quiz. But Gilbert Parker? Well, he still might be rather obscure, but I knew of him as a very popular Canadian writer of mostly historical fiction, who was active around the turn of the 20th Century. So when I happened across a book by him at an estate sale the other day, I snapped it up.

Gilbert Parker was born in Camden East, a village in Southeastern Ontario, more or less the length of Lake Ontario away from Toronto, in 1862. He became a teacher, including for a time a teacher of the deaf, and then a lecturer at Trinity College in Toronto, before moving to Australia in 1885 to work as an editor for the Sydney Morning Herald. While in Australia he wrote a few short stories about Canada, but when he moved to London (England, not Ontario!) in 1889 and tried to publish a collection, it was politely rejected and Parker burned the stories -- saying later that he was certain the publisher who had rejected them was right. Soon after he began writing again, and another set of stories set in Canada appeared in 1892, Pierre and His People -- stories set in "the Far North" about fur trappers and the like. He continued to write stories in that mode, but soon turned to novels, most notably The Seats of the Mighty (1896), concerning the British conquest of Quebec in the middle of the 18th Century. Later novels tended to be set elsewhere than Canada -- including England, the Channel Islands, and even Egypt. His novels The Battle of the Strong (1898), The Right of Way (1901), and The Weavers (1907) were listed as among the top ten bestselling novels of their years in the United States. (One of his latest novels is The Power and the Glory (1925), which somehow is not remembered as well as a certain other novel of that title.) He married a wealthy American woman, Amy VanTine, in 1895. He was a Member of Parliament from 1900 to 1918, and was Knighted in 1902 and made a Baronet in 1915. He is considered instrumental in convincing the US to join on the British side in World War I. He died in 1932.

A Ladder of Swords was published in 1904. My copy is a 1914 reprint from A. L. Burt, then the most prominent publisher of inexpensive reprint editions. (This was, of course, long before the time of paperbacks.) The A. L. Burt edition reproduces the illustrations from the original, by the husband and wife team Troy Sylvanus Kinney and Margaret West Kinney, who signed their work "The Kinneys", and also reproduces the rather attractive cover shown above, with the gold leaf (or imitation gold leaf?) panel. I've also included a photo of the title page (with the credit to "Sir Gilbert Parker") and the frontispiece illustration of Queen Elizabeth with Angèle Aubert.

The novel is ostensibly set sometime in the 1570s, though a note at the beginning warns "there will be found a few anachnronisms in this tale, but none so important as to give a wrong impression of the events of Queen Elizabeth's reign." At the open Angèle Aubert and her father, a Councillor of the Parliament of Rouen, are living in exile on Jersey, one of the Channel Islands. Angèle is a Huguenot (a French Reformed (i.e. Calvinist) Protestant) and so her family has been persecuted, as this is the time of the French Religious Wars. (At a guess, this is shortly after the St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre, in 1572 when a Catholic mob, probably incited by Catherine de Medici, the former Queen and mother of the then King, Charles IX, killed a group of Huguenots in Paris.) Angèle has just sent a letter to her betrothed, Michel de la Forêt, who is in hiding in France, as Catherine wishes to kill any remaining influential Huguenots. Michel then tries to reach Jersey, a dangerous trip which he takes in the company of a notorious pirate, Buonespoir, who is under sentence of death in both France and England. Their boat founders, but they are rescued by a nobleman on Jersey, Raoul Lemprière of Rozel. (Raoul had previously asked Angèle to marry him, but his honesty is proven by rescuing his rival.)

It quickly becomes clear that Michel's position is still precarious, as Catherine de Medici wishes Queen Elizabeth to arrest him and send him back to France, in exchange for some political support. Lemprière manages to facilitate the escape of Michel and Buonespoir from immediate arrest, but they must go to Elizabeth's court to negotiate his freedom. Angèle and her father travel to court as well, along with Lemprière and Rozel. There follows a few months of intrigue, also involving Elizabeth's favorite Robert Dudley, the Earl of Leicester, as well as a friendly lady of the court called only the Duke's Daughter. We see a duel, a joust, Queen Elizabeth playing the virginal, and a number of scenes showing Angèle impressing the Queen with her virtue and loyalty. The general shape of the outcome is obvious from the start (though there is a rather depressing final episode, probably about 20 years later, but surely before the Edict of Nantes, in which the Huguenots were finally given freedom of religion* by Henry IV (who was also raised Protestant but had converted to Catholicism in order to keep the throne -- as he reputedly said: "The Crown is worth a Mass."**)) 

The novel is somewhat episodic in structure, and the main characters are a bit too much the paragons to hold the interest. Parker is arguably more interested in the relationship between Elizabeth and Dudley -- the book is very much anti-Leicester, and even implies that he is disgraced by the end of it, and more or less banished by Elizabeth. (In reality, he remained one of her favorites until he died in 1588, though of course his influence, as with everyone at court, had up and down periods.) The two more comic characters -- Lemprière and Buonespoir -- are enjoyable in their scenes. The historical aspects are somewhat reasonably portrayed, with some timeline issues -- with Leicester's career, as I noted, plus there is a mention of the future James I's birth, which actually happened in 1567, at least five years prior to the action of this book. And it's a bit tricky to place Catherine de Medici's involvement in things like her demand to Elizabeth to arrest Michel relative to real history. But that's all quibble.

In the end, this is a pretty minor novel, and probably not the best choice to have read among Parker's ouevre. Perhaps some day I'll get to The Weavers or The Seats of the Mighty, which seem to have better reputations.

(*Alas, the Edict of Nantes was revoked by the Edict of Fontainebleau in 1685, and eventually nearly all the Huguenots were driven out of France.)

(**I have read an historical novel about Henry IV's conversion to Catholicism in 1893, which essentially put a cap on the French Religious Wars -- this is Bertha Runkle's 1901 bestseller The Helmet of Navarre, which I review here.)