Lindsey Davis: Rebels and Traitors
Save for one nitpick, this is actually the story I was expecting last year's disappointing miniseries The Devil's Whore to be: the English Civil War from a general pro-revolutionary perspective, with interesting, engaging characters on both sides (and of both genders), told suspenseful and, not surprising considering this is the author of the Falco mysteries, with humour (which doesn't blend out the true horror of war). Despite the use of an old fashioned omniscient narrative voice, it keeps the story and the readers with the original characters - Charles I, Cromwell et al are only observed by them from a far and very, very occasionally a bit closer, when the characters are - and you can follow the politicis of the time even if you don't know much about them beforehand. Generally speaking, I also think Davis plays fair. While it didn't escape my notice we get atrocities by the Royalists early on up close (because several pov characters are present) whereas we get Cromwell's atrocities in Ireland only by report (because no pov character goes with Cromwell to Ireland; they only learn about what's going on second hand), the viciousness of the later - and the impact it has for centuries to come - is made quite clear and not made to look more harmless.
The main characters are: Gideon Jukes, printer and occasional soldier and spy for the Parliamentarian side, Juliana Lovell, wife of a mostly absent Royalist who has to get her children and herself through the wars without support, her husband, the very pragmatic and quite shades-of-grey Orlando Lovell (who, being a deeply practical fellow, rather resents the poetic first name his parents have inflicted on him, btw), and a character on no one's side who changes her name a lot throughout the story but starts out nicknamed Kinchin, a scavenger girl who goes through being a thief, highway robber, prisoner, very briefly whore but always able to escape into the next identity and the next career. There are a great many memorable supporting characters as well, such as Gideon's sister-in-law and brother (who become involved with the Levellers and Ranters respectively), or the Irishwoman Juliana befriends at Oxford, Nerissa. One highlight is the scene where Juliana, being utterly out of funds and with the Royalist cause looking really badly, shows up at her husband's family only to find out they view him as the black sheep who is better off in captivity, are Parliamentarians and have their own worries with his crippled-by-war older brother to boot. If you're familiar with the fun Davis has in her Falco novels with Falco's extended family, you can imagine how well she does these kind of family scenes; and to watch Juliana, with the odds so severely against her, figure out a way to get some money out of this situation anyway is a joy to read.
Speaking of Juliana and her husband: in a way, this is the most original relationship of the novel, because it's neither a passionate love affair nor a horrible enforced marriage, those two stallwarts of historical novels. She has his measure early on - he's charming (both to her and their children) when around, but not to be relied upon when not there, which is two thirds of the the time, and the fact he sticks with the Royalist side of things even after it starts to be clear the Parliamentarians are going to win is less due to him believing in the Royalist cause than to him, who left home early and basically grew up in the European Thirty-Years-War, knowing he's good at fighting and preferring to stay that way. He, for his part, married her among other reasons precisely because he knew she'd be self reliant if necessary and enjoys their barbed banter and the advantage of having a wife to rely on and children without the actual day-to-day trouble of raising them. In a way, it's the reverse of the Gone With The Wind formula (because Juliana got woed at first by Orlando's idealistic best friend Edmund, but went for the cynical Orlando instead); Scarlett starts with Rhett, discovers Rhett isn't all that, keeps Ashley as a best friend, and ends up with Will (a character from the novel who isn't in the movie; a soldier the O'Hara's take in post-War who ends up becoming Scarlett's brother-in-law and managing Tara).
Which brings me to my one nitpick in a roundabout way. Considering Gideon and Juliana are announced on the back of the novel as the main characters, it's a no brainer to assume that at some point, they'll meet and end up together. They do meet - after two thirds of the novel are already over. Then we go through the falling in love and ending up together part very quickly. Now Lindsey Davis can write romance (see Falco and Helena Justina), and this is all very enjoyable to read; also, Juliana deciding that as once again she's in a situation where she doesn't know whether Orlando is alive or dead and hasn't heard from him for years, she's going to regard herself as a widow and free to marry again makes much sense. As we didn't actually get a scene where Orlando Lovell dies (and he is a main character), it's also easy to guess that he's not actually dead (but rather in Holland with young Charles II et al) and will show up at the most inconvenient moment later on, and that this will make the dramatic denouement of the novel. And it does, which I haven't got a problem with, but I do have a problem with the way it happens. As this concerns the ending directly, and I hate being spoiled for the ending, I'll put it below a cut.
I started being irritated when the first big scene we got was between Orlando and Gideon, not Orlando and Juliana. Yes, Gideon is the most important male character in the novel. But not only is his relationship with Juliana rather short in terms of reading time, but the relationship between Juliana and Orlando was going on through the novel; it should be Juliana, thought I, who gets the big confrontation and who gets to say the non-anachronistic equivalent of "yes, we had some good times, too, but mostly I had all the work and you had all the fun, and now I'm with a man who actually loves me and whom I love, plus you're a fugitive, so, shoo!" But okay, thought I, maybe this is still to come. Meanwhile, Orlando, after his meeting wiht Gideon does something dastardly but not ooc; he waylays his oldest son Tom (aka the one who can actually remember him, and has only good memories because on short terms, Orlando was a fun father to have around) and persuades him to come along with him. (This means Gideon can't denounce the Royalist Orlando Lovell to the authorities, among other things.) This actually ends very satisfyingly not by a dramatic rescue but by Tom figuring out on a day to day basis that his father is not who he wants to be with or who he wants to be like, and running away from dear old dad. And then we finally get the Orlando-Juliana confrontation I've been waiting for. Which is, a few pages before the end, where the novel suddenly shifts tone and instead of, say, a final argument in which Juliana makes Orlando realize he had and lost his chance and should go save his life, which would fit the type of relationship they've been having until then as well as Juliana's status as a no-nonsense self reliant heroine, we're suddenly in a melodrama where Juliana is a helpless damsel and Orlando a (physically) brutal villain who shoots her maid, slaps her, and then gets run through by their younger son (who can't remember him and just saw the maid shot and his mother abused, and takes the sword which is actually an Orlando leftover from ages back). The whole thing is described in the only-just-arriving-a-bit-too-late Gideon's pov. At which point the novel just stops. Seriously. No aftermath, no epilogue telling us how Juliana and her sons fare in the aftermath of this other than the omniscient narrator interrupting Gideon's pov earlier for one sentence about how this would shape Val (the younger son). Orlando dies, the end. I seriously thought there were pages missing at first. This ending is just weird, and not up to par with the rest of the novel.
This one problem I had aside, I thoroughly enjoyed the book. I think my favourite character is the ever name changing Kinchin who makes an art of survival on the bottom of the Civil War and ultimately manages to carve out a place for herself she can be content with, but I also have much affection for the rest of them. With one reservation highly recommended.
The main characters are: Gideon Jukes, printer and occasional soldier and spy for the Parliamentarian side, Juliana Lovell, wife of a mostly absent Royalist who has to get her children and herself through the wars without support, her husband, the very pragmatic and quite shades-of-grey Orlando Lovell (who, being a deeply practical fellow, rather resents the poetic first name his parents have inflicted on him, btw), and a character on no one's side who changes her name a lot throughout the story but starts out nicknamed Kinchin, a scavenger girl who goes through being a thief, highway robber, prisoner, very briefly whore but always able to escape into the next identity and the next career. There are a great many memorable supporting characters as well, such as Gideon's sister-in-law and brother (who become involved with the Levellers and Ranters respectively), or the Irishwoman Juliana befriends at Oxford, Nerissa. One highlight is the scene where Juliana, being utterly out of funds and with the Royalist cause looking really badly, shows up at her husband's family only to find out they view him as the black sheep who is better off in captivity, are Parliamentarians and have their own worries with his crippled-by-war older brother to boot. If you're familiar with the fun Davis has in her Falco novels with Falco's extended family, you can imagine how well she does these kind of family scenes; and to watch Juliana, with the odds so severely against her, figure out a way to get some money out of this situation anyway is a joy to read.
Speaking of Juliana and her husband: in a way, this is the most original relationship of the novel, because it's neither a passionate love affair nor a horrible enforced marriage, those two stallwarts of historical novels. She has his measure early on - he's charming (both to her and their children) when around, but not to be relied upon when not there, which is two thirds of the the time, and the fact he sticks with the Royalist side of things even after it starts to be clear the Parliamentarians are going to win is less due to him believing in the Royalist cause than to him, who left home early and basically grew up in the European Thirty-Years-War, knowing he's good at fighting and preferring to stay that way. He, for his part, married her among other reasons precisely because he knew she'd be self reliant if necessary and enjoys their barbed banter and the advantage of having a wife to rely on and children without the actual day-to-day trouble of raising them. In a way, it's the reverse of the Gone With The Wind formula (because Juliana got woed at first by Orlando's idealistic best friend Edmund, but went for the cynical Orlando instead); Scarlett starts with Rhett, discovers Rhett isn't all that, keeps Ashley as a best friend, and ends up with Will (a character from the novel who isn't in the movie; a soldier the O'Hara's take in post-War who ends up becoming Scarlett's brother-in-law and managing Tara).
Which brings me to my one nitpick in a roundabout way. Considering Gideon and Juliana are announced on the back of the novel as the main characters, it's a no brainer to assume that at some point, they'll meet and end up together. They do meet - after two thirds of the novel are already over. Then we go through the falling in love and ending up together part very quickly. Now Lindsey Davis can write romance (see Falco and Helena Justina), and this is all very enjoyable to read; also, Juliana deciding that as once again she's in a situation where she doesn't know whether Orlando is alive or dead and hasn't heard from him for years, she's going to regard herself as a widow and free to marry again makes much sense. As we didn't actually get a scene where Orlando Lovell dies (and he is a main character), it's also easy to guess that he's not actually dead (but rather in Holland with young Charles II et al) and will show up at the most inconvenient moment later on, and that this will make the dramatic denouement of the novel. And it does, which I haven't got a problem with, but I do have a problem with the way it happens. As this concerns the ending directly, and I hate being spoiled for the ending, I'll put it below a cut.
I started being irritated when the first big scene we got was between Orlando and Gideon, not Orlando and Juliana. Yes, Gideon is the most important male character in the novel. But not only is his relationship with Juliana rather short in terms of reading time, but the relationship between Juliana and Orlando was going on through the novel; it should be Juliana, thought I, who gets the big confrontation and who gets to say the non-anachronistic equivalent of "yes, we had some good times, too, but mostly I had all the work and you had all the fun, and now I'm with a man who actually loves me and whom I love, plus you're a fugitive, so, shoo!" But okay, thought I, maybe this is still to come. Meanwhile, Orlando, after his meeting wiht Gideon does something dastardly but not ooc; he waylays his oldest son Tom (aka the one who can actually remember him, and has only good memories because on short terms, Orlando was a fun father to have around) and persuades him to come along with him. (This means Gideon can't denounce the Royalist Orlando Lovell to the authorities, among other things.) This actually ends very satisfyingly not by a dramatic rescue but by Tom figuring out on a day to day basis that his father is not who he wants to be with or who he wants to be like, and running away from dear old dad. And then we finally get the Orlando-Juliana confrontation I've been waiting for. Which is, a few pages before the end, where the novel suddenly shifts tone and instead of, say, a final argument in which Juliana makes Orlando realize he had and lost his chance and should go save his life, which would fit the type of relationship they've been having until then as well as Juliana's status as a no-nonsense self reliant heroine, we're suddenly in a melodrama where Juliana is a helpless damsel and Orlando a (physically) brutal villain who shoots her maid, slaps her, and then gets run through by their younger son (who can't remember him and just saw the maid shot and his mother abused, and takes the sword which is actually an Orlando leftover from ages back). The whole thing is described in the only-just-arriving-a-bit-too-late Gideon's pov. At which point the novel just stops. Seriously. No aftermath, no epilogue telling us how Juliana and her sons fare in the aftermath of this other than the omniscient narrator interrupting Gideon's pov earlier for one sentence about how this would shape Val (the younger son). Orlando dies, the end. I seriously thought there were pages missing at first. This ending is just weird, and not up to par with the rest of the novel.
This one problem I had aside, I thoroughly enjoyed the book. I think my favourite character is the ever name changing Kinchin who makes an art of survival on the bottom of the Civil War and ultimately manages to carve out a place for herself she can be content with, but I also have much affection for the rest of them. With one reservation highly recommended.