Robert Louis Stevenson - Kidnapped

 I can’t say if it was the content of the book itself, a change in my mindset while reading it or a combination of the two but I felt a real difference between the first and second half of the book.  I would’ve been much happier if the book finished after David Balfour’s eventual return to the mainland from Erraid.  

I think it is fair to say that both halves are action packed, both contain caricatures more than characters and both, at times, stretch the reader’s credulity.  All of this seems appropriate for a children’s adventure novel.  However, for whatever reason, I found the first half to be engaging and the second to be sloppily constructed and overwrought.  The tale of David’s journey to Cramond and his subsequent dealings with his curmudgeonly uncle were great and I found the young nephew’s suspicions to be an excellent starting point for the plot.  Of course, things take a turn for the more fanciful once the adventure begins in earnest and David is kidnapped.  That said, the ignoble crew and the inevitable mishaps were well drawn and of a piece.  The appearance of Alan Breck Stewart provides a good catalyst for David’s eventual escape and the fight scene would have made for a perfect, action packed crescendo - or so I thought at least!  I didn’t have much objection to the self-imposed stranding on Erraid either.  It provided a good foil of ignorance and incapacity to the all too capable performance of Alan and David during the fight!

After that, I felt like the book took a turn for the worse.  Perhaps I thought that after such an ordeal, David would stop at nothing to get back to his uncle as quickly as possible.  Perhaps the somewhat ridiculous Alan Breck began to wear a bit thin as he took up more narrative and dialogue.  I’m not usually a fan of historical characters appearing in novels.  I feel it’s a bit uninventive and usually results in the repetition of a few hackneyed character traits.  This was certainly the case for the highly romanticized chieftain in hiding, Cluny, and Alan Breck Stewart. 

The second half of the book also struck me as far more haphazard and unnecessarily flamboyant.  While the incidents of the first half hung together nicely, I felt the author was scrambling for material in the second.  David meets extraordinary guides, unwittingly becomes an accessory to the murder of the king’s agent, embarks on lengthy clandestine journey through Scotland, which is made to sound more like Hollywood Lord of the Rings set than anything like the real Highlands, without shelter and witnesses a farcical piping competition between ABS and another legendary clansman.  The tone and quality of the dialogue also seemed to deteriorate until I had the sensation that one cliche was being piled on top of another until the whole edifice keeled over.  

The denouement was reasonably satisfactory, with the exception of some highly floral and badly drawn interactions between David Balfour and his uncle’s lawyer back in Cramond but I felt like the book had already been spoiled by the journey from Erraid.  I would recommend this book because, at its best, it’s highly enjoyable but I would have preferred a shorter, edited version.   

Ursula K Le Guin - Earthsea

He stood tall and proud as the mighty oak whilst the wind whipped his mysterious and scarred visage and lightning broke the dark, stormy sky behind him.  He wore simple tweed britches, hand sewn leathern booties and the shaggy fleece of the flippitytoot, from his native lands of Giveashit, for warmth against the harsh winter.  He carried a staff of Baobab, palladian shod.  They called him Pidge but his true name, in the ancient, primordial tongue of the Snifftyflob, was MageLord 3000. 

I should preface these ramshackle reflections by saying I am not usually a reader of the ‘fantasy genre’, depending on how it’s defined.  First, it strikes me that a lot of fantasy books are about a fairly narrow cast of wizards, dragons, witches and ogres.  That’s not to say there is anything wrong with those types of characters.  They don’t pique my interest much.  On the whole, I tend to think to myself, rightly or wrongly, ‘humanity is interesting and varied enough for me I’ll probably leave the fantasy for another day’.  

The prose in the book wasn’t much to my liking and I found it meandering, facil and cliched.  It was never pithy or concise and was often confusing and verbose.  I found a lot of the characters and scenes to be overwritten and full of romantic nostalgia for the world she’s created for them.  ‘What do you expect from a fantasy novel?’, you might ask.  

I got more enjoyment out of the themes in the book, for example, the idea in the first book of Ged battling against the darkness, which he has created, to save his life and identity.  At other points, I felt like it was too much of a mish mash of borrowed ideas, for example, light and darkness (Bible), a young man going on a journey to establish his own identity (Greek epic, Jung).  One theme I thought a bit ridiculous was the desperate attempt to establish a positive female perspective in the fourth book.  In the preceding three books women are depicted as crafty seductresses (Ged in garden, Book 1) or evil devil worshippers and child sacrificers (Order of Preistesses, Book 2).  However, in the fourth book there is an abrupt change from men, mage lords and mighty staff wielding wizardry to a focus on mothering, nurture and the importance of domesticity and anything relating to women while men are scolded instead.  

Book 2 was an impressive piece of writing and struck me as the most creative perhaps because it wasn’t full of ‘fantasy’ characters from central casting.  In fairness to Le Guin, it’s possible that I find some of her characters and style hackneyed because so many people have copied it.  I have read that some people consider her incredibly influential and innovative but I am not really in a position to comment.  

This wasn’t a book that I enjoyed or would recommend because it is too long, the prose is bad and there aren’t enough good themes or characters to make it worthwhile.  Books 1 & 2 are certainly better than 3 & 4 and would be enough to get a taste of her style.  That said my favourite character was from Book 3, so there you go.  It was Sopli.