2023 #18: The Spider's Web (Tremayne) - Sister Fidelma #5

 

The Spider's Web by Peter Tremayne
My rating: 3 of 5 stars


For reasons I can't quite discern, the front matter (often essential for a Fidelma book) is put at the end of the Kindle edition. This was rather unfortunate as this fifth installment in the series definitely benefits from a preview of the Principal Characters. Not unfitting for the "web" Tremayne sought to create, but a headache for readers--particularly those for whom medieval Celtic names are rather foreign.

The beauty of the valley provides a fitting contrast to the evil operating within Araglin. As with several Fidelma stories, there is a character who stands accused of two murders (just two of the five in the book), and we know at the outset that Sister Fidelma will exonerate him, because that's what she does. But Tremayne starts weaving his "web" before we even get there with what, initially, seems to be an unrelated land dispute over which Fidelma is presiding. I don't want to give away spoilers, but suffice it to say that modern readers would not be surprised if the book came with a content/trigger warning if it was published today. "Evil" is a word Fidelma uses several times in the book to describe the people of Araglin (many of them anyway), and here it seems more apt than the typical Christian binary moralities. Tremayne uses this to his advantage, manipulating us into momentary solidarities and conflicts with different characters. As with other books, Fidelma's "enlightened" Christianity is on full display, particularly as it butts heads with the local Father Gormán, whose hellfire and brimstone seems to have a stranglehold on many people.

In the end, however, I had trouble keeping interest as there were just too many characters, including some that we never meet but are in fact essential to the story. At times it felt as though new characters were created to steer a path back to some sort of connection when a thread of the story started to unravel. Sister Fidelma's standard "big reveal" is a bit tedious for that reason, and I was disappointed that the accused did not have more opportunity to "speak" for himself (he is deaf, mute, and blind--but can communicate, we come to find out), and Fidelma is less-than-likeable at times in this book. In later volumes she becomes more sympathetic, but the haughty "I'm an advocate of the courts" attitude was grating at times. Eadulf, too, is still in his occasional nincompoop phase, needing Fidelma to explain the obvious or he's foaming at the mouth about his Christian beliefs.

In retrospect, having read several volumes that come after this one, it is valuable to be reading them in order now because Sister Fidelma does grow and whether or not her more "youthful folly" is intentional in these early volumes, it is a relief to know that it doesn't last for the entire series.
If you are interested in reading the series for this reason (or others), go for it. If you want a really great installment of the series to try it out--skip this one for now. Click the "Sister Fidelma" tag for all my reviews of books in the series.

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2023 #17: Quicksilver - The Baroque Cycle #1 (Stephenson)

 

Quicksilver by Neal Stephenson
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I really need to preface this with the following: This was probably not a good choice as an audiobook. So, please know that this rating might be much better if I had read the print version--I hope. Visual tedium doesn't bother me nearly as much as aural tedium, so with that out of the way...

I had heard some good things about Neal Stephenson's books, and as someone who enjoys historical fiction, and is a music historian, I thought this initial volume of The Baroque Cycle would be a "no-brainer" (of a choice). The story is immeasurably creative and inspired, taking place in both in 1713 and in flashbacks some 40 years earlier. The protagonist--not the right word--is Daniel Waterhouse, an ex-Puritan scientist ("natural philosopher"), who is living in Massachusetts Bay Colony and is on board a ship (the Minerva) headed back to England to resolve one of the many intellectual disputes which seem to have been the lifeblood of thinking men in the eighteenth century. And yes, the cronies of the Royal Society and the illustrious historical figures are names that Stephenson whisks out of the history books and into his drama: Samuel Pepys, Isaac Newton, Gottfried Leibniz, Robert Hooke...just to name a few. The droll humor was the saving grace and largely what had me coming back to finish.

Where I struggled were the long passages of historical minutiae which seemed utterly superfluous to the story and very much an attempt to show Stephenson's immense research and knowledge of the time period. A discussion of coinage, for example, added very little to the story, and was one of the most tedious things I have ever listened to within the context of a piece of fiction. Encyclopedic detail has a place, and I prefer it to historical fictions that are so absurd as to be unethical, but historical fiction is still literature and I felt there were far too many moments where the "plot" came to halting stop to luxuriate (fixate) upon some historical icon of progress.

On the other hand, there are clever moments where Stephenson shines as an author: the discussion between John Wilkins and Daniel Waterhouse regarding redundancies in the philosophical language they are creating is subtly mirrored in Wilkins running to write something down and grabbing his quill, and shaking off the "redundant" ink. Ha!

About halfway through I felt perhaps I was doing this book a real disservice by listening to it instead of reading it, and it made me think about modalities. I have the privilege of choice here, and I'm wondering if I didn't, perhaps I would not have found the book so tedious. The failing may be mine, because even when I was frustrated with rabbit holes of endless details, I had a sense that there is a brilliance to what Stephenson has created here. In amongst all the self-indulgent navel gazing (of the characters), there is a coming-of-age story, a seafaring adventure story, a recasting of historical figures (Newton as a masochistic emaciated brat was essential), and the more traditional history-as-scenic-backdrop moves (the Great Fire of London, the bubonic plague) that Stephenson does more justice to than most.

Listening to the book was an experience--and while it wasn't altogether joyful or pleasurable, I came away from it wanting to pick up the next volume in print. I respected and enjoyed Stephenson's ability to enliven historical narratives with multi-dimensional perspectives and wit, to boot.

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2023 #16: The Novice's Tale (Sister Frevisse #1) - Frazer

 

The Novice's Tale by Margaret Frazer
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

As much a fan as I am of Peter Tremayne's Sister Fidelma series, I think it has met its match with Frazer's Sister Frevisse. Frazer's sense for character development is obvious at the outset, and she manages to create a colorful cast of characters who are not caricatures. Pious Thomasine becomes a murder suspect when her aunt Lady Ermentrude--who I pictured like the Red Queen from Alice and Wonderland--succumbs to her own "strange and sudden death" (that's from the back cover, so I'm not counting it as a spoiler!). There is also Dame Claire, the herbalist and someone who deserves a large bit of credit, as does the entire convent of St. Frideswide, and their leader Domina Edith. One of the contrasts with Tremayne's series is that Sister Frevisse, while a major player, is not the only player. Granted, given the fifteenth-century setting and the Benedictine context, Frazer has less to explain than Tremayne with his seventh-century tensions between the Roman and Irish churches. Those who like fast-moving plots may be a bit frustrated here, but Frazer does an artful job of making everything matter! Take your time with this one--enjoy each and every character as they are all important here and there. Quite a great first book in the series--I'll be reading the rest!

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