Among Others by Jo Walton

I really enjoyed the Ha'Penny series by Walton, and I thought this would be quite good, too. Unfortunately, I only made it about a quarter of the way through before giving up. It's just a little to vague and young adult for my tastes, though others may like it quite well.

The story is about a girl, Morwenna Phelps, who has lost her twin sister in some sort of vague, unspecified magical (she believes) disaster triggered by her mother, and been crippled, herself. She's sent off to live with her father and his sisters, and must accustom herself to her new surroundings, including an English girls school.

It's vaguely reminscent for me (and it's been many many years since I read them) of The Magus by John Fowles, and I Capture the Castle by an author whose name I have forgotten, as well as having some undertones of the whole Narnia thing, without any of its excitement or moral certainty.

Walton does some very good descriptive and evocative stylistic things in this novel, but it never really held my attention, despite the fact that the heroine is a serious science fiction and fantasy reader, and the book is peppered with references to classics of the genre, such as:

(regarding her father) "If he's Lazarus Long to our Laz and Lor, I'd expect to have some sense of recognition."

Alas, despite the Heinlein references, I just couldn't continue.

Half a Crown by Jo Walton

Jo Walton wraps up the series of Inspector Carmichael books, I think, with this one. She continues the device of having the story told from two POVs, in this case Carmichael's and his "niece" Elvira's. Elvira is actually the daughter of the his deceased sidekick, Royston, whom he has informally adopted and tried to provide with a proper education. Elvira is on the verge of coming out as a debutante and being presented to the Queen, as the story begins.

The fascists are in power pretty much everywhere, with the Japanese and Germans having won the war, and occupying vast spheres of influence. Jews are being persecuted openly even in England, with many of them being deported to The Continent, and England is about to open her own concentration camp to take advantage of their free labor.

Carmichael is now the commander of The Watch, a Gestapo-like organization responsible for rooting out dissenters and Jews. Unbeknownst to his superiors, he has formed a group he calls the Inner Watch, which has ties to the underground railroad which gets Jews and others out of England and off to Canada and Africa, where they can live without fear. He and his men in the Inner Watch have managed to help thousands escape over the past decade, and no one suspects a thing.

Elvira and her friend, Betsy, attend an Ironsides rally with a gentleman friend of Betsy's father, and enjoy the torchlit parade and humilation of captured Jews, up until the rally goes suddenly violent and turns into a riot. Elvira is arrested during the riot, and her "uncle's" enemies in the ordinary police force and at Scotland Yard decide to use her as a lever against him. Carmichael uses his position within the Watch to force them to release her, for a time.

Elvira hasn't any idea of Carmichael's subversive activities, but she does overhear a suspicious conversation between him and the woman who was responsible for getting our heroine from Farthing, Lucy, out of the country. When she is re-arrested later on, she lets this little bit of information slip, and Carmichael's former boss, Penn-Barkis, believes he can bring Carmichael to heel. Things get twisty and dangerous, as all of the different players work out their own intrigues, but the conclusion is satisfactory, for the first time in this whole series.

Ha'Penny by Jo Walton

Inspector Carmichael is back in another mystery by Jo Walton, set in the world of the Farthing Peace. I had wondered which characters Walton was going to bring back in this novel, and was delighted to find the Inspector, though most of the characters from Farthing are only mentioned in passing here.

A bomb has exploded at the home of actress Lauria Gilmore, killing her and a companion. Carmichael and Royston are called in to investigate, and their path rapidly grows obscure as they try to figure out exactly who was killed with Gilmore, and why an actress, of all sorts, would be involved in a bombing.

Again, Walton splits the story into two narratives. The other protagonist is Viola Lark, another actress who has given up her family inheritance in order to pursue her stage career. She is cast as Hamlet in a cross-casting version of the Shakespearian play, in which Gilmore had already been cast. Walton does a good job, I believe, of distinguishing Viola's "voice" from that of her earlier character. She's not nearly as bubbly, nor witty, although there are some similarities, as both Viola and Lucy are born to the nobility, and have given up their privileges, though for different reasons.

While Lucy was innocent of any wrongdoing, Viola is a reluctant participant in the conspiracy that surrounds Gilmore's death. One of her sisters, Cressida, is a communist, and she drags Viola into the plot to kill Prime Minister Normanby and Hitler, together, on a visit by the Fuhrer to England, when he attends opening night of Hamlet.

As Inspector Carmichael and his sidekick, Seargant Royston, work their way through finding the details of the conspiracy and the conspirators, Viola slowly discovers the truth about the Reich and eventually becomes a willing accessory to murder and treason.

As in the first novel, things don't work out the way I had hoped they might, and I was a little upset about the way things ended. It does, however, make me hungry for the sequel, so I can find out how everything resolves...if it's the last one.

Farthing by Jo Walton

I saw some books by Jo Walton at the library one day, and thought to myself, "I haven't read anything by Walton in a while, perhaps I should check one of these out (literally and figuratively)." When I got home later on, I realized that I have nothing by Walton in my personal collection and so I've probably never read anything by Walton in the first place. An author I thought was an old one becomes new, Voila!

An alternate history mystery, how cool is that? A murder has been committed at the home of Lord Eversley, possibly by anarchists, bolsheviks, or Jews. In Walton's story, the historic twist that creates the background is that England decided on a course of appeasement rather than opposition to Hitler during WWII (which I suppose wouldn't have been a World War after all) and therefor were left alone by him while he conquered the rest of The Continent, although he's still trying to invade Russia as the novel unfolds.

Walton's tale is told from two points of view, a first person narrative by Lucy Kahn (nee Eversley), which is so bubbly as to nearly be stream of consciousness - oddly opposed to her actual habit of keeping her mouth firmly shut unless she has something of import to say - and a third person mode focusing on Inspector Carmichael, who, with his sidekick Seargent Royston, is investigating the murder of Sir James Thirkie at the Eversley manor.

Whoever murdered Sir James was either an idiot, crazy, or leaving a false trail of evidence to implicate "The Jews". Anti-semitism is alive and well in England, though it hasn't approached the level of persecution that Hitler's rule enforces, and most of the clues seem to point to Lucy's husband, David, a Jewish investment banker. We get to see the progress of the investigation through the eyes of Lucy, as she watches and listens to her high society friends and family (she's an outsider to much of this since her marriage to a Jew) and their reactions to Thirkie's death, and through the methodical prodding and steady analysis of Carmichael.

The turns of phrase in Walton's work are really delightful. A couple of examples:

"I wanted...to keep him from being hurt, or to enclose him behind castle walls where nobody could reach him. Instead I had brought him here where he had to sit down and eat salmon in hollandaise sauce among his enemies."

"David said, very reasonably, 'I know you attribute supernatural powers to your mother sometimes, but seriously, how could she have? Unless she did it herself- and I have difficulty imagining her stabbing a friend.'
'That's because you haven't known Mummy very long. Besides, Sir James was an ally, not a friend. But you're right - her usual style is stabbing them in the back.'"

I was involved in a short discussion about reviewing books with a fellow blogger, and the subject of whether a positive review can turn negative if the review doesn't like the ending came up. I absolutely hated the way this book ends, and so you'd think this spoiled the book for me. However, it wasn't a badly written ending, and the ending followed quite naturally and logically from the rest of the story, so I have to still give the book good marks, over all. I'll even read the sequel.