Captain Thunderbolt and His Lady by Carol Baxter

Frederick Ward is perhaps better known as Captain Thunderbolt, one time convicted and imprisoned horse thief, escapee and most famously bushranger. A contemporary of Ben Hall whose NSW territory stretched from the central west to the Riverina; Thunderbolt based himself around the Hunter Valley and northwards.

Carol Baxter’s book Captain Thunderbolt and His Lady is a detailed and enthralling biography of Thunderbolt and his “wife” Mary Ann Bugg. Baxter takes what is known of the two from historical sources and gives her account the pace and intimacy of a novel.

Baxter starts with family histories of both Ward and Bugg, exploring the cultural background of their path to crime. The story is one of both racial and class prejudice. Being native born (whether black or white, to aboriginal or convict parents) was a distinct disadvantage in a society ruled from the motherland by British born aristocracy and law enforcers.

Harsh and inflexible punishments, rather than deter crime could ironically entrench it, making capture and imprisonment a less desired outcome than death. Giving wanted men the incentive to resist arrest at all costs, even their own lives and the lives of others.

Ward experienced this harshness, but by accounts didn’t allow himself to turn to outright brutality and ruthlessness, despite resorting to crime. Instead he tried to foster an impression of himself as a gentleman; as far as that would be possible while threatening victims with guns.

Baxter describes her writing style as “allow[ing] the participants to live their own stories, wherever possible, by having the narrator step into their shoes and experience what they experienced as recounted in their own statements. This offers the immediacy of fiction without fictionalising the narrative”.

It is a very effective way of keeping the reader’s involvement but could have the disadvantage of being suspected of being fictional. To counteract this suspicion Baxter provides her research details on a website cited in the acknowledgements at the end of the book. The notes were considered too extensive to include as end notes in the book.

I love history but find many history texts fail to keep my interest. I had no trouble with this one. Baxter has written a lively and compelling combination of biography and social history.

Thanks to Allen and Unwin for providing a review copy of thebook.
http://www.allenandunwin.com/default.aspx?page=94&book=9781742372877

LIBERATOR

Many stories reach a satisfactory conclusion. The hero overcomes the odds and defeats the villain. Cinderella is found by her Prince Charming and rescued from a life of drudgery: and they all live happily ever after.

At least that is the impression given by a neat and satisfying conclusion.

Richard Harland’s Worldshaker would fit into that "satisfying conclusion" category, but the follow-up novel, Liberator shows us what happens AFTER the initial euphoria of a “happy” ending. It shows that such endings are only temporary and one problem solved will merely lead to another.

Liberator begins not long after the concluding events of the earlier novel and things have deteriorated very quickly. The Leviathan WorldShaker has been renamed Liberator to reflect the freedom gained by the lower class “Filthies” – but that freedom could now have severe consequences for the “swanks” who choose to stay on after the Liberation, even those who played a significant part in overturning the former oppressive, elitist regime.
It soon comes clear that elitism and oppression are not the exclusive traits of those born into privilege.

This book was just as enjoyable as the first in the series. Again I was compelled to read it at every opportunity I could make. Both are very near to the top of my favourites of recent years.

I liked Worldshaker enough to buy a second copy – the American Hardcover edition. I’ll be doing the same when Liberator is also (hopefully) released in Hardcover.*

Another installment please Richard?

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*With both books, written by an Australian author and published by an Australian company, I bought the locally available product first. I prefer to support local writing and publishing when possible.

Liberator by Richard Harland

Richard Harland, author of Worldshaker , has just notified me that its sequel, Liberator is now on the book shelves.

Worldshaker is definitely one of the best books I’ve read since I started this blog. I am very keen to read the next one.

I'll be ordering my copy as soon as I've posted this.

More information here at the publisher's website:

Liberator by Richard Harland

The UFO Diaries, Martin Plowman

I should have reviewed this book weeks ago, but it’s been a difficult one to process. My interest in the book was directed towards the “UFO” part of the title, while the author wrote a book more focused on the “Diaries” side.

Martin Plowman set out to study those who study UFOs. This was the focus of a postgraduate degree. As part of course work he travelled to the Americas (North, South and Central) to meet with people with some kind of attachment to the UFO phenomenon. After some disappointment with Roswell and its claimed crashed flying saucer, he set his sights on Latin America and most of his book tells about his experiences there.

I did learn a few new things about the people with UFO claims. I hadn’t known that (in)famous contactee George Adamski was a theosophist and I was kept interested by his Roswell interview with Walter Haut . But those UFO related insights were rare. Most of the book was a kind of travelogue which sometimes touched on UFO-related regions such as those publicised decades ago in Erich Von Daniken's popular but mostly discredited Chariots of the Gods?.

Even though his travel experiences are interesting enough in themselves, it wasn’t really the kind of book I was looking forward to reading,

I feel part of the problem for me is that Plowman had no real interest in what lies behind UFO reports and he makes that clear all along. UFOs therefore become incidental to his personal quest – the goal of which was never really made clear. Maybe there was no aim in mind beyond completing his course, or maybe he didn’t figure out what his own motives were, why at times he seemed driven to continue the goalless journey he had started.
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I was kindly provided with a review copy by the publisher, Allen & Unwin.

Blackout by Connie Willis

What more desirable tool could historians dream of than the ability to travel through time to observe people and events for themselves instead of relying on texts and artefacts? Connie Willis has created a world in which this tool is a reality and is being used by Oxford based historians.
She introduced this concept in her Hugo and Nebula award winning novel Doomsday Book, a merging of science fiction with the historical novel. She has now returned to the ideas of that earlier book with a two volume story that starts with the recently released Blackout and will conclude with All Clear, due later in the year.

In Blackout historians are studying various aspects of life in the Second World War. One is studying evacuees, children sent away from areas of danger in the cities to the relative safety of the country. Another is focusing on the life of the “shop girl” in London during the Blitz and a third has been sent to cover the heroes of Dunkirk who set out in small boats to rescue British troops trapped on the beaches of France.
All of these projects should run reasonably smoothly. It is assumed that the laws of Time Travel prevent them from having significant impact on the events they observe, but it’s not long before that assumption is challenged.

One of the difficult things in writing about a book like this, is avoiding giving away any key plot details that will spoil the experience for anyone who has not read the book so I'll avoid specific references to events in the story. It was the desire to find out what happens next that made this book such an addictive read as I got more involved with the characters and the challenges they face.

At first I struggled with the story but as I gained more familiarity with the characters and their situations, the book became one that I was desperate to return to whenever my reading was interrupted by the unwelcome intrusion of real life. Willis uses a common technique of cutting from one set of characters to another at each chapter break, often leaving each section with a “cliff-hanger” making the reader more eager to read on to find out how it is resolved.

As mentioned Blackout is only the first part of the story, I knew this before I started the book, but I was still disappointed when I came to the end without the satisfaction of a conclusion. Against expectation the book didn’t end dramatically, it ended with a whimper. I feel it would have been much stronger had it ended a chapter or two earlier.

Early in the book I found myself being pulled out of the story a few times by little irregularities. I’m sure a lot of this comes down to personal idiosyncrasies and probably other readers wouldn’t think twice about them and this may be why I struggled with it a little at first.
One thing that irritated was the occasional lapse into inappropriate Americanisms – for example, cars were often referred to as “automobiles”, a term that I’m sure was not used by the British in war time. Having lived in England until the age of 13, and having parents who lived through the period detailed in the book, little things like this became minor irritations.
Admittedly Willis is an American author and her main readership would be American – but to a non-American, former English reader, such lapses broke the illusion of the reality being portrayed.

Another grievance I had with the early part of the book relates to something I’ve seen described as “build up and pay off”. This is a technique in which significant plot points are built upon foundations that have been set up in advance. For example, if a character saves himself by shooting an enemy, it is necessary to establish the fact that a gun is available for him to use before it comes into play.
In the case of Blackout, a significant part of the plot involves “time lag”, tiredness similar to jetlag which can cause intense sleepiness. The first time I recall this happening in the book was when the experience completely changed a character’s situation. It was mentioned again a little later in relation to a second character where the experience had very little impact.
Structurally I think the story would have been significantly strengthened if these two experiences had been reversed, allowing the minor situation to prepare the reader for the case when time lag played an important part in the first character’s experience.

By making these critical observations I don’t want to diminish the fact that Blackout is a very enjoyable book. The characters are well portrayed and their wartime experiences are believably vivid. I am very keenly waiting for the release of All Clear so that I can re-enter their world and share their experiences again.
In the mean time I’ve been inspired to find out more about war time Britain and I am realising how little my generation (and those following) can conceive of the horrific realities of a war only 15 years before I was born.
Today I checked the casualty figures of American troops in Iraq. In seven years almost four and a half thousand of them have been killed. While these figures are certainly tragic, such casualty figures AND HIGHER were common on a DAILY basis during WWII – many of them being civilians.

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I acknowledge and thank Allen & Unwin, the Australian publishers of this book, for providing me with a review copy.

Richard Harland’s Worldshaker.

Before I write anything else I have to confess to two areas of apparent “vested interest”. Firstly Richard Harland was one of my lecturers/tutors at University in the early 1990s and he wrote me a very generous reference when I was looking for work afterwards. Secondly, in the mid 90s I worked for Allen & Unwin, the publisher of Worldshaker, for about a year and a half.
(Richard’s website also had a part in inspiring me to create this blog which is why I have a link to it in the sidebar.)

While this may appear to give me reasons for bias, I will also add that for one essay, Richard gave me the lowest mark I ever received for any assignment during my whole time at University (and I still remember after 19 years!!!), and A & U relocated my job to another city so I had to leave them and find work elsewhere in a less stimulating environment. So we can pretend that the positives have been cancelled out and a balance of neutrality has been restored.

Worldshaker was a book I didn’t want to leave. I read it at every opportunity and was disappointed when I reached the end. It’s the kind of book that demonstrates why continuing series of novels can be so successful. It is a book that creates a world and characters so interesting that you want to explore and experience them some more.

Harland has created an alternative history, a world where the industrial innovation and creativity of the Victorian era has taken a huge leap beyond the bridge and shipbuilding wonders of I K Brunel. In this world political necessity has driven steam age technology to achieve far grand goals than was the case in the “real” Victorian age.

Worldshaker is a massive “juggernaut”, part ship, part tank, part earthmoving excavator, which houses and employs citizens of various fixed classes. Perhaps a comparison could be made to futuristic stories of massive star-ships transporting nation sized communities through space – except juggernaut communities are earthbound and restricted to Victorian age technology.

Colbert Porpentine, heir in waiting to Worldshaker’s Supreme Commander, is thrown into contact with a girl who has entered his room to hide from the authorities. She is a member of the lowest of the low, a “filthy. A reflex decision not to expose the girl’s forbidden presence puts Col’s privileged position at risk and leads him to discover the price that others continually pay to maintain the lifestyle of the Juggernaut’s elite classes.

Worldshaker has what I consider to be a novel’s most essential qualities: strongly believable characters that I care about; an exciting storyline with interesting and original ideas and on a more practical level - short chapters.
I have found long chapters can be a stumbling block to successful reading. It is a major reason I’ve always struggled with Lord of the Rings. By the time I finish one long chapter, the task of reading another of similar length can seem too daunting, especially when other things are competing for my time. With shorter chapters it is easy to read “just one more chapter” several times in succession until a significant portion of the book has been read.

Worldshaker would be classed as a Young Adult title and it was a pleasure to read a book untarnished by the presence of graphic sex and foul language. From recent experience, books that don’t resort to such devices are becoming increasingly hard to find.