The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas

It's just one of  those things.  Why read the book when you can watch the movie?  Make that movies, plural.  Less effort, less time.  And let's be frank, The Three Musketeers is a long book.  So it has been sitting on my bookshelf for the longest time.  I needn't have feared, for once I started reading it I could not put it down.

Even so, having watched the movies and having read the book, there is one question that remains unanswered.  Why is it that the musketeers use swords to the exclusion of muskets?  If the book was called The Three Swordsmen ... nope, that doesn't work.  I guess some things are best left a mystery.

In 1625, an eighteen-year-old called d'Artagnan leaves his father's home in the south of France.  Bound for Paris, he has nothing but fifteen crowns in his purse, a half-dead horse under him and a letter of recommendation pressed to his breast.  This young man wishes to become one of the king's musketeers.  Before too long, d'Artagnan becomes embroiled in duels, feuds, and personal and political intrigues.  Along the way, he meets Athos, Porthos and Aramis - the Three Musketeers - and together they face the dangers of court and highway.  Can they save the reputation of the queen, get their girls, and avert a war between France and Britain while they are at it?

Dumas introduces us to a cavalcade of memorable characters: the hot-headed d'Artagnan; Athos, a drinker and gambler; Porthos, a man addicted to the finer things in life; and Aramis, who is torn between the sensual world and the spiritual life.  Opposing them in various ways are Cardinal Richelieu, chief minister to King Louis XIII, and political manipulator extraordinaire; the Comte de Rochefort, the Cardinal's right-hand man; and the utterly deadly femme fatale Milady de Winter.

In the finest tradition of adventure stories, there are chases, fights, overheard conversations and incriminating letters.  In lesser hands, these devices can be rendered trite or overblown, but Dumas is able to integrate them seamlessly into a narrative replete with acute observations about the human condition: loyalty, treachery, ambition, survival, and affairs of the heart and of the head.  Overall, then, we get a ripping yarn that smacks of art.  That's gotta be a good thing, doesn't it?

The Gods Themselves by Isaac Asimov

In a previous review, I commented that Jules Verne worried about the limited reserves of coal energy left in the world.  He estimated that the coal would last about 300 years, unless we modified our consumption.  After that, what will we do for energy?

I suppose one can forgive him for not foreseeing the rise of the petroleum industry, let alone nuclear or renewable energies.  It is plain to see that high civilization depends on reliable and efficient fuels for energy.  Oil has served us well for the last century and, perhaps, may serve us for another century.  And then what?  

Also, we must not forget the negative impacts that modern industry is having on our ecosystem: global warming, ozone layer depletion and ocean acidification, to name a few.  We must surely give thought to the consequences of living the lifestyles to which we have become addicted.  If only there was a limitless and consequence-free energy source - we could go on partying for centuries, perhaps millennia, or even until the sun goes phfft!  That energy source may be just around the corner.

Or in another universe.  That is what Frederick Hallam discovers when an unusual substance materialises in his office and begins to leak radiation, slowly at first but then in ever greater quantities.  Hallam soon establishes contact with aliens in a para(llel) universe who instruct him on how to build an "electron pump".  Sim sala bim! electron energy is pumped into our universe, and a reciprocal stream of positron energy is pumped into the para-universe.  Everyone is an energy winner, and there seem to be no negative consequences.  Well, not until wunderkind scientist Peter Lamont decides to open his mouth.  But why is no one listening?

The word on the street is that Asimov wrote The Gods Themselves in response to criticisms that his stories lacked aliens and sex.  In this novel, he gave us aliens, alien sex, and even moon sex.  Although the book was first published in 1972, its theme of energy dependence and production presages the oil shocks of 1973 and 1979.

As is usual with an Asimov tale, the storytelling is done through conversations held in closed rooms (or, in this case, caves too).  There is a lot of exposition needed for the reader to understand the plot and its underlying scientific premise.  And the same applies to the politics in the novel.  Luckily for us, Asimov has a talent for weaving all these elements into his stories without making our eyes glaze over or losing us in detail.  

His masterstroke in this novel, I think, is his treatment of the aliens in the para-universe.  First he invents a tri-gendered species.  Then he explains (or, rather, shows) both the mechanics and psychology of sexual and emotional intercourse in such a species.  And while he is doing this, he does manage to advance the action.

The book is divided into three parts.  The first part sets up the basic problem.  The second part shows the problem from the aliens' perspective.  Both these parts of the book play their part admirably.  The third part contains the denouement.  It is arguably the weakest section of the book: the solution is undramatic, the characters unsympathetic, and there is a lot of padding in the guise of conversation.  

In fact, I think the story would have been better suited to a shorter form of story telling. Editors and judging panels seem to have disagreed with me.  The Gods Themselves won both the Nebula and Hugo awards for best novel.  I don't grudge it.  Overall, I found the book entertaining, thought-provoking and relevant to our 21st century predicaments.

  

Kind Hearts and Coronets (1949) Starring Alec Guinness

Trust me, Clara Vere de Vere,
From yon blue heavens above us bent
The grand old gardener and his wife 

Smile at the claims of long descent.
Howe'er it be, it seems to me,
'Tis only noble to be good.
Kind hearts are more than coronets,
And simple faith than Norman blood.

- Alfred, Lord Tennyson

'Tis only noble to be good.  Tell that to Louis Mazzini, whose mother suffered an ignoble life and death at the hands of her own family, the D'Ascoynes, headed by the Duke of Chalfont.  Swearing to avenge his mother, Louis decides to murder the eight D'Ascoynes who stand between him and the ducal throne.  We know Louis succeeds because the film begins with him in prison, charged with murder, and being identified as the tenth Duke of Chalfont.  How, then, did he pull off his plan?

Kind Hearts and Coronets was one of the black comedies to come out of Ealing Studios in Britain just after the Second World War.  Other notable examples are The Lady Killers and The Lavender Hill Mob.  The difficulty faced by the producers of these movies was to make the audience care for characters who are disreputable or even downright amoral.  How then did they make us care for Louis Mazzini?

To start off with, Louis is played with infinite smoothness by Dennis Price.  The cold, calculating, killing machine is suave and charming; and he manages to gain the affections of not one, but two young ladies.  Louis has a way with words and a dry, roguish wit that he employs in both the dialogue of the movie and in the monologues he delivers in his role as narrator.  And these little gems of wit seem pardon Louis in an undefinable manner as he drowns and bombs and poisons his way closer to his inheritance.

Opposite Price, we have Alec Guinness, who plays all eight members of the D'Ascoyne family on Louis' hit list.  With a few exceptions, Louis makes the acquaintances of his relatives (usually without them being aware of their blood ties to him).  Guinness is able to portray them with same degree of likeability that Price brings to his character, albeit in quite diverse ways.  But we are not allowed to forget the shabby treatment these same charming characters doled out to Louis' mother.

In the end, we are in the morally dubious position of both liking and disliking a serial murderer and his victims, with the balance sheet tipped slightly in Louis' favour.  I think that it the success of the comedic elements of the movie, as black as they may be, that sees us arrive at this position; and it is a credit to the writers, actors and director that we do so.  How much easier it would have been to condemn Louis out of hand, and to forgive his family.

So, was there a last minute reprieve for Louis?  Or, like his family, did he get his comeuppance? You will have to see the movie to find out.  No cheating, now.

The Eyre Affair by Jasper Fforde

What a clever book.

The planet is Earth, but an Earth that is different to our own in some odd respects.  The present day is 1985, the Crimean War is still being waged, Wales is a communist republic and jet engines have yet to be invented. 

There are vampires and werewolves, and some humans possess extraordinary powers, such as the ability to move through time, or through walls, or from this world into those contained in works of literature.

When a criminal mastermind decides to hold the literary world to ransom by kidnapping and killing beloved fictional figures, thereby forever altering the treasured texts of popular novels, literary detective Thursday Next finds herself enmeshed in a deadly game of cat-and-mouse that threatens her friends, her family and her country.  Can she bring the perp to justice and rescue literary reality?

Jasper Fforde has taken the genre of urban fantasy and given it a comedic twist, and he has done it with a lot of charm and intelligence.  The text reads like that of a thriller, but the content is funny, gripping and erudite.  This guy knows his literature, and he weaves it effortlessly into his narrative.  Shakespeare's plays figure heavily, but central place is given to Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre, hence the title of the book.  Fforde's wordplay sparkles throughout the text, and the action rarely flags.

I will happily compare this book to Terry Pratchett's Sam Vimes novels in the Discworld series.  Of course they are different, but they operate in the same satirical landscape. 

I eagerly look forward to reading another Fforde novel some time soon.