Merlin's Keep

Merlin's Keep

By Madeleine Brent

Jani, the strange and lovely heroine, has been brought up in a remote region of the Himalayas in Tibet by a runaway English soldier. Both Jani’s past and that of her soldier protector are shrouded in a mystery that grows ever deeper for Jani when the foreign demon on a black horse comes from the south to take her away to a new and frightening world—a London orphanage. Later, when she moves on and finds the Woman in Red, Jani becomes one of the family in a Hampshire household. And it is here that her past is gradually uncovered. She becomes locked in a macabre struggle, long prophesied by the High Lama of her Tibetan youth, against the strange and terrifying powers of the Silver Man.

Merlin's Keep is still in the classic Brent style, but is a little bit less...action-filled, maybe? I say this about a book in which a young girl's protector dies in snow storm like, thirty pages in, and then she has to make it through diphtheria, orphanages, sexual harassment, poisonous snakes, sinister magicians (like real magic, not David Copperfield), dangerous trips through the Himalayas, hallucinations, tibetan bandits, snow leopards, and the East End of London.  But there's a lot less activity on our heroine's part - she is basically packed up and sent from place to place by other people for the entire book.  I think the only initiative she takes on her own steam is her trip to the East End, looking for her friend.

Brent sets this somewhere in the Himalayas, and is quite a bit vaguer on location than he/she was in Stormswift.  For example, they're not supposed to be in either Nepal or Tibet, but both are close by.  Namkhara is a place, but it's in West Bengal, too far east (ironically) to make much sense in context.  And "Chak Pass" seems made up.  It does seem like we spend less time in the foreign country than we usually do in Brent's books, which is too bad, since I was excited to  re-read this one because of my time out in Nepal.  Merlin's Keep also has a big supernatural element, which is also somewhat uncommon for Brent.  

I think the lack of action is part of the reason I don't really remember this one so well, and why it's not so much a favorite.  There's a big macguffin in the way of a precious gem which they need to steal, except that they're fated to steal it anyway, so it's not that much of a heist.  Overall, like I said, just not my favorite, plus I loved how hypocritical Jani was about the Silver Man's use of her friend in his magic spells, but Jani (TWICE) has him use it for her benefit too (first to find her friend, then to heal his blindness), so I guess you don't feel that bad about it, huh? And we're just going to ignore whatever her friend was doing in Jamaica to piss off a hoodoo practitioner, I guess.  And the vet is so weird, too, proposing to Jani because well, she's there, and this other woman he liked already got married, so may as well ask around.  Hmmmm, okay, Jan. 

Stormswift

Stormswift

By Madeleine Brent

The year is 1897. Deep in the mountain wilderness of the Hindu Kush, a seventeen year-old English girl is brought to the primitive tribal kingdom of Shul to be sold as a slave. Her ordeal endures for two long years before at last there comes the chance of escape to Lalla, as she is called, who believes herself to be Jemimah Lawley, heiress to the great house and estates of Witchwood in the county of Surrey. On the hazardous journey of escape across Afghanistan with a man who hates her, she hears for the first time a name that will later echo menacingly in her life... the name Stormswift. Once home, she faces the shock of being compelled to doubt her own identity. Is she truly Jemimah Lawley, or is she suffering from a delusion caused by her degrading ordeal as Lalla of Shul? Soon she is plunged into a new world, where she finds there are others who, like herself, are perhaps not what they seem to be. Life in England brings her strange adventures and a touching friendship, but also the heartbreak of love without hope. In these pages Madeleine Brent has woven a tale of many surprises as mystery after mystery unfolds, but strangest of all is the mystery which causes Lalla of Shul to return to the barbaric land of her captivity, there to encounter the dark shadows of death and disaster before she at last finds the happiness she believed could never be hers.

So I've written about Brent before, and I maintain that as far as rip-rollicking adventure stories with fun heroines, they are delightful.  For example, in Stormswift, we encounter Jemimah Lawley, aka "Lalla" aka "Mim" first as a captured slave in 1881 Kafiristan, what is now known as Nuristan, a province in Northeastern Afghanistan.  In short order she assists her fellow Greek slave with a birth, gets sold to a mad prince, and escapes with a peddler, Kassim, who surprise, surprise, is more than what he seems.  Specifically, an English spy who promptly gets shot up by his Russian counterpart.  After removing the bullet from Kassim and burying the dead Russian, Jemimah manages to get both their butts back to the embassy in Herat (and by the way, tracking down her route in this first part of the book was pretty fun.  So much traveling through parts of the world I rarely engage with!).

P.S. I know the description says 1897, I don't know where they came up with that - Jemimah's parents were massacred at Bala Hissar in 1879, and she was held for two years before escaping, clearly putting her the timeline of the book in the early 1880s.  

Then, she's shipped back to England, where she discovers that an imposter has taken her place after her two-year kidnapping sojourn, so she joins a Punch and Judy traveling show run by this "hilarious" guy and his Romany girlfriend.  Except then the Romany girlfriend's ex-boyfriend tracks them down and beats up Punch and Jemimah, and offers to marry his ex-girlfriend, so she leaves with him.  And we're only like, barely halfway into this and haven't even been introduced to like, the main villain!

So it turns out Punch is actually a lord, and has a nice house with a relatively nice mom, who puts them both up until Jemimah is framed for the theft of a ~mysteriously important~ locket so she goes to live with Anne/Melanie, who turns out to be married to KASSIM, who turns out to be BEST FRIENDS with PUNCH, who turns out to be in LOVE with ANNE, who turns out to be a BITCH.

AND THEN, Jemimah realizes that the guy in the locket is her old friend the Greek slave, and Anne is murdered, and they all set off for Afghanistan.

So I remembered why I wasn't as big a fan of this one, and it is for two reasons: one is that Jemimah decides she loves Lord Punch, who, let's be honest here, is a real doofus.  I mean, you have mysterious, sexy Kassim, who rescued her from Afghanistan and refuses to sleep with his awful wife, and then on the other hand, you have goofy ass "Henry", who is fucking some rando when they first meet, and hates having to be rich, so he keeps running off, but makes sure to keep his hand securely in the trust fund pocket, so he doesn't actually have to face any consequences of being poor, or actually having to, you know, "work" for a living.  But Henry is "funny" so she just decides he's the one for her even though his big life plan at the end of the book is to run off and bum around on a Mississippi Steamboat, like Mark Twain.  By the way, did you know that Mark Twain had a younger brother who he convinced to work on steamboats with him, and his brother died at age 20 when the boiler exploded and Mark Twain always felt himself responsible?  Now you do.

I mean, I know Kassim keeps getting himself shot, and that's not really the mark of a super successful spy, but seriously, I think Brent had to kill him just to prevent all his readers being like, "Hey!" Obviously Kassim is the superior choice here.  I mean, Henry is just the worst.  His only redeeming quality is that he's like, 100% on board with Jemimah actually being Jemimah (and not a fraud pretending to be Jemimah) although he had a leg up on everyone else because Kassim vouched for her to begin with.

And second, like Anne/Melanie is supposed to be this extraordinary Harpy-like person, but she's frankly just kind of a bad person.  She has affairs, she blackmails her lovers, a couple of them threaten to commit suicide, she employs a burglar.  It's all pretty tame.   For real, when I was re-reading this, I was like, "Oh, yeah, her Sanctuary, that's where she has those drug binges and orgies." But it's not!  It's just like, regular adultery, no drugs whatsoever.  And just one dude at a time.  Too much build-up, she falls really short by comparison. 

That all said, if you want a genuinely fun, fast-paced story about a young woman who overcomes massacres, rape, slavery, snipers, boat rides, false accusations, doofy young men, impersonators, gypsies, two-faced women, and the awful burden of having money, Stormswift is the book for you!

Moonraker's Bride

Moonraker's Bride, by Madeleine Brent

Born in a Mission in China, Lucy Waring finds herself with fifteen small children to feed and care for. The way she tackles this task leads to her being thrown into the grim prison of Chengfu, where she meets Nicholas Sabine - a man about to die. He asks her a cryptic riddle, the mystery of which echoes through all that befalls her in the months that follow... She is brought to England and tries to make a new life with the Gresham family, but she is constantly in disgrace and is soon involved in the bitter feud between the Greshams and a neighboring family. There is danger, romance and heartache for Lucy as strange events build to a point where she begins to doubt her own senses. How could she see a man, long dead, walking in the misty darkness of the valley? And who carried her, unconscious, into the labyrinth of Chiselhurst Caves and left her to die? It is not until she returns to China that Lucy finds, amid high adventure, the answer to all that has baffled her.

Aha, so I was actually reading Shiver when this book arrived, and I picked it up and read, like, the first three pages, and decided, eff it, I'ma just read the whole thing in one go.  SO WORTH IT. I think it was that moment when Lucy is like, "I know that I could have one of my hands cut off for stealing, but there is no other way to get enough money to feed my little Chinese orphans.  But Ms. Prothero would be so upset.  WELP, JUST GONNA HAVE TO LIE TO HER, THEN, I GUESS." And then heads out like a boss to go thieving (and gets thrown in jail and has adventures)!  I have decided that I have a new (old) favorite archetype: the lady who Gets Shit Done.  Like, yes, you are in a sticky situation, and everything is going to hell, but you have to keep doing the best you can with what you got.  Lady, I salute you.

So Moonraker's Bride, despite it's terrible 1970s title and windswept cover, is actually pretty enjoyable.  Like, good enough that I did, for a brief moment go, "Would it be cheaper to just pay the library fine than buy it online?" because it is hella expensive.*  But then I would deprive other card members of the glory that is Moonraker's Bride.  But.  I was tempted, is what I'm saying (mostly because I am also hella cheap).

I will admit, Moonraker's Bride is not, like, the Decameron, okay?  Ain't no one going to be writing their thesis on it (I hope, geez).  But it is a stellar example of the romantic suspense category, I mean, you've got exotic settings, mysterious treasures, riddles, uptight English people, and an arranged jail marriage (which is not as gross as it sounds).  And I know this sounds like faint praise, but I thought the book would be super-racist (as many of those era are) and I did not find it to be so (note that more sensitive people may disagree). 

Hand to god, I liked just about everything about it, but especially Lucy - she plays a good martyr, and mostly tries not to rock the boat, but at the same time, when shit needs doin', she gets it done.  There's a scene in which a little boy is lost in a snow-storm, and Lucy is the only one who might know where he is, but her patronizing patron won't listen to her, and does she wail into some nice fellow's waistcoat until he goes out and saves the day?  No, she puts on her big girl pants (literally) and walks through a blizzard to rescue this kid.  Also, words cannot express my delight at the dinner scene wherein she believes that she was brought over to England to be a concubine. 

Brent's books (and I have to admit, I went out and immediately read two more after this one, Golden Urchin and Stormswift (not as good, sadly, but still a fun time)) follow a fairly basic pattern: accommodating, yet stalwart heroine, usually raised or living in a distant and exotic location, is brought back to civilization, i.e. England, and deals with people trying to kill her, romance, and overcomes an obstacle which only she, with her unique background, can surmount.  Also, any extraneous people in a love triangle (whether with the heroine or not) are summarily killed before the book ends, either because the author reeeeeeally dislikes loose ends, or he went through some early high-school trauma that has led him to believe that death is easier than facing rejection.  [Yes, apparently Madeleine Brent is a pseudonym for a Peter O'Donnell, but don't let that dissuade you]. 

So this particular book just hits all the right spots for me - I have a serious weak spot for Chinese orphans and lady missionaries who care for them after watching The Inn of the Sixth Happiness (I know, I'm embarrassed for me, too) and arranged marriages which basically start off as the strangest method of charitable donation ever, but turn out to be true love.  The book did drag a little in the middle (if by drag, you mean mysterious night visitors, feuding neighbor families, bonfires, cave kidnappings, secret butler fathers and snowy rescues) after Lucy tries to accustom herself to English life, but picks right up again after her presumed-dead husband comes back.  Then the book takes a CRAZY turn for the awesome when Lucy and her father-in-law go tramping through China in the midst of the Boxer Rebellion.  I would watch the shit out of the tv-movie, is what I'm saying here. 

Honestly, if you're not already convinced, I don't know what else to say to get you to go out and procure your own copy.  I mean, more for me, I guess.  But if you're looking for some enjoyable escapist literature, I don't think you can go wrong here. 



*(It would totally save me, like $20, but then they might take my card away.  Also, I feel like that behavior is particularly frowned upon when committed by a member of the library's board of trustees.  Whoops!)