Some time back I favorably reviewed March Upcountry, the tale
of a spoiled young prince who ends up stranded on a nasty planet with
nothing but his personal guard (a company of marines) and a handful of
other retainers. It’s military science fiction, but it’s also a tale of
growth, as Prince Roger MacClintock, detested by his guards, matures into
a capable leader the marines will follow anywhere.

March Upcountry gets Roger and his marines about a third of
the way to his destination, the planet’s only starport, which is
currently in enemy hands. This book takes up immediately afterward, and
suffers all of the problems the middle book in a trilogy usually has.
There’s only limited character development; Roger did most of his growing up
in the first book. There’s no real resolution; we get farther along the
path home, but that’s it. What there is is military detail aplenty, and
it’s very good if that’s what you like, but I’d been hoping for a bit
more.

Nevertheless, I’m quite looking forward to the third and final volume,
March to the Stars; I really want to see what happens when
Roger gets home.

It’s funny, but every time I read this (and I’ve read it three or four
times previously) it makes more sense and is more fun.

When I read this the first time (I was in junior high school, I think)
it didn’t make much sense to me. I got it at the local library, and I
think I must have gotten a badly translated or bowdlerized edition
because I remember some details from it that simply aren’t there
in the unabridged translation I have now. (Of course, I could be
dreaming.)

When I read it the second time it made more sense; but there were some
long digressions, as it seemed to me, that I just didn’t understand the
need for. And I remember it as being a bit of a slog between the good bits,
but I didn’t have that problem this time. Instead it just flowed from
beginning to end in the most lovely way.

Anyway, if you’ve never read The Three Musketeers, and
you think you know the story, you probably don’t. It’s a good one,
and Dumas (and his collaborators) write with romance, flair, and
great good humor.

It must have been in grade school that I first read Jane Eyre.
I suspect
my older sister had a copy and I snitched it. I have read it since, most
likely in high school, and then pretty much ignored it as a nice little
romance. Been there, done that. At the local Large Chain Bookstore, I
saw it on display with a bunch of other “classics” and I bought it, I am
ashamed to admit but it’s totally true, for the picture on the cover.
The Oxford Classics edition has the most interesting painting of a young
woman knitting with absurdly long needles and a cunning little yarn
basket hooked to her wrist. The needles must be at least a yard long and
she is working on a huge ribbed afghan with stripes in teal and white.
Saw the picture, had to have it.

I finally got around to rereading it last weekend. Why I dismissed this
book as a romance is beyond me because it is disturbingly weird. The
basic story is that Jane is an orphan taken in by her aunt by marriage,
treated badly, sent to a horrible charity school where she manages to
learn all sorts of accomplishments and then ends up as governess for a
child whose guardian is enigmatic to say the least and living in a
seemingly haunted house. Not to mention she has all these depressive
thought patterns that could seriously warrant therapy. That’s the first
half of the book. She ends up falling in love with her employer but finds
out at the altar, no less, that he has a lunatic for a wife and he was
just about to disgrace her with bigamy. She leaves in the middle of the
night, spends some time starving on the road and is taken in by a pastor
and his sisters. The pastor sets up a girl’s school for the local peasants
for her to teach in and then thru coincidence they find out that they are
cousins of some sort. He is going to India as a missionary and even
though he doesn’t love her he wants to marry her because she will be a
good wife to a missionary. She refuses and then hears her name called to
her on a dark and gloomy night on the wind by her former employer. She
goes back to see him and finds that his wife has set the house on fire
and he has been blinded and maimed in the fire. She marries him and they
live happily ever after.

Not only does Jane have really bad luck with the guys in her life, she
inhabits a world with of haunted houses and voices calling her in the
night. I used to think Emily Bronte was the sister whose work showed some
scary psychological disconnects with reality but after reading this one,
I think it must have been in the family. If they made a movie plotted
from the book instead of the normal Hollywood sunny, sanitized version,
it would seem more like a Stephen King movie than anything else. What a
weird book!

The witches have returned from their trip to Genua and are settling back
into their lives in Lancre. Magrat Garlick is going to marry King Verence
who used to be a Fool and is now the King. And crop circles keep turning
up all over the place. Plus there is a new contingent of young girls
dressed in black who want to be witches to plague Granny Weatherwax. She
has her hands full since the crop circles are a sign that the Lords and
Ladies, euphemism for Elves, are trying to come back.

This one wasn’t as good as the previous witch books by Pratchett. There
are some funny bits, like Magrat wandering around the castle bored out of
her mind. And there is the long ago story of Mistrum Ridcully and Granny
Weatherwax. And the Librarian has a humorous part to play. But Pratchett
wasn’t at his best, which means the book is still wonderful, just not so
funny you have to stop reading to let the tears clear from your eyes.
Anything with Granny Weatherwax is worth the time.

Buy it, read it, enjoy!

Terry
Pratchett has a new book out, called Night Watch.
Predictably it’s about Sam Vimes. I’ve just started reading it to
Jane; I’ll post a review when we’re done.

Today I spent most of the day at home with a sick kid. She called me
shortly after I got to work and way before I had consumed enough coffee
to face the spreadsheets I had planned on tackling this morning. Anyway,
when I got her home, medicated with Tylenol and tucked in, the couch
called me. Loudly. But, of course, any really fine nap is preceded by a
short read in a good book so I picked up my son’s copy of Witches
Abroad and started in. And two hours later I finished it. So much for
napping.

This is another Pratchett book about Granny Weatherwax, Nanny Ogg and
Magrat Garlick. After Desiderata, the good fairy godmother, placidly dies
leaving her magic wand to Magrat, they must travel to the city of Genua
to prevent the marriage of the girl to the handsome prince. Along the way
they take the magic out of just about every fairy tale told to children.
It reminded me of the spot on the Rocky and Bullwinkle show called
“Fractured Fairy Tales” that I loved as a child. And Pratchett has this
way of writing that includes little comments that are hysterically funny.
There’s one about panty girdles that I had to put the book down til my
eyes quit tearing up from laughing so hard. His nod to Tolkein is a
hoot, too.

As always with Pratchett books, buy them, read them, enjoy!