Book Review: Nightbirds on Nantucket
Feb. 15th, 2025 12:06 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
osprey_archerNear the end of Black Hearts in Battersea, Dido Twite is apparently lost at sea. Sophie says she has a feeling that Dido’s probably all right, and back in 1964 that was where the matter rested for two long years until Nightbirds on Nantucket came out.
Fortunately,littlerhymes and I could simply sail smoothly on to the next book, which begins with Dido asleep on the deck of a whaling boat under a pile of sheepskins. She has been sleeping under these sheepskins, it appears, for ten months, kept alive on a concoction of whale oil and molasses, which is so potent that she has grown six inches.
As our story begins, she awakes, and springs into action none the worse from her coma. Soon she befriends the captain’s shy but extremely stubborn daughter Dutiful Penitence, who locked herself into a closet in the captain’s cabin after her mother died months ago, where she has been living on a diet of beach plum jelly.
(Everyone in this book has a stomach of cast iron. Later on, a donkey inhales a bowl of clam chowder, the self-same captain is soothed in a brain fever by an entire bottle of huckleberries preserved in alcohol, and a whale enjoys a snack of cream buns and corn dogs.)
Naturally Dido manages to coax her out. But it’s when they land on Nantucket that their adventures really begin. Captain Casket rushes off to chase the pink whale with which he is obsessed, leaving the girls in the care of Aunt Tribulation… who is not Aunt Tribulation at all, but our old nemesis Miss Slighcarp, who is part of a Hanoverian plot to assassinate King James III using a very long gun that will shoot all the way across the Atlantic Ocean and hit his palace with pinpoint accuracy!
This is deranged. It makes no sense. I love it. The giant gun was invented by a German scientist named Breadno who can’t quite grasp that shooting a giant gun is a bad idea, especially given that the recoil will push Nantucket into New York harbor. If they can’t shoot at the king in his palace, couldn’t they shoot at the arctic? Or the moon? Or something? “Is not having bigbang?” he begs, but the others are adamant that they do not want Nantucket ripped from its sandy moorings.
Everyone promised me that Joan Aiken would get very weird indeed and I’m so glad to see that they were right. We’re only on book three and it’s already nuts.
***
Next on the docket, we have The Stolen Lake, Limbo Lodge (Dangerous Games in the US, because American publishers love generic titles), and The Cuckoo Tree. Then maybe The Whispering Mountain? Possibly Midnight is a Place? Potentially Dido and Pa? More than any other series we’ve read, the reading order is unclear, although at the same time it also probably matters the least.
Fortunately,
littlerhymes and I could simply sail smoothly on to the next book, which begins with Dido asleep on the deck of a whaling boat under a pile of sheepskins. She has been sleeping under these sheepskins, it appears, for ten months, kept alive on a concoction of whale oil and molasses, which is so potent that she has grown six inches.As our story begins, she awakes, and springs into action none the worse from her coma. Soon she befriends the captain’s shy but extremely stubborn daughter Dutiful Penitence, who locked herself into a closet in the captain’s cabin after her mother died months ago, where she has been living on a diet of beach plum jelly.
(Everyone in this book has a stomach of cast iron. Later on, a donkey inhales a bowl of clam chowder, the self-same captain is soothed in a brain fever by an entire bottle of huckleberries preserved in alcohol, and a whale enjoys a snack of cream buns and corn dogs.)
Naturally Dido manages to coax her out. But it’s when they land on Nantucket that their adventures really begin. Captain Casket rushes off to chase the pink whale with which he is obsessed, leaving the girls in the care of Aunt Tribulation… who is not Aunt Tribulation at all, but our old nemesis Miss Slighcarp, who is part of a Hanoverian plot to assassinate King James III using a very long gun that will shoot all the way across the Atlantic Ocean and hit his palace with pinpoint accuracy!
This is deranged. It makes no sense. I love it. The giant gun was invented by a German scientist named Breadno who can’t quite grasp that shooting a giant gun is a bad idea, especially given that the recoil will push Nantucket into New York harbor. If they can’t shoot at the king in his palace, couldn’t they shoot at the arctic? Or the moon? Or something? “Is not having bigbang?” he begs, but the others are adamant that they do not want Nantucket ripped from its sandy moorings.
Everyone promised me that Joan Aiken would get very weird indeed and I’m so glad to see that they were right. We’re only on book three and it’s already nuts.
***
Next on the docket, we have The Stolen Lake, Limbo Lodge (Dangerous Games in the US, because American publishers love generic titles), and The Cuckoo Tree. Then maybe The Whispering Mountain? Possibly Midnight is a Place? Potentially Dido and Pa? More than any other series we’ve read, the reading order is unclear, although at the same time it also probably matters the least.
