osprey_archer | Entries tagged with author: joan aiken

Joan Aiken’s pacing may have bobbled in some of her later books, but it’s full speed ahead in The Witch of Clatteringshaws, which she raced to get done with the literal deadline of her own encroaching demise.

She has a lot of loose ends to wrap up in this book, chief among them the question of who will be the next King of England. Simon is currently saddled with the job, but he doesn’t want it, because all he wants to do is live a quiet life communing with animals and painting, and also he would like to marry Dido who has very definitively stated that she is unwilling to be queen.

It’s not entirely clear to me if she’d like to marry Simon, but she’s a good bro who doesn’t want to see Simon stuck on the throne, so she heads off to the north to chase up the only lead they’ve got on a possible alternative king. Apparently there’s an Aelfric somewhere up in Caledonia with a claim to the throne?

Spoilers: we never find Aelfric. From beginning to end we have no idea who this man is. Like the thought speech, which was so important in the Is books and never appears again, this one of many loose ends Joan has decided she doesn’t have time to bother with. As she finished this book a scant four months before her death, that’s fair enough.

Instead, Dido finds a Dickensian old person’s home (and let’s pause to admire Aiken’s breadth of Dickensian vision: Dickensian orphanages, Dickensian schools, Dickensian mines, apparently Dickensian mills in Midnight Is a Place which we haven’t read yet, and now Dickensian retirement homes). And at this home there is a boy, an orphan foundling who has been raised as a drudge, even though he arrived at the door wrapped in a cloth emblazoned with a golden crown…

( Spoilers )

Joan Aiken finished the last two books in the Wolves of Willoughby Chase sequence just before her death in 2004. The penultimate book, Midwinter Nightingale, has certain flaws that indicate a rushed or weary author, but before I discuss these flaws I do want to state that I’m very glad Aiken did write these books, as it seems right and proper that the series should come full circle with Dido and Simon at the end.

The main flaw in Midwinter Nightingale was the pacing, which is usually Aiken’s strong suit: in most of her book she packs so many happenings into a chapter that

littlerhymes and I struggled to discuss all the developments. But here, the characters spend the first half of the book wandering more or less aimlessly before the plot really kicks off.

Also, this is petty but I just have to complain, Aiken offers three separate and incompatible lengths for the time that has elapsed since King Dick’s coronation. It happened 15 years ago, as it coincided with his marriage to his (second) wife Princess Adelaide. (As it turns out, Prince Davie who died in the mines was the son of King Dick’s hitherto unmentioned first wife, which means Davie was a teenager when he went to investigate the mines, which is better than going off to investigate at the age of about five as I first thought.)

But it also happened six years ago, because that’s when Dido said she first got back to England, and as we know Dido saved the ceremony which otherwise would have been interrupted by St. Paul’s Cathedral rolling into the Thames. But then Dido mentions her adventures on the island of Aratu, which happened before her return to England, as occurring “two or three years ago.” WHICH IS IT, AIKEN? Please just stop giving us numbers.

However, it is lovely to be back with Dido again. Is is fine but she’s just not the same. I enjoyed the reappearance of Aiken’s trademark ferocious creatures in the form of a moat filled with man-eating fish and crocodiles (although I’m still so sad they killed spoiler redacted and spoiler redacted!), and also the unexpected plot point of two completely non-ferocious bears. They just want Simon to give them head massages to help them cope with the wet cold of England! Who among us has not dreamed of a bear friend?

The next (and last) book is very short, and was in fact published posthumously. I envision Aiken writing it on a legal pad in her hospital bed, and will not hold it against her if it occasionally devolves from prose into a list of bullet points.

After Is Underground,

littlerhymes and I approached Cold Shoulder Road with trepidation. However, I am happy to report that our concerns were unwarranted. In this book, Joan Aiken returns to form with an adventure story that is gristly but mostly in a way that is fun for the reader, like the Edward Gorey covers that grace many books in this series.

(Except for a very minor character who she kills at the end for no apparent reason except to remind us that she can. Spoiler redacted didn’t deserve that fate!)

Anyway. Is Twite and her cousin Arun have made their way back to Arun’s hometown, where Arun will be briefly reunited with his mother, whom he hasn’t seen ever since he ran away from the Silent Sect because he couldn’t stand not being allowed to sing or talk. They arrive at the family home in Cold Shoulder Road… and find it empty! Arun’s mother has disappeared! And the Silent Sect has been taken over by a charismatic leader by the name of Dominic de la Twite…

Later in the book Is and Arun learn a song, the substance of which is that “When Twites are good, they are very very good, but when they are bad they are horrid.” Old Domino, as Is calls him, is definitely on the horrid side. He also appears to have command of at least an unconscious form of the thought speech that Is discovered in Is Underground, which he uses to mind-whammy Arun into submission until Is drags him away.

Other typical Aiken touches:

A down-trodden but plucky orphan

The Admiral’s giant pet spider Rosamunde

The Admiral’s dupli-gyro (bicycle), which he likes to ride while flying a kite

The system of caverns beneath the Admiral’s house where Is and Arun find three large vats of treasure.

(The Admiral is doing a lot of work to bring the quirkiness to this book.)

And of course the reappearance of Is’s cat Figgin, who occasionally appears in danger but pulls through at the end, which almost made me forgive Aiken for killing spoiler redacted. (But not quite.)

Next book, we’re returning to Dido! We had the briefest mention of her when the downtrodden but plucky orphan brushed minds with her across the sea, as Dido has been Sir On a Vacation to Nantucket for the previous two books. Does this mean that Dido is going to carry the thought speech forward into the last two books of the series? To be honest I’m not madly keen on the thought speech, so I kind of hope not, but we’ll see.

littlerhymes and I have read through The Wolves of Willoughby Chase series, various people have informed us that they dropped out partway through the series because it got too dark. As no one told us which particular book broke them, we’ve been amusing ourselves by trying to decide what drove people away. Is it the porridge made of children’s bones? The child who gets killed at the climax? The bit where Mr. Twite walks away whistling from a burning building with a cellar full of children?

We just finished Is (a.k.a. Is Underground in the US, which I think is a rare case where the US title is actually an improvement), and have unanimously agreed that this is the book.

In Dido and Pa, Dido met a miserable neglected servant child called Is, who lived in a cold wet closet in a cellar. In Is Underground, we learn that Is is Dido’s half-sister (one feels this should have been established in Dido and Pa but let’s just go with it) when Is’s hitherto unsuspected uncle shows up at the door after being chased by wolves. He gasps out that he’s been searching for his son Arun who ran away to London and then dies.

A side note: I found Is almost indistinguishable from Dido, to the point that I repeatedly typed Dido while discussing this book with

littlerhymes. As I love Dido, this is not exactly a bad thing, but it does make the change in heroine puzzling, especially given that Dido would have the exact same family relationships that are so important to the plot in this book.

Is decides she can’t refuse a request from a dying man, so it’s off to London she goes! But in searching for her cousin, she discovers that children are disappearing all over London. Then she receives an invitation written in icing on a delicious pancake: come to the station at Euston to take the express to Playland!

This pancake sounds amazing and I am truly so impressed with Is for not eating it. Also, the aroma of this delicious and uneaten pancake is nearly the last good thing that happens to anyone in this book.

Because adults in the Aikenverse are invariably useless, it doesn’t occur to anyone that they might, let’s say, send in the guards to check out the secret train station that is spiriting children away. No, the only possible solution is for Is to take the train herself! Which she does, and she discovers that it is not going to Playland at all, but to a land in the north of England where all children over the age of five are legally required to work, usually in either the foundry or the mines. And if they work in the mines, well, they’re so far underground that the children never come out, but live and work there until they die. There are bunks for them to sleep on, but if you don’t get there in time to nab a bunk, you have to sleep on the floor that is inches deep in slushie cold mud.

In this horrible place, Is runs into yet more unsuspected Twites: her great-grandfather and her Aunt Ishie, who are both basically good people (except when Grandpa has been drinking at which point he becomes a monster), and her uncle who is Gold Kingy, the leader of this horrible place. When the Twites go to the bad they don’t do it halfway.

Aiken’s work is full of bad things happening to children (see above the bone porridge), but in sheer density of misery, this book is far and away darker than the others. The town has been moved underground, when Is is above ground it appears to be perpetually gray and rainy, the old post office and library are in ruins (and the library shelves are apparently airtight and can be pushed together to make prison cells! Who designed this library?), and of course you’ve got the mines and the foundries and the stream of horribly injured children who get tipped into the ocean the moment they die.

Also Is turns out to have a telepathic connection with the other children in the mines, as one does. She tells them the fairy tales that her half sister Penny made up and this is the one spot of brightness in the literal darkness of the mines.

However, we persevered! We finished! Gold Kingy kicks it at the end, thank god. And we’re heading onward with Cold Shoulder Road.

I am happy to report that Joan Aiken had mercy after all, and started Dido and Pa with the reunion between Dido and Simon which she denied us at the end of The Cuckoo Tree. At long last they see each other again! They are delighted to be reunited and have a lovely supper at an inn.

However, their reunion is short-lived, as Dido hears a song that reminds her of her father’s tunes. She goes out to investigate (musing all the time that her father never played for her, not once, in her entire childhood) and runs into her father, who informs her that her sister is extremely ill! and wants to see her! so just get into this carriage and stop asking questions!

You will be unsurprised to hear that Dido’s sister is not ill. Indeed, Dido’s father has no idea where Dido’s sister is. He is kidnapping Dido to make her take part in another wicked Hanoverian plot. This plot has been slightly complicated by the fact that the last Bonnie Prince Georgie just died, oops, so the Hanoverians no longer have a contender to the throne, but never fear! They will come up with a way to plot wickedly anyway.

(I was reading a history book the other day which mentioned Hanoverians and I needed to pause a moment to remember that Hanoverians are (a) real and (b) not constantly wickedly plotting in real life.)

Dido’s father starts this book as a terrible father and only goes downhill from there. He is also music master to the Hanoverian ambassador and actually a wonderful musician and composer, which causes Dido painful confusion. How can he be such an awful person and such a wonderful artist? I feel you, Dido. If only the two were incompatible, things would be much easier for us all.

But he continues to be the worst, up to and including walking whistling away from a burning building with over a hundred children in the basement, while also being such an amazing musician that his music actually has healing properties. (Pity Queen Ginevra in The Stolen Lake didn’t discover the life-extending properties of music rather than porridge made from the bones of children.) Beneath the barmy plots, Joan Aiken is a stone-cold realist about the contradictions of human nature.

In The Cuckoo Tree, Dido Twite at long last returns to England! Her adventures on the voyage over were actually written post-Cuckoo Tree, so we are not going to be hearing anything here about how Dido helped the reincarnation of King Arthur regain his throne in New Cumbria (South America) or how she helped restore Dr. Talisman to her rightful place as heir of Aratu.

We do, however, hear that Dido and company fought in the China Tea Wars and captured a French frigate, neither of which were detailed in those earlier/later books came to be written. Joan Aiken, never change.

Anyway! Dido is back in England with Captain Hughes, who carries an urgent dispatch related to the upcoming coronation of King Richard IV, a.k.a. King Davie Jamie Charlie Neddie Geordie Harry Dick Tudor-Stuart, NO we will not be explaining which Tudor married which Stuart. Unfortunately, on the road back to London, their carriage overturns, leaving Captain Hughes wounded and forcing Dido to go for help.

The nearest source of aid proves to be Tegleaze Manor, an almost abandoned and generally gothic place in the hands of an eccentric old lady who has gambled away much of the family fortune. She has a cousin Wilfrid who has made a doll-size copy of Tegleaze Manor and a grandson Tobit who is obsessed with peashooters, but not as obsessed as Lady Tegleaze herself is with contagion. The moment she hears Captain Hughes is not well, she banishes Dido and the captain to Dogkennel Cottages (despite Dido’s remonstrances that carriage accidents are not catching), where Dido finds herself in company of a kindly blind shepherd and a not at all kindly witch…

This book also includes such Aiken favorites as lost heirs, girls dressed as boys, alcohol used as medicine (Dido is at one point revived by a porridge made of wine), and animals who thrive on the dubious diet of hot buttered buns and marmalade pie. The animal in question this time is an elephant, Rachel, who perhaps is not quite as amazing as the pink whale in Nightbirds on Nantucket, but listen, who could compete with the pink whale/whaling captain love story?

Also Dido is reunited with her father, who tells her that most of her family is dead, which Dido accepts with equanimity, as they were never good to her and anyway she’s got adventures to be getting on with. He also leaves her tied to a post by the baddies. Still the worst father. Fascinated how he and Dido will rub along together in the next book, Dido and Pa.

More important, who will Dido put on a throne in the next book? Always a kingmaker, never a king. Will Dido someday manage to crown herself?

Joan Aiken’s Dangerous Games (Limbo Lodge everywhere but the US, but American publishers like titles that are shared by at least 500 other books) is next chronologically in the Dido Twite sequence, but later in terms of when it was actually written, which perhaps explains why it is not quite as strong as the other books we’ve read so far.

Although possibly ANY follow-up to The Stolen Lake would have suffered by contrast of not being completely bonkers Arthuriana.

It does, however, have absolutely peak Dangerous Animal action. In this book, Dido and co. land on the island of Aratu, which is inhabited by pearl snakes (poisonous), sting monkeys (poisonous), AND crocodiles (not poisonous, but you don’t need to be poisonous when you have teeth like that). Also the gloomy colonial Angrians and the native Forest People, all of whom are vaguely ruled over by John King, who has lived in solitude in Limbo Lodge ever since his wife died twenty odd years ago.

Dido is here because her ship has been sent to search for Lord Herodsfoot, who is hunting round the world for games to bring back to cheer up the gloomy King James III, who presumably feels a bit down in the mouth on account of all those Hanoverians who keep trying to assassinate him. For convoluted plot reasons, Dido eventually tracks him down on her own, and discovers a classic upper-class English twit (mostly affectionate) with a monomania for games of all sorts.

Also there is magic and it turns out that Dido herself might have a gift for magic and in fact turns someone into a hyena, and I’m VERY curious if this is something that shows up in the chronologically-later-but-actually-written-earlier books in the sequence. “Maybe I should explain how Dido learned to summon up rain at will,” Joan thought. Although overall Joan is not a big one for explaining things.

Also Joan kills (SPOILER) and I am very sad and begin to understand why people feel the later books in the sequence get too dark, although

littlerhyme and I are going to soldier on for now. After a couple of weeks hiatus while I move into the Hummingbird Cottage! But then we’ll start in on The Cuckoo Tree.

When I began Joan Aiken’s Wolves of Willoughby Chase books, I did not realize that the Aikenverse (as

littlerhymes and I have taken to calling it) would expand to include BONKERS ARTHURIANA, but honestly I should not have been surprised. Aiken is an “everything and the kitchen sink” kind of writer, and Arthuriana is an integral part of every Anglophone writers’ kitchen sink.

So. At the beginning of this book, Dido is on a ship home to London, where she is mostly under the direction of the steward Mr. Holystone. Mr. Holystone spent ten years studying at the University of Salamanca and therefore speaks 500 languages (a slight exaggeration) and then went to butler school and is now tasked with giving Dido the rudiments of an education.

But in the middle of the Atlantic, the ship suddenly changes course! A carrier pigeon has arrived with the message that they have been summoned by the queen of New Cumbria.

What is New Cumbria, you ask? WELL. Back in the fifth century, when the Saxons overran Britain, a group of Romano-Celts sailed away to the west. They landed in South America and founded the kingdoms of New Cumbria, Lyonnesse, and Hy Brasil.

Because of this ancestral link to Great Britain, the queen of New Cumbria can summon a British naval captain to help her with her latest problem, which is… okay this is technically a spoiler, but it’s also the title of the book… someone has stolen her lake!

( More spoilers )

This summary leaves so much out. I didn’t even mention the captain obsessed with flying machines, or the part where a princess rides a big cat, or the bit where Dido almost gets sacrificed, or… Oh, well, just so much else. WHAT a book. Every single chapter is a roller coaster ride.

Near 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.

littlerhymes and I continued our Joan Aiken readings with Black Hearts in Battersea, the very loosely connected sequel to The Wolves of Willoughby Chase. Move over, Bonnie and Sylvia; our hero this time is Simon, Bonnie's friend the goose boy who lives in a cave in the woods and discovered a talent for art as he was helping Bonnie and Sylvia escape to London.

Now Simon is on his way to London to study art at Dr. Furneaux's academy. He is supposed to lodge with Dr. Field, an artist-doctor whom he met in the previous book... but when he arrives at the Twite's lodging house, Dr. Field is nowhere to be found, and the Twites insist he was never there!

On the bright side, Simon does run into his old friend Sophie, whom he met in the workhouse before he ran away to be a goose boy. Sophie is now the lady's maid to the duchess of Battersea! Also, before she was in the workhouse, she was raised by otters.

This is mentioned once and never again, which is extremely Joan Aiken. Another author might make "raised by otters" the entire plot, but Aiken has far too many fish to fry to linger on it for more than a sentence. We have Hanoverian conspiracies to deal with! (They are yearning for Bonnie Prince Georgie to come over the sea and overthrow King James III. Aiken is having a fantastic time.) A wolf attack to defeat using croquet mallets and billiard balls! No less than three assassination attempts, all foiled by Sophie with the aid of the tapestry that the duchess is embroidering! A kidnapping, a boat-burning, a hot air balloon ride from Yorkshire to London...

Also the introduction of Dido Twite, who is, I believe, the heroine of most of the rest of the series, who ends this book completely AWOL but for Sophie's confident assertion that she's sure Dido is fine somewhere, a plotting choice that Joan Aiken somehow gets away with even though it would I think drive me up the bend from anyone else. She's just having such a good time that you have to have a good time too.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, this means our Joan Aiken list is growing: we have already agreed to add Midnight is a Place and Dido and Pa onto our original five-book plan. Will this end with us reading the complete Wolves of Willoughby Chase series? We shall see.

When

littlerhymes and I were slogging through A Place of Greater Safety, I complainted that I wanted to read something lighter and more fun. “What about The Wolves of Willoughby Chase?” suggested

littlerhymes.

I have long meant to read Joan Aiken, so I replied, “Sure!”

Reader, this was an excellent choice. The Wolves of Willoughby Chase IS light and fun! It takes place in an alternate universe England where King James II was never driven from the throne, so in 1832 England is still ruled by the Stuarts, who have built a tunnel under the English channel through which many wild and savage wolves have emigrated to England. (

littlerhymes’ copy had a note explaining this backstory. Mine did not.)

Does this exactly make sense? No. Does Joan Aiken care if this exactly makes sense? Also no. Joan Aiken wants wolves and Joan Aiken is going to have wolves and Joan Aiken’s wolves fling themselves at train windows to try to attack the passengers inside and that’s all there is to it.

Our heroines are Bonnie Green, sole daughter of Sir Willoughby the lord of Willoughby Chase, and her cousin Sylvia Green, who is coming to visit for the first time as Sir Willoughby and his wife travel to warmer climes in the hope that Mrs. Green will regain her health. Bonnie and Sylvia are instant best friends, which is fortunate, as they have been left in the charge of their distant cousin the wicked Miss Slighcarp, who soon announces that Bonnie’s parents have perished at sea and sends the girls away to an evil orphanage!

“YES I LOVE AN EVIL ORPHANAGE!” I yelled, and this orphanage is indeed MOST satisfactorily evil. The children are starved! forced to work! shiver all night under inadequate blankets! and the headmistress Mrs. Brisket (love these names) bribes them to inform on each other with slivers of cheese from a basket.

Fortunately Bonnie and Sylvia soon escape with the help of Bonnie’s friend the goose boy Simon. They spend two months driving the geese to London to be sold! (Fortunately all the wolves have migrated north at this point with the coming of spring. Well, fortunately for the children,

littlerhymes and I agreed we would have enjoyed more wolf action.)

Eventually good is rewarded and evil punished. A most satisfactory children’s book of the old-fashioned sort.

littlerhymes and I have decided to read at least the first five, plus Midnight is a Place (which I am perhaps less reliably informed also features an Evil Orphanage?), and perhaps more if the spirit moves us. I am reliably informed that this book is the most normal of the entire Wolves of Willoughby Chase series, so I am looking forward to reporting back as things get weirder.