Musings from Brian J. Noggle

This is my second Alistair MacLean of the year (the first, as you remember, was The Golden Gate in August. Both stem from the 1970s, which based upon the evidence of these two texts might represent the phoning-it-in period for MacLean.

The book starts out with an race car crash in the European Grand Prix circuit. The reigning champion apparently has lost his nerve and become an alcoholic. However, he seems to have some hidden agenda, for while he’s putting on the show, he’s sneaking around and investigating something. MacLean doesn’t really draw us into his investigations or quickly identify the real meat of the story–Harrow has gone underground or underdog to find out who’s gambling on the races and fixing them by sabotauging cars while selling heroin.

The reader goes along mainly because it’s an Alistair MacLean book and something’s going to happen. It does, and then the book ends abruptly.

Not MacLean’s best effort, and not even as good as Floodgate, which draws the user into the plot if not the characters. The Way to Dusty Death does neither, really.

As you know, gentle reader, I am something of an Anglophile as long as it doesn’t require actually traveling to Britain or liking, really, anyone or anything currently British. I was an English major, though, and as much as I tilted the degree toward American writers, I couldn’t escape the constraints of my collegiate upbringing. Plus, I think it’s interesting the progression of the English monarches throughout much of the relevant history of the Western world.

Consider this book to be a more detailed version than Britain’s Kings and Queens: 63 Reigns in 1100 Years, which I reviewed three years ago. That pamphlet, from the same time period as the edition of this book that I read, summed up the leaders and the effects their rules had upon England and Europe at large; this book, though, offers more verbosity in the leaders’ lifetimes and occasional sections into the time periods. Of course, this book is worth more than the pamphlet I reviewed in 2003, but it’s an expansion on the themes and rules therein.

Both books I’ve reviewed come from the early 1970s, so there’s not been much change in the lineage aside from the marriage of Charles III (projected) and the divorce of Charles III (projected) and his issue. Still, in the 1970s, the chroniclers had a certain (as sports fans now call it) homer sentiment; that is, the introduction of this book admits that the early rulers were barbaric, but the early times were barbaric, but that the home team (Britain) eventually turned out okay and that its influence on the world was good. As an American conservative, I respect that (and apply it to my own country).

This edition (ca 1975) offered me enough trivia and Britainnia to be worthwhile; I cannot speak to the late editions, but I don’t think they’ll be any less interesting.

On a side note, I’ll let you know, gentle reader, that I was a little ashamed of recovering the same territory that I mentioned in my review of the Bellews book. Until such time as I discovered when I covered that book, that is. I thought I’d read that book this year, or perhaps late last year. When the beauty that is this blog revealed that I read that earlier pamphlet 3 years ago, I was stunned. What a different world that was, for me at least. What were you doing then, and was it as immediate for you as the 9th century was for me?

This book is part of the Quest for the Unknown set, and I guess its schtick is that it’s supposed to center around the past. It does have chapters on ley lines, old temples and sacred places, and whatnot, but it also lumps in lesser past things like mediums and some recent disappearances. It’s not exhaustive nor even detailed in the subjects it covers, preferring a very browsable format with small articles and lots of photographs and sidebars.

Still, if you’re jonesing for a Reader’s Digest compendium of paranormal and other things that make you go hmmmm, you’re better off with Mysteries of the Unexplained, which relies more on copy, is longer, and includes source notes.

In stark contrast to the long, well thought out and meticulous Gor books I’ve been reading, here’s a short (140ish) paged book that’s the start of a trilogy. Set in the far future in a Utopia where man can bend matter and time to his whims, an indulgent and decadent playboy decides he’s going to court a recent arrival from 19th century England. As he tries to woo her with poorly-remembered and rendered gifts and all the luxuries the id can provide, she tries, as a Christian, to teach him virtue.

Then he goes back in time to retrieve her after one of his contemporary friends sends her back, and he meets his friend there as a judge who sentences him to death in 1896, but he’s spared and returned to the future for some purpose to be revealed in the next book. Good luck with that, protagonist. You’re on your own as far as I’m concerned.

Certainly, there’s some allegory in this remnant of 60s sensibility. I don’t think I’ll bother with it when I can pick up another Gor book instead. Perhaps I could spin some allegory of my own, where I generalize that certain segments of the population envisage a world of self-indulgence, lax moral standards, and whims catered to by forces whose details are so forgotten they might be magic, and that some segments of the population read books where evil exists and sometimes a man has to pick up a sword and chop at evil. But that’s too hasty a generalization for me, and besides that, no one cares thirty four years after these books might have met head-to-head for the soul of science fictiondom.

Man, who would have expected me to read another Moorcock two and a half years after I read The Black Corridor? Well, anyone who knows how books get off of my to-read shelves, I reckon.

And in closing, non sequitir, this is the 67th book I’ve read this year. Boo-ya!