32. A Hero for Leanda by Andrew Garve

This was a short, somewhat slight, yet still entertaining, classic British mid-century sailing adventure.  It starts right into the situation,  where our hero, Mike Conway, discovers that his sailboat, and all his worldly possesions, has come unmoored and crashed, a complete write-off.  He's now almost penniless and stranded in Accra, Ghana.  We learn quickly that he has spent his last years sailing around the world, a vagabon with no ties.  His desperate situation does not last long, however, as he meets a sophisticated Greek gentleman who makes him an incredible offer.  He is representing a wealthy businessman, Metaxas, who is originally from the island country of (fictional, I'm guessing analog for Cyprus?) Spyros, currently under the thumb of the British and resisting.  The rebel leader of Spyros has been arrested by the British and is being held on a remote colonial island far off the eastern coast of Africa.  Conway is the perfect man to sail quietly in and free him.

The wrinkle of the title is that the boat that Metaxes finds for Conway needs a second hand to make such a long crossing.  This person turns out to be Leanda, a beautiful competent young woman, who herself is a native of Spyros.  You can see the setup!  This is all done quite efficiently in the first section and then we are off on a sea voyage.  I would say this is almost a cozy sailing adventure, with much of the book mostly pleasant sailing. Things get complex when they pick up the prisoner.  I think the thing with Garve is that he kind of pulls his punches with his priority being a nice, romantic resolution.  This was a fun read with a somewhat soft, but enjoyable ending.

31. The Long Ships by Frans G. Bengtsson

I wish I could remember who recommended this book to me, because I owe them a debt of significant gratitude.  It has easily taken the top spot of books I've read this year and has a place on the all-time favourites as well.  I do remember that I bought this new at Dark Carnival.  The NYRB reprint is quite well done, with excellent maps (though spoilery as they show the paths of the journeys as well, so beware) and a brief, inoffensive, non-spoilery intro by Michael Chabon.  

I'm surprised that this book is not better know and loved among the nerd community.  It's an incredible adventure epic with many D&D tropes, such as exploration, treasure, strange lands and even a bit of light, folk magic here and there.  For the first book, you could basically call the protagonists a band of murder hoboes.  I try in my later years to not be that recommending guy ("you gotta read this!"), but I am making an exception in the case of this book and will be foisting it on others as much as possible, especially gamers.

The book is about Orm the Red, a Danish viking in the late tenth century AD.  It was originally two books, each made up of two books.  The first is his initial voyage as a young man to plunder the lands to the west and then further fall into several wild adventures in western Europe.  The second is about his involvement in wars and politics within the viking lands.  The third is much more domestic and tells various tales of Orm's homestead and the region he is in.  The final book is the shortest and is his last adventure to find some hidden gold in Eastern Europe.  The first book is far and away my favourite,  with so much adventure and ass-kicking, told in such an entertaining way, that I could barely put it down.  It becomes quite domestic in the third book and this goes on for many pages. It's not boring at all and I always enjoy stories of people developing their homestead ("domain play" as we say in the TTRPG community), it's just that it's hard to beat the thrills of the first book.  Nevertheless, there is still combat a-plenty in the years back in the Danish hinterlands as Orm builds up his community, has to fight off bandits, assassins and berserkers and deal with the other groups around him.

A big through line in the book is Christianity and its adoption in the viking lands.  Another reason I enjoyed the first book the most is that it is decidedly anti-christian in a very funny way.  The vikings are not nice to christians, let's just say.  Slowly and insidiously, they are converted for one reason or another.  I do have to agree that trying to get vikings to move from constantly killing each other and their neighbours to a more peaceful "turn the other cheek" policy is a good thing.  And the Christianity here never fares well when it tries to impose its sexual mores on the vikings so it doesn't become too much of a bummer.  Feels distinctly Scandinavian. The main priest character is a fun part of the proceedings as well, usually in a foul temper because of the godless north people.  

Others have written more thoroughly and better on the virtues of The Long Ships, but my recommendation is that you just get it and read it.

30. Trigger and Friends by James H. Schmitz (edited by Eric Flint)

Most of Schmitz' work were short stories, novellas and a few serialized novels were published in sci-fi magazines at the time.  That is a level of pursuit and collecting that is beyond me, and finding any of his original paperbacks is quite tough.  Other than The Witches of Karras, it is only these Baen collections that I have been able to find.  They are also fairly rare in used form these days as well (and quite likely new).  If you are a Schmitz fan, I would recommend seeking them out as they are, from what I can tell, when all of them are together a complete collection of his works.  The problem for me who is not a Schmitz completist, is I would rather a nice sampling of his best stuff and preferably in novels only.  I feel this Baen series kind of demands you to read it all.  Furthermore it isn't just one series, but a set of books for each universe that Baen wrote about.  This one, Trigger and Friends, is the fourth in the Hub universe.  I did appreciate that once I had finished it, the editor had done a good job of collecting several short stories and a full-length novel that united all the same characters in a mostly singlar arc involving the discovery of the mysterious bio-tech left over by an ancient civilization.

The characters are Trigger herself, a beautiful and smart Precol agent, her boss Commisioner Holati Tate and sometimes agent, sometimes rogue Quiller.  The first stories detail Holati and Tate in mini-adventures on the planet Macon where they first discover these weird shelled slug beings of various sizes that seem to have been left on autopilot and display a range of powers and energy.  There is one story about Quillan defending a giant resort station from various factions who want to destroy it that would have been more fun if there hadn't been so many characters and confusing scheming (it also had a cool alien life force).  These characters all come together in the main novel in which they try to figure out what the alien artifacts are doing while they fight off all the other galactic factions trying to steal them.  We are also introduced here to the Psychology Service, which is a much-disliked but crucial sort of galactic behaviour police force that oversees telepathic powers to ensure individuals don't get too powerful and destroy everything (a real possibility in Schmitz's construction).  

I have mixed feelings about these books.  Schmitz's alien concepts and technologies are really unique and cool.  He finds that balance between unknowable and yet still interesting and somewhat graspable that eludes most galactic sci-fi.  Most aliens are either humanoid variants à la Star Trek or utternly uknowable (like some of Cherryh's species).  Schmitz are kind of both which is impressive.  He also likes action and there is a lot of cool space stuff that isn't too fussy.  On the other hand, he also really likes organizational theorizing of the post-WWII corporate style and on top of that corporate espionage but in a very vague, suppositional way.  

What this means in practice is a lot of the good guys trying to figure out what the bad guys might be doing, while the reader isn't given a lot of actual info to work with.  This can go on for many pages even the entire story and then be resolved at the end by a quick exposition that is not satisfying but appears super clever, I guess.  For example, in the main novel, Trigger who is hired to work at a university, keeps wanting to escape to see her boyfriend, to the point where her own team has to kidnap her.  Even when they explain that the job at the university was just a front because they think she is somehow connected to the new alien tech and they now bring her on to help with the main mission, she still keeps trying to escape.  It's just sort of baffling as you don't really know her character that well and it doesn't make sense.  This creates hundres of pages of her on a fancy cruise ship and other side adventures that feel like distractions and are confirmed as such when we finally get to the main plot and not until the very end learn that she was being mind-controlled, which then led to some big expository explanation at the very end about the alien tech that fell kind of flat and deflated the cool attack on the alien-infested base.

I do have one other thick multi-storied Baen book of Schmitz's work, but it is in some entire other universe and I'm not sure if I will make it through.  For a certain kind of sci-fi reader, who enjoys thought puzzles along with their galactic action and intrigue, I would recommend him. His prose style is strong and the worlds are rich.  It's just the overal execution makes it hard reading for me.

29. On the Beach by Nevil Shute

Well it is snarky to say but also true that this is far and away the most boring post-apocalyptic novel I have ever read.  That being said, it is also quite good and moving.  I joke a bit about it being boring, because it did hold my attention.  It’s just that I came up in the 80s and my PA worlds range from The Road Warrior to Gamma World.  On the Beach is about as calm and sober as you can get. The story is set in Melbourne and follows the lives of a few characters as they prepare for the end.  A global nuclear war, triggered by Albania (who somehow bombed Israel), which then set off Russia and China followed by the US, has covered the northern hemisphere in deadly radioactivity, which is then moving south.  Everybody knows it, nobody can avoid it and it is just a question of when the end will actually come.

The main characters are a young couple with a new baby.  He is an officer in the Australian navy and gets assigned as a liaison to a US sub (the last of two).  He meets the sub commander a nice, calm dude named Dwight, who meets and develops a platonic affair with a young Australian girl.  Dwight’s wife and children are all still in Connecticut presumably dead but he has no way of knowing.  Finally, there is a young scientist who is fixing up a beautiful old ferrari and using what fuel he can find to drive fast. The men go on a sub journey to the north, but they can’t leave the boat because the radiation is so high.  The young couple prep their garden and watch their daughter grow.  

This is a very civilized and mundane end to the world.  There is no real reason to freak out because there is nothing anybody can do.  I found it a bit unrealistic, informed I believe by Shute’s own strongly colonialist and old-school British conservative worldview.  Things do deteriorate but mostly out of neglect and people deciding to spend their final days doing what they love rather than because they go wild.  Everybody is very respectful and helpful to one another.  This is a very stiff upper lip indeed!

The first third was a bit slow-going.  The pace never picks up but the characters are very well-written and mostly quite likable.  You get absorbed in it and that is what makes the simple and expected ending so sad.  I have been aware of this book for a long time, but always avoided it for fear that it would be a bit too slow and realistic.  Well it was but I am glad I finally got to it.  It is sobering and sits with you.

28. Smith and Jones by Nicholas Monsarrat

I'm a fan of Monsarrat so would have bought this book no matter what, I mean look at that amazing cover.  It has extra special meaning for me as well, though, because of the title.  I'm a huge fun of Wall of Voodoo and they have a song called Spy World which has the line "He goes by Jones in Istanbul and Smith in Beirut."  I would be surprised if Stan Ridgway knew of this book, but you never know. It's quite a coincidence.

Smith and Jones is one of Monsarrat's "Signs of the Time" mini-novels.  It's the second one I've found and I'm not really sure what unites them other than that they are short.  The story here is told from the perspective of a diplomatic security officer.  He is recounting the saga of Smith and Jones that brought down his career "for the record."  The introduction is interesting as it makes it very clear that his role is one of a police officer and he distinguishes himself from the other diplomatic staff.  There is a coldness here that I can't tell if Monsarrat is critiquing or not.  Monsarrat himself was on the diplomatic side and it seems that a lot of this book comes out of his actual experience.

Smith and Jones are both sad characters.  The former is fat, suave and unhappily married to a wealthy woman and their public quarrels put his career and his country's reputation in harm.  Jones is petite and flamboyant, who drinks excessively and behaves much worse, ranging from saying undiplomatic things to killing a person in his host country while driving drunk.  For both men, the narrator has to make a judgement call on whether or not to have them fired or give them a second chance.  He gives them a second chance and then, out of his control, both men are posted as a sort of punishment to the same wintery enemy country.  It's not named, but I presumed it to be Russia or some other cold war, actually cold analog country.  

By being in the same posting, both men's bad tendencies resonate with each other, they move in together and start really partying (Smith's wife left him at this point).  It is also very clear, though in the typical "soft" homophobia of the time, that Jones is definitely gay and Smith probably.  The portrayal of both men is quite realistic and therefore I found their stories sad.  The narrator, on the other hand, is quite mean and utterly unsympathetic.  Aside from their sexuality, they are both quite selfish and pathetic, but one has to wonder if that is also not a function of growing up in a society where they are repressed from being themselves.  Monsarrat is speaking in the voice of the security officer and his positions is really clear, almost ruthless.  It's unclear to me how much of his contempt for these men is a lens on the security perspective or Monsarrat's own.

The culmination of these men living together is that they eventually defect.  This is a huge blow to the reputation of the country and the narrator's boss blames it all on him. He is sent out to the host country ostensibly to monitor the situation, try and find a resolution and minimize the damage.  It is also a sort of punishment.  At first, Smith and Jones are paraded around in triumph, invited to all sorts of cultural events, given the star treatment.  Of course, over time their roles are diminished and they start to have to face the reality of what they have done.  It's pretty bleak and their behaviour falls once again to the dissolute, excessive drinking and bad public behaviour so that their new country accelerates their move out of the spotlight.

It's a fun, sad and interesting little read.  Monsarrat is an excellent writer, both technically and the depth and realism he gives to his characters.  It all feels very real.  There is also a wild element that I will not reveal but will say that all Canadians of my generation would get a real kick out of reading this book.

27. The Hardliners by William Haggard

I continue to bore you with the minutiae of my reading habits. As loyal readers well know, I am trying to read only from my on-deck shelf and not buy any new books.  One of the things that is making it difficult is that I have several books on that shelf from authors that I generally like whose other books I have already read recently.  This is particularly acute with William Haggard. His thin Penguins are just so beautiful, I can't resist buying them!  So despite having recently read and not enjoyed one of his later books, I still have 4 others on deck so thought I should continue on.

The Hardliners is a later Haggard, but fortunately Colonel Charles Russel has only just retired and Haggard seems to still keep his creepy old-man fantasies on a tighter leash.  The temptation is there, though, as once again Russel is drawn into action at the request of a younger woman, a columnist and the daughter of a pompous ambassador.  More importantly, she was one of Russel's informants when he was back at the Executive and he respects her work.  Her father is preparing to publish his memoirs and is weirdly over-excited about the chance of their success.  She suspects that he is going to reveal some secrets from his posting an Eastern Bloc country that could put himself and both England and this country at risk.  The country is not named but it's pretty clear that it is a Czechoslovakian analog.  It was recently invaded by Russia (also barely mentioned by name) and now stable, but if the ambassador's secret is made public, it will allow Russia to fully clamp down on the country.  So this country's spies have an interest in suppressing the memoirs, while Russia and its agents want them to come to light.

Fortunately, the emphasis here is on the intrigue and the action (of which there is more than usually for a Haggard book).  We get only one restaurant scene and Haggard's mid-century culinary advice is kept to a minimum.  Likewise, even though it's clear Russel is crushing on the journalist (so many lines to describe how admirable she is and what a good wife she would make), he never crosses the line, just drives expertly and gives good advice.  You can see the edges of Haggard's fraying post-war conservatism, but it's not annoying.

The calm climax takes place in a cool Russian safe house, owned by an independently wealthy communist-sympathizing artist way out on some marshes.  One of the themes of The Hardliners is the prevalence of left-wing sympathy among the noble elites (who of course, Haggard is always at pains to point out, live in material comfort themselves).  These guys are almost always total stools of the actual scary commie spies and one of them here really gets his comeuppance.

The Hardliners was a solid espionage story, nothing spectacular but kind of fun. 

26. Oath of Fealty by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle

Well I cheated and I paid for it.  I am supposed to be strictly reading only books on my on-deck shelf, but I stumbled upon this generically covered 80s paperback and thought that it would be not great, but at least an easy, entertaining read with some crazy action.  I should have been suspicious of this really terrible cover.  I mean the colours are nice, but talk about an utter lack of inspiration, in the name which maybe sort of has something to do with the book but even worse this partial image.  I mean what are we trying to convey here?!  It's amazing how even this limited picture can tell us so much about the sexual mores of the time.

My guess is that Niven and Pournelle were trying to go somewhat mainstream here with a sort of sci-fi techno-thriller along the lines of Robin Cook and Whitley Strieber which were big sellers at the time.  It takes place in the near future where a private company has built a gigantic cubic arcology in the middle of devastated Los Angeles.  I thought it was going to go the distance and involve some giant battle or collapse. Instead, it is more concerned with the social and political ramifications of such a setup, which might have been somewhat interesting if the authors were not such boring consnerdatives.  There are some nuances but not enough to make this go beyond the stupid Death Wish/urban decay themes of Reagan's America. Oh right and with a really nasty anti-60s counterculture cherry on the top (the radical groups against the arcology are basically terrorists rapists with no coherent position).

Not only were the politics simplistic but there is also a bunch of really stupid plot maneuvers that make absolutely no sense.  The plot hinges on an executive who releases toxic gas on what he thought were people trying to blow up the hydrogen lines in the arcology.  It turns out they were rich kids doing a prank (although actually they were a front for the eco-radicals). The executive is arrested and in the LA jail and the other leaders of the arcology decide to break him out of jail.  This involves the most preposterous (but also the only real fun in the book) episode involving a borrowed/stolen tunnel digging machine like the one used to make subway tunnels. It's ridiculous.

Also, they pepper in tons of nerd easter eggs here.  There are references to Cthulu, tabletop RPGs, science fiction conventions, all sort of normalized as if these had moved from a nerdy subculture to the mainstream.  I have to give Niven and Pournelle that they did get that right, but just wish these welcome moments had been in a better book.