[I decided in retrospect that the 4 was just an effusion of my fondness for Howard Whitehouse. The bits in the slums of London are definitely worth skipping in the re-read.]
This book would have been the third most anticipated title of the year, if anyone had told me it was coming. No one did. I hold each of you responsible, individually and personally.
"Being the Tale of a Criminal Mastermind, His Masked Minions, and a Princess with a Butter Knife, Involving Explosives and a Certain Amount of Pushing and Shoving." The (madcap!) adventures of Emmaline and Rubberbones continue, foiling villains' attempts to capture Princess Purnah in the skies, the woods, and the streets of London. They must overcome well-built carriages, poorly built flying machines, cake with slugs, and leather clothing.
If Mr. Whitehouse's previous book was Pippi Longstocking with pterodactyls, this one is Whales on Stilts without the whales. Or the stilts. Okay, the titles don't match, but I don't recall much about stockings in the first book. The tone and writing style are what feel so similar. Also the quality.
The writing carefully and precisely breaks things. The expected word does not arrive, and the sentence ends with understated absurdity. In a crisis, the heroic dog valiantly leaps to get a sandwich. There is no alarm when the princess hits someone with a baseball bat; why wouldn't she? The characters may be absurd, but their world accepts them.
They are sillier in this book because of an increased focus on the stranger characters. Princess Purnah cheers for calamity and violence. Rab has the optimism of the indestructible. Stanley the dog gets more time on stage, if not more intelligence. Professor Bellbuckle has a surprisingly large stock of explosives. Aunt Lily enforces English propriety by any means necessary. They are all such a cheerful bunch. If we are going to be entangled in an international criminal conspiracy, why not enjoy the sausage and explosions while we are there?
Emmaline does not appear as much in this book. That works just fine for me, since she is the serious-minded character who actually cares about the plot. For everyone else, the plot is just a vague set of boundaries within which they can live out their peculiarities.
I favored the first half of the book, when the plot was inchoate. I found the strength of the book in the characters rather than the story, so I was quite happy for Princess Purnah to go on about her demands for chocolate and stabbings. We open with children falling out of the sky, and the first plot element appears under the guidance of a Sikh commando butler. Further plot encroachments are battled with tea. Aunt Lily throws out the expository character before realizing that she was supposed to get the background story from him. Oops.
The titular Faceless Fiend is playing it straight. He is the villain, and he is going to fulfill his role in a Victorian melodrama of intrigue and mistaken identity. He will drive the plot forward kicking and screaming no matter who he has to kill. The rest of the cast is less cooperative, with minions who cannot be bothered to set up the dungeon and hostages who forget to lie under questioning.
If you want a more straightforward story, the second half is for you. The book settles down a bit once they arrive in London. There is a structure and plot-driven events, with plans and surprising coincidences that bring elements together for a climax. You know how this goes, you have read books. There is still silliness, but the balance has reversed, so that the frivolity is within the plot not against it.
Some parts of this do not work for me. Sherlock Holmes, really? The slums of Victorian London are a bit dark, given the book's normal tone. The ending is a bit neat and saccharine, which can be forgiven as a convention of the genre. The gypsy cameo will make no sense if you have not read the first book, and not much more if you have.
There is one scene that was inserted specifically to confound me, I swear. It is one of those scenes where things are going to go badly, you know it will, you can see it coming, this is going to be so mortifying, I can't bear to look ... and it works out, despite the laws of physics. *shake fist* And it works perfectly in the logic of the book.
I enjoyed this more than The Strictest School in the World, last year's surprise gem. Buy a copy for yourself and one for a friend.
Amazon link
author's website and kind of blog
Howard Whitehouse reads to you on YouTube
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