Algy goes missing while investigating gold smuggling near the Terai, a jungle region between India and Nepal. By the time this is reported to Biggles, he's presumed dead. Biggles immediately takes Bertie with him to go find Algy--one way or another.
This is a very fun book, partly because of the unusual team-up of just Biggles and Bertie. Bertie is sweet, competent, and extremely self-deprecating, which made me wonder if it's his personality or a cultural norm for behavior if you're a Lord and with people who aren't, so you don't seem like you're LORDing it over them. There's a good mystery, a ton of India-Nepal border atmosphere, and lots of nice opportunities for Biggles to be comfortable in a place he knows well.
It is also astonishingly not very racist! That is, there is some of-the-time language, but there's a lot of Indian and Nepali characters, and they're all portrayed as just people: some heroic, some criminal, some ordinary. I particularly enjoyed the young aspiring pilot who tags along on their adventures and a matter-of-factly heroic Gurkha.
India here is very clearly not the India of The Boy Biggles. Time has moved on and language has changed - something acknowledged in the book itself.
Biggles and his crew are also noticeably older than they are in some of the earlier books. They don't age in real time, but they do age; in some of the later books, including this one, they're clearly middle-aged. One of the most striking scenes is when Biggles gets in a dogfight and realizes that it's been years since he's been in one. The other pilot has absolutely no chance against him because Biggles is an actual aerial combat veteran and his opponent seems to be just a guy doing crimes. Biggles tries to warn him, but of course that's not something you can really convey from an airplane...
I feel that it is not a spoiler to say that Algy is not in fact dead. But given that he's presumed dead for a lot of the book, I wished the characters were slightly less stiff upper lip about it. The first chapter in particular needed more quiet freaking out of the sort everyone else did when Biggles went missing in Biggles Fails To Return. I felt a bit angst-deprived, and also post-rescue comfort-deprived.
As a result, there are several Terai-based fics I would like to recommend:
Sunflowers, by![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
sholio. Very touching post-rescue missing scene which also deals with the passage of time.
Fracture Reduction, byblackbentley. "Okay. You're fine. Good for you. But have you ever considered what this has been like for me?" Ginger asked. (Spoiler: Algy is not fine.)
Good Neighbors, bysholio. After the events of the book, Algy gets a visitor while the others are away.
This is a very fun book, partly because of the unusual team-up of just Biggles and Bertie. Bertie is sweet, competent, and extremely self-deprecating, which made me wonder if it's his personality or a cultural norm for behavior if you're a Lord and with people who aren't, so you don't seem like you're LORDing it over them. There's a good mystery, a ton of India-Nepal border atmosphere, and lots of nice opportunities for Biggles to be comfortable in a place he knows well.
It is also astonishingly not very racist! That is, there is some of-the-time language, but there's a lot of Indian and Nepali characters, and they're all portrayed as just people: some heroic, some criminal, some ordinary. I particularly enjoyed the young aspiring pilot who tags along on their adventures and a matter-of-factly heroic Gurkha.
India here is very clearly not the India of The Boy Biggles. Time has moved on and language has changed - something acknowledged in the book itself.
Biggles and his crew are also noticeably older than they are in some of the earlier books. They don't age in real time, but they do age; in some of the later books, including this one, they're clearly middle-aged. One of the most striking scenes is when Biggles gets in a dogfight and realizes that it's been years since he's been in one. The other pilot has absolutely no chance against him because Biggles is an actual aerial combat veteran and his opponent seems to be just a guy doing crimes. Biggles tries to warn him, but of course that's not something you can really convey from an airplane...
I feel that it is not a spoiler to say that Algy is not in fact dead. But given that he's presumed dead for a lot of the book, I wished the characters were slightly less stiff upper lip about it. The first chapter in particular needed more quiet freaking out of the sort everyone else did when Biggles went missing in Biggles Fails To Return. I felt a bit angst-deprived, and also post-rescue comfort-deprived.
As a result, there are several Terai-based fics I would like to recommend:
Sunflowers, by
sholio. Very touching post-rescue missing scene which also deals with the passage of time. Fracture Reduction, by
blackbentley. "Okay. You're fine. Good for you. But have you ever considered what this has been like for me?" Ginger asked. (Spoiler: Algy is not fine.) Good Neighbors, by
sholio. After the events of the book, Algy gets a visitor while the others are away.
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Presumably that's the same one as my "The Boy Biggles", interesting shift in the title.
And that's an excellent picture of a Hawker Hunter on the cover.
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Yes, it's a great cover. The Hawker Hunter is very crucial in the story.
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There’s another fun Terai fic, heavy on the medical detail (prizes for using the best tag I have ever seen, ‘fracture reduction without sedation’), focusing on the heroic Gurkha and his rescue of Algy: https://archiveofourown.org/works/39170007
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Mahomed Khan is great. Another one of my favorite bits is when Biggles yells, "Drop your rifle!" and he replies calmly, "That is bad for rifles" and carefully sets it down.
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But at the same time, I adore the very understated reunion between Biggles and Algy, I've always thought it feels just right for them. And Mahomad Khan is great, as is Ram Singh.
And the Hunter is possibly the sexiest of the classic jet fighters. My dad has been up in one, and I am mad jealous.
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I am also jealous of your dad! How did he manage that?
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He did give me a book recently which I think will be very useful - Halton Boys (Dad did his apprenticeship at RAF Halton).
Perhaps ironically, he currently works for Fokker...
Edited to add: sorry, I am the worst, thank you very much for reccing my fic! <3
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No worries! I owe you a comment. That is probably the first fic where the part that most ripped my heart out was buried in an end note, and I didn't get it until I clicked on the link.
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In my kitchen cupboard I have both a Sopwith Camel mug, and a Fokker one :D
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(A mouse once leapt out of our toaster and ran up my husband's arm. That was a low point.)
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I don't know what's worse, thinking about Biggles reading tragic poetry and thinking of Algy being dead and trying to find something worthy of him ... or thinking about Biggles actually having to read that over a grave if they hadn't found him. Probably in the rain.
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I can absolutely picture Biggles in the sitting room, alone, in the early hours of the morning, trying to find a reading while the others are asleep.
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This is something I wondered about Bertie, too. I can see him developing this level of putting himself down and dodging conflict as a way of (over?) compensating for knowing he has more social capital than the people he's around and could easily be seen as stuck-up or just throwing his weight around. I could also see him developing this at least partly as a bullied child's defense mechanism. He's painfully apologetic about being a burden when he's hurt, too. (I need to write Bertie more, if I can figure out how to get better at writing him; he's clearly got an entire library full of issues.)
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