A Quokka Dreeds its Weird

That amazing cover is an extremely accurate drawing of an actual photograph which is reproduced in the book, of a performance piece by Claude Cahun.

Liberated is a graphic novel telling the true story of Claude Cahun, a French Jewish writer and artist born in 1894. Cahun, along with their lover, the photographer and artist Marcel Moore, was active in the Parisian surrealist movement. Later, they resisted the Nazis via a stealth propaganda campaign aimed at occupying Nazi soldiers. They created pamphlets and fliers, and smuggled them into the soldiers' cigarette packs and even pockets! And they did all this while Cahun was chronically ill. Eventually, they were ratted out, arrested, tried, and sentenced to death, but the war ended before the sentence was carried out.

Assigned female at birth, Cahun's life and art interrogated gender, persona, and identity, writing, Masculine? Feminine? It depends on the situation. Neuter is the only gender that always suits me. Marcel Moore was also assigned female at birth, but I'm not sure how Moore identified in terms of gender, or whether the name Marcel Moore was a preferred name or a pseudonym/artist's persona. I think the graphic novel probably doesn't pin this down on purpose, and my guess is that either it wasn't clear at this remove, or it seemed more true to Moore to leave it ambiguous/fluid.

The two of them met at school, fell in love, and traveled Europe together. And just when it started getting socially dicey for them to stay together, social cover fell into their lap when - I am not making this up - Moore's mother married Cahun's father! When they moved to the island of Jersey to escape the Nazis (this only worked for so long) they represented themselves as sisters living together.

The graphic novel is largely told in Cahun's words, with lovely graphic art plus a few of Cahun and Moore's own photographs. It's a quick, moving, inspiring, thought-provoking read, more relevant now than ever.

These are a set of beautifully produced one-color graphic novels (each book has a different color, in addition to black and white) about history, with the frame device of Nathan Hale playing Scheherazade for his hangman and a British officer. (The author really is named Nathan Hale and is a descendant of the original.) They're fun and often funny without being trivializing; the end of Above the Trenches is a real gut-punch.

I got them for my shop and read them on a slow day, and was completely engrossed. In particular, the one on the Donner Party made the events more clear to me than they'd ever been before. The graphics there were excellent.

Thanks to everyone who recced them! I hope they sell so I can have the excuse to buy more, because I would like to read more.

We had a monster in the river, and a secret in the lake. We had a ghost that haunted the road behind the wheel of a black dragster with flames on the hood. We had a Gabriel and a Lucifer, and a rebel that rose from the dead. We had an alien invader, a boy with a perfect arm, and we had a dinosaur loose on Merchants Street.

Cory Mackenson is twelve years old in 1964, in Zephyr, Alabama. This is the story of that year in that place. There's an overarching plot concerning the murder of an unknown man at the bottom of a lake, but most of the book is about Cory growing up in a place that's both magical and real, in both beautiful and terrible ways. Zephyr is the white town, and Bruton is the black town. Segregation, racism, and the Civil Rights movement are major parts of the story; the tone is often nostalgic but it's the nostalgia of a man for the boyhood he loved, not the nostalgia that believes the past was objectively better.

Reminiscent of Stephen King and Ray Bradbury in their more wistful modes, this novel has elements of horror and dark fantasy, but also lots of humor and beauty. Despite its clear inspirations, it feels very much its own thing. There's genuine magic and monsters, but some elements that could be magical or science fictional turn out to be metaphors, fantasies, or wonders of the natural world. This gives the whole book a feeling that there are wonders and terrors everywhere and in everything, and whether or not they're strictly real is less important than what it feels like to experience them.

A lot of the chapters are constructed as self-contained short stories. One of my favorites is about Cory and his friends and their dogs growing wings and flying, told in an almost magic realist style. Is it real magic, or a game that feels like real magic? There's a clear answer, but the chapter would have been just as satisfying if it had been the other one. In another chapter, Cory meets characters who we gradually realize are Frankenstein's Monster, the Mummy, and Dracula. Or possibly a washed-up boxer, his manager, and his trainer. Or maybe it was all a dream... but in this book, a dream is never just a dream.

I won't argue for this as a perfect book by any means, but I think it's a legitimately great one for all its flaws. As it says in the prologue, it has a dinosaur that runs amok, a Wild West gunslinger, a very cleverly constructed murder mystery, a monster in the lake, a semi-sentient bicycle, a ghost car, a green feather clue, the world's slowest handyman, the world's strongest glue, and more. Much more. Robert McCammon wrote other books I've enjoyed but he never wrote anything else like this. He put everything in it.

( Read more... )

Content notes: violence, some kid-type grossness, bullying, depictions of period-typical racism and racist and homophobic slurs, dead dogs and other dead animals. If you want to avoid a really gruesome dead dog story, it's chapter "Case #3432."

During WWII, Biggles is sent to Norway under a fake identity to map out possible airfields in case it gets invaded, on the understanding that he'll be pulled well before that could happen. He joins a private flying club so he has a reason to fly all around the country.

But one morning he wakes up in his hotel room to a strange lack of the usual morning noises. When he gets up to investigate, he finds that the streets are full of German troops. Norway has been invaded, and he's in the middle of it. I love the creeping "Something seems off" feeling, and it's evoked very well here.

I won't say more about the plot outside of a cut as it has so many delightful twists and turns and reversals, and it's more fun coming in cold.

This is one of the very best Biggles books, up there with Biggles Flies East - exciting, fun, well-plotted, and full of clever bits. If you like secret identities and people juggling multiple identities and going undercover and other forms of identity porn, this book is GREAT for it. Between that and some incredibly brazen bluffs Biggles pulls, the book has a bit of an early Vorkosigan novel feel. Algy particularly shines in this book, but Ginger is great too and even the minor characters are well-drawn. It's also, somewhat embarrassingly, excellent for Biggles/von Stalhein interaction.

Disclaimer so my ancestors don't rise from the grave and slap me so hard my head flies off: My headcanon for all WWII books is that von Stalhein was either a double agent during WWII or was secretly working with "let's murder Hitler" forces within Germany or both, believing that it was the only way to save Germany from itself. And then his handler dies or hangs him out to dry, his plots fail, and he ends up depressed and bitter and unable to ever go back. Honestly it would explain a lot. (Particularly in this book, actually.)

I'm okay with this as 1) I consider the Biggles/Worrals books similar to long-running comics canon in that there's enough weird inconsistencies that you can pick and choose your canon, 2) this series has a genuinely unique issue in that von Stalhein was introduced well before WWII happened in RL, written into the WWII books while the war was literally ongoing, vanished for the rest of the war while Johns clearly thought better of it and reappeared afterward in a different role while everyone decided to just forget that ever happened, 3) Johns himself was explicitly and very vocally anti-Nazi.

Anyway, below the cut you will learn all about how great this book is. Don't click if there's any chance you'll read it - it's really such a fun ride and best unspoiled.

( Read more... )

I'm happy to email an epub of this or any other Biggles book - just ask if you want one.

My opponent fell, shot through the head, one hundred and fifty feet behind our line. His machine gun was dug out of the ground and it ornaments the entrance to my dwelling.

The memoir of the Red Baron himself, the greatest flying ace of WWI, with 80 planes shot down. He painted his plane red, and the pilots in his squadron also painted theirs, so they were known as the flying circus. (If you thought clowns were scary...) He won a ton of medals, was a celebrity at the time, ordered trophy cups to be made for himself to commemorate his victories, and collected bits of the planes he shot down to decorate his room.

He was shot in the head while flying, but returned to duty with a bandage covering a wound that exposed his skull. At the age of 25 he was shot through the heart, probably by an Australian rifleman, while chasing a very inexperienced Canadian pilot.

Von Richthofen's memoir is quite short. It recounts his early life and how he began in the cavalry and then became an observer before becoming a fighter pilot. There's some good anecdotes of funny occurrences and snapshot portraits of other pilots, plus some dog stories which remarkably do not all end tragically. He endearingly refers to another pilot's dog as "doggie" and to his own enormous hound as "my lap-dog." (Given that, he might have been more amused than offended by Snoopy's battles with the Red Baron.)

He wasn't a good pilot immediately, and struggled with it early on. He's very dismissive of acrobatics and says that courage and a cool head is much more important than being a fancy flyer or even a good shot, noting that Boelke was a terrible shot on the ground but a master in the air. The bright, individually painted planes of his circus wasn't done as a showoff or intimidation tactic (though it definitely became the latter) but because you can't camouflage a plane in the air anyway, so it made more sense for his squadron to be individually recognizable to each other as they knew each other's strengths and weaknesses, and could make use of that when fighting.

But most of the book goes basically like this: "I bagged an Englishman today. He was my 33rd. I was very happy. I ordered a silver trophy cup to commemorate it, and I took the aeroplane's serial number and put it up in my bedroom."

He was an enthusiastic hunter, and he writes about combat exactly as if he was writing about hunting animals for sport. It's especially noticeable because he enjoys hunting on his days off, so you get an account of shooting a bison and an account of shooting a man and they're identical in all but the details.

He doesn't hate his enemies, and he respects the ones who fight well. When he lands beside a plane he downed where both pilot and observer are uninjured, he's pleased to be able to talk with them. (The best hunters respect their prey and appreciate their qualities even as they stalk them.)

I've read war memoirs where people take trophies, enjoy the adrenaline rush of combat, or find war an overall good and rewarding experience--that's all pretty common--and I've read a couple, mostly by colonial-era Englishmen, who find war a tremendously fun game. But I've never read anything quite like this. It's like "The Most Dangerous Game" from the point of view of the hunters, and it takes the cake for the creepiest war memoir I have ever read.

The context for its writing is that the German government asked him to write it as propaganda. They sent him a stenographer and had him talk to her. She took down his stories, which were edited into a manuscript and apparently heavily censored. And I read it in translation. So that's already at least three layers of distance and distortion between whatever von Richthofen actually said, let alone what he actually thought, and what I read. I'd be very curious to hear from anyone who read it in the original German, because with a translation I always wonder about accuracy and tone.

If the war hadn't happened, I don't think he'd have become a serial killer; he doesn't like hunting humans more than he likes hunting animals, just equally. (For me, that made it more chilling rather than less. And also, I have read a lot of war memoirs, and this is the first one I've read where that thought even crossed my mind.) I think he'd have been your basic rich kid who spends his life hunting and playing sports, and is admired within his circle of similar friends. But the war did happen, and so his particular attributes made him ideally suited, useful, valuable, and remembered.

Von Richthofen wrote an essay about a year afterward, which is included in some editions, in which he says he regrets the "insolent" tone of his memoir and isn't finding war quite as fun anymore. I wonder how he would have felt about it all if he'd survived the war, but considering Germany's next war effort, probably it's just as well he didn't.

On the other hand, people don't change until they do. The war memoir I've read that's closest in tone to this one was Lahore to Lucknow by Arthur Lang, by an English officer in India during the Indian Rebellion of 1857. It was his private diary, not intended for publication and only discovered after his death. To him, it's all a wonderful, thrilling game.

It continues in this tone right up until literally the last two pages, in which his best friend is caught in an accidental explosion and is horrifically burned but stays conscious. Lang remains with him until he dies that night. The last diary entry is a eulogy concluding by saying that his death ruined his enjoyment of the entire war. A postscript says that Lang became a public works engineer, and spent the rest of his life building roads in India.

Post-Biggles Buries a Hatchet, Biggles gets a mysterious letter asking him to come to lunch. Who can it be from? He doesn't give out his address to anyone!

...anyone except, apparently, his favorite ex-spy, who skulks in wearing a fake beard and sunglasses for ~reasons~. I mean, he does have reasons, but there were ways to accomplish what he wanted without sending anonymous letters and wearing a fake beard. It seems pretty clear that von Stalhein missed Biggles and missed being a spy. They're on extremely friendly terms in this book, though not as intimate as they get later on.

Von Stalhein explains that notorious assassins have been spotted in his favorite German restaurant, and he thought Biggles should know. Relatedly, he's concerned about the Roths, the family of a German official he knew, who was recently executed in a purge; he had a wife and two children, who will certainly be killed if they don't manage to escape, but there's nothing von Stalhein can do to help them. Biggles proceeds to ignore all orders, entreaties, and naysaying from British intelligence in order to pursue the lead and protect the people von Stalhein wished could be protected.

Unusually, this book doesn't involve any piloting and all flying is done by getting tickets on commercial aircraft, which means there's a lot of action around dealing with customs, being picked up at the airport, spies buying tickets and following them onboard, etc. Biggles justifies this as "It isn't worthwhile [to fly myself]. I might as well let someone else do the work." But it causes them so much trouble that it absolutely would have been worthwhile to use their own planes. I think Johns just wanted to mix it up a bit.

Biggles flies straight to Berlin, fails to find the Roths, but does locate Anna, the fiancee of older son Moritz Roth, and takes her back to London. The rest of the plot proceeds as a thriller version of a comedy of errors, as everyone runs around searching for people and missing the people who are searching for them. There's some nice action but no spectacular set-pieces. The best bits are character moments, like Algy getting a little caretaking after he gets roughed up and the crew interacting with Anna.

At one point Anna has a letter sent to her father which might or might not contain useful information; she's hesitant to open and read it as that's clearly a thing that is not done. Biggles wants her to open it, and she'll do it if he outright tells her to, but he refuses to do so. He'll lay out for her why he thinks she should do it, but says it's ultimately her choice.

In such a huge and not always internally consistent series, one thing that comes up a lot is how insistent Biggles is on allowing people to make their own choices. He'll try to persuade them, but he won't force them. We see this with von Stalhein over a very long period of time. It even comes up very early on, when Biggles is a teenager and way less mature in many ways, he deals with a young pilot who panicked, fled a battle, and says he can't fight again. Rather than telling him he has to or to push through his fear, Biggles talks to him very kindly and says it's ultimately his choice.

The letter, when opened, does have important information but is also a very touching character moment.

( Read more... )

I was pleased to see a very sympathetic, non-stereotypical Jewish character in a small but key role; I strongly suspect that at some point before writing this book, Johns met an actual Jew. Relatedly, this book is extremely sympathetic to refugees and persecuted people in general.

Other than that, my favorite bit was von Stalhein in a fake beard, giving Biggles a tip like a cat presents its favorite person with a mouse. I wish we could have gotten the scene where von Stalhein meets up with the Roths. It happens but off-page, and I'm sure it's quite touching.

I recently obtained a set of random Biggles books via Etsy. There are others that look more objectively good, but I pounced on this one first as the back cover mentions that they are nearly eaten alive by ants. I immediately knew, via a misspent childhood in a country colonized by the British and so littered with elderly British pulp adventure novels, that this meant they would be staked out to be eaten alive by ants, possibly stripped naked and smeared with honey.

This book is sufficiently racist that I can't recommend it unless you really like batshit 1930s pulp (I do) or are willing to plow through or skim a lot to get to the good Biggles-specific bits. If you don't fall into either category, enjoy the "good parts" version here.

It starts off with a bang with this frontispiece. Click to see Ginger naked, yes really.

Biggles, Algy, and Ginger are hired by Kadar, a young Egyptian man, to help him find a lost oasis of archaeological significance. Kadar is a fun, likable character and about 90% non-stereotypical. He's not the problem. The problem is everything else, all the way down to a footnote explaining that "native tribes" commonly drink petrol. Uhhh I guess it's historically interesting to learn about a completely new stereotype? Anyway, they fly out in search of the oasis and promptly get stranded in the desert and attacked by everything but the palm trees.

I hereby reproduce my liveblogging, which gives you the experience of reading the book:

- The first two chapters take place in 500 BC. (As atmospheric setup, as the backstory for a treasure hunt.)

- Ginger chases a butterfly.

- Biggles just punched a bat.

- An ordinary bat, but part of an attack flock. They ran into the bats while fleeing an army of scorpions. Somewhere in there Ginger got sneered at by a crocodile.

- We've also had some presumed dead. This is not one of the better Biggles books but you can't say it lacks for incident.

- Now cobras are falling from the ceiling.

- As predicted, they have been spread-eagled and staked for the ants. Honey is involved. 🍯 🐜 🐜 🐜

- Here's Biggles when they've been staked for ants:

"Don't worry, you fellows," he said quietly. "It will soon be over."

No it won't, Biggles, the whole point of being eaten alive by ants is that it takes a long time!

- Biggles, Ginger, and Kadar are the ones staked for ants, while presuming Algy dead. Algy, who presumed them dead, comes to the rescue!

Algy reached Biggles first, and shuddered as he saw the broad, black line of ants hurrying towards him.

Biggles was far gone, but he managed to smile, and whisper, "Good boy."

I'M SORRY THE SLASH WRITES ITSELF. Though regrettably, they were staked out fully clothed and the honey was only smeared on the ground around them, as a lure.

- There is also some high-quality Algy whump. He wanders the desert desperately searching for the others while it's literally burning the soles of his feet!

- Biggles is hilariously grumpy in this book. He's in a bad mood for basically the entire thing. (I mean, understandable given the cobras and ants and all.) Kadar is a civilian archaeology enthusiast tagging along, which is really fun as he keeps forgetting they're in extreme danger and wandering off to enthuse about archaeological finds, to which Biggles responds by reminding him that they'll probably all die.

- I just hit the moat full of snakes.

- Ginger is sleeping with his head on Biggles' leg while Biggles sits and smokes a cigarette.

- Also someone was sacrificed to a crocodile.

- (They have now been separated from Biggles).

The absence of his dominating personality and cheerful optimism made their own position seem so much worse.

What cheerful optimism? Not in this book! Dominating personality... Well, there was that "Good boy."

- Guess who utters this immortal line? "Frizzle, you blighters, frizzle!"

- Okay, this book has possibly the single most spectacularly batshit climax of anything I have ever read.

I am going to excerpt parts of the climax below, but seriously, if there's any chance you'll actually read this book, it's so much more amazing if you encounter it yourself. Warning: involves cruelty to animals (IMO Biggles is a bit out of character at points in this book) but in a cartoony way.

( Read more... )

I used Dragon Dictate to dictate that bit so I wouldn't have to write it out, and it was very difficult as I kept cracking up. Ever since I read it, at least once a day I have remembered it and laughed out loud. I am certain that Johns chortled to himself as he wrote it.

Content notes: About 30% racism by weight. Violence. Somewhat graphic deaths of attacking animals.

I quite like this cover, which would make a good icon.



This cover better conveys the tone of the book.

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 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.

"Do you realize that you've been intruding in what is acknowledged to be the most dangerous side of war? Believe me, had the men in that building known that you were there and were watching them, they would have - er - disposed of you without the slightest compunction."

"Oh, I realize all that," agreed Worrals. "What about it? Quite a lot of people are risking their lives in this war. Is there any reason why we should be exceptions?"

In this book, Worrals and Frecks of the WAAF get entangled in espionage, help out the French Resistance, and organize a spectacular rescue. This all comes about after Worrals notices a leaf stuck to the undercarriage of a plane, a leaf from a plant that doesn't grow anywhere the plane has supposedly been, and proceeds to make a Sherlock Holmes-worthy set of deductions and investigations. She pulls on a single thread, and all sorts of things come up with it. Accompanied by the loyal Frecks, Worrals pursues a spy, makes a dramatic forced landing, and ends up the official leader of an extremely dramatic rescue behind enemy lines.

There's about two pages' worth of Worrals being courted by fellow pilot Bill; Frecks threatens to bail out of the plane if such goings-on continue. Bill is fine - he particularly endeared himself to me by giving an exhausted and emotionally drained Worrals a much-needed packet of raisins, and assuring her that everyone collapses to some degree at the end of a mission - but Frecks is right there.

The series continues to blend very exciting adventure with atmospheric settings and fascinating little glimpses into ordinary life during WWII. Worrals and Frecks get trapped in a nightclub with the spy they're tailing when air raid sirens sound, and have to continue to dodge him inside; most people continue dancing. Why not? They're in the same amount of danger whether they dance or not.

You can download a free ebook at The Faded Page.

If you want a paper copy, there's a reprint edition available. Unfortunately, it's been given absolutely hideous new illustrations.

"The guns fired just as well for me as if a noble Wing Commander had pressed the button."

If you like Biggles, you have GOT to read Worrals.

During WWII, the Air Ministry asked Johns to write some books to inspire girls to join the WAAF (Women's Auxiliary Air Force). He obligingly wrote eleven of them, basing his heroine on two WAAF pilots he knew. The books are now even harder to find that Biggles, which is too bad, because this one, at least, is terrific.

Joan Worralson (aka Worrals) is frustrated with only being allowed to ferry planes back and forth, as women aren't allowed in combat. Her best friend Betty Lovell (aka Frecks because she has freckles) is frustrated because, at seventeen, she's too young to officially be a pilot. I should note that Worrals is a pilot at all of just-turned-eighteen. At one point a male pilot calls Worrals "kid," she asks him if he's twenty yet, and he replies, "Almost!" There are definite shades of the WWI Biggles books here, though thankfully casualty rates aren't as high.

After Worrals gets an unauthorized lesson in piloting a fighter plane, she's dispatched to deliver it to a base. She takes Frecks along as a passenger. When she tests out the radio, they hear a radio message about an unidentified plane that must be shot down at all costs, just as they see that same plane emerge from the clouds...

The action is absolutely nonstop from that point on. Worrals and Frecks uncover an extremely clever enemy plot, and the rest of the book is a wild ride of cat-and-mouse games, daring escapes, even more daring rescues, and thrilling flying. Johns' gifts for inventive plotting, exciting action, clever twists, and atmospheric settings really shine here.

Worrals has a Biggles-like gift for out-of-the-box thinking, and Frecks has a Ginger-like love for slang she learned from American movies. But they're really their own characters, and they have excellent camaraderie.

Worrals drives a car named Snooks and already had a private pilot's license before she joined the WAAF. (I'm not sure if that suggests she came from money.) She's extremely tough and forthright, and at one point is prepared to crash her plane and kill everyone onboard, including herself and Frecks, if that's what it takes to defeat the enemy.

Frecks is a bit naive (when someone suggests she try bleaching out her freckles, she responds that they don't hurt), admires Worrals for her courage, and gets flustered when faced with difficult decisions on her own. But when she needs to, she steps right up to the plate, and she gets an absolutely spectacular heroic bit in this book.

Unlike Biggles and his friends, Worrals and Frecks are viewed with doubt and suspicion because of their gender, aren't supposed to be in combat at all, and have to fight harder to prove themselves. Very refreshingly, Johns clearly has absolutely no difficulty believing that women can everything a man can do.

I really loved this and highly recommend it. You can download it and a couple other Worrals books here.

Content Notes: Literally no -isms whatsoever! That is, some sexism is expressed by some characters, but it's only there to be proved wrong by the author.

( Read more... )