The Man in the Iron Mask, Alexandre Dumas

4.5 stars

First Sentence: Ever since Aramis’s bizarre transformation into the confessor of the order, Baisemeaux, the warden of the Bastille, had not been the same man.

Thoughts: Well that didn’t go the way I was expecting. I’d known the broad outlines of the story before I read the book, but it turns out I only knew half of it. I really thought Aramis was going to get away with it until he didn’t.

So what was Aramis up to? We’ve been asking ourselves that since Book One of Vicomte de Brangelonne and finally we have an answer. He’s going to further his plans to be the next prime minister of France, following in the footsteps of Cardinal Richelieu and Cardinal Mazarin. Thing is, Louis XIV doesn’t want a prime minister and wants to be an absolute monarch. However, there’s one little flaw in his plan and it’s at the Bastille: Louis’s secret twin brother Philippe. (Which is also the name of Louis’ younger brother Monsieur. Unimaginative parents.)

Aramis, who already found Philippe the Twin in Louise de la Valliére, goes back to the Bastille to tell him the truth of his heritage. Our sneaky religious then goes to the warden and presents a letter signed by the king authorizing Philippe’s release. He then takes Philippe with him to observe the King’s routines until he’s ready to make the switch.

Here we reach the limit of what I previously knew about the book. Aramis succeeds in switching Louis and Philippe the Twin and his plan works for a couple of hours until the real king returns in a right fury. Turns out that Aramis had confessed his plan to Fouquet (the finance minister) because he was going to kidnap the king from Fouquet’s house. The minister was terrified of the consequences of this switch, mainly because it was happening at his house, so he went to the Bastille, rescued the king, and brought him back during the morning levee. Confusion ensues.

Aramis takes off, Porthos in tow. From now on they occupy the first two spots on Louis XIV’s Specialized High-Intensity Training list. They hide out in Belle Isle, hoping the fortifications they built in the first volume will protect them from the royal wrath. Narrator: it will not.

Meanwhile, Raoul is still reeling from the revelation that ended the last book when he walked in on his One True Love Louise being the king’s mistress. Like a proper romantic hero, Raoul declares he will never love again and starts looking for the best way to get himself killed. It appears in the form of Duc de Beaufort who’s about to embark on a military expedition to Algiers. Athos reluctantly lets his son go, fearing that they will never meet again in this life. Narrator: they will not.

What about d’Artagnan? He’s caught between a rock and a hard place when the king orders him to Belle Isle to capture Aramis and Porthos. D’Artagnan does his best to convince them to escape, but then he finds out the king didn’t entirely trust him and sent another man with secret orders…orders to kill. Once again d’Artagnan resigns his commission and is locked away until Aramis escapes. Porthos, alas, fell victim to foreshadowing.

Later, d’Artagnan and Aramis are reunited. Aramis finally feels some sort of guilt for all his machinations as he tells the story of why only one of them escaped. He goes on to exile while d’Artagnan goes back to Paris where he learns that both Athos and Raoul have died. Well that sucks. But wait, what’s this? Some good news? Yes it is! At long last d’Artagnan gets what he always wanted: appointed Marshal of France. His joy, however, is short-lived because of course it is.

And so the Saga of the Musketeers comes to an end. The Age of Bravery is over, the Age of Romance and Manipulation has come into full flower. But it’s not altogether a tragedy. Our Heroes kept true to themselves and each other until the very end. And that’s what the story was really about in the first place.

The Bridge of San Luis Rey, Thornton Wilder

5 stars

First Sentence: On Friday noon, July the twentieth, 1714, the finest bridge in all Peru broke and precipitated five travelers into the gulf below.

Thoughts: This is the story of those five people. Well, three of them. Two were only children and didn’t deserve their own chapter. Apparently. There was almost a sixth person on the bridge, Brother Juniper, but he hadn’t made it when the ropes holding the bridge up snapped and sent the five unfortunates plummeting. But it did inspire Brother Juniper to formulate the central concept of the book:

Anyone else would have said to himself with secret joy: ‘Within ten minutes myself…!’ But it was another thought that visited Brother Juniper: ‘Why did this happen to those five?’ If there were any plan in the universe at all, if there were any pattern in a human life, surely it could be discovered mysteriously latent in those lives so suddenly cut off. Either we live by accident and die by accident, or we live by plan and die by plan. And on that instant Brother Juniper made the resolve to inquire into the secret lives of those five persons, that moment falling through the air, and to surprise the reason of their taking off.

It seemed to Brother Juniper that it was high time for theology to take its place among the exact sciences and he had long intended putting it there. What he had lacked hitherto was a laboratory. Oh, there had never been any lack of specimens; any number of his charges had met calamity,–spiders had stung therm; their lungs had been touched; their houses had burned down and things had happened to their children from which one averts the mind. But these occasions of human woe had never been quite fit for scientific examination. They had lacked what our good savants were later to call proper control. The accident had been dependent upon human error, for example, or had contained elements of probability. But this collapse of the bridge of San Luis Rey was a sheer Act of God. It afforded a perfect laboratory. Here at last one could surprise His intentions in a pure state.

Brother Juniper studied the lives of the people who fell off the bridge, interviewing everyone who knew any of the deceased, and wrote everything they said down, no matter how inconsequential. The result was a monumental book that ended up getting burnt in the town square, along with its author. Why? Because, the Inquisition said, Brother Juniper was trying to define God’s will which is unknowable according to approved doctrine. Insert joke about expectations here.

So who were these people, anyway? To begin with, there was Doña Maria, Marquesa de Montemayor, the town eccentric. She was a plain woman who had a beautiful daughter. The daughter married a Spanish nobleman and got the heck out of Peru. The Marquesa was despondent and took to writing letters to her daughter detailing life in Lima. A hundred years after her death, the letters were published and became required reading for all Spanish-speaking schoolchildren due to their amazing portraits of life in colonial Peru.

Why was the Marquesa on the bridge? She was coming back from the Cathedral of San Luis Rey where she had gone to offer up prayers for the life of her daughter and impending grandchild. She brought her servant girl, Pepita, with her. Before that trip the Marquesa had never paid much attention to Pepita even though the girl was the one who nursed her through all her hangovers. But then one night while they were visiting the cathedral, the Marquesa found a letter Pepita was writing to the Mother Superior of the convent she was raised in. The Marques read the letter and realized she never really knew what love really was. She resolved to do better in the future, starting the next day as she left the cathedral.

Next was Esteban, an orphan boy raised at the same convent Pepita was later adopted by. He had a twin brother, Manuel, who was his entire life. When the boys were too old to live in the convent, they went out on their own, finding work anywhere they could. Then the Perichole, the greatest actor in Peru, asked Manuel to write letters for her because she was illiterate and he wasn’t. The Perichole was also the not-so-secret mistress of the Viceroy of Peru, but the letters she wanted Manuel to write were to all the other men she was having affairs with. Manuel soon fell in love with the Perichole, but his affection was not only unrequited but short-lived as he cut his leg at the dockyards and ended up dying of an infection soon after.

Esteban was heartbroken. He was already jealous of Manuel’s affection for Perichole, but to lose him body and soul was too much. He took Manuel’s identity for a while until a sea captain friend found him and offered to help him start a new life. But first they had to take a trip to the Cathedral of San Luis Rey. The captain went down into the valley to supervise the cargo he was having shipped while Esteban took the bridge above.

Finally, there was Uncle Pio, the mysterious father figure to the Perichole. Mysterious to everyone else in Peru, that is. Pio was the man who discovered the Perichole back when she was just singing in taverns. He traveled the countryside with her, teaching her how to act, how to memorize her lines (which he read to her), and eventually released her on the stage in Lima. She was a sensation, and possibly the greatest actor in all Peru, maybe even better than the ones in Spain. However, she had a libido to mach her talent. As we learned from Esteban’s story, she had many lovers but she made sure that all her children were from the Viceroy. Eventually she retired so she could become respectable. The fact that one of her sons, Jaime, was constantly sick might have influenced her decision. Uncle Pio, who was cast aside with the Perichole’s career, returned and offered to take over Jaime’s education. The Perichole relented and let her son join Uncle Pio to San Luis Rey where they would start their new lives.

Then symbolism explodes all over the concluding chapter in the form of the Mother Superior’s meditations after meeting the bereaved families of the victims. She spends the final pages beating us over the head with Bridge As Symbol. But this is only for a few pages right at the end so we can ignore it all in favor of the biographical chapters which are much more interesting.

Louise de la Valliére, Alexandre Dumas

4 stars

First Sentence: Raoul and the Comte de la Fère reached Paris the evening of the same day on which Buckingham had had the conversation with the Queen-Mother.

Thoughts: Louise de la Valliére should be subtitled “In Which No One in King Louis XIV’s Court Slept in Their Own Bed.” Most of the book is about the romantic intrigues and amorous assignations in the royal court while they cavorted about in one of the country castles.

We dive right into the romance when Raoul asks his father to ask the king to approve his marriage to the fair* titular Louise. The king says no, Raoul’s too young. Besides, he’s a soldier in the royal service and the king isn’t ready for him to settle down with a wife just yet. However, he will help Raoul in his career…by sending him to England as an emissary to King Charles II. That also gives Raoul a chance to sweep up the aftermath when Lord Buckingham the younger has a duel with de Wardes the younger on a sandbar as the tide comes in.

Silly place for a fight, I know, but they actually had a good reason for choosing that location.

Athos goes home to sit the rest of the book out. D’Artagnan and Porthos also hang out in the background until the end. Aramis, however, is slinking around the Bastille making plans. Then he goes to the village near the Palace of Bed-Hopping where he meets a certain religious someone. Once that religious someone shows up, Aramis’ plans become somewhat less murky, but his true goals remain unclear. We’ll have to wait for volume 3 to find out what he’s really up to.

Since the Musketeers are out of the way, the rest of the characters are free to indulge in their various love affairs, up to and including the king. First he falls for his sister-in-law, Madame the Princess Henrietta. She falls for him, too, but they don’t do anything because her husband, Monsieur the Prince Philippe, is not only prone to jealousy but also has a boyfriend that is more than willing to sneak around and find out who’s paying attention to the princess. You know, because of heirs and parentage and that sort of thing.

It all comes to a head the night of the big ballet. After the dance, everyone goes for a walk in the gardens. Three of Madame’s maids of honor, including Louise, sit under a big tree and talk about which men of the court they think are the cutest. Louise admits that she’s fallen for the king. Suddenly, the king emerges from the bushes! He’s overheard the whole thing! And worse yet, he has the biggest gossip in court with him.

Soon all anyone can talk about is Louise’s affection for the king and speculating whether or not it’s reciprocated. It is, and Madame the Princess Henrietta is not happy about it. She uses all her wiles to keep the king and the maid apart. Many schemes are hatched, a secret staircase is constructed, and the king declares nothing will keep him apart from his beloved of the week.

Then someone drops a few hints in Raoul’s direction.

You may be wondering what the point of all these affairs. You might also be wondering why, if Louis is trying to be the absolute ruler of France, he’s spending so much time running after women and not ruling his country. Why is he letting his lower brain take control so often? Who’s actually in charge around here? The answer to all these questions will be answered in the next book. See you then!

*Several characters mention how plain Louise was, but that’s a portrait of the actual Louise on the cover. I think she’s pretty, but I’m not a member of Louis XIV’s court so my opinion doesn’t matter.

The Return of the King, J.R.R. Tolkien

5 stars

First Sentence: Pippin looked out from the shelter of Gandalf’s cloak.

Thoughts: Remember that crystal ball Wormtongue threw at Gandalf in the last book? That was a palantír, one of the seeing-stones of Gondor that Sauron corrupted. Pippin looked into it and accidentally announced his presence to Sauron, so Gandalf snatched him up and took him to Gondor so Sauron would be distracted from the armies preparing to march on his lands. Once in Minas Tirith, Pippin quickly won over Denethor, the depressed Steward of Gondor, and ended up becoming a squire.

Meanwhile Theoden is mustering the Rohirrim to ride to Gondor to help in the final battle. Merry’s going with, but Legolas and Gimli are following Aragorn to the Paths of the Dead instead. The Paths of the Dead are where the ghosts of the armies that failed to help Gondor the last time Sauron attacked are waiting for the King to return. Before he leaves, Aragorn uses the palantír himself to distract Sauron so he’ll be looking everywhere but in his own lands for his enemies to attack.

Back in Gondor, things are not going well. The fighting has started, Faramir was wounded defending Osgiliath, and Theoden is getting weirder and weirder. Then the cheese falls completely off his cracker and he tries to kill Faramir (who he thinks is already dead) and himself. Pippin stops this plan just as the Rohirrim arrive along with Merry and a mysterious warrior who turns out to be Eowyn in disguise. Together they solve the riddle of “Who can kill the Witch-King” by killing him. They were both wounded in the process (these things happen when you fight Witch-Kings) and end up in the Halls of Healing with the newly-rescued Faramir where they sit out the rest of the battle. By this time Aragorn and his Dead Armies have shown up and defeated the forces of Mordor outside the gates. Never one to rest on his laurels, Aragorn gets Gandalf to muster the soldiers still standing and they all go off to the Black Gate to be a distraction.

Which brings us back to Frodo. Remember Frodo? It’s a story about Frodo. As we know, he was alive but taken by The Enemy. Fortunately he had Samwise the Brave with him who earned his name by rescuing Frodo and leading him through the wastes of Mordor to Mount Doom where Gollum reappears in time to save Frodo from making the worst decision of his life. Then the Eagles Ex Machina show up and bring them back to their friends.

Then follows several chapters of celebrating and saying goodbye to everyone and Aragorn finally assuming his throne. Arwen shows up and they finally get married. They escort the remains of the Fellowship back to their several homes, with a brief stop at Isengard to see how the Ents are doing. Then Gandalf and the hobbits go back to the Shire. Or rather the hobbits go back, Gandalf wants to stop off for a chat with Tom Bombadil to see how he’s been since he was doing ABSOLUTELY NOTHING while everyone else was off saving the world. Still doing ABSOLUTELY NOTHING, it seems, because Sauruman and Wormtongue have been wreaking havoc in the Shire and our four hobbits have to chase him out.

I have no use for Tom Bombadil. I don’t know what he is or what his purpose is in Middle-Earth, but I do know that he isn’t to be relied on in a pinch. Unless you happen to be near his house. Anything more than a mile away, forget it, he’s not going to do anything for you. Stupid nature spirit.

It’s a bittersweet ending to our epic journey. I was sad to see the elves leave. It was inevitable because Tolkienesque elves are the mopiest type of elves, but they did bring a little magic to Middle-Earth. Now it’s all left in the hands of the humans and I, like the elves, am not sure if they’re up to the job. Still, though, they’re less mopey than the Tolkien elves. I blame the immortality.

The Two Towers, J.R.R. Tolkien

5 stars

First Sentence: Aragorn sped on up the hill.

Thoughts: The Fellowship is broken. Frodo took off after Boromir tried to take the Ring from him, but he didn’t get far before Sam joined him on his trek eastward. When Boromir returned to camp he found Merry and Pippin under attack by orcs. Boromir fought bravely, but the orcs shot him full of arrows and took the hobbits. Aragorn, who had been up at the watchtower with Legolas and Gimli, came back to find Boromir dying and all the hobbits gone.

Aragorn, Gimli, and Legolas tracked the orc raiders to Rohan where they encountered a group of Rohirrim on the way back from an orc-killin’ expedition. They directed the trio to the battlefield. They found a pile of dead orcs, but no hobbits. Before they could continue their search they encountered Gandalf the White. Well, look who finally finished killing the Balrog and returning from the dead. Gandalf brings them to Theoden King, kicks out Grima Wormtongue, and leads them into battle against Saruman who’s betrayed them all.

Meanwhle Merry and Pippin are not having a good time. They’ve been bound hand and foot and are being carried like sacks to Orthanc. Pippin not only manages to get his hands free during a quiet moment, he keeps it secret until the orcs get distracted by infighting. He frees Merry and they run into Fangorn Forest where they meet Fangorn himself, aka Treebeard the oldest of the Ents. Treebeard calls an Entmoot to decide what to do with both the hobbits and the orcs on their borders. They decide that the hobbits are good people and they need to take care of this little orc problem once and for all.

Side note: The Two Towers is the first movie I ever paid to see twice in a theater and it’s all because of Treebeard. Ents are a spectacle best experienced on the big screen. They’re also responsible for the scariest moment in the whole trilogy. It’s when Treebeard comes out of the forest and sees the desolation Saruman’s wreaked on the landscape and he lets out a roar of mighty Ent fury. Chills down the spine. Do not piss off the Ents.

Two thirds of the Fellowship are reunited at Orthanc when the warriors find the hobbits chillin’ out in the rubble smoking a pipe. Then the Fellowship is split again because Pippin did something stupid again. Honestly, though, I can’t get too angry with him. I would totally be Pippin if I were in the Fellowship because I would also like to know what all of this neat stuff is and how it works. I’d toss a stone down a Morian well to see how far down it goes and I’d also like to know what that round stone Grima threw at Gandalf was. I wouldn’t last a week in Middle-Earth without a wizard to look out for me.

But what about Frodo and Sam, you ask? They’re still on their long walk to Mordor and they have no idea where they’re going. Fortunately (surprisingly) Gollum shows up to help. He’s been in Mordor and escaped so he knows about a side entrance that Sauron isn’t watching. On the way to the side passage, they meet Faramir and catch up on events in the West since they ran away from Boromir. After a pleasant interlude in Ithilien, they find Gollum’s side passage and walk straight into Shelob’s lair.

Side note the second: I remember a discussion we had in a college fantasy lit course about Tolkien’s use of spiders. We never conclusively decided if he was afraid of spiders, but I personally feel he was very uncomfortable around them. Just look at how menacing they are in The Hobbit and The Silmarillion and here with Shelob. I feel that Tolkien would be the kind of person who would say spiders have too many legs.

Anyway, it all ends with the most frustrating final sentence in all literature: “Frodo was alive but taken by the Enemy.” That’s a line guaranteed to send you running for the next volume.

The Fellowship of the Ring, J.R.R. Tolkien

4.5 stars

First Sentence: When Mr. Bilbo Baggins of Bag End announced that he would shortly be celebrating his eleventy-first birthday with a party of special magnificence, there was much talk and excitement in Hobbiton.

Thoughts: I tried to read LOTR as a teenager. I guess I can say I actually read it, but I got through all three books plus the appendix and I had no idea what happened. Something about Frodo and a ring and Gollum from The Hobbit was in it. I put the books back on the shelf and went back to other series.

Then the movies came out twenty years ago. I watched the first one and the proverbial light bulb turned on above my head. So that’s what the hell was going on. All I needed was someone to act it out so I could follow through all the walking and all the High Forsooth. (It didn’t hurt that it was full of eye candy, especially Elijah Wood. Which is why this is one of only two book series I have the movie tie-in version of.) After watching the movies, I reread the books and this time they made sense.

We all know the story, right? Bilbo’s ring he swiped from Gollum in The Hobbit turned out to be the One Ring to Rule Them All. The fun trick of turning its wearer invisible turned out to be extremely dangerous because it brought the wearer to the attention of Sauron the Big Bad of Middle-Earth. Bilbo managed to escape before the ring got the better of him and left it to Frodo. Sauron sent his minions out to reclaim the ring, sending Gandalf into a panic and Frodo and his friends out of the Shire. They all met up at Rivendell where they decided to destroy it, formed the Fellowship, and started on a very long walk.

I forgot how much time Tom Bombadil took up in the first section of the book. I’m on the side of everyone who was glad he was cut from the movie because he really does just bog the story down. Oh, the ring doesn’t affect you but you’re not going to help the hobbits get rid of it? Bite me, Tom Bombadil.

I did like the bit with the barrow-wights, though.

Of course, my favorite part is the Mines of Moria. No matter what medium I am experiencing the story through, I cannot tear myself away from the moment the Fellowship goes into the mountain until they come out again. Especially once they start hearing the drums. Especially especially once they get to the bridge. That Balrog, y’all.

There’s a reason why this series established the groundwork for every other fantasy series that followed.

The Hobbit, J.R.R. Tolkien

6 stars

First Sentence: In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit.

Thoughts: I’m not a die-hard Tolkien fan, but I do think that this is the perfect fantasy novel. There is not one extraneous detail to bog the story down, everything moves in a straight line from Chapter the First to Chapter the Last, Bilbo’s growth as a hero with each adventure on the way…it’s just great. Tolkien never wrote a better book.

For the three people in the back who haven’t read this book yet, this is the story: Bilbo Baggins is an average hobbit living near Hobbiton in spacious Bag-End. He’s boringly respectable and never has any adventures. One day Gandalf, a wandering wizard, stops by and asks Bilbo if he’s up for an adventure. No thank you, Bilbo says firmly and goes inside. Gandalf puts a secret mark on Bilbo’s door and goes on his way.

The next day thirteen dwarves and Gandalf show up at Bilbo’s house for tea. And dinner. Afterwards, they gather ’round the fire to tell Bilbo why they’re there. The chief dwarf, Thorin Oakenshield, has found a map showing a secret door into the Lonely Mountain. Thorin’s father was once King Under the Mountain until the dragon Smaug showed up and ran all the dwarves out. Smaug then proceeded to lay waste to all the surrounding countryside, pile up the gold, and lay on it. And there he’s been sitting ever since. But with this map, Thorin & Co. can sneak into the Lonely Mountain, chase Smaug away, and reclaim both their ancestral halls and ancestral gold. They want Bilbo to be their burglar for a 1/14^th share of the treasure. Want to come along?

Bilbo would not. However, the next morning Gandalf returns and pushes him out the door to meet the dwarves at the local tavern where they will embark on their journey. It’s a long journey that takes them to the Last Homely House (aka Rivendell, home of Elrond) to the Misty Mountains to the house of Beorn the skin-changer to the forests of Mirkwood to the halls of the Wood Elves to the village of Laketown and then finally to the Lonely Mountain itself. Along the way they have many adventures with trolls, goblins (or orcs as we later know them), giant spiders, and elves both cheerful and irritable. Surprisingly, Elrond is not one of the irritable ones.

Bilbo himself changes on this adventure from a grouchy middle-aged hobbit to a skilled burglar who can match wits with a dragon in its own lair. The major catalyst to this transformation is a magic ring he found in a cave deep beneath the Misty Mountains when he and the dwarves were trying to escape from the goblins. Soon after Bilbo found the ring he was accosted by another creature that lived in the cave: Gollum. Bilbo challenged Gollum to a riddle contest and won by asking the unanswerable riddle “What have I got in my pocket?” Gollum didn’t know Bilbo had found his ring and Bilbo didn’t know it would make him invisible until he accidentally put it on and Gollum ran right past him. That ring gave Bilbo the edge he needed to face the enemies he and the dwarves would encounter in the second half of the story.

This is Bilbo’s story and he’s a wonderful main character. We really get involved in his experiences, feeling his exhaustion after the long days of travel, his hunger when the rations run short, and terror when he’s confronting an enemy alone. We also feel his triumph when he gets home just in time to keep the Sackville-Bagginses from moving into Bag-End. Bilbo may have lost his reputation as a respectable hobbit, but at least he got one over on the real villain of the story: Lobelia Sackville-Baggins.

And the ring, but that’s a story for another time.