Royal Flash

Harry Flashman is a damnable rouge. He's a drunk, and a cheat, and a coward, and a liar, and he's one of the most fun characters I can think of. These books are historical fiction, set in the 19th century, which is a brilliant time for adventurers like Flashy to get into trouble.

Flashman's (fictional) memouirs take him all over the world. From Victorian London, to his service in the British Army, to his adventures in the United States, to Africa and beyond.

The first book told of how Flashy was forced, by circumstances of his own creation, to join the British Army and be sent to Afganistan. While there he did his best to run away from danger, avoid any real hard work, and sleep with as many beautiful women as he could.

Flashman is basically the Sterling Archer of the British Empire, but with more running away from danger.

That first book, simply titled Flashman, is one of my favourites, and so I was greatly looking forwards to his second adventure, Royal Flash. Sadly, Royal Flash is much the disappointment. It hinges on one joke: what if the famous adventure novel The Prisoner of Zenda was actually based on a misadventure of Flashman's? A tale of royalty, lookalike imposters, plots, counter-plots and doomed love affairs, Flashman is forced against his will into heroic circumstances against great peril, and in doing so the story loses almost all of the fun.

Flashman has no agency over his own actions in this book. He is forced, by Otto Von Bismark no less, to do everything he does. And while Flashy complains bitterly about it all, he mostly just goes along with things, as a pawn in someone else's story. There is little opportunity for him to get up to any fun, and the adventure plays out much the same as it would with anyone else in his shoes.

The whole joke relies on the reader being familiar with The Prisoner of Zenda, but since that tale has fallen into relative obscurity, the value there was lost on me completely. It's a thin joke, and not enough to sustain the novel.

There are still some excellent passages. Flashy's unfriendly rivalry with Bismark, in steeple-chasing and in a short boxing match, make for two great sections. But the main plot of the thing is a plodding affair, which has little meaning on the story of Flashman's life.

If I were setting out to read the series afresh, I would give this book a miss. It is not essential to the larger tale of Flashy's life, and there's better stories to read first. As a series however, I love Flashman, and loudly recommend it to everyone.

I will re-read GoT.

I'm thinking about re-reading Game of Thrones. With the TV show starting soon, it's been on my mind. And it is a brilliant story, and I really want to get into the world properly this summer, reaing the sequels now that I have the time.

Of course, it is quite long, so I'll probably spread it out until the end of Easter.

Winter is coming!

A Song Of Fire And Ice

I just started reading A Game Of Thrones, and it is very, very epic. If it keeps up like this, it will be getting the first Best Book You're Not Reading.

This book is the first in the Song of Fire and Ice series, which is written by George R R Martin, and is set in a fictional medieval land, which acts very much like War of The Roses England. The book is about the key families in the royal court, and the power struggle that is emerging. That may not sound as good as it is, and I assure you, I am just selling it short, because it is truly amazing. Anyhoo, more of this to come once I have finished.

Anyway, the reason I bring this up is that the book is amazing, and there is a TV adaptation coming next year, which you should really keep an eye out for.

Game of Thrones. Remember that name.

Float Out review

Serenity: Float Out is a one issue comic, set after the movie Serenity, and "expanding" upon the character of Wash. I put expanding in quotations because of how spectacularly it fails to do this.

In this comic, three new characters are about to christen their new ship, when one of them mentions Wash, who has recently died. They spend five pages standing there, expositioning at us about their new ship, which is pointless as these characters are ones we have never seen before nor will ever seen again. They have no personalities, and these pages do nothing for the story. This exposition is very bornig, and what makes it worse, it is the most predicatble backstory imaginable. It just feels like padding.

Then these guys decide, for literally no reason, to share stories about Wash. They take it in turns to tell a story which makes Wash into Jesus. (If Jesus were the pilot of a spaceship. Which he surely will be after the second coming. But I digress.) While this, kind of, makes sense for people reminiscing about a dead friend, but it does nothing for the reader. It just makes these stories less usefull for connecting us to Wash.

In the first story Wash pulls off the impossable, literally, in order to escape some Reavers. In the second, Wash pulls off the impossable, literally, in order to escape some Pirates. In the thrid he dumps his smuggled cargo so a friend can escape a trap.

This is really boring.

Wash does things out of character. He was makes jokes when the real Wash would be serious, due to haviing to concentrate on the whole not dying thing. He pulls stunts that the real Wash would know are impossable. The story does not develop Wash, it just has three guys tell us he was a great pilot. It does nothing to build him as a character, or devlop him in anyway. And it is really boring. This comic is a huge let-down.

This is what I hate about post-cancellation Firefly. You cannot just stick the name to it and call it Firefly. It goes deeper. Serenity was a great sci-fi film, but it was not Firefly. It was clearly not in the same 'verse.

If everyone is just gonna act out of character, then what is even the point of using those characters?