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Ellis Peters' Brother Cadfael is about a former Knight Hospitaller who has retired to a convent in his old age. He gardens, treats the sick, gives sage advice to the young, naps, annnd solves a murder every couple of months to keep himself busy. I started reading the series in college, and I've always found them extremely soothing - at least when not taken in excess. Too many in a row and you start wanting to wipe that smug look off Cadfael's face.
The books are very formulaic, to the point that - I tell you after a quick survey of the ones I have on hand - the turns in their plots can often actually be predicted by page number. When you get to page 150, you can be pretty sure that Cadfael will be privately working out the murderer sometime within the next twenty pages, and will reveal him or her within the next forty.
The prose is a little ornate, often poetic, and very readable. Observe the obligatory description of the current state of Cadfael's garden, appearing somewhere in the first or second chapter of each book:
If that run-on sentence does not appeal to you on a very visceral level, then clearly you were not exposed to nearly enough Tolkien, Narnia, and flowery Arthurian retellings as a child. I believe that the ACA makes provision for free emergency injections of pastoral ideal; you might want to check that out.
The books have a strong sense of the seasons, and as such the winter ones tend to feel slightly darker, even when the subject matter is, practically, lighter. The Raven in the Foregate is a winter book, and the crime in question is not, compared to most of the other books, particularly serious. A new priest comes and is cruel to the parishoners, eventually indirectly causing a young woman's death. He is widely hated, and is found in a frozen pond with his head cracked open on Christmas Day.
In the end, the mystery is an unfair one, so I see no reason not to spoil it:
( Read more... )
In terms of physical damage done to people's lives, the events of Raven are minor in comparison to those of St. Peter's Fair, which contains several murders, a riot, a kidnapping, a death by fire, and three separate sets of spies. I'm surprised Francis Lymond didn't manage to worm his way in. But because it's a summer book, the mood is significantly lighter than Raven's. Every Cadfael book I've read so far involves Cadfael helping unite a pair of young star-crossed lovers; in St. Peter's Fair, the pair is much more deeply involved in the mystery plot, and their relationship is gentler and more innocent.
Dead Man's Ransom is also romance-centered, but the two sets of star-crossed lovers spend it separated and hating and doubting one another. It's a winter book, of course. Peters has this thing where her shorthand for the Evil That Lurks In The Heart Of Men is male homosexuality. Though she doesn't get as explicit about it here as in An Excellent Mystery, the imagery is fairly unambiguous. Ransom reminds me of the really guilt-ridden sort of BL manga, the kind that's in such deep denial about what it's about that it can't use the vocabulary.
The books are very formulaic, to the point that - I tell you after a quick survey of the ones I have on hand - the turns in their plots can often actually be predicted by page number. When you get to page 150, you can be pretty sure that Cadfael will be privately working out the murderer sometime within the next twenty pages, and will reveal him or her within the next forty.
The prose is a little ornate, often poetic, and very readable. Observe the obligatory description of the current state of Cadfael's garden, appearing somewhere in the first or second chapter of each book:
Here within the walls he had made, virtually single-handed, this closed garden for the small and precious things, and in the outer levels, running down to the Meole brook that fed the mill, he grew food crops, beans and cabbages and pulse, and fields of pease. But now with the winter closing gently in, and the soil settling to its sleep like the urchins under the hedges, curled drowsily with all their prickles cushioned by straw and dead grass and leaves, he was left with just one novice to help him brew his draughts, and roll his pills, and stir his rubbing oils, and pound his poultices, to medicine not only the brothers, but many who came for help in their troubles, from the town and the Foregate, sometimes even from the scattered villages beyond.
If that run-on sentence does not appeal to you on a very visceral level, then clearly you were not exposed to nearly enough Tolkien, Narnia, and flowery Arthurian retellings as a child. I believe that the ACA makes provision for free emergency injections of pastoral ideal; you might want to check that out.
The books have a strong sense of the seasons, and as such the winter ones tend to feel slightly darker, even when the subject matter is, practically, lighter. The Raven in the Foregate is a winter book, and the crime in question is not, compared to most of the other books, particularly serious. A new priest comes and is cruel to the parishoners, eventually indirectly causing a young woman's death. He is widely hated, and is found in a frozen pond with his head cracked open on Christmas Day.
In the end, the mystery is an unfair one, so I see no reason not to spoil it:
( Read more... )In terms of physical damage done to people's lives, the events of Raven are minor in comparison to those of St. Peter's Fair, which contains several murders, a riot, a kidnapping, a death by fire, and three separate sets of spies. I'm surprised Francis Lymond didn't manage to worm his way in. But because it's a summer book, the mood is significantly lighter than Raven's. Every Cadfael book I've read so far involves Cadfael helping unite a pair of young star-crossed lovers; in St. Peter's Fair, the pair is much more deeply involved in the mystery plot, and their relationship is gentler and more innocent.
Dead Man's Ransom is also romance-centered, but the two sets of star-crossed lovers spend it separated and hating and doubting one another. It's a winter book, of course. Peters has this thing where her shorthand for the Evil That Lurks In The Heart Of Men is male homosexuality. Though she doesn't get as explicit about it here as in An Excellent Mystery, the imagery is fairly unambiguous. Ransom reminds me of the really guilt-ridden sort of BL manga, the kind that's in such deep denial about what it's about that it can't use the vocabulary.
