Crocodile on the Sandbank – 3/5 Stars If you haven’t read this book, it’s a little hard to fully understand how to categorize it. It’s very British-feeling, even though it’s written by an American author. It’s very British-loving to be sure. It reads almost like a mystery novel, but it’s not entirely a mystery. Instead, it’s most close to a few of the antecedents mentioned in the book itself. It styles itself after HR Haggard adventure tales, but in a less buxom/masculine kind of way. […]
This Mermaid Packs a Punch
The Sea King’s Daughter by Barbara Micheals (1975) – Occasionally, I have to cleanse my palate with something non-SF/Fantasy. The mother of my children got me hooked on Barbara Micheals (really Elizabeth Peters), and I’ve always enjoyed her novels. With this one, I thought maybe they’d gotten the authors mixed up. Elizabeth Peters wrote her adventure novels under her own name. She wrote her supernatural books under Barbara Michaels, but I was over halfway through this one before anything remotely magical happened. Ms. Peters was […]
Amelia Peabody Goes to Egypt Again
I’ve been trying to always have an audio book available to listen to when I’m in my car. I enjoyed Elizabeth Peter’s first book in her series about Amelia Peabody, so I decided to move on to The Curse of the Pharaohs (1981). The Curse of the Pharaohs begins about three years (I think?) after the ending of the first book. Amelia has married Radcliffe Emerson–her love interest/soul mate from the first book, she’s just recently had a child, and they’ve settled down to a relatively peaceful […]
It’s easier to disregard society’s constraints when you’re rich
As I was looking for more books on CD to listen to in the car, I remembered The Crocodile on the Sandbank (1975) from an earlier Cannonball review. Fortunately there was no wait, and I was soon listening to the adventures of the intrepid Amelia Peabody and her friends in Egypt. Amelia Peabody is a fascinating character, a feisty feminist stifled by the Victorian times of 1884. Fortunately, she is primarily immune from society’s constraints through her independence of mind and means. When her father died, […]