The Women of Nell Gwynne's - Kage Baker

I thought I’d change my reviewing ways a little for this themed month of steam punk reading, to highlight a little about what I think makes them fit the steam punk genre. Then at the end of the month after I’ve read a bunch of steam punk books I’ll do a final post to try and explain any other connections between the books, that add to the wider definition of steam punk conventions. I finished two books from my steam punk pile this weekend and I think I’ll begin by telling you about a slim, steam punk romp called 'The Women of Nell Gwynne’s’ by Kage Baker.

Plot summary

Set in the times of the British Empire and Victoriana, ‘The Women of Nell Gwynne’s’ follows a young aristocratic girl, as her life is changed by the death of her father and the rejection she faces from the rest of her family. Forced to earn a living, or die she sews a scarlet dress and hat, then begins walking the streets looking for rich customers to pay her way to retirement. Marked out as a special kind of prostitute, Lady Beatrice is soon recruited to join an elite brothel, which acts as a special information gathering arm of The Gentlemen’s Speculative Society, the Empire’s premier organisation when it comes to spying, inventing and generally safe guarding the Empire. The women’s directive is to use their natural intelligence and their bodies to loosen the tongues of their rich and influential clients.

Sometimes gathering information involves doing a bit of field work and during the novella Lady Beatrice and a few of her housemates are sent on a special mission with their leader, Mrs Corvey, to uncover what secret invention a certain Lord Brandon is inviting international millionaires to come and see. Off the girls go to be the entertainment at Lord Brandon’s planned unveiling party at his run down castle, described as ‘an ancient motte and bailey of flints’ . The castle geek in me went ‘hurray’ at this point.

Specifically steam punk features

Gadgets: Mrs Corvey has mechanical optics screwed into her face in place of her eyes, which went blind in her youth. They allow her to see again, zoom in and have a night vision feature. The Gentlemen’s Speculative Society also has lots of interesting gadgets to offer the girls for their mission, like sleeping draught dress buttons that dissolve in drinks.

Tunnels: It seems like every steam punk novel needs a network of tunnels to feature in its story. Nell Gwynne’s is attached to a respectable house, where a rather large number of ladies live by a tunnel so no one ever sees gentlemen arrive at the respectable house. There’s also a network of tunnels under Lord Brandon’s castle.

Opinion

‘The Women of Nell Gwynne’s’ is excellent. The premise of prostitutes acting as spies, working for good, not evil, is out of the ordinary and as always the inclusion of prostitutes in fiction opens up many interesting avenues of discussion. In particular, through the portrayal of Lady Beatrice readers can examine the idea of privilege in prostitutes, as it can be argued that it is Lady Beatrice’s aristocratic upbringing which makes her so suited to the work at Nell Gwyne’s, where they serve the highest reaches of male society. Connections with her father’s friends secure her introduction to Mrs Corvey. There’s a clear distinction made between Lady Beatrice and the common streetwalkers who take what they can get, ending their nights drunk. However, can Lady Beatrice be viewed as privileged when it’s necessary for her to sell her body to survive, even once she’s taken under Mrs Corvey’s wing? Is her previous aristocratic privilege the only reason she elevates herself above other prostitutes, or is her personality, described as ‘true as steel’ more important in gaining an advantage?

There’s more to be explored when you consider that even as the ladies’ services are respected by the men of The Gentlemen’s Speculative Society there’s never any question of the women moving into other areas, like invention, even in this covert world hidden from general society. They’re still stuck within traditional gender constraints, despite acting outside of Victorian society’s construct of proper womanhood. This keeps the spy community historically realistic and avoids changing it into a fantasy outlet for how we all wish men had treated women in Victorian times, yet the denigration of the women is avoided by having the male spies respect them for their courage and their talents. It would have been remarkable for women to find their work appreciated and attributed to them during the nineteenth century. Even though the gentlemen of the society sleep with the women for free, this is an active choice that the women make, not something that is forced upon them. Again in a situation where prostitutes are partially reliant on a group of men for their security this would have seemed a gift and as the narrator says ‘Life for the ladies of Nell Gwynne’s was, placed in the proper historical, societal and economic context, quite tolerably nice.’.

That’s all very interesting from an analysis side of things, but I think the most important thing is that this book is fun to read. The girls adventure at Lord Brandon’s castle is very much a spy romp, including elements of physical comedy like unstable costumes fashioned from bed sheets and a dessert of ridiculous proportions that the ladies are expected to dance around. The women all have wry senses of humour and light, practical sides to their characters that make them capable of carrying on regardless, or fainting, as the situation requires. As a group, they’re a joy to be around, with a spirit reminiscent of friends from a boarding school novel and the tone of their dialogue is often dry and smirking, without being bitter, despite their careers in prostitution. The secondary characters add to the comedy, even if they are not as fully developed as the main characters and I expect there would have been more to come for them in later books if the author had not sadly died this year. It seems that some of the plot is not conclusively tied up by the end of the book and I can’t decide if I’m missing something, if it’s meant to be left mysterious, or if it had to go to publication slightly unfinished because the author was so ill.

I can’t talk this book up enough, it’s a little bit different, but not overly steeped in sci-fi for anyone unsure about that element of the steam punk genre. If you enjoyed ‘The Crimson Petal and the White’ or Sarah Water’s Victorian novels I think you could happily spend an entertaining afternoon with ‘The Women of Nell Gwynne’s’. On a side note I’ll should probably mention that this novel is kind of a prelude and offshoot to Kage’s main series of novels about The Company (which is what The Gentleman’s Speculative Society will become) which I haven’t read yet. While I could tell some characters might have special significance for fans of The Company novels I never felt I needed to have read those books to understand this one. It stood alone well and was a wonderful book in its own right.

Other Reviews

Chasing Ray

What Book is This?

Birthday Books

It has been almost three weeks since my birthday and I’ve suddenly realised I haven’t mentioned the books people got me for my 25th, or the sneaky little books I might have bought while on annual leave. How can this be, my floor is covered in books, how can it have slipped my mind to post about them?

Let’s start with the most wonderful surprise of all – a book from a friend. This never, ever happens, my friends do not buy me books and I think my experiment of giving books alongside other birthday and Christmas presents this year has been a serious failure, as everyone talked about their other presents happily, but didn’t really talk about their books (in case you’re wondering I bought ‘Magyk’ for a recovering Harry Potter addict, ‘Ten Cents a Dance’ for a fellow history lover, who is taking her MA in museum studies and ‘Flygirl’ for an army pharmacist whose fiancé has every book every written about the history of war). Even the friends who read (museum studies lady and army woman) don’t tend to send books as presents. This year someone bought me ‘A World without Bees’ to accompany the gift of a hive to Heifer International. They couldn’t really have picked better, as this will make a perfect second read for Sylvia’s ‘Year of Biodiversity’ challenge and I know I’ve seen reviews which made me want to get interested in bees.

My parents consulted with me before shopping and picked up a few novels I especially wanted. I’m now the cheerful owner of ‘Daphne’, ‘The Happy Island’ (Dawn Powell may be my new literary obsession) and ‘Heaven’s Net is Wide’, the prequel to the Tales of the Otori fantasy series. It turns out ‘The Girl with Glass Feet’ is one of the choices for the ‘Not the TV Bookclub’ Simon from Savidgereads and a couple of other bloggers are running this year, so I’m happy I finally got a copy. A couple of these books got stuck in the snow, so I had a lovely steady stream of presents that kept arriving after my birthday and I feel pretty chuffed I remembered to only ask for books that were out in paperback this year – I save people money.

I might have made a few sneaky little purchases recently as well. I couldn’t resist Tracey Chevalier’s ‘Remarkable Creatures’ once the paperback edition appeared. I know some people really weren’t impressed with her most recent novel, ‘Burning Bright’ but I liked it just as much as I liked her older books (very much indeed) and I find her to be a generally strong storyteller. ‘Graceling’ is here now and I totally that purchase down to review pressure, there are only so many wonderful reviews I can take from bloggers I trust before breaking down and buying books. ‘Anila’s Journey’ was a random find and I’ll talk a little more about how I came to buy it in a later post. A historical novel about a girl who joins a naturalist on a river exploration fits with my current interest in stories about early naturalist and botanists (must get to ‘Flower Hunters’ this year as well). Lastly I bought the first Lucifer Box spy series, ‘The Vesuvius Club’, which features a gay Edwardian secret agent – flimsy book buying excuse number 109 ‘I needed change for the bus’.

I am considering a bit of a buying binge right now because I’m feeling a little down (no Paul McKenna I still do not want to be cured of my emotional spending ways, books are not that expensive) but I do wonder where I’d put them all. Need some sort of magical filing cabinet if anyone is looking for a project.

How to prepare for the Apocalypse

Lenore is having her own themed reading month over at ‘Presenting Lenore’ and I think our two themes match up nicely as she’ll be reading tons of dystopian fiction and I’ll be reading steam punk, which often takes place in dystopian societies. Never say book bloggers aren’t as cheery as a Clinton’s interior during the Valentine’s month (if you would prefer something more sweet and pink let me recommend a trip to bookarama, where there’s a big Blog Luv Fest going on during February).

In her initial post Lenore recaps why some bloggers say they like dystopian fiction and they all offer good reasons. It started me thinking about what we all take away from dystopian fiction, or more usefully what we can learn that will help us to survive the (almost certainly on its way this time) Apocalypse.

Only the Amish will survive: If I’ve learned one thing from dystopian fiction it’s that technology is bad and science is not always to be trusted either. They will almost certainly be the downfall of our civilisation and we would all be best avoiding anything the Luddites would not have been happy with. So step away from your computer right now people, it’s probably just biding its evil time.

Girls get your guns: Women’s rights are almost always the first thing to go in a dystopian society, meaning it’s probably a good idea to learn how to shoot a gun now, before people turn up chanting ‘Rights. You don’t need no stinking rights.’

Your money is no good here: Start stock piling tradable supplies. Those people piling their trolleys with cans and mountains of bread at Christmas time will make you dance for food if you don’t get on with it.

The world can end, as long as I have you: Don’t worry there will still be plenty of time for lurve in a dystopian society (of course walking around pointing guns at men’s privates may make it harder for women to find ‘the one’). The world may flood, freeze or dry up but it’s likely that these conditions will help you find that special someone, rather than hinder your search for love. Ok, you won’t get along right away, you’re on a quest while they’re all about scavenging, but then your eyes will meet as you’re fighting off the packs of giant (probably genetically modified) rats and you’ll realise they mean the world to you (the old world, not this awful new world). Just don’t expect to see in your silver wedding anniversary with them.

If all else fails, dig!: Underground tunnel systems are the way to travel in a dystopian society, but they take time to create. Why not start setting some up now? No, I’m sure you don’t need planning permission, the council will understand when you tell them about the upcoming Apocalypse.

See it does not all have to be doom and gloom in dystopia land as long as you prepare. What dystopian lessons do you have to pass on from your reading? Anyone want to volunteer to build my underground shelter (hammers are not my friends).

Whirlybrain

I think my attention span may have been broken these last few days. I haven’t read anything in book form for four days and I had to make the decision to put down ‘Boneshaker’ because it is brilliant and every time I picked it up my head would spin off to think about something else, while my eyes continued to scan the page, until I snapped back to the present and realised I hadn’t been taking anything in at all. I hate when that happens.

My head is in a whirl about job interviews at the moment. I’ve had one already (didn’t get through to the next level) and have two more next week, one where I have to create a presentation on the spot, about an unknown topic and one where I have to take a test. The process is nerve wracking, especially as I am well aware that I don’t often make a good first impression.

Luckily my steam punk month idea still allows for lots of variety in reading so today I decided to try again with one of the lighter reads. ‘The Osiris Ritual’ is from a series of steam punk mysteries beginning with ‘The Affinity Bridge’ which I read a couple of years ago. It’s about a steam punk series with a very cozy, familiar feel. Yes I realise a mysterious plague creating werewolf zombies in the London slums and automatons with the potential to kill may not be everyone’s idea of a cozy set up, but there’s only a low level of violence, the plots tend to revolve around the upper classes and you can be sure that even if they’re in peril the main characters will get out alive. They’re the steam punk equivalent of an extended visit with Sherlock Holmes, if Watson was a woman and Holmes didn’t have a problem with that.

So far so attention taming. A young reporter has been sent to cover the social event of the season, a party where the host proposes to open up the wrappings of a newly uncovered Egyptian mummy to prove that it is an entirely unique find. I am absolutely sure that idea will not cause untold horror to be unleashed. Oh aristocrats when will you learn mummies are not for collecting, try matchbox cars instead.

Talking of attention spans and accidental scanning last weekend I was talking to someone about how many books I read for ‘The Year of Reading’ and she said, not meaning to be harsh (although I did kind of feel like she was saying I’d conned her out of her donation), that I must skim so much to read so many books in a year. Umm, no, what would be the point of skim reading a novel or a non-fiction book, unless I was researching something, I wouldn’t get the experience I’m reading to get. Sometimes I accidentally scan without keeping my mind of the text, but I usually go back and reread those bits because the plot gets confusing, or I skim when books annoy me, but otherwise I try to read sentence after sentence, word after word. Now I’m curious, does anyone else skim for pleasure?

The Mariposa Club - Rigoberto Gonzalez

‘The Mariposa Club’ follows four gay teenagers living in “mostly-Mexican southern California” who set out to form a GLBT club at Caliente Valley High School as their final, fabulous act before they graduate. They try to support each other through family problems, while also dealing with the inevitable fall out that goes along with intense teenage friendships. At the same time they aim to make their last year in Caliente as fun as possible and start to plan for the future, although their options sometimes appear limited.

Maui, Isaac, Lib and Trini have spent years as ‘The Fierce Foursome’, a group of close gay friends who identify with the flamboyant side of gay society. They adopt many practises traditionally associated with women, for example Trini wears blouses and dresses and the characters refer to each other as ‘the girls’, but they add their own twist on their behaviour, which makes it part of the unique gay culture. It’s hard to describe because I keep wanting to say their behaviour is quite extrovert, but that’s only true of Trini and Lib. Maui and Issac aren’t loud, or especially outgoing outside of their small friendship circle, but within that circle and in daily life they still do and say things that would be considered flamboyant if a straight man did them. This is a section of the gay community I’ve always found really hard to understand but this book definitely caused me to have a little personal epiphany and bumped me down the road to greater understanding (more reading and listening needed). Yet another reminder that fiction equals powerful.

The strength of this book is the characters and their relationships with others. All four main characters are created as distinct, interesting individuals with interests and personalities that are developed throughout the book. The complexity of the friendship between the boys feels realistic and their relationships with each other are sketched simply but strongly, so even though they fight and make up regularly it seems believable that they could so quickly forgive each other, because of the depth of their friendships. I love the detailed character portraits presented, that show Rigoberto Gonzalez knows everything about his main characters and one of my favourite things about ‘The Mariposa Club’ is how anti-generic the boy’s world seems. Skin colour, religion, cultural heritage, looks and economic background are all defined for the main characters and many of the supporting characters. It’s rare to see so much thought go into what can easily turn into invisible issues.

Although the secondary characters like Maddy, the sheriff’s daughter who is the fifth member of the proposed GLBT club (named The Mariposa Club because mariposa means butterflies and ‘fluttering butterflies’ is how Mexicans refer to gay men), aren’t as fully developed as the main characters I did feel like they were described enough for me to get to know them and understand their relationships with other people. It may not be possible to get an intensely detailed picture of the feelings of Maui’s dad, or Tony the closeted member of the local gang, but with light handed, brief sketches Gonzalez provides their moods and emotions in a way that allows easy access to their core characters.

‘The Mariposa Club’ deals with some serious issues about the conflict between straight male culture and gay teenagers, but it also aims to be a fun book about teenage friendship. It seems like it would be hard to realistically portray characters who have been hurt badly, as going through much of life like average teenagers who can be as cheerful as they are gloomy but Gonzalez has managed to strike an effective balance between the overbearing issues the boys face and the exciting feeling of being a teenager. While I remember the book’s message about the extent of the prejudice the boys face, I also remember the fun times they have. The book’s overall tone is light and the writing is quick and cheeky, making it a buoyant read that aims to bring readers to serious issues, by way of engaging, exuberant characters.

Quite a bit happens throughout the book and sometimes it feels like the author is trying to cram too much plot into such a short novel. There’s all the usual teenage drama like fights and ditching school, the issues that comes specifically from the boys sexuality like trying to set up the Mariposa club and fights with parents about being gay and there’s the extra, sort of unrelated plot lines the author throws in to move the action in a specific direction like parental health scares. It does feel like some plot points get lost in the background until Gonzalez is ready to resurrect them to further other, more dramatic plot incidents. This is especially true of the boy’s attempts to establish the Mariposa club, which gets shunted out of the way as bigger issues come up, but then is brought back near the end of the book to enable a dramatic ending. Mostly though this isn’t a big issue, as the novel flows from plot point to plot point, casually referring back to previous episodes on occasion, but sometimes the inclusion of so many different plot points left me feeling that the book was overcrowded.

‘The Mariposa Club’ is a smart, fun young adult novel that presents an interesting set of friends and treats its characters as unique and different human beings. If you enjoy it so much that you want to review it be sure to leave a link to your review in my comments section.

PS Make sure to check out my post about the racial and gender issues with this novel’s cover.

Cover Issues: 'The Mariposa Club'

‘Huh,’ you might think on reaching the end of ‘The Mariposa Club’ ‘that cover, its...its...ITS NOT RIGHT IN SO MANY WAYS!’ And you would be correct. After corresponding with the author Rigoberto Gonzalez I found out that ‘The Mariposa Club’ is yet another example of a cover where the racial descriptions of the main characters do not match with the models chosen by the marketing department to represent said characters. On the cover are three models, one has white skin, one has extremely pale skin and one has light brown skin (yep that’s only three, we’ll get to that in a minute). The correct bit is the white model on the left, as in the book a member of the ‘Fierce Foursome’ group of gay teenagers is described as ‘the only white boy’ in the group, but then we’re given another extremely pale model and one very light version of brown skin (I’m not really sure how to describe that better, suggestions?) when all the other characters in the book are Latino and two of the characters skin colours are actively described as dark. So we have a misrepresentation of the character’s skin colour on this cover.

Remember how above I said we’d get to the fact that the boys call themselves ‘The Fierce Foursome’ and there are only three boys pictured on the cover? Well the fourth member is Trini, who self identifies as a ‘she’ and wears women’s clothing. Do you see anyone matching that description on the cover? Nope, Trini got erased and doesn’t even deserve an inaccurate looking stand in apparently. Trini is also one of the main characters who is described as having ‘dark skin’. So that’s a fail on accurate gender representation.

Finally Mr Gonzalez mentioned being unhappy that one of his characters is often described as overweight, but all the guys pictured are thin. I know during the recent cover conversations weight has been talked about as an annoying inaccuracy, rather than a serious issue of representation, like covers missing black, asian or latino faces. I’m not really sure where I stand on that issue, I don’t want to minimise the feelings of people concerned with either issue, or get into a hierarchy of pain discussion, or derail any conversation, so for now I’ll try to treat all three cover misrepresentations as separate issues. So I’m angry that race is inaccurately depicted/disguised. I’m angry that a character who is female identifying was eradicated from the cover. I’m angry that this book contributes to the warped self-image larger teens are encouraged to view as normal.

Most relevant to the current blogosphere discussion is the fact that the characters have totally different skin colours from the ones the writer wrote for them. Let me say again that this is not right, putting a pale skinned cast on the cover of a book about boys who were not written with pale skin.

Mr Gonzalez tells me I am free to say that he had nothing to do with creating this cover and that at the time of its creation he was dissatisfied with it for the reasons outlined above (and he was quick off the email to address my questions about the cover which I very much appreciate and think that indicates how passionate he is about this issue) and that at the time he spoke about the importance of the characters differences. He also mentions that this has been brought up before, but I can’t find anything on the internet – does anyone know anything about this?

This book was published by Alyson Books, which on researching them confuses me. They’re an imprint which prints GLBT work and the founder lists one of his previous big projects as editing the most comprehensive anthology of African-America GLBT literature ever published. Surely a company like that should be operating a more self aware cover policy? If you want to contact the publisher about the cover for any of the reasons above you can try writing to:

Don Weise
c/o Alyson Books
245 West 17th Street, 12th floor
New York, NY 10011

Or email:

publisher@alyson.com

My review of ‘The Mariposa Club’ will turn up here in the next day or so (short version personally enlightening and enjoyable), in the mean time any discussion about the cover would be most welcome.

Steampunk Month!

Remember me mentioning something about having a month dedicated to reading steam punk novels? Well the time for that project has arrived, unlike so many other of my projects. In February I will be reading mostly steam punk novels, with a quick change of subject for the Harlem Renaissance Classics Circuit tour and an ongoing Stephen King read, because I need to get ‘Under the Dome’ back to a colleague and it is long!

Several people commented, when I first announced the idea of a themed reading month, that they did not know much about steam punk. Neither do I, but I know whenever I read about a novel someone classifies as steam punk I feel giddy and excited at the possibilities of a combination between sci-fi, dysotopia and alternate history. My brief knowledge extends to a very basic starting definition of the steam punk literary genre as books where the novel’s society still uses steam power. So you get blimps as the primary mode of flight, steam powered land vehicles etc. There’s also an offshoot called clock punk, where clockwork is the primary technology, but clockwork technology also turns up in general steam punk novels.

Many steam punk novels are set in Victorian England and contain that patented Sherlock Holmes mix of science, the supernatural, detection and adventure. Characters alternately fear technology, or at least come to fear how it can be misused and are intrigued by invention, which sounds psychologically fascinating when applied to Victorian society, that culture of extreme opposites. That’s about all I have for you, gleaned from reading two previous steam punk novels. Please see Wikipedia for more.

The steam punk books I plan on working through in February are:

'Boneshaker' – Cherie Priest: This is the first book I’ll be reading because it is a ‘Chasing Ray’ suggestion and Colleen mentioned that the heroine in a thirty year old mother who has to adventure off to save her teenage son. Alternate history combined with ‘mothers do not just have to wait and knit’ gender commentary should be more prevalent. I actually started this today while I was waiting for the traffic to clear so I could get to work after the impromptu snow flurry.

'The Women of Nell Gwynne’s' – Kage Barker: Another ‘Chasing Ray’ young adult suggestion. The author has a popular series out, which this is a standalone prequel tobut I know nothing about those books all I know is that there is an elite female spy ring operating out of an elite brothel and the women are on the side of good. Way to subvert the ‘prostitutes are bad people’ idea and the idea that all female spies are on the side of ‘the bad guys’ like Mata Hari.

'Leviathan' – Scott Westerfield: ‘Leviathan’ was the big steam punk book of 2009 and I really wish that such a popular author writing a steam punk novel would inspire the same kind of ‘omg vampire’ trend that is stillsweeping through young adult publishing.

'The Osiris Ritual' – George Mann: The second in a steam punk detective series which is will be cosily familiar to Holmes fans, but also features zombie/werewolf type creatures and some other odd surprises. Also a female detectoring sidekick, which Holmes would not have allowed.

'The Court of the Air' - Stephen Hunt: I got almost all the way through this last year, but gave up in the final 150 pages. It was too much of an overt historical parody for my mood at the time, and despite not being high fantasy it had that kind of extreme world building feel to it which was too hard to grasp with my brain in fluffy mode. I’ve kept hold of it for when I want more serious steam punk.

'Mortal Engines' – Philip Reeve: I thought this was steam punk, but after reading litlove's review it may be more of a general dystopia. I’ll keep as a backup read I think.

It’s about to get steamy around here (yes that was lame wasn’t it, I am so bad at ending posts strongly).