I'm not even going to attempt to review the Aeneid, because I have nothing to say that hasn't been more thoroughly said by two thousand years worth ofI'm not even going to attempt to review the Aeneid, because I have nothing to say that hasn't been more thoroughly said by two thousand years worth of scholars. I'll stick to reviewing Frederick Ahl's translation.
Ahl tries to reproduce to the feel of Latin poetry more than any other translation I read. (For comparison, I read parts or all of the translations by Sarah Ruden, Robert Fagles, Shadi Bartsch, and Allen Mandelbaum.) I particularly appreciated how often he used alliteration – those repetitive sounds really do give the lines a rhythmic musicality. That said, the more poetic a sentence becomes the less clear it tends to be, and I often found myself preferring other translations for the purposes of figuring out the sheer basics of what was happening.
Ahl has the best, most thorough footnotes of any translator by far – even if they were, technically, endnotes rather than footnotes, and it's always annoying to have to flip back and forth between different parts of a book. He clearly inclines more towards the "Harvard school" (ie, Virgil wrote to criticize a straightforward panegyric of empire) than most of my other translators, but that's fine, especially since he usually gave quite long and well-cited explanations of his interpretations and theories.
Definitely one of my top two translations of the Aeneid (the other being Ruden), and it's less a matter of one being better than the other than that they work best when read together.
This is apparently also now a review of Sarah Ruden's translation, because GoodReads apparently has combined these two versions and I can't make separate posts for them. Oh well. Conveniently, I would also give Ruden four stars!
Ruden chose iambic pentameter for her translation, which makes her lines significantly shorter than Ahl's. (They both go for a line-by-line translation, keeping their line numbers the same as the original Latin, which makes them much easier to compare and discuss.) In general, Ruden's text is blunt and straightforward; it's always abundantly clear what is happening, even if she loses some of the extraneous details and adjectives that make it into Ahl's text. She occasionally has moments of brilliance and beauty – I frequently found that if I wanted to quote a single line, Ruden's translation was the most powerful.
Ruden also has the second best footnotes (actually footnotes this time!) of any translation, though this is a low bar because every translator except for her and Ahl have a ridiculous paucity of notes. She mostly sticks to explaining allusions – giving the backstory behind the various mythological heroes or god and goddesses Virgil namedrops – and leaves any larger themes or metaphors uncommented upon. Still, frequently helpful! Even if I thought she could have done more.
One of the top two of the various translations I checked out, and probably the one I would recommend the most for someone who just wants the poetry and not the larger historical and political context. ...more
A retelling of the Aeneid from the perspective of Lavinia, the woman Aeneas wins to be his new wife at the end of the epic.
Reading Lavinia immediatelyA retelling of the Aeneid from the perspective of Lavinia, the woman Aeneas wins to be his new wife at the end of the epic.
Reading Lavinia immediately after the Aeneid is a bit of an experience, because this is extrememly close to the original. Le Guin even calls it a "translation" rather than a "retelling" in her afterword. And while I wouldn't go that far (this is a novel, not epic poetry, for one; and it comes nowhere close to following the Latin word for word except for a few distinctive metaphors), I do think it's useful to describe it that way.
Lavinia *is* the story of the Aeneid. The plot is the same, the characterizations are the same, the beginnings and middles and ends are all the same. This isn't one of those retellings like Wicked or The Mists of Avalon where you're getting a different story that keeps only the basic beats.
Le Guin does adds two new elements to her take on the Aeneid. First, she cuts out the direct intervention of gods and goddesses. Lavinia is religious, but she no more expects to see Venus giving advice to her son than we modern-day readers would in our real lives. Mystical happenings in the original become dreams or chance or inexplicable mysteries here. Secondly, Lavinia knows she's fictional. She speaks to Virgil several times through prophetic dreams at a sacred spring: in her timeline, it's before her role in the poem begins; in his timeline, it's as he's dying, having finished writing (or as close to finished as he'll ever get). I have mixed feelings about this element. On the one hand, there's always something tacky about a rewriter having the original author see their new version and saying how great it is (see also: Dante having Virgil invite him to join the greatest poets of antiquity). But on the other hand, Le Guin is really doing something interesting with this device, having Lavinia grapple with questions of what it means to have your fate so explicitly written down, how much of Aeneas is himself and how much is Virgil, why the poem ends where it does and if it's meant to be a tragedy or a triumph, why Lavinia herself has such a small role. Her ponderings are some of the best parts of the novel and I would never want to cut them, even if Virgil's first appearance did make me roll my eyes.
Le Guin clearly did *a ton* of historical research, both on Virgil's period (around 20 bce) and Lavinia's (vaguely around 800 bce) and another great pleasure of Lavinia is how the world and all the small details of her daily life are so specific and lived-in. Spinning wool, cleaning storehouses, seasonal prayers, clothing – it all takes up far more page time than you'd assume and rather than being boring, it feels so grounded and real. (Or possibly I'm biased because I've just spent the last couple of months trying to do my own research on Roman religion. But I really liked it!)
It's not a perfect book and I'd probably give it 4.5 stars rather than 5 if Goodreads allowed for half-stars, but I'm glad I read it, and I'd highly recommend it....more
A m/m romance set in 1910s Coney Island. Benigno, a young Puerto Rican blacksmith, builds a magnificent tank for a sideshow. He finds a new family amoA m/m romance set in 1910s Coney Island. Benigno, a young Puerto Rican blacksmith, builds a magnificent tank for a sideshow. He finds a new family among the "freaks" of the show, but matters get complicated when he discovers the tank is for a real live merman they've captured. Río, the merman, is not a fish but a person, and Benigno finds himself falling in love.
To be honest: I had low expectations for this book. The setting and premise is 100% my favorite tropes, but there was something about the blurb that pinged my warning radar for overly earnest racism-101 lectures and cutesy cozy sickeningly twee Found Family. Thankfully, the book is not that! I was happily surprised at how seriously the power dynamic between Benigno and Río is taken: that Río is quite literally captured for the vast majority of the book, and that Benigno theoretically has the power to free him but chooses not to. Río is frequently an asshole and (justifiably!) resents his position, and I LOVED that. I also really liked that the other sideshow employees, at least some of them, had a complicated dynamic between doing what was right and doing what made sense for their careers. At least some of them did, but again, my expectations were low, so I was glad to see anything that kept characters from being entirely Good or Bad. The ending heist to free Río was also tremendously exciting and just a fantastic set-piece. The book is illustrated with gorgeous black-and-white (and a trace of blue) drawings by the author herself, and they make it worth getting a physical copy instead of an ebook.
On the other hand, When the Tides Held the Moon does still have a bit of a fanfic/tumblr vibe to the way characters deal with societal prejudices or complex situations. Also there's no sex scene! There is a ~mystical uniting moment~, but c'mon, if you're going to have a mermaid romance, don't wimp out on giving us some weird sea-creature sex organs.
Overall I had mixed feelings. There were lots of fun details, and the historical research was clearly very thorough and impressive, but I couldn't help but feel like it could have been so much more. Recommended if you have a higher tolerance for fluff than I do....more
I'll stick to reviewing Robin Kirkpatrick's translation.
Kirkpatrick is a professor of literature, and I feel thaHow does one review The Divine Comedy?
I'll stick to reviewing Robin Kirkpatrick's translation.
Kirkpatrick is a professor of literature, and I feel that guided his approach to the poem. His footnotes share some traits with both Dorothy Sayers's (religious, focused on poetic imagery) and the Hollanders' (academic, focused on grammar and context), but were most often centered on the story Dante wanted to tell: what was the point of including a specific historical figure? How does a single canto connect to themes in cantos earlier or later? Why does Dante portray his own earlier self as fearful or confused? Of the three translators I read, Kirkpatrick was probably my favorite (though to be honest, it was a close tie) and the one that most often led me to say, "Oh! Now I get it!".
The translation of the poem itself is fine, only occasionally rhyming in English. I quite liked the effect of the rare rhymes – they kept the whole thing feeling more like poetry than prose, but without the contorted syntax of forcing every line into a rhyme. ...more
I'll stick to reviewing the Hollanders' translation.
This is by far the most thorough and academic of the versionHow does one review The Divine Comedy?
I'll stick to reviewing the Hollanders' translation.
This is by far the most thorough and academic of the versions I read; the footnotes are often three or four times longer than the actual canto they're covering. If you want a Dante that will explain every single minuscule grammar choice, review the several-centuries-long debate between scholars about whether interpretation A or B is the most likely, and cite similar phrasings in Vergil or the Bible, this is the book for you. If you don't need five paragraphs on what exact almanac Dante was using to calculate star signs, I'd stick with a different version.
The translation itself was fine, with no attempt at rhyming in English. Which did probably make this the most straightforward and easy to read of any version of the poem itself....more
She's one of the few English authors to actually stick to the terzaHow does one review The Divine Comedy?
I'll stick to reviewing Sayers's translation.
She's one of the few English authors to actually stick to the terza rima (the rhyme scheme that goes aba bcb c), which on the one hand makes this feel more like poetry, but on the other hand can lead to some extremely tortured syntax as she tries to make the rhymes fit the meaning. It was sometimes hard to even understand what was happening.
I really enjoyed her footnotes, especially her interpretations of the "images", as she calls them. Sayers is the only devoted Catholic translator I've read of the Divine Comedy, and sometimes it's very useful to get the perspective of someone who takes this all seriously and wants to make the theology align with a modern perspective.
I don't think I'd recommend her as the only Dante to read, but she's an invaluable interpretator to combine with one or two others. ...more
You may ask: do I need an 800-page incredibly dense historical novel about the 'true person' behind tSO GOOD. My favorite book of the year, probably.
You may ask: do I need an 800-page incredibly dense historical novel about the 'true person' behind the legend of Macbeth that incorporates things like papal infighting over who gets to appoint bishops, Viking family dynamics in Scandinavia, and the creation of a Scottish national identity? BUT YOU DO. YOU REALLY, REALLY DO....more
Over the years I've struggled to get into the Aubreyad, but apparently the answer was just to jump ahead in the series. I've found #4 and #5 to be wayOver the years I've struggled to get into the Aubreyad, but apparently the answer was just to jump ahead in the series. I've found #4 and #5 to be way more engaging and fun than #1-3 (which had their own good points, of course, but the jargon and plots were too complex and elaborate for me to keep straight). In Desolation Island we get a wonderful femme fatale, an outbreak of typhus, an absolutely INCREDIBLE action scene of two ships chasing one another through near-Antarctic waters while simultaneously sinking and enduring mutinies, being stranded on the titular island, and suspicious whalers. It's all of my interests in one book! :D
My one critique is that the island stranding only takes up a few chapters, despite being the title, when I could have happily spent a whole book there. Nonetheless, the chase scene was one of the best set-pieces I've ever read in a naval book, and there's all the best qualities one expects from the Aubreyad: dry humor, spy shenanigans, ridiculous botany, fun minor characters, and the Aubrey-Maturin friendship. ...more
A graphic novel that tells three intertwined stories: the (nonfiction) account of the 1912 arctic exploration expedition led by Stefansson, who abandoA graphic novel that tells three intertwined stories: the (nonfiction) account of the 1912 arctic exploration expedition led by Stefansson, who abandoned his ship when it got stuck in the ice, leading captain Robert Bartlett to make desperate choices for the abandoned sailors to survive; the (nonfiction) account of the 1921 arctic exploration expedition led by Stefansson, when he abandoned an Inuit woman he had hired as a seamstress, Ada Blackjack, on an isolated island for two years, forcing her to face polar bears, loneliness, and a total lack of supplies; and a (fictional) story of a modern, gay college professor who's been put on probation for sleeping with a male student. The art is simple and cartoony, primarily using pink, yellow, and turquoise. The narrative skips between the three timelines without breaks, which is confusing until you note each timeline is associated with a particular shade of the base colors.
All three of the stories are captivating, but I'm not sure what the modern-day one was trying to say by paralleling the others. The student was clearly depicted as the aggressor in the relationship with the professor, which is uhhhhh an uncomfortable choice, to say the least. Ada and the captain are way more interesting and sympathetic characters, and I much preferred their stories.
Still, an interesting approach to polar history that I don't regret reading....more
Jonathon's two handsome, inspirational, brave brothers died in WWI. Unable to bear living in his parents' grief and expectations (because Jonathon wasJonathon's two handsome, inspirational, brave brothers died in WWI. Unable to bear living in his parents' grief and expectations (because Jonathon was not born under that name and is not looking forward to wearing dresses and being proper for the rest of his life), Jonathan decides to fulfill his brothers' dream by stowing away on an expedition to discover the South Pole. At first things seem to be going well – the clothes and life of a young man suit Jonathon better than anything he'd ever known – but problems begin to pile up. And not just the usual misadventures of polar exploration, ships sunk and supplies running low and unendurable cold and so on. Something waits out in the darkness, something inescapable and endless.
This is SUCH a good book. Just wow. I'm in absolute love with how well it's written. The dynamics between the characters are complicated and tragic and sympathetic and terrible. The monster (for lack of a better word) is an excellent example of cosmic horror, so huge and unknowable and inhuman. The descriptions of the ice fields and aurora australis were gorgeous and haunting and very memorable. My one slight critique is that I felt the beginning was a bit too slow, and it took a while for me to be drawn into the book. But once I was, goddamn! I could not put it down.
Worth reading just for the piece where Galapagos tortoises are described as uncanny Lovecraftian monsters: "Nor even at the risk of meriting the chargeWorth reading just for the piece where Galapagos tortoises are described as uncanny Lovecraftian monsters: "Nor even at the risk of meriting the charge of absurdly believing in enchantments, can I restrain the admission that sometimes, even now, when leaving the crowded city to wander out July and August among the Adirondack Mountains, far from the influences of towns and proportionally nigh to the mysterious ones of nature; when at such times I sit me down in the mossy head of some deep-wooded gorge, surrounded by prostrate trunks of blasted pines and recall, as in a dream, my other and far-distant rovings in the baked heart of the charmed isles; and remember the sudden glimpses of dusky shells, and long languid necks protruded from the leafless thickets; and again have beheld the vitreous inland rocks worn down and grooved into deep ruts by ages and ages of the slow draggings of tortoises in quest of pools of scanty water; I can hardly resist the feeling that in my time I have indeed slept upon evilly enchanted ground.
Nay, such is the vividness of my memory, or the magic of my fancy, that I know not whether I am not the occasional victim of optical delusion concerning the Gallipagos. For, often in scenes of social merriment, and especially at revels held by candle-light in old-fashioned mansions, so that shadows are thrown into the further recesses of an angular and spacious room, making them put on a look of haunted undergrowth of lonely woods, I have drawn the attention of my comrades by my fixed gaze and sudden change of air, as I have seemed to see, slowly emerging from those imagined solitudes, and heavily crawling along the floor, the ghost of a gigantic tortoise, with “Memento * * * * *” burning in live letters upon his back."
Hell yeah.
Robert G. O'Meally's introduction, looking Melville as influenced by and influencing in his turn Black Americans, is absolutely amazing and a very different perspective on Melville than one usually sees....more
I finally got around to reading this classic of early cosmic horror!
The King in Yellow is actually a collection of short stories; the first four are tI finally got around to reading this classic of early cosmic horror!
The King in Yellow is actually a collection of short stories; the first four are the reason why people still read any of them. Each features an encounter with "The King in Yellow" – a play that drives anyone who reads it insane – and "lost Carcosa", a mysterious city that might be on another planet. These stories were surprisingly good. I found them genuinely scary and evocatively written, which is not always the case for me with early cosmic horror. The stories I've read by Lovecraft or Algernon Blackwood I appreciate more for their historical influence than their actual skill. But not here! These are some actually great pieces.
The next two stories (or rather, one story and a poem) also feature ghosts and other creepy themes, but don't seem to be linked to the specific Carcosa mythology.
The final four stories have no fantastic elements at all, and are mostly romances about artistic Americans living the bohemian life in contemporary Paris. They're all fine, pleasant and amusing, but do seem like a strange fit with the first half of the book....more
Absolutely fantastic sequel to The Best Bad Things! A queer Western told with all the lyricism of a literary novel and the clear-eyed devotion to factAbsolutely fantastic sequel to The Best Bad Things! A queer Western told with all the lyricism of a literary novel and the clear-eyed devotion to facts of an economic textbook.
Alma Rosales (who presents herself as Jack Campbell) runs an opium-smuggling gang in Tacoma in 1888. Everything seems to be going well – until everything goes wrong all at once. Alma's ex-friend/ex-crush, Bess Spencer, shows up in town; Alma's boss demands that she find a new way to get the executives of the railroad company on their side; someone is murdering opium-addicted workingmen; a journalist is tracking the smuggling operation from the factories in Canada to the docks of Tacoma; and a Pinkerton detective arrives in town looking for a train robber but possibly will be in the right place to find evidence of Alma's gang.
I love this series. It's such a vivid recreation of history in all its muddy, cold, wet, bloody reality, balanced by Alma's desire for affection and trust, but need to keep herself safe.
A collection of fantasy and sci-fi short stories that focus on LGBT themes and characters. All anthologies are a mix of good and bad, but this one wasA collection of fantasy and sci-fi short stories that focus on LGBT themes and characters. All anthologies are a mix of good and bad, but this one was weighted much higher to the good side than usual. A wonderful range of queer content as well (a surprisingly high number of trans stories!), and none where the queer character was just a minor note.
My favorites: "The Deepwater Bride" by Tamsyn Muir. Cthulhu with teenage lesbians. Hilarious and gory and told through an absolutely compelling voice. I want this to be a whole novel, please.
“Cat Pictures Please” by Naomi Kritzer. An AI achieves sentience and decides to make things better for humans. It doesn't work out. Cute and funny.
"Three Points Masculine" by An Owomoyela. Gender boundaries in a military dystopia. Sad and thoughtful, though it could have used a bit more worldbuilding. This reminded me, in a very good way, of Isabel Fall's "I Sexually Identify as an Attack Helicopter".
"In the Eyes of Jack Saul" by Richard Bowes. A retelling of The Portrait of Dorian Gray from the POV of a molly prostitute. A different perspective on a classic, with another incredibly strong voice....more
A novel about the (more than friendly?) relationship between Herman Melville and Nathaniel Hawthorne, who lived near one another in rural MassachusettA novel about the (more than friendly?) relationship between Herman Melville and Nathaniel Hawthorne, who lived near one another in rural Massachusetts while Melville was working on Moby Dick and Hawthorne was writing The House of the Seven Gables. Were they... in love????
I am incredibly here for speculating that the many queer themes in Melville's writings extended into his real life, but this novel is not the place to look for an interesting exploration of that idea. First of all, if you've read "Hawthorne and His Mosses" (Melville's INCREDIBLY HORNY review of Hawthorne's writing) and/or any of Melville's letters to Hawthorne, you're not going to find anything new in The Whale. Beauregard is so focused on being scrupulously accurate to the historical record that he refuses to build on what we already know to find something new. That's the fun of writing this story as fiction, rather than the nonfiction that Beauregard seems more suited to!
Secondly, Beauregard's writing is just... bad. I'm sorry to say it, but it's flat, tedious, and mundanely straightforward. He's describing the inner thoughts of one of the most creative, lyrical, radical, experimental writers, and all he can come up with is prose that sounds like the "About Us" section of a webpage! I get that trying to do a pastiche of Melville might have been intimidating, but come on, give us something. Write it in a wild post-modern style, go for overblown Romanticism, try out an omniscient narrator – do absolutely anything other than the utmost crime of being boring.
God, this was an absolutely amazing book. Anderson is also the author of The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, and as good as that book is, I thinGod, this was an absolutely amazing book. Anderson is also the author of The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, and as good as that book is, I think this one is even better.
Nicked is the story of how Bari, in Italy, came to be in possession of the relics of St Nicholas in 1087, approximately seven hundred years after Nicholas himself died: mainly through stealing them from their former residence in Turkish Myra, during the chaos caused by the Byzantine Empire being invaded by the Seljuk Turks. The leaders of Bari want Nicholas's bones because of their supposed healing powers, but more importantly because of the sweet, sweet cash the pilgrim trade will bring. And so they hire Tyun, a mysterious and cynical treasure hunter renowned for 'liberating' relics, and send him off in the company of Nicephorus, a naive and earnest young monk. Tyun and Nicephorus slowly realize that they have more in common than it seems; namely, an interest in kissing one another. :D
The writing is glorious and deeply grounded in real history, despite how ridiculous events eventually get. There are heists, battles between ships, fake bones, people swinging on chandeliers during sword battles, obnoxious young nobles, devious mercenaries, desperate escapes, falling off cliffs, magic tricks, and dog-headed sailors. It is frequently hilarious, always exciting, and nearly impossible to put down once you get sucked into the story.
But in between the madcap adventures are sections written in an entirely different voice, one that is somber and mystical and deeply moving. It's a bit silly to imagine people fighting over the bones of St Nicholas – who is, after all, Santa Claus – and these sections go into the history and older legends of the figure, finding a meaning that is still relevant to those of us who are not medieval Catholics. A few quotes to show what I mean:
In regards to Nicholas gifting three dowries to young woman who would otherwise have been sold into prostitution: This story is what we recall in giving our children miraculous gifts from the saint: We shall not have to sell you. We will keep the world from you as long as we can. Soon enough, you will have to sell yourselves.
Or when Nicholas saves his town from a famine: The granary at the port of Myra, built in the days of Hadrian, still stands, a testament to Nicholas's ministry. So Myra was saved. I am not sure what they did about the famine down the coast a few miles at Antiphellos or Phoinike. God's mercy is infinite – an infinite eye – which, seeing all, favors none, and makes no particular distinction in quality between those who eat and those who starve.
It's a short book, but there's so, so much in it; I feel like I could reread it a million times. I long for a sequel, though unfortunately I don't think Anderson's interested in expanding on the ideas here in that way. Still, I can't recommend this highly enough. An early but strong contender for my favorite book of the year....more
An incredibly fun murder mystery set in ancient Rome during the early years of Caligula's reign. Valerius is your typical young Patrician man – too yoAn incredibly fun murder mystery set in ancient Rome during the early years of Caligula's reign. Valerius is your typical young Patrician man – too young to run for senator, too old to be a soldier, resigned to spending his nights drinking and days soaking away hangovers in the public baths, at least until one of his family members eventually succeeds in making him develop an ambition.
Valerius's problems: 1) someone was murdered at a dinner party he attended, and no one seems to care about figuring out who did it except for the annoying, tight-laced Plebeian watchman, Atreus.
2) Valerius is gay. Which would be fine if he just wanted to bang some pretty dancers, but an upstanding patrician man isn't supposed to want to bottom for said stoic plebeian watchman... What to do???
Burke uses a lot of modern slang, which I know annoys some readers of historical fiction, but I enjoyed it. She clearly knows a lot about the period, and her research shines through. She also doesn't make her heroes too modern in their attitudes; Valerius owns slaves, has no problems with the patriarchy, is a complete class snob, and is utterly unselfaware, but he's also just enough of relatable guy (and enough of a loser) that I liked him anyway. His relationship with his family and with Atreus were all very well-developed, and I really hope this gets a sequel, because I'd love to read more....more
Spain's greatest Golden Age playwright, Lope de Vega (1562-1635), claimed to have written nearly 2,000 plays during his lifetime. Historians think 500Spain's greatest Golden Age playwright, Lope de Vega (1562-1635), claimed to have written nearly 2,000 plays during his lifetime. Historians think 500 is probably more accurate, though still an absolutely insane number to have been written by a single individual.
Here we have three: Fuente Ovejuna (about a group of peasants banding together to overthrow their villainous lord; de Vega's most famous play outside of Spain), The Knight from Olmedo (about a doomed love affair, wherein a spurned suitor murders his rival for a woman's attention), and Punishment Without Revenge (about a Duke who decides to disinherit his bastard son by marrying a woman; unfortunately, she falls in love with the son instead of the father, and things do not end well).
All three plays had a similar vibe to Lope's contemporary playwright, Shakespeare, but in a shorter and more rushed form. Imagine Macbeth rewritten as a 30-minute sitcom and you'll get the idea. Lope claimed that he wrote many of his plays in 24 hours or less, rushing to meet a voracious demand for new plays, so honestly weekly sitcom probably isn't far off from the reality.
I read this as part of my general investigation into Early Modern Spain, as background to Don Quixote, and it's pretty fascinating in that regard. You can see many similar themes popping up in both Cervantes's and Lope's works – the question of what is honor, the role of women in a strongly patriarchal society, the ideals of courtly love placed into more realistic settings and personalities, an attachment to twisty plots and sudden reveals – though Lope tends to have a more straightforward, shallower treatment of them. Of course, Lope only has about 70 pages per play to work with, compared to Cervantes's 1000 pages of Don Quixote, so it's hard to blame Lope for not delving as deeply.
Would I recommend this if you're not comparing it to Don Quixote? Eh. It's an intriguing little time capsule, but there weren't any lines I found memorable, nor any plots or characters that aren't fairly cliche. Worth far more for its historical than its literary value. ...more