Britannia’s Reach, by Antoine Vanner, is the second in a loosely connected series of books about the life and times of a British naval officer in the late 19th century. A while ago I read and reviewed the first in the series. Britannia’s Wolf (Goodreads review, June 2013). The books are independent of each other, and you do not need to have read the first one to understand the second.

Buy Britannia’s Reach from Amazon.co.uk
Buy Britannia’s Reach from Amazon.com

Full marks to Antoine for his unusual choice of setting for this book. Dawlish makes a career of handling slightly shady.assignments and there is something of the Mission Impossible in the way he is routinely told that Britain will disavow knowledge of and responsibility for the endeavour if it goes wrong. Here, commercial rather than political interests drive the military goals. In common with many other naval officers of his day, the protagonist Dawlish is courageous, disciplined on a personal level, and very competent at conducting necessary actions on land or sea – or on river, in this case.

The details of naval technology and customs have obviously been very thoroughly researched, and it is clear from other reviewers’ comments that on a military level the book comes over as authentic. Certainly great care has been lavished on descriptions of the military hardware and its use.

However, the book as a whole did not click with me as much as the first one. For one thing there are essentially no female characters explored sympathetically or in depth. This would be fair enough for the shipboard experience, but in Britannia’s Wolf, Antoine successfully found ways to bring female balance into the narrative.

Similarly, the combat action takes over the whole book from early on, and other forms of interaction are largely discarded. The proportion of the book describing battle scenes is extremely high. The few “boardroom” scenes, and the one attempt to parley, scarcely provide balance. The very dubious moral basis for the action as a whole keeps drifting towards the surface, but does not drive the action or the plot: characters may dislike the position they are in, but apparently have no way to step out of it. Dawlish’s adversaries, who on the face of things might well have a greater moral claim on their side, are mostly flat characters who (with one exception) never attain a life of their own.

On a technical level there were a small number of proof reading errors, but none of a serious nature – basically minor slips of present for past tense or the like. Since these slightly increased towards the end of the book I did wonder if things got a bit hurried as a planned release date approached. The production of the kindle version is accurate and makes good use of the various features available – all in all a well turned out book worthy of the naval professionalism it describes.

The content and focus of the book means that for me this is a four-star book – I don’t really enjoy such a purely martial focus. But others who enjoy the vicarious experience of combat in the late nineteenth century will probably rate it more highly, and I feel sure that it will appeal to a lot of readers. Certainly I will be happy to look out for other books in this series as they appear.

The Handfasted Wife, by Carol McGrath, is one of the many books which have come out in recent years surrounding the Norman invasion of 1066. For me, this was a five star book that I have thoroughly enjoyed reading.

Buy The Handfasted Wife from Amazon.co.uk
Buy The Handfasted Wife from Amazon.com

Carol has chosen to tell her tale about a year or so either side of the fateful months, and to focus on the person of Elditha (Edith) Swanneck – married to Harold according to popular customs and accepted as valid by most Saxon Christians of the time, but not legitimate according to the stricter rules of the European church.

Carol has delved heavily into the various literary sources referring to these years, with an appropriately critical eye depending on their authorship as well as their distance in time from the events. Small extracts from approximately contemporary texts stand at the head of each chapter, a device I personally enjoy. Indeed, the quality and detail of research stands out from the book as a major feature. There was a real sense of immersion in the age.

To some degree, this was a slight distraction – much as I like research, there were times in the first half of the book where it threatened to overwhelm the story. In ruthlessly objective terms, not a great deal happens for a fairly large chunk of the book, but Carol uses a lot of space informing us of local customs and everyday objects. In complete contrast, the second half of the book, involving flight and pursuit into the west of England and beyond, accelerates at a rapid rate.

One of my great joys of reading this book was simply the pleasure of knowing the terrain Elditha and her various companions move across – at least, the modern version of it. The river trip along the Thames near Oxford, the approach to the Severn valley, the view of the estuary at Exeter – all were vivid episodes enhanced by my own experience of them. They are, I think, well enough described that someone who does not know the land would still appreciate them.

As well as the exterior landscape of England, Carol captures the interior world of Saxon women in a way I find very credible. The Norman rule was a cruel time for women, not only in the obvious forms of personal violence, but in the destruction of their role in society. As the dust of the conquest settled, women would find themselves in a completely subordinate position, with the rights and privileges accorded them in Saxon society swept away. These would not be recovered for many centuries.

Again on a personal note, this made an interesting connection with my own preferred period – the much earlier transition from Late Bronze to Iron Age in the middle east. Here also, a long-standing and stable social structure was being swept away and replaced by a system which put women at a considerable disadvantage and locked them into a few prescribed roles.

This was definitely a five star book for me – the minor reservations that I had with the level of research detail inserted into the text do not detract from the overall effect. I particularly enjoyed the blend of interior and exterior worlds, and the larger sense that a whole way of life was being swept away in ways that were rather unexpected to the parties involved. Definitely to be recommended if you like books set in this era which focus not so much on the fighting and battles as much as the personal experience of life.

City of Women, by David Gillham, was another book club selection and another three star book for me. The club choices are the result of a collective vote, so we only have ourselves to blame… but part of the idea is to deliberately expose ourselves to books we might not choose in the ordinary course of life. City of Women is a second world war book, but set rather unusually in 1943 Berlin.

Buy City of Women from Amazon.co.uk
Buy City of Women from Amazon.com

The title comes from the fact that most men of military age were away serving in the armed forces, mostly out east in the Soviet Union. Despite this, there seem to be enough men around to provide the main character (a woman who works as a typist in a minor government agency) with plentiful bed partners. The return from the eastern front of her wounded husband does little to interfere with her sex life, since their marriage was already in a precarious state when war broke out. Nobody seems especially bothered, or even surprised, by the state of affairs.

I found the book immensely dreary, I’m afraid. I suspect that in part this was a deliberate stylistic choice of the author, to convey to the reader how dreary wartime life in Berlin was. If so, it was all too successful.

On top of the daily grind of boring work, inadequate food and regular bombings, with only a cinema to provide official entertainment – and sporadic and rather mechanical sex as a diversion – there is a steadily developing plot of helping Jews to escape the city and the country. It is hard to decide if this is really an act of courage, or just one more way to escape boredom. For a few of the people involved, the actions are part of a moral stand, but for many, there is no real basis other than a rather unfocused sense of anger.

Personally I didn’t find that this theme integrated very well with the personality of the central woman, though perhaps the author feels that once again this is the point he is trying to make – in such a situation, unlikely responses are drawn out of ordinary people. The slightly dreamlike lack of volition, of just following along to see what would happen next, pervades the book.

For me this mix did not work. I found the combination of dull routine and improbable coincidence unconvincing, and was filled with a sense of unreality as I persevered through the book. I cannot give this book more than three stars – perhaps some people will find it more engaging than I, but other than the feeling of dogged endurance, I have not come away from the book with any deeper insight into this period of history, or the human condition in general.

On a purely technical note, the kindle version does not make proper use of the kindle navigation features, and there were a number of editorial and proof-reading slips. Since this is a Penguin book, and not self-published or small press, this highlights the issue that finding a major publisher does not at all guarantee a quality finished product.