2009 Reading #9: The Master of Ballantrae
Jan. 27th, 2009 05:50 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
snurri1. Family Circle: The Boudins and the Aristocracy of the Left by Susan Braudy
2. The Sea-Hawk by Rafael Sabatini
3. From the Files of the Time Rangers by Richard Bowes.
4. A Study in Scarlet and The Sign of Four by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.
5. Charles Fort: The Man Who Invented the Supernatural by Jim Steinmeyer.
6. The Days of Rondo by Evelyn Fairbanks.
7. Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson.
8. Kidnapped by Robert Louis Stevenson.
9. The Master of Ballantrae by Robert Louis Stevenson. I wonder if Sabatini, above, was a Stevenson fan; there are elements of both the kidnapping from Kidnapped and the enmity between brothers from this book in The Sea-Hawk, enough so that it seemed like inspiration. Stevenson has echoes of his own, of the brother/mirror dichotomy of Shelley's Frankenstein and Stevenson's own Jekyll and Hyde. In the end, this is the most interesting book of Stevenson's that I've read, but also probably the most flawed--it starts with some nice foreboding and some gentle satire, but the humor falls away and the foreboding becomes tedious, and melodramatic in the extreme. The weird spiral of fraternal rivalry has its moments, and psychologically is a step up from the adventure novels; but the narrator, whom Stevenson plays for some laughs early in the novel, is taken far too seriously by the end, and the overall narrative is too fragmented to really satisfy.
2. The Sea-Hawk by Rafael Sabatini
3. From the Files of the Time Rangers by Richard Bowes.
4. A Study in Scarlet and The Sign of Four by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.
5. Charles Fort: The Man Who Invented the Supernatural by Jim Steinmeyer.
6. The Days of Rondo by Evelyn Fairbanks.
7. Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson.
8. Kidnapped by Robert Louis Stevenson.
9. The Master of Ballantrae by Robert Louis Stevenson. I wonder if Sabatini, above, was a Stevenson fan; there are elements of both the kidnapping from Kidnapped and the enmity between brothers from this book in The Sea-Hawk, enough so that it seemed like inspiration. Stevenson has echoes of his own, of the brother/mirror dichotomy of Shelley's Frankenstein and Stevenson's own Jekyll and Hyde. In the end, this is the most interesting book of Stevenson's that I've read, but also probably the most flawed--it starts with some nice foreboding and some gentle satire, but the humor falls away and the foreboding becomes tedious, and melodramatic in the extreme. The weird spiral of fraternal rivalry has its moments, and psychologically is a step up from the adventure novels; but the narrator, whom Stevenson plays for some laughs early in the novel, is taken far too seriously by the end, and the overall narrative is too fragmented to really satisfy.