#constance savery

[isfjmel-phleg]

Tenthragon by Constance Savery enters the public domain in the US today!

[fictionadventurer]

Tenthragon! It's a fairy tale! It's a retelling! It's an allegory! It's a psychologically astute portrayal of the effects of sin in a soul and across generations!

[oldfashionedbooklove]

~ The Top 10 Female Characters List ~

The rules: List 10 of your favorite female characters from 10 different fandoms, and then tag 10 different people. (Thank you @healerqueen for the tag!)

1. Anne Shirley from the Anne of Green Gables series by L.M. Montgomery: She's iconic, ok? She's amazing. I would love to be Anne.

2. Katy Carr from the What Katy Did series by Susan Coolidge: Katy is one of the sweetest yet most real characters I ever met. 10/10 want to emulate.

3. Phemie Ingleford from Enemy Brothers by Constance Savery: I am in awe of Phemie's capabilities. The woman single-handedly manages a household of 10+ people, many of whom need a good deal of caring. She has a beautiful heart and great capabilities.

4. Elinor Dashwood from Sense & Sensibility by Jane Austen: Elinor is one of the wisest, strongest, most loving characters ever. (Are we seeing a theme here?)

5. Jane Eyre from Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë: I will never not be awed by Jane's strength in standing for the right despite the cost.

6. Ava Fox from Blind Date With a Book Nerd by Erica Dansereau & Britt Howard: Ava is so relatable it's almost unbelievable, and I love her 💙

7. Cornflower from the Redwall T.V. series (adapted from Brian Jacques’ Redwall): Cornflower is so capable and kind! She's Matthias' right hand and also helps keep the kitchen folks cheerful and "stiff upper lipped," so to speak.

8. Celeste from the Babar T.V. series: Okay, so capable, loving women are apparently the ideal I dream of becoming. Technically Celeste is from books but I don’t know if she has the same personality in those as she does in the series. She's an awesome wife, mother, and queen though.

9. Margaret Hale from North & South by Elizabeth Gaskell: Margaret's courage, and the way she manages through all the difficulties of the book, while also caring for both her parents and basically running the house, always provoke such admiration in me!

10. Polly Milton from An Old-Fashioned Girl by Louisa May Alcott: Sweet, upright Polly, so bright and honest and realistic—how I love that girl, and how I aspire to be like her! 

I won't tag anyone because I don't know 10 people but feel free to steal 😉

[healerqueen]

I've read…so many classic Constance Savery books at this point. And Tenthragon was like a remix of ALL of them, even the obscure ones. Each of them is unique but has her trademark stamp on it. And somehow this was all of them rolled into one, times twenty.

[goldkirk]

don't even look at me I'm reading Enemy Brothers for the third time in one week

[thelonelybrilliance]

Is Tenthragon really going to just ... end like that?????

[valiantarcher]

I have random and assorted thoughts on my Constance Savery reads over the past couple of weeks. I’ve categorised them by work (Magic in My Shoes, “The Waswytch Secret”, The Reb and the Redcoats, The Good Ship Red Lily, and Enemy Brothers) so those who haven’t read all of them have the option to (hopefully easily) scroll past the unread ones if they so desire. I have also put them under the cut due to length.

Magic in My Shoes: I enjoyed Sally as the narrator, and the premise was engaging even with me knowing the secret early in the book. I was a little surprised by the accusations of ill-nourishment and neglect against Aunt Persis, but in retrospect, I appreciate that realism - four growing children are not going to flourish off even generous portions for two of them. Which brings me to my main complaint - Tandy and his unwillingness to see gorging himself was selfish and wrong on many levels. Despite the thin excuse that he had been delicate and sickly at times in the past, I really expected Josset (with Laurence’s support) to put his foot down instead of continuing to baby him (after all, as someone remarked, triplets are all of the same age). Tandy didn’t ruin the story for me, but he made certain parts of it very irritating. I did love the plan involving ten-year-old Laurence becoming a schoolteacher and, when Aunt Persis declared that was nonsense, all the children bring up a moral tale with a six-year-old being so studious that she became a teacher as solid proof.

“The Waswytch Secret”: Given that it was in a collection of ghost stories (well, sort of - most had some sort of haunting element, if only a little, but I’m still not sure why “The Red-Headed League” was included), I wasn’t sure what to expect at first. It was thoroughly Savery, though, and an enjoyable read with an element of mystery. It felt slightly different from her novels, and I think that was due to the choice of one of the younger children as narrator.

Reb and Redcoats: This was a reread and I found it a pretty fun one this time around. Randal’s integration into and relationship with the Darringtons was charming. I couldn’t decide whether Tim Wingate’s inaptitude for stealth and secrecy was more irritating or amusing, but I swung towards the latter by the end, especially given his cheerful nature. My main gripe is that I still feel like the Patty switch was kind of cheating.

The Good Ship Red Lily: I struggled with this one a lot even past (or maybe because of) the tense start. Violet was a horrible child, and I loathed Ingram and disliked Sir Timon. Objectively, of course it’s good that there was reconciliation with Ingram and that he repented and asked forgiveness, but I could not make myself invested in it (though the tiny glimpses we had of it from Michael’s perspective helped a little). I enjoyed Toby as primary character a lot and especially appreciated his resolution to deny the pleasures when he felt accepting them would go against his conscience. I wasn’t very pleased with the treatment of Patience, though - Toby said the others didn’t join him in his denial because they were too young to understand; while that certainly makes sense for the younger ones (and Violet is a category in and of herself), Patience is a year older than him and - although not privy to all the knowledge and trust from their father that Toby is - was Toby’s confidant about plans to escape. She showed a lack of wisdom in following Violet up the chimney, but that could partially have been explained by her caregiving to the younger children. Regardless, especially since all knew about Ingram’s betrayal, I think Patience at least should have been given a reason for not seeing the pleasures as a betrayal of their father instead of being pushed to the side and under the general but false umbrella of “too young to understand”.

Enemy Brothers: Especially after The Good Ship Red Lily, I was afraid this one might not live up to the positive recollection I had of it - but it didn’t disappoint. I very much appreciated that, although Dym was the one who had a special connection with Tony, Tony belonged to the entire family and they to him. I know Tony takes it lightly at the end and chalks it up to their keenness for detective work, but James and Porgy cycling 60 miles after him and the German in the car was no small thing. And, while it bugs me a little bit that Ginger doesn’t recgonise Tony despite the marked resemblance to Dym, I’ll let it go with the idea that he thinks he’s familiar but his brain doesn’t provide the correct context while on ship. I have a new appreciation for Dym. On one hand, of course he is gentle and doesn’t take harm easily from Tony - he’s been searching for Tony for years and so he’s been choosing to love Tony for years. And, on the other, you can tell he still hasn’t forgiven Max’s Mutti for stealing Tony and just how much effort it takes for him to choose to tell Tony to still love her and that he will take him to see her after the war. I also appreciate the honesty that Dym had in discussing England’s past and how they were not always on the side of right but that this time, they were. Also, Dym was a bomber pilot! I don’t know the exact statistics, but this was an incredibly dangerous job. I’m sure it varied some between organizations and aircraft, but if you were on the crew of a US B-17 bomber doing runs, the odds were you would only make it halfway through the 25 runs (I believe that’s right for the year it was published?) you were supposed to before being killed, captured, or severely injured. Even if you beat the odds and made it through all those runs (as some did), you would have had multiple crewmembers who did not and so would not have kept your full crew together (Were there rare exceptions to this, crews who made it all together? I hope so, but I don’t know). At any rate, when Euphemia comments to Dym and his friends to leave croquet until the summer when it was warmer and the way they all looked at each other for a moment as if there was no certainty that summer would come hit hard this time. (Oh, I just found someone noting that the RAF flew night missions and had a higher casualty rate than the US bombers, though it did depend on the year, of course - if they weren’t in the worst year yet, they were heading into it.) And the moment when Tony finds Dym and comes up behind him, nervous and afraid, and whispers “Please, George, I’ve come back” is just wonderful. I think there’s an idea of fear and justice vs. love and mercy, along with the hope that the choice of coming back will make a difference, but I haven’t figured out how to put it into words. I’m actually kind of shocked this book has never been made into a movie or a mini-series, especially when WWII stories have been so popular in somewhat recent years. But perhaps the strong Christian threads have put producers off (...not that that’s stopped others from mangling or removing them from other works).

The Good Ship Red Lily and Enemy Brothers: Enemy Brothers feels like a kind of inverse of The Good Ship Red Lily. Both books deal with children meeting and spending time with family members (and because of kidnapping, no less) and making decisions as to where home is and who true family is, but the role of the family is drastically different. In Red Lily, the dapper uncle is the kidnapper. Ingram tries to act like he is filling the kind, wise, but fun adult role and the children do love him for that. However, he is directly and actively responsible for their kidnapping, for previous imprisonment of their father, and for the current attempt to capture their father. In Enemy Brothers, Dym is ostensibly in the enemy role (being English and responsible for Tony’s “imprisonment” in the White Priory), but his actions are kind, loving, and (mostly) wise. Even when Tony is hating him, he can’t deny there’s a magnetism around Dym that all the children, including him, recognise and respond to. It’s not quite that serious, but I am reminded of the exchange in The Fellowship of the Ring about the enemy’s agents seeming fair but feeling foul, while the good may look foul but feel fair. But where an understanding of Ingram’s true nature leads Toby to separate from him and his grandfather, a deeper understanding of Dym and his true character helps Tony to make the hard but right decision about his home and family. In both cases, repentance and returning bring about reconciliation and restoration, but Ingram is the one repenting in Red Lily, confessing and asking forgiveness of his brother. In Enemy Brothers, Tony is the one who comes back, finally seeking the brother who has sought him for so long. He doesn’t ask for forgiveness from his brother in words and indeed doesn’t need to because his actions speak so loudly of it, but is fully received with love and restored.

[fictionadventurer]

Tenthragon is so good, and I can't even be mad at people for not telling me how good it was, because @isfjmel-phleg has been singing its praises for years, and I can't be mad at myself, because I started reading it as soon as it was reasonably accessible, so I guess I have to be mad at the reading public for not appreciating this book and letting it go out of print.