2010 book log

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I have frequently admitted that I am a sucker for an amnesia plot, that grand old staple of television series and of romance novels–and yeah, Elizabeth Peters has one, too. That would be The Snake, the Crocodile, and the Dog, Book 7 of the Amelia Peabodies, in which Emerson loses enough years off his memory to make him think he doesn’t have a wife. You can guess that this causes Amelia quite a great deal of consternation.

Really, though, this book is almost less about that than it is about Amelia and Emerson rekindling the romance of the early years of their relationship. Ramses and Nefret are not active in this plot, although periodic letters from Ramses threatening his imminent arrival in Egypt bring some Funny, and much of what drives the events in this story are the ramifications of news getting around about the Emersons finding Nefret. This clears the way for Amelia to focus exclusively on her husband and with the mystery at hand. And that’s not the only relationship getting explored, either, as there are quite a few twists involving a particular character I shall not name for fear of spoilers.

And I’ll say for Peters that her particular handling of an amnesia plot is at least slightly less goofy than many. Yeah, you have the obligatory nasty crack on the head, but that’s not all the abuse that Emerson takes at the hands of his captors; there’s enforced intake of opium as well. I could have done without the psychologist showing up later to spout assertions about how Emerson doesn’t really want to remember that he has a wife, but hey, it does fuel Amelia’s tension through most of the plot. Plus, there is a nicely understated resolution to it all.

This would not be an Amelia Peabody without the appearance of at least one memorable cat. In this case, it’s Anubis, the first male cat to join the Emerson family, and the comparisons between him and Bastet and how the Emersons’ workmen react to each animal add some amusing color to the proceedings. There is delightful character interactionb between Amelia and Abdullah. And, of course, there is excellent mileage with Sethos. But I’m not sayin’ where. Wouldn’t want to give a Master Criminal away, after all!

All in all a fairly self-contained story, not vital to the overall arc of the series, but fun nonetheless, and the adventure ties in nicely with the Egyptian tale that Amelia translates through the course of the novel. Five stars.

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

You really need to point at Book 6 of the Amelia Peabodies, The Last Camel Died at Noon, as one of the pivotal books of the series–because it’s here that arguably the most important character in the entire cast (aside from, of course, the Emersons themselves) is introduced. The Last Camel Died at Noon is the book that introduces Nefret, and it’s the tale of how the Emersons discover and rescue her from a lost civilization deep in the Sudan.

It’s this book as well where Peters starts throwing around references to H. Rider Haggard, and in particular, King Solomon’s Mines. Amelia harks back a lot to Haggard’s writing as she tells the reader all about what proves to be one of the Emersons’ most exotic adventures ever. Word comes to them that the explorer Willoughby Forth, long presumed to have been lost in the desert along with his young wife, may not actually have died–and that, moreover, the lost oasis they were seeking might actually exist. The Emersons are begged by Forth’s father and cousin to go in search of proof of his eventual fate; the Emersons being who they are, they agree. But the journey is deeply perilous, and after the deaths of their camels, abandonment by their men, and the threat of illness and thirst and heatstroke, they are rescued by the people of the very civilization Forth had set out to locate.

What happens when they get there–and how Nefret comes into it–I won’t say because that’d be hugely spoilerrific. Suffice to say that there is political and social intrigue, treachery from several quarters, and Amelia getting the biggest shock of her life when Ramses encounters someone who can actually make him shut up. Five stars.

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

In a series that’s famous for being primarily set in Egypt, The Deeds of the Disturber, Book 5 of the Amelia Peabodies, is quite distinctive in that it’s set in England during the off-season, when the Emerson family is between digs. It also has the good fortune of being my very favorite book involving Ramses as a child. Sure, that boy’s formidable even in Books 3 and 4, but here, put up against the odious Percy and Violet, the children of Amelia’s brother James, Ramses gets his first real stretch of character development.

You’d think that the Emersons being at home means they’d get a break from their detectival adventures, but you’d be wrong. There’s a new exhibit with a mummy at the British Museum, and of course there are Mysterious Persons showing up in ancient Egyptian garb causing disturbances at the exhibit. Worse yet, people have started to die at the museum, and rumors are beginning to fly about a curse. Cue the Emersons, even though Emerson himself is frantically trying to finish a manuscript. And even though Amelia has to juggle managing not only her husband and son, but also her niece and nephew, who have been unceremoniously thrust upon her by her brother. The redoubtable Amelia is hopeful that exposure to other children, “normal” children, might be good for Ramses–but it should surprise no reader of the series that things go very, very badly. Fights break out, accusations are hurled, and as is so often the case with young Master Ramses, things wind up on fire.

The Young Lovers Du Jour are a refreshing change of pace–none other than Kevin O’Connell, the Emersons’ simultaneously most liked and most hated reporter, and his rival, Miss Minton, who’ll stop at nothing to scoop him on the story of the curse at the museum. And it’s fun to see characters here that we don’t normally get to see in an Amelia Peabody novel, such as the Emersons’ England-based servants, all of whom take an inordinate amount of interest in the family affairs (Gargery, the butler, is Awesome). Emerson gets his obligatory Scenes of Being Heroically Wounded, not once but twice even, and there is even a mysterious woman from his past cropping up and giving Amelia cause for Grave Concern. Coming as we are off of Book 4, this is fun tension, given that the tables are now turned and Amelia has to have her own battles with doubt.

But really, read this for the excellent Ramses mileage! And keep an eye on that kid Percy, because we will be seeing him again! Five stars.

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

If you pick and choose only a selection of the Amelia Peabody books to read, one of your choices must indisputably be Lion in the Valley, book 4 of the series. This introduces one of the most critical recurring characters to show up all throughout the books: as Amelia herself likes to call him, that genius of crime, the Master Criminal, Sethos.

Thanks to events of the previous book, The Mummy Case, Emerson has secured permission to dig at the Black Pyramid in Dahshur. But as is always the case with the Emersons, their efforts are soon enough interrupted. Someone attempts to kidnap Ramses–and the man who helps rescue him proves to be an opium-addicted Englishman. Moreover, there’s a young woman on the run from an accusation of murder, and anyone who’s read any other book of the series should be able to quickly guess that there’s backstory with these two side characters, too.

But really, the main interest of this installment is Sethos, particularly when his romantic interest in Amelia comes to light. Look for the big ending, when the Master Criminal gets his shot at his main goal. Which is to say, Amelia herself. This’ll set up a lot of lovely interaction for later installments, as well as occasional fun tension between Amelia and Emerson. Also, Sethos himself is a fabulous anti-hero, sure to appeal to any fan of rakish thieves and gentleman rogues. Four stars.

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Once you get into Book 3 of the Amelia Peabody series, The Mummy Case, you start picking up steam for the long haul of the bulk of all these books. Hands down, the best aspect of it is that Amelia and Emerson’s young son Ramses joins them for the first time in Egypt, and therefore starts taking his place as a primary character in the family’s adventures. Much like with Book 2, though, aside from Ramses starting to become his catastrophically precocious self, the rest of this story doesn’t stand out as much for me plot-wise. There’s certainly plenty of intrigue surrounding the murder of an antiquities dealer and the disappearance and reappearance of a mummy case, as well as the usual colorful cast of characters that populates any Amelia Peabody adventure.

What really sells this one for me, though, is all the character interaction–particularly with Ramses. He’s still too twee as of this book, what with Peters still writing out all his dialogue with a lisp–but he starts exhibiting the tendencies that make him quite the little holy terror for his parents to raise. The bit with the lion in this book, in particular, is gold. I also absolutely adore that Ramses, in emulation of his parents, carries out his own tiny excavation that turns out to be quite a bit more important than either of his parents expect. Four stars.

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

After the awesomeness that is Crocodile on the Sandbank, the mighty opening round of the Amelia Peabody series, a reader might wonder how Elizabeth Peters could possibly have packed more awesome into these books. The answer: by the introduction of Amelia and Emerson’s son, the “catastrophically precocious” Walter Peabody Emerson, better known by his nickname of Ramses.

The opening of this book remains one of my favorite bits in the entire series. It’s four years after the events of Book 1, and Amelia and Emerson have been staying at home in England raising their small son rather than risking him by a return to Egypt. In a quick little sequence of anecdotes, Amelia provides a delightful little portrait of exactly what this kid is like, from how he started to talk at a very early age to how he delighted in his father reading grisly accounts of mummies to him, and most of all in digging up bones out of the garden. He’s a bit too twee at this early age, though, as his dialogue is written out with some baby pronunication that makes him a bit hard to read. I was cheerfully willing to overlook that though for the giggle factor of young Ramses interrupting a tea party his mother is having–by bringing Amelia a particularly filthy femur, and horrifying all the other women present. Muaha.

Sadly, Ramses is not actually much in this book. The main gist of the plot involves one Lady Baskerville coming to beg Emerson for assistance, for her husband, himself a well-known excavator, has died in the middle of digging into a new tomb. Lady Baskerville wants Emerson to continue the job–and if at all possible, to investigate the mystery of her husband’s death and other strange circumstances that have surrounded their entire dig. And it’s certainly an entertaining mystery, notable for setting up a lot of the standard elements of an Amelia Peabody book: murder, a budding young romance, and someone (or multiple someones) being attracted passionately to Emerson! One other plot element is introduced here as well that will resonate through several of the following novels: the Emersons’ acqusition of the cat Bastet.

So even though the main plot doesn’t stand out for me as much as with the rest of the series, there are still a whole bunch of important things introduced here that set up books to come. For this one, four stars.