Walton, Jo - Ha'Penny
Mon, Jan. 14th, 2008 04:22 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
oyceterI loved Walton's Farthing, a sharp, intelligent, and angry critique of fascism and complacency delivered via an alternate timeline in which Britain makes peace with Germany and the Third Reich is never stopped.
Ha'Penny returns to that world, and Viola Larkin, young aristocrat turned actress, is getting caught up in a scheme that has the potential to overturn her world. Inspector Carmichael from the first book is back and investigating, and like the first book, Ha'Penny alternates between first-person (Viola) and third-person (Carmichael) narratives.
While I enjoyed reading this and found Walton's version of the world just as chilling as before, the book didn't grab me quite as much as Farthing did. I think some of it may be that the shock of the world has gone; I've grown more used to the idea, horrifying as it is. I also had problems with the timeline. While Walton does a good job at building tension using what Carmichael knows, what Viola knows and what the reader knows, I still never quite like the feeling of flapping my hands around and waiting for one character to find something out.
The other bit was that I wasn't quite convinced by Viola's plot. Lucy's worked because it was sinister and everyday and only slowly revealed itself, whereas Viola's role in the plot we learn up front. I did appreciate getting a look at an entirely different aristocratic flighty girl. Walton is extremely good at giving the two protagonists of her two books very distinct voices, backgrounds, and families, even though they both roughly come from the same class. I also liked Viola's political apathy, which read as very real, though I wasn't completely convinced by her change of mind.
All that said, I would also kill to see a version of the gender-swapped Hamlet! I spent a lot of the book wishing for more looks at the play, heh.
Am still looking forward to the third book, particularly given how Carmichael's been positioned in this one.
Links:
-![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
gwyneira's review
-rachelmanija's review
-cofax7's review
-kate_nepveu's review
Ha'Penny returns to that world, and Viola Larkin, young aristocrat turned actress, is getting caught up in a scheme that has the potential to overturn her world. Inspector Carmichael from the first book is back and investigating, and like the first book, Ha'Penny alternates between first-person (Viola) and third-person (Carmichael) narratives.
While I enjoyed reading this and found Walton's version of the world just as chilling as before, the book didn't grab me quite as much as Farthing did. I think some of it may be that the shock of the world has gone; I've grown more used to the idea, horrifying as it is. I also had problems with the timeline. While Walton does a good job at building tension using what Carmichael knows, what Viola knows and what the reader knows, I still never quite like the feeling of flapping my hands around and waiting for one character to find something out.
The other bit was that I wasn't quite convinced by Viola's plot. Lucy's worked because it was sinister and everyday and only slowly revealed itself, whereas Viola's role in the plot we learn up front. I did appreciate getting a look at an entirely different aristocratic flighty girl. Walton is extremely good at giving the two protagonists of her two books very distinct voices, backgrounds, and families, even though they both roughly come from the same class. I also liked Viola's political apathy, which read as very real, though I wasn't completely convinced by her change of mind.
All that said, I would also kill to see a version of the gender-swapped Hamlet! I spent a lot of the book wishing for more looks at the play, heh.
Am still looking forward to the third book, particularly given how Carmichael's been positioned in this one.
Links:
-
gwyneira's review-
rachelmanija's review-
cofax7's review-
kate_nepveu's reviewTags: