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Freedom and Necessity (1997)

av Steven Brust, Emma Bull

MedlemmarRecensionerPopularitetGenomsnittligt betygOmnämnanden
1,0801918,592 (3.89)53
It is 1849. Across Europe, the high tide of revolution has crested, leaving recrimination and betrayal in its wake. From the high councils of Prussia to the corridors of Parliament, the powers-that-be breathe sighs of relief. But the powers-that-be are hardly unified among themselves. Far from it . . . On the south coast of England, London man-about-town James Cobham comes to himself in a country inn, with no idea how he got there. Corresponding with his brother, he discovers he has been presumed drowned in a boating accident. Together they decide that he should stay put for the moment, while they investigate what may have transpired. For James Cobham is a wanted man--wanted by conspiring factions of the government and the Chartists alike, and also targeted by a magical conspiracy inside his own family. And so the adventure ofFreedom and Necessity begins... leading the reader through every corner of mid-nineteenth-century Britain, from the parlors of the elite to the dens of the underclass. Steven Brust and Emma Bull have crafted a masterful mix of fantasy and historical fiction. Not since Wilkie Collins or Conan Doyle has there been such a profusion of guns, swordfights, family intrigues, women disguised as men, occult societies, philosophical discussions, and, of course, passionate romance.… (mer)
  1. 20
    Sorcery and Cecelia, or, The Enchanted Chocolate Pot av Patricia C. Wrede (puddleshark)
  2. 00
    Rebecca av Daphne Du Maurier (bjappleg8)
    bjappleg8: first person narrative; ambiguous supernatural elements; slow unravelling of a mystery in a historical British setting
  3. 01
    The Woman in White av Wilkie Collins (aulsmith)
    aulsmith: Both novels take place in Victorian England. They have convoluted plots, many surprises and a whiff of the occult. Although Freedom and Necessity was not a Victorian novel, it reads like one, complementing the style of Collins.
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» Se även 53 omnämnanden

Visa 1-5 av 19 (nästa | visa alla)
A thick book, with small type, and incredibly dense prose. It took me a while to get into the story and I never really got into the Hegel, but I did really like the characters - especially the less philosophical, more practical women: Kitty was just lovely and bubbly and sweet, while I could really identify with Susan's reserve. The family tree at the front was handy as I kept referring back to it throught....

Not sure if I was imagining the set-up at the end for a potential sequel; none seems to have eventuated either way. ( )
  zeborah | Oct 9, 2018 |
It's 1849, the place is England, and James Cobham is dead. He was seen to drown, although his body was never recovered. Except that two months later, his cousin Richard receives a letter from James, who's working as an hostler at an inn and doesn't remember the past two months. The story unfolds in the letters and journal entries of Richard, James, Kitty, Susan, and assorted other connections, further enlivened by the fact that nobody is telling anybody everything. As the four principles gradually pick apart the threads of the several competing conspiracies with various political, personal, and financial motivations, life becomes ever more exciting, more exciting than any of them wanted it to be.

It should be noted, I think, that no one finding this book cold in the general fiction section of a more mainstream bookstore, or in the library without a little sticker indicating "fantasy", would ever identify this as anything other than a straight historical novel. Nothing unambiguously fantastical ever happens in it; even the ambiguous things are not especially prominent. This is a very good, complex, literate historical novel, getting an sf readership because of its authors and its marketing. Highly recommended. ( )
  LisCarey | Sep 19, 2018 |
I wanted to love this book. Emma Bull and Will Shetterly are amazing writers. However, the execution of the book did not live up to its promise. What should have been exciting and compelling fell flat. The epistolary format, which I was a bit wary of, wasn't the problem. The pace of the book was what killed it for me. The secrets that were uncovered and plots that were revealed were just not enough to keep the momentum going. There were also many fascinating ideas that were brought up and never addressed. The entire book feels like a missed opportunity for greatness. ( )
  jencharlap | Aug 22, 2016 |
England, 1849. A man is fished out of a lake, half-dead. His last memory is of falling into the water during a boating party - two months earlier.
What happened during that lost two months? And was there a plot afoot to do away with him? He goes underground, working as a hostler at a small inn, writing to his relative in order to try to find out what happened...

Emma Bull, particularly, is an author I very much enjoy and admire. However, this was the second time I've read this book (it was this month's selection for my book club), and I still just couldn't get into it.
It's written in the epistolary fashion - as a series of letters and journal entries, with the occasional newspaper article thrown in. A good deal of the time, the letters (written in pseudo-19th-century British style) are not even describing events, but are referencing OTHER letters, books, etc.
The effect is very distancing, and I found it impossible to achieve the "reading trance" or "flow state" that I very often experience while reading (and which is one of the best parts about reading!) through this book. This also means I read it very slowly - and it's a long book! (590 pgs.)

With some books, you end feeling that you know the characters intimately... in this one, you end feeling like you might have been pen-pals.

The characters (vivacious, blonde Kitty, who dabbles in mysticism, her husband Richard, the revolutionary and intense James, the spunky and unconventional Susan) are interesting, and many exciting elements are there: anti-government plots and counter plots, secret societies, occultism and sacrifice, cross-dressing, kidnapping, weapons smuggling, arson, violence, poison.... plus a healthy dash of romance.

However, throughout the book, I couldn't quite help feeling that really, not so much was at stake. I was at such a remove from the action that I didn't really care, emotionally.

Also, although advertised as a 'fantasy' (probably since it's from two authors known for fantasy), it's not. It's straight historical fiction, with no more of a hint of the supernatural than one would find in real life.

I can't say it's not an ambitious work - and well-done. The way in which one has to search through each letter for clues as to what is happening, and to find out exactly what each character knows, and when, can be an entertaining mental exercise. But personally, I prefer more of a feeling of immediacy to novels. ( )
  AltheaAnn | Feb 9, 2016 |
This was a deftly handled, engaging adventure story, but I was mostly unimpressed by its attempts to engage seriously with its subject matter. Characters and plot were interesting enough for me to keep reading, but ultimately they were pretty lightweight and did not seem to belong in the same book as endless pages of philosophical and ethical navel-gazing. The villains in particular were just silly and their motivations too ridiculous for any sort of logical analysis, let alone Kitty and Richard's Hegelian epiphany. In regards to the villains, a word of advice to writers of historical fiction: do *not* attempt implausible feats of plotting by having your characters shrug away English inheritance laws. Every historical reader worth her weight in Penguin Classics paperbacks will call you on it.

The central place of the Chartist movement in this story also bothered me, because the main characters were, at the end of the day, still just four members of the gentry having adventures. The writers, to its credit, kept addressing this, but ultimately they didn't deal with it in the form of their novel, whose message was that only the wealthy possess the agency and inner complexity to be protagonists. James's appropriation of Irish identity was even more bothersome to me for the same reason - he gets to somehow be essentially Irish, dropping Irish-language words left and right, without suffering the prejudice that would come with Irish identity.

I feel that the authors chose these characters because for modern readers, the gentry are "us," socially mobile, possessing disposable incomes, and in the case of intellectuals like these four, possessing of modern ideas about gender roles, national identity, politics, and class identity. (The fact that they're old money and not new money is probably just thoughtless adherence to the form of the early Victorian novel. Newsflash - it's not the Victorian era anymore, we can write about everyone, and for that matter, Middlemarch was more inclusive than this book is.) People like James and Susan and Kitty and Richard of course existed in the 1840s, but I think to deal with class issues and then to select a troupe of privileged American-style liberals as your protagonists is profoundly unimaginative.

For all this criticism, this book really only lost my sympathy near the end, where they had one of our protagonists get knocked up after two weeks of sexual activity and IMMEDIATELY start experiencing morning sickness making her CERTAIN that she is pregnant. I mean REALLY? After so much relatively well-researched plotting, I simply had no words. Well, no, I had plenty of words, as my boyfriend will attest (he had the misfortune of sitting next to me while I was reading).

To give the authors credit, this was an impressively plotted and well-written novel. It just did not do it for me as far as historical fiction goes. I think I am going to avoid epistolary novels with two authors for a while, in my experience they tend to be self-indulgent. ( )
2 rösta raschneid | Mar 31, 2013 |
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Författarens namnRollTyp av författareVerk?Status
Brust, Stevenprimär författarealla utgåvorbekräftat
Bull, Emmahuvudförfattarealla utgåvorbekräftat
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When the content of the interest in which one is absorbed is drawn out of its immediate unity with oneself and becomes an independent object of one's thinking, then it is that spirit begins to be free, whereas when thinking is an instinctive activity, spirit is enmeshed in the bonds of its categories and is broken up into an infinitely varied material . . . because spirit is essentially consciousness, this self-knowing is a fundamental determination of its actuality . . . the loftier business of logic therefore is to clarify these categories and in them to raise mind to freedom and truth.
--Hegel, The Science of Logic
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Dedicated to Teresa Nielsen Hayden, who is probably the ideal reader for this book.
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From The Times, July 26, 1849: Mr. Roebuck also begged to enter his protest against this ill-considered and crude piece of legislation, which he described as the result of a species of cant which was almost as dangerous as vice.
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It is 1849. Across Europe, the high tide of revolution has crested, leaving recrimination and betrayal in its wake. From the high councils of Prussia to the corridors of Parliament, the powers-that-be breathe sighs of relief. But the powers-that-be are hardly unified among themselves. Far from it . . . On the south coast of England, London man-about-town James Cobham comes to himself in a country inn, with no idea how he got there. Corresponding with his brother, he discovers he has been presumed drowned in a boating accident. Together they decide that he should stay put for the moment, while they investigate what may have transpired. For James Cobham is a wanted man--wanted by conspiring factions of the government and the Chartists alike, and also targeted by a magical conspiracy inside his own family. And so the adventure ofFreedom and Necessity begins... leading the reader through every corner of mid-nineteenth-century Britain, from the parlors of the elite to the dens of the underclass. Steven Brust and Emma Bull have crafted a masterful mix of fantasy and historical fiction. Not since Wilkie Collins or Conan Doyle has there been such a profusion of guns, swordfights, family intrigues, women disguised as men, occult societies, philosophical discussions, and, of course, passionate romance.

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