The Riddle of the Sands: A Record of Secret Service (Penguin Red Classics)
£0.77
A fiendish plot in a melancholy setting - The Riddle of the Sands has a cracking plot, superb characterisation and some very evocative descriptions. The two main characters - the urbane narrator Carruthers and his boyish, sea-loving sailing companion Davies are very well drawn. The descriptions of the waste of ever-changing sands around the East Frisian Islands in Autumn are evocative and atmospheric.One word of warning: this is a book that you have to involve yourself in. If you have an interest in sailing or some knowledge of North Germany, you have a head start. I did find myself getting a bit bogged down in the middle section of the book mainly due to my total lack of experience of sailing. But I soon found myself referring back again and again to the maps and charts (N.B: these are a touch on the small side as far as legibility goes) to join in with the theorising and speculating of our intrepid pair of heroes.I would have also have liked to know a little more about the main villain of the piece and his motivations: what exactly had led him to betray his country and fall in with the (as yet unknown) enemy? I suppose that is left to the reader s imagination.
Good start, but.... - Intrigued by the premise of the story, and a beautifully designed cover,I felt that this book started well, but sadly became bogged down in excessive descriptions of mud, tides, sand and channels,and a confusing plethora of geographical locations, with little suspense or variety of action to redeem the story. That said, it does evoke a certain atmosphere of life on the open waves in a bygone age. Not bad, but not great.
Brilliant - I love this book, I ve read and re-read it again and again and still get something new out of it each time. The prose style is very much of its time and takes getting used to for a modern reader. Having struggled initially, I now think it s so well written, not as fast-paced as a modern story might be and all the better for it - the clarity and depth of the descriptions strike a balance between the needs of a first-time reader reading for the narrative and the boat-obsessed reader who already knows the story but wants to work out exactly what the tide is doing... I loved it before getting involved in small boats and now that I ve become a boat obsessive myself, I like it even more.
Boy s Own : A Must - This has long been a favourite of mine, and the wonderful new Penguin edition is an absolute must have for admirers old and new.A wonderful spy novel that should grip thriller fans as well as any amateur seafarer. The Riddle Of The Sands deserves the term classic.The movie too made in the late 70s is also worth watching.
Good, but not that good - Riddle of the Sands is a bit like Moby Dick : when you read them you can see their appeal, but you also see why they re not likely to get back on any bestseller lists. I found this book quite hard to read, the author has quite an elaborate writing style and an unusual way of expressing himself, so reading some passages is a chore. I ve never had similar problems with other authors from this period, so I don t think it s just a matter of age (the book was written in 1903). The story is solid, but slow, and everything gets wrapped up rather abruptly in the last four or five pages. To understand what s going on you also have to absorb a lot of local geography (mostly consisting of numerous sand-banks and channels) which is hard, even with the help of the maps provided.Overall I m glad I read this book, but in the end I didn t enjoy it that much. Towards the end I was doing a lot of skimming , but a more patient reader might get more out of it than I did. Interestingly, the author notes and the start of the book tell us that Erskine Childers was shot by firing squad. However this had more to do with politics than his prose style.