No, not because of the vacation, this is over several weeks.
BETRAYAL FROM THE EAST: The Inside Story of Japanese Spies in America by Alan Hynd is the inspiration for the same-name movie,which apparently combined two unrelated spy cases to make its story (understandably I suppose—the Miyazaki case didn’t have a very satisfying ending). Unfortunately, it’s impossible now to trust a book that claims the Nisei were a vast nest of traitors (“I’m sure there’s a certain percentage that are loyal.”), the internment was justified (it’s interesting that releasing prisoners from Manzanar triggered the same dire warnings talk of Gitmo closing does today) and that allowing Japanese to work in pretty much any career in the US (fisherman, engineer, hotel owner) was equivalent to sticking America’s head in the noose. Interesting for showing what the received wisdom was 60 years ago.
THE BOOK OF DRACULA is a horror collection that includes several familiar to me (“Carmilla,” “For the Blood is the Life” and “The Room in the Tower”) and a number that weren’t (Benson’s “Mrs. Amworth” is probably the best of them). An enjoyable collection, though I imagine there would have been little new to you.
SHARPE’S TRIUMPH: Richard Sharpe and the Battle of Assay, 1803 by Bernard Conrwell breaks the four quiet years following Sharpe’s Tiger by embroiling Sharpe in “boy general” Wellesley’s battle against a renegade British officer now fighting for one of the Indian princelings—plus a plan by Hakeswell to get rid of Shapre once and for all. This retcon is Sharpe’s major turning point, where he saves Wellesley’s life and wins his battlefield commission and also comes to realize that soldiering is his true path. Well done.
THE BLOODY CHAMBER is a collection of fairy-tale-based stories by Angela Carter in which a soldier confronts a vampiric Sleeping Beauty, a girl encounters a werewolf while visiting her grandmother, a young woman is bartered to a beast to pay off a gambling debt and a new bride learns she really shouldn’t have looked in her husband’s locked room. Carter’s style is impressive, but as you say, there are much wilder versions of the old stories available now (though since these were written thirty years ago, that’s not really Carter’s fault).
FAIREST by Gail Carson Levine proves the point—this reworking of Snow White can’t match the elegance of Carter’s prose but it’s considerably more imaginative as a self-consciously plain young maiden finds her superb voice and ventriloquist skill makes her perfect to be her queen’s voice at important ceremonies—which all turns out to have something to do with a malevolent magic mirror and a fairy’s wedding gift. Much further removed from the source material than Levine’s Ella Enchanted, but very entertaining.
