(no subject)

[skygiants]

Yesterday while I was wandering forlornly around at the bookstore because my favorite coffee place had mysteriously disappeared in the night, I found a copy of Elizabeth Marie Pope's The Sherwood Ring in the bargain bin for a dollar. This was one of my favorite books as a kid, and the path before me had clearly been prepared; I bought it and zoomed through it on my lunch hour. AND IT WAS GREAT.

The Sherwood Ring is technically set in the 1950s and is technically about a neglected teenaged girl who gets sent back to the ancestral family home to live with her history-obsessed uncle and solve a mystery and have a romance. But before she goes, her dying father also mentions in an offhand sort of way that the ancestral family home has some ghosts --

PEGGY: Ghosts?!?
PEGGY'S DYING FATHER: Oh, don't worry, not the scary kind of ghost, they are all sexy Revolutionary War heroes! The worst they will probably do is some matchmaking, Helpful Hints On How Not to Get Your British Boyfriend Caught by Your Patriotic Relatives, that kind of thing.
PEGGY: . . .

-- and so actually most of the book, and by far the most interesting part, is the ghosts telling Peggy about everything that went down in the house during the Revolutionary War when Peggy's ancestor Dashing Young Officer Dick was sent to the area to chase around his nemesis, a brilliant British officer and leader of a secret outlaw band named PEACEABLE DRUMMOND SHERWOOD.

PEACEABLE DRUMMOND SHERWOOD, it should be mentioned, is very clearly the preincarnation of the Scarlet Pimpernel/Francis Crawford of Lymond/Lord Peter Wimsey. (Well, I guess he would be a post-incarnation of Francis Crawford.) He also ends up meeting Dashing Officer Dick's sister Barbara, and the resulting romance fulfills all my needs for dudes being starry-eyed over ladies who are extremely competent at being their enemies. More proposals of marriage should happen in the brief interval between when the gentleman realizes the lady has drugged his drink and when he falls over unconscious, is what I think. Meanwhile, Dashing Officer Dick gets wind of the fact that his nemesis is in love with his sister, and . . .

DASHING OFFICER DICK: LOLOLOLOL I SHIP IT LOLOLOLOL
BARBARA: >:| >:| >:|
DASHING OFFICER DICK: I am sorry Barbara but this is the funniest thing to happen all war.

So you can see why I love this book. Elizabeth Marie Pope wrote one other fiction book in her life as far as I know, which I also love and need to reread one of these days soon; it's the Elizabethan Tam Lin where the hero and the heroine progress in their romance by talking seriously about drains. Elizabeth Marie Pope is GREAT.

Comments

[nny]

I'm gonna try and remember this one.

[nny]

Er. As in, find and read, not like spontaneously create memories of a book I haven't read ALTHOUGH THAT WOULD BE AWESOME.

[skygiants]

I WOULD LOVE TO HAVE THAT GIFT. Although actually I guess it would take some of the element of surprise away from a first read . . .

[nny]

But you could spontaneously generate memories of books that didn't exist! I mean, yes, I write, I should be able to do that anyway, but like books with DIFFERENT ENDINGS and SEQUELS and things!

I COULD BE PONDER STIBBONS

[skygiants]

But then how frustrating would it be to never be able to find them again? You'd be like "I KNOW Diana Wynne Jones and Terry Pratchett teamed up to write that Howl's Moving Castle crossover" and then it would be NOWHERE.

. . . being Ponder Stibbons is a pretty good life goal however.

[bookblather]

Elizabeth Marie Pope is the BEST and omg Peaceable and Barbara. BEST MARRIAGE PROPOSAL EVER.

"So, Dad, how did you fall in love with Mom?"

"Oh, she drugged my drink really obviously except then it turned out she'd actually drugged her drink and manipulated me into drinking it, and as soon as I realized I was passing out I realized I had to GET WITH THAT."

"..."

"What?"

SPOILERS!

[skygiants]

I always loved Peaceable and Barbara best as kids, because BEST MARRIAGE PROPOSAL EVER INDEED, but on this round I realized that, as amazing as they both are, my favorite character might actually be Dick and his endless sibling trolling.

"HEY SIS I GOT YOU A PRESENT"
". . .?"
"IT'S MY NEMESIS GO MAKE OUT WITH HIM"
". . ."
"NO SERIOUSLY HE'S IN THE KITCHEN, I dragged him here all the way from New York JUST FOR YOU, don't mind me, I'll just be sitting here laughing until my face falls off."

Re: SPOILERS!

[bookblather]

BAHAHAHAHAHA. The best kind of trolling: the kind where the sibling not-so-secretly wants the nemesis to make out with, but really really hates that the trolling sibling knows it.

[cahn]

Perilous Gard is one of my FAVORITE BOOKS EVER, and I have NO IDEA why I have never read this one.

[skygiants]

I think it was a lot harder to find for a while! And it didn't win any awards like The Perilous Gard did. It's SO worth it, though.

[lacewood]

Investigation has just revealed that the library DOES have a handful of super ancient copies of this available for loan. AHA, and just when I'd assumed they were out-of-print and eternally unfindable!

[skygiants]

Sometimes the library comes to the rescue after all! \o/

[crossedwires]

it's the Elizabethan Tam Lin where the hero and the heroine progress in their romance by talking seriously about drains.

I LOVE THIS BOOK. I'm not sure why I've never read The Sherwood Ring. Must remedy that.

[skygiants]

They're both so good! I keep hoping that if I wish really hard there will be more, like, Elizabeth Marie Pope will magically resurrect from the grave and write a bunch more adorable historical fantasies JUST FOR ME.