(no subject)

[skygiants]

A few months ago I agreed to trade littlerhymes some endearingly mediocre published Arthurian fanfic in exchange for a dealer's choice Dick Francis novel.

This turned out to be Flying Finish, which is about PLANES and SMUGGLING and BIRTH CONTROL PILLS and maybe also TERRORISTS?

Our Hero Henry Gray is a very reserved, buttoned-up, socially awkward lord's heir who one day decides his life is meaningless and subsequently scandalizes his entire family by going and getting a manual job helping to ship horses back and forth from the UK. I liked him very much, although I did start snickering a little meanly to myself whenever he started explaining sadly to somebody else about how the aristocracy are very oppressed! everyone judges them by their titles and nice normal people don't wish to be friends with them and sometimes they get bullied at work for this accident of birth that they just can't help! THAT'S ROUGH, BUDDY.

But, that aside, I really enjoyed Henry's story of learning to Be A Person Who Has Emotions And Likes Himself. I also liked Henry's love interest, Gabriella, who runs the airport gift shop and as a sideline smuggles birth control pills into the country, but I was a little disappointed that they literally fell in love at first sight; I always feel a little cheated by that, but especially when the protagonists are both characters I'm interested in and ESPECIALLY when at least one of them has poor social skills that would make it challenging, because I want to see how they manage to connect with each other and having it happen at first sight skips over all the most interesting-to-me parts!

BUT ANYWAY, the actual plot: several people who work at Henry's company have disappeared, and also there's one asshole coworker who keeps beating Henry up for no reason, and at first Henry's like 'it's probably just a class thing, that thing where people bully you at work sometimes for an aspect of your identity that you had no choice about, which in this case is that you are a member of the landed gentry?'

BUT MAYBE IT'S NOT ACTUALLY A CLASS THING, MAYBE IT'S A CRIME THING.

(As a sidenote, asshole coworker is a very intense vaguely sociopathic nineteen-year-old with a chip on his shoulder and carefully described pretty, almost androgynous features and in, say, an Ellen Kushner book his initial physical clashes with Henry would possibly have gone a VERY different way. I'm just saying.)

It takes Henry about 60% of the book to get around to investigating it though because he's busy falling in love at first sight, and trying to juggle his job and his family and his hobby of flying airplanes and his surprise new Italian girlfriend and his own personal growth, and honestly, that's all fair. It's a lot of extracurriculars to balance before he gets around to the stoic suffering and grimly determined action heroics involving planes and horses!

Comments

[kate_nepveu]

I am always so sad that more of these haven't been released in ebook.

[skygiants]

Me too! They seem like prime targets for the same kind of backlist treatment that other 80s thrillers authors have gotten, like Barbara Michaels.

[sovay]

I also liked Henry's love interest, Gabriella, who runs the airport gift shop and as a sideline smuggles birth control pills into the country

I remember this one! I primarily remember Gabriella, but I also remember that I liked the book.

[skygiants]

Gabriella seems to be the thing that sticks most for the people who've recced it to me, which makes sense given her excellent hobbies!

[littlerhymes]

Ahahahaha yeah POOR HENRY GRAY WITH HIS MONEY AND HIS TITLES lol! I totally see what you mean about the romance having no build-up, I wish it had more of that too, since Gabriella is wonderful.

in, say, an Ellen Kushner book his initial physical clashes with Henry would possibly have gone a VERY different way

This is 100% true.

(And thank you very much for the Arthuriana fanfiction which is currently on my bedside table patiently waiting its turn!)

[skygiants]

"I dare not reveal the dark secret of my identity lest all my acquaintances judge me not for my achievements but for the accident of birth that marks me!" OH HENRY.

She's great, and Henry is great but so bad at humans, and I was really looking forward to seeing the interactions that would get him to overcome his bad-at-humans! ALAS. But it was still super enjoyable; thank you so much for sending it! (And I look very much forward to whenever you get around to reading the Arthuriana. >:D)

[oracne]

This one is one of my faves!

[skygiants]

It seems to be near-universally well-regarded! :D

[sienamystic]

I haven't reread this one in FOREVER, I may need to go track down a copy. I gave away most of my tattered Dick Francis books and almost immediately regretted it. Only a few clangers in that bunch.

[skygiants]

I own none, having resisted reading them for so long, but genarti's parents have stacks and stacks of them on their shelves, so whenever she decides I need to read one she can just trot it helpfully down...

[genarti]

It's true! :D Although there are several of them for which my mom is like YOU CAN BORROW IT BUT I WANT IT BACK IT'S ONE OF MY FAVES, which I find hilarious given that for most books she's like, "oh sure, borrow it if you like! If you want to keep it that's fine, or just get it back to me sometime." jothra also has several, btw.

(Though I think she did get rid of the clangers, and she has Strong Opinions about the ones he co-wrote with his son Felix after Mary's death.)

Anyway now I definitely want to (re)read more, which to be fair is a thing it's always very easy to nudge me into wanting.

[genarti]

I did like Henry, although his class issues were so... uh. What they were! I was entertained by how stubborn he was about them, while everyone else (except Pilot Buddy Patrick) was like, "I... sure, man." I'm not sure Dick Francis disagreed with Henry about it as strongly as I do, but I don't think he wholeheartedly agreed, either, and I'm much more willing to accept An Aristocrat's Lot Is A Hard One D: as an idiosyncratic character perspective than I am as an authorial one. And Henry is definitely an idiosyncratic character!

I agree about liking Henry's arc, and Gabriella's jobs both paying and self-appointed. I like what we get of Gabriella's personality, too, though I did wish she got a bit more time to show more sides of it. (Also, as I mentioned to you, I got my wires crossed about the fact that Mary Francis's piloting experience informed the writing of this book, and somehow thought that Gabriella was also a pilot, which would have been awesome.)

It's not one of my top favorite Dick Francis books, but it's definitely not one of the bottom, either. There is SO MUCH going on, though, heh -- it definitely is on the slow burn plot side of things, until all of a sudden the plot explodes into SO MUCH OF EVERYTHING ALL THE TIME WOW. But gotta get in that Dick Francis stoic whump sooner or later, and Henry is a solid contender in those stakes!

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I did love all the piloting stuff, though. I have no desire to be a pilot, but I really enjoyed reading about Henry being competent at it, and being temperamentally extremely suited to it in all the ways I am not.

[lokifan]

Haha this sounds awesome! Especially the smuggling-the-pill aspect.