No Highway, Neville Shute

 This is  well written book, and I really liked some of the characters.  It's set firmly in Shute's own field of expertise, with the main character, Mr Honey, doing a long term study on stress fractures in aircraft. He's very wrapped up in the technical aspect of his work, and tends to not notice much in the real world.

But when his boss realises that there may be aircraft flying that are within Mr Honey's predicted time of failure, then things start to get complicated.

 

The reason I can't give this book more than three out of five stars, is because I cannot accept a plot that relies on a planchette as a plot device.

 

(It's possible that Shute believed in such things himself, but I don't.)

 

You can get it free from Faded Page.

Inyo's Ring, by N.H. Schwabacher

 I really wanted to like this book...

 

The characters are okay, I like the concept behind it.  I like the idea of a story about a Spanish Armada shipwreck survivor trying to survive in Ireland, but sadly, the historical research lets it down.

 

There are clearly bits that have been researched. eg. The description of how to use an astrolabe is correct, but it's also clear that the writer has relied on snippets of information from other people, rather than doing solid background reading herself.

 

Several times, I caught myself thinking 'Is that really correct?'  By and large, I let those go, as it's hard to be certain one way or the other. eg. Glass fishing floats were definitely not available in this period - but it's possible that they might have used some other kind of float.

 

Likewise map usage. The author went with latitude lines on a Mercator projection map. I think a portolan map, like this Spanish one - https://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/510d47da-ea02-a3d9-e040-e00a18064a99 - from from a few decades before the Armada might have been more likely. 

But it's quite possible they existed side by side.

 

The first one that really knocked me out of the story was the crew of a Spanish merchant ship started eating ship's biscuit on their first day at sea!

Sure, people ate ship's biscuit at sea, but NOT until the fresh food ran out. 

(And merchant ships did not have crow's nest; and in any case you don't send a character with sea sickness up to the crow's nest even if there is one, because the ship rotates around it's centre of gravity and hence the motion high up the mast will be far worse than it is on deck.)

 

The point when I finally abandoned the book was when the evil English burned the fields of the  Irish peasants as a punishment, becuase they didn't have enough money to pay their taxes.

 

I have no objection to the English being evil - the treatment of the Irish historically was appalling. 

BUT - being evil does not make you stupid.

 

Every evil overlord knows that (unless the peasants are in active revolt and you're trying to starve them out) you wait for the peasants to harvest their grain, thresh it, and have all nicely stored in sacks for the winter - THEN you steal it.

 

Basically, if you want a story set in an interesting period in the past, and aren't too interested in the nitty gritty of historical detail, then the odds are that you will enjoy this.

 

But, if you're like me and read all sorts of odds and sods of historical bits and pieces, and wonder what those funny stars on old maps are actually for, then this book is best avoided before you throw your ebook across the room and damage it!