Micah Clarke by Arthur Conan Doyle

Around the World in 80,000 Pages - Book 16

Micah Clarke by Arthur Conan Doyle

You can read about my Around the World in 80,000 Pages challenge here.

Miles travelled: 948 
Pages read: 6,355

 

Disclaimer: I'm rather behind on my reviews, so they will be super brief until I get caught up again.

We now head north, into the West Country for a non-Holmes novel by Arthur Conan Doyle.

Micah Clarke follows the titular hero as he signs up for the rebel army of the Duke of Monmouth, against the catholic James II, and marches in the name of the doomed protestant cause.

Although most famous for Holmes, Conan Doyle was far from a one-trick pony, and produced several novels he thought of more literary merit than his consultant detective stories. The only such story I had previously read was The White Company, which I didn't get on with too well. I found that novel dry and overly full of its own importance. As such I was somewhat nervous coming to Micah Clarke. I needn't have worried. Conan Doyle's great strength as a writer was in taking tropes and well-trodden genres, and making them his own. Micah Clarke is in the spirit of a rollicking Louis Stevenson yarn, and contains none of the pretense of great literature which made The White Company so stodgy. It rips along at a cracking pace, the characters are believable and well-rounded, and the book is chock full of period detail which gives it a great sense of place, both geographically and historically. Neither the plot or theme are quite what needed to make this a great book, but it is a very good book.

I gave Micah Clarke 107½/140 - ★★★★☆. The featured flag is that of Somerset and the suggested music is that banger of 17th century liturgical music: Ainsworth's setting of Psalm 75.