I had no idea this book existed until I found it on Friday. As part of my glamorous long-weekend off from work I had my tires rotated on Friday (yes, it’s just as good as jetting off to a Caribbean island, I tell you!). I found a paperback copy of Thrones, Dominations in the waiting room at the Les Schwab Tires. Turns out it was there as part of bookcrossing.com , released back into the world a couple of days earlier by another reader.
Thrones, Dominations was an uncompleted Lord Peter Wimsey book begun by Dorothy Sayers that was (finally!) completed by Jill Paton Walsh about ten years ago. I read several of the Lord Peter novels in college, but didn’t know this book even existed! I’m more a fan of romance than mysteries, so the Lord Peter books I liked best were the ones about his relationship to Harriet Vane. They are what I think of when I hear the quotation “Let us not to the marriage of true minds admit impediments” since they are the marriage of true minds. They’re wildly romantic, but in a very cerebral way. I once wrote a paper on Gaudy Night explaining that the one present Harriet would let Peter buy her, an ivory chess set, signaled that one day she would agree to marry him (the descriptions of the chess set and the things she loved about it were also applicable to Peter). They have the marriage I would want – the way they come to understand the people under the complex and thorough masks that the rest of the world accepts as their real selves, and love each other for those real, vulnerable selves and for the strength and intellect that created the masks in the first place.
*sigh* I suppose the fact that they’re the fictional product from the mind of a woman whose own marriage was a disaster may go a ways to explaining why I’m single. But still, a girl’s gotta have standards!
Thrones, Dominations was an uncompleted Lord Peter Wimsey book begun by Dorothy Sayers that was (finally!) completed by Jill Paton Walsh about ten years ago. I read several of the Lord Peter novels in college, but didn’t know this book even existed! I’m more a fan of romance than mysteries, so the Lord Peter books I liked best were the ones about his relationship to Harriet Vane. They are what I think of when I hear the quotation “Let us not to the marriage of true minds admit impediments” since they are the marriage of true minds. They’re wildly romantic, but in a very cerebral way. I once wrote a paper on Gaudy Night explaining that the one present Harriet would let Peter buy her, an ivory chess set, signaled that one day she would agree to marry him (the descriptions of the chess set and the things she loved about it were also applicable to Peter). They have the marriage I would want – the way they come to understand the people under the complex and thorough masks that the rest of the world accepts as their real selves, and love each other for those real, vulnerable selves and for the strength and intellect that created the masks in the first place.
*sigh* I suppose the fact that they’re the fictional product from the mind of a woman whose own marriage was a disaster may go a ways to explaining why I’m single. But still, a girl’s gotta have standards!
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