The White Rajah by Tom Williams

[byslantedlight]

It's ages since I've started reading a book and then been 100% annoyed at the world that it won't let me just sit there and finish it all in one go, but The White Rajah by Tom Williams has totally been that book! As it was, it was there waiting for me in it's Amazon-cardboarded glory when I got home last night, and because Sir James Brooke is my new boyfriend (thank you foxcat74 for that rather brilliant description), and I'd already started White Rajah by Nigel Barley which is a biography of Brooke, but this was the novel of the biography of the... (well, of course it's not cos it's a novel, but it kind of is...) I had to sit down with it straight away.

And there is just something about it!

Granted, I was predisposed to be interested cos it's about Brooke, who I met at the National Portrait Gallery:

and fell in love with a bit because he's just got something, and fought pirates, and adventured around the world at the same time as all the boys I'd been researching for my defunct phd, and has curly brown hair and look at the way he's leaning on that rock! Also it turns out that he was almost certainly gay, and the novel is told from the pov of the bloke who fell in love with him... *g*

And that's the other thing about this book - it's not just a story about Brooke's adventures in Borneo, or about Williamson for that matter, it is a romance because they're shown to be totally, devotedly in love, but at the same time it's not a pile of soppy tat with one of them actually "the woman" (*headdesk* that that's even supposedly "definable"). It's their story, and it's the story of how Brooke came to be the "White Rajah" of the country of Sarawak, and it's a bit fab. It's about two people and something extraordinary that they did, and how they felt about it and dealt with it.

From the back cover:
Based on a true story, Brooke's battle is a tale of adventure set against the background of a jungle world of extraordinary beauty and terrible savagery. Told through the eyes of the man who loves him and shares his dream, this is a tale of love and loss from a 19th century world that still speaks to us today.

And it can be found here on Amazon, or if you're in the States directly from JMS Books - and ooh, look there's an extract here too... and just... go out and buy it!

Also, foxcat74? Next time I'm down, there's a churchyard on Dartmoor that we need to find... *g*

Comments

[londonronnie.livejournal.com]

I think I'm another one who's going to put that book on my 'to buy' list. It sounds right up my alley!

[byslantedlight.livejournal.com]

Oh, I hope you like it! It's not your big gushing swashbuckling m/m romance, it's far more subtley done, a bit Larton-like, that sort of gentle romance. Interestingly, I've just been googling The White Rajah again and found a review of it written by Erastes, and she really didn't like it. But I'm gobsmacked by the reasons she didn't like it, because she seems to have completely missed swathes of it - because Williamson doesn't gush about his love for Brookes she says there's nothing to show us that he cares at all! Except that there is, Williamson tells us dozens of times what he thinks of Brooke - he just doesn't explain it. It's brilliant show-not-tell. Which I'm guessing is a reason that I don't get on with books by Erastes and the like - no subtlety! They explain love to me, rather than showing me, and that's not what I'm after... It's odd, innit - I can't imagine wanting to read any other way, and yet so many people do seem to want that overt this-is-what's-happening in a story...

Rambling? Me? *g*

[moth2fic.livejournal.com]

I like some of Erastes' writing - but I don't trust her reviews. She gave the latest Temeraire volume (the one set in Australia) a poor review and I thought it was brilliant so our tastes are clearly very different! And yes, the things that attracted me to Tongues of Serpents were subtlety and showing...

[byslantedlight.livejournal.com]

Hee - I've just said to you about Erastes' review down below, too... *g*

Erp for her giving the Australian Temeraire a poor review - because I've got to admit that I kind of do as well! I've liked all the others, but I thought Novak was losing the plot a bit in the Aussie one... but we may have disliked it for different reasons - I'll have to go and see what she said about it, out of interest!