Every so often I have a break from reading (and writing) young adult fantasy to read something else and this time it was the latest in Peter Tonkin’s Richard Mariner series. Volcano Roads is due for publication in late November and will be the 21st, yes 21st, Mariner novel. But before you stop reading this review on the basis that you couldn’t possibly find the time to read the previous 20 in the next two months, let me reassure you: each of the Mariner novels is self-contained. It may add to your enjoyment if you have read others but it really isn’t necessary.
So, for Mariner virgins, let me tell you a little about the books. The eponymous Richard Mariner is a sea captain who gets himself and his indomitable (and sexy) wife, Robin, into all sorts of scrapes involving boats and ships all around the world. He’s massively wealthy, extraordinarily well-connected and has a better-toned body than any middle aged man deserves. He’s also reliably practical around boats, guns and women and more than a bit of a polymath. All of which comes in handy when he’s fighting off pirates, terrorists, mercenaries and any other ne’er-do-wells the modern world can throw at him.
Which leads me onto Volcano Roads. The novel opens with the striking image of a young woman diver hanging motionless and near-dead in the Java Sea. Below her is the dead body of her diving buddy. Above her is the dead body of the boatsman. She has less than an hour to live.
Into this scene sails the Tai Fun, Richard Mariner’s state-of-the-art four-masted cruise liner, en route to the grand opening of the Volcano Roads hotel on the nearby island of Pulau Baya and the marriage of the island’s ruler, Prince Sailendra, and Inga Nordberg. I did mention that Richard is rather well-connected and wealthy didn’t I? So it won’t come as a surprise that he co-owns the hotel and that his guest on the Tai Fun is none other than the bride.
Needless to say, Richard saves the diver, kicks off the investigation into the deaths, and still succeeds in getting the bride to the wedding on time. Just.
But that isn’t the last of it and what follows is a complex and fast moving tale involving a truly evil businessman, weak-minded and greedy princelings, double-crossing nice guys and rather of lot of well-researched geography and science. Indeed, the amount of research involved in a Mariner novel is one of their more striking features.
Another striking feature is Tonkin’s style. I rather expect this sort of novel to involve a lot of punchy dialogue and short sharp sentences and paragraphs. But Tonkin’s is a more literary style. At first it seems a bit slow. There’s a languorous description of the diver on the opening page, for example. Let me quote a little:
Her arms were thrown wide, but bent inwards at the elbows as though she was hugging the slow, warm current like an invisible lover. A lover who ran slow fingers across the redness of her cheeks, past the yellow frame of her face-mask, over the silver circle of the regulator between her carmine lips and up through the spread black cloud of her hair.
You fear at first that such exquisite description will slow down the pace of the book. But as you read you realise that it’s quite the opposite. And that is because of the way Tonkin uses the descriptive passages to create atmosphere, suggest character and leave hints and clues for the reader to decipher. It has the effect of making you feel more involved with the characters, and the hints put the reader in the privileged position of being to solve the mystery alongside the protagonists.
If I have any criticisms of Volcano Roads, it’s that it finished just a little too suddenly, as if a final, short, chapter was missing. But maybe that was just because I had got used to luxuriating in this book and didn’t want it to finish.
So, watch out for the publication of Volcano Roads and give it a try. Only be warned, if you like this one, there are 20 others to read too!
Volcano Roads by Peter Tonkin, published by Severn House on 26th November 2009
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