Hi, Other Jenny! I may have come off a little hysterical in that post, but Kim is very dear to my heart. Basically, it doesn’t bug me when King uses Holmes, because Holmes is the main character of a series. He was designed to be written about again and again, and at this point so many authors have used him in one way or another that it would be silly to mind Laurie King’s accomplished and respectful pastiche. Lord Peter is a slightly different case. I don’t like the Jill Paton Walsh sequels, partly on principle and partly because I don’t think she does a good job of blending her writing style with Sayers’s. And I would doubtless get very irritated if King were to offer her own take on the events of Gaudy Night, for instance. But the fact is that Lord Peter, like Sherlock Holmes, is a character in a mystery series, and he has been written about by people other than Sayers. So if King can appropriate Holmes, it’s hard to argue that she shouldn’t touch Lord Peter. I don’t mind at all that she gave the young Lord Peter a scene in one of her books, because she does a good job. He’s far more in character in that brief appearance than he is in most of the short stories that Dorothy Sayers actually wrote.

On to Kim. Kim is not in the same genre as Holmes or Lord Peter, it is not a series, and you don’t find unauthorized sequels to it popping up all over the place. So King is for some reason taking a flying leap out of her chosen genre, and somehow I feel a little squeamish about an author taking the same liberties with a single brilliant late-Victorian novel that get taken regularly with characters like Sherlock Holmes.

I can’t honestly remember very many specifics, as it’s been several years since I read The Game, but as a random example I do remember being very surprised that she made the agnostic Kim into a devout Buddhist. Kipling puts so much emphasis on Kim’s ability to hold many different cultures and religions in his mind without thoroughly committing to any of them. I suppose it’s possible that growing up, combined with the lama’s death, changed Kim in some fundamental way, and that this is what King was going for, but it seems more likely that she just wasn’t paying attention.

I’ve never read Kim – I wouldn’t know whether King was dealing with it well or poorly! I’ll add that to the list and give it a read before I get to the other Mary Russell books. 🙂

Shut up. Shut up. Other parts of the Empire? Like in – like in British colonies and ex-colonies all over the place? I’m going to cry. I love other parts of the Empire! But I am probably going to read the Holmes stories too, at least a few of them, to see if I love them better now that I am much older than I used to be.

Thank you! Your Christmas music fun is very validating. My sister Bonnie hates it when we start up with the Christmas music early on in the year, but I very very very much love Christmas carols!

Thank you! And the same to you!

Christmas is wondrous! It cannot possibly come soon enough for me!

I enjoyed your reviews! 🙂 Definitely made me want to read more of this series. And yeah, I am curious about where they’re going to go with the Downey film. I’m looking forward to it so much because this has been kind of a slow movie year for me.

And by the way, I disagree with Katy that the one about Kim is poorly done. I think Laurie King does it with love, respect, and humor. Her whole series is based on taking liberties with an established literary character, and she does the same with Kim. (Not sure why Katy thinks Lord Peter is common property?) And it’s led me on to read many books about that time and place now, which has to be good! 🙂