White Blood Reviews
Charlie Doig…is an unforgettable
character…This work is energetic, lavishly expressive, and a great read. That it also pulses with historic accuracy is a reader’s bonus. Nephew of spymaster Ian Fleming, James deserves a new generation of Fleming fans of his own.
(starred review)
Crackling flamboyant…In the book’s wintry denouement, Charlie’s narration pulls slowly back on events – the revolution’s settling of scores – and then freezes. It’s funny, sad and magical.
Kirkus Reviews
The action sequences virtually sing with energy, and the novels blistering pace never lets up for a moment. Fleming is indeed skilled, and the book is a pulse-pounding read.
The Revolution turns Charlie [Doig] into a ruthless, remorseless fighter. The book is beautifully written, with baroque energy and style. It is not at all a comfortable read, for one is taken right into the pitiless barbarity of revolutionary Russia’s murder, misery and martyrdom.
When the conflagration arrives, no amount of forewarning can prepare us for its gruesome effects…White Blood allows the voice of history to speak for itself.
It moves at a cracking pace with plenty of atmosphere and sympathy. Provincial aristocratic life – the milieu of Turgenev and Chekhov – is evoked with affection and humour, while our knowledge of its imminent doom imbues the proceedings with tragic tension and poignancy…White Blood has romance and pathos in spades.
In his third novel James Fleming carves out his turf…with a relish and élan that is both moving and gripping…He captures the contradictions of the period and the rich flavours of elegance and terror compellingly. This is a tense, thrilling and at times darkly comic novel with a complex central character who, in the best passages, bursts off the page.
Fleming finds an unencumbered, historically penetrating language in which the simplest expository sentence can bring prose, story and setting into a crisp and evocative alignment.
The locations and scenes of Fleming’s narrative vividly imprint themselves…it is the telling details that bring the whole thing to life: the clink of a signet ring on a porcelain teacup, sewing stuffed into a bag of maroon ribbed velvet, the pleat of snow made by a garden gate…The narrative, the dialogue and the intensity of Doig’s emotions drive the story to a savage climax that reads like a modern thriller. It is the best sort of historical novel.
Told in an intimate, chatty style and in prose of great originality…this is a historical evocation at times as powerful as the account of pre-1914 Berlin that the late Sybille Bedford gave us in A Legacy. From its opening pages, the narrator shows a desperate, obsessional quality which brings out the full, bloody, sensual brutality of his situation …This extraordinary novel…readers will surely welcome its author to the ranks of our greatest storytellers.
Books Quarterly
Fleming develops the novel’s central themes of suffering, retribution and redemption with almost unbearable intensity, and in doing so has created a truly Russian epic. Its language displays a beguiling richness that can contain heart-rending tenderness and infernal cruelty in the space of a single phrase.
My goodness, James Fleming can tell a story…the last third is as taut as any thriller I have read…Cliched as it is to say, I simply could not put this book down.
Publishing News (Book of the Month)
I’m grateful to Fleming for reminding me just how exciting a good novel can be.
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