2014-2015 fiction, fanfic connected to the Swallows & Amazons books.
In 1938 with war looming, there's one last adventure to be had…
It seems inspired in part by The Riddle of the Sands: the
overall plot is that the charts of the Baltic need to be updated, but
in a subtle way, so what with the children now being adults they can
be asked to go along looking like holidaymakers…
Or course I'm going to say the thing I often say, which is that the
portrayal of Nazism is very one-sided; almost everyone they meet is
thoroughly nasty, whether clever or stupid. Not that I think Nazism a
good thing, but there;s nothing here to show how anyone would become
enthusiastic about it unless they were already a bully by nature,
which in my experience most people aren't until they're taught to be;
and the effectiveness of the poison of this death-cult masquerading as
a philosophy lies in its appeal to more decent people who can be
persuaded into resentment. Still, as foreigners without local contacts
I suppose it's plausible that our protagonists might not meet anyone
on a friendly enough basis to see more deeply.
Anyway, there's an Allied spy with a hidden document who has to be got
back to England as fast as possible, but most of this is a series of
vignettes, effectively portraying the familiar characters—with a few
extra years on them (the original stories are set in the early 1930s)
but still recognisable as themselves.
Nothing world-shaking but a pleasant relief for me after some heavier
and more disappointing books. Freely available at
ao3.