Sergeant Luck’s Secret Mission by Geoffrey Bond

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

There’s a point where you think in a book that “that’s enough now, we’ve got there, we’ve hit all the character beats and everything’s pretty much set up now for us to roll on home in style” and sigh contentedly to yourself and think Noble Thoughts about the art of literature and adopt a Noble Expression as you do so. And many books conform to such a beat; they go “yep, we’ve done good you and I, let’s hit the finishing post together my friend” and all is well, noble, noble, etc. etc.

This is the sort of book which looks at ‘enough’ and laughs in its face; the sort of book which says “NO THAT IS NOT ENOUGH” and then adds everything it can to an already overstuffed plot and then, when all of that is not enough, throw in the kitchen sink, the secret heir to the House of Habsburg (a spoiler, perhaps, but this has been out three hundred years and you’ll never see it coming I guarantee it) and then, as if all of that is not enough, goes “i’m going to add a wooden hand to the mix”.

I mean, this saw “enough” and went “not today, not on my watch”.

And yet, despite all of its noise (and there’s a lot of it), it’s still a solid thing. Part of the Eagle empire, this was a spinoff of a popular comic strip “Luck of the Legion” which was published in the periodical itself, and it wasn’t alone: there’s a Dan Dare and a Belle of the Ballet novel along with several others featuring Luck himself. I didn’t know these novels even existed but I’ve always enjoyed Eagle and Girl when I’ve come across them and that’s due to the near-uniform high standard across the publications. There’s always good stuff here and it’s always stuff which knows precisely what it is – and I think that’s a good way to characterise this book. It knows precisely what it is, what it wants to be, and makes no bones about it. It strays merrily and wholeheartedly into stereotypes of the period that have not worn well for modern readers in the slightest but then it was never going to do anything other. It ends every chapter on a cliffhanger. It makes the Foreign Legion sound like the absolute best thing ever. The sidekicks are catchphrases with legs and you just don’t care because we’re all too busy believing in brotherhood and adventure but oh? did you want mysterious and meaningful flashbacks and flashforwards as well as this?? You GOT IT.

OH WHAT’S THAT? YOU WANT MORE? WELL THIS BOOK HAS GOT IT TOO.

I mean, it really has. I haven’t even mentioned the Aztecs.

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