Biggles Power Ranking (So Far)

[rosanicus]

Since the middle of April I have read fourteen Biggles books and one Gimlet. As it stands these are my thoughts on each of the books along with some pithy commentary (I like being pithy). Half of this was written on tumblr so please excuse any missing punctuation. I have learned from my mistakes and am now a bigger person.

I have split this into sections based on my overall opinion of the books. Because believe me some of these were awful.

Highly Recommend

Biggles Flies East

Intrigue! Spycraft! Dogfights! kate_beaton_nemesis_comic.png! What’s not to love about Biggles Flies East, a book about a teenager accidentally becoming one of the most successful spies-per-diem in history while also viscerally hating every second. So interesting to put your character in a situation they hate being good at! And of course von Stalhein is an instantly iconic nemesis. The fact that W.E. Johns writes with such sympathy for the German army during WW1 is one of the things I was most surprised by in the series, and I hope Jacob Mayer had a good life after this book was over.

Biggles "Fails To Return"

Constantly rotating between this and Flies East as my favourite Biggles. Flies East is top at the moment due to the presence of von Stalhein, but Fails To Return is such a fantastic showcase for Algy, Ginger and Bertie that I have to rank it highly – and of those three only Algy shows up in Flies East, mostly to be interrogated and/or presumed dead. Ginger’s Spanish vs English onions dooming him to discovery as a foreign agent is fantastic, as is Bertie immediately being rumbled by a former friend from Monaco, as is Algy going off in the opposite direction and having to find out about the ridiculous nonsense his friends have been up to after spending two hours on a bus to nowhere. It’s SO good. And as Philomytha notes, Biggles does fly a plane in his pants (how the plane got inside his pants I will never know).

Biggles & Co.

The return of von Stalhein! In which he is so happy to see Biggles again he has him served homemade cake in his prison cell (which is a turret of a castle which may or may not belong to him). I’m convinced that this was one of the few points before Buries a Hatchet at which von Stalhein might have been persuaded away from a life of crime. But alas, instead he threatens Ginger with a firing squad, swings his chair too hard, and gets bonked on the noggin. The mystery here is also very fun and I love the side characters a lot, especially Julia the pilot. Feminism!

The Camels Are Coming

This was the first Biggles I found a physical copy of in a charity shop, beginning a months long obsession which will probably become lifelong. I really enjoyed this on the level I enjoy reading about World War One in general, by which I mean it made me desperately sad while also having a number of rip-roaring adventures in amongst the dreadful futility of aerial combat before the advent of parachutes. The story where Biggles is on home leave and absolutely destroys a war profiteer socially by being his usual excellent, capable self is one of my personal Biggles highlights. And of course introducing Algy makes it all worth it - Algy <3

Biggles Goes To War

I love this book so much. I've been thinking about it on and off since I first read it, including the period of a few hours where I wrote a missing scene about the Princess and Ludwig getting engaged. And of course Ludwig is the source of my username on the Biggles forum - he's a good boy! There's so many hijinks in this book; it's my second Ruritanian adventure ever after K.J Charles' The Henchmen of Zenda, which is very fun and admittedly has significantly more on page gay activity than these books, although I do think Biggles could improve almost any KJC novel. The part where he persuades a Lovitznian pilot to parachute out of his own plane is truly excellent nonsense. Very good all around, started rereading it at a barbeque this evening because I just love it to bits.

Biggles Buries A Hatchet

Obviously we all love Buries A Hatchet. But do we talk enough about how good Fritz Lowenhardt is? Because he is SO good. Brave and stubborn and kind; W.E. Johns must have really cared about changing the readers' opinion of EvS, because he puts a lot of effort into characterising Fritz and his worry and care for his uncle. This was in fact my first ever Biggles and after rereading it holds up as an effective melodrama, a sad meditation on lost chances, and the ultimate hope for reconciliation. And I really liked the bears that kept showing up in the background

Biggles And The Black Peril

I read this second out of all the available Biggleses I illegally downloaded onto my phone, and I think it was a good second outing! It's a classic Biggles mystery with some good flying sequences and of course the introduction of Ginger, who I love very much. I have decided unilaterally that he retains a strong Northern accent for all of canon and it is simply never mentioned (because it isn't relevant to Biggles' journey). He is so fun and clever from page one, while still being believably young and impulsive. I know that later on this becomes a bit parodic but at this point it's just charming and enjoyable as he helps a stranded Biggles on his twisted ankle.

Biggles Learns To Fly

He's so small in this one... tiny seventeen year old Biggles going to the wrong place at the aerodrome, being thrown to the Western Front without even taking his flying exams, avenging the permanent injury of his (boy)friend Mark Way... it's all very bleak in its own way and I only rate it less than Camels Are Coming for the lack of Algy. There's a formula to all the WW1 stories but it works better to me than the WW2 ones, possibly because I'm more invested in the stories where the plane could literally disintegrate much more easily.

Enjoyable

Biggles In The Terai

Not only a source of delicious Presumed Dead angst (I love Presumed Dead so much, one of the best tropes of all time) but also a very fun mystery and with a good deal of Biggles Being Multilingual (I also love multilingual characters). There is as ever a certain level of Johns' paternalism in this one but we do get the character Ram Singh, who is delightful in every way. I loved all the sequences where they are actually in the Terai because I love jungle descriptions, and it's less relentlessly negative about nature in the way that Takes A Holiday is - believe me, we're getting there.

The Boy Biggles

Read entirely on my brother's sofa while I was catsitting, I do wonder if his cat was concerned by my constant cries of, "He's TWELVE!" as James Bigglesworth hung precariously from broken rope bridges, killed a leopard, almost got bitten by multiple snakes, and of course was forced to work with an American. Very enjoyable but not really one I'd recommend because of the attendant racist attitudes in a few of the stories, as well as the general paternalistic tone Johns employs in the narration. However I would kill for a fic where Biggles reunites with some of his childhood friends from this book. Maybe they could work with Ram Singh in the air investigation satellite office he is definitely going to set up.

Spitfire Parade

Notable for its introduction of our good friend Lord Bertie Lissie, cousin to Peter Wimsey in my heart, and also for being apparently quite slipshod in its portrayal of how actual squadrons worked during World War Two. I love longsuffering Biggles as the Squadron Leader of a bunch of misfits - it feels like the sort of story which might be made into a dark comedy or dramedy series now, and the nature of the book lends itself to that sort of format. However I have to admit that it got formulaic quickly, and the class consciousness was. Well. Unconscious. Much as I love Taffy and Tug!

Oh Dear

Biggles Flies Again

I bought a copy of this for £2.50 from a secondhand bookshop and after reading it and having Mixed Thoughts my mum sent me a photo of the copy she'd just found in the outhouse two weeks after I lugged all my dad's other childhood Biggleses home. So not only did this book make me alternately bemused and deeply uncomfortable, I also wasted £2.50 on an edition that thinks Biggles is a beefcake.



At least we have the crossdressing South American revolutionary, and Li Chi (my good friend Li Chi!). And a giant octopus. This is the one I'm most likely to reread (partially) in this section, but it's not good.

Biggles Takes A Holiday

God I hated this book. I have skipped every WW2 EvS book for the time being because, well, yeah, but heading back in with this one was a bad choice I think. It's clear that WEJ wasn't quite sure what to do with him, and on the whole I genuinely think that 'hiding out in South America with a bunch of ex-Nazis' is not what the EvS of the pre-war would be doing. I also still think (Biggles conspiracy time) that EvS was not originally included in the story, then WEJ realised how deeply boring the book was and put him in to have some sparkling repartee with Biggles and big him up to the baddies (the only good part of the book) without considering the implications (fine with human experimentation, again not something I believe about the EvS I know and love from the pre-war books).

Biggles Flies North

While reading this I posted extensively on Tumblr about how deeply boring it is, and honestly that would be enough to consign it to the depths. However, it is also blisteringly racist in a way which made me very uncomfortable reading this at work (which is why it took weeks to finish a 150 page book) around impressionable nine year olds. Also while reading this I found out one of my friends' dads (who is seventy) was reading it and thought it was awful, which says something doesn't it. I did of course enjoy the corned beef scene but it's too little too early for a book which is mostly boring back-and-forth and macroaggressions.

Not Biggles

King Of The Commandos

Much more bloodthirsty than any of the Biggleses I've read, but at the time I read this that was absolutely what I was in the mood to read. I love Gimlet, I think he's such a bizarre amalgamation of characteristics in a trenchcoat. A fastidiously clean man who is also extremely willing to commit murder. The Kittens are also very fun and the dynamics between each member are unique enough that I'm looking forward to hunting down more Gimlets to read over the summer - there's something very soothing about a book in which you just know there will be a massive explosion every fifty pages.

Comments

[wateroverstone]

I believe that he did write straight into neat.Dr Biggles ( Biggles Information website) has compared some of his notebooks to the published books and there's very little editing. Homework suggests he left notes for himself on manuscripts though. I think he wrote books in about six weeks.