Shape up, Littlefinger - or, on second thoughts, don't

My attempt to catch up with the Game of Thrones phenomenon is trundling along. I'm now half-way through season two, and I admit it's an improvement on season one, not least script-wise. It's sharper overall, and Tyrion's lines are funnier, so Peter Dinklage gets more to work with. Also, as this is the season where the actual "game of thrones" starts in earnest - a number of would-be kings are fighting each other for the throne, or more properly speaking two thrones - the stakes are higher. The characters are fleshed out and on the whole well-acted, not least because the series is full of British thesps for some reason (not all of them have very rewarding parts, though).

However, much remains the same. The script can still be ponderous, with enigmatic monologues that neither bring the story forward nor illuminate the characters to a great extent. The villains are still reassuringly, plot-functionally vile. Joffrey - now king - behaves predictably nastily in every single scene where he appears. Charles Dance in armour has shown up by now and looks a treat, but is no threat to my peace of mind so far. As Tywin, the head of the devious Lannister clan, he is introduced skinning an animal while talking about family honour, and then spends most of his time warlording. That's hardly shrewd villainy of the Tulkinghorn class - any thug can fight. In one episode I recently watched, Tywin did recognise at one glance that the disguised Arya Stark is actually a girl dressed as a boy. Now that's more like it. If, before long, he also twigs that she happens to be the lost sister of his enemy, he might still be going places villain-wise.

The one I should be rooting for most among the numerous GoT cast, though, is Lord Baelish, aka Littlefinger, who's not really that much more villainous than most of the rest of the characters. One pleasing feature of this series is that it doesn't put bravery and heroism above intelligence - Tyrion gets by on his wits, and he's easily one of the most likeable protagonists. Baelish, for his part, is a political survivor and schemer who'll ally himself with whoever lets him stay in power. Now, I truly love political schemers, but for the second time in a relatively short time period I find myself underwhelmed by a character who, on paper, looks tailor-made to be an object of my villain-loving affections. First, it was George the dishy banker in Poldark. Now it's Baelish, who somehow fails to gives me that "wow, he's like the Joseph Fouché of Westeros" feeling.

Maybe it's because I don't really get where they're going with this character, and it's not an enigma I find especially intriguing. Aiden Gillen certainly looks the part as Baelish - like Machiavelli, only handsomer - but I can't make out the way he underplays it. Now, I realise I'm spoiled at the moment in the villain-snarling department, but shouldn't a back-story monologue full of seething resentment be acted with a little bit of, well, seething resentment? Also, Baelish is saddled with one of those unrequited passions that have lasted a lifetime, where his loved one has never given him a word of encouragement. It's a ticklish motivation to carry off - if you've been stuck on one chick since boyhood without getting anywhere, even a villain-sympathetic audience like myself will sooner or later wish you could just get over it and find another girl - but Alan Rickman nailed it as Snape in the Harry Potter films. In contrast, Baelish's supposed devotion to Catelyn Stark never quite convinces. Honestly, you have to be able to do the Wounded Villain Heart Routine - if there were a Bachelor's programme in being a good villain, this would be second-semester stuff. Maybe my tastes are too unsubtle, but if Baelish is supposed to be a man who buries his bitterness beneath layers of bland courtesy I, for one, can only see the bland courtesy.

But that's fine. I confess that I still enjoy Game of Thrones partly because I don't care too much about the characters. Though more fully realised than in the first couple of episodes, they still retain a certain chess-piece quality, and I'm fully prepared for them to be taken off the board at any moment. Perhaps it's because I read reviews of the series beforehand; although, luckily, I don't remember who will die, I remember that a lot of the main characters are heading for the chop, and also that one character will eventually be castrated and kept as a slave. Most likely, it's some defence mechanism that keeps me from getting too attached to anyone that may be heading for a gruesome fate. So much for raising the drama stakes by throwing in random killings and maimings - but I'm not complaining, as long as my heart remains un-squeezed.

Sarah Waters to the rescue

Finally! For the first time in what seems like ages, I read a book I really liked and didn't either give up on or have to struggle to finish. (This is not counting the odd re-read of a Christie or similar.) Sarah Waters can usually be relied on to supply a well-written yarn - Fingersmith was a page turner, and The Paying Guests was also a good read, though I had problems with Affinity. Nevertheless, the odds were rather stacked against The Night Watch, as far as I was concerned. For one, it takes place during and immediately after World War Two and contains descriptions of London during the Blitz - not exactly the cosiest of settings. (I'm not too fond of World War stories at all, to be honest.) Second, the structure of the novel makes it rather melancholy, as I've already mentioned. It opens in 1947, where we first get to know the book's four protagonists: Kay, Helen, Viv and Duncan. They're not doing great, but then again they're not doing terribly, either. Then the story jumps back to 1944, and finally to 1941, in order to show us how these four characters ended up the way we find them at the beginning of the novel. This means that the characters are stuck with the ending they're given at the end of the 1947 section: nothing that comes afterwards will improve it.

I found I could take this better than I anticipated, though. The end of the 1947 section isn't that bleak; for two of the characters the light at the end of the tunnel is already hinted at. As for the other two, it's not too hard to imagine that life will go on for them as well, and that they will put past and present heartache behind them eventually. Perhaps partly because of the way the novel's narrative is laid out, it is easier than usual to take into consideration that the book's end point is not the end of these characters' lives. Not that we know anything more about their lives, since they're fictional, but you get my drift: somehow, in this context, the "open ending" works.

I didn't mind the war setting, either. The descriptions are very atmospheric, and even I did not get fidgety as the reader follows Kay - a lesbian ambulance driver with a touching gentlemanly streak - on one of her rounds. Kay is the most likeable of the four protagonists, and the strongest of the storylines concerns the love triangle between her, the love of her life Helen, and her ex, the glamorous Julia. The siblings Duncan and Viv, with their questionable taste in men, are somewhat less interesting, but you are swept along with their stories anyway thanks to the high-quality prose. Nevertheless, I was always glad when the novel returned to Kay and Helen. I can't help thinking that men get rather a raw deal in Waters's novels: I've yet to encounter a truly attractive one. Julia may be a femme fatale, but you can see why Helen would fall for her, although it's a terrible idea. The objects of Viv's and Duncan's affections, on the other hand, remain unimpressive.

As for the backwards-in-time structure, it doesn't give you that wow-how-clever feeling you can get from a good Doctor Who episode involving time tricksiness, but it has its merits. You're more interested in what happens in 1941, at the start of the characters' stories, once you've got to know them. As a beginning of a novel, the 1941 section might have come across as a bit slow. The most interesting section of the novel is the middle one, set in 1944, and the preceding 1947 section serves a good springing-board to it.

After The Night Watch, I'm seriously considering giving up on Drood altogether, in spite of the Dickens connection. If you can find something you truly enjoy reading, why struggle on with a book just because you can't put your finger on why you don't like it much? For now, I'll put Drood on ice a little while longer: it's still a bit too early to dump it in the charity-shop bag.