We read this from October 10th to 24th, 2024 so I’m nearly a year behind in reporting on it! I also didn’t take notes at the time so these are my best recollections. (I’m learning from my mistakes and have gone back to jotting down at least some of his comments from what we’re reading right now).

Foreworded is forearmed?

The River of Adventure is my least favourite of the series so I was a bit less enthusiastic than Brodie was about reading this.

We started with the foreword where Blyton explains that she had planned to end the series after Bill “proposes” to Allie at the end of The Ship of Adventure, but had so many letters from children that she added another two books. Those being the brilliant Circus of Adventure (and obviously the best book of the series) and this last one, River. Brodie said he was glad she didn’t end with six or else we wouldn’t be reading this book right now.

On the fly updates

I can read in my head a lot faster than I can read out loud so my eyes are usually at least half a sentence ahead of my mouth, giving me time to do things like change from one terrible accent to another as I can see who has spoken, or swap out queer for strange. Sometimes half a sentence isn’t enough and it’s a scramble to finish a sentence that’s going downhill in a way that makes sense, but I do my best.

As the Mannering-Trents are abroad through most of this book I made a lot of little word changed – a lot as in a small number of words were used a lot of times.

Throughout I called the people from the un-named country the locals or the local people rather than the natives as while there’s nothing wrong with saying native people, saying the natives has a somewhat colonial sound.

Although Tala and Oola work for the family I toned down much of the deferential language used. For example less of the sir and master from Tala and none of the Lord from Oola. Tala was asked to do things instead of ordered (the subtle difference between working for someone and serving them), and I toned down the terror and screaming about the gods coming near the end.

I also made a couple of minor changes regarding the girls needing looked after. Bill asked the children to stay together, rather than asking the boys to keep the girls with them. Likewise Philip doesn’t think of the two girls but thinks of all their safety.

The River of Surprise

I swear he was more surprised at things in this book than any of the others we’d read before.

The ladder of knives, the snake charmer, an escaping snake, Oola bringing a snake to Philip – these all had him on the edge of his seat.

He went through a whole range of feelings about the snake escape. The snakes were fake – to begin with – then they had to be real as one had got out. Then maybe they weren’t actual poisonous* snakes. Likewise the one Oola brought later must have had his mouth sewn up too, but no it hadn’t –WHY WOULD HE BRING A DANGEROUS SNAKE?? What a roller-coaster.

He was thrilled at Raya Uma thinking he’d been “poisoned” by the bargua and thought him very stupid. I don’t think Brodie always remembers that we, the readers, have knowledge that certain characters, like Uma here, don’t.

Miscellaneous interruptions

There was a distinct lack of sympathy for the children’s “colds”and I ad to explain (again) that flu is a lot worse.

He loved the idea of a convalescence and wished he could do the same (so do I for that matter!)

I gave him a chance to guess what Sinny-Town was (not all the interruptions come from him, just most of them!) but he didn’t know. I think that’s fair enough as we don’t say cine as in cine-camera etc much these days, and the cine in cinema is pronounced differently. Of course none of the book characters guess it either, but that’s only so that the surprise isn’t spoiled too soon.

He asked me what gimcrack meant. I assumed (correctly) from the context that it meant tat but I looked it up to check just in case.

Like me, he had difficulty understanding and picturing the layout of the underground scenes in the book. For a time he seemed to think they were at the bottom of the waterfall.

He loved the treasure find and said he would definitely have taken a sword, but wanted to know if there were any shields too. (It’s as if he thinks I can look around the fictional room for information not in the text sometimes…)

Lastly he was disappointed (as always) that they weren’t staying to see it all excavated. And that there’s no next book, either.

My experience

I went accent-less for this one which made a nice change. The broken English from Oola and Tala were enough to make them distinct without me attempting an unspecified Middle-East accent.

As I can’t whistle Kiki’s police whistle was a pain to replicate and sounded awful. More or less me just saying phweeeeeee in a high pitched voice.

I spotted a new nitpick on this re-read too. Jack apologises to Bill who hadn’t heard Kiki’s newest achievement (the police whistle) and yet he must have heard it the night before as she has done it in the bedroom, and Bill knocks on the door saying “Who wants the police? They’re here. Open in the name of the law!”. It’s possible he only heard her shouting for the police but given how loud and piercing the whistle is, it doesn’t seem likely.

After we finished he said his favourite characters were all of them which is his usual response – but I think it was probably the bargua as he talked about that the most often. He even drew it. Fearsome, isn’t it?

 *Snakes are venomous, not poisonous** and yes we discussed this while reading it. According to Steve Backshall – if it bites you and you die it’s venomous, but if you bite it and you die, it’s poisonous. Sort of surprising that Blyton didn’t know that, given her background with nature and wildlife.

**If we’re being pedantic there are a small number of snakes that are both poisonous and venomous but as the children were never going to be eating snakes all we had to worry about was them being bitten and thus envenomed and not poisoned.