Duchess of Kneedeep [Paperback]

If you are lucky enough to find a copy of this book, grab it and quick. It is the hilarious story of a just-married Duchess who escapes from her husband and sets out on a series of adventures across a planet whose oceans are mostly only (feel free to groan) knee deep. With islands named Billionaire Beach, Swami Rock, Whatbitya, Dammit, Swampfoot, and Falloffaraft, a bordello called Missy Rose's House of Plenty Happy, and various colorful characters, (Clute, Missy Rose, the Peace Troops, Joe & Kate Spearkeeper, and Master Wu Wu Vedugara) you know you're in for a rolicking fun ride.

Sidonee is a newly wed Duchess on the minor planet of Kneedeep, when she flees her husband, her husband's castle, and her honeymoon, because of something rude her husband showed this young virgin on her honeymoon. "The Duchess Of Kneedeep" is an extremely short novel that chronicles Sidonee's adventures as she flees her husband, his soldiers, and attempts to find her cryptically named suitor True Love, who has given her three geises that she has to complete before he and she can become one. However in between then . . .

In between then she has to flee her husband, and with no place to go, the only place that she can think of going is The House Of Plenty Happy, where her ex-schoolmate Sonia works, she went there after being bounced from Lady Peabody's School For Girls for having an unhealthy interest in those things about men that proper young ladies shouldn't have an interest in until their wedding night. Yes, she sees something about her husband on her honeymoon that causes Sidonee to flee to Kneedeep's most notorious house of ill-repute in the hope keep her dignity. Here at The House Of Plenty Happy, she attracts the attention of its owner Missy Rose, the curiously, massively overly-developed, of "Amazonian dimensions" madam, who immediately takes Sidonee under her wing.

To keep herself pure and to earn her keep, Sidonee talks Missy Rose into letting her sing torch, and their equivalent, songs for the patrons of The House Of Plenty Happy, all the while looking over her pampered shoulder for the Duke's cloned, cartoony (riding crops and all) quasi-nazis, who DO eventually show up, causing Sidonee has to flee again.

The humor of "The Duchess Of Kneedeep" is clearly patterned on several things. One of which is thirties screwball comedies, and the humor here ranges from the dry, the obvious, the overstated, the slapstick, and the absurd. If something in this novel doesn't raise a smile to your face then you're a dead person and you're just beyond hope, so just go away, there's nothing for you to see here. Another influence, and it goes way beyond coincidence are the fictions of Ron Goulart, sf's prime absurdist. This is obvious as Goulart's novels are composed and constructed of rambling plotting, odd quests, and a satiric and absurdist sense of humor, as he specialized in absurdist satire and slapstick. And so it goes here, Sidonee, and her storyline, ramble endlessly from one ridiculous situation to another, and to further this comparison, every screwball bit of non-sense would never be complete without a character Friday. This character's job was to play the novel's straightman and to be the novel's moral or societal center to balance out the wackos for the consumer so that we can truly appreciate the oddness of the fiction's situations and characters. In "The Duchess Of Kneedeep" that straightman is a robot, furthering the Goulartian comparisons, an Assistance Interface Device called Bret, leading to a vague comparison to "Gone With The Wind", and who acts as Sidonee's much put upon Jeeves. Unfortunately, the novel's age betrays it as Bret is constantly referred to as an AID, making it sound as if Sidonee has some form of ambulatory disease helping her out.

Noël also uses a device that Goulart, and later, Larry Niven and Monty Python, would use, and that is nothing is simply named, everything is absurdly named, from buildings (The House Of Plenty Happy), to islands (Dammit, Billionaire Beach, Ashpit, Whatbitya), to the people (Brother Brazenose, Siphuncle, Missy Rose, Farquahar) leaving one with the impression that only multiple readings would allow us to appreciate the all of the random acts of senseless wackiness that Noël tosses at us.

I don't know who Noël is, fantastic.fiction lists her as being born in 1948 thus it can't be Goulart (he'd have been about nine when his first fiction was published), but she wrote only three short sf novels under this name. A hint might be that on page 125 a character declares that he was an alumnus of the Jefferson Putnam Swycaffer Institute of Applied Abstractions. Swycaffer was an author who had a brief run during the eighties who has also disappeared from publishing. Could the two be related somehow? According to [...] Sycaffer was born 1958 so it can't be him. Can it? Hmmm, will Noël's identity be one of those great secrets of the ages? Dunno, but she left us one of those great little fun relics of a more innocent time, as this novel couldn't be published nowadays, unless it were needlessly padded up to four hundred plus pages of tediousness, and the sexual innocence downgraded to something a bit more pessimistic. In the end however, this is a great, short, quick, slash-and-burn, rabbit punch of wacky humor and satire, that comes and goes almost before you know it, leaving you with a sense of dizzy discombobulatedness. They don't write `em like this anymore, and more's the pity. Still, they did at one time, buy it, enjoy it, and pass it around. Maybe somebody will take all three and issue them as an omnibus. They should, but the chances are slim that they will, so get this novel while you can.

› Go to Amazon U.S. to see both reviews  4.5 out of 5 stars