A Quokka Dreeds its Weird

Late last night sholio, scioscribe, and I created Biggles Bingo!

If you would like a card for Biggles, Worrals, or any fandom or piece of original writing that might feature tropes like Looking good on a horse, Attempting to fly something that doesn't fly, or Electric centipedes, go get your card at bigglesevents.

Here is mine.

Imprisoned in a tower	Water landing	Searching for lost friend(s)	Undercover with the enemy	Cursed by pirate treasure
Lost in the desert	Stood up in front of a firing squad	Snakes on a plane	Daring rescue	Gunshot wound
Malaria	Nerves	FREE SPACE	Nightmares about war trauma	Dinner invitations
A mysterious poison	Sleeping together	A quiet holiday for shattered nerves	Car crash in a high-speed chase	Staked out for ants
Lost in a blizzard	Islands	Gratuitous Towser	Looking great on a horse	Giant squid

"I'm afraid you're right," agreed Worrals sadly. "Excitement is like a drug. The more you have the more you want, and when you can't get it the old nerves begin to twitch."

Since Worrals acquitted herself so well in the last two books, she's asked if she'd be willing to fly a tiny unarmed plane with foldable wings (the better to hide it) to occupied France so she can fly messages back from a French spy network. Naturally, she brings Frecks. (Poor Frecks, no authorities ever seem to think she was the key to victory even though she often is.)

Worrals and Frecks set up at a decrepit chateau, which they are nonplussed to discover is also inhabited by 1) their main contact, a depressed and apathetic old man, 2) his not-all-there son given to frequent fits of maniacal laughter, 3) an unexpected squad of Nazis. Not what you want when the only place you have to park your airplane is the chateau's immense wine cellar...

Homing pigeons, presumed dead, atmospherically melancholy chateaux, death by antique crossbow, and a Gestapo officer disguised as a nun: this book has it all. It's particularly good with spy vs spy shenanigans. At one point Worrals muses that of five people in a room, all but maybe one were using false identities. Later, we have an English spy pretending to be a German spy pretending to be an English spy.

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Like the other Worrals books I've read, this one is not only implicitly but explicitly feminist. While Worrals is perfectly willing to use Nazi preconceptions about women to her advantage, she does not tolerate anyone on her own side viewing women as less capable than men or implying that her success was due to chivalry rather her own efforts.

Johns has a surprisingly good understanding of what it's like to be a minority in this context and have to simultaneously deal with risking your life, not being allowed to do things solely because of your gender, having some people assume you're not as good as a man and others try to overprotect you, and, in particularly low moments, wondering whether maybe everyone is right about what women can and can't do.

It's accurate to describe the Worrals books as "Biggles, but with women," but it's equally accurate to describe them as "Biggles, but on extra-hard mode." I assume through conversations with his female pilot buddies on whom he based the characters, Johns has a surprisingly sensitive understanding that Worrals and Frecks can do everything Biggles and his crew can do, but they have to do it backwards and in high heels.

Possibly relatedly, Worrals and Frecks have yet to actually kill anyone, though they've both made very solid efforts in that direction. (In the first book Worrals shoots down a plane but the pilot survives, in this one a male ally kills the Nazi before Frecks can brain him with a poker, etc.) I wonder if that was a bridge too far for Johns' publishers? It really doesn't seem like Johns himself would have a problem with it. Frecks is ferocious in up-close combat, and Worrals has the cool nerve of a fighter pilot.

The ebook includes the original illustrations, of which my favorite is a Gestapo officer disguised as a nun. You can obtain it for free at Faded Page

"The guns fired just as well for me as if a noble Wing Commander had pressed the button."

If you like Biggles, you have GOT to read Worrals.

During WWII, the Air Ministry asked Johns to write some books to inspire girls to join the WAAF (Women's Auxiliary Air Force). He obligingly wrote eleven of them, basing his heroine on two WAAF pilots he knew. The books are now even harder to find that Biggles, which is too bad, because this one, at least, is terrific.

Joan Worralson (aka Worrals) is frustrated with only being allowed to ferry planes back and forth, as women aren't allowed in combat. Her best friend Betty Lovell (aka Frecks because she has freckles) is frustrated because, at seventeen, she's too young to officially be a pilot. I should note that Worrals is a pilot at all of just-turned-eighteen. At one point a male pilot calls Worrals "kid," she asks him if he's twenty yet, and he replies, "Almost!" There are definite shades of the WWI Biggles books here, though thankfully casualty rates aren't as high.

After Worrals gets an unauthorized lesson in piloting a fighter plane, she's dispatched to deliver it to a base. She takes Frecks along as a passenger. When she tests out the radio, they hear a radio message about an unidentified plane that must be shot down at all costs, just as they see that same plane emerge from the clouds...

The action is absolutely nonstop from that point on. Worrals and Frecks uncover an extremely clever enemy plot, and the rest of the book is a wild ride of cat-and-mouse games, daring escapes, even more daring rescues, and thrilling flying. Johns' gifts for inventive plotting, exciting action, clever twists, and atmospheric settings really shine here.

Worrals has a Biggles-like gift for out-of-the-box thinking, and Frecks has a Ginger-like love for slang she learned from American movies. But they're really their own characters, and they have excellent camaraderie.

Worrals drives a car named Snooks and already had a private pilot's license before she joined the WAAF. (I'm not sure if that suggests she came from money.) She's extremely tough and forthright, and at one point is prepared to crash her plane and kill everyone onboard, including herself and Frecks, if that's what it takes to defeat the enemy.

Frecks is a bit naive (when someone suggests she try bleaching out her freckles, she responds that they don't hurt), admires Worrals for her courage, and gets flustered when faced with difficult decisions on her own. But when she needs to, she steps right up to the plate, and she gets an absolutely spectacular heroic bit in this book.

Unlike Biggles and his friends, Worrals and Frecks are viewed with doubt and suspicion because of their gender, aren't supposed to be in combat at all, and have to fight harder to prove themselves. Very refreshingly, Johns clearly has absolutely no difficulty believing that women can everything a man can do.

I really loved this and highly recommend it. You can download it and a couple other Worrals books here.

Content Notes: Literally no -isms whatsoever! That is, some sexism is expressed by some characters, but it's only there to be proved wrong by the author.

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