I was writing an essay and I needed a name for a fictional European country. If you've seen my videos, you'll be familiar with the "Read Mises" poster in the background, and I thought of his "Ruritania" that he used for some of his examples.
But I was struck with a thought: Surely, Mises had the creativity to come up with a fictional country name, but did he? After a little digging, I found that the name Ruritania dates back to this adventure novel from 1894, by Anthony Hope. This book was so popular that it spawned a slew of imitators, satirists, and parodies, but the name "Ruritania" also got used in scholarly writings, too!
I wasn't expecting much when I cracked this book open but I was pleasantly surprised. It is fun, well-written, and accessible. It's written in very modern idiomatic English and doesn't try to stand on pretense. It's a fun and funny adventure story, with a good pace, a friendly tone, and a natural, easy flow.
On the surface, it's a simple story of a switcheroo: our main character is an Englishman who goes to Ruritania to see the crowning of a new king. However, it turns out he is the spitting image of the king, for reasons that hearken back to a duel over a hundred years in the past. The main character gets roped into impersonating the king for a day, but it ends up blossoming into a huge adventure, with the future of Ruritania in the balance!
It's got lots of sword and revolver action (it's a little more modern than Zorro), and starts out quite light, with the tone and plot darkening somewhat as the book goes on, though with a good smattering of humorous situations and dialog, as well as a unique and well-handled romantic subplot.
The enemies are smart, the deceptions are many, and the castles are well-defended. It has a satisfying climactic fight, gets quite action-packed and frantic, and ends with a believable draw-down of tensions that leads to a relaxed ending.
Read it free here.
And if you want more spoilers, see the Spoiler Section of the embedded video, as usual.
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