2025/146: Kings of This World — Elizabeth Knox

'In the 1980s we coined the term P, for Persuasion, which turned into P for Push when people stopped being so polite about it.' He paused a moment and pursed his lips, as if pleased with himself. [loc. 178]

Knox's latest YA novel is set in her fictional island nation of Southland, and references both Mortal Fire and the Dreamhunter Duet. Unlike the earlier books, it's set in more or less the present day: there are cellphones, EVs, the internet. And there is P (for Persuasion): a coercive / perceptual ability possessed by the Percentage, 1% of the population -- and a divisive issue in Southland society.

Vex Magdolen, sole survivor of a massacre at an 'intentional community' known as the Crucible, has strong P. After a childhood in the fosterage and state care system, she enters Tiebold Academy, where 75% of the students (though not Vex's roommate Ronnie) have P. Within a few weeks she's made friends and found her people ... but after a disturbance at the Compulsory Senior Year Morgue Visit, Vex and four of her classmates -- plus an adult assistant -- are kidnapped and imprisoned by mysterious masked captors. Was the original target Hanno, son of the richest man in Southland? Or was it one of the others -- Vex, Ari the senator's son, Taye who seems immune to Pushing?

The story alternates between the teens' captivity and Vex's first weeks at Tiebold Academy: and it doesn't end with the kidnapping, but with a confrontation that also reveals unexpected truths about Vex's past. There's love, zealotry, loss, treachery, and politics, and adults who think they know what's best for the young people under their care.

But most of all there is Knox's refulgent prose, vivid and simple (the promise of which was why I went to considerable lengths to acquire a copy of this book, not yet available in the US or UK). I loved the additional details of Southland's history and culture -- 'plague, the Place, and P' -- and am now eager to reread the other Southland novels: and Knox has said she intends to write another two novels set in Southland. Hurrah!

I note that I haven't said much about the plot of Kings of this World. The aspect that most intrigued me was Vex's childhood storytelling, which reminded me of the Game that Knox has mentioned in various contexts. I was also prompted to read Vonnegut's story 'Harrison Bergeron', about handicapping the gifted. And I am still thinking about Vex's family's reputation for foresight.

2025/145: The Last Dragoners of Bowbazar — Indra Das

“Why won’t you let me remember?” I dared ask.
She blinked. “You deserve to be real in this world. It’s not an easy thing to be stuck between worlds.” But stuck I was, and ever have been. [loc. 286]

Ru George grows up in Calcutta [sic] in the 1990s. He's the child of immigrants, and lives with his grandmother and his parents. Ru's father is a failed fantasy author: his novel The Dragoner's Daughter (about dragonriders on a distant planet using their mounts to traverse multiple realities) sold only 52 copies. Ru's grandmother tells him fantastical stories about his grandfather having started life as a woman (Ru can see the truth of this in old photos). Ru's mother administers the Tea of Forgetting after meals, and before bedtime. 

Ru grows up a lonely child with only the vaguest idea of who he is, and who his family are. He's prone to spinning extravagant yarns to his schoolfriends. (But are they fantastical, or true?) By his teenage years, now home-schooled, he has just one friend: Alice, the daughter of the couple who run the Crystal Dragon restaurant. Alice and Ru share enthusiasms for video games, metal music and fantasy novels. And slowly they share Ru's -- or Ru's family's -- secrets.

Like all the best novellas, this packs a novel's-worth of content into its pages. There's a story about found family, a story (or two) about refugees fleeing wars, a story about memory and forgetfulness, a story about gender. In a way, it's also about the stories we tell to ourselves and to others. Ru, the perpetual outsider, is so lonely, so rootless, and yet he hopes. And when he remembers, the story turns full circle on itself.

I know now that forgetting and remembering was a cycle I have relived many times, a snake eating its tail...[loc. 36]... “Belief is a serpent eating its tail forever, knowing that its tail is finite.” [loc. 979]

2025/144: Cinder House — Freya Marske

Scholar Mazamire's own theory was that a ghost was how a building held a grudge, because it was not human enough to do it on its own. [loc. 527]

A novella-length variation on 'Cinderella': it begins with Ella's death at sixteen, dizzy with the poison that has killed her father, falling downstairs as the house convulses at his demise. Shortly thereafter, Ella finds herself merging with the house itself. She cannot leave the property, and the only people who can see her are her stepmother Patrice and her two stepsisters, Danica (who likes to read) and Greta (who likes to get her own way). She feels any damage inflicted on the house, and she's compelled to tidy and clean and make good. She becomes an unpaid maid of all work.

She cultivates a penpal, Scholar Mazamire, with whom she exchanges long letters about magic and ghosts: and at last she finds herself able to leave the house -- though she's wrenched back home on the stroke of midnight. She wanders the streets, and can enter any public place: she visits the ballet often, and wishes she could talk about the performances with the other regulars. Nobody can see her, except for a faerie spell-seller at the night marker who introduces herself as 'Quaint'. When the royal family issue an invitation to 'all unattached ladies of the kingdom' for a series of balls before the Prince becomes betrothed, it's Quaint who makes it possible for Ella to attend.

There are some very well-executed twists here, from Ella's mirror-studded shoes to the Prince's worsening curse to the skeleton in the attic. (I applaud Marske's restraint in identifying that skeleton). Ella's situation reminded me of being housebound after illness -- the author confirms, in her afterword, that it's 'a story about chronic illness and disability' -- with that sense of being trapped, unable to change one's circumstances or make choices about one's life. I found her skin-hunger and her taste for steamy romances all too relatable!

I would love to read more set in this world: but the story fits novella-length very nicely, and the implied world-building is fascinating and credible. I especially liked the magic system, with its subjects and objects and exceptions. Perhaps Quaint could have a novel of her own...

Thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for the advance review copy, in exchange for this full honest review. UK Publication Date is 9th October 2025.

2025/143: Twilight Cities: Lost Capitals of the Mediterranean — Katherine Pangonis

...in Syracuse, the ghosts feel like they raise the city up; in Ravenna, Nicola thinks they hold it back. [loc. 3703]

Pangolis explores five ancient capitals (Tyre, Carthage, Syracuse, Ravenna and Antioch) leavening historical detail with her own impressions of each city's modern remnants: a blend of history and travel writing which works better in some chapters than in others. This book won the Somerset Maugham Award (which, I learn, is 'to enable young writers to enrich their work by gaining experience of foreign countries'): Pangolis's previous work was Queens of Jerusalem, which I have not read.

One aspect of the book that I found fascinating was the intermingling of past and present: for instance, 'at least 30% of the [male] Tyrians are indeed descendants of the Phoenicians'. Though this is a source of pride, it's also been used to differentiate between Christians and Muslims. Carthage, which began as a Phoenician settlement, has an only slightly lower percentage of Phoenician genes amid its populace, but Pangolis writes that she did not 'meet a single Tunisian who describes themselves as Phoenician'. History can be a mixed blessing. As one artist in Ravenna tells the author, he grew up with  'this phantasmic history, which dwarfs everything the city is in the modern day. That trumps the reality of the city. ... Ravenna is so much more than her history, but you grow up with these ghosts.' [loc. 3699] 

Some of the cities she explores are in ruins -- more now than at the time of writing, 2023, when 'the thunder of Israeli rockets could be heard in the city of Tyre'. Massive Israeli airstrikes in 2024 destroyed much of the ancient city.  Antioch, where Pangolis had bathed in the hammam with the local women, suffered severe damage in the 2023 Turkish earthquake: the chapters on Antioch and its modern overlay Antakya are an elegy for a shattered city. 

The chapters are sometimes repetitive, and sometimes read like potted histories (lists of battles, kings, religion). Pangolis often omits the BC on dates: this confused me at first ('recent results do indeed put the foundation of the city sometime between 835 and 800') and would be more acceptable if the histories she recounts didn't span both BC and AD. And the section on Ravenna (with its lengthy description of Lord Byron's affair with a Ravennese lady) didn't quite fit with the other cities under discussion. 

Also, I think the author was confused: 'In the archaeological museum in Syracuse there can be found the skeleton of a curious one-eyed dwarf elephant. In 1914 the palaeontologist Othenio Abel suggested that the presence of these giant one-eyed creatures in Sicily gave rise to the legend of [the Cyclops] Polyphemus' [loc. 1852]. No, the elephants weren't one-eyed: their skulls, though, do have a large central opening, the proboscis cavity.

Overall an interesting read, but I would have liked more of the author's modern experiences ('the crackle of the live coral'; climbing over walls to visit the stones of Carthage) and less of the battles-and-kings history.

Some things I learnt:

• 'In 1985, the mayors of Carthage and Rome finally signed a peace treaty, officially ending the Third Punic War, which otherwise had lasted 2,131 years.'
• Justinian's Plague wiped out nearly a quarter of the population in the eastern Mediterranean
• The Marsala shipwreck 'reads like an instruction booklet for ancient shipwrights, with letters from the ancient Phoenician alphabet demarking where sections joined another, and which piece went where' [loc. 1174]

2025/142: Everfair — Nisi Shawl

He had been warned, but had thought Everfair too remote, too obscure, for Leopold's dependents to seek its destruction. He had thought that because this land had been legitimately purchased they were safe. He had trusted to his enemy's basic humanity to preserve them. [p. 95]

Everfair is a steampunk-flavoured alternate history, beginning in 1889. The Fabian Society, instead of founding the London School of Economics, purchases land in the Congo as a refuge for those fleeing the oppressive, violent regime of the Belgian government and their rubber plantations. Everfair, as the new country is called, is initially populated by African-Americans and liberal whites, as well as escaped slaves. King Mwenda, whose land it was before the Belgians stole it, is not wholly pleased with the way that Everfair is run: but he and his favourite wife, Josina -- a fearsome diplomat -- are playing a long game.

The steampunk aesthetic is strong. Many of those formerly enslaved have been mutilated: a young Chinese engineer known as Tink (his name is Ho Lin-Huang) creates artificial limbs for them. (Fwendi, a young woman who's survived the loss of a hand, revels in the fireworks and weaponry that her assortment of prosthetics provides.) There are 'air canoes' and steam-powered bikes; uranium as a power source; ingenuity and artifice.

There is also, of course, race. Shawl explores many aspects of racism and colonialism, including the white saviour / white martyr trope; the tension between Christian missionaries and the spiritual world of the indigenous people; the social consequences of having a Black grandparent; the white horror of 'miscegenation'; the unspoken assumptions and the privilege that underlies even the best intentions of Everfair's founders. Shawl's characters illustrate these tensions and tropes: a Christian preacher who becomes an acolyte of the forge-god Loango; a Frenchwoman with a Black grandfather who decides not to 'pass'; a character who's enthusiastic about the idea of a 'white martyr' to rally British readers to the cause, until the martyr turns out to be someone close to her...

There is a lot in this novel -- which reads more like a set of connected short stories, spanning a period of around thirty years, than a single arc -- and a plethora of viewpoint characters. There is romance both queer and heterosexual; many women with agency and competence; atrocities and joys; spiritual and scientific revelations. There are also supernatural elements. (I loved Fwendi's cats!) And yet for me it fell a little flat. It felt very dense: it felt as though there was a trilogy trying to get out. And perhaps because it's so dense, some of the characters felt less realistic, less rounded, than others. That said, I'm wishlisting the sequel Kinning, which sounds splendid.

2025/141: The Nature of the Beast — Louise Penny

One person, not associated with the case, would be chosen to represent all Canadians. They would absorb the horror. They would hear and see things that could never be forgotten. And then, when the trial was over, they would carry it to their grave, so that the rest of the population didn’t have to. One person sacrificed for the greater good. “You more than read his file, didn’t you?” said Myrna. “There was a closed-door trial, wasn’t there?” Armand stared at her... [p. 34]

This was a real contrast to The Long Way Home: there's a murder in the first couple of chapters, and a plot that spans decades and continents. We learn more about some of the less storied inhabitants of Three Pines (Ruth and Monsieur Béliveau, the grocer, were activists in the 1970s: one of the villagers is a veteran of the Vietnam War) and a terrifying new -- or old -- threat is introduced.

The story opens with a small boy's discovery of something terrifying in the woods. His story isn't believed, because he's an imaginative kid and something of a fantasist. Soon after, he's found dead. Accident or murder? Gamache doubts the official verdict (the aftermath of corruption is still infesting the Sûreté du Québec) and is drawn into the investigation. 

In parallel, there's an amateur production of a play: when it turns out to be the work of a notorious serial killer, most of the actors withdraw. That might seem relatively trivial, but the ways in which these two plots intersect, and the agenda of the hapless CSIS (Canadian Security Intelligence Service) agents, is unexpected but as tight as clockwork.

There's a lot of discussion about whether one can separate the created and the creator -- Gamache thinks not: ("This is how he escapes. Through the written word, and the decency of others. This is how John Fleming gets into your head.") -- and about how those who have committed, or planned to commit, atrocities carry on with their lives. And part of a plot thread is about a horrendous plan to 'bomb Israel back to the Stone Age', which reads differently now than it would have when this novel was published.

I liked this a lot, though it's a dark novel and sows the seeds for more darkness ahead. I am looking forward to seeing how that darkness unravels, and is illuminated.

2025/140: The Long Way Home — Louise Penny

Armand Gamache did not want to have to be brave. Not anymore. Now all he wanted was to be at peace. But, like Clara, he knew he could not have one without the other. [p. 42]

After finishing the first big arc in the Gamache series last December (with How the Light Gets In) I had been saving the rest of the series for this winter: but unseasonably poor weather enticed me to read the next book. It was like coming into a warm room after a long cold journey: the familiar characters, the emotional honesty, the humour, the intricacies of crime.

The mystery to be solved, in The Long Way Home, is the non-appearance of Clara Morrow's husband Peter. Over a year ago, they separated -- Clara told him to leave -- and he was due to return on the anniversary of that separation. But Clara's had no word from him, and she's concerned. For his part, Gamache doesn't want to leave Three Pines, where he and his wife Reine-Marie are enjoying a happy and peaceful retirement. On the other hand, Clara and Peter are his friends: and Peter, his reputation as an artist suffering by comparison to Clara's recent success, was a troubled man.

This novel takes Gamache and his allies into the world of art: art schools, art dealers, artists. It also, physically, takes them to the wild coast at the mouth of the St Lawrence River: splendid descriptions of landscape, travel, and chance-met individuals. I don't think it's going to be one of my favourites of the series, but it was very nice to be back with these characters -- so nice that I instantly went on to the next in the series...