2020/013: Something Human -- A J Demas

They had fallen into an easy friendliness, as if they had known each other for years. It would have been something remarkable if they had been soldiers serving together or two people introduced by a mutual acquaintance at a party. But they had been on opposing sides of a battle a few hours earlier. This felt far more natural than that. [loc. 257]

Rus is a tattooed priest, born into a nomadic tribe; Adares is a civil servant, trapped under a wrecked wagon after his first battle. They should be enemies, but they are drawn to one another. Rus saves Adares, and Adares returns the favour by finding shelter for them both in a nearby temple. He tends Rus' near-fatal wound, and the two young men quickly become friends. Adares would like more, but Rus is, after all, a priest. And there can be no future for any relationship between them, because they're on opposite sides of a war.

This is an utterly delightful romantic novel, set in the same pseudo-historical period as Demas' Sword Dance and One Night in Boukos. I was reminded strongly of Rosemary Sutcliff's work, both in the depiction of male friendship and in the little details that bring the setting to life. Rus and Adares are both keeping secrets about themselves, but that doesn't prevent them being honest and open with one another. They are both competent, strong characters, whose personalities and abilities complement one another. And their conversations made me laugh out loud more than once.

Something Human is a straightforward but engaging story, with some intriguing worldbuilding. I'm hoping Demas will publish more fiction set in this world.

2020/012: Prosper's Demon -- K J Parker

... only two things live forever, the instruments of darkness and works of genius. Which, I now had disturbingly good reason to believe, might not be such separate categories as I’d once thought. [loc. 877]

A grimly cheerful novella about an exorcist, a couple of demons and a polymath with ambitious ideas: also extremely informative on the subject of casting massive bronze statues.

Our nameless narrator first encountered a demon before he was born: one particular demon, in fact, that periodically possesses other humans, until our narrator locates Him and drives Him out. Maybe that early experience is part of the reason he's the best at what he does. Exorcising a demon from a human isn't pleasant for either party, but the demons -- who are immortal -- suffer magnitudes more.

Curious statistic: in this Renaissance-adjacent world, the human population is fifteen million, and they are plagued by exactly 72, 936 demons, two of which feature in this story. There's the one that our narrator met in the womb, known as He, and a new one that he identifies as female. Both demons have plans involving Prosper of Schanz, a polymath genius who wants to make a bronze horse larger than anything that's ever been made -- and who also wants to tutor the young prince who will eventually ascend to the throne. A worthy conduit for demonic machinations ...

Morally grey, sometimes really quite unsettling, and often very funny. The opening scene is especially gory, but it's the narrative equivalent of an opening chord, rather than setting the tone throughout. This is classic Parker with its combination of practical engineering, lesser evils balanced against greater ones, and a narrator with an unhappily clear view of his own failings.

2020/011: One Night in Boukos -- A J Demas

"He did it for a lark. He thought it would be fun... The night before, he was really having a good time. He’d got to do all sorts of things a respectable man can’t do in Zash, and he thought it was spectacular. He liked mingling with the locals—he thought everyone in Boukos was just wildly quaint and fabulous in a sort of barbarian way." [loc. 2756]

The Ambassador from Zash has gone missing in Boukos after a night of debauchery cementing diplomatic ties. So far, the only two people who know he didn't come home are the captain of his guard, Marzana, and his eunuch secretary Bedar. Can they find the Ambassador in time for the trade deals to be concluded? And will the fact that it's the night of the Psobion, a religious festival dedicated to sex and decadence, interfere with their investigations?

Another cheerful secondary-world pseudohistorical from A J Demas. I didn't adore this quite as much as Sword Dance, but that might be because it's as much a crime novel as a romance: also, there are two romances, one heterosexual and one not, but neither is a case of wild passion. The Zashians apparently say that one 'catches' love, like an illness: the infections depicted here seem mild and gentle, head colds rather than high fever, though no less sincere and cheering.

A lot of the charm of this novel is in Marzana's and Bedar's experiences of culture shock, as they come to terms with the sheer foreignness of Boukos. (Horned Beasts everywhere! Megaphallic marionettes! Unwatered wine!) The secondary characters, the widow Chereia and the prostitute Pheres, are also thoroughly delightful -- we come to know them as our protagonists do, gradually but intimately and with a real appreciation of their characters, strengths, and vulnerabilities.

And happy endings for nearly everyone involved. Win!

2020/010: Sword Dance -- A J Demas

"You literally said you were expecting more than a kiss. We'd better do something out of the Garden of Jasmine, at least."
“The garden of what? Why can’t you say ‘fuck’ like a normal person?”
“Oh, I can say it, but I’m not going to let you do it—and much as I’d love to do it to you, it’s not really in my repertoire.” [loc. 1344]

A delightful pseudohistorical country-house murder mystery foregrounding a romance between an invalided soldier and an elegant eunuch who is not what he seems. Also featuring wastrel philosophy students, fake relationship, a fish sauce factory, and some really unpleasant backstory (torture, slavery, mutilation, non-consensual sex) for both protagonists -- though they are both good at acknowledging their own traumas and accommodating the other's. The romance evolves gradually, and is built on a foundation of mutual respect and equality.

I enjoyed the classical-flavoured, pseudo-Mediterranean world depicted here. There are elements of Persia and Greece, and with the fish sauce it's hard not to think of Rome ... Using a semi-historical setting with the serial numbers filed off means that Demas doesn't have to adhere to strict detail, either in terms of the society she depicts or in the wider political milieu.

Things I especially liked here include the wealth of strong female characters; Varazda's non-binary nature; the way that he and Damiskos work together as soldiers / warriors. It's told throughout from Damiskos' viewpoint, and he is not always the most perceptive of individuals: the reader understands how his feelings are changing towards Varazda before Damiskos recognises it himself.

And it's not all sweetness and light. Characters have decided views on manliness, racial purity, slavery and the decadence of Zash. There are unwanted suitors, blithering philosophers and feisty servants. And some intriguing hints about religious practices ...

So of course I went and bought the other two books by Demas. Yay!

2020/009: The God's Eye -- Anna Butler

"...You can’t think we’d misuse it?”
“Because we’re English gentlemen—honourable and virtuous, moral and true? Oh, Ned. Ask any nation we’ve absorbed into the Imperium. You may get an answer that shocks you.” [loc. 3723]

Third in the 'Lancaster's Luck' series that began with The Gilded Scarab and continued with The Jackal's House. This episode is less of a romance and more of a swashbuckling adventure: Rafe Lancaster and Ned Winter spend most of the first half of the book apart, Rafe learning to live with his role as First Heir of House Stravaigor -- and watching his father's decline -- while Ned is off in Egypt, investigating links between the Antikythera device and the ancient cult of Thoth.

There isn't much development of their relationship, but there is plenty of excitement: enemy agents! perilous landings in crippled airships! explorations of a mystical pyramid that makes Rafe wonder whether 'that Wells chap' was right about visitors from other planets! a plucky younger sister! (Oh, Rafe, she really shouldn't have been able to trick you so easily.)

I miss the coffee shop, and Londinium. But Rafe's star is rising and I look forward to more steampunky, slashy adventure.

2020/008: American War -- Omar el Akkad

...perhaps the longing for safety was itself just another kind of violence—a violence of cowardice, silence, submission. What was safety, anyway, but the sound of a bomb falling on someone else’s home? [loc. 2110]

Set in a near-future America ravaged by climate change: the Second Civil War is being waged over the use of fossil fuels, and Sarat Chestnut, whose family hail from the Louisiana coast, spends much of her childhood and adolescence in a refugee camp, where she's befriended (or groomed) by a recruiter for the Southern rebels.

She loses everyone dear to her; she becomes a killer; she is captured by the enemy, and tortured until she confesses to crimes she hasn't committed; she is set free, at least physically, and returns to what's left of her family. She wants vengeance, and a way of achieving it is offered to her by the representative of a foreign power.

That's a stark summation of the novel. I am conflicted about it. I didn't like the characters; they did not feel especially American; I did not believe in the stated causes of the war. Yet I do think that American War is a powerful depiction of what it takes to drive someone to commit atrocity. The future it depicts is bleak -- though the long upheavals of the Middle East have coalesced into a new empire, and the flow of migration to Europe has reversed, with flotillas heading south across the Mediterranean -- and the world is irrevocably changed.

Not a cheerful read, and not wholly satisfactory as a story, but it engaged my attention.

2020/007: Convenience Store Woman -- Sayaka Murata

... there was a detailed manual that taught me how to be a store worker, and I still don’t have a clue how to be a normal person outside that manual. [loc. 182]

Keiko Furukura is thirty-six and has worked in the same convenience store (open 24 hours a day, 7 days a week) for all her adult life. She is aware that she is different, an outsider: she constantly watches her colleagues and customers, mimicking their behaviour, in order to fit in -- to make others comfortable . She grew up believing that she needed to be 'cured', and feels that she's found the place she belongs, the place where she can excel.

Society, however, does not agree. Her sister would rather she was 'normal'; her colleagues think she is odd, and exclude her from their social activities; she has never had (nor wanted) a lover or a husband or a child. Or a pet (which becomes relevant).

No diagnostic terms are used in this novel. Keiko is neurodivergent, could be regarded as somewhere on the autism spectrum, and has a lack of empathy that might, under certain circumstances, be dangerous to others. The story is told in the first person, a straightforward account of Keiko's experience. Keiko sees other people clearly, constantly comparing her own behaviour with theirs. When a male colleague becomes interested in a relationship with her, she's initially excited and optimistic. But what price normality, eh?

I'm still thinking about this book, and about how happy I was that Keiko didn't take the 'easy road' to conformity. I'm aware I am missing aspects of the story because I haven't grown up in the same culture. I suspect there are also nuances lost in translation, like the repeated mentions of 'eliminating foreign objects', which felt like a translation of a snappier, commonplace figure of speech.

(Petty gripe: I wish the translator had inserted commas before 'I thought', 'I realised' etc.)

Read for the 'Set in Japan or by a Japanese Author' rubric of the 2020 Reading Women Challenge. Female translator (Ginny Tapley Takemori) too! I enjoyed this a great deal: it's poignant, closely observed, and often very funny.

2020/006: You Let Me In -- Camilla Bruce

‘. . . I came to love him.’
‘But did you have choice? What were you to do? Taken into Faerie at such a young age.’
‘It is the curse of the sight.’
‘It is the curse of a predator falling upon its prey – I should know all about that.' [loc. 1875]

Successful 74-year-old romance novelist Cassandra Tipp has been missing for over a year: her will specifies that her niece and nephew will inherit her fortune, but only after they have read the document that she's left for them, typed on pink paper, in her isolated mansion.

Cassandra has been estranged from her family for decades: indeed, for her whole life. She was always the bad girl, the odd one out, nothing like her 'tangerinemarzipan' sister or her fragile, kind-hearted brother. Her childhood and adolescence was a constant war with her mother, who believed Cassie's beloved friend Pepper-Man (he smelt like pepper) was imaginary. It had to be Cassie breaking flower-pots, hoarding sticks and bones, tormenting her sister.

But, as Cassie's account reveals, her relationship with Pepper-Man changed her life. The tragedies that have shattered the family -- the death of Cassie's husband Tommy, the murder-suicide of her father and brother -- did not unfold in the ways that made the headlines. And psychiatrist Dr Martin's lurid bestseller Away with the Fairies: A Study in Trauma-Induced Psychosis, which explained Cassie's stories of faerie friends and a secret child in terms of sexual abuse and mental illness, was just another story. ('Can't both stories be true?' Cassie asks Dr Martin. 'Why is it that only because one thing is true, the other thing is not? Why do we always have to decide?' [loc. 1264])

This is an unsettling read. Whichever version of the story one gives more weight to, Cassie has been groomed and abused -- either by a human predator or by an ancient, almost vampiric being who craves blood and humanity. And whichever version is 'true', Cassie is deemed culpable: even the title of the novel is an accusation.

It's hard to say, too, when and where this is set. There are no identifying details. Most of the story takes place in the small coastal town of S---ville, or in the forest nearby, or within a mystical mound in that forest. There are cars and phones -- landlines, I think -- but no computers. (Oops, one mention of 'a chunky old laptop'.) Cassie's novels -- their plots apparently inspired by faerie tea -- are typed on a typewriter. Cassie sought refuge in books as a child, but we never learn the names of those books.

Cassie's prose is magical and delicate, replete with odd detail, when she describes the faerie realm, but there's something curiously flat about her accounts of interactions with other humans. Her tale of love and abuse and vengeance, of facades and masks, is timeless. And if the faeries are real, they too are timeless: here, they are seeded from the dead, though not all humans have the strength or 'will to life' for post-mortem metamorphose. And some eschew humanity, feeding on animals or trees. There's a thread running through this novel about prey and predator, about whether a human being gives the Sunday roast a choice: and Cassie is, or has been, prey.

This is Camilla Bruce's first novel: I'll definitely look out for more of her work.

I received an Advance Review Copy via NetGalley in exchange for this honest review.

2020/005: Little Women -- Louisa M Alcott

... much describing of other people's passions and feelings set her to studying and speculating about her own, a morbid amusement in which healthy young minds do not voluntarily indulge. [loc. 6400]

The story of four sisters growing up in (relative) poverty during the American Civil War while their father is away with the Army. Each sister (feminine Meg, tomboy writer Jo, artist Amy and shy pianist Beth) confronts different challenges and moral dilemmas. Each grows and changes over the course of the novel, which begins rather episodically (one chapter per challenge) but coalesces later on.

(I say 'the novel': publications of Little Women usually consist of both Little Women -- where none of the girls are married and all live at home -- and Good Wives, which begins after Meg's marriage and ends with Jo's.)

I found the religious aspects of the novel, and the girls' desire to be Good, rather wearing and somewhat sentimental. I'm unsettled by the inequalities in the novel -- Laurie and his grandfather live in splendid solitude in a grand house, while down the road a family of German immigrants don't have enough to eat. This is human nature, then and now: but none of the March family question it, even when they're expending their own limited resources on charitable work. They give their Christmas meal to the Hummels -- and then are rewarded by old Mr Laurence sending them food. Instant rewards for good behaviour! But Mr Laurence could as easily have donated food directly to the Hummels...

And the title, Little Women, still seems to me to privilege adulthood above childhood: it's important, in the novel, that the girls get over their fun-loving careless ways and become serious, restrained members of society. (Even at the beginning of the novel, the elder two March girls go out to work to support the family. But at home they remain frivolous.) One of the novel's primary themes, though, is 'how does a woman make her own way in the world?'. Jo wants to do it by writing a great novel; Amy wants to be a famous artist, but will settle for marrying well; Meg believes that love is enough (until it isn't.)

I do love the interactions between the sisters, and each girl's friendship with Laurie next door, and the insight into polite society in 19th century America. I found myself constantly analysing my own reactions to the sociological underpinnings of the novel: the risks of writing longhand, the price of hair, the use of corporal punishment in schools.

I don't recall ever having read Little Women before: I suspect my mother was unimpressed by its overt Christian message. Instead, she introduced me to Susan Coolidge's 'Katy' books, for which I still have considerable affection.

I read this for the 'Read and Watch a Book-to-Movie Adaptation' rubric of the 2020 Reading Women Challenge. (It would also have fulfilled the 'over 500 pages' rubric.) I watched Greta Gerwig's excellent film version, and enjoyed it immensely: I was already most of the way through the novel, and so I could see how the scriptwriters had adapted the source.

In brief:
- the film begins somewhere in Good Wives and then skips back seven years to the beginning of Little Women (spot the era by the length of Jo's hair!)
- no mention of religion, or teetotalism
- people of colour (and Marmee's line about being 'ashamed of her country')
- schoolgirls talking about the war
- Amy much more likeable in the film
- a handsome Prof Bhaer! see Greta Gerwig: interview clip on why she chose a handsome actor to play Professor Bhaer: 'throughout the history of cinema men have been putting glasses on hot women and calling them awkward'.

But more than any of these, it is a film that focuses on Jo the Writer, and on how her experiences (and mistakes) shape her and her work. I wish I had had Jo as a role model when I was a child.

I went looking for older cover art and fell down a rabbit hole! This book has had, literally, thousands of covers -- many of them reflective of the decade of publication. See some here.

2020/004: The Wild Swans -- Peg Kerr [reread]

It was all there in the background, Elias realized while looking through the album later, like the distant cacophony of traffic on the other side of a closed window. You think you can ignore it, but it keeps getting a little louder, a little closer, irritating at first, and then more and more ominous. There was a kind of anxiety among their friends, even the ones who seemed entirely healthy... [loc 2802]

The story is told in two parallel strands: Eliza, in the 1680s, discovers that her stepmother's changed her eleven brothers into swans; and Elias, in 1980s New York, is learning to live with his sexuality as a gay man, even while his friends are dying of a mysterious illness. Both Elias and Eliza have been disowned by their parents, but find love and friendship elsewhere; both are silent, though silence = death; both find love unexpectedly, though Elias has to endure the lingering death of his lover Sean.

There are other echoes: a man of the cloth questioning his faith; food placed just out of reach; the role of the mother, or the stepmother, in bringing doom to a son; the need to create art in the face of a curse ... And there are hints that the two stories might be connected: that Eliza might be Elias' ancestor, and that another (trans) character might be the reincarnation of someone who deeply regretted her inability to help Eliza. But these are only hints: Kerr has a light touch. She doesn't hammer home the parallels, or sentimentalise either Elias' or Eliza's suffering: nor does she glamourise the gay scene at its brief heyday. Neither protagonist is given to dramatics, but both experience profound emotion. The Wild Swans is a powerful story about love, and hope, and -- to a certain extent -- self-sacrifice.

I read this novel when it was first published in 1999: I haven't reread it since, and recalled very little of the plot, though I did remember the characters and themes. It's aged surprisingly well, and I'm happy that it is now available again, in ebook format, from new publisher Endeavour. (I received a free e-copy from NetGalley in exchange for this honest review.) There's also a new foreword by Peg Kerr, which highlights how far we've come in those two decades: not only in treatments for AIDS but in marriage rights.

Read for the 'Either a Favorite or a New-to-You Publisher' rubric of the 2020 Reading Women Challenge

2020/003: The New Moon's Arms -- Nalo Hopkinson

“It’s like she think…” I reached for the words. “… she think that the marvellous things in this world, the wondrous things, we can find a trick to them, you know? And if we work the trick just right, well then, we can control them.” I kissed my teeth. “Why you want to control a miracle? Then it won’t be a miracle no more!” [loc. 1326]

Calamity (christened Chastity) Lambkin is in her fifties, single, menopausal, and mourning her father's death from cancer. Her mother walked out on the family when Calamity was young: Calamity fell pregnant at sixteen, and has a tense relationship with her own daughter Ifeoma. (She adores her grandson Stanley, though.) In fact, Calamity has tense relationships with quite a few people: she is forceful, independent and full of rage at a society that discounts her now that she's not young.

Lately, Calamity has been finding things: things that have been lost for years, like the brooch her mother gave her, and a beloved soft toy, and a whole, mature almond tree. One day she finds a little boy on the beach: she takes him home, names him Agway and begins to teach him English. Is Agway another 'lost thing', though, or has Calamity stolen him?

I loved this novel. Calamity is such a vibrant character -- though not always likeable: in particular she's viciously and offensively homophobic -- and her voice is unique and distinctive. How refreshing, too, to read about a menopausal woman! From one angle she's selfish: but from another, she has pride and independence, and knows her own worth. Hopkinson's writing is rich and allusive, full of vivid imagery (the sea smells 'salty and meaty ... like dinner') and she doesn't fall prey to the need to explain everything. The fate of her mother, the effects of the new chemical plant, the relevance of an old story about a slave ship, the finding of what's lost ... everything is connected, but the connections are seldom explicit.

I suspect The New Moon's Arms was more groundbreaking when first published in 2007. Highly recommended, though. I bounced off a Nalo Hopkinson novel about a decade ago (right book, wrong time?) and haven't read anything by her until now: I'll be reading more of her work.

Read for the 'by an Author from the Caribbean or India' rubric of the 2020 Reading Women Challenge.

2020/002: The Silver Bough -- Lisa Tuttle

After the last Apple Fair, we never had any luck in the town,’ one elderly woman told me. ‘It was her fault, the Apple Queen. If she’d married her man, everything would have gone on as it always had. But she went away. They both did...' [loc. 937]

Several incomers arrive in the small, isolated Scottish seaside town of Appleton. Ashley is a teenager intrigued by her grandmother's stories; Kathleen is the new librarian; widowed Nell wants to restore the town's famous orchards. All three women are American: there is also Mario, a Sicilian teenager working in his cousin's chip shop after a failed love affair, and refusing to accept his exile.

The three women are all drawn to the same mysterious man, Ronan: each of them learns a different part of the town's defining myth, the Apple Queen and the golden apple which she traditionally shares with her lover, granting their hearts' desires. The absconsion of the last Apple Queen is blamed for the town's decline: but could there be a new Apple Queen who'll reverse Appleton's fortunes and bring prosperity again?

After the town is cut off from the rest of the country by a landslip, inexplicable events begin to occur. Perhaps local folklorist Graeme, with his theories about the peninsula once having been an island, is not as wrong-headed as he sounds ...

I felt the novel suffered from having too many viewpoint characters: in particular, Mario seemed wholly unnecessary to the story, and though his sense of isolation and alienation was well-portrayed, it didn't add anything. (Also, how on earth did he manage to miss the fact that he was on the west coast of Scotland? Do they not have sunsets there?)

I did like the subtle hints at the town's history and nature, and the juxtaposition of myth and economic stagnation. The myth entangles the three female protagonists in a complex and nuanced story with shifting themes and indeterminate endings. The endings bestowed upon each woman are satisfying, but I do think the novel could have been more tightly structured.

Read for the 'Inspired by Folklore' rubric of the 2020 Reading Women Challenge.

2020/001: Minor Mage -- T. Kingfisher

When kindness came from murdered ghosts and lost pigs, and the adults that were supposed to help you were monsters that walked like men… What was he supposed to do? It wasn’t right. He wanted the world to be different. [p. 111]

Oliver is, as his armadillo familiar Eglamarck frequently reminds him, a minor mage. That's true in more senses than one: he's not particularly powerful, and he is also just twelve years old.

The people he's grown up with, the adults of his village, have banded together and sent him on a dangerous journey to end the drought. (They waited until his mother was away! And he had been planning to go anyway!) Oliver understands the importance of the land to farmers; he understands that the villagers were afraid; he knows that the Cloud Herders might be able to help lift the drought and restore the land. But how is this right? How is this normal?

Oliver's journey is ... not without incident. He meets lots of interesting people: some rather odd farmers, a charming youth who makes harps, a ghost in red, and a plethora of irrational, brutal adults. There's quite a bit of violence here (mostly off-page), but it's not disproportionate to the story. Oliver is in more or less constant peril, and without his familiar (to whom he's utterly devoted, and it's mutual) this would be a very short book. (It's actually a novella.)

I found it an enjoyable read, though slightly imbalanced: the first third is quite slow, while the last couple of chapters speed up to breakneck pace. Eglamarck is a delightful and wise counterpoint to Oliver's very credible adolescent, and also -- equally credible -- an armadillo, who has short legs, can't see the colour red and is certain of reincarnation.

Apparently there's some debate about whether this is suitable for children. I'd have devoured it eagerly from around the age of eight, though there are some pretty grim scenes. A key theme is Oliver's gradual realisation that adults can be just as scared as children: and that is an important thing to recognise, both in the novel and in the world.