2021/129: The Crow Folk -- Mark Stay

‘You’re the one who risked a demonic incursion to win best pumpkin at the village fair.’ [loc. 2647]

The setting is Woodville, a small Kentish village, during the Second World War. The protagonist is Faye Bright, seventeen (a period-typical seventeen, rather young for her age by contemporary standards), who's just discovered that her dead mother was a witch. The antagonist is Pumpkinhead, a former scarecrow who has brought other scarecrows -- the Crow Folk -- to life and is determined to emancipate them. ("We ain't their slaves no more.") Faye is a capable young woman: a keen bellringer, she is also an Air Raid Precaution warden ("Put that light out!") though the Local Defence Volunteers -- later to be renamed the Home Guard -- won't accept her application, what with her being female. Faye also helps her dad run the local pub, where she gets to hear all the gossip, and encounters the village witches.

It's a somewhat soft-focus, nostalgic version of wartime, though full of evocative details such as the ban on bell-ringing, the removal of signposts, and so on. Most of the characters are pleasant enough, and there's plenty of humour: there are also intriguing hints of a larger magical society. It didn't really engage me, though, perhaps because I was expecting a darker story.

2021/128: A Free Man of Color -- Barbara Hambly

It had been a French city then, with the French understanding of who, and what, the free colored actually were: a race of not-quite-acknowledged cousins, neither African nor European, but property holders, artisans, citizens. [loc. 2034]

In 1817, Benjamin January left New Orleans for Paris. In 1833, after the death of his wife, he returns to a city that has changed in his absence -- and not for the better. January is the eponymous 'free man of color': born a slave but freed as a child, he is a dark-skinned Black man, trained as both a surgeon and a musician. In New Orleans, with its complex hierarchy of Blackness (mulatto, quadroon, octoroon) and its institutional plaçage -- a civil, extralegal union between a white man and a mixed-race woman -- January has to readjust to being treated as an inferior. He has to allow a white man to strike him without raising a hand in his own defense. And when a quadroon woman is murdered (with January apparently being the last person to see her alive) he has little chance of justice, unless he finds it for himself.

I think I read a novel in this series a long time ago: I don't remember much about it, and that may be because, like all the best series, there is a strong core cast of characters who become familiar to the reader. Jumping in at the deep end means flailing without context. This time, I started at the beginning (thanks to Lockdown Bookclub) and very much enjoyed this well-written, well-researched novel. Given the times we live in, and the fact that Barbara Hambly is white, I was surprised not to read reviews about cultural appropriation, racism, privilege: but Hambly treats her subject and her characters with respect. She doesn't shy from the more horrific aspects of slavery and racism, but also doesn't dwell exclusively on this side of the story. Bad things happen to good people, true, but good things happen too, and there are moments of beauty and peace even in January's memories of life as a slave.

The murder mystery is suitably twisty, the characters -- especially the marvellous Prussian fencing master, Mayerling -- intriguing, and the descriptions of 19th-century New Orleans (a city I visited just once, years before Katrina) evocative and compelling. I have every intention of reading more in the series.

Oh, and from the Afterword: "All my thanks and humble gratitude go to Octavia Butler for her time and consideration in reading the original of this manuscript and for her invaluable comments."

2021/127: Tam Lin -- Pamela Dean

If you were in the habit of vanishing under a hill into a realm where time stood still, then, supposing you wanted to live in the world again -- and after all, one must do something -- you might very well decide to go to college to catch up on what the world had been doing. Adolescents are awkward; they know nothing; nobody is surprised at any ignorance they display. Mingle with college students and nobody would notice you twice. [loc. 6227]

Reread again: I adored this when I first read it in the second millennium (review from 1998) but was less enthusiastic when I next read it (review from 2015). I think I may have attained some kind of equilibrium this time around: I admired and enjoyed the novel while remaining aware of its flaws. And heavens, the protagonists are all so very young: teenagers, college-age students, all dramatic gestures and a propensity for quoting Great Literature at the drop of a hat.

Though not all the teenagers are teenagers, and not all of the Classics department are wholly human ...

I especially enjoyed the frequent scenes of play-going (Hamlet, The Revenger's Tragedy et cetera) this time around, what with having been deprived of live theatre by the plague. And I found myself paying much more attention to the Shakespearean trio, with their odd assumptions and beliefs, and their clothes smelling of herbs ("Janet wished they would wash with chemicals like normal people" [loc. 6526]).

Worth noting that Tam Lin, published in 1991, is set in the early 1970s: reading it in 2021, it's effectively historical fiction. I wonder how the story would work in a contemporary setting ...

2021/126: The Lost Sun -- Tessa Gratton

Everyone across the United States of Asgard will be watching the ritual in Philadelphia as his priests spread the ashes from his death pyre into the roots of the giant New World Tree. Cameras will flash, the seethers will sing, and everyone will wait as—slowly, slowly—Baldur the Beautiful climbs hale and whole out of his own ashes: new, golden, and alive. [p. 29]

This novel, highly relevant to my interest in Norse mythology, was published in 2015: how have I been oblivious to its existence until now?!

The Lost Sun is first in the 'United States of Asgard' series, set in an alternate world where North America was colonised by Norse settlers instead of Europeans. Their gods came with them: Odin is involved with the House of Congress, Thor kills mountain trolls when they menace the human population, Loki drives an ice-cream van ... And every Asgardian vows allegiance to a god -- except for those like Soren Bearskin, whose father succumbed to berserker frenzy and killed thirteen people, and who has no choice but is pledged to Odin because of his own berserker nature. Soren (who's Black) is attracted to his schoolmate Astrid, daughter of a renowned prophetess: but he doesn't expect to take a road trip across the United States of Asgard with her, in search of Baldur, whose annual resurrection has not occurred.

The Norse-flavoured USA was splendid: Gratton has tweaked history and culture in both obvious and subtle ways, retaining older names for the states, or rather Kingstates (Laflorida, Mizizibi, Kansa, Nebrasge). There is a LEGO model of the Rainbow Bridge; kids choose a Hallowblot sacrifice from the martyr store; that famous band from England was called the Quarrymen; Biblists worship a god who was resurrected, and tend to pledge to Baldur; there are pygmy mammoths and hill trolls on the Great Plains, and we encounter the wolf Fenrir in a surprising form. The Asgardians have vowed to coexist with non-humans (though the original inhabitants of the North American continent seem to have fared rather less well, at least initially): their international diplomacy is surprisingly pacifist, though young men are still sent off to the desert to die.

I definitely want to read more about this world, but I didn't find Soren and Astrid's romance either credible or engaging. It's the only aspect of the novel that felt 'young adult' to me, and it is very much an instant, soulmate-style bond. I am pleased to report that it does not end predictably. Other plot strands (Fenrir, Idun, lady berserkers et cetera) were more satisfying, and I look forward to discovering how those stories develop.

2021/125: Get a Life, Chloe Brown -- Talia Hibbert

He wanted to find every friend who’d ever ditched her... and force them all to walk barefoot across a room full of Legos for the rest of their lives. [p. 243]

One day, Chloe Brown is almost hit by a car: she chooses to take this as a message from the universe, to the effect of 'get a life so your eulogy won't be boring." Accordingly, she moves out of the family home into a block of flats somewhere in South Nottinghamshire, where she intends to work on her 'Get a Life' list. This includes a motorbike ride, a drunken night out, meaningless sex, and 'do something bad'. She is certain that the gorgeous Redford Morgan, caretaker at the flats, can assist with at least some of these, even though he seems to have an instant aversion to her. Chloe -- who suffers from fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue and migraine, amongst other invisible disabilities -- is fascinated by Red's art, and by his tattoos and motorbike. But as she gets to know him, she realises that he has issues of his own.

I liked this a lot: Chloe is smart and determined, far from a victim despite her physical limitations, and if she hadn't already won me over by the time she rescued a cat from a tree, that would have done it. ("Well done, human! miaowed the cat. You’re a total badass!"). I found Red a fascinating romantic hero: he gets lost in the flow of his art, is triggered by memories of past emotional trauma, and is willing to admit that he's wrong. Two damaged (but indefatigable) people, learning how to fit into one another's lives and how to tell each other what hurts, physically or mentally. There are some communication issues, in both directions, but Red and Chloe overcome them.

Get a Life, Chloe Brown is also very funny -- Chloe's narrative in particular is a delight -- and I'm looking forward to reading the other two novels in the 'Brown Sisters' trilogy, each of which deals with one of Chloe's eccentric / charming sisters.

2021/124: Shadow of a Lady -- Jane Aiken Hodge

Miss Tillingdon was always a little shocked by Helen’s interest in the one-time Emmy Hart. She believed that women should be liberated, but not, perhaps, quite so liberated as Lady Hamilton. [p. 41]

Labelled as a Regency romance, but to my mind it's neither: it's set in the 1780s, and the romance is secondary to the historical narrative. Helen Telfair has sworn never to marry. She is due to inherit a great deal of money when she comes of age, and she intends to set up house with her friend Miss Tillingdon. Then her mother falls ill, and she and Helen accompany Helen's father, a naval captain, to the Mediterranean. Captain Telfair assures the ladies that they will be quite safe: in this, he is incorrect. Helen finds herself in a terrible quandary, and marriage to the dilettante (and very probably homosexual) Lord Merritt seems the only solution. Then, of course, she must face the man she could have loved, to whom she cannot explain the reason for her marriage. And, once ashore in Naples, she finds herself in the company of her childhood 'angel', a beautiful woman who once danced on a table for the entertainment of some dissolute aristocrats: Lady Emma Hamilton, wife of the British Ambassador.

Lots of naval action, double-crossing, perfidy, bad behaviour and poor parenting. Helen does seem prone to dropping people when their faults become evident: I don't think she ever writes to Miss Tillingdon to say that her plans have changed; she is immensely grateful for the company of Charlotte in the first days of her marriage, but begins to find her company grating; and though by the end of the novel she has every reason to distrust and fear Lord Merritt, she is never really appreciative of the fact that he's saved her reputation and perhaps her life.

The novel seemed to end very suddenly, in a flurry of action and resolution. An epilogue might have helped...

I found the historical aspects of the novel more compelling than Helen's story, though it's interesting to see the everyday effects of revolution, war and volcanic eruption -- and the efforts of Sir William Hamilton on behalf of the British -- from the perspective of a lonely and desperate Englishwoman. Not one of Aiken Hodge's best, though.

2021/123: Paladin's Hope -- T Kingfisher

...hair the color of… no, don’t start trying to decide what organ at what stage of decomposition is that shade of red. Pick something else. Something that isn't horrible. ... Smoked paprika. [p. 29]

Galen is a paladin of the Saint of Steel, and thus prone to occasional berserking: otherwise upright, moral, courageous and well-armed. Piper is a lich-doctor (think forensic pathologist) who prefers the company of corpses, has a minor wonderworking talent which he prefers not to discuss, and would also rather not discuss or even admit to having emotions. Earstripe is a gnole, working for the city guards.

Together they fight crime. (There's also a cheering romance, not involving Earstripe.)

Third in T Kingfisher's 'Saint of Steel' series (Paladin's Grace, Paladin's Strength) which typically features some fairly horrific plot elements -- in this volume, a number of clerical corpses who have met a variety of gruesome deaths, and the location at which those deaths occurred -- wrapped in and ameliorated by a fluffy romance, plenty of humour and some excellent characters. I especially liked the insights into gnole pronouns and grammar here: Earstripe is very good at expressing himself. Kudos to the author, too, for the line 'Five men stood .. looking at a corpse. Four of the men were human' -- the fifth, of course, being the badgeresque Earstripe. I like the fact that 'man' is not species-specific, but refers to a sentient adult male. I also thoroughly approved of the Temple's solution to the shortage of trained clerks, required due to a shake-up of the city guard: retired prostitutes, aged out of the profession, retrained by the Scarlet Guild in clerical skills and recordkeeping.

Lots of neat worldbuilding, two romantic protagonists with flaws and secrets (and some difficulty in believing they're worthy of the other's regard), and .. possibly slightly too much of a maze of twisty passages, all alike. Character as well as plot plays out in the maze, though, and the wonders of the ancients are, as usual, rather exasperating. Paladin's Hope was an enjoyable read: I am happy to read that the author plans more in the sequence, and am hoping that the books will tie in somehow to the yet-unfinished sequence that began with Swordheart ...

2021/122: Perhaps the Stars -- Ada Palmer

...before I've sweated out my term as oarsman on Apollo's flagship, I must lead Utopia to some new world untouched by Distance, where the very oars and sails we use to battle grim Poseidon are undreamed. [loc. 12074]

The long-awaited (and long) finale of the Terra Ignota series. (Too Like the Lightning, Seven Surrenders, The Will to Battle.) I will not attempt to summarise the tetralogy here, except to note that it's set in a 25th century that thinks it's small-u utopian but has elements of dystopia. There are gods (some more Present than others) and monsters (oh, Mycroft), a World War and an ideological war conducted simultaneously, a villain in an underground lair (hmm, more than one of those), reversals and twists, blurred identities, mythic resonances, metamorphoses and miracles, space elevators, and -- regrettably -- spreadsheets, which have not yet gone extinct.

The war subtracts two of the key technologies that society relies on: the car system, which had made it possible for individuals to live and work anywhere in the world with at most a two-hour commute, and the tracker system, which connected (and monitored) everybody. Chaos, in the form of riot and prejudice, ensues, and old alignments and alliances shift and change: the calming influences aren't necessarily those one might expect. The twin toxicities of gender and religion are further explored, and some of the limitations of the various approaches to both acknowledged. The existence and treatment of Servicers is also addressed, and by the end of the novel there are credible expectations of a better world. Or worlds.

Not all endings are happy, but happiness is not necessarily the point.

There were some conclusions that weren't wholly satisfying (Madame, reminiscent of Lady Macbeth; Thisbe; Ráðsviðr), and some developments -- those relating to the narrative voices, and the various Readers who interrupt and interrogate the primary narrative -- which felt slightly rushed: but the latter might simply be because I raced through the novel and missed foreshadowing. Conversely, it was cheering to spot a resonance or reference before it was made explicit. There's a lot of the Iliad here, as well as its in-universe sci-fi reimagining by Apollo Mojave (which was read and reimagined, in turn, by an impressionable adolescent). Apollo never, thankfully, got as far as the Odyssey, which is mirrored in Mycroft's tale. I cheered when Helen was revealed, and teared up at Odysseus' dog.

...Perhaps the Stars is a densely-written, complex, philosophical novel which I suspect I'll be assimilating for some time. It doesn't answer all the questions I hoped it would: it doesn't neatly tie off all the threads. But it is profound and provocative, tragic and triumphant and, literally, marvellous.

Thanks to NetGalley for the advance review copy, in exchange for this honest and unbiased review which I'm posting out of sequence for publication day!

2021/121: The Heavens -- Sandra Newman

... in waking life, she was dogged by anomalies, discrepancies, attacks of jamais vu. In every street, there were new stores and restaurants, appearing at a pace that seemed impossible even for New York. She didn’t know most of the songs on the radio. She didn’t know half of the movie stars. [loc. 628]

New York City, in the year 2000: a Green woman senator is president, astronauts have landed on Mars, the Jerusalem peace treaty has been signed and carbon emissions have declined rapidly. '...the first year with no war at all, when you opened up the newspaper like opening a gift' [loc. 350]. Ben meets the romantic, impractical Kate at a party, and they fall in love. But Kate has a second life: since childhood, she's been dreaming of what she gradually realises is the past, the sixteenth century, where her name is Emilia and she plays an ivory flute for the queen. Not everything is perfect in Emilia's life. There is plague, and she is pregnant by the Lord Chamberlain, and being asked for help by a feckless playwright named Will -- of whom Kate, in waking life, has never heard. She's certain she has a vital task to perform in the past, something that will save the world and prevent the bleak, lifeless cities which she glimpses in visions: it seems that Will is somehow key to this mission.

The Heavens is a mosaic of shifting timelines, memories that don't fit together, and Ben's increasing impatience with the utopian alternate reality that Kate claims to remember. It seems clear from the narrative that the present is changing, and Kate is sure it's because of her dream-life in the past. But the world doesn't seem to be changing for the better: and Kate is not a reliable narrator.

I found much of this novel very enjoyable, though for me it crumbled apart in the last few chapters when the mechanisms were revealed. There are some splendid, and some appalling, scenes ("There was a war going on in this world, Kate guessed, a war in which airplanes were used as weapons. The skyscraper seemed to be a major development...' [loc. 2105]) and some achingly sad moments -- all the more poignant for their ephemeral nature, because by the next chapter they might never have happened. I kept hoping that there could be a happy ending, even after Kate stops dreaming of 1593. But for the dark Lady Emilia and for Kate herself, for Will and for Ben, for the world in which the novel opens: relentless, implacable change.

I enjoyed the beautiful prose, interesting characters, an ever-changing whirl of history ancient and modern: this was absolutely worth reading even though it didn't go in the direction I wanted it to go.

“Are you still from a parallel universe?”
“Who knows?” Kate said. “It isn’t really a question that comes up.”[loc. 2934]

2021/120: Strong Wine -- A J Demas

"If it would help," said Varazda, deadpan, "I'd be happy to pose as a bizarre girlfriend. I didn't bring any of my gowns with me, but I can always get something ready-made in the market." [loc. 1453]

Third in the series that started with Sword Dance and continued with Saffron Alley: the setting is reminiscent of the classical Mediterranean, though with the names changed, and the protagonists are Damiskos (military veteran) and Varazda (eunuch dancer and spy).

I think I enjoyed Strong Wine even more than the previous two instalments. Damiskos, who has been living with Varazda for a month and rather hoping that he can stay forever (but is it too early to ask?) is summoned 'home' to Pheme to encounter old enemies, his ex-fiancee, and -- worst of all -- his feckless parents. He despairs: but he should have more faith in Varazda, who is not prepared to simply let his beloved be drawn back into a life he no longer wants.

Hilarious, poignant, and triumphant, Strong Wine features a murder mystery, some splendid women (including Aradne and Nione, first encountered in Sword Dance, as well as Ino the silversmith and Dami's mother Myrto, who refuses to misgender Varazda), just deserts for the malfeasant and happy endings for the (mostly) deserving, including Dami's horse Xanthe. I was especially cheered by the ways in which the characters look after one another, and by Varazda's sheer competence: he's not just a pretty face. (I was also, perversely, cheered that neither Varazda nor Dami were prepared to tolerate misgendering, homophobia or generic insults. It's one thing to know that they originate from prejudice and ignorance, quite another to endure the constant grind.)

I received a review copy from the lovely author, in exchange for this honest review, which I'm publishing out of sequence in honour of Publication Day!

2021/119: The Moonspinners -- Mary Stewart

Over the hot white rock and the deep green of the maquis, the judas trees lifted their clouds of scented flowers the colour of purple daphne, their branches reaching landwards, away from the African winds. [p. 11]

Read 'on location' in Crete, this is an oddly timeless thriller (published 1962: apparently quite different from the film version) with a feisty and impulsive heroine, Nicola Ferris. Nicola is on holiday, travelling alone to meet her cousin Frances, when she encounters a wounded Englishman and his Greek protector and becomes enmeshed in a murder mystery which she's determined to unravel. She does so by leaping (athletically) to conclusions -- "That it was the murderer, there could be no possible doubt" -- and rushing in where angels, et cetera. She has also fallen for Mark, the wounded Englishman, and struck up a friendship with his younger brother.

The descriptions are marvellous, the plot rather less effective for me. Nicola is generally very competent, but occasionally prone to girlish frailty, as when she completely forgets that she's abandoned an immobile Frances. The romance feels rather sudden, and I didn't get much of a sense of the handsome Mark's personality. A pleasant enough read, but not entirely satisfying.

2021/118: Great Circle -- Maggie Shipstead

I hate the never-ending day. The sun circles me like a vulture. I want a respite of stars... Circles are wondrous because they are endless. Anything endless is wondrous. But endlessness is torture, too. I knew the horizon could never be caught but still chased it. [loc. 441]

On New Year's Day 1950, pilot Marian Graves and navigator Eddie Bloom set off to circumnavigate the earth the hard way, longitudinally, passing over both north and south poles: a great circle, the longest journey possible on this planet. And in 2014, film star Hadley Baxter is trying to reinvent her career, and perhaps herself, by playing Marian in a biopic.

Marian and her twin brother Jamie narrowly escape shipwreck during the first world war, and are reared in the wilds of Montana by their melancholy, alcoholic uncle. Marian is determined to learn to fly, and makes a deal with a devil to do so. She runs bootleg booze from Canada, joins the Air Transport Auxiliary in Britain when the second world war breaks out, and goes missing at the age of 36, somewhere between Antarctica and New Zealand.

Hadley's drawn to her story, not least because her own parents vanished without trace on a flight over Lake Superior. Hadley, too, was raised by an uncle: Hadley, too, makes deals with devils to get what she wants. Not that she's sure what that is: she has been sacked from a major film franchise, very much in the Twilight vein, for having a relationship with her co-star and then blatantly cheating on him. (She has some trenchant words on the subject of real person fanfiction.) Her friend and neighbour Sir Hugo suggests that she might like to audition for the role of Marian, and she is fascinated. The film's based on a popular novel, but surely the novel is just another kind of fan-fiction? ('More than once, reading Carol's novel, I’d thought of the fan fiction Oliver and I had read about ourselves, the dollhouse feeling of it, the author gripping us so tightly we might have snapped in half.' [loc. 4512])

Hadley does discover many of Marian's secrets, but Marian -- as evidenced by her own, third-person, narrative -- is difficult to define, unknowable, perhaps even to herself. She is a surprising character, though not always a likeable one, and her sole ambition is to fly (higher, further, faster...). Hadley is easier to define and, for me, harder to empathise with, though she is capable of surprisingly philosophical insights. I'm not sure that her journey is as conclusive as Marian's, but I don't think Marian's would have worked as well without the contrast of Hadley's apparently shallow, sunlit life.

Beautiful prose, enough to make you want to go up in a small plane or out into the wilderness; a wealth of background information (aerobatics, geology, Native American myth, bootlegger economy); gender fluidity and diverse desires. I'm still thinking about this novel: the half-told hinted stories about the people who affect the course of Marian's life, and Hadley's unravelling of a layer or two of that life.

2021/117: Looking Glass -- Andrew Mayne

I give myself one last look in the mirror to make sure nothing screams computational biologist masquerading as delivery man who is secretly releasing an untested genetically modified microbe into the general populace. [loc. 2982]

I didn't like this quite as much as The Naturalist, maybe simply because it has a less appealing setting -- Los Angeles rather than Montana. There's an urban myth about the Toy Man, who bestows gifts on good children but punishes the bad. The story is only current in specific areas, which tend to be Black and underprivileged, mirroring a pattern of abductions and disappearances barely acknowledged by the police. Cray believes the Toy Man story may be based on fact, and sets out to find this mythical figure using computational biology, social engineering and sheer bloodymindedness. Meanwhile, he's increasingly uncomfortable with the ways in which his research is being used by the government, and as the story progresses, he begins to wonder if he's attracting the wrong sort of attention from powerful individuals. On the other hand, nobody has pursued these cases until now ...

Some fascinating science, or pseudoscience, here -- do serial killers really have 'peculiar olfactory functions'? -- and a gruesome but highly ingenious method of retrieving samples from a burial ground when the police don't want you there. Theo is cheeringly open-minded about the importance of religious / superstitious belief as motivation for human behaviour, and not above facilitating a kind of vigilante justice when official channels fail to provide it.

Despite the gruesome crimes (details of which are not dwelt upon) and the depressing misery of human evil, I did find this very readable: I'll probably read more of the series, but not quite yet.