2022/164: Tomb of the Golden Bird — Elizabeth Peters

‘You ought not have cursed Lord Carnarvon, Emerson.’
‘Bah’, said Emerson. ‘He was already out of temper with me.’
‘You threatened him with everything from dying of the pox to being devoured by demons in the afterlife.’ [p. 174]

The final novel, chronologically, in the Amelia Peabody series, Tomb of the Golden Bird follows directly from The Serpent on the Crown, and deals with the discovery and excavation of Tutankhamon's tomb in 1922. Peters does a good job of fictionalising the historical excavation, with misbehaviour on the parts of Carnarvon and Carter (rumoured to have broken the terms of their permit) and a very credible reason for excluding Amelia and her family from the site (Emerson's fury at their slapdash methods and general arrogance).

The entire Peabody-Emerson clan is assembled here, including Sethos; Ramses and Nefret and their dear little children; David and Lia, out from England and trying not to get entangled in newly-independent Egypt's politics ... and of course Amelia and Emerson, both older and (arguably) wiser but no less passionate about Egypt, about archaeology and about each other. There is a mystery of sorts, but one does get the feeling that Peters was bidding a fond farewell to her characters and her setting. (Two novels were published after this: A River in the Sky, set in Palestine in 1910, and The Painted Queen, set in Egypt in 1912 and completed by Joan Hess after Peters' death. I don't feel the series would be diminished without them.) There are some charming family vignettes, some moderate excitement, and a definite sense of loose ends being tied off: a fitting candidate for the last novel of the year.

2022/163: The Man Who Mistook his Wife for a Hat — Oliver Sacks

...our ‘evaluations’ are ridiculously inadequate. They only show us deficits, they do not show us powers; they only show us puzzles and schemata, when we need to see music, narrative, play, a being conducting itself spontaneously in its own natural way.[loc. 2829]

Neurologist Oliver Sacks' compilation of twenty-four of his most interesting clinical cases, organised into four sections: 'Losses', 'Excesses', 'Transports' and 'The World of the Simple'. This was first published in 1985 and I suspect neurology has advanced in many of these areas: I definitely found some of the language more, ah, robust than would be usual today. (Sacks refers to his patients as 'morons', 'retarded' and so on: these are used as simple descriptions rather than slurs, but the terms feel harsh and jarring.)

Sometimes Sacks errs too much on the clinical side, but on the whole I found this a very readable account of the various ways in which the brain can malfunction. Sacks is keen to appreciate the marvels, as well as the tragedies, of neurological conditions: the lady who suddenly wakes up hearing the music of her youth, the twins who communicate In a 'thought-world of numbers' by sharing prime numbers with one another, the 'innocent wonder' of a man who can't recall the last few decades of his life, the sheer intensity of heightened sensory input. I was particularly taken with Sacks' aside about Shostakovich, who had a physical brain injury: "a metallic splinter, a mobile shell-fragment, in his brain, in the temporal horn of the left ventricle. Shostakovich was very reluctant, apparently, to have this removed: Since the fragment had been there, he said, each time he leaned his head to one side he could hear music. His head was filled with melodies – different each time – which he then made use of when composing." [loc. 2281]. An interesting read, though I think I enjoyed his autobiography, On the Move: A Life, more, because Sacks' voice is so engaging there, and his compassion and humanity so vivid.

Fulfils the ‘Throwback | Published In 1980s or 1990s’ rubric of the Annual Non-Fiction Reading Challenge.

2022/162: Cloud and Ashes: Three Winter's Tales — Greer Gilman

By one and one they rise and stare about them at the timbers of the Ship, and at the wreckage of their world's mythology: a sickle, buried to the haft in sand; a sieve; a shuttle wound with bloodred yarn; a bunch of keys, rust gouted; ruined hay, a dazed goat browsing it; the rootstock of a thorn, salt-bare. The tideline is a zodiac. [loc. 5214]

This book comprises three works set in Gilman's mythic, allusive, alliterative world of Cloud: the short story 'Jack Daw's Pack', the novella 'A Crowd of Bone', and a full novel, Unleaving. Cloud is shaped and kept by its seasonal rituals, by its goddesses and its constellations, by witches and mummers and sacrifice. It is pagan and cruel and densely layered, and the stories here will bear rereading, not once but many times. Which is to say that I'm not sure I have understood more than fragments of those stories, or their underpinning.

The axle of the story is Ashes, a role which a woman chosen by chance must play each winter so that spring will come; a role which steals her voice, bestows some arcane gifts and some sexual freedom (welcome in an otherwise judgemental society) but also imperils her ...and which requires the sacrifice of any child conceived when she was Ashes. All three of the female protagonists -- Whin, Thea and Margaret -- take on the role of Ashes: all three are changed, and in changing change their worlds.

There are no pretty fairytales here: there is raw, rough, rude language, and raw rude behaviour. There are rapes and murders, treachery and trickery, loves unrequited and doomed. But there is also great beauty, and a binding-together of threads by unbreakable bonds of story, and the celestial storytelling of constellations and zodiacs which is, in this world, literal truth. And there are echoes and mirrors of our familiar world: language that is often on the verge of iambic pentameter, quotations or riffs on Shakespeare and Donne and a dozen others, images familiar from myth and folksong. It's a dizzying novel, like looking up at a clear night sky: it's sometimes terrifying and sometimes brutal, and sometimes mercifully kind. I shall reread, in a future winter.

As an aside, I did have some issues with the ebook: I couldn't change the style of the font, and for a while I was trying to puzzle out why some 'i's were dotted and some not, until I realised that this was an artefact of my Kindle: searching the text or my highlights revealed no distinction between i and ı.

(Compare the i in eight and in grinning.)

Fulfils the ‘a book that intimidates me’ rubric of the 52 books in 2022 challenge. I have owned this book since 2011! I've started reading several times, but been awed or cowed or envious of the language: and it is not always easy to focus on the underlying story when one is glamoured by Gilman's language. I also think this would not be a good book for me to read if I were in the middle of writing something myself: I'd end up a mere mimic.

Handy lexical reference: A Cloudish Word-Hoard, by Michael Swanwick.

Interview from 2021: The Matter of Cloud: An Interview with Greer Gilman (Uncanny magazine). (Oooh, and an earlier interview from 2000: Inside Jack Daw's Pack: An Interview with Greer Gilman.)

2022/161: The Untold Story — Genevieve Cogman

‘Aunt Isra, I’m a Librarian, and – as you’re doubtless aware – Kai here is a dragon. We don’t live in stories the way that you Fae do.’
‘Ah, but you do,’ Aunt Isra said, unruffled. ‘You just don’t recognize it. Nobody ever does – at the time.’ [loc. 2549]

The finale of the Invisible Library series (first of which was The Invisible Library, read in 2015 and reviewed with the comment 'sets up admirably for a sequel or three' -- The Untold Story is the eighth). There were several unresolved plot threads at the end of The Dark Archive -- Irene's parentage, the balance between chaos and order, the nature of the Library itself -- and these are satisfactorily, though not predictably, resolved.

Irene's superiors at the Library encourage her to pursue Alberich, the rogue Librarian who's been revealed as her father. However, this can't be seen as official policy: she must appear to have gone rogue. Meanwhile, worlds are disappearing, and balance between the dragons of order and the chaotic Fae is deteriorating. Irene's original role was as a stealer and preserver of unique books, but in recent novels there's been more emphasis on diplomacy and mediation. Irene's friends -- notably Vale the Great Detective, Kai her dragon lover, and Catherine her Fae apprentice -- have been wondering why she hasn't questioned this change of role, or shown much interest in who's pulling her strings. Could there be a narrative at work here? The Fae archetype known as the Storyteller may have some of the answers...

It was very pleasing to see more of the Library's internal workings, and to discover more about individual Librarians such as Melusine and Bradamant: Alberich's backstory is expanded, too, in unexpected but credible ways. Though Irene's quest in this novel doesn't deal with book-theft or other heist narratives, there's plenty of action and some genuine peril. I do find her sheer competence (and confidence) a little offputting at times, but there are enough moments of vulnerability and fallibility in this volume to balance that. A great conclusion to the series, with some images and ideas that will linger.

My reviews of the series can be found here, most recent first.

2022/160: Black Sun — Rebecca Roanhorse

“...all peoples of the Meridian have banned human sacrifice. It is considered uncivilized, barbaric...Too powerful for humans. Best we stick to sacrificing people the old ways, with wars and famine and despot rulers.” [p. 297]

Black Sun (first of a duology) is set in a world with a pre-Columbian, Mesoamerican flavour. There are four focal characters: Naranpa, the Sun Priest, who grew up in the squalor of the Maw; Xiala, a Teek sea captain regarded as not quite human; Okoa, a warrior prince called back to the city of Tova after the death of his mother; and Serapio, whose own mother made him into a god, or the vessel for one. All are drawn towards Tova, for the Convergence -- a spiritually-significant eclipse which may revive the fortunes of the Carrion Crow clan, still recovering from the Night of Knives massacre a generation before the novel opens.

Roanhorse has chosen her viewpoint characters to display the different facets of Meridian life: their voices are distinct, and their stories very different. I found Xiala the most intriguing of the protagonists, with her Teek magic, her pain at being exiled from her people, and her weakness for casual sex and strong liquor. Naranpa's rise from obscurity to power was mostly backstory, and her narrative focussed on the political machinations of the priesthood, and her attempts to reform it. (Some interesting interactions with her former lover, though.) Serapio was fascinating, but a lot of his story was told in flashbacks to his youth and training: most of his most powerful scenes were told from other perspectives. Okoa, rider of the giant crow Benundah, felt the least-developed of the protagonists, but I suspect he'll have a larger role in the second book.

This may have been a case of 'right book, wrong time': I found the worldbuilding, the diversity, and the character interaction fascinating, but I don't think I gave the novel as much attention as it deserved (and needed). Still, I'll revisit it before I read the sequel, Fevered Star.

One minor niggle: 'acre' is a measure of area, not distance, so a circle can't be 'two acres in diameter'.

2022/159: The Serpent on the Crown — Elizabeth Peters

There was a hole on the Blue Crown, in the centre of the brow. Here the uraeus serpent, the symbol of kingship, had reared its lordly head. ... ‘Poor little king,’ I said whimsically. ‘Without the guardian serpent on his brow he was helpless to prevent the humiliation of being passed from hand to greedy hand, and exposed to the gaze of the curious.' [loc. 472]

Egypt, 1922: Amelia Peabody and her family assemble to plan more excavations in the Valley of the Kings, but their attention is diverted by the appearance of Magda Petherick, writer of sensational novels and widow of a notorious collector of antiquities. She claims that the small golden statue she's brought with her is cursed: she deems it responsible for the death of her husband (and her dog). It certainly attracts attention, as evinced by the arrival of her stepchildren -- who believe they have a right to the statue -- and a number of other interested parties. Perhaps it's just a publicity stunt? But when Magda's body is found in the hotel gardens, rumours of the curse proliferate.

I've enjoyed most of the rest of the Amelia Peabody series, and had saved this and the next (last) in the series (Tomb of the Golden Bird) for a time when I wanted a light, cheering, well-researched read. It didn't disappoint. As is often the way with long series, the pleasures here have more to do with the ensemble cast than with the plot, though the latter is well-paced, the perils real and threatening, and the resolution satisfactory. Howard Carter appears in this novel, and of course 1922 is the year of his discovery of the lost tomb of Tutankhamon. Amelia's dreams of Abdullah indicate two undiscovered tombs in the Valley of the Kings ...

Exactly what I needed when I read it: gripping plot, likeable characters, humour and affectionate mockery. Plenty of fascinating historical detail, too -- not just about Ancient Egypt but about the Egypt of a century ago.

2022/158: Keeper of Enchanted Rooms — Charlie N Holmberg

“Haunted? This is Rhode Island, not Germany.”
“Agreed.” While it was possible for magic to root itself in inanimate objects, it had become so rare — especially in a place as new as the States — that the claim felt incredible. [loc. 260]

Rhode Island, 1846: Merritt Fernsby, moderately successful novelist, has inherited remote Whimbrel Island in Naragansett Bay, and the house that stands there, unoccupied for years and reputedly haunted. Merritt is pleased by the prospect of a solitary writing retreat, but quickly realises that the house is magically active, and that it will not let him leave. Enter -- literally -- Hulda Larkin of the Boston Institute for the Keeping of Enchanted Rooms, an experienced consultant who nannies the house into compliance, recruits some staff, and helps Merritt make sense of his new home.

Both Hulda and Merritt have secrets in their pasts, failures and betrayals that have made them wary of emotional involvement. Hulda's experiences at Gorse House, indeed, come back to haunt her; and Merritt, encountering his former fiancee at a concert, discovers that the defining tragedy of his life did not play out quite as he'd thought. His growing regard for Hulda, and her determination to repress her own attraction to him, resolve very satisfactorily, as does the plight of Whimbrel House and its unmoored spirit.

This is the first in a promising new series. There was slightly too much explicit worldbuilding for my taste (though Merritt's blithe ignorance, borne of an American education that doesn't really cover magic except as a historical phenomenon, gives Hulda a good excuse to explain everything) and I felt that the villain(s) of the story, though definitively villainous, could have been treated more sympathetically. I did enjoy this, though: I think it was the first of Holmberg's novels that I'd read (though there are several in the TBR) and I'd be interested to see more in this world.

2022/157: One Night in Hartswood — Emma Denny

Raff wanted to be free, just as Penn had, and this thing between them was that freedom. [loc. 2132]

Oxfordshire, 1360: Raff is travelling south with his brother Ash and his sister Lily, for Lily's marriage to William de Foucart, heir to a newly-minted Earl with a dark reputation. Raff would far rather be out in the forest, hunting: when they make camp he wanders into the woods, and encounters a young man named Penn. They walk together, share a kiss ... and are reunited when Raff returns to the forest the next day, commanded by the Earl to search for his missing son, Lily's husband-to-be. The Earl, unaccountably, does not provide a description of William, so Raff is to be forgiven for not realising that Penn and the wayward son are one and the same.

The pair travel north, each concealing his identity, each drawn to the other, each convinced that the other won't want him. Braving the perils of winter in medieval England (floods, snow, belligerent nobles, fearful villagers, bandits, wolves) they make their way north to Raff's home. But truth will out, and Penn's father won't hesitate to rally his supporters ...

This was a sweet romance between two likeable, and very different, protagonists. Penn has suffered abuse at his father's hands, but comes into his own when Raff needs protection. Raff has always preferred his own company, until he meets someone with whom he can truly be himself. I'm not over-keen on romances built on a foundation of lies, but at least here the lies go both ways -- and the truth-telling is credibly anguished for both Raff and Penn. The middle third of the novel, where they're travelling and getting to know one another, is quite slow: more than made up for by the hectic pace of the last third.

Given the setting, I'd have liked a little more historical detail. We don't really get much sense of medieval England. Religion is barely mentioned; 'the King' (Edward III, at this point) is a vague shadowy figure; there's surprisingly little superstition. In some ways One Night in Hartswood feels more like a fantasy novel -- albeit one without magic -- than a historical: but given that this is first and foremost a romance, the setting is scenery. A pleasant read, with good characterisation and a love affair that works on several levels.

Thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for the advance review copy, in exchange for this full honest review. UK publication date is 19 January 2023.

2022/156: The Sentence — Louise Erdrich

'Sadly, or heroically, depending on the way you look at it, books do kill people.’
‘In places where books are forbidden, of course, but not here. Not yet. Knock wood. What I’m trying to say is that a certain sentence of the book — a written sentence, a very powerful sentence — killed Flora.’
Louise was silent. After a few moments she spoke. ‘I wish I could write a sentence like that.’[p. 171]

The Sentence opens with Tookie, an Ojibwe woman with some reckless habits and a sharp, mordant sense of humour, being sentenced to 60 years by 'a judge who believed in the afterlife'. Her crime? Accidentally smuggling a cocaine-laden corpse across state lines. Prison is not as awful as it might have been, because Tookie realises she has a library in her head, made up of all the books she's ever read. And people are working towards her freedom: after ten years, she's freed. She marries Pollux, the tribal policeman who arrested her, and takes a job in a bookstore specialising in Native books.

In another novel, that would be the novel. Here it's the setup, the first fifty pages. The real story starts on the Day of the Dead -- 2nd November, 2019 -- with the death of Flora, a white woman who claimed Indigenous origins. ("The woman in the picture looked Indianesque, or she might have just been in a bad mood," Tookie decides, on being shown a photograph of Flora's purported forebear.) But Flora has not departed: she's haunting the bookstore, and there's something she wants. Maybe it's to do with the book she was reading when she died, which Tookie has inherited: The Sentence: An Indian Captivity...

And then Covid. And then the murder of George Floyd.

There are a lot of layers to this novel, and -- like the nuances of the setting -- I'm not sure that I, a white British reader, am qualified to appreciate or understand them all. I did appreciate the ways in which Tookie was haunted, not only by Flora (who becomes much more menacing as the book progresses) but by her own past, her family heritage and the expectations (positive and negative) of others. I was fascinated by the complexity of the relationships, especially between Tookie's generation and the younger generation. There was an uplifting sense of community, even while Erdrich acknowledged the issues experienced by and within that community: and there was a spirit of optimism, of hope, after the outrage sparked by Floyd's murder. (I fear that optimism has dissipated in the intervening years.) The heart, the purpose, of the novel is Tookie, and she is such a compelling and engaging character that I wasn't bothered by uneven pacing or elided details. There's magic here, as well as the mundanity of pandemic life (were US bookstores really deemed 'essential services'? Hurrah!) and the tensions between family members, between employees, between neighbours. The Sentence made me happy, even when it was enraging or poignant or tragic or, sometimes, a little too rose-tinted.

NB: features the author as a character: yes, 'Louise' in the quotation above is Louise Erdrich, owner of an Indigenous bookstore, haunted by a kinder ghost than Flora.

Fulfils the ‘featuring a library or bookstore’ rubric of the 52 books in 2022 challenge.

2022/155: Pandora — Susan Stokes-Chapman

...he gave Pandora a jar – not a box, as many believe. That error is due to a mistranslation attributed to the Dutch philosopher Erasmus. In his Latin account of the story he changed the Greek pithos to pyxis which means, literally, “box”. But the point is there was a pithos, and Zeus ordered her never to open it.[loc. 4240]

London, 1798: Dora Blake, an orphan, lives with her wicked uncle Hezekiah and his 'housekeeper' Lottie, and spends much of her time in her draughty attic room, kept company by her pet magpie Hermes, producing extravagant jewellery designs. She is appalled by the ruination of her dead parents' antique business: they were professional achaeologists, but Hezekiah is more interested in selling forgeries and making dodgy deals. And he won't let her down into the cellar, where his latest acquisition -- a huge pithos, or jar, which is reputedly cursed -- is being kept.

Bookbinder and antiquarian scholar Edward Lawrence is intrigued by the trade in black-market finds and forgeries, and when he hears of the pithos, and finds that it is so old that it seems to predate history, he is convinced that it could be the making of his antiquarian career. His friend Cornelius Ashmole (no relation, apparently, to the founder of the Ashmolean Museum) vows to assist him, though his motives may not be entirely pure.

I found this slightly disappointing. There are hints of the supernatural, but they fade away; the plot is, I think deliberately, predictable (deprived but virtuous heroine, wicked uncle, mysterious legacy, love at first sight, happy endings for the deserving); there is a rather cliched gay character, and an entirely unnecessary death; many of the characters feel two-dimensional, and don't change much over the course of the novel; and there are a number of anachronisms and errors which, while not affecting the story, vexed me. ("I might get run over by a tandem": in 1798? "His pupils look almost black": do you mean his irises? "Their salvation and their purist hell"? An aristocratic lady saying, of a high price, "You know I'm good for it"?)

I'd have liked more of the mythological, and more examination of the 'curse': the setting was intriguing, but the story unevenly paced, and the inclusion of historical characters such as Sir William Hamilton and his lovely wife Emma was well-researched but seemed superfluous.

2022/154: The Cat and the City — Nick Bradley

...there it was, neko – cat. But it was different to how it was written normally. The normal way to write the character was 猫 – with this radical 犭 on the left. The character Ogawa had sent had 豸 on the left. That was the tanuki radical. This must be an older version, relating the cat to other shapeshifting animals like the badger, fox and tanuki. [loc. 1656]

A series of interlinked stories set in Tokyo, in what's turned out to be an alternate, Covid-free reality where the Tokyo Olympics of 2020 weren't postponed to 2021. The stories range from the tale of Ohashi, a homeless storyteller who's arrested and 'rehoused' in the pre-Olympic clearup (and who feeds tuna to a stray cat), via a rejected lover who lashes out at the cat who tries to offer comfort, to an agoraphobic and his young friend who care for the injured cat, to a young woman who's having the whole city tattooed on her back -- including a cat who seems to move through the tattoo ... Each story has a distinctive voice and style: the story of the agoraphobic and the boy who befriends him is a manga, while others are told in first or third person, present or past tense, deliberately 'literary' or briskly colloquial language. The stories connect their characters in ways that aren't always obvious: the moment when Ohashi almost encounters his estranged brother, the moment when Flo, the American translator, forgets her manuscript in a cat cafe ...

This reminded me of some of David Mitchell's fiction, not least because of the tenuous but significant connections between characters (and of course the Japanese setting). I appreciated the emotional and tonal range of the stories, and the inventiveness with which they were told; I liked the way the larger stories became clear gradually and without direct focus, like a Magic Eye picture; and I think I'll need to read again with an eye to the more esoteric aspects of the cat, which may be more than it seems.

I was charmed to discover that Bradley 'has a PhD focusing on the figure of the cat in the country’s literature' (source). His next novel, Four Seasons in Japan, is out in June 2023, and there is a cat on the cover ...

For Shop Your Shelves Bingo: purchased 02MAY21, animal on the cover.

2022/153: Masters in this Hall — K J Charles

He liked the carols that reeked of ancient madrigals, the ones that made you imagine snow and wolves out there in the darkness, kept off by fire and song. [loc. 144]

Short, sweet, surprise Christmas novella set in the same milieu as Charles' 'Lilywhite Boys' series (Any Old Diamonds and Gilded Cage), and featuring a character from those books. The focus here, though, is on the festively-named John Garland, disgraced hotel detective, who has thrown himself on the mercy of his elderly uncle Abel, who hosts an annual Christmas party and loves antique Yuletide customs. John's choice of festive venue is not entirely random: his nemesis, stage designer Barnaby Littimer -- whose affections cost John his job -- is in charge of organising the festivities, and John would dearly like some vengeance this Christmas.

Of course it is not that simple. Of course there are communication issues, a dastardly plot, an imminent wedding, and one or two guests who are not quite what they seem. And there is a delightfully menacing appearance by 'the lean terrifying one known to hotel detectives across England as ‘that bastard’'. Mmm, Jerry ... This was a splendid, cheering pre-Christmas read, refreshingly free of Victorian sentimentality and rich with pagan tradition: now I want to go back and reread the novels.

2022/152: Silver Skin — Joan Lennon

He tried to imagine what it would be like to actually believe this stuff. To feel invisible danger all around. To not know if the next person you met was human or something else entirely that was out to get you, one way or another. When they’d studied the superstitions of early cultures it had never occurred to him just how stressful it would be, just how paranoid it must make you feel. [loc. 942]

Rab lives in Stack 367-74, Delta Grid, Northwest Europasia. It's far in the future, after the Catastrophe Ages -- the Nadir, the Flood and the Bulge, the latter an immense population explosion which led to the Alexander Decision and antaphrodisiacs in the drinking water. Rab wants to be an archaeologist, and his mother is keen for him to move ahead, move out: she buys him a Retro-Dimensional Time Wender with Full Cloaking Capability, a wearable time-machine which will transport Rab to a different time while keeping him in the same geographical location. He makes a quick trip to 1850, anchoring his trip to the massive storm that exposed a Neolithic village buried under the sands -- but disaster strikes and he finds himself, injured and amnesiac, in Skara Brae just before it was abandoned.

Rab was seen falling from the sky (his journey began high up in a Stack) by a young woman named Cait, who's also an outsider, an Offlander. Cait is apprentice to the village wise woman, Voy, who's taken custody of Rab's 'silver skin', believing him to be a selkie. Perhaps because of something she's seen in a vision, Voy is more than happy to let Rab and Cait spend time together, and Rab learns a great deal from Cait about Neolithic society and religion, about life close to nature, and about love. But he also knows the settlement is doomed -- and with his suit, and his implanted AI, damaged, he's afraid that he will share the villagers' fate.

I enjoyed this novel, with its framing Victorian narrative which describes the uncovering of Skara Brae in 1850 through the perspective of a young woman woken by the storm. There were a couple of elements I wasn't entirely convinced by (for instance, the word 'seal' -- meaning both the closure of Rab's suit and the aquatic mammal -- being a word recognisable by Neolithic Orcadians when Rab says it) and I felt the ending was rather abrupt. But I'd recently been reading about Skara Brae (see Shadowlands) and it was fascinating to see it brought to life, with great attention to detail and respect for the archaeology done at the site.

This is a YA novel and Rab and Cait come across as quite young, though there are some fairly adult themes hinted at throughout the story. Joan Lennon seems to write mostly for younger age groups, but I do hope she writes more YA.

2022/151: Iorich — Steven Brust

No one can do everything perfectly; mistakes happen. But we’re assassins: when we make mistakes, people live. [p. 81]

I used to be a huge fan of Brust's Vlad Taltos books: I lost track some time in the first decade of this century, possibly after not really engaging with Jhegaala (though I note I accidentally reread Dzur back in 2017: coincidentally, just after I purchased Iorich.). Anyway, this felt like a return to form (assuming form had been departed from), and reminded me of how much I like the characters, the setting and the style.

Iorich brings Vlad back to Adrilankha, despite the fact there's still a price on his head, because his friend Aliera has been arrested on a trumped-up charge. Vlad, with the help of an Iorich named Perisil, investigates the case, works out what it's really about, and ... well, 'resolves' is probably not the right word here. 'Terminates' might do better: 'with extreme prejudice' certainly applies.

Very nice to see Vlad back on familiar territory both geographically and psychologically; good to renew my acquaintance with his friends, especially Morrolan and Sethra, and to see him getting along with ex-wife Cawti and their son. There's some great dialogue, as usual, and a hilarious set of deleted scenes. I enjoyed this more than I'd expected when I dredged it from my TBR.

Yes, Deverra is in this one.

Yes, one of these days I will reread the whole series from the beginning, including the ones I've missed. I see Tsalmoth (book 16!) is out in April: that might prove a sufficient spur ...

2022/150: 21st Century Yokel — Tom Cox

Had they known me, they would have realised that ‘I wouldn’t try to go that way if I were you – it’s difficult’ is one of the three main motivational hiking phrases a person can say in my vicinity, along with ‘There’s a great pub at the apex of this route’ and ‘This hill is well known due to the coven which is said to have practised in the copse at its plateau during the middle of the seventeenth century.’ [loc. 151]

What I like most about Tom Cox's writing -- here, online, in Villager -- is the immensity of his enthusiasm for and curiosity about things. So many things: cats (obviously), music, otters, wood, woodlands, winter, scarecrows, pigs preparing for apocalypse, bat detectors, the sea, the sea ...

21st Century Yokel is a bit of a patchwork of anecdotes, rambling in more than one sense: there isn't a plot, except inasmuch as it's about going for long walks and getting your head together. There are hints of bad stuff in the past (divorce, quitting mainstream job) but it's mostly about the rabbitholes that his interests open up, and the ways in which the landscape affects him, and about his family (especially his dad, whose monologues are rendered in ALL CAPITALS, which can become slightly wearing). 21st Century Yokel made me, too, want to go for long walks and experience the eerieness of twilight on a deserted lane, or face down the sea to settle my mind.

This was self-published via Unbound, and it was good to see more than one friend's name in the list of sponsors.

2022/149: The Salt Path — Raynor Winn

The path had taught us that foot miles were different; we knew the distance, the stretch of space from one stop to the next, from one sip of water to the next, knew it in our bones, knew it like the kestrel in the wind and the mouse in his sight. Road miles weren’t about distance; they were just about time. [loc. 1991]

At the start of the book, Raynor Winn and her husband Moth lose their house: all their money's gone towards legal costs. Days later, Moth is diagnosed with an incurable, terminal, degenerative disease. Ray feels she can't go out and get a job if it means spending less time with her dying husband. So instead they decide to walk the South-West Coast Path, 630 miles from Minehead in Somerset to Poole in Dorset, via Devon and Lands End. (They initially hope to walk it in the other direction, with the easier parts first, but all the maps and guidebooks are geared towards the Minehead-to-Poole route.)

Quite an ambitious project for anyone, let alone a couple in their fifties, one of them dealing with terminal illness, both of them reeling from the loss of their home. Understandably, there are moments at which Ray becomes quite resentful of the perceived privilege of other walkers they encounter. There are also some scenes where human kindness is decidedly lacking: cafes charging for water, people shrinking away when Ray admits to being homeless. ('We could be homeless, having sold our home and put money in the bank, and be inspirational. Or we could be homeless, having lost our home and become penniless, and be social pariahs.' [loc. 1438]) There are occasions, too, where Ray and Moth are desperate enough to steal: confectionary from a shop, an overnight campsite where they sneak out without paying. Balancing the grimmer moments, there is joy: watching a peregrine falcon, being mistaken for poet Simon Armitage (who was doing a well-publicised coastal walk at the same time), a nighttime swim. "...showers of white and silver dancing through the water, each swell sparkling with shattered, iridescent crystals of light. The moon, the source of it all, moving, swaying, refracted through the water to the sand and rock of the seabed... at eye level the water fizzed with the same light."

The walk is restorative both physically and mentally: the repetitive physical motion restores some of Moth's strength and muscle control, and Ray finds walking a meditative experience, helping her to accept rather than to rage at what she can't change. "Only one thing was real, more real to me now than the past that we’d lost or the future we didn’t have: if I put one foot in front of another, the path would move me forward." [loc. 2557]

I'd been wary of The Salt Path for two reaons: firstly because of its 'instant bestseller' status, which doesn't always reflect quality of prose or subject; and secondly, because my father wanted to walk the whole of the same coastal path (in sections), but degenerated too quickly to manage more than a couple of stretches. I was concerned that reading this would bring back the helpless sorrow I felt during his illness. It didn't: instead it made me miss long country walks, by the sea or otherwise. I doubt I would physically be able to do the coast path (breathing issues, especially on even the slightest incline) but I can certainly attempt some shorter routes on the flat. And I'll have a home to go back to -- which, I'm happy to say, Ray and Moth have too, by the end of the book. Their experience of homelessness showed how easily it can happen to anybody, and how little there is in the way of safety nets. And this was 2013, when things were not quite as bad ...

Fulfills the ‘read in November’ rubric of the 52 books in 2022 challenge.

2022/148: Ancestors: A Prehistory of Britain in Seven Burials — Alice Roberts

Man had emerged from the Ice Age to become a weapon of mass extinction. Here we were, divorcing ourselves from Nature, wreaking havoc with the climate, and crucifying biodiversity. [loc. 1692]

Alice Roberts examines seven burials, ranging from the 'Red Lady' of Paviland (34,000 years ago), via the Amesbury Archer (4,500 years ago) and the Pocklington chariot burial (2,300 years ago), to the cremation -- very unusual for the time -- of archaeologist Pitt-Rivers (120 years ago). She uses these examples to discuss the waves of migration, and the 'restlessness', of the past, and to explore ideas about race, gender and culture. There is evidence of cannibalism in human remains from the Cheddar Gorge, dating back 10,000 years: but was it cannibalism in a time of starvation, or cannibalism for religious purposes, or something else? Chariot burials were usually associated with male warriors, but of the burials where biological (osteological) sex could be determined, nearly a third are female. Perhaps women were warriors -- think of Boudicca, of Cartimandua -- or perhaps these were women living as men, or perhaps ... something else.

As in Buried, there's a lot of archaeogenetics here. Roberts writes of the Thousand Ancient Genomes project at the Crick Institute, which aimed to sequence a thousand ancient genomes: unfortunately this was put on hold at the start of the Covid pandemic. (They've started to publish results this year, for instance '1,000 ancient genomes uncover 10,000 years of natural selection in Europe'.) I was intrigued by the genetic analysis showing that 'the people who lived in Britain before the Bronze Age didn’t contribute much ancestry to later populations', and by evidence of the yersinia pestis (Black Death) bacterium in human remains dating back to the Bronze Age. Roberts is at pains to emphasise, though, that genetics can only provide the bigger picture: archaeology fills in the smaller details, the remains of individual lives. She writes movingly of lifting a pottery bowl out of a child's grave: 'Human experience is built of moments – and here were two, linked together across millennia. The moment I lifted the bowl out of the grave, my hands earthy from digging; the moment the potter (the mourner, the parent?) held the bowl in their hands, making that corded pattern, their hands covered in clay.' [loc. 3357].

At first, the inclusion of the Pitt-Rivers 'burial' seemed an awkward fit with the other burials here: but it gives Roberts an opportunity to discuss, in more relatable terms, the cultural trappings of a burial. When Pitt-Rivers was cremated, it was only fifteen years since the first cremation in Britain: burial in a graveyard -- inhumation -- was by far the most popular option, and the one deemed acceptable by the Christian church. Roberts suggests that Pitt-Rivers was not especially religious. He clearly didn't believe in bodily resurrection, and perhaps his archaeological career had 'lift[ed] him out of his contemporary culture'. Cremation now accounts for nearly 80% of 'mortuary rites', although it is astonishingly un-green. ('Each cremated body results in 400 kilograms of CO2 emissions – about the same as burning two tanks of diesel in an SUV. Toxic mercury vapour from tooth fillings also escapes into the atmosphere from the chimneys of crematoria. [loc. 4985])

A fascinating and deeply humane book, well-written, with a distinctive voice and a wealth of incidental detail. I'm almost tempted to watch some of Roberts' TV work ...

2022/147: Shadowlands: A Journey Through Lost Britain — Matthew Green

These are Winchelsea’s ghost streets. The sight of the seven-hundred-year-old New Gate marooned at the southern end of the old town makes the soul quiver; there it stands forlorn, a stranded portal to a lost world. [p. 110]

In the years after the Brexit referendum and Trump's ascent, Green's life was changed by personal losses. He became 'determined to discover how [the] country had been shaped by absences', and set out to explore eight 'lost' settlements in Great Britain, from the Neolithic settlement Skara Brae, abandoned around 2500BC, to Capel Celyn, levelled and flooded to create a reservoir in 1965. Shadowlands is his account of visits to Dunwich, Old Winchelsea, Saint Kilda and the deserted medieval village of Wharram Percy, and the factors contributing to each place's demise -- weather, plague, politics and piracy, war gaming, the post-war economic boom -- as well as the human responses. Some fled their homes, fearing the wrath of God; some went up against faceless bureaucracies; some hung on til the grim end. Some never left at all.

Green explains that 'this book is written in the minor key': it's about waste as much as destruction, 'squandered potential', not only economic and physical ruin but the heartfelt loss of hearth and home. I learnt quite a bit, especially about the rise and fall of Winchelsea, attacked seven times by the French and the Castilians between 1360 and 1389, and breeding a fair few pirates itself. Some of the vignettes, lives brought into sharp focus in a few lines of prose, were decidedly melancholy, and others gloriously defiant.

Shadowlands could have done with an eagle-eyed editor: as Green sometimes contradicts himself or misremembers facts (on page 53 he writes of medieval Wales as 'a patchwork of princedoms – twenty-two at their peak' and further down the same page 'the various warring princedoms of Wales – eighteen at their peak'); elsewhere he writes of salt as one of the items the inhabitants of St Kilda couldn't readily produce -- whyever not? They lived on an island surrounded by salt water. But this was, despite occasional glitches, an immensely absorbing and engaging book. Green's good at balancing his own emotional reactions, and his modern perspective, against his sense of a place and his research into its history. I especially liked his phrase 'the presence of absence', the sense of emptiness we feel in a place that has been populous but now is not. The Anglo-Saxon poem 'The Ruin', which Green quotes in his Introduction, evokes that magnificently:

Bright were the castle buildings, many the bathing-halls,
high the abundance of gables, great the noise of the multitude,
many a meadhall full of festivity,
until Fate the mighty changed that.

2022/146: In the Eye of the Wild — Nastassja Martin (translated by Sophie R Lewis)

Leaving the therapy center, I raise an exhausted face to the white sun. Did I need that? Once again I will have to look deeply into myself. I think of the bear. If he’s alive, at least he is living his bear life free from attacks like this, symbolic and actual, without paying this price. [loc. 600]

In 2015 Nastassja Martin, a French anthropologist who was studying the indigenous Evens in Siberia, was attacked by a bear. She spent a long time in hospital in Petropavlovsk: later, she was repatriated to Paris, where French surgeons redid the work of the Russian doctors (introducing a life-threatening infection) and French therapists urged her to confront her hostility and inner darkness. Her response: 'Why must I bring everything back to myself?' She returned to Siberia, to her Even friends, finding their animist philosophy more acceptable and more compelling than the 'Western' narrative of sacrifice, symbolism, and interpretation. Which is not to say that the Evens were universally accepting: they believed the bear meant to mark her, not kill her, and that surviving the attack had made her medka, someone who lives between the worlds.

Poetic and philosophical, yet also rather unsettling. I felt that despite her comfortable familiarity with the Evens, and her sense of alienation whilst in France with her mother and sister, she was trying to have the best of both worlds: she mythologises the encounter with the bear ('I had marked out the path that would lead me into the bear’s mouth, to his kiss, long ago. I think: who knows, perhaps he had too'), and her honest, raw account of the healing process often feels dismissive of those around her. The nature of her relationships with the Evens is not really clear, either, because the focus is so firmly on her own interior life. There's very little about their culture, their beliefs, or what they think about having a French anthropologist embedded in their village. (And yet, and yet: one of them, having a premonition that Nastassja was in trouble, travelled a hundred kilometres to a place where he could get a mobile signal -- and learned of her encounter via a text message she persuaded someone to send for her.) I'd have liked more about Kamchatka: the wilderness, the people, the culture, the uneasy balance between the Evens and the 'Russians'. But that is not the book that Martin needed to write. In the Eye of the Wild is about alienation: about living between two worlds, not quite part of either, and there is some powerful writing here, with a distinctive voice.

Fulfils the ‘in translation’ rubric of the Annual Non-Fiction Reading Challenge.

2022/145: When We Cease to Understand the World — Benjamín Labatut (translated by Adrian Nathan West)

He had replicated in the subatomic world what Newton had done for the solar system, using only pure mathematics, with no recourse to imagery. He had no idea how he had arrived at his results, but there they were, written in his own hand; if he was correct, science could not only understand reality but begin to manipulate it at its most basic level. Heisenberg thought of the consequences knowledge of this nature might have, and was struck with a feeling of vertigo so profound that he had to restrain the impulse to throw his notebook into the sea. [loc. 1199]

In this 'nonfiction novel', Chilean author Benjamín Labatut explores the darkness at the heart of science, and the tipping-point between genius and madness. What happens to the mind when scientific theories passes the limits of human understanding?

The book is in five sections. The first, 'Prussian Blue', is a more or less solid, non-fictional discussion of the discovery of hydrogen cyanide, which 'yielded a blue of such beauty that Diesbach thought he had discovered hsbd-iryt, the original colour of the sky—the legendary blue used by the Egyptians to adorn the skin of their gods' -- and also yielded Zyklon-B, the gas used to murder millions in Nazi death camps. 'Schwartzchild's Singularity' is more fictionalised, and deals with the existential dread felt by the dying physicist who, having deduced the possibility of black holes, feared that something equally horrific could result from a sufficient concentration of human will. 'The Heart of the Heart' is about mad, or differently sane, mathematicians, Mochizuki and Grothendieck; 'When We Cease to Understand the World' fictionalises (and surrealises) the intellectual duel between Heisenberg and Schrodinger, who independently created competing theories of quantum mechanics. And 'The Night Gardener' focuses on another mathematician who abandoned his career after realising that 'it was mathematics — not nuclear weapons, computers, biological warfare or our climate Armageddon — which was changing our world to the point where, in a couple of decades at most, we would simply not be able to grasp what being human really meant'. Here the author enters the book, becoming a direct narrator, interacting with -- but perhaps not fully understanding -- the night gardener.

This was not an easy read, but it was curiously compelling: it blended scientific concepts (which I believe are rendered faithfully) with the human frailties of the men who experienced those epiphanic revelations. (No female scientists here: are they less prone to such frailties?) When We Cease to Understand the World also resonated, uncomfortably, with the part of me that fears a vast, uncaring, violent universe, and used to have nightmares about falling into the void... Some really fascinating(ly horrific) details, too, like the cyanide capsules handed out by schoolchildren after a 1945 Wagner concert in Berlin: 'in small wicker baskets, like votive offerings at Mass.'

A beautiful translation from the Spanish: I felt a distinct flavour of the original language, though I'm not sure whether this is an artifact of phrasing and syntax, or a deliberate choice by the translator, or my own imagination.

Does not fulfil the ‘non-fiction in translation’ rubric of the Annual Non-Fiction Reading Challenge, though I'd started reading it in the belief that it would: while the first section is non-fiction, the 'creative' elements became clearer in later chapters. "This is a work of fiction based on real events. The quantity of fiction grows throughout the book; whereas “Prussian Blue” contains only one fictional paragraph, I have taken greater liberties in the subsequent texts, while still trying to remain faithful to the scientific concepts discussed in each of them." [loc. 2205]

2022/144: Buried: An Alternative History of the First Millennium in Britain — Alice Roberts

The idea of British culture (and the British population) being enriched by all these civilising influences – bringing farming, metalworking, Roman civilisation and the rest – is a colonialist construction: the incomers are a Good Thing. But this origin myth – the idea of civilising influences spreading from the east – is balanced against another in which indigenous culture evolves, with a home-grown hero like Boudica pitted against a tyrannical regime.[loc. 3670]

Alice Roberts examines several unusual burials from Roman and medieval times, and uses them to illustrate the diversity and the history of the first millennium AD in Britain. As she writes, these are 'the traces of ordinary lives, and people whose stories were never written down': there's a fair amount of speculation here in these very human stories, like the man buried with a pipe poking out of the earth above the grave, which may have its roots in Greek Orthodox tradition: wine, or blood, may have been poured down the pipe as a way of including the deceased in a graveside feast. (Apparently this custom was also practiced in Soviet Russia.)

Roberts explains, clearly and without jargon, the intricacies of determining gender and biological sex from burials, and how it's important not to project modern cultural concepts onto the dead. Early archaeologists had a tendency to assign sex and gender based on grave goods (brooches for women, swords for men) but osteoarchaeology shows that there isn't a definite correlation between the biological sex of a skeleton -- where it can be determined: the majority can't -- and the goods in their grave. Roberts mentions a number of theories: heirloom jewellery in a man's grave; jewellery worn by men and women alike; individuals biologically male living as female, and vice versa.

Some of the burials discussed here are poignant, such as the remains of a very young child (perhaps a late foetus) which had been dismembered, most likely during obstetric surgery. There are lethal acts of violence, too, with little care being taken over the interment of the bodies: decapitated corpses, possibly victims of 'headhunting' or of superstitions about the walking dead, and a group of 'foreigners' found in a ditch in Anglesey, their bones revealing that they came from as far away as Scandinavia, to be executed with considerable violence.

The mention of 'foreigners' is deliberate: Roberts is interested in the narratives of waves of invasion in the post-Roman period -- 'Gildas, Bede and then the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle present this picture of a Roman, Christian culture destroyed by pagan, Saxon culture' -- and argues that it's more likely to have been peaceful migration, or at least assimilation of raiders. And she's keen to emphasise that there have always been migrants, and always been people whose families have lived in the same place for a long time, and that these two groups have intermixed over the centuries.

Highly readable, with clear explanations of the cutting-edge science of archaeogenetics, and a pleasing balance between the raw data of archaeology and its human context. Even before I'd finished reading Buried I'd started on Alice Roberts' more recent book, Ancestors: review soon.

2022/143: A Fatal Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum: Murder in Ancient Rome — Emma Southon

No other society has built media empires on such mountains of dead and mutilated women. But, to us, the Romans look like the weird ones because they were fascinated by murder in a different way. We have our mountains of dead fictional girls. But they had mountains of dead real men. [loc. 85]

Murder in Ancient Rome came in many forms, and Southon explores them all: the 'social death' of enslaved persons, which meant that their actual deaths were trivial; the infamous murders of assorted emperors (I did not know that Claudius was the only Emperor to have been poisoned); death as spectacle in the arena; ritual murder and sacrifice; the high rate of infant mortality, and whether all those dead babies were killed deliberately or not.

The book also examines the ways in which the empire became increasingly corrupt, the emperors kings in all but name, and the vast inequalities at the heart of Rome: rich men at the top, women (even wealthy aristocrats) almost invisible and almost powerless, a 'middle class' of commoners, and an underclass of enslaved people who were, well, barely people. I was appalled by the existence of professional firms who 'offered bespoke punishment of enslaved people and execution services for the busy enslaver who didn’t have the time to do his own killings'. ("Probably the best insight you’ll ever get into the mundane reality of a slave state like Rome and how little the lives of individuals meant to it," notes Southon.) There are also accounts of especially barbaric murders by aristocrats of their slaves. Between these and the public enjoyment of staged violence in gladiatorial contests, and the thousand-year existence of a state founded on the dehumanising of the enslaved, it's easy to conclude that the Romans did not feel empathy: and it's also unsettling to realise that all those historical novels about free persons forming strong friendships with their slaves are, at best, portraying an exceptional occurrence.

The Romans had 'a unique and deep-seated cultural horror of murder within the family', or rather the familia: 'one’s whole immediate and extended family, plus people who have been enslaved, plus formerly enslaved people who have been freed who now have a limited kind of freedom but are still around and share the family name, plus any random men who might have been adopted in...' The murders that 'mattered' were those of wealthy, important men: but Southon also describes the few surviving accounts of murdered women. ('These women are only visible to us because their male relatives had enough social status and money to cause an imperial level fuss.') Wives murdered by husbands for getting in the way of the husband's wickedness; wives and daughters murdered to make a political point, or to punish the family or familia of a man who'd fallen from favour.

Southon's colloquial voice and willingness to poke fun at the mores of Roman society may not suit everybody, but it does make A Fatal Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum extremely readable. But what she is writing about is violent and appalling, and though she is both furious and intellectually critical about Roman society, and its foundation of death and suffering, there are moments when the humour feels a little off-key.

Fulfils the ‘Recommendation’ rubric (thanks, Kate!) of the Annual Non-Fiction Reading Challenge.

2022/142: What Moves the Dead — T Kingfisher

(We did not run. If we ran then we would have to admit there was something to run from. If we ran, then the small child that lives in every soldier’s heart knew that the monsters could get us. So we did not run, but it was a near thing.) [p. 137]

Another novella from T Kingfisher, whose The Twisted Ones and The Hollow Places retell, and transform, classic horror tales. What Moves the Dead is based on Edgar Allan Poe's The Fall of the House of Usher, relocated to the imaginary East European country of Gallacia, and with rather more fungus than the original. Our narrator is Alex Easton, a former soldier, who's travelling to visit Roderick and Madeline Usher, having served with the former and received a communication from the latter. Easton, as a soldier, gets their own -- kan own -- set of pronouns: Gallacian has seven sets of pronouns, including a set for pre-pubescent children. (This becomes significant later.) With the help of a redoubtable English mycologist (Miss Potter) and the Ushers' other guest, an American doctor named James Denton, Easton investigates the mysterious condition that seems to be sapping the life of Madeline, and perhaps of the house itself.

This short novel is marvellously atmospheric, with vivid descriptions of the gloomy countryside, the glowing lake, the lurid fungi and the unusual behaviour of the local wildlife. The characters are equally vivid, with Miss Potter the mycologist being a protofeminist delight and even Hob the horse having more personality than is usual in his species. I liked Easton a great deal, and the sickly Usher siblings felt much more like actual people than Poe's versions of them. The resolution was surprising as well as deeply unsettling, and I enjoyed seeing 'behind the scenes' in the author's afterword, which describes the origins and evolution of the story. Perhaps less supernatural than I'd prefer for a Halloween read, but still pretty unsettling.

2022/141: The Shape of Darkness — Laura Purcell

Pearl’s started to do this every night: take out the carpet bag and sit waiting for bravery to possess her, like the ghosts do, so she can put on the boy’s clothes and follow the map. But it turns out bravery is the hardest spirit of them all to catch. She calls and calls, yet it doesn’t come. [loc. 3106]

1854: the ominously named Agnes Darken lives in Bath, ekeing out a living as a silhouette artist. She worries that she won't be able to earn enough to support her widowed mother and her dead sister Constance's child; and she's recovering from a bout of pneumonia that nearly killed her. Luckily she has the support of her brother-in-law, Simon, a respected physician. When one of Agnes' clients is found dead, Simon takes charge and protects Agnes from the ordeal of being questioned by the police. Of course, he reassures her, it's mere coincidence. But then another client dies ... Tormented by the notion that the deaths are somehow tied to the silhouettes she's made, Agnes seeks out a young medium named Pearl, who lives with her sister Myrtle and her father, who is dying of 'phossy jaw' -- phosphorus necrosis -- caused by working in a match factory. Pearl is an albino, and has never left the house: Myrtle organises the seances, and has in the past had Pearl masquerade as a spirit herself. Agnes is drawn to Pearl, who's terrified of disappointing her sister: and only Pearl can communicate with Agnes' dead clients and discover the secret of their deaths.

It was refreshing to read a novel set in Bath that was about middle- and working-class women trying to make ends meet, rather than pretty young debutantes agonising over marriage proposals. I did find The Shape of Darkness a rather depressing read, though: not because Purcell's prose is dull -- quite the opposite! -- but because of the chronic illnesses, the darkness of the city as winter draws in, and Agnes' quiet despair. Years earlier, she lost her fiance, a naval captain, in circumstances that only gradually become clear but are connected with her sister; there are also hints that Constance was not an especially pleasant person. Both Agnes and Pearl are bound by familial obligation: both feel trapped by circumstance, and perhaps by their sisters.

A Gothic novel with an interesting focus and a twist that I didn't expect. (Well, there are two twists: one of them I saw coming.)

2022/140: A Spy Among Friends: Kim Philby and the Great Betrayal — Ben MacIntyre

They seldom discussed their fears, or hopes, for theirs was a most English friendship, founded on cricket, alcohol and jokes, based on a shared set of assumptions about the world, and their privileged place in it. They were as close as two heterosexual, upper-class, mid-century Englishmen could be. [loc. 3972]

No, not another biography of the infamous Kim Philby, who was a double agent reporting to the Russians as well as to MI6 and who defected in 1963. A Spy Among Friends takes a different approach, describing Philby's career -- and how he got away with treason and murder for so long -- in the context of his close friendships with Nicholas Elliott, who he knew at Cambridge, and James J. Angleton, the CIA's chief of counterintelligence. MacIntyre describes the paradox of friendship (and especially upper-class English friendship): a shared set of assumptions about the world, competitive drinking, an old boys' network which valued loyalty above all else, and a distinct lack of emotional candour.

MacIntyre is a very readable author (I picked this up after reading Agent ZigZag, another of his non-fiction books about a WW2 spy) and this was as good as a thriller. (Indeed, the afterword is by John Le Carre, who knew Elliott at MI6 and later had a series of conversations with him about Philby. "Was I contemplating a novel built around the Philby-Elliott relationship? I can’t have been. I’d already covered the ground in Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. A piece of live theatre, perhaps? A two-hander, the Nick and Kim Show, spread over twenty years of mutual affection – I dare almost call it love – and devastating, relentless betrayal?" [loc. 4692]) A number of familiar events -- for instance, Lionel Crabb, the Navy frogman who died investigating the Russian warship Ordzhonikidze while she was visiting Portsmouth in 1956 -- assume a different significance if Philby, as described by MacIntyre, was involved. He may have betrayed Crabb's mission to the Russians, who captured and killed the diver. Philby almost certainly betrayed a number of German and Albanian agents who were working against the Nazis. ‘I was responsible for the deaths of a considerable number of Germans,’, he wrote later, not mentioning that some of these had been on the side of the Allied forces.

The focus of the book is very much on Philby as a likeable, charismatic, clubbable fellow. Few ever suspected him, even when with hindsight his treachery seems evident. (Informed by his Russian handler of Maclean's imminent arrest by the British security services, Philby warned Burgess of the danger to them all, thus facilitating Burgess and Maclean's defections. Philby was one of the very few people in a position to warn the men, and Burgess had been staying in his house. Elliott's unwavering conviction of Philby's innocence saved him from discovery, though he was forced to resign.) Philby was clearly very good at friendship, and one can't help feeling sorry for Elliott, even more than for Angleton (who destroyed all papers relating to his association with Philby because 'it was all very embarrassing').

Plenty here, too, about Philby's wives, and his pet fox, and his fraught relationship with his father: now I want to re-reread Declare with a firmer grip on what's real and what's invented. But as MacIntyre demonstrates, Philby's 'real' life was as much an invention as many works of fiction.

Fulfils the ‘About Friendship’ rubric of the Annual Non-Fiction Reading Challenge.

2022/139: Murder on the Christmas Express — Alexandra Benedict

"It's about every person who has been made to feel like nothing. Violated mentally and physically. Extinguished. How many on this train have gone through an experience where ... the next day they have curled up into a ball, and screamed silently into a pillow?"
"It's probably easier to say who hasn't." Roz's voice was very quiet. Very small. [loc. 2654]

It's the night before Christmas Eve, and the sleeper train to Fort William leaves Euston with a number of passengers on board, including a killer, a stowaway, and former Met detective Roz Parker. Roz is heading north to be with her daughter, who's gone into labour prematurely. Social media influencer Meg intends to propose to her partner Grant. There are four students competing for a place in a quiz team; a couple travelling with their teenage children; a lawyer who seems familiar to Roz; an elderly woman and her son; and of course the train crew. Somewhere after Edinburgh, in heavy snow, the train is derailed by a tree on the line -- and shortly afterwards, one of the passengers is found dead. They won't be the last ...

A homage to Murder on the Orient Express, laced with cryptic clues and Kate Bush references, and featuring a competent and interesting female lead (who remembers being a Goth as a teenager: she's 49: suddenly I feel ancient), this was an entertaining whodunnit with some clever plotting, a lot of misdirection, and a truly unpredictable ending. The isolation of the passengers, the fear setting in as the bodies mount up, the intersection of Roz's personal and professional lives, the mysterious 'killer' who is sometimes the narrator, but is not identified until very late in the story, the diversity of the characters, the secrets each of them hide -- all make for a well-plotted and well-paced novel.

However, the plot does depend on a lot of physical and emotional abuse of women. Nearly all the female characters have been victims of sexual assault. (None of this is 'on screen', but some of the descriptions are very vivid.) 'Trauma sticks to trauma', and memories become tangled together: Roz's recollection of giving birth is inextricably linked with her recollection of a previous assault. She's not the only passenger haunted by her past.

Despite this theme, Murder on the Christmas Express manages a happy ending (at least for some) and an unexpected but apt resolution. Still, I think I preferred Benedict's previous Christmas crime novel, The Christmas Murder Game.

Thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for the advance review copy, in exchange for this full honest review. UK Publication Date is 10th November 2022.

It's time we stopped saying what we 'should' or 'shouldn't' do. They should stop raping us. [loc. 2841]

2022/138: Cleopatra's Heir — Gillian Bradshaw

“Where did you acquire a conscience?” asked Octavian. “It was bred out of your mother’s line long ago.” [p. 415]

I decided to read this whilst I was in Egyptian mode, following Cleopatra's Daughter: I was surprised to find that it also resonated strongly with A Confusion of Princes. Indeed, it has pretty much the same plot as the latter -- though a very different setting, and a different emotional landscape. (Both, it seems, owe a plot-debt to Kipling's Captains Courageous, which I haven't read.)

Caesarion, son of Cleopatra VII and Julius Caesar, wakes up on his own funeral pyre: he had a seizure when the camp was attacked by traitors, and has been left for dead. He eludes the half-hearted guards and makes his way to the caravan trail, where he's found and tended by an Egyptian trader named Ani. Caesarion, unaccustomed to dealing with the lower classes (he was a king!) tells Ani that his name is Arion, and proceeds to display all the arrogance, entitlement and prejudice with which he's been inculcated from birth. Ani is remarkably tolerant, and (very gradually) Arion becomes less arrogant. Once he's recovered from his wounds he's actually useful to Ani and Ani's family: literate, Latin-speaking, and well-informed, he can discuss poetry with a Roman general, write letters introducing Ani to trading partners, and entertain Ari's children with tales of Alexandria before the Roman conquest.

I didn't love this as much as Island of Ghosts (one of the most enjoyable historical novels I've read in years) but it was an engaging read. Though I disliked Caesarion in the initial chapters, I was drawn into his story as he began to adjust to his new, lowlier status, and the loss of all he'd known or anticipated. Though there is constant peril here, there's also humour and warmth. In Ani's family, Arion finds something he's been missing all his life. Perhaps that's what gives him the strength to face up to enemies, traitors and even his second cousin...

Bradshaw's Afterword explains her approach to the story: she 'came reluctantly to the conclusion that Cleopatra was a nasty piece of work, and that her son wouldn’t have been much better' (p. 444). Arion's epilepsy (the 'sacred disease' which Caesar also apparently suffered -- here an additional indication that Caesarion truly was Caesar's son) is depicted with sensitivity: be warned, though, that Arion's haunted by nightmarish visions of medical horrors, which he relives during his seizures.

2022/137: Cleopatra's Daughter — Jane Draycott

Cleopatra Selene is an historical figure who should be much better known, particularly by young women of colour who look for someone they can personally identify and engage with in the historical record. [loc. 125]

I was only vaguely aware of the existence of Cleopatra Selene, daughter of Cleopatra and Mark Antony: I hadn't appreciated the arc of her life, from Egyptian princess to Roman prisoner to African queen. Draycott's biography, whilst admittedly a 'qualified reconstruction' rather than a rigorous examination of historical evidence, is an eminently readable account of the known facts, and the probable truths, of Cleopatra Selene's life. While there is little information about her childhood, there is ample information about aristocratic children in Rome around that time; though there are no records of her life in Alexandria, archaeological and historical evidence allows Draycott to describe city life in the first century BCE.

After the deaths of their parents, Cleopatra Selene and her brothers Alexander Helios and Ptolemy Philadelphos were taken to Rome to be raised in the household of Octavia, wife to Antony and sister to Octavian whose naval defeat of Antony and Cleopatra orphaned the three children. (Caesarion, Cleopatra's son by Julius Caesar, had already been killed: if he'd lived, and the war hadn't happened, he'd have ruled with Cleopatra Selene as his sister-wife.) The two boys vanished from the historical record shortly afterwards: in Draycott's view, it's at least as likely that they contracted some disease as that Octavian had them killed. Cleopatra Selene survived, though, and at age 15 was married to Juba II of Numidia, an African prince. The two became co-rulers of the Roman client kingdom of Mauretania -- co-rulers rather than a king and his consort, evidenced by coinage issued in both their names. Cleopatra Selene died relatively young, at 35, allegedly during a lunar eclipse. Her only son, Ptolemy, ruled Mauretania with his father and then alone until he was executed by Caligula.

Draycott is keen to draw parallels between Cleopatra Selene's time and the modern world. She's careful to stress that our concepts of 'race', 'nationality' and so on aren't applicable to the ancient world: however, prejudice, appropriation and misogyny are very much in evidence both then and now. Whilst prisoner, or adoptee, in Rome, Cleopatra Selene would have been exposed to 'Egyptomania, a process of cultural appropriation whereby Egyptian motifs were reworked for this newfound Roman audience and became extremely fashionable as a result' [loc. 1933]; I was reminded of the interest in ancient Egypt sparked by Napoleon's campaign in the early 19th century. Draycott's comparisons of ancient and modern life are usually apt: I was struck by her mention, during the passage discussing the triumphal procession in which the children were paraded through Rome, of Princes William and Harry walking behind their mother's coffin. There are also references to Meghan Markle's treatment by the British press, and to the surprising popularity of Cleopatra Selene (and her romance/political alliance with Juba) on social media. While occasionally the modern-day contextualisation jars ('Antony was keen on cosplay throughout his life') it's generally well-observed and will likely make the book more accessible to younger readers, and to those without a grounding in ancient history or the classics.

Fulfils the ‘Addresses a specific topic’ rubric of the 52 books in 2022 challenge.

Thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for the advance review copy, in exchange for this honest review. UK publication date is 10 November 2022.

2022/136: Greywaren — Maggie Stiefvater

The world he had built with Ronan Lynch. A world of limitless emotions and limited power. A world of tilting green hillsides, purple mountains, agonizing crushes, euphoric grudges, gasoline nights, adventuring days, gravestones and ditches, kisses and orange juice, rain on skin, sun in eyes, easy pain, hard-won wonder. [loc. 3256]

Concluding the 'Dreamer' trilogy that began with Call Down the Hawk and continued in Mister Impossible. I am still assimilating, and will probably reread quite soon: in some ways Greywaren resolves or explains a great deal of what has gone before (not only in the Dreamer trilogy but in the Raven Cycle), but in others it left me vaguely unsatisfied.

At heart it's the story of the three Lynch brothers: Declan, who would like to be able to lead his own life; Ronan, who can manifest objects (and people) from dreams; and Matthew, who exists solely because of his brothers. It's also the story of their parents, Niall and Mór Ó Corra (nee Marie Curry); or possibly of the man calling himself 'the new Fenian' and the woman they all knew as Aurora. And it's the story of 'Jordan Hennessy', who is a dreamer and also a dream.

There are a lot of complex relationships in Greywaren, and a lot of transactional interactions. Adam gives Ronan back his watch (no, no, thinks Ronan, but is unable to speak); Liliana gives Carmen a revelation that explains the apocalyptic visions driving the Moderators; Bryde gives Declan's brothers back to him. Nobody comes out of this novel unchanged: everyone is transformed. And everyone, I think, loses something they thought was important.

I think I'll need to reread the trilogy as one long book -- which it surely is -- in order to understand all the nuances and twists. But I love Stiefvater's blend of profanity and profundity: I love the sense of a wider universe opening up, in the Forest and beyond: and I love the final scene, friends reunited, promises made, tranquility attainable.

2022/135: A Confusion of Princes — Garth Nix

All I had to do then was get along with a group of people who I still, at heart, thought were totally inferior and should do what I told them to do. Resisting this impulse took a lot of energy and thought, and one wearisome day a week later I told the two main shareholders in our little enterprise how I really regarded them. Five minutes later I had a very bruised face and was looking for another contract... [loc. 2071]

Khemri is special. Not because he's a Prince: one of ten million Princes who rule a wormhole-reliant galactic empire encompassing 'trillions of sentient subjects, most of them humans of old Earth stock'. Princes (the term is gender-neutral) are taken from their families as small children, if they have the requisite talents and abilities, and undergo a rigorous programme of physical and mental training and modification before they come of age and enter into competition with the other Princes. Khemri survives multiple assassination attempts within the first few hours of being a Prince. Luckily, he has an extraordinarily gifted Master of Assassins to protect him, and acquires more staff rapidly. This must, he reasons, be because he has been Chosen. Every twenty years the Emperor abdicates and a new Prince ascends the throne. It's nearly abdication time: can Khemri survive the training scenarios and the attentions of his fellow Princes for long enough to have a chance at supreme power?

The Empire, though, is not what it seems: Khemri slowly realises that a lot of what he's been taught is not wholly accurate. He encounters normal, unmodified humans who have little to do with Princes: he fights, and dissembles, and falls in love, and grows up into a rather more likeable person than he was at the outset.

This YA novel is good old-fashioned space opera, with some of the flaws of that genre. The romance, in particular, felt contrived, and though the scale was epic, the worldbuilding felt thin in places. There were plenty of indications that Khemri's understanding of the Empire was incomplete, but mostly this aspect of the story faded out without resolution. I'd have liked more about the Empire's enemies and the abandoned systems and the whole 'immortality' thing. That said, A Confusion of Princes was great fun, a solid YA narrative that focusses on the evolution of Khemri from arrogant Prince to relatable human being: it would make an excellent film. Plenty of scope for sequels, too.

2022/134: A Thief in the Night — K J Charles

I did think I might make you stand, and then deliver..."

Novella-length audiobook, narrated by James Joseph and Ryan Laughton.

Toby, the eponymous thief, encounters a gentleman named Miles Carteret in a rural inn. They like the look of one another, and repair to the shadowy alleyway behind the inn to act on that attraction. On parting, Toby helps himself to Miles' watch and pocketbook and congratulates himself on a very satisfactory evening. Sadly, whilst pretending to be a snooty valet some days later, he discovers -- a beat too late -- that his potential employer is none other than Miles, who turns out to be the impoverished Earl of Arvon. Miles is trying to clear out the family home after the death of his estranged father. It's possible that the key to the family fortune is hidden amid the hoarded bills and ephemera -- and that Miles' father had not, after all, given up on his son.

This was a pleasant romance with quite a slow burn, though the pace picked up massively in the last couple of chapters. Miles and Toby were both likeable, both flawed, both haunted: daddy issues, Toby's lost siblings (who are the protagonists of The Gentle Art of Fortune Hunting), Miles' triumph over his gambling addiction. I'd have liked a bit more backstory for them both (more about Miles' time as Captain Carteret in the Peninsula, and Toby's previous escapades) but the story, and the romance, worked well without this.

I don't think audiobooks suit me at all well, though. I managed to finish this whilst recovering from my covid booster jab, when I felt too rough to read print, but kept losing track and restarting. I confess the dual narration didn't really work for me, either. Partly this was due to mispronunciations ('Miss Earliness' for miserliness; 'stifled' with a short 'i'; different pronunciations -- neither of which quite worked for me -- of 'Little Gilling', a fictional village), which jolted my attention and distracted me from the story. Partly, too, I didn't find the 'Toby' narrator's voice quite fitted the character: too young and submissive. I suspect I will have a different experience when I read the ebook, due in 2023.

2022/133: The Reluctant Widow — Georgette Heyer

...perhaps I should make it plain at once that even though I am susceptible to colds, and infinitely prefer cats to dogs, I have not been selling information to Bonaparte’s agents. How degrading it is to be obliged to say so! [loc. 4261]

Possibly a reread? I don't remember it at all, but I devoured Heyer's novels in the mid-Nineties, and it's likely this was one of them.

Elinor Rochdale, whose father committed suicide after losing the family fortune, has been obliged to seek employment as a governess. En route to a new, unappealing position, she gets into the wrong carriage in a Sussex village, and discovers that she's been mistaken for a young woman who answered an advertisement for the position of wife to a dissolute, debauched nobleman. The advertisement was placed by the groom-to-be's cousin, Lord Carlyon, who manages to persuade Elinor to go through with his outrageous scheme. (His intent is to ensure that he does not inherit his cousin Eustace's estate, because aristocracy.) Eustace, it turns out, has been injured (by Carlyon's younger brother) in a tavern brawl, and is not expected to survive the night. Elinor is widowed by dawn: but a mysterious visitor alerts her, and Carlyon, to the possibility that Eustace was not only a debauchee but may have been a traitor, selling secrets to a Napoleonic spy.

I will not detail the romance, as it is (a) evident who'll end up together (b) somewhat sketchily depicted. Having read an excellent blog post by K J Charles, I agree that 'the narrative eye of the book spends most of its time focused in entirely the wrong place': Ned (Carlyon) and Elinor are pretty dull, and so is their romance; the 'French spies' plot, which feels incidental to the romance, is actually a far better story, and features the Machiavellian dandy Francis Cheviot, who is as awesome as Avon in These Old Shades, and fearsomely competent.

I generally find Heyer a pleasant read, and this was no exception: but it does feel very imbalanced, and the romance -- the supposed focus of the novel -- is lacklustre and far from her best.

2022/132: Odd and the Frost Giants — Neil Gaiman

Odd sighed. “Which one of you wants to explain what’s going on?” he said.
“Nothing’s going on,” said the fox brightly. “Just a few talking animals. Nothing to worry about. Happens every day. We’ll be out of your hair first thing in the morning.”

Technically a reread (first read in 2009: review here): I had a free trial of Audible with my new Kindle and wanted to try out an audiobook, and one of the '52 book club' prompts was 'audiobook read by author'... Odd and the Frost Giants is the story of Odd, a crippled half-Scots, half-Viking boy who runs away from home. It's not quite like the ballads his mother sings to him. Instead of a horse, a hound and a hawk, he finds himself in the company of a bear, a fox and an eagle, who are not what they seem.

I find that I have a very different experience of a book when listening. My concentration drifts; I tend to fall asleep if it's after about 6pm; I can't annotate or highlight or save choice quotations. I also found, listening to this story with which I was already familiar, that different aspects snagged in my mind. When I first read it in book form, I was focussed on Loki (this was before I had encountered his MCU incarnation) and the plight of the gods, while this time it was Odd -- with his cheerful stoicism, his disability, and his irritating smile -- who caught my attention. He is, after all, the protagonist: and Gaiman (whose narration is warm, pleasant and animated) is telling Odd's story, not the story of three talking animals and a winter that won't quit.

Fulfils the ‘Audiobook is narrated by the author’ rubric of the 52 books in 2022 challenge.

2022/131: The World We Make — N K Jemisin

City magic is liminal. It likes the hidden stories, the perceptual/conceptual shifts, the space between metaphor and reality. [loc. 3218]

Sequel to The City We Became, concluding what is now a duology instead of a trilogy: Jemisin, in her Acknowledgements, notes that 'reality moves faster than fiction', that her creative energy 'was fading under the onslaught of reality', and that 'the New York I wrote about in the first book of this series no longer exists'. Covid, Trump, Deep Fascism: nevertheless, she persisted...

The avatars of the five allied boroughs of Greater New York, excluding Staten Island but including Jersey City, are dealing with an incursion from Ur-space: the white city of R'yleh hangs over Staten Island, visible to only a few, inimical to human civilisation. The Enemy's weapons are elegant and subtle: Brooklyn's house is being sold without her permission, due to misfiled taxes; Padmini loses her job and therefore her visa; and Manny starts to remember his past life -- which seems to preclude his present occupation as avatar of Manhattan. In this volume, we encounter other city avatars and other spaces. I was especially taken with Istanbul (who loves his cats) and London (slightly batshit but utterly charming, which feels about right). There's more of Sao Paulo and Hong Kong, and a scene in the ruins of Atlantis. And the finale is elegant, too, relying on Padmini's understanding of quantum states and Bronca's experience of the relationship between fear and hatred. It's a triumph for inclusivity, diversity and tolerance -- themes that are threaded through the novel -- and an uplifting, joyful conclusion.

Which is not to say that The World We Make (hmmm, I wonder which world is being made, and by whom?) is flawless. There are a few plot threads that don't seem to lead anywhere (Brooklyn's favour from 'Bey'), some elements that felt jarring (Manny's backstory), character development that could have done with a little more detail (Neek): I found the pacing quite uneven, especially in the last few chapters. None of that stops it being joyful, inclusive, expansive and very entertaining -- at least for me -- but I do mourn the trilogy we might have had.

Thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for the advance review copy, in exchange for this full honest review. UK Publication date is 01 November 2022.