2025/047: The Cautious Traveller's Guide to the Wastelands — Sarah Brooks

The Company had always disliked anything they perceived as superstitious or backward, but until recently an uneasy truce had existed. The crew could keep their small rituals, their icons and gods, as long as they were discreet, as long as the passengers found them charming. But now, they have been told, it is time for a change. A new century is approaching – the passengers do not want mysticism, they want modernity. There is no place for these rituals any more, said the Company. [loc. 367]

Siberia, 1899: Valentin Rostov's famous guidebook, from which this novel takes its title, begins by warning the traveller not to attempt the journey between Moscow and Beijing on the Trans-Siberian Express 'unless you are certain of your own evenness of mind' [loc. 153]. The heavily-armoured train's previous journey through the Wastelands ended catastrophically with the deaths of three people -- though nobody who was on board can quite recall what happened. 

Passengers on this new voyage, all heading for the Great Exhibition in Moscow, include a woman travelling under a pseudonym, a young girl who was famously born on the train, and a disgraced naturalist who's determined to redeem himself. There are also aristocrats and peasants, snipers and scientists, the train's Captain (who grew up in Siberia before it became Wasteland) and the two representatives of the Trans-Siberia Company, who are known as the Crows. Once the train has passed through the heavily-guarded Wall and into the Wasteland, even looking out of the window might be dangerous. For the Wasteland has, for nearly a century, been turning against humanity. And if its creatures enter the train, everyone will die.

This is a beautifully-written novel that I think I may have read, too hastily, at the wrong time. (Or perhaps my 'evenness of mind' was inadequate.) I suspect a reread is in order, so that I can soak up the atmosphere: the fluid horror and beauty of the Wastelands, the themes of evolution and of human impact on the natural world, the hints of the effects of the transformation on the wider world. 

2025/046: Icarus — K. Ancrum

“If you’re such a good thief, then why haven’t you stolen me yet?” [loc. 3002]

This is a YA queer romance: it is not -- despite the title -- a straightforward retelling of the myth of Icarus, who flew too near the sun. Ancrum has transformed the elements of that myth into something quite new, a story about a motherless boy and his father, about art and vengeance, about theft and love and being different.

Icarus Gallagher's mother died when he was no more than two years old. Since then he's been raised by his artist father Angus, who has trained him to become a thief and a forger. Their target is rich Mr Black, and their modus operandi is to steal genuine artworks and replace them with immaculate forgeries. Icarus -- a gifted artist in his own right -- has grown up being careful not to attract attention, not to make friends or excel at school or mention that he's tired because he spends his nights breaking into a millionaire's house. At the opening of this novel, Icarus is nearly eighteen, and he's making plans to leave. He wants to start afresh, 'far from his crimes and his father and this house'.

But one night he senses that Mr Black's house isn't as empty as expected -- and then he meets Mr Black's son Helios, under house arrest without access to phone or internet or anything beyond the walls of the house, effectively imprisoned. Helios is immensely lonely, and makes a deal: he won't tell anyone about Icarus's crimes if Icarus comes to visit him. Icarus, against his father's rules and despite his own reservations, does. Together they unravel the complex history between their families, and Icarus discovers that he does have friends despite his best efforts. And Icarus pulls off the most audacious theft of all.

This is an emotionally intense novel that deals with some difficult and potentially triggering issues: physical disability, abusive parenting, addiction, queerness .... It's also a joyous celebration of art and love, and a story about prisoners, and about recognising and appreciating the love and friendship that are present in one's life. Icarus is also, often, very funny, despite the harrowing elements. I liked it immensely and am looking forward to reading more by Ancrum, whose work I'm surprised I haven't encountered before.

“We’ve already gallivanted through medical trauma, abuse, addiction, my weird joints, extracurricular genders, almost getting off from your touching my face, a dance recital, Roman baths in the middle of Michigan—” [loc. 2800]

2025/045: Full Dark House — Christopher Fowler

May was finding it increasingly hard to concentrate on Bryant’s theories when, just a short distance from London, the bodies of so many innocent civilians were being dragged from the smoking ruins of a town. Their case seemed absurd and almost pointless by comparison. [p. 217]

First in the Bryant and May series, read for book club. It begins in contemporary London, when ageing detective John May investigates the death of his longtime colleague Arthur Bryant in an explosion. He finds himself remembering their very first case together, in wartime London, with the perils of the Blitz complicating a series of murders at the Palace Theatre. The crimes coincide with the opening of a scandalous new production of Offenbach's 'Orpheus in the Underworld' -- and the plot of that operetta may hold clues to the pattern of the crimes. Bryant's knowledge of classical mythology allows him to offer arcane interpretations of the murders, while May, more down-to-earth and empathetic, is better at talking to the performers and the theatre's staff. Meanwhile modern-day May is bemoaning modernity and the loss of the rationality he valued. He's also trying to unravel a set of clues which lead to a curiously bland (and predictable) solution.

The first victim (a dancer, dead in a lift with her feet cut off) is named Tanya, which did not endear me to this novel. Nor did the frequent changes of viewpoint (sometimes in a single paragraph) or the author's tendency to provide historical context which wouldn't have been known to the characters. ("Last month, the corner of Leicester Square had been bombed flat, and holes had been blown in the District Line railway tunnel at Blackfriars; right now the bureau would be busy suppressing the truth, retouching photographs, stemming negative information, tucking away all morale-damaging reports until after the war." [p. 130]) It's as though he needs to keep reminding us that the events of the novel take place in two different times.

All of which sounds very negative, but I think I just wasn't in the mood for Fowler's voice. Possibly I was expecting something more supernatural, something in the vein of the Rivers of London novels. Full Dark House is the first in a long and popular series, so it's possible I would get on better with later volumes. I did enjoy Bryant's bookish, classics-inflected utterances ("You’re part of the maieutic process... Socratic midwifery... You know, the easing out of ideas." [p. 280]) especially in contrast to May's mundanity and his tendency to stare at or flirt with every female character. But the sense of a budding friendship between two very different men is well done.

2025/044: Lost Souls Meet Under a Full Moon — Mizuki Tsujimura, translated by Yuki Tejima

"She had a hard time deciding if she should see you too. If she saw you, you would know she was dead. But she said yes... even though she wants to live inside you for ever, even though she wants you to never forget her. She knows that once you see her, you'll forget about her and move on..." [loc. 1732]

Lost Souls Meet Under a Full Moon, first published as Tsunago ('Go-Between') in Japanese in 2010, could be mistaken for another vaguely magical feelgood novel. The premise is that the Go-Between -- a young man, orphaned, named Ayumi -- can set up a meeting between a living person and a dead person. There are, of course, rules: the dead person must agree to the meeting, and neither party can ever arrange another meeting. The meetings take place at a five-star hotel, from sunset to sunrise on the night of the full moon. ('The more intense the moonlight, the longer they can meet' -- but still, sunset to sunrise...) 

The first four chapters, or stories, recount four such meetings. Twenty-something office worker Manami Hirase wants to meet Saori Mizushiro, a recently-deceased celebrity whose off-the-cuff comment helped her with her self-confidence; hard-boiled businessman Yasuhiko Hatade has been given the go-between's contact details by his now-dead mother, and pretends he just wants to ask her about her will; schoolgirl Misa Arashi is desperate to see her dead friend Natsu Misono, for whose death she blames herself; Koichi Tsuchiya mourns the only woman he ever loved, Kirari Himukai, but doesn't know whether she is dead or alive.

Each of the stories goes somewhere unexpected, imparting lessons about expectations, about grief, about guilt. (And yes, they do all get to talk to the dead.) But it's only with the fifth chapter of the book, in which we replay these encounters from Ayumi's viewpoint, that the stories become part of a larger narrative: the story of how Ayumi became an orphan and then a go-between, of the history behind that gift (or is it a curse?), and of Ayumi's relationship with his beloved grandmother. It's a story about family and about loss, about expectations and unspoken assumptions, and about how we deal with grief. Is it selfish to want to speak to the dead? Must we let go of those we loved? Can we forgive them, or ourselves?

The translation was mostly smooth, though there were a couple of points where an explanation of a Japanese term felt laboured: I assume that the nonchronological flow of the stories was the author's own. This was a sweet and thoughtful novel, and I think it would be an interesting book club choice: plenty of material for discussion!

Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for the advance review copy! UK publication date is 3rd April 2025.

2025/043: And the Ocean Was Our Sky — Patrick Ness, Rovina Cai

"We fight so that we may stop being devils!"
And at this, I could hold back my anger and confusion no longer, even if it killed me. "But what if it's the fighting that makes us so?"
... "And there at last, my dear Third Apprentice," she said, "is the adult question." [p. 102]

This short, gorgeously illustrated novel is a physical and allegorical inversion of Moby Dick. Captain Alexandra leads her crew against the ships of men, determined to avenge the insult inflicted on her years before. The harpoon embedded in her head means she can no longer echo-locate, but has to rely on her crew, including our narrator ('Call me Bathsheba') to direct her. The whales' Above is the men's Below: they dive towards the Abyss -- the border where sea meets air -- to capture men's ships, and to breathe. For all their fearsomeness, they are still mammals, and they need air: but they have developed 'breather bubbles' to minimise these necessary trips to the Abyss. And when a single survivor, with a message for Captain Alexandra from the whale-slaughtering Toby Wick, is discovered on a wrecked ship, he can be kept alive with a breather bubble, to tell the whales what he knows.

Captain Alexandra's obsessive search for the white-hulled ship of Toby Wick is as driven as that of Melville's Ahab, but the ages-long confict between species is a more solid grounding for her emotions, and those of her crew. Bathsheba has seen her own mother butchered by men: she has every reason to continue hating them. Her own grandmother has prophesied that she will hunt, and she is immensely loyal to her Captain and her crew. But Demetrius, the shipwreck survivor, imprisoned in the whales' ship and without hope of reaching land again, makes Bathsheba question the prophecies and the nature of evil.

This may be aimed at a younger audience, but it isn't soft or sentimental. It's a story about war, and hatred, and justifying evil, and about how devils are made. Ness's prose is vivid and unflinching. Rovinda Cai's illustrations (see some here) begin in monochrome, shadowy and sleek, but towards the climax of the novel there is colour, and that colour is red. I was fascinated by the evocation of whale society (cities in the deep, coral engravings, harpoons, heating crabs, scars adorned with jewels), and the war between whales and men, depicted as a more equal conflict than the historical whaling industry, felt queasily satisfying. Such a beautiful book in many ways, with a sense of hope despite the horrors it reveals.

2025/042: The Tomb of Dragons — Katherine Addison

A Witness for the Dead, said the dragon. How ... appropriate. Will you witness for us? We need a witness, and we assure you we are dead. [loc. 1307]

At the end of The Grief of Stones, Thara Celehar lost his Calling, but was promised 'an assignment that is uniquely suited to your abilities'. Unfortunately, that seems to involve a lot of paperwork and bureaucracy. His days are not without incident, though. Though his apprentice, the excellent and determined Velhiro Tomasaran, is answering the few witnessing requests that come in, there are other matters that demand his attention; a murder at the Vermillion Opera, demesne of Celehar's friend Iäna Pel-Thenhior; an escaped political prisoner; and a group of miners are keen to have someone talk to the unseen horror that lurks in the depths of a mountain.

This is as much a novel about friendship and support as it's about paperwork, mines or murders. Celehar has always battled feelings of inadequacy and self-worth (he doesn't even think he deserves a decent coat, let alone a better stipend from the city treasury) and he doesn't seem to recognise friendship when it's offered. But it is offered, and reciprocated, and sometimes Celehar even manages to trust those friends: Tomasaran, Pel-Thenhior (who has, to be fair, shown signs that could be interpreted as something more than friendship), Azhanharad the subpraeceptor, and even some individuals in the distant capital.

Given the publisher's blurb ('deftly wrapping up The Cemeteries of Amalo trilogy') I'd expected more of a conclusion here. The finale of this novel feels more like the beginning of a new phase than an ending to Celehar's story -- or the stories of his friends. Yes, he's grown and changed across the course of these three books, and his personal relationships are in considerably better shape than they were at the start of The Witness for the Dead; yes, he's overcome the lingering grief of events that happened well before even The Goblin Emperor. But there is so much more possibility in his life now -- perhaps even romantically -- and I'd love to see what happens next.

In preparation for this long-awaited novel, I reread The Witness for the Dead and The Grief of Stones, the first two books in the trilogy... I found I liked Stones rather better this time around, as more happens to Celehar in it.

Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for my advance review copy! UK publication date, at least for Kindle, is 13th March 2025.

2025/041: Doppelganger: A Trip Into the Mirror World — Naomi Klein

We must attempt, with great urgency, to imagine a world that does not require Shadow Lands, that is not predicated on sacrificial people and sacrificial ecologies and sacrificial continents. More than imagine it, we must begin, at once, to build it. [loc. 6058]

Activist and writer Naomi Klein (author of No Logo, Shock Doctrine and other impactful works) realised that she was being conflated with Naomi Wolf (author of The Beauty Myth, but more recently anti-vax and conspiracy-minded). The two, at least from Klein's perspective, could not be more different, yet Wolf -- 'Other Naomi' -- has been cast as her doppelganger. Klein writes about how Wolf, her reputation in tatters after introducing factual inaccuracies into her book about LGBTQIA+ history, reinvented herself -- and how Wolf could pivot so easily from left-wing to right-wing, from the real world to the Mirror World of conspiracies and bad faith arguments.

This is very much a lockdown book. It was released in 2023 and the initial focus is on the pandemic, on Wolf's comparison of lockdown to the Holocaust, on the spreading of misinformation and anti-vaccination arguments. Klein argues that major issues, such as wealth inequality and scepticism abut the health industry, easily mutate into their Mirror World counterparts: QAnon's 'New World Order', anti-vax warnings about microchips. And she discusses how modern issues mirror Nazi Germany, and how the Holocaust required not only an othering, a racial profiling, of its victims but also a history of colonial genocide. "The flip side of the post–World War II cries of “Never again” was an unspoken “Never before.” The insistence on lifting the Holocaust out of history, the failure to recognize these patterns, and the refusal to see where the Nazis fit inside the arc of colonial genocides have all come at a high cost." [loc. 5150]

It took me a long time to read this book. It's far from my usual subject matter, and I found it relentless and horrific. Klein's writing is powerful, and what she's writing about is of immense importance: but it's hard to find hope, despite her stirring call to action.

2025/040: Pagans — James Alastair Henry

'...dozens of conspiracy theories here, all stirred up together. And I don’t mean “The Pan-Africans never went to the moon” stuff, there’s mad stuff: wifi summoning dark elves, the Wall being a big hologram put up by the Norse, the High Table tracking agitators by putting microchips in their honeycakes—’
‘I happen to believe in that one,’ said Aedith, her face solemn. [loc. 2270]

The setting is modern London -- but London the capital of the Kingdom of England, in a Britain that is classed (in the Pan-African Collective Intelligence Services Factsheet) as a 'developing nation'. This is a world where the Norman Conquest never happened; where there's more of an East/West than a North/South divide in Britain; where Celts, Saxons and the Norse maintain an uneasy peace, with a Unification Summit about every five years; and where there are vapes, phone games, disaffected youths making music out of right-wing rhetoric, and warpaint for sale in the supermarket.

Pagans begins when a prominent Celtic negotiator is found gruesomely murdered, on the eve of the latest Unification Summit, by a Nigerian couple on honeymoon. (They've eschewed 'native guides' to wander into the primeval woodland of Epping Forest, where they discover a tattooed Celt leaning against a tree, then realise that that's real blood.) Aedith Mercia, daughter of Earl-Elector Lod Mercia, is a Detective Captain at the Woden's Cross Station. When the victim is identified, she has to work with Detective Inspector Drustan, a Celt who is more than he initially seems, to establish a motive and avert a diplomatic crisis. And she'll have to step on a lot of toes to do it.

The worldbuilding is superb. The Pan-African Unified States, the Mughals and the European Islamic Caliphate are this world's superpowers; the Nordic Economic Union, the Tsarist Conglomerate, the Han and the North American First Nations are also mentioned. Britain, meanwhile, gets Mughal students on their gap year building playgrounds, and the poor wear castoffs donated by Pan-Africans 'to help starving whites through the long cold winters'. Britain was never a colonial power, but a quarter of the Metropolitan Police Force (including Aedith's sergeant, an avid player of 'the game where you walk around collecting sacred creatures') is of African descent. While religion doesn't play a major role in Aedith's life, Drustan's faith is important to him -- and there seems to be a murderer hunting down followers of an obscure monotheist cult known as the Fishers.

I enjoyed this a great deal: it reminded me in some respects of Cahokia Jazz, though here the alternate history encompasses the whole world. (Maps here -- the versions in the Kindle edition are rather small...) The police-procedural aspect is soundly constructed, the characterisation is great, and the style is immensely readable. I'm looking forward to the next in what I hope will be a long series.

2025/039: When the Earth Was Green: Plants, Animals and Evolution's Greatest Romance — Riley Black

Animals never would have crawled out of ancient bogs without scaly trees and other plants that altered the terrestrial realm first, thick and otherworldly forests where crunchy insects would eventually entice our fishy ancestors to belly flop onto shore. [loc. 160]

I greatly enjoyed The Last Days of the Dinosaurs, but wasn't sure that a book about the prehistory of plants would appeal as much. I was wrong: it's rivetting. Black examines the ways in which plants have not only transformed the planet, but shaped the evolution of every living creature. Each of the fifteen vignettes explores some aspect of interaction between plants, animals and the abiotic environment, described so vividly (and often poetically) that it's sometimes hard to remember it's all extrapolated from the patchy fossil record.

There are plenty of charismatic megafauna here (I was especially charmed by the chapter about sabre-toothed Machairodus enjoying catnip, which evolved a chemical defence against mosquitos that turned out to get cats high) as well as gargantuan dragonflies (able to grow to immense sizes due to the high oxygen content of the atmosphere, provided by plants) and a mosquito trapped in amber, formed from resin produced after a tree had been used as a dinosaur's scratching post. 

Black provides appendices detailing the paleontology behind her scenarios: she also discusses social and ethical issues, such as the trade in amber from Myanmar funding genocidal conflict. And in her conclusion, she draws parallels between the complex exuberance of nature and the shifting, evolving queer community. A splendidly readable and accessible account of a vast span of life, well-researched and gorgeously written.

2025/038: Small Bomb at Dimperley — Lissa Evans

...you couldn’t give half the population a gun and send them away for five years and then expect their slippers still to fit when they came home. [loc. 1456]

Set in 1945, this novel centres on Dimperley Manor, the gently crumbling ancestral seat of the Vere-Thissett family. Felix, the dashing RAF squadron leader, has been declared dead; his wife and two teenage daughters have returned from California, where they've spent the war. His younger brother Valentine, who's dyslexic, returns from his own wartime service to find that he's now Sir Valentine, who has to deal with a damaged hand, death duties, and elderly relatives lamenting the fall of civilisation. ("...the appalling, inexplicable events of July, when the populace had flung aside Mr Churchill and filled Parliament with baying reds, there was no knowing how far or how quickly the descent would continue, how soon before the tumbrils came clattering through the lodge gates...") He also encounters the quietly efficient Zena Baxter, who was evacuated to Dimperley when it was requisitioned as a maternity hospital during the war, and has stayed on -- with her little girl, Allison -- to type up the family history being written by Uncle Alaric.

I didn't like this novel as much as Evans' other novels, but it was a calm and cheerful read. Valentine's nieces, with their weird American notions -- deodorant! talking to boys! showers! -- are a delight, as is Valentine's childhood friend Deedee, who spent the war ferrying aircraft and now faces penury and boredom. The romance is gentle and credible, the twist in Zena's story all too believable, and the underlying theme of social class never too laboured. (Pun intended.)

2025/037: The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks — Rebecca Skloot

Black scientists and technicians, many of them women, used cells from a black woman to help save the lives of millions of Americans, most of them white. And they did so on the same campus – and at the very same time – that state officials were conducting the infamous Tuskegee syphilis studies. [p. 97]

I've owned this book for a decade, and I wish I had read it sooner. It's the story of a Black woman in 1950s America, who died of cervical cancer, and whose cells (or rather whose cancer's cells) were taken and used for research. It's not clear what level of consent, if any, she gave for this. The HeLa cells grew very rapidly and, unlike other cultured cells, did not die: this made them ideal for experimental purposes. The polio vaccine was developed using HeLa cells, and HeLa cells have been sent into space, subjected to radiation, and used for medical and pharmaceutical research.

Lacks' family knew nothing of this until the mid-Seventies.

Skloot worked with the Lacks family, especially Henrietta's daughter Deborah, to explore how Henrietta Lacks' cells had achieved this semi-life of their own. It's a damning depiction of bioethical mispractice, as well as a story of systemic racism. Skloot treats the Lacks family with sympathy and sensitivity, and helps them to understand the science of the HeLa strain. They're mostly only educated to a basic level, and they are very religious. (One of the family theorises that HeLa cells are the 'spiritual body' of Henrietta Lacks.) And they are angry: "...if our mother cells done so much for medicine, how come her family can’t afford to see no doctors?" [p. 10]

This was immensely readable, with clear explanations of the science and vignettes of Lacks family life. I was a little uncomfortable about the repeated reference to 'Henrietta's cells': they were cancer cells, and their DNA is not the same as hers. But this is a world where a dead woman's cells have birthed a billion-dollar industry, and I think it's important to remember where those cells came from.

[The Marvel character Hela:] part dead and part alive, with “immeasurable” intelligence, “superhuman” strength, “godlike” stamina and durability, and five hundred pounds of solid muscle. She’s responsible for plagues, sickness, and catastrophes; she’s immune to fire, radiation, toxins, corrosives, disease, and aging. She can also levitate and control people’s minds...When Deborah found pages describing Hela the Marvel character, she thought they were describing her mother, since each of Hela’s traits in some way matched what Deborah had heard about her mother’s cells. But it turned out the sci-fi Hela was inspired by the ancient Norse goddess of death, who lives trapped in a land between hell and the living. Deborah figured that goddess was based on her mother too. [p. 254]

2025/036: Daughter of Fire — Sofia Robleda

Father’s story gods had names like Hephaestus and Hera. Mother’s were Auilix and Xbalanque. [loc. 59]

Catalina de Cerrato is 'the only legitimate mixed-blood child in town'. She grows up in Guatemala, a generation after the Spanish Conquest: her Spanish father is the Governor, her Mayan mother was executed for heresy. Catalina is a strong-willed young woman, and she's determined to honour her vow to her mother -- to preserve the Popul Vuh, a sacred text which recounts the history of the K'iche' people. In an uneasy alliance with the handsome Juan de Rojas, a Mayan descended from kings, and with her own cousin Cristóbal -- and the use of psychedelics -- Catalina transcribes the ancient legends. But her father is strict (though fair) and it's hard for Catalina to reconcile the two halves of her heritage: the Mayan myths which live vividly in her mind, and the Spanish genocide still celebrated by the older generation.

I found the historical elements of the novel more convincing than the romance, and I wasn't comfortable with the catalogue of disasters that befell Catalina. Well-written, and with vivid descriptions, Daughter of Fire includes a bibliography, and an afterword explaining the historical context. Catalina's father is not very nice to his children, but "by implementing the New Laws almost single-handedly, Don Alonso López de Cerrato achieved one of the most extraordinary feats of administration in the New World. Yet, he has been largely forgotten by history."

2025/035: Rocannon's World — Ursula Le Guin

...there were no words. Yet it asked him what he wished. “I do not know,” the man said aloud in terror, but his set will answered silently for him: I will go south and find my enemy and destroy him. [loc. 1632]

Le Guin's first published novel (1966), and not nearly as distinctive or profound as her later work: it's more readable than a lot of mid-Sixties planetary romance, though, and there are traces of themes that would appear in her later novels, such as sacrifice and colonialism.

Rocannon is a 'middle-aged' (43!) ethnologist, who -- in the opening chapter, a variant of Le Guin's short story 'Semley's Necklace' -- encounters a beautiful alien woman who has been brought by dwarven Clayfolk to retrieve an heirloom from a museum. Semley's story ends when she returns to her world and discovers that her husband is dead and her daughter an old woman: though the journey took 'one night' for her, decades have passed. It's as though she's been taken to Fairyland, and Rocannon's subsequent journey to her world has many of the trappings of a fantasy novel: a quest with a varied group of companions, a gift that is also a curse, the realisation that one can't go home again.

The main narrative begins some years later, after Rocannon has travelled to Fomalhaut II (Semley's planet) to do a survey: a stealth attack has destroyed Rocannon's spaceship and killed the rest of his team. He is stranded, and he needs to get a message to the League of All Worlds to report the ship's destruction and the presence of the lightly-sketched Enemy. He travels south, accompanied by Semley's grandson Mogien, a couple of servants, and an elven Fiia given to prophesy: his technology is mistaken for magic, and he himself for the mythological 'Wanderer': he encounters monstrous winged creatures, rough piratical types, intelligent rodents and an unseen entity who bestows a double-edged gift. And then, when his mission is accomplished, the novel concludes in less than a page. Yes, it's a short novel (originally half an Ace Double), but the pacing is ... uneven.

I did enjoy reading this, despite Rocannon's single-note character. I liked the way that the world is shaped by Rocannon's own decision to put the planet in a kind of quarantine. "...after I met Lady Semley, I went to my people and said, what are we doing on this world we don’t know anything about? Why are we taking their money and pushing them about? What right have we?" [loc. 469] And I liked the occasional phrase that rang true, that reminded me of Le Guin's later work:  "this world to which he had come a stranger across the gulfs of night" [loc. 843]

This was technically a reread, though very little felt at all familiar: I bought Rocannon's World for my father one Christmas in the ?1980s, and very likely devoured it pre-gifting. I inherited that paperback, too, and kept it until 2007. This time round I bought the compendium Worlds of Exile and Illusion, which contains Le Guin's first three novels: I'll get around to Planet of Exile and City of Illusions at some point...

2025/034: The Orb of Cairado — Katherine Addison

...one of Ulcetha's main tasks was writing fake provenances for the fake elven artefacts that came into Salathgarad's hands... It was a terrible use of second-class honors in history, but Ulcetha gritted his teeth and did it anyway because he was paid extremely well. He even came to find the work perversely interesting. [p. 8]

The events of The Goblin Emperor are triggered by the crash of an airship, which kills the emperor and all but one of his heirs. The Orb of Caraido tells the story of disgraced scholar Ulcetha Zhorvena, for whom the airship crash was a very personal tragedy: his best friend Mara was the pilot of the airship. From Mara, Ulcetha inherits a puzzle with a very academic twist that leads him back into the Department of History, from which he was expelled after being framed for the theft of the priceless Orish Veltavan. Working with historian Osmer Trenevar, Ulcetha discovers a murder, a secret love affair, and the possibility of clearing his name.

The Orb of Cairado is only about a hundred pages long, but there's a lot of plot in those pages. Ulcetha -- who likes trashy adventure novels, a taste which saves his life -- is vividly characterised, and he comes to look at his world and himself quite differently by the end of the story. I liked the backstabbing and politicking of the University, and Ulcetha's technique for gaining access to family archives: I'd happily read a whole novel about him, and it felt as though I had. The Goblin Emperor is a dense novel (I just checked the page count and was surprised to find it was under 500 pages!): The Orb of Cairado, though it has a simpler structure, is just as tightly woven. I find the Osreth books fascinating, not least because the author seldom explains much about anything. There is a weight of worldbuilding lurking beneath the surface.

2025/033: Yule Island — Johana Gustawsson

I thought, or rather I hoped, there was a man in this horrifying equation. A man who manipulated [her], perverted her, preying on her weaknesses to turn her into a monster. But the missing part of that equation was a woman... [p. 219]

Set on Storholmen, an island in the Stockholm archipelago, this is a chilly and twisty crime novel by an author who, despite her name, is French: indeed, she's known as the Queen of French Noir.

Emma Lindahl is employed to appraise the art and antiques collection of the Gussman family, whose manor house dominates Storholmen. Nine years ago, Emma's sister Sofia died on the island, her body found hanging from a tree with a pair of scissors hanging around her neck in a manner suggestive of Viking ritual. Emma does not advertise this connection, but she's keen to discover what really happened. When another young woman is murdered nearby, she encounters Detective Inspector Karl Rosén, who investigated Sofia's death and who's mourning the disappearance of his wife. The third viewpoint character is a woman named Viktoria, a housekeeper at the manor house: she's worried about her daughter Josephine, and especially Josephine's friendship with Thor, the teenaged son of her employers.

Two major twists, both of which were built on solid foundations and were credible within the story: both of which had me gaping and paging back to see how, where... The relationships between Karl, Emma, Anneli (who runs a cafe on the island), Freyja (Karl's wife) and others occasionally felt shallow, but there were also moments of great emotional complexity. Very atmospheric, and good at explaining (sometimes overexplaining) Swedish idiom, culture etc. In particular, Swedish expostulations are followed by their translation. "För helvete. For God's sake."

I did not predict the outcome, even after the twists and their sub-twists: the Viking element was neither super-intrusive nor horribly anachronistic. A shame, though, that the victims were almost all young women. And I'm not wholly convinced by the motivation behind the 'sacrifices'.

2025/032: Nowhere Else — Felicia Davin

“You know people who can travel across the universe in the blink of an eye and all you want from them is to feed your cats.” [loc. 1752]

The conclusion to the Nowhere trilogy (which began with Edge of Nowhere and continued with Out of Nowhere), this novel focuses on the scientist who caused the rift into the Nowhere: Dr Solomon Lange. He came back out of the breach greatly changed, having acquired an ability to move things with his mind and a conviction that the Nowhere provided an escape from 'the misery of embodiment'. Lange doesn't like anyone else on QSF17, except for (a) his cats and (b) possibly engineer Jake McCreery. He can hear and see the breach, which nobody else can, and he's probably the only person who can close it: but he needs a break, some time to recover from his ordeal in the Nowhere. Lange and McCreery take a trip back to Earth, to a Canadian an Alaskan shack in the wilderness: the landing pod is damaged, and he and McCreery (plus Lange's three cats) are stranded. They come to know and understand one another rather better than before.

It was initially hard to warm to either of the leads. Lange is the epitome of arrogant, asocial scientist: McCreery is preternaturally imperturbable, easy-going, and kind. In fact, the two have quite a lot in common, including a reluctance to form romantic relationships. Their time in Alaska brings them closer together, but it can't last forever. The breach is still threatening the fabric of the universe, and QSF17 -- a hollowed-out asteroid in lunar orbit -- may also be harbouring an alien intruder. Turns out it's a lot easier to save the universe if you're not working alone.

I found Lange's background, and his scientific approach to his lack of meaningful relationships, rather moving, and I liked the unexpected connection between Lange and Kit. The Lange/McCreery relationship was satisfying (as was Lange's obvious affection for his cats): however, I didn't feel that the SFnal elements of the broader plot were explored as fully as I'd have liked. A very enjoyable read, though.

2025/031: Out of Nowhere — Felicia Davin

Caleb didn’t want anything to do with that. His double wreaking havoc on a stranger’s reputation wasn’t his problem. The whole fucking multiverse was falling apart, and more importantly, so was he. [loc. 2434]

Sequel to Edge of Nowhere, which I enjoyed enough to immediately buy the rest of the trilogy: Out of Nowhere avoids middle-volume syndrome by picking up the story with different characters and with a different mode. This is more romance-with-SFnal-elements than SF-with-romantic elements, and it's also a tale of the multiverse, complete with exact doubles, different histories, and an ambitious heist.

Caleb took a job at QSF17 (a secret research lab hidden in a captured asteroid) to rescue his childhood best friend Aidan, who's a runner -- someone able to teleport and to take things with them -- and who was abducted by representatives of Quint Services. The rescue was accomplished (see Edge of Nowhere), but Aidan is no longer able to teleport. While Aidan recovers (and broods about being in unrequited love with his straight childhood best friend) Caleb encounters his own double, realises that the multiverse is a thing, and comes up with a scheme to make Quint pay by having his double confess to Quint's crimes.

What could possibly go wrong?

Actually, most of the things that I thought might go wrong didn't: instead Davin presents a delightful, and surprisingly successful, heist, complete with a celebrity spiritualist (last seen taking delivery of a vomitous dog), a new serum, and a life-saving drug. Also identity porn, activism, fake dating, and a trillionaire getting his just deserts. There are some dark moments (and quite a few points where I wanted to yell 'just talk to him!') but the finale was very satisfactory.

2025/030: The Runaways — Elizabeth Goudge

They had the charming surname of Linnet, and it was a pity it did not suit them. [p. 19]

First published in 1964 as Linnets and Valerians, those being the surnames of two entwined families: reissued as the winner of Hesperus Press's 'Uncover a Children's Classic Competition'. Four children, sent to stay with their autocratic grandmother while their father is soldiering in Egypt, flee her draconian rules. They find an unattended pony and trap outside a pub, plunder the bags of shopping therein, and climb in -- only to find that the pony knows its way home. Arriving after dark at a house they've never visited, they are greeted by an elderly gentleman who gives them beds for the night. He turns out to be their Uncle Ambrose, and sends a note to their grandmother to let her know where they are: she's quite happy for him to take charge of and educate them.

And life with Uncle Ambrose is quite idyllic. His employee Ezra (who had to walk all the way back from the pub on his wooden leg) takes to the children; Uncle Ambrose's reclusive neighbour Lady Alicia regards them as 'inevitable as the sun and rain' and her servant Moses Glory Glory Alleluja befriends them -- as do the bees. Not everyone in the village is wholesome, though. Emma Cobley, who runs the village shop, possibly sets her possibly-monstrous cat Frederick on them. (‘A sweet cat. A dear, pretty, loving, gentle cat,’ she insists, though Timothy, the younger boy, is still smarting from the scratches of a tiger-sized beast.) And there's a man known as 'Daft Davie' living in a cave under the tor (this is Devon) and a spell-book full of nastiness and a missing child and a lost husband and a publican who's up to no good...

I wish I'd read this as a child: I'd have loved it. It's very traditionally English, and feels Edwardian. Each child has a different and decided character: Robert who has all the ideas, Nan who deals with the aftermath of those ideas, Timothy who is frail but determined, and Betsy whose curiosity is matched by her kindness. There's a definite threat, which has blighted the village: there are adults behaving like adults, several unexpected reunions, and happy endings for all. And the writing is delightful, never too scary but sometimes quite dark, and peppered with mythological references.

Poor Frederick, though...

Bought in 2014, only just read!

2025/029: The Cosmic Serpent: DNA and the Origins of Knowledge — Jeremy Narby

I was now of the opinion that DNA was at the origin of shamanic knowledge. By “shamanism,” I understood a series of defocalization techniques: controlled dreams, prolonged fasting, isolation in wilderness, ingestion of hallucinogenic plants, hypnosis based on a repetitive drumbeat, near-death experience, or a combination of the above. [loc. 1410]

Narby's hypothesis is that shamanic ritual, and in particular the use of botanical hallucinogens ('plant-teachers'), allows indigenous peoples to access botanical and medical knowledge imparted at the molecular level via DNA. He's a hands-on experimenter, and his own experiences of ayahuasca -- a complex preparation, which shamans claim was taught to them by the plants -- inspired his theory that hallucinations and visions of entwined snakes, vines etc actually represent DNA. He theorises that the rituals and preparations allow humans to perceive the weak, colourful photons emitted by DNA.

I am not at all sure what I think about Narby's theories, but I am willing to accept that there are ways of understanding the world that do not conform to the scientific method. Narby writes "The problem is not having presuppositions, but failing to make them explicit. If biology said about the intentionality that nature seems to manifest at all levels, 'we see it sometimes, but cannot discuss it without ceasing to do science according to our own criteria,' things would at least be clear. But biology tends to project its presuppositions onto the reality it observes, claiming that nature itself is devoid of intention." [loc. 1818] Some of the studies he cites, and some of the arguments he makes, seem credible: at other points, such as his discussion of the role of 'wise serpents' in mythology, I was less convinced.

The book itself could have done with better proofreading and better conversion to ebook format: I was especially vexed by the rendering of large numbers, which did not superscript the powers. 'there is 1 chance in 20 multiplied by itself 200 times for a single specific protein to emerge fortuitously. This figure, which can be written 20200, and which is roughly equivalent to 10260, is enormously greater than the number of atoms in the observable universe (estimated at 1080)' [loc. 1023] ... Or 20²⁰⁰, 10²⁶⁰, 10⁸⁰...

An interesting read and an intriguing theory, but perhaps not as engaging (or convincing) as the author intended -- and more about his personal experience and beliefs than about the science of hallucinogens and the visions they create. Kudos to Narby for openmindedness and rejection of colonial mindsets.

an interesting interview with Narby, including accounts of some researchers asking ayahuasca specific questions.

2025/028: Kif: An Unvarnished History — Josephine Tey

I'm almost frightened for him sometimes, and I don't in the least know why. I think perhaps because he is so tremendously in love with life. People who are that are simply asking to get hurt. [loc. 1075]

A flawed but fascinating novel about Kif, who joins the Army at 15 (he's big for his age) to escape the grinding monotony of rural life as an orphan; makes friends with his fellow soldiers; doesn't adjust well to post-war civilian life, and -- after a disastrous business failure -- falls in love with Baba, sister of a friend from the war, whose family induct Kif into a shadowy world of crime.

This is nowhere near as well-written or as well-observed as The Expensive Halo, but Tey's understated account, and her depiction of a young man almost entirely alienated from his fellow humans, kept me reading to the tragic finale.

I do wonder if Tey intended some of the loose threads -- the spiritualist's vision, the culpability of Collins,  Hough's involvement in the business failure -- to be picked up later in the novel. It might have made Kif's story twistier and more interesting.

The edition available as an ebook from Amazon is not great (for one thing, someone has been through and done a global replace of 'arni' to 'tingle': look at the Amazon cover!) but Kif is in the public domain, so can be acquired from Project Gutenberg etc. Meanwhile, I shall keep Tey's other novels for future reading.

2025/027: The Expensive Halo — Josephine Tey

On Sara the riot of peacock greens and blues and iris yellows [of her silk offcut dressing-gown] looked barbarically appropriate. Every time her eye lighted on the splendour and the subtlety of them she had a moment of pleasure, and each time her eye lighted on herself in the splendour her pleasure was renewed. She was Egypt, she was Diana, she was Circe. Sara’s dressing-gown was one of the things that helped to make life bearable for Sara. [loc. 404]

Published in 1931, this standalone, non-thriller novel by Josephine Tey is the story of two brother-and-sister pairs -- one aristocratic, the other working class. The actual plot (bored socialite Ursula Deane falls for Gareth, a penniless but ambitious violinist, while her brother Lord Chitterne falls for the violinist's sister Sara, a dressmaker: Sara persuades Ursula to give up Gareth so he can marry his childhood sweetheart) is fairly thin: what made this such a compelling read was Tey's descriptions of her characters, and her depictions of family life. Sara and Gareth's father is a monstrous authoritarian, and their mother 'still loved [him], because she had never analysed herself sufficiently to find out that she didn’t'. Ursula's friend Daphne is prone to cocktails and shrieks of mirth. And Mrs Marsden, who cleans for the Ellis family, 'had four absorbing interests in life: contraception, the price of boiling beef, the rent money, and the Duchess of York.' 

I'd have liked more examination of the differences between Ursula and her brother -- why the brother is a decent prospect for Sara despite the gaping chasm of class difference, while Ursula's love for Gareth is to be set aside before she gets bored of him -- but Tey seems more concerned with the horrors of working-class life.

Many of Tey's novels (some, like this, published under the name 'Gordon Daviot') are now in the public domain, and therefore available very cheaply. I shall read more...

2025/026: Edge of Nowhere — Felicia Davin

Kit was afraid to speak aloud what he’d seen—a man, trapped and screaming—because it sounded so crazy. And yet this was his life: teleportation, asteroids, other realities. What was one more thing in the mix? Why not a tortured ghost? [loc. 1966]

Kit is a runner, which means he can teleport to any coordinates he's given, usually with some illicit package, or a mob boss's gift (a stressed and vomitous dog) to his girlfriend. Runners, who teleport by moving through a dark featureless space called the Nowhere, are rare: they've made limited space colonisation possible. Dr Solomon Lange, a scientist working at QSF, an orbital facility in lunar orbit, has vanished while running experiments on the Nowhere: the sole witness to the accident, Emil Singh, has been thoroughly questioned by Quint Services. Now he's due to be returned to QSF, sedated and blindfolded -- and Kit is the runner chosen to transport him. But the Nowhere isn't empty...

Edge of Nowhere is an effective combination of M/M romance and science fiction. Emil is a sensible botanist who's loyal to his team, while Kit is a purple-haired, flamboyantly-dressed orphan who lives under the radar, mostly working on the wrong side of the law, unwilling to trust anyone. As Quint Services' nefarious schemes come to light, and Kit is menaced by some kind of entity in the Nowhere (could it be connected to the 'poltergeist' that haunts QSF17?), both men have to reassess their assumptions and prejudices -- and consider the possibility of a multiverse.

I liked this enough to immediately buy the sequel. There is a delightful (though outrageously neglected) cat named Niels Bohr; a former pop star who runs a bar with her wife; some extremely extra fashion choices; a lightly-sketched future (the end of the 21st century) in which climate change seems to have destroyed New York City; an appalling techno-trillionaire; and a light sprinkling of romance tropes. The science-fictional side of the novel was satisfactory -- yes, the science of the Nowhere is a bit handwavy but that's as much to do with our viewpoint characters as with the underlying logic -- and the romance works nicely. I'm not sure who recommended this to me, but thank you!

2025/025: Ludo and the Star Horse — Mary Stewart

You mean to keep faith with your friend... lead him as best you can along the path the sun is taking, through the good lands and the bad... The sun left my house this very day. If you can catch him before he reaches this spot again, your life's wish will be granted -- or else it will not, and who is to say which of the two will bring more happiness? [p. 54]

Audiobook (read by Paul Eddington) via the Internet Archive, as this childhood favourite seems to be unobtainable in ebook format. I adored this book when I was at primary school, and it holds up pretty well half a century later. 

Ludo is an eleven-year-old boy who lives in Bavaria, probably some time in the 19th century. One winter night, while he's alone at home, the family's elderly horse Renti escapes from his stable. Ludo is sure he'll be blamed, so he sets out through the snow to find Renti, who he's known all his life: who he loves. He falls into a cave and meets the Archer, a centaur, and is told that Renti is a star horse, like the horses who pull the sun's chariot. Ludo and Renti must follow the sun through the twelve houses of the star country, encountering perils and wonders -- not all of them predictable even by a reader who, unlike Ludo, is familiar with the houses of the Zodiac.

Ludo's not the brightest protagonist, but he is loyal, humble and kind -- all traits that stand him in good stead with the creatures and entities he meets. I had forgotten many of the details, such as the archer who restrains the Twins, and the rather dull embodiment of my own birth sign: but I remembered the book's climax, and it was just as compelling this time. I think the text was somewhat abridged for this audio version (which comes in two files, possibly from an LP) but the story remains intact, and Paul Eddington's narration is excellent. (Yes, he does voices, but not silly ones. The Scorpion was really chilling.)

I also noticed aspects of the story that I probably didn't recognise before. When Ludo meets the embodiment of Aquarius, he's a lad named Gula, which is the Babylonian name for the constellation. That archer who hangs out with the Twins, who introduces himself as Lykeios, is Apollo. The Archer is probably Chiron, since his pupils include Peleus. Even at nine, I was familiar with some Greek myths, but I'm not sure I spotted every reference.

An absolutely lovely 'reread', which has tempted me to re-skim a scan of the actual book. (Thanks, Internet Archive!)

2025/024: In the Land of Giants: A Journey Through the Dark Ages — Max Adams

Perhaps post-Roman Britain, far from the desolate, ruinous, plague-ridden chaos of Gildas’s portrait, was a genteel, faded seaside town of a land. Perhaps. [loc. 344]

In which Max Adams travels -- on foot, or by motorbike or car or boat -- through the British Isles, exploring early medieval sites and discussing their context. In the Land of Giants is as much a travel book as it's history in action: though there's little documentary evidence for life in Britain between the departure of the Romans and the time of Alfred the Great, there remain buildings, artefacts, monuments and landscapes from the 'Dark Ages'. Adams discusses the population decline in this period, but makes clear it wasn't a chaotic apocalypse of sword, fire and famine. 'People survived; some thrived; some left in the hope of a better life...' [loc. 775]

As well as the narrative of a country living amid the ruins of Romanisation -- Dark Ages armies marched on Roman roads, but town life had disintegrated -- this is a book full of fascinating facts. I learnt that Baldock, in Hertfordshire, was named after Baghdad; that Viking ships sailed up the Lea all the way to Hertford, and were stranded there when the river was dammed and drained; that the Scillies were a single landmass in the early days of the Roman occupation; that brewster and baxter are surnames deriving from female occupations (a baxter is a female baker, a brewster a female brewer)... And Adams' writing about walking to quiet one's thoughts, walking to regain a sense of the landscape, make me want to leave the city and head for the empty places.

A few typos, which really should have been fixed by now (it was slavers, not slaves, who took St Patrick to Ireland) and a few references to page numbers rather than locations. Most of the photographs are rather dark and indistinct in the ebook, but it's easy to find online images of the sites Adams visited.

I bought this in October 2016, and finally read it (very slowly) as part of my 'Down in the Cellar' self-challenge, which riffs on the metaphor of to-be-read pile as wine-cellar rather than to-do list.

2025/023: Mr Mustachio Gets Collared — Dawn McKinnon

There was little about Sam’s life anyone would believe. A gay ex-cop orphan living in a mansion owned by his ... boyfriend and their adopted litter of kittens? Nah. Couldn’t happen. Sam kissed his ... boyfriend as their children swarmed over him and thanked his lucky stars that sometimes fairy tales really did come true. [closing paragraph]

Third, and apparently final, novel in the 'Mr Mustachio' series. Engaged to investigate a mysterious lack of profit at Peabody's premier restaurant, Gourmand's, PI Sam Jones and his boyfriend Algernon have ring-side seats to the attempted murder of an annoying socialite, Meghan Wallach. Meghan has also accused Mr Mustachio of fathering her prize-winning cat's forthcoming kittens: but Mr Mustachio is gay^*... Sam and Algernon find themselves dealing with suspicious deaths, further outbreaks of 'food poisoning', and Mr Mustachio (who does not have a collar, a microchip or a current rabies vaccination) getting locked up by Animal Control -- and there's more than one tough decision to be made about feline welfare.

Fun, and twistier than the previous novel, but part of the entertainment was the build-up to the Big Reveal in Mr Mustachio Sings Like a Canary: the events of this novel couldn't have happened without that reveal, though. I think I read all three novels within 24 hours; they were the perfect antidote for low mood and gloomy weather. Mr Mustachio's chapters are splendid, the found-family theme is strong, and there's a subtle dry humour that suited the characters very well.

^{*"He doesn’t know what gay means, but he knows how it feels. Girl cats are only friends." [loc. 322]}

2025/022: Mr Mustachio Sings Like a Canary — Dawn McKinnon

"...Once he gets fixed, his face will thin out some.” That didn’t sound desirable. Mr. Mustachio’s face was Mr. Mustachio’s face. Sam didn’t want it changed. He only wanted Algernon to be a responsible pet owner. Representative, he corrected himself, because Algernon hated the word owner too.
...Celine Levesque had left her millions to Mr. Mustachio instead of to Algernon specifically for the purpose of giving Mr. Mustachio the right to remain intact. [p. 43]

The primary plot here is about the unexpected demise of Joan Peabody, an old lady with a heart condition and a bad temper. Her will has gone astray, and PI and author Sam Jones becomes involved when the dead woman's niece asks him to help find it. Features an exploding mailbox, unpleasantly healthy baking, and small-town politics.

I enjoyed this one a lot (though the mystery of Mrs Peabody's death was not especially mysterious), and the scenes from Mr Mustachio's perspective were great. There's also further character development for some of the other residents of Chez Celine, and the central mystery -- which seemed apparent to me from the first chapters of Mr Mustachio is Falsely Accused -- is revealed late in the novel.

A quick, cosy and enjoyable read, so on to the next one!

2025/021: Mr Mustachio is Falsely Accused — Dawn McKinnon

“This is for the cat?”
“We don’t call him the cat,” Hannah said quickly.
“This is for Mr. Mustachio?” He’d moved in with a bunch of delusional cat-fiends, but as long as he was here, he would have to cater to their delusion. At least he liked cats. Better than he liked people most of the time. [p. 28]

Quintessential cosy crime: stoic ex-cop Sam Jones has moved into Chez Celine, an artists' cooperative, where he hopes to write detective novels and maybe have a sideline in private investigation. Sam is surprised to find that his landlord is a cat -- the eponymous Mr Mustachio, a splendid orange Persian -- but intrigued by Algernon, the late owner's cute ward, who signs things. ("Mr Mustachio doesn't have hands.") When Mr Mustachio is accused of breaking a million-dollar vase, Sam discovers the unsavoury undercurrents of Chez Celine. 

This was great fun, with a vividly-written cast and a central mystery that ... well, seemed obvious to me, but the individuals concerned didn't know they were living in that kind of novel. I read this in a couple of hours, on a cold and gloomy day, and went straight on to the next in the series.

2025/020: The Glow — Alistair McDowall

Even if everything else is stolen from me, I'll remember you. Always.
I'll chain you to my thoughts and drag you through time. [p. 90]

I saw 'The Glow' at the Royal Court Theatre in 2022, when it opened, and bought the playscript the next day -- not least for the additional material.

The play opens in 1863, with spiritualist medium Mrs Lyall selecting a nameless girl from the local asylum to 'amplify' her own mediumistic talents. Mrs Lyall's son Mason finds the girl disturbing, even before her first séance, when she begins to chant Latin amid unsettling crashes. After that, things become stranger and bloodier.

1979, and a dropout named Evan is telling the girl about a mysterious figure who appears in old manuscripts: 'She looks a bit different each time but you can always tell it's her.' His source is an obscure book of folklore or mythology, by Dorothy Waites, called The Woman in Time. (Excerpts from this imaginary book are included with the play text.) The Woman -- immortal, invulnerable, singular and infinitely lonely -- knows that love matters more than anything. Her story unfolds from 1345 to 346AD to prehistory and into the future: but some characters are constant.

I did find the Afterword, in which a fictional academic is rather scathing about Waites' book and McDowall's play, entertaining: it definitely fleshed out the underlying myth of The Woman, while poking fun at conspiracy theorists and ambitious young playwrights. But the text of the play works without any of that context, and even without the impressive staging I recall.

For the 'genre picked by someone else' prompt of the 52 in 52 (2025) challenge: Nina picked 'a play' for me.

brief review of the play, from 2022.

2025/019: When the Moon Hits Your Eye — John Scalzi

We are confronted with a seemingly impossible proposition, that the moon has turned to cheese. And we live in an age where disinformation not only exists, but is actively used as a tool by pundits and political parties. [loc. 514]

Scalzi's latest novel, very much in the vein of Starter Villain and The Kaiju Preservation Society, takes a light-hearted concept -- here, it's the moon (including moon rock samples) suddenly turning into cheese -- and explores the consequences in twenty-eight sections, one per day of the lunar cycle, recounting the experiences of ordinary Americans.

We begin with the director of a small Air and Space Museum: other stories feature a retired philosophy professor, two assistants in two cheeseshops both alike in dignity a small town in Wisconsin, a Sunday School teacher, an appalling billionaire (when asked what he'd say to other billionaires with space companies, his answer is 'Hey, Elon and Jeff? Ha ha ha lol suck it dudes'), a Vice-President of development in Hollywood^*, a sex worker in Las Vegas...

I recall several novels, a while back, examining what would happen if the moon suddenly disappeared or had never existed: Seveneves, The Fifth Season, to name but two. (I'm sure there were others which I cannot recall or locate. Any suggestions?) This novel also fits the premise, albeit with more comedy. It reminded me, in parts, of the film Don't Look Up, and of Ben Winters' Last Policeman trilogy: but the scope is broader, and so is the humour. It's sometimes tragic, sometimes (surprisingly?) profound, and a very good read.

Interesting post about translating the title for audiences unfamiliar with the Dean Martin song.

Thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for the advance review copy, in exchange for this full honest review. UK Publication Date is 25th March 2025.

^*This is where Scalzi stashes most of his appalling puns.

2025/018: A Radical Act of Free Magic — H G Parry

Something terribly important had happened, she thought. Some great and wondrous step toward magic that didn’t control, didn’t restrict or confine or destroy or even burn the world on its way to freedom, but liberated. [loc. 7079]

I liked A Declaration of the Rights of Magicians very much, so dived straight into the second volume of the duology. A Radical Act takes place from 1797 to 1807. While magical war engulfs Europe, the Saint-Domingue slave rebellion continues. Fina continues to support Toussaint L'Ouverture in the Caribbean; Wilberforce, in London, continues to fight for abolition; Pitt continues to conceal his deadly secret. In France, a young battle-mage from Corsica, working with a mysterious 'friend', has summoned a kraken to lay waste to the British navy. Other new characters are introduced, too: Kate Dove and her brother Christopher, mudlarking orphans who were tested for magical ability at birth, and forced to wear bracelets to suppress their magical talents. But in wartime, Britain will take all the magical help it can get ...

This is a fast-paced and thrilling account of the Napoleonic Wars. In this volume, we're shown magic having more effect on the history of individuals and of nations: this is not quite our history, and there are more opportunities for women and for Commoners. It also highlights the conflict between Pitt and the centuries-old 'enemy' (Bonaparte's 'friend') and explains why the Templars have turned a blind eye to Pitt's difficult heritage. It's exciting and hopeful and heroic.

That said, I didn't enjoy it as much as the first novel: towards the end, events seemed tumultuously hasty, without enough foreshadowing or description. (The splendid Lady Hester Stanhope has a crowning moment of glory that's barely a page long.) And there are elements of the story which, though they are foreshadowed, seem to fade away (vengeance of bound shadows, for instance). Still a splendid read but less satisfying than A Declaration. Despite a vague sense of disappointment, I did enjoy this book and I'm still looking forward to reading more of Parry's novels.

2025/017: This Way Out — Tufayel Ahmed

'Maybe I don’t want to always be a learning experience for you. Maybe we just haven’t realised how different we are, how different our worlds are.’ [loc. 2083]

Amar Iqbar is Muslim, gay, and about to get married to a white guy. His family learn the latter two facts from a message in the family WhatsApp. They are not impressed: elder sister thinks he's mentally ill, younger sister cries, one brother stays quiet and the other says he 'can't have no faggot for a brother'. Their father tells him 'Look to God to forgive you'. All of which demonstrates why he hasn't come out to them before, and also provides a concise summary of typical attitudes in a second-generation Bangladeshi family in contemporary London.

Amar is still dealing with grief after his mother's death, and has always been troubled by the conflict between his faith and his sexuality: and then he discovers he's about to lose his job at a small independent bookshop. It doesn't help that Joshua, his boyfriend, stands by while Amar is (as he sees it) insulted by his future mother-in-law, Josephine. Luckily, Amar still has friends, and one suggests therapy...

This was an easy read, often repetitive, but a good window onto a culture that isn't my own. The least credible aspect of it for me was the therapist who never says the wrong thing or suggests anything unreasonable! I liked the sense of Amar discovering who he was without the filter of family or relationship, and I liked his new 'found family' and his realisation that there's more to Islam than the faith he grew up in.

I read this in sync with a friend and felt more sympathetic towards Amar than she did. I also found the culture clash more interesting -- the sense that at least some of Amar's behaviour (such as avoiding difficult conversations) is cultural. At one point when therapy is suggested, he replies 'it just seems like kind of a white people thing. They feel sad and then they go and see a therapist and pop a couple of antidepressants. No offence. That just isn’t how we do things in my family, in my culture. There aren’t just some magic words that make everything okay.' [loc. 970]. And yet the therapy is what saves him.

I bought this in June 2022, and finally read it as part of my 'Down in the Cellar' self-challenge, which riffs on the metaphor of to-be-read pile as wine-cellar rather than to-do list.

2025/016: Jessica Jones: Playing with Fire — Lauren Beukes, Vita Ayala, Sam Beckbessinger, Zoe Quinn, Elsa Sjunneson: narrated by Fryda Wolff

The only thing I'm better at than beating myself up is proving people wrong out of spite. [chapter 11]

Audiobook, well-narrated with excellent sound effects and a personable narrator. I enjoyed the TV series, and this has very much the same ambience: Jessica Jones is superpowered (though the book doesn't go into the details of how she acquired her powers) and suffering from CPTSD due to horrible things in her past (again, not explained here: Kilgrave is mentioned a couple of times in passing). She investigates crimes. Her therapist, Mel, suggests that she take on a straightforward case with low stakes, so Jessica begins to investigate a missing person -- Jamie Green, twenty years old, formerly estranged from his father due to his powers, but turned up missing when they were supposed to reunite. Needless to say, the case is not straightforward and the stakes are high. Jessica's usual approach of drinking whiskey and hitting things may not be enough.

I really liked this, though I do find audiobooks harder to keep in my mind than ebooks or physical books: something about not being able to page back and forward, or highlight key passages. Still, the story flowed well despite each chapter being written by different people: this is the Serial Box model and it worked very well here. I'm no more than vaguely aware of this corner of the Marvel universe, but that plus the contextual material in the novel was sufficient for me to make sense of character interactions. The story was packed with dark humour, gritty realism, alternative lifestyles and well-rounded characters. I liked it a lot, and will try more Serial Box audiobooks, especially if they're in the Audible Plus catalogue!

2025/015: A Declaration of the Rights of Magicians — H G Parry

The National Assembly of Magicians had risen up, exactly as Robespierre had hoped. They had issued a proclamation declaring it the right of all citizens to be free to practice their own magic: a Declaration of the Rights of Magicians. Within a day, the Temple Church in Paris had been stormed... [p. 179]

Having enjoyed Parry's more recent The Scholar and the Last Fairy Door, I bought A Declaration of the Rights of Magicians when it was on offer: I love it, and am currently reading the second book in the duology, A Radical Act of Free Magic -- which means I don't yet know how the overall arc resolves.

Set mostly between 1783 and 1794, this is a novel about an Age of Enlightenment complicated by magic. Briefly, this is a world where some individuals have magical powers, connected with but not reliant on heritage; generally, aristocrats are allowed to use magic and commoners are not; 'blood magic' (a combination of mesmerism and vampirism, apparently uniquely European) is banned, a ban enforced by the Knights Templar who slew the monstrous Vampire Kings who ruled Europe centuries before, as well as every blood magician they could find. 

There are three strands to the novel: William Wilberforce and William Pitt the Younger, trying to abolish the slave trade and (in Pitt's case) come to terms with magical heritage; Fina, an escaped slave in Jamaica, fleeing to Toussaint L'Ouverture's rebel army; and Camille Desmoulins and Maximilien Robespierre working towards revolution in Paris. Each of these subplots is as much concerned with friendship as with magic or revolution. Parry's version of history adheres closely to our own, but with additional magical elements to amplify the horror: the guillotine's victims are transformed into an army of the dead; the slaves in the colonies are kept obedient by a potion that renders them unable to speak or move of their own volition.

And behind the slave revolt, the Revolution and even the repeated failure of British attempts to abolish the slave trade, there's a hidden force, known to Robespierre as his benefactor, to Pitt as his enemy, and to Fina simply as 'the stranger'.

This is a long, slow, dense novel, and I found it a compelling read: the blend of fantasy and history felt credible, and I very much enjoyed the friendships, especially that between Pitt and Wilberforce. I also found myself warming more to Robespierre than ever before. Though the history and worldbuilding are quite lightly sketched -- we learn little of the world outside Britain, France and Haiti -- there are plenty of little details, such as the laburnham-and-silver panels in the House of Commoners that respond to the speeches with sound and harmony, which make this world feel real.

I'd have liked more female characters, but can understand their absence. (There are more women in A Radical Act of Free Magic, including Pitt's awesome niece Hester Stanhope.) And I did find some of the scenes of Parliament rather long-winded. But this, for me, was an utterly splendid read, and the very first thing I did after finishing it was to buy the second volume of what's effectively one long narrative.

2025/014: The Athenian Murders — V J Randle

He agreed, of course, that murder was most terrible. But she had not used the modern Greek word, tromeros, instead using the Ancient Greek, deinos... [p. 60]

Sergeant Michail Mikras of the Athenian police is assigned, with his partner Katerina Galanis, to the investigation of a gruesome murder with mythic undertones: the body was arranged to suggest the birth of Athena, who was freed from the head of Zeus by an axe wielded by Hephaestus. It's Mikras who finds the axe, hung from Hephaestus's temple -- a fact that fascinates the tabloids. And a group called The Awakening is claiming that Athena has arisen to cleanse the city of Athens. Michail Mikras's superior, Sofia Sampson, is unimpressed with his suggestion that they consider other Athene-related myths to 'locate' further crimes. Nevertheless, Michail and Katerina identify the next target...

Like many crime novels, this is more about the detectives than about the crimes. Michail Mikras is neurodivergent and bad at people, but familiar with mythology and Ancient Greek; Katerina is trying to separate from her husband Theo, also a police officer, because of his involvement with far-right, anti-immigrant groups; Sofia Sampson has personal history with one of the ringleaders. Two retired British classicists are also involved in the case, providing some scholarly input as well as some red herrings.

This was a quick and easy read, and I was interested by the depiction of modern Athens (a city I know better from historical novels and non-fiction set in the ancient world). The characters were likeable, if somewhat stereotyped, and the crimes were complex and unusual. I don't feel compelled to read more in the series, but I think I might revisit this author if I were to visit Athens.

2025/013: A Line You Have Traced — Roisin Dunnett

...when we talk about time, we should really talk about history, because that's the only element of time that we understand. ... some parts of time are actually thinner than others ... what wears it thin? Stories, narrative, expression. [loc. 2422]

A Line You Have Traced is the story of three women living in East London, in three different centuries: Bea, a silversmith's wife, in the 1930s; Kay, devoting her life to partying in something like contemporary London; and Ess, living in a near-future collective which believes that humans will soon be extinct. (All the character names in this novel are letters of the alphabet, from Bea's husband Ade to Ess's friend Zizi. This became annoying until the story really got going.) The three are related by more than blood. There's an angel whose appearances Bea records in a small red notebook, Kay's fantasies about being watched by time travellers, Ess's friendship with an elderly man whose vast personal archive of photographs and documents holds the key to an ambitious plan. There are also three cats, named Tuna, Mackerel and Sardine, who may also be related...

Each viewpoint was fascinating, though perhaps Kay's less so (because more familiar) than Bea's or Ess's. Bea's story includes the story of her husband's friendship with a novelist, who presents a warped and misogynist portrait of Bea in his account of Ade's life: it also includes the Battle of Cable Street and the rise of fascism. Kay's account is a portrait of contemporary queer life, with the looming climate emergency and a lack of direction. And Ess's future, with its antique Tupperware and acceptance of doom -- and its radical solutions -- feels horribly credible.

Dunnett's prose is fluent, and each voice is distinctive: she's very good at dialogue, and her depictions of the changing face of misogyny -- especially in the context of female fertility -- over the three narratives is acute. I'm still not clear about the novel's resolution: Dunnett presents us with possibilities rather than a definitive event. But that's the nature of the beast, that's the multiverse, that's history for you.

Thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for the advance review copy, in exchange for this full honest review. UK Publication Date is 15th April 2025.

2025/012: Someone You Can Build a Nest In — John Wiswell

...if her biting off a bunch of people’s heads was how Homily learned her identity, it would probably stifle their relationship. Romance was awful. She couldn’t even do something as simple as murdering rude people anymore. [p. 69]

Shesheshen, an amorphous shapeshifting creature, lives in the cellar of a ruined mansion. She is woken by the latest set of monster hunters, who are keen to slay the Wyrm of Underlook (Shesheshen, apparently) who has cursed an entire family. Poisoned by a rosemary-anointed arrow, Shesheshen flees ... and is rescued by Homily, a healer who turns out to be a scion of the Wulfyres. Homily does not get along with her bellicose, golden-armoured siblings, but still: a family curse is a family curse. It's love at first sight for Shesheshen -- masquerading as a human -- who fantasises about laying her eggs in Homily's lungs, and wonders how Homily will receive the revelation of Shesheshen's true nature.

I am still not sure what I think or feel about this novel. On the one hand, it's a delightful romance between Homily, a woman who is abused by her family, and Shesheshen, a gelatinous blob who likes killing at eating people. On the other hand, it is full of therapy-speak about identity, parenting and abuse. On the third hand (Shesheshen probably has a few hands to spare, given her fondness for removing them from humans) it is an intriguing horror-romance about disability, toxic families and boundaries. It's often very funny, and the violence, though extreme, is rather cartoonish and not especially shocking or cruel. Seen through Shesheshen's eyes -- or whatever she is using to perceive the world with -- the humans seem ridiculous (can confirm), and what is a poor lonely monster, the last of her kind, to do?

I'm puzzled by how Shesheshen became so good at identifying and describing psychological and physical abuse amongst humans, and I'm not comfortable with the relationship's foundation of lies. But this was fun, albeit uneven, and I shall look out for more by Wiswell.

2025/011: The Surfacing — Cormac James

Worse, he had never known, and could not imagine. This is the worst moment of my life, he promised himself, counting everything to come. It would be a useful memory, he knew, if he survived. [loc. 2242]

Echoing some themes from recent polar reads... The Impetus is one of the many ships searching the Arctic, in 1850, for Sir John Franklin's lost expedition. Captain Myers is stubbornly determined to continue the search, though it's late in the year: 'matters as they stand do not quite suit his convenience, and must therefore change'. Lieutenant Morgan, the second-in-command, has a lightly-sketched (but possibly shady) history and a mutinous streak. Ashore in Greenland while a broken rudder is mended, he briefly becomes involved with Kitty, the sister of the local governor: some weeks later, he discovers that the chaplain, Mr Macdonald, has smuggled Kitty aboard the Intrepid. She is pregnant.

Over the course of that pregnancy, the Intrepid heads north, under sail and then trapped in the ice. There is heroism, and there is violence. The crew -- DeHaven the doctor, Cabot the cook, Petersen and Brooks and Banes -- become distinct individuals. Morgan's relationship with DeHaven (friends since childhood) is strained: his relationship with Kitty is cool and distant. James' prose is also cool, distant, formal. His dialogue is unpunctuated, which made me pay more attention to distinguishing it from the surrounding prose:

I heard about your passenger, Austin said...
I think everybody has by now.
Unfortunate.
For me or for her? Morgan said.
For you both, I presume. Inconvenient too.
That's one way of putting it.

I found Morgan absolutely fascinating, perhaps because his past is so indistinct. One has a sense of scandal, of melancholy, of a man always in search of a fresh start. Hidden in The Surfacing amid the ice and the masculine environment and the beautiful terror of the high Arctic, between the moments of peril and the days of boredom, there's the story of Morgan's redemption, of his re-engagement with the world. A slow, quiet novel, in which actual events take second place to the characters', and especially Morgan's, inner lives.

One aspect of the story that seems strange to me is Kitty's, and Morgan's, confidence: they never seem to consider Kitty to be in danger (and especially sexual danger) from the crew. Does her social status make her invulnerable, or is it her pregnancy? 

I bought this in August 2015, and finally read it as part of my 'Down in the Cellar' self-challenge, which riffs on the metaphor of to-be-read pile as wine-cellar rather than to-do list.

2025/010: Thin Air — Michelle Paver

Being on a mountain forces us to confront the vast, unsentient reality that’s always present behind our own busy little human world, which we tuck around ourselves like a counterpane, to keep out the cold. No wonder that when we trespass into the mountains, we create phantoms. They’re easier to bear than all this lifelessness. [loc. 1325]

Reread, after reading Into Thin Air: my review of Paver's novel from 2017 is here. Paver's 1930s team are climbing Kangchenjunga, rather than Everest, and the novel is as much about the rivalry between two brothers as it is about the technical and emotional demands of the climb. But there's a lot of resonance. The topography of the mountain, with icefalls and buttresses and peaks, feels familiar after Everest. And the ghost story at the heart of Thin Air is rooted in the experience of a man left to die.

This is still one of my favourite ghost stories. Yes, period-typical racism; yes, classism; yes, an overwhelmingly masculine cast. But I love it, and it is terrifying.

2025/009: Into Thin Air: A Personal Account of the Everest Disaster — Jon Krakauer

The ratio of misery to pleasure was greater by an order of magnitude than any other mountain I’d been on; I quickly came to understand that climbing Everest was primarily about enduring pain. And in subjecting ourselves to week after week of toil, tedium, and suffering, it struck me that most of us were probably seeking, above all else, something like a state of grace. [loc. 1952]

Krakauer's decision to join one of the Everest expeditions in 1996 was professional rather than personal: he was initially only going to climb as far as Base Camp, and report on the commercialisation of Everest. Having been a keen mountaineer in the past, the prospect reignited his enthusiasm for climbing, and he decided he wanted to make the ascent to the summit.

What sets Into Thin Air apart from other survival / mountaineering works is Krakaeur's examination of his own culpability. Despite a somewhat defensive afterword, he's very much aware that his presence on the expedition may have influenced decisions made by the team leader, Rob Hall, and that his own actions and attitudes likely caused at least one death and perhaps more. Because, through sheer bad luck^*, Krakauer was making the final ascent in May 1996, when twelve climbers died: 'the worst single-season death toll since climbers first set foot on the peak seventy-five years ago' (now the third worst, due to the 2014 avalanche and the 2015 earthquake).

Krakauer writes clearly and evocatively about the joys and miseries of climbing: he portrays interactions objectively, for the most part, and lets the reader draw their own conclusions: he describes the history and sociology of Everest ascents, and the ways in which the climb has become a commodity. I had a strong sense of the heroism of some individuals, and the appalling behaviour of others (refusing to loan a radio to help coordinate rescue; not stopping to help climbers in mortal danger). Krakauer does point out that 'lucid thought is all but impossible at 29,000 feet', due to altitude sickness and hypoxia: and more recent studies have shown that the lack of oxygen was worsened by the weather: 'atmospheric oxygen levels fell by an additional 6% as a result of the storm, resulting in a further 14% reduction in oxygen uptake' (source).

In some ways 1996 is a very long time ago: reading about 'technological limitations' brought home how much things have changed since then. "E-mail was received in Kathmandu, printed out, and the hard copy was transported by yak to Base Camp. Likewise, all photos that ran on the Web had first been sent by yak and then air courier to New York for transmission. Internet chat sessions were done via satellite phone and a typist in New York..." [loc. 4551]. One of the climbers was attempting to 'live-blog' her climb, which seems ... ambitious. And the mountain itself has changed: the Hillary step, a major chokepoint for climbers, is no longer there.

In some ways an inspirational read, in others a reminder that the heights of Everest are inimical to human life. Either way, Krakauer's account engaged and compelled me.

^* And bad decisions by several individuals, and poor communication, and other factors...

There is an opera...

I bought this in October 2014, and finally read it as part of my 'Down in the Cellar' self-challenge, which riffs on the metaphor of to-be-read pile as wine-cellar rather than to-do list.

2025/008: The Greatcoat — Helen Dunmore

It seemed as if she could put out her hand and touch thousands of lives which had never ended but had broken off into a silence that hung more heavily than any noise. [p. 56]

Set in Yorkshire in the 1950s, this short novel is, I suppose, a ghost story: except that the ghost is more alive than most of the living.

A prologue set on an air base during the Second World War shows us the crew of a Lancaster bomber preparing for their twenty-seventh mission, with all their superstitions and songs and the knowledge that if they survive this and the next three missions, they'll be stood down. The body of the novel, though, focuses on Isabel, newly married to Philip, living in a rented flat in a town where Philip is the new GP and Isabel knows nobody. Their landlady, Mrs Atkinson, is a malevolent grey presence, her footsteps audible overhead all night: Isabel suspects that she noses around the flat when Isabel is out. It's a cold winter, and Isabel, looking for another quilt or blanket, finds an old RAF greatcoat in a cupboard. She spreads it over her bed. Then there's a tapping on the window...

The shadow of the War hangs heavily over this novel: Isabel's parents died in a Japanese labour camp, Mrs Atkinson lost her whole family, and everyone is accustomed to bad food and not enough of it. The old 'hostilities-only' airfields are running wild, overgrown with brambles. Isabel, lonely and isolated and inevitably self-centred, is as lost as Alec, who was tapping at the window. 'He had missed so much. He’d been outside for so long, in the dark and cold. Why not let him come in?'

Dunmore's prose is clear and unsentimental, and she doesn't attempt to explain everything, simply sets out the story with an implacable inevitability. I should ration her novels -- there will be no more -- but I've read three in the last year (The Siege, The Betrayal and The Greatcoat), all very different, all set in WW2 or its aftermath. And I think I own all the others...