2025/054: Saint Death's Herald — C S E Cooney

“Skinchangers do not eat flesh. ... What they eat is everything that makes a being itself. Their haecceity. Their thisness. Thisness is what they feed on.”[loc. 1052]

In Saint Death's Daughter, Lanie (short for Miscellaneous) Stones spent much of her time in the family mansion, avoiding anything and anyone that might trigger her allergic reaction to violence: when that was taken from her, she found a home above a school in Liriat Proper. In Saint Death's Herald, she leaves Liriat (and most of her found family) behind, determined to fulfill her promise to rescue Sari Scratch's son. Cracchen, possessed by the vengeful spirit of Lanie's great-grandfather Irradiant Radithor Stones (a.k.a. Grandpa Rad), is heading north: Lanie, accompanied only by the gyrgardi (were-falcon) Duantri and by Stripes (an animated tiger-skin rug of great valour), must follow.

Though there are brief interludes recounting the adventures of Lanie's nearest and dearest -- her niece Datu, Datu's father Mak, Duantri's partner Tanaliín -- on their pilgrimage, most of the story focusses on Lanie and her discovery of the wider world. She visits Leech and Witch Queen City, which turn out to be coloniser names for the Free Territories of Taquathura and its capital city Madinatam. She discovers the truth about the flying castles of the sky wizards of Skakmaht, and the chilling way in which they're powered. And though she's lonely and often in peril, her innate compassion and kindness extends even to the most implacable of foes.

Saint Death's Herald picks up where the previous volume of the hopefully-a-trilogy left off: it's definitely worth a quick reread of Daughter to refamiliarise oneself with names and events. There aren't as many footnotes in this volume, and the plot of the novel is at once darker and simpler. I missed Mak (of whom we catch glimpses) and Lir, but found Grandpa Rad's life story tantalising, and the skinchangers fascinating. And I love that, in this cosy-gruesome world, death is a balm, a release, a kindness.

Cooney's prose is an absolute joy. I'm occasionally reminded of Ysabeau Wilce, just for sheer rambunctiousness -- and it's a long time since I've had to look up the meanings of so many words while reading a novel (quop! tholobate! acroteria! anomural! phenocryst! and many many more) which is a pleasure in itself. Looking forward to the next volume...

Thanks to Netgalley and the publishers for my advance review copy! UK publication date is 22nd April 2025.

The poor, mangled bird of his soul. How it had hunched, sullen, glaring at her: wings torn, beak broken, one eye missing, feathers the color of void, smelling of rotten citrus. [loc. 5641]

2025/053: Saint Death's Daughter — C S E Cooney (reread)

“The real reason necromancers keep being born to the Stones line is not because the Stoneses are blessed of Saint Death. It is because the first necromancers of the Founding Era instigated a wrong long ago, and Saint Death wants to put to right. [loc. 6868]

My review from January 2024. Reread to prepare for my ARC of the second in the trilogy, Saint Death's Herald, of which the review is imminent. There was a lot in Saint Death's Daughter that I'd forgotten, and some of the novel resonated differently this time round. (The Blackbird Bride misgenders Lir!) Still splendidly complex, lexical, comic, tragic and inventive.

2025/052: Soldier of the Mist — Gene Wolfe (reread)

"Pindaros, look at the moon. What do you see?"
"It's very thin," he said. "And it's setting behind the sacred hill. What about it?"
"Do you see where some columns are still standing? The moon is tangled in them -- some are before her, but others are behind her."
"No, Latro, I don't see that..." [Chapter XVI]

My most recent reread was ten years ago (review here), and even then I was bemoaning the lack of an ebook version. Once again I am thankful to the Internet Archive...

The premise of the novel, set in Greece in 479BC, is simple: 'Latro', a soldier, is suffering amnesia due to a head injury, and has been advised to write down the events of each day before he sleeps. One unexpected side-effect of his injury (or his amnesia) is that he sees the gods and other supernatural beings. Latro learns that he has been cursed by the Great Goddess: he and his travelling companions -- including an African man named Seven Lions, a ten-year-old slave girl called Io, and the poet Pindar -- suffer many reversals and relocations. And Latro does not always remember (and is not always able) to write in his scroll, inserting lacunae into the story and leaving a snarl of loose ends.

This is one of the rare books that I enjoyed when I first read and have never fallen out of love with. Each time I read it, I notice more, or focus on a different strand of the story, or a different character. This time around, I noticed the dedication ("This book is dedicated with the greatest respect and affection to Herodotos of Halicarnassos'), and paid more attention to the non-mythological aspects of the book. Latro (which is a descriptor rather than a name: it means 'soldier') may not be able to form new memories or recall anything since childhood, but he is a precise observer, often seeing more than the other characters because he does not know what he expects to see.

Sometimes brutal (this was a time of war and chaos) and sometimes deeply unsettling: beautifully written, twisty, and infused with a deep understanding and appreciation of classical myth and culture.

2025/051: Every Valley — Charles King

His music was inseparable from a cause as well as a moral sensibility: helping indigent children and knowing the deep tangibility of hope. After the London premiere of the Messiah in 1743, Handel is supposed to have told a noble patron, “My Lord … I should be sorry if I only entertained [an audience]; I wished to make them better.” [loc. 4459]

The American edition's subtitle, 'The Desperate Lives and Troubled Times That Made Handel’s Messiah', gives an idea of King's broad approach. Instead of focussing only on Handel, King examines the circumstances surrounding the composition of Messiah, and the broader social context into which it was born. He shows us that the Enlightenment was as much 'a period of profound anxiety about improving the world' as a glorious revolution of political, social, intellectual and cultural life.

The book opens with Charles Jennens, whose lifelong depression inspired him to produce a libretto that focussed on hope and faith. King moves on to Handel and his early years, when he was the handsome and gifted toast of European musical society. Then there's Susannah Cibber, a singer with a scandalous history of her own -- her husband was not only abusive but insisted that she sleep with another man as a way of paying off his debts -- who sang the contralto role in the Dublin premiere of Messiah. Also featuring is Jonathan Swift, Dean of St Patrick's Cathedral in Dublin, who prohibited church musicians from participating in Handel's composition, but changed his mind when he learnt that proceeds from the performance would be used for worthy causes, such as paying off the debts of imprisoned paupers.

That philanthropic urge contrasts with the fact that 'the era’s art, wealth, and power all rested on a common source --enslavement -- an abstract word for wrecked families and shattered fortunes' [loc. 584]. Both Jennens and Handel were clients of the South Sea Company, which profitted from the transatlantic slave trade. As counterpoint, King explores the history of Thomas Coram, a philanthropic sea-captain who founded the Hospital for the Maintenance and Education of Exposed and Deserted Young Children, usually known as the Foundling Hospital. Coram's Hospital benefitted immensely from Messiah, receiving over £7,000 from performances. King also recounts the story of Ayuba Suleiman Diallo, a Muslim prince enslaved in Senegambia, sent to America, and finally freed. I'm not altogether clear on Diallo's connection with Handel, other than as an example of the rise of philanthropy and the abolition movement...

And of course King explores the life of Handel himself, from his glorious Baroque operas to the piety of his later years, when he was afflicted by failing eyesight and paralysis. King gives a good account of the process of composition, and the sensibility that underlaid it. His own experience of Messiah -- listening to 'the earliest recorded full performance... from 1927, with Sir Thomas Beecham conducting' in the first weeks of the Covid pandemic, and bursting into tears -- is a poignant introduction to a book about misery and hope.

...an illuminated pathway back to a moment when empire, faith, terror, and hope were wound together in one extraordinary life. [loc. 4672]

2025/050: This Immortal — Roger Zelazny (reread)

"What are they doing?" asked Myshtigo. It was the first time I had seen him genuinely surprised.
"Why, they're dismantling the Great Pyramid of Cheops ... they're kind of short on building materials hereabouts, the stuff from Old Cairo being radioactive..."
"They are desecrating a monument to the past glories of the human race!" Diane exclaimed.
"Nothing is cheaper than past glories," I observed.

I was craving Ancient Greece after The Hymn to Dionysus and thought there was more of it in this, Zelazny's SF novel rooted in Greek mythology. ... There isn't, but it was a quick and mostly enjoyable read (thanks, Internet Archive!), and very nostalgic. I don't have much to add to my review from (OMG) 25 years ago here, except that I now also find the characters' constant tobacco use weird and outdated.

2025/049: The Hymn to Dionysus — Natasha Pulley

I’d never prayed for anything to any god: I made sacrifices in the way I paid taxes. Gods are like queens. You pay what you owe and in return they don’t notice you. [loc. 992]

Phaidros is about thirty years old, a veteran of the Trojan War, and a Theban knight. He's mourning his commander Helios, whose twin sister Agave is the Queen of Thebes: he's haunted by memories, and convinced that he's been cursed -- by a lost prince, or by a blue-eyed boy who might have been a god. And then a star crashes down into the parade ground, and Phaidros sees footsteps in the molten glass of its crater.

This is a very different novel to the current plethora of myths retold. Some of the characters, and some of the plot, are familiar from Euripides' Bacchae: other aspects of the story are new, and often just as unsettling. The Hymn to Dionysus is also quite different from Natasha Pulley's previous novels, though there are echoes of those earlier works throughout: turns of phrase, golden pears, hair-combing, games with language -- Helios, like Odysseus, is 'polytropos', a complicated man^* -- and sparks of sheer fun, such as diplomacy pomegranates and surprise badgers.

Thebes is a city in crisis, drought-starved and heaving with unrest.  It's a military state, with a constant refrain of 'obedience is strength' and 'duty is honour'. In battle, the front lines are built out of pairs of sworn lovers like Helios and Phaidros, a commander and their ward: usually there's only a five-year age gap. (Nearly half the knights, it should be noted, are girls and women.) 'The best compliment you can pay someone here,' Phaidros explains, 'is to say, you’re a marvel; as in a clockwork marvel. It means you function the same no matter what’s happening.'

The marvels -- bronze statues animated by clockwork -- are one of the stranger aspects of the story. When the star crashes into the parade ground, things become even stranger. A kind of madness, expressed in song, has infected many of the knights. The people of Thebes talk about a curse incurred by the burning of Troy, and whisper that a lost prince will return and seek vengeance -- not Agave's missing son Pentheus, but the son of her dead sister Semele. And Phaidros, sent in search of Pentheus, seeks out a witch ... 

I have not mentioned Dionysus, whose 'function is to guard the border between the clockwork and the wild.' [loc. 2450] He's uncanny, vulnerable, ancient, amused: he is not, despite modern depictions, a god for good times.  Masks, marvels, mazes and madness...  

I am still in the process of reading, rereading and thinking about this novel. Do I love it as much as The Mars House? as The Kingdoms? Will I always notice the occasional typos, or wonder about the triplet slaves and the mechanical Furies, or wish a happy ending for a woman? (The original myth dooms Agave, but she may be Pulley's most rounded, relateable and likeable female character.) I can't yet say. But it is a glorious and uplifting read, and one that has lured me back towards the best, or my favourite, novels of Ancient Greece.

I was unsurprised that the author, in her Notes, mentioned 1177 BC: The Year Civilisation Collapsed, by Eric Cline...

... nothing is left but those scraps of tax records ... noted down on clay that baked in those fires. [loc. 6670]

^* See also 'Catharsis, Harpies, Harmatia, and More: Natasha Pulley on Her Favorite Greek Words'

2025/048: The Touch of the Sea — Steve Berman (editor)

I swim for the same reason that I sail, because I love the sea, not it loves me. Because it is dark, because it is salt, because it is deadly. Because it is bitter, and because it is my heart. [loc. 2892: 'Keep the Aspidochelone Floating', by Chaz Brenchley]

A selection of gay fantasy short stories by eleven authors, introduced by editor Steve Berman. I'm fairly sure I bought this because I'd just read something by one of those authors, but I cannot remember which or who. Here we find selkies and naiads, mermen, pirates, rig workers, fishermen... The two stories I liked most were 'Wave Boys' by Vincent Kovar (in which tribes of 'lost' boys meet, fight and part in a futuristic landless world where language has warped) and 'Keep the Aspidochelone Floating' by Chaz Brenchley (in which pirates of many genders discover a secluded island and live to regret it). I'm also intrigued by the worldbuilding in 'nathan Burgoine's 'Time and Tide': would like to read more in that world. A nice anthology to dip into.

Full list of contents here.

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.