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

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

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

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

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

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

2022/133: The Reluctant Widow — Georgette Heyer

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

2022/130: The Brides of Rollrock Island — Margo Lanagan

They were not costumes; they were peeled-off parts of our mothers; without them, how could our mams be themselves, their real selves, their under-sea selves, the selves they were born into? They walked about on land with no protection, from the cold or from our dads falling in love with them, or from us boys needing them morning and night. [p. 236]

Life on the island of Rollrock is salt-stung, windswept, hand to mouth. Misskaella grows up lonely and bitter, 'a bit slanted, a bit mixed', ostracised by her family and slowly awakening to her bond with the seals that bask on the sands. She can see something within them, points of light like stars, that can be drawn together to bring a human out of a seal. She recognises that this is power, that this is freedom -- for her, not for the seal-wives that she sells. The men of the island are willing customers, casting aside their human wives, turning from the unmarried women of their own red-headed kind ('I am driven to this; none of these bitches wants me') to be beguiled by the dark, melancholy beauty of the selkies. Misskaella becomes immensely wealthy; the red-headed women leave Rollrock; the lads care for their mothers, and the girls ... do not thrive on land.

This is a beautifully-written novel, or perhaps a collection of novellas and stories, about a monstrous practice. Though Misskaella takes a seal-man as a lover, she does not offer this service to the other human women, who anyway would have no means of payment. She watches a generation of boys grow up with sad 'mams' and no sisters. (The men seem to prefer miserable seal-wives to angry human wives. '‘What did they have to be angry about?’ asks one boy. ‘Nothing,’ says another. ‘They were just like that, says my dad.') Fortunately, there are boys who want their mams happy...

I read this for a book club, and though I found it deeply unsettling, it sparked a fascinating conversation about witchcraft and misogyny, about incels and entitlement, about sadness and anger, about anthropology and escape. None of us were quite sure when or where it was set: there's an Atlantic-coast feel to it, for me, but few markers of place. There is a church (referenced only as a landmark) but no apparent religious practice. There are motor-buses and boats with engines, but no radio or electricity. None of the men go off to war. (None of the men go anywhere, except to the nearest mainland town.) The Brides of Rollrock Island is a novel with no easy answers, no firm explanations: open to many interpretations. It's especially effective because told from different points of view over a period of at least 50 years -- but it was not (for me) a pleasant read, though there were moments of great beauty. I'll read more Lanagan, in the hope of a lighter or less distressing story with the same splendid prose style.

NB This is listed as being suitable for 12-17 year-olds. I would have found it extremely unsettling at that age: sexual slavery, emotional abuse, a form of femicide, and the single word 'rendering'.

2022/129: The Cat Who Caught a Killer — L T Shearer

Conrad quinted at her quizzically. 'You keep looking for a reason as to why I'm here,' he said.
'Because it's strange. It's not every day I get approached by a talking cat.'
'Don't overthink it, Lulu. Sometimes paths just cross, that's all there is to it.' [loc. 115]

Lulu (named after the singer) is a retired police detective who lives on a narrowboat in Little Venice, a quiet upmarket area of London. She used to live in her mother-in-law Emily's house nearby, but Emily's now in a nursing home and Lulu, recently widowed, couldn't deal with living alone in the house.

One day Lulu welcomes aboard a special visitor, Conrad the Calico Cat. (Most calicos are female, but not this one.) She knows Conrad's name because he introduces himself, very courteously and patiently, and finally gets her to accept that yes, talking cat. He rides on her shoulder when she goes to visit Emily -- and when Emily unexpectedly dies that night, Conrad (who can see auras, gauge health and guess what Lulu's thinking) agrees with Lulu's suspicion that Emily's death wasn't natural.

This is a charming and heartwarming cosy crime novel, with two very likeable leads and decent pacing. There were some aspects I would have found more bothersome in a less cosy book (the way both Lulu and Conrad love to infodump local history; the repetitive banality of tea-making descriptions; the occasional hint of Daily Mail sentiments; the fact that the villain is so very obvious from the moment they appear). But Conrad and Lulu's relationship, and especially their kindness to one another, turned out to be just what I needed. I also liked the setting, with Lulu's life on the canal, her friends in the community, and the sense of place. I was thoroughly charmed, and I look forward to reading more in this series.

Fulfils the ‘An Unlikely Detective’ rubric of the 52 books in 2022 challenge.

Thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for the advance review copy, in exchange for this full honest review. UK publication date is 27th October 2022.

2022/128: Take a Hint, Dani Brown — Talia Hibbert

Dani had little hair, zero bees and no established habit of public nudity; nor did she devote any attention to romantic love, empirical evidence having proven it was a drain of energy that would distract from her professional goals. [p. 10]

Dani Brown is bisexual, beautiful, intellectual, and assertively non-romantic. Friends with benefits has always worked out pretty well for her (though some of her exes, such as Jo, might differ). She beseeches the goddess Oshun for a regular source of orgasms. What could possibly go wrong?

Dani is friends with Zafir, the ex-rugby player (and secret romance-novel fan) who works security at the university. Dani brings Zaf coffee, Zaf brings her protein bars, they snark and flirt, and they both know it could never work between them. Until one day they end up on social media tagged #couplegoals, and Zaf is offered free, positive publicity for his boys' mental health charity ... if he and Dani can pretend to be a couple for a few weeks.

What could possibly go wrong, eh?

Zaf and Dani are both very likeable, and the slow burn of their not-a-relationship-honest is paced very nicely: they both have mental health issues, in terms of being adversely affected by painful events in their pasts: the supporting cast of friends and family are all rather lovely... But: this was not the cheering read I had hoped, perhaps because I relate to some aspects of the Dani-before-Zaf mindset. Zaf tells Dani at one point why he loves romances ("book after book about people facing their issues head on, and handling it, and never, ever failing — at least, not for good..." [p. 208]) and I found this resonant, but also perhaps an indication that I shouldn't be reading romances when I'm in a cynical, misanthropic frame of mind. Take a Hint is charming, funny, sweet, well-written: and not for me, not right now. Right book, wrong time.