2020/95: Wicked by Design -- Katy Moran

Kitto surged towards him, held back by the guards, King George’s granddaughter scowled, and Napoleon looked on. ‘My word,’ Crow said to his brother in Cornish, ‘you do seem to find yourself in some compromising situations, don’t you?’ [loc. 4029]

Sequel to False Lights, by K J Whittaker, though you wouldn't know it since that is now only available as Hester and Crow by Katy Moran. This novel is tagged as 'sexy, thrilling, swashbuckling Regency romance with a twist', which is misleading on so many levels: the 'sex scenes' are almost all abusive and non-sexy; there is no Regency, and the English throne is empty; the 'romance' really took place in the previous book, and the 'twist' is on the very first page of the novel, where the author describes 'a period of history that never happened'. ("Several years after Napoleon defeated the Duke of Wellington at the Battle of Waterloo, the French Occupation has at last been expelled from Britain. The country is on the brink of revolution – and the English throne is still empty.") 

I will grant them 'thrilling' and 'swashbuckling', though. Jack Crowlas, Lord Lamorna, is the archetypal dark, passionate hero, resisting the treasonous enthusiasms of his fellow Cornishmen; his Black wife, Hester, hides fury behind her smiles, and is every bit as capable as her husband of manipulation, intrigue and violence. Crow and Hester are united in their desire to protect their daughter Morwenna: meanwhile, Crow's younger brother Kitto, still only sixteen, has been mentioned in despatches and is on a delicate mission to St Petersburg, to locate a missing heiress and bring her home to England to assume the throne. Unfortunately, the young lady in question is less than enthusiastic about the prospect.

Moran's prose is lively and readable without seeming anachronistic, and her characters -- even the minor ones glimpsed only in passing -- are credible individuals. There are plenty of emotional peaks and troughs for all three protagonists, some pleasant (and some less pleasing) surprises, and some nice historical detail. (In the Afterword, the author mentions Captain Nadezhda Durova, author of The Cavalry Maiden; she also acknowledges a debt to Joan Aiken's The Wolves of Willoughby Chase).

In the earlier novel (False Lights) I was struck by the relative lack of racist prejudice encountered by Hester: sadly, there's a lot more of it in this novel, as she mingles with the aristocracy ('you’re hot for it, with all that African blood'; Sally, Lady Jersey, touching Hester's hair without permission; Wellington's outrage that Crow married her). Hester counters these abuses with grace and good humour (and, occasionally, laudanum and scorn): she is one of the most thoroughly competent 'Regency' heroines I've read in the last few years, and I would happily read more about her and her family. (Kitto in particular: he will go far, if he doesn't hang first.)

2020/94: The Return of the Incredible Exploding Man -- Dave Hutchinson

The thing that struck him most, as the weeks and months went by, was how matter-of-fact everyone was about the whole thing. It was as if generations of comic books and movies had made them view superpowers as something to be taken for granted. [loc. 5073]

The Return of the Incredible Exploding Man's protagonist, Alex Dolan, has a certain laid-back cynicism that reminds me of various characters from the 'Fractured Europe' series: however, this is, at least for the first two-thirds of the book, a more traditional technothriller. 

Alex is a Scottish journalist living in New York, watching the bills pile up but unable or unwilling to tackle the job market afresh after being made redundant from his high-flying print-media employment. One day he wakes up to find out that all his bills have been paid, an overture from the world's fifth richest man -- Stan Clayton, genius billionaire playboy philanthropist who's built his own supercollider and incidentally rejuvenated the small town of Sioux Crossing. Clayton wants someone to bring a sensawunda to the project, and he thinks Dolan can do the job. 

 Things are ... not quite normal in Sioux Crossing. The previous inhabitants of Alex's new house seem to have departed in quite a hurry; there are rumours of mysterious figures being sighted around town; there is surprisingly little hostility from the townsfolk towards the project which has effectively bought up their town and its economy; and a British intelligence agent is keen that Dolan report back his findings. Assuming he ever makes any. 

 It's a low-key, small-town thriller for most of the way: Clayton's supercollider doesn't actually work, Alex struggles to get his book together, there's a budding relationship that's so coyly described I really wasn't sure whether it was happening or not. Shades of Stephenson in Alex's reluctant relish of the weirdness and friendliness of his neighbours. Then ... then everything changes: and in the last few chapters it becomes quite a different sort of book, at once filled with 'sensawunda' and decidedly bleak and downbeat. And reminiscent of Watchmen (original graphic novel rather than TV). 

 It was a good read but didn't wow me in the way that much of Hutchinson's other work has done.

2020/93: A Wizard's Guide to Defensive Baking -- T. Kingfisher

It seemed like once you agreed that the government could put you on a list because of something you were born with, you were asking for trouble. [loc. 1581]

Described by the author in her afterword as 'a weird little anti-establishment book with carnivorous sourdough and armies of dead horses', which is wholly accurate. It is a delight.

Mona is fourteen years old, and lives with her aunt and uncle, who run a bakery. Mona is already a successful baker herself, a wizard of bread-dough and cookies: she knows how to persuade dough. Unfortunately, at the beginning of this novel, she discovers a dead body in the bakery, and that sets off a chain of events that endangers Mona's life and the lives of everyone in the city. Inquisitor Oberon is cracking down on magic-users, requiring them to register with the Loyalty Board 'for their own safety'. Mona's friend Knackering Molly (whose companion is a dead horse, and who is not wholly sane) warns her that magickers from the poorer parts of town are disappearing. The police have become a force to be feared. And the Golden General, the city's hero, has led the army off to confront a threat that may not be real.

This is a novel about the downside of being the teenager who saves the day. Mona, with the dead girl's brother Spindle (who's about ten) keeps asking why none of the grown-ups have stopped things before they got this bad. She does not feel qualified to be a hero: "It doesn’t make you a hero just because everybody else didn’t do their job." And she is not especially brave: it's just that circumstances conspire to put her in terrifying situations.

Being a T Kingfisher novel, though, it's funny as well as dark. Mona's gingerbread-man familiar is cute, and Bob (the rat-eating sourdough starter) is a truly unique character. There's a Diana Wynne Jones feeling to some of the characters, and an irreverent note to Mona's thoughts as she hides, and runs, and breaks in, and fights. I also liked the way that everything wasn't all right at the end of the book.

Great fun, quite dark, very timely. Also made me want a sourdough starter of my very own.

2020/92: Powers -- Ursula Le Guin

I was able to see, in part at least, why the Mother and Father had betrayed my trust. The master lives in the same trap as the slave, and may find it even harder to see beyond it. [p. 456]

Gavir and his sister Sallo are from the Marshes, but they don't remember their early years: they were enslaved as children, and now serve a wealthy patrician family in the city of Etra. Gavir has an eidetic memory, and the gift of 'remembering things that are going to happen'. The former grants him good treatment and education, since he will grow up to be a teacher, but the latter (according to Sallo) is something he should never mention.

Life is, on the whole, pleasant for Gavir. He is encouraged to read, his duties are light, he likes the Family and most of his fellow slaves. He has enough to eat and a comfortable place to sleep, and he is not beaten. When the Family go to their summer residence, he goes with them, and the children all play together. But he is a slave, and so is Sallo: and when tragedy strikes, Gavir walks away.

And keeps walking. He finds a hermit in the forest, and then a city of outlaws; he finds his way back to the Marshes, but no place for him to remain; he resolves to set out for the distant city of Mesun, to the University where the poet Caspro -- author of Cosmologies, a book that has been Gavir's solace in his wanderings -- lives and works.

The depiction of slavery in this novel reminded me of fictional depictions of slavery in the classical world (think Rosemary Sutcliff, Mary Renault, Lindsay Davies et cetera): caste-based, generally humane, almost just another way of working for a living. Powers showed the underside of that system, and how difficult it is to understand and define individual freedom when one has grown up enslaved. It also contains a harrowing description of what can befall a woman who is merely a possession. (And this is not the only harrowing passage in the novel.)

I found Gavir's wanderings somewhat long-winded and rambling: there was a long stretch in the middle of the book where I wondered if he was ever going to settle, if anything was ever going to resolve. But it does.

Like the previous two novels in the 'Annals of the Western Shore' trilogy (Gifts and Voices) this is a story about the power of stories: Powers balances prophecy and remembrance, and shows how freedom is rooted in an understanding of possibilities: other worlds, other lives.

2020/91: Voices -- Ursula Le Guin

A generation learns that knowledge is punished and safety lies in ignorance. The next generation doesn’t know they’re ignorant, because they don’t know what knowledge was. [p. 80]

Memer is a child of rape in Ansul, a city occupied by the Alds, who fear and destroy books. In the house where Memer lives, there is a secret library: the head of the household, the Waylord, can enter it, and so can Memer. She is devoted to the Waylord, who's crippled by the torture he endured as a prisoner of the Alds: he teaches her to read, and together they take joy in the stories and histories they share.

When Memer is seventeen, a famous storyteller from the Uplands comes to Ansul, with his wife and her companion half-lion. (These are Orrec and Gry from Gifts, the preceding book in the 'Annals of the Western Shore' trilogy.) The Waylord welcomes them as guests, and even while rebellion is fomenting in the city, their tales spur him to reclaim his family's heritage, the ancient Oracle whose words might yet bring freedom. And Memer discovers that words have power, whether or not they are written down; and that stories, retold and amended, can change the world.

Another beautifully-written and reflective book, about the power of story and the ways in which secret stories, the legacy of an oppressed people, can change the world. I very much liked the relationship between the Waylord and Memer, and it was good to see Orrec and Gry free of the stifling traditions of the Domains. Also, half-lion!

2020/90: Gifts -- Ursula Le Guin

...treasuring the written words not only for the story they told but for what I saw hidden in them: all the other stories. The stories my mother told. And the stories no one had ever told. [loc. 640]

First read in 2007 (review here): I remembered some aspects of the story, but not its ending.

Orrec is the heir to Caspromant, a windswept and mountainous domain. His mother Melle comes from the Lowlands, with a wealth of stories: his father Canoc is Brantor of Caspromant, bearing the Gift of his lineage -- the gift of undoing. With a glance and a gesture, he can break a bowl, wither a willow wand, kill a rat. The Gift is their protection, but Orrec worries that he hasn't inherited it. His nightmares are of accidental destruction, or of failing his father. His friend Gry sympathises, but can't truly understand: her Gift, of calling animals (but not to the hunt), comes easily to her.

As tensions rise between the families of the Uplands, Canoc is increasingly insistent that Orrec use and nurture his Gift: and, to protect (and perhaps to warn) others, he has Orrec wear a blindfold so that he doesn't inadvertently turn his destructive power on an unintended target.

The novel opens with a visitor, a thief from the Lowlands who delights in the stories told by Orrec and by Gry: indeed, various stories are woven through the whole of the book. Melle brings literacy to Caspromant, but there is a strong oral tradition too. Orrec learns to become himself through the stories he hears, and reads, and retells: he begins to realise that he would rather make than unmake, that he would rather invent and imagine than destroy. But the blindfold, the implicit threat, is another kind of story, and one that Orrec -- perhaps prompted by the thief Emmon's questions -- eventually rejects. Why must the Gifts be harmful and destructive? Why must he play a role he doesn't want?

One aspect of this story that I didn't recall, but that resonated powerfully with me this time around, was the final argument between Orrec and his father. Orrec accuses Canoc of making him a threat, a weapon: and Canoc never has the chance to respond. Does he truly believe that Orrec's Gift is so dangerous? I found that lack of closure tragic.

Beautifully written, a story about the power of stories: I read this for lockdown bookclub and was inspired to read the other two books in the 'Western Shore' trilogy, which I'd owned for years but never opened.

2020/89: Magpie Lane -- Lucy Atkins

I remember the day she spoke to me for the first time because that was the day I found her in the priest’s hole eating dead bees. [loc. 1544]

Magpie Lane opens with a police interview: a girl of 8, Felicity, has gone missing, and her nanny Dee is being questioned. Over the course of the novel, and the interview, she reflects on the events that have led to this point: her first encounter with the new Master of an Oxford college, Nick Law, and his desperate need for a nanny for his daughter; the high-flying lives of Nick and his pregnant second wife Mariah, a restorer of vintage wallpaper; the shadowy figure of Ana, the deceased first wife who was Felicity's mother; the historian Linklater who shows Dee a side of Oxford that she had never realised existed; and at the heart of it all, Felicity, who likes to collect bones and relics, who is terrified of the cupboard in her room, and who does not speak to anyone except her father.

It's Felicity who is the focus of Dee's narrative: a lonely, frightened child, with a great deal of trauma in her past and -- perhaps -- a sensitivity to the supernatural. Nick and Mariah metamorphose from genial, grateful (if occasionally dictatorial) parents, neglecting Felicity but trusting Dee to care for her, to vengeful opponents recasting Dee's time in their employment as a time of deceit and betrayal.

It's true that Dee has secrets, a past she hasn't revealed to anyone. Once she was a promising mathematician: she still works on a mathematical proof, and she teaches Felicity about Penrose tiles. Something catastrophic happened to her twenty-six years before the events of this novel: only gradually is that catastrophe revealed, and Dee's background sketched out. That background, it turns out, informs her relationship with Felicity, and perhaps also with Linklater.

I'm in two minds about this novel. I found almost all of it immensely compelling, thoroughly readable, well-paced and without unnecessary twistiness: however, I was unconvinced by the Epilogue, when the truth of the matter becomes apparent. That truth makes perfect sense but there are aspects of the situation that seem rather too easy.

Still, an accomplished Gothic novel with a supernatural element that's subtle enough to be dismissed as a product of the characters' imaginations. Dee is an excellent narrator and protagonist, and my heart ached for Felicity (and thoroughly approved of her upsetting Mariah with bones and circles of salt). I really liked Dee's plain, raw voice, and the atmospheric descriptions of Oxford. I'll read more by this writer.