2024/159: A Short History of Humanity: How Migration Made Us Who We Are — Johannes Krause / Thomas Trappe (translated by Caroline Waight)

If you look at the settlement of Europe as the drama it so often was, then at least 70 percent of its cast are descended from the antiheroes: the migrants who arrived on the continent and subjugated it 8,000 and 5,000 years ago. [loc. 2165]

An informative, accessible and fascinating book about archaeogenetics and what the study of ancient humans' DNA can tell us about patterns of migration. It's Eurocentric, but that allows the authors -- Johannes Krause, director of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Biology, and journalist Thomas Trappe -- to focus on the origins of present-day Europeans, and the waves of migration that have swept over the continent from east to west.

There's a thorough examination of the role of plague in human history, from its effect on migration (easier to migrate into an area where most of the population has died) to the lingering fear of migrants bearing disease. I hadn't known that there was a 'first wave' of plague, non-bubonic and probably transmitted to humans by Asian horses, in the Mesolithic: that variant died out just as bubonic plague was evolving. Nor did I realise that after regular outbreaks of plague in the early medieval period (including the Plague of Justinian), the disease went dormant -- at least in Europe -- for centuries before the lethal epidemic of the mid-fourteenth century. The reason is unknown, but Krause hypothesises that earlier outbreaks, as well as cultural and social changes, had reduced population density to a level which precluded mass outbreaks. (He also points out that 50% of medieval plague infections were non-lethal, and conferred lifelong immunity on survivors.)

Also fascinating was the discussion of non-Homo Sapiens DNA inheritance: in sub-Saharan Africa there are no traces of Neanderthal DNA, whereas it's 2.5% in Europeans. Indigenous peoples of Australia and Papua New Guinea are about 7% descended from Neanderthals and Denisovans. It's not only different human species that can be detected in DNA: Southern Europeans, and especially Sardinians, have less genetic indication of incoming migration than in other areas.

There are also intriguing insights into the origins of syphilis (not a souvenir brought back to Europe by Columbus' crew) and the spread of tuberculosis and leprosy. And despite the violence and disease historically introduced by waves of migrants, Krause is at pains to stress that 'human beings are born travelers; we are made to wander.' He argues against the ways in which genetic evidence has been used to fuel ethnic conflicts, and explains how genetic differences are reducing as humans become ever more mobile. And he stresses that the issues facing the world today 'are constants in human history: deadly pandemics and constant migration'.

A really good read: full of science, but with a distinctly humanist slant and a refreshing refusal to interpret prehistory through the lens of the present.

2024/158: Signal to Noise — Silvia Moreno-Garcia

He lifted the needle. There was the faint scratch against the vinyl and then the song began to play.
“Okay, now we hold hands and dance around it,” Meche said.
“Really,” Sebastian replied dryly.
“Yes. That’s what witches do. They dance around the fire. Only we don’t have a fire, so we’ll dance around the record player.” [loc. 983]

It's 2009, and IT professional Meche is returning to Mexico City for the first time in twenty years, to attend her father's funeral. It's 1988, and Meche is 15, hanging out with literature-mad Sebastian and young-for-her-age Daniela, and discovering that the three of them can do magic. Alternating between the two timelines, Signal to Noise is the story of what went wrong between Meche and Sebastian, Meche and her parents, Meche and herself.

This was Moreno-Garcia's first novel, and features some predictable plot elements and occasional clunky sentences. We never get an explanation of the magic, or why only some records (physical records! those round things!) work as magical foci. And I'd have liked more about the grandmother's history, and her sacrifice. But I liked the atmosphere of a Mexico City high school; the way that music twines through the story; the relationship between Meche and Sebastian, and the uncomfortable dynamics of Meche's family; the way that the past must be faced before it can be left behind.

I bought this in September 2020, 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.

2024/157: The House of the Stag — Kage Baker

“But this is all absurd!”
“Isn’t it? I lie to survive, because people fear and respect a black mask more than an honest face. Life became much simpler once I understood that.” [p. 288]

This has been on my wishlist for ages, and was suddenly, briefly affordable...

Gard grows up in a close-knit family among a tribe of gentle forest dwellers, the Yendri. He's bigger and stronger than the other boys, and he doesn't believe in the divinity of the newly-arrived prophet. Then come the Riders, who enslave the Yendri: the prophet Beloved walks through walls, tending to the wounded and despairing, but Gard would rather fight back in more physical ways. He ends up exiled, and trying to climb the mountains beyond which lies a fabled promised land ... and finds himself, crippled by frostbite, prisoner and slave to a coven of immortal mages who employ hordes of demons to keep their Citadel running. Gard attracts the eye of the ambitious Lady Pirihine, Narcissus of the Void: he also befriends a number of demons, including the lovely, deadly Balnshik. Trained as a gladiator and then as a mage, Gard learns a great deal about the world and about his own nature. Then the Citadel is destroyed, and Gard turns to acting ... but his ultimate aim is to become a Dark Lord, with his own mountain stronghold and (obviously) werewolf valet.

Meanwhile the Yendri are flourishing under the care of a young woman known as the Saint, who is pure and compassionate and sensible. I am not comfortable with the circumstances of her first meeting with the Master of the Mountain... But on the whole (and despite slavery and genocide and rape and murder and some deeply unpleasant scenes) this is a cheering and gently humorous novel. It doesn't shy from the horrors of the world, but neither does it linger on them. Instead, it shows us people making the best of their situations: it shows us kindness and forgiveness, loyalty and just deserts, and a multitude of magics, from theatre to magecraft to the inner lives of demons. There were moments when I wanted to look away -- but more moments where I smiled, or laughed aloud, or reread a conversation just to relish Baker's humour. I wish she'd lived longer and written more.

I realised about halfway through that this was actually a prequel to The Anvil of the World, which I read nearly 20 years ago and now want to reread!

2024/156: Where the Dead Wait — Ally Wilkes

When animals were slaughtered -- butchered correctly -- they’d have the blood drained. This was the stink of something still fat with blood. Being cooked hastily, for starving men. Something was in the room with them. [p. 127]

I'd found All the White Spaces compelling and well-written, so was keen to read Wilkes' second novel. Her prose is still resonant and evocative, but I didn't enjoy Where the Dead Wait as much: partly, I think, because I didn't find the protagonist (William 'Eat-Em-Fresh' Day) as sympathetic as Jonathan in the previous book, and partly because I found the cannibalism thoroughly unpleasant.

There's a lot more than cannibalism to this novel of 19th-century Arctic exploration. The focal character is William Day, disgraced survivor of a polar expedition, who returns to the Arctic thirteen years later because his second-in-command, Jesse Stevens, has gone missing in the same area. Those members of the original expedition who made it home had resorted to 'the last desperate resource' -- a euphemism for cannibalism -- but Day knows, though has not revealed, that Stevens' nature held darker secrets. Day, who was in inadmissable and unrequited love with Stevens, is accompanied on the rescue mission by old crew mates and a gang of whalers who survived a shipwreck but were changed by it, and by two especially unwelcome passengers: Stevens' wife, a medium, and Avery, a newspaper reporter. Three unwelcome passengers, perhaps: for whenever Day looks into a mirror, or catches a glimpse of a reflection, Stevens is there.

The gradual revelation of the earlier expedition's fate, told in parallel with the second voyage, is excellently paced. Day's slow disintegration has an inevitability as horrific as the events that haunt him. The characters are intriguing (especially Arctic Highlander Qila, and Olive Stevens the medium) and the tension between them palpable. Elements of colonialism ('the expedition’s first acts had been to claim the land around them, as if theirs to do so'); echoes of Heart of Darkness and The Terror. But I now know much more than I wanted to know about cannibalism and the preparation and cooking of human flesh.

They’d taken the good cuts first. And then, with almost unimaginable hubris, they’d buried what was left. [p. 173]

2024/155: We Are All Ghosts in the Forest — Lorraine Wilson

They were not ghosts, but the forest was not just a forest anymore and people had written far too many stories about wolves for them to be unchanged. You tell a thing it is hungry enough times, can you blame it for hunting? [loc. 2388]

Katerina, formerly a photojournalist, lives in her dead grandmother's house, near a small village in Estonia. The villagers think she's a witch (they're right) because she has a knack for herbalism, a talent for talking to bees, a coat whose pockets nearly always give her what she needs, and a ghost cat named Orlando. The forest is semi-sentient, and full of ghosts from the Crash -- when the internet collapsed in on itself, spawning infectious digital ghosts that might be fragments of birdsong, or a galloping horse, or sentient fungus. Or wolves out of fairytales, more intelligent and malevolent than their natural cousins.

The novel begins with Katerina returning to her village with a young boy in tow. His name is Stefan, and he's mute: he gave Katerina a note from his father (a man she doesn't know) asking her to take care of his son. Katerina teaches him to manage the basic tasks of the farm, and tries to find out what became of his father. Could he be somehow linked to the new and terrible illness that's killing travellers? And can Katerina -- with the help of the forest, and the bees, and even the ghosts -- find a cure for it?

This is a slow, dreamy novel, beautifully written and suffused with loneliness and mystery: it reveals its secrets only gradually. The characters seem defined as much as by what they've lost (Katerina mourning her sister, Jaakob trying to 'fish' for the ghost of his husband, Stefan missing his father) as by what they do. There is prejudice (Katerina, as well as being a witch and a traveller, is mixed-race) and xenophobia. The post-technological society that Wilson depicts is as mystical as it's practical. There is great power in stories, and in the ways those stories are told.

Pragmatic and practical, Katerina's inner conflict between her compassion and her fear of emotional connection is vividly depicted: I liked her interactions with the (sometimes prickly) villagers, and she won me over by sprinkling salt on Orlando the Ghost Cat, who turns black to soak up the heat of a stray sunbeam. 'Salt strengthens the signal... Or the current, if that’s how it works. Electricity, either way. Copper powder works better but it also lasts longer and then he starts shredding the rugs'. Definite pandemic vibes here, too, with the isolation and the constant threat of infection... A slow read, but a beautiful one.

Thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for the advance review copy, in exchange for this full honest review. UK Publication Date is 07 NOV 2024.

2024/154: Dreadnought — April Daniels

The dirty little secret about growing up as a boy is if you’re not any good at it, they will torture you daily until you have the good graces to kill yourself. [loc. 82]

YA superhero fiction. Danny, fifteen, has gone to the shopping mall to buy nail polish and is hiding out in an alleyway painting her toenails: it's the one way she can rebel against being stuck in a boy's body. Then a superhero, Dreadnought, falls out of the sky. Dying, he passes his 'mantle' -- his powers -- to Danny. And part of that mantle is changing the recipient's body to match their self-image. 'That is not the chest I woke up with', observes Danny.

She's finally herself: but her transformation is only the start of the novel. It's not easy being a fifteen-year-old superhero, but it's even harder being a girl with an abusive father who could never have accepted Danny's transgender identity, and refuses to believe that Danny can be happy about her new body. Danny quickly discovers that her best friend David is actually a complete jerk: but she makes a new friend, Latina vigilante Calamity. Calamity's a 'greycape', morally ambiguous: blackcapes are villains, and whitecapes are the good guys. The local whitecape chapter is the Legion Pacifica, who contact Danny and invite her to Legion Tower. Not all of the Legion are cool with the new Dreadnought, and TERFy Graywytch questions her gender. Danny's happier hanging out with Calamity and fighting crime, but their ambition is greater than their ability: going up against a major blackcape is not a smart move.

I enjoyed this a lot, though did feel that most of the characters could have done with more backstory, and indeed more personality. I'd have liked more world-building, too, though there are some intriguing snippets of superhero history: 'In the last great gasp of radio journalism, the whole world stayed glued to their sets to listen to the live reports as [the original] Dreadnought and Mistress Malice savaged each other...' But this gave me a warm glow and a nostalgic affection for the MCU in its heyday (the Legion are reminiscent of the Avengers: a super-strong fighter, an android, a Norse deity, a guy in a suit of armour, a witch...). Not sure I'll read the sequel just yet, but I'd recommend this as a fun read.

I bought this in DEC 2020, 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.

2024/153: We'll Prescribe You a Cat — Syou Ishida (translated by Emmie Madison Shimoda)

‘The amount of time you spent together probably matters, but less time doesn’t mean less love. Whether it’s a day or a year, human or cat, and even if we may never see them again, there are those who are irreplaceable in our lives.’ [loc. 2613]

Somewhere in Kyoto, in an old building down a gloomy cobbled alleyway, is the Kokoro Clinic for the Soul. It can only be found by those who need it, who are weighed down by emotional pain. And the door is very heavy, but you have to keep pushing. Inside, terse nurse Chitose will direct you to Doctor Nikké, who will -- as it says on the tin -- prescribe you a cat. An actual cat, in a carrier, with a printed instruction sheet.

We'll Prescribe You a Cat is a series of linked short stories. Kagawa is unhappy at work, and is prescribed a cat who upends his life: he ends up in a much more pleasant job. Koga loathes his new supervisor, who's full of compliments for everyone: his cat helps him connect. There's a ten-year-old girl who's struggling socially, a perfectionist who can't forgive others, a geiko who's lost her own cat and can't get over the guilt. Many of these patients also encounter Dr Kokoro, who looks exactly like Dr Nikké: and Abino the geiko is shocked to find that Nurse Chitose looks exactly like her. There are disturbing rumours about the unit occupied by the Clinic for the Soul: that it's jinxed; that it was used by unscrupulous cat breeders; that it's haunted by ghosts...

Chitose and Nikké are delightful characters, and each cat that they prescribe has a distinct personality. The patients, with their problems and their resolutions, are sensitively written, and though there are echoes of loss, grief and cruelty beneath the surface, the overall mood is joyous.

I liked this much more than I'd expected. The translation reads smoothly, and the hints of magic realism never overdone.

Buddy-read with N, but I kept getting ahead as it was so compelling.

You know the old saying, “A cat a day keeps the doctor away.” Cats are more effective than any other medicine out there.’