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]