2025/038: Small Bomb at Dimperley — Lissa Evans

...you couldn’t give half the population a gun and send them away for five years and then expect their slippers still to fit when they came home. [loc. 1456]

Set in 1945, this novel centres on Dimperley Manor, the gently crumbling ancestral seat of the Vere-Thissett family. Felix, the dashing RAF squadron leader, has been declared dead; his wife and two teenage daughters have returned from California, where they've spent the war. His younger brother Valentine, who's dyslexic, returns from his own wartime service to find that he's now Sir Valentine, who has to deal with a damaged hand, death duties, and elderly relatives lamenting the fall of civilisation. ("...the appalling, inexplicable events of July, when the populace had flung aside Mr Churchill and filled Parliament with baying reds, there was no knowing how far or how quickly the descent would continue, how soon before the tumbrils came clattering through the lodge gates...") He also encounters the quietly efficient Zena Baxter, who was evacuated to Dimperley when it was requisitioned as a maternity hospital during the war, and has stayed on -- with her little girl, Allison -- to type up the family history being written by Uncle Alaric.

I didn't like this novel as much as Evans' other novels, but it was a calm and cheerful read. Valentine's nieces, with their weird American notions -- deodorant! talking to boys! showers! -- are a delight, as is Valentine's childhood friend Deedee, who spent the war ferrying aircraft and now faces penury and boredom. The romance is gentle and credible, the twist in Zena's story all too believable, and the underlying theme of social class never too laboured. (Pun intended.)

2025/037: The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks — Rebecca Skloot

Black scientists and technicians, many of them women, used cells from a black woman to help save the lives of millions of Americans, most of them white. And they did so on the same campus – and at the very same time – that state officials were conducting the infamous Tuskegee syphilis studies. [p. 97]

I've owned this book for a decade, and I wish I had read it sooner. It's the story of a Black woman in 1950s America, who died of cervical cancer, and whose cells (or rather whose cancer's cells) were taken and used for research. It's not clear what level of consent, if any, she gave for this. The HeLa cells grew very rapidly and, unlike other cultured cells, did not die: this made them ideal for experimental purposes. The polio vaccine was developed using HeLa cells, and HeLa cells have been sent into space, subjected to radiation, and used for medical and pharmaceutical research.

Lacks' family knew nothing of this until the mid-Seventies.

Skloot worked with the Lacks family, especially Henrietta's daughter Deborah, to explore how Henrietta Lacks' cells had achieved this semi-life of their own. It's a damning depiction of bioethical mispractice, as well as a story of systemic racism. Skloot treats the Lacks family with sympathy and sensitivity, and helps them to understand the science of the HeLa strain. They're mostly only educated to a basic level, and they are very religious. (One of the family theorises that HeLa cells are the 'spiritual body' of Henrietta Lacks.) And they are angry: "...if our mother cells done so much for medicine, how come her family can’t afford to see no doctors?" [p. 10]

This was immensely readable, with clear explanations of the science and vignettes of Lacks family life. I was a little uncomfortable about the repeated reference to 'Henrietta's cells': they were cancer cells, and their DNA is not the same as hers. But this is a world where a dead woman's cells have birthed a billion-dollar industry, and I think it's important to remember where those cells came from.

[The Marvel character Hela:] part dead and part alive, with “immeasurable” intelligence, “superhuman” strength, “godlike” stamina and durability, and five hundred pounds of solid muscle. She’s responsible for plagues, sickness, and catastrophes; she’s immune to fire, radiation, toxins, corrosives, disease, and aging. She can also levitate and control people’s minds...When Deborah found pages describing Hela the Marvel character, she thought they were describing her mother, since each of Hela’s traits in some way matched what Deborah had heard about her mother’s cells. But it turned out the sci-fi Hela was inspired by the ancient Norse goddess of death, who lives trapped in a land between hell and the living. Deborah figured that goddess was based on her mother too. [p. 254]

2025/036: Daughter of Fire — Sofia Robleda

Father’s story gods had names like Hephaestus and Hera. Mother’s were Auilix and Xbalanque. [loc. 59]

Catalina de Cerrato is 'the only legitimate mixed-blood child in town'. She grows up in Guatemala, a generation after the Spanish Conquest: her Spanish father is the Governor, her Mayan mother was executed for heresy. Catalina is a strong-willed young woman, and she's determined to honour her vow to her mother -- to preserve the Popul Vuh, a sacred text which recounts the history of the K'iche' people. In an uneasy alliance with the handsome Juan de Rojas, a Mayan descended from kings, and with her own cousin Cristóbal -- and the use of psychedelics -- Catalina transcribes the ancient legends. But her father is strict (though fair) and it's hard for Catalina to reconcile the two halves of her heritage: the Mayan myths which live vividly in her mind, and the Spanish genocide still celebrated by the older generation.

I found the historical elements of the novel more convincing than the romance, and I wasn't comfortable with the catalogue of disasters that befell Catalina. Well-written, and with vivid descriptions, Daughter of Fire includes a bibliography, and an afterword explaining the historical context. Catalina's father is not very nice to his children, but "by implementing the New Laws almost single-handedly, Don Alonso López de Cerrato achieved one of the most extraordinary feats of administration in the New World. Yet, he has been largely forgotten by history."

2025/035: Rocannon's World — Ursula Le Guin

...there were no words. Yet it asked him what he wished. “I do not know,” the man said aloud in terror, but his set will answered silently for him: I will go south and find my enemy and destroy him. [loc. 1632]

Le Guin's first published novel (1966), and not nearly as distinctive or profound as her later work: it's more readable than a lot of mid-Sixties planetary romance, though, and there are traces of themes that would appear in her later novels, such as sacrifice and colonialism.

Rocannon is a 'middle-aged' (43!) ethnologist, who -- in the opening chapter, a variant of Le Guin's short story 'Semley's Necklace' -- encounters a beautiful alien woman who has been brought by dwarven Clayfolk to retrieve an heirloom from a museum. Semley's story ends when she returns to her world and discovers that her husband is dead and her daughter an old woman: though the journey took 'one night' for her, decades have passed. It's as though she's been taken to Fairyland, and Rocannon's subsequent journey to her world has many of the trappings of a fantasy novel: a quest with a varied group of companions, a gift that is also a curse, the realisation that one can't go home again.

The main narrative begins some years later, after Rocannon has travelled to Fomalhaut II (Semley's planet) to do a survey: a stealth attack has destroyed Rocannon's spaceship and killed the rest of his team. He is stranded, and he needs to get a message to the League of All Worlds to report the ship's destruction and the presence of the lightly-sketched Enemy. He travels south, accompanied by Semley's grandson Mogien, a couple of servants, and an elven Fiia given to prophesy: his technology is mistaken for magic, and he himself for the mythological 'Wanderer': he encounters monstrous winged creatures, rough piratical types, intelligent rodents and an unseen entity who bestows a double-edged gift. And then, when his mission is accomplished, the novel concludes in less than a page. Yes, it's a short novel (originally half an Ace Double), but the pacing is ... uneven.

I did enjoy reading this, despite Rocannon's single-note character. I liked the way that the world is shaped by Rocannon's own decision to put the planet in a kind of quarantine. "...after I met Lady Semley, I went to my people and said, what are we doing on this world we don’t know anything about? Why are we taking their money and pushing them about? What right have we?" [loc. 469] And I liked the occasional phrase that rang true, that reminded me of Le Guin's later work:  "this world to which he had come a stranger across the gulfs of night" [loc. 843]

This was technically a reread, though very little felt at all familiar: I bought Rocannon's World for my father one Christmas in the ?1980s, and very likely devoured it pre-gifting. I inherited that paperback, too, and kept it until 2007. This time round I bought the compendium Worlds of Exile and Illusion, which contains Le Guin's first three novels: I'll get around to Planet of Exile and City of Illusions at some point...

2025/034: The Orb of Cairado — Katherine Addison

...one of Ulcetha's main tasks was writing fake provenances for the fake elven artefacts that came into Salathgarad's hands... It was a terrible use of second-class honors in history, but Ulcetha gritted his teeth and did it anyway because he was paid extremely well. He even came to find the work perversely interesting. [p. 8]

The events of The Goblin Emperor are triggered by the crash of an airship, which kills the emperor and all but one of his heirs. The Orb of Caraido tells the story of disgraced scholar Ulcetha Zhorvena, for whom the airship crash was a very personal tragedy: his best friend Mara was the pilot of the airship. From Mara, Ulcetha inherits a puzzle with a very academic twist that leads him back into the Department of History, from which he was expelled after being framed for the theft of the priceless Orish Veltavan. Working with historian Osmer Trenevar, Ulcetha discovers a murder, a secret love affair, and the possibility of clearing his name.

The Orb of Cairado is only about a hundred pages long, but there's a lot of plot in those pages. Ulcetha -- who likes trashy adventure novels, a taste which saves his life -- is vividly characterised, and he comes to look at his world and himself quite differently by the end of the story. I liked the backstabbing and politicking of the University, and Ulcetha's technique for gaining access to family archives: I'd happily read a whole novel about him, and it felt as though I had. The Goblin Emperor is a dense novel (I just checked the page count and was surprised to find it was under 500 pages!): The Orb of Cairado, though it has a simpler structure, is just as tightly woven. I find the Osreth books fascinating, not least because the author seldom explains much about anything. There is a weight of worldbuilding lurking beneath the surface.

2025/033: Yule Island — Johana Gustawsson

I thought, or rather I hoped, there was a man in this horrifying equation. A man who manipulated [her], perverted her, preying on her weaknesses to turn her into a monster. But the missing part of that equation was a woman... [p. 219]

Set on Storholmen, an island in the Stockholm archipelago, this is a chilly and twisty crime novel by an author who, despite her name, is French: indeed, she's known as the Queen of French Noir.

Emma Lindahl is employed to appraise the art and antiques collection of the Gussman family, whose manor house dominates Storholmen. Nine years ago, Emma's sister Sofia died on the island, her body found hanging from a tree with a pair of scissors hanging around her neck in a manner suggestive of Viking ritual. Emma does not advertise this connection, but she's keen to discover what really happened. When another young woman is murdered nearby, she encounters Detective Inspector Karl Rosén, who investigated Sofia's death and who's mourning the disappearance of his wife. The third viewpoint character is a woman named Viktoria, a housekeeper at the manor house: she's worried about her daughter Josephine, and especially Josephine's friendship with Thor, the teenaged son of her employers.

Two major twists, both of which were built on solid foundations and were credible within the story: both of which had me gaping and paging back to see how, where... The relationships between Karl, Emma, Anneli (who runs a cafe on the island), Freyja (Karl's wife) and others occasionally felt shallow, but there were also moments of great emotional complexity. Very atmospheric, and good at explaining (sometimes overexplaining) Swedish idiom, culture etc. In particular, Swedish expostulations are followed by their translation. "För helvete. For God's sake."

I did not predict the outcome, even after the twists and their sub-twists: the Viking element was neither super-intrusive nor horribly anachronistic. A shame, though, that the victims were almost all young women. And I'm not wholly convinced by the motivation behind the 'sacrifices'.

2025/032: Nowhere Else — Felicia Davin

“You know people who can travel across the universe in the blink of an eye and all you want from them is to feed your cats.” [loc. 1752]

The conclusion to the Nowhere trilogy (which began with Edge of Nowhere and continued with Out of Nowhere), this novel focuses on the scientist who caused the rift into the Nowhere: Dr Solomon Lange. He came back out of the breach greatly changed, having acquired an ability to move things with his mind and a conviction that the Nowhere provided an escape from 'the misery of embodiment'. Lange doesn't like anyone else on QSF17, except for (a) his cats and (b) possibly engineer Jake McCreery. He can hear and see the breach, which nobody else can, and he's probably the only person who can close it: but he needs a break, some time to recover from his ordeal in the Nowhere. Lange and McCreery take a trip back to Earth, to a Canadian an Alaskan shack in the wilderness: the landing pod is damaged, and he and McCreery (plus Lange's three cats) are stranded. They come to know and understand one another rather better than before.

It was initially hard to warm to either of the leads. Lange is the epitome of arrogant, asocial scientist: McCreery is preternaturally imperturbable, easy-going, and kind. In fact, the two have quite a lot in common, including a reluctance to form romantic relationships. Their time in Alaska brings them closer together, but it can't last forever. The breach is still threatening the fabric of the universe, and QSF17 -- a hollowed-out asteroid in lunar orbit -- may also be harbouring an alien intruder. Turns out it's a lot easier to save the universe if you're not working alone.

I found Lange's background, and his scientific approach to his lack of meaningful relationships, rather moving, and I liked the unexpected connection between Lange and Kit. The Lange/McCreery relationship was satisfying (as was Lange's obvious affection for his cats): however, I didn't feel that the SFnal elements of the broader plot were explored as fully as I'd have liked. A very enjoyable read, though.