2026/071: Planesrunner — Ian McDonald

It was a deep, dark shock, a fist clenched around the heart, for Everett to realise that every decision he had made, every action he had taken, had caused someone to pay a high and terrible price. It was never like that in the action movies. There were never any consequences. [loc. 3205]

On a rainy December night in London, thirteen-year-old Everett is walking along the Mall to meet his father Dr Tajendra Singh: they're going to a lecture on nanotechnology at the ICA. Then Tajendra is abducted, leaving Everett with a few photos of the car in which he was taken away -- and, soon, an email that plunges Everett (named after Hugh Everett, who developed the Many Worlds theory) into a complex and perilous quest through multiple realities. Tajendra knows his son's aptitude for maths, pattern-spotting and connections. He's made plans to cover every contingency, and his priority has been to safeguard the infundibulum, a map of the multiverse which can lead the bearer -- via Heisenberg gates -- to trillions of other Earths.

I love the worldsbuilding: the world where Einstein was a quantum theorist, the world where the Moors invaded Britain after the Romans, the world where something mysterious has happened to the moon, even the world where, in 2010 or so, Michael Portillo is PM.  And of course E3, which is where Everett finds himself at the end of Planesrunner -- on an airship, in the company of multiple strong female characters. (E3's London is fascinating, not least for its variations on the inequalities of race, class and gender.) The YA label, and the sometimes-predictable plot beats, don't detract from Planesrunner's pleasures, and Everett is a likeable, relatable and interesting protagonist, solidly grounded in the mundane realities of teenage life despite being plunged into adventure.

This is Ian McDonald's first YA novel, which I purchased in 2013 and have unaccountably left in the TBR for all those years. I shall be reading the other two novels in the Everness trilogy soon, and not only for Everett's adventures and a conclusion to the story. 

2026/070: The Paranormal Ranger — Stanley Milford Jr

Just because I cannot fully explain the event doesn't make me think it wasn't real... my experiences with the paranormal have taught me to coexist with mystery when I must.

Subtitled 'A Navajo Investigator’s Search for the Unexplained', this is Stanley Milford Jr's account of his life as a Navajo Ranger -- a law enforcement officer in the Navajo reservation, responsible for a vast area with a relatively low population. While much of his work was mundane, there were some cases that (at least in the eyes of those involved) had a paranormal aspect: skinwalkers, aliens, hauntings, Bigfoot. Always careful to ensure that the person reporting a crime or an issue felt heard, Milford was also intrigued by the unexplained.

Much of the book is narrated by Milford himself (he has a very restful voice), with Duane Milard voicing the chapters that recount Navajo myth. Milford's parents were Navajo and Cherokee, and he grew up hearing the legends and traditions of both tribes. His theories about the paranormal, unsurprisingly, draw heavily on these legends, especially the concept of parallel planes of existence. And he does present his views as theories, rather than certainties.

This book offers an insight into 21st-century indigenous attitudes towards the unexplained, and towards mainstream Western culture that dismisses 'superstition'. And it reminds us that 'urban myths' (here, of course, not exactly urban!) serve a social purpose -- warnings and checks on antisocial behaviour -- as well as, perhaps, documenting the incursions of the uncanny.

2026/069: Floating Hotel — Grace Curtis

Media featuring extra-terrestrial intelligence (‘subversions of the supremacy of man’) had been banned Empire-wide for several generations. Even the word ‘alien’ made Uwade flinch with taboo. [p. 37]

It's the 29th century. Humanity has spread across the galaxy. The Empire -- and its 500-year-old Emperor -- governs many planets, quite a few of which are gutted for their resources before being abandoned, their populace sent to mine the next resource-rich world. 

But there is still luxury: the Grand Abeona Hotel (really more of an interstellar cruise liner) travels its leisurely circuit, offering an 'analogue paradise' that is screen-free, along with the luxuries and services of a lost golden age. The hotel's manager is Carl, who came aboard as a stowaway some decades before and became the protege of the then-manager, Nina Windrose. The crew members he's recruited are, like him, people with secrets in their pasts, people with something to run away from. But this circuit is different: the seditionist revolutionary known as the Lamplighter has been traced to the Abeona, and the Empire are keen to apprehend him.

Each chapter focuses on a different individual, from Carl himself to Daphne (brought aboard as the maid to a vapid socialite, abandoned by her and promptly offered a waitressing job) to Professor Azad (a delegate at the annual Problem Solvers’ Conference, held on board, who's paired with a young analyst who's her polar opposite), from Mr and Mrs Applegate (Imperial spies and torturers) to Angoulême the lounge pianist, from Rogan (the lifeguard who can't swim) to Uwade (the receptionist who believes someone is sending her love poems -- actually Shakespeare sonnets). Switching from character to character gives the novel a somewhat fragmented feel, but the plot ticks along in the background, sometimes very subtly.

Floating Hotel has been acclaimed as 'cosy found-family in space' -- though see above under 'torturers': there are some dark and nasty scenes). I'd disagree. There's an ambitious plot thread about what the Problem Solvers' Conference is actually solving, as well as the quest for the mysterious Lamplighter and the undercurrent of revolutionary sentiment. Though the denouement felt somewhat flat in contrast to the rest of the novel, I thoroughly enjoyed the entire experience.

I was reminded of  The Grand Budapest Hotel, and also of Claire North's excellent Slow Gods, perhaps because of the broad sweep of different cultures, perhaps because of the foregrounding of social class. Narratively speaking, they are very different -- tight first-person versus multiple vignettes -- but there's an innate optimism to both.

A couple of editing quibbles: a place where metal things are made is not a 'forgery', and if someone has omitted a pedicure they will not demonstrate unpainted nails by spreading their hands...

2026/068: She Made Herself a Monster — Anna Kovatchevka

"Humans have always needed people like me—as long as we’ve needed monsters.”
... “Do people need monsters?”
“A person can’t fight a plague, but they can fight the beast that cursed them with it. If not vampire or varkolak, it’s the Devil, or it’s witches. My way doesn’t end in witch burnings.” [loc. 1308]

Anka was orphaned on the night she was born: a house fire, a mother giving birth on bare earth lit by flames. The people of Koprivci, a small town in Bulgaria, believe Anka is the reason for the streak of stillbirths and fevers that has claimed nearly all of the children born in the last sixteen years.

Anka is miserable and lonely: her only close friend, Margarita, is to be married soon, to her childhood sweetheart. Her cousin Kiril (with whom she's had a love-hate relationship since they were little) is back from medical school, planning to rid the town of superstition and apply the techniques of modern medicine. And her uncle, known as the Captain, is determined to marry Anka herself as soon as she starts menstruating. Luckily the housekeeper, Yulia, is on her side, and helps her conceal her periods and consult with Minka, the village midwife.

Then a stranger comes to Koprivci: Yana, whose face looks shadowed even in bright light (I think she has vitiligo) and who is a self-proclaimed hunter of vampires and witches. There's certainly a witch in town, according to the townsfolk: Nina, a young widow, who's spent four months in the town jail. But when Yana arrives, occult signs multiply: dead hens, eggs full of blood... It's beginning to look as though there is a vampire in Koprivci: there is certainly a predator.

She Made Herself a Monster builds slowly, exploring ritual and story-telling: it's punctuated by Slavic folk tales, which cast the story's events in different lights. There's a deliciously Gothic ambience, but the rumours and stories of the supernatural are never precisely resolved. The focus is on Anka, and her relationships -- with Kiril, with Margarita, with the Captain, and especially with Yana. Anka is stronger than she seems at first, and she has agency: and in the febrile, superstitious atmosphere of Koprivci, the right words at the right time can spark a conflagration.

NB: The author was born in Bulgaria, but now lives in America: the novel was written in English.

2026/067: How to be Human — Paula Cocozza

She stared at him, her gaze a kind of cage, throwing down bars to the lawn to keep him trapped. One moment of inattention, and he would be free. [p. 7]

Mary, who lives in East London, has recently split up with her abusive fiancé Mark: she's kept the house, and has a comfortable life with little excitement or social contact. Her next-door neighbours, Michelle and Eric, have a new baby named Flora, to whom Mary is drawn. But she's also fascinated by the dog fox who frequents her garden. 

Gradually, as her life outside the house diminishes (signed off sick from her stressful job, more or less disconnected from her mother) she begins to form a kind of relationship with the fox. 'He was her friend. He alone knew that she was not so strange.' He comes into her house, he brings her presents -- boxer shorts, an egg, a shoe, a glove -- and she tries to name him (Sunset? Darcy? Red?) without success. '...he really wasn’t hers to name.'

It's soon obvious that Mary is not only introverted, but possibly losing her grip on reality. On the other hand, the fox is very real, and some of the novel is narrated from his viewpoint. His pregnant mate was killed by a car last autumn: now, in an urban summer, he forms a definite bond with 'human Female' and mistrusts Mark when he reappears at Michelle and Eric's barbeque. ('Salty snail odour tunnelled into his muzzle. From the fresh male who was an old male who was a slithery male...Come fresh to stalk around the human Female with sly feet and rippety eyes. Spruckling toadsome.')

Mary's slide into insanity -- taping up the front door; obsessing about Flora and the need to teach her Mary's own, new-found, love of the natural world; basically abandoning her job -- was uncomfortable to read, but her joy in the fox was a delight. It's hard to tell, though, how much of what happens on the page is real in any objective sense. For instance, it becomes clear fairly late in the novel that the 'abusive' Mark may have been a victim of Mary's own violent impulses. (He's still unpleasant, though.) Mary isn't the only character with psychological issues: Michelle is clearly suffering from post-natal depression. When Flora briefly goes missing, it triggers some unpleasant scenes.

Despite the anguish, the psychological issues and the tensions, I liked this novel a great deal, especially the fox-viewpoint passages and Mary's bliss in the natural world. How to be Human is a twisty novel, and while Mary is not a wholly likeable character, Cocozza's portrayal of her is a fascinating portrait of an unusual human.

...he bent one ear back \ to the human Female on the move through the ferns / one ear forward to the new noise. [p. 183]

2026/066: Beyond the Blue Horizon — Alexander Frater

[the] Imperial passengers... set off knowing they were flying the flag that held sovereignty over much of the territory through which they would pass. That, I thought, must have been immensely reassuring. All I had were a lot of last-minute worries, a closely typed seven-page itinerary and a booklet of tickets which, my exhausted travel agent said, was probably the largest ever issued on British Airways coupons. [p.40]

Frater, who was deputy editor and travel editor for the Observer, took a break from journalism to attempt a recreation of the Imperial Airways 'Eastbound Empire' service, inaugurated in 1936, which took nine days and stopped at 35 airports en route.

Frater is fascinated by the machinery of flight (he's keen on telling us about the engines of each plane he flies on) and, especially, by the travails of early air travel. Imperial Airways used 'flying boats' for much of the journey from London to Brisbane, which wasn't an option open to Frater: instead he zigzagged around the route, having to backtrack in order to visit every stopping-point. Desert forts in Saudi Arabia (where Imperial's aircraft used to fly in pairs), small towns on remote islands... 'It was thus essential to get to Calcutta in time for the Dhaka flight but, by the same token, I had to make my way there via Kanpur and Allahabad, both Imperial fuelling halts.' [p.212]. Some stops were more fraught than others: though he was welcomed everywhere, the welcome sometimes -- for instance, in Timor, mid-civil war -- firmly prevented him from exploring on his own.

Of course the world has changed since 1936... though it's also changed since this book was written in the early 1980s. ('I smoked a cigarette, recalling that I wouldn’t have been allowed to do so aboard an HP 42...' [p. 42]). Some of Frater's attitudes felt very dated to me: the way he sums up every woman he meets -- stewardesses, airport operatives, hotel staff -- by their size, eye colour and demeanour; his way of reporting the speech of those for whom English is a second language; his visit to a sex club in Bangkok. On the other hand, some things don't change: a security officer warns Frater that there are rumours of Iran closing the Straits of Hormuz...

I learnt a lot about early aviation, with particular reference to this most luxurious of routes: the steward's first duty in the morning, apparently, was to uncork the clarets and let them breathe in time for lunch. The technology in use was primitive in the extreme: 'Imperial’s engineers were asked urgently to devise equipment that would give a true indication of altitude. What they came up with were net containers secured to each wingtip and filled with pingpong balls. At the appropriate moment the nets were released and the balls bouncing across the limpid surface gave the pilot his crucial visual reference.' [p. 55]

A very enjoyable and informative read, despite my sense that I wouldn't have warmed to the author in person. That said, his enthusiasm, knowledge and gift for conversation -- he seems to have talked to everyone -- did a great deal to balance his flaws.

Apparently there's a film, The Last African Flying Boat, partly based on this book: it won a BAFTA for Best Documentary.

2026/065: Renaissance — E H Lupton

“Ulysses?”
When he looked back, Eli said, carefully, “It’s pull the lever, not throw yourself in front of the trolley to save everyone.”
Ulysses exhaled. “It’s a thought experiment, Doc...” [loc. 3320]

Fifth in the 'Wisconsin Gothic' series which began with Dionysus in Wisconsin: in this instalment, Sam and Ulysses are planning a quiet summer, until Ekaterina (Ulysses' Russian grandmother) is hospitalised by a fall which she claims was due to a magical phenomenon. 

Sam, meanwhile, is sad that Ellen and Harry are moving to California -- and perturbed by the sense that there's something the library wants to tell him. While Ulysses is running himself ragged juggling hospital duty and mentoring a non-binary student, Sam wonders if last year's prophecy of 'something bad' might be coming true.  Is it coincidence that, Ekaterina incapacitated, an old enemy has resurfaced?

Oddly slow, despite the various menaces, though things speed up rapidly at the end. I'm intrigued by glimpses of Laz and Eli (the latter searching for premises in which he can set up his clinic for magic-users) and sad that, per the author, this is the last in the series to be focussed on Sam and Ulysses. I'll miss them -- but I am interested to see how things work out for Laz and Eli, and what becomes of Peregrine. And maybe one day we'll get more of Tim's story...

Coincidentally, I started reading this as I was finishing Silent Spring -- which is mentioned in the novel!