2026/057: You Dreamed of Empires — Álvaro Enrigue (translated by Natasha Wimmer)

It never occurred to them, of course, that half the sauces of the dishes they had just eaten were moderately hallucinogenic, and thus their delectable sense of relaxation was in truth a welcome to the esoteric between-place where the Colhua permanently resided. [loc. 278]

I had been expecting a fictionalised account of Hernán Cortés' 'conquest' of Tenochtitlán, the capital of the so-called Aztec empire. (Enrigue points out that the inhabitants 'identified as Tenochca, the descendents of Tenoch': 'Aztec' is lazy shorthand by 19th century historians.) My expectations were subverted, exceeded and left by the wayside, for this is a manic and unpredictable novel: set on a single day (9th November 1519) when Cortés and his soldiers enter Tenochtitlán and meet Moctezuma.

Cortés, here, is less a conquistador than a slaver and pirate. His intentions have been overtaken by ambition, and by the support and influence of the local tribes. He has no idea whether they will be allowed to leave the city (which is a Borgesian labyrinth of corridors and rooms), and he doesn't realise that Moctezuma is less interested in the Spanish than in the cabuayos they rode in on. Moctezuma, meanwhile, is permanently high -- his shaman somewhat exasperated by his craving for more hallucinogens -- but sharp enough to deal conclusively with vexing family matters as well as with his barbaric guests.

Enrigue has immense fun with the scenario. He switches tenses, shifts focus, editorialises from his twenty-first century perspective, and has Moctezuma hearing T Rex's 'Monolith' -- perhaps what Enrigue was listening to himself, when he wrote.

I love this room, said Moctezuma, you can’t imagine how I miss being a priest. Where there were splotches of blood, he saw sprays of flowers. The withered fingers of the hands of great warriors sacrificed during the year’s festivals swayed pleasingly like the branches of a small tree to the beat of some music he couldn’t place, though in a possible future we would have recognised it. It was T. Rex’s ‘Monolith’. [loc. 1886]

(The lack of quotation marks, indeed of any conventional marking of speech, is a quirk of style that made me pay more attention to who was speaking, rather than on the rhythms of dialogue.)

You Dreamed of Empires strays far from the usual remit of historical fiction, but it's gloriously counterfactual and immense fun, vividly described (for instance, the reek of dried blood from the priests who sit near Captain Jazmin Caldera at dinner; the difficulty of cutting one's toenails with a dagger; the shadows cast by floating flowers in a pool) and exuberantly revolutionary.

2026/056: The Luminous Dead — Caitlin Starling

“That was the look of somebody resigned to being the monster they knew they were.”

Gyre lives on Cassandra-5, a planet with immense mineral wealth but little else to commend it. She takes a contract to explore a particular cave system -- dangerous, because the caves are often collapsed by native beasts called Tunnellers -- which will pay enough money for her to get off-world and search for her mother. She's been surgically fitted into a life-support suit, and she expects to find a full team supporting her by comms. Instead, she gets a single person: a woman named Em.

Neither Gyre nor Em has been wholly honest. Gyre's lied about her experience: Em hasn't revealed the true purpose of the mission, or the number of failed (and fatal) attempts already made. But it's Em who's in the position of power. She can order Gyre's suit to dispense drugs, sedating her: she can even manipulate the suit remotely, dragging Gyre along.

In the darkness of the caves, Gyre keeps feeling that she's not alone. That she's being watched. And she catches glimpses of things that can't be there -- that Em assures her aren't there. But she can't trust Em...

This is an immensely claustrophobic novel: Gyre imprisoned in her suit, unable even to touch her own skin; repetitive conversations between Em and Gyre; the physical dangers of the cave, and the possibility that Gyre has been exposed to something psychotropic. Gyre has no friends, and only the memory of her mother to motivate her. Em is an orphan, who's sent many to their deaths and seems likely to do the same to Gyre.

I found this slow, and often repetitive. There are only so many sumps Gyre could swim through before it felt tedious: there are only so many arguments that Gyre and Em can have about the earlier expeditions, and about whether Em is telling Gyre the truth. Perhaps if I had read the ebook rather than listening to the audiobook (excellently and emotionally read by Adenrele Ojo), I'd have skimmed... Psychological horror, in a science fictional setting, with just two characters: it's a bold debut, despite its flaws. I'm interested to read more by Starling.

2026/055: The Weaver of the Middle Desert — Victoria Goddard

She could weave those falling descants, those trilling calls, those infinitely varied notes into her work. Could she weave sound and silence together, craft a curtain that would keep a tent silent or hold the songs of mourning or merriment within its folds? [loc. 530]

Arzu is the eldest of the three daughters of the Bandit Queen, desert nomads whose world is strongly reminiscent of the Arabian Nights. Her younger sisters, Pali and Sardeet, have each had a novella to themselves (I find that I haven't read Pali's, The Warrior of the Third Veil), so it's Arzu's turn. But she is not as young nor as ambitious as her sisters. She's already happily married to a man of the clan, and her magic is founded on the gentle arts of weaving and threadcraft.

Nevertheless, when Pali -- back from warrior training -- suggests that they visit Sardeet, Arzu is happy to embark on the journey. It turns out that Sardeet's second husband is almost as awful, in different ways, as her first, and additionally has gone a-roving. The three sisters climb a magic beanstalk to find him...

This was sweet but slight: just what I needed, halfway through an unsettling and claustrophobic novel. It's really nice to find a fantasy protagonist whose ambitions compass home and family, who is happy with who and where she is. Pali will always be heroic: Sardeet will always be beautiful (and perhaps a little too trusting): Arzu... I think her gift is happiness.

2026/054: Zennor in Darkness — Helen Dunmore

... he will cry out against Frieda if she dances in the wind with her scarf flying above her like a banner. She dances for pure joy, but the war does not recognize that kind of dancing. It knows that she’s twirling her scarf in a prearranged signal to the U-boats lying out offshore, waiting. [p.128]

This was Helen Dunmore's first novel, and some of her tropes and traits are visible: sexual tension within the family, arresting images of the natural world, the inexorable force of gossip and rumour. The setting is Cornwall in 1917, a village near Zennor: D H Lawrence and his German wife Frieda have taken a cottage there, and Lawrence is trying to farm, and to maintain his anti-war stance.

The focal character, though, is Clare Coyne, only daughter of Francis Coyne: she keeps house for her widowed father, paints illustrations for his book on wild flowers, and spends what time she can spare with her friends Hannah and Peggy. As the novel opens, the three girls are eagerly awaiting the return of John William, Hannah's brother and Clare's cousin, who's on leave from the trenches because he's going to be made an officer. Clare is secretly in love with John William.

The novel moves between viewpoints, predominantly Clare, Francis Coyne (a prurient man who, unknown to his daughter, is having an affair with a local woman, and also keeps thinking about Hannah and her Sam making love on the beach), Lawrence himself, and Frieda. Lawrence is a keen observer of the natural world. He meets Clare when she's out sketching plants, and introduces her to Frieda in the hope that the two will befriend and support one another. But after John William has been and gone, everything changes.

A novel about women, and men, in wartime, and how war warps and wrecks everything. Lawrence's Utopian schemes, Clare's hopes -- and the hopes of a million girls like her -- of marriage, Frieda's loneliness and anger, John William's despair at the slaughter. I really disliked Francis Coyne by the end of this novel: I felt very sorry for Frieda (whose cousin, I learnt, was the Red Baron himself, Manfred von Richthofen) and I admired Clare's intelligence, composure and passion. 

Dunmore's prose is a delight, full of surprising imagery ('larks scream as though they had thrown themselves against the sky and stuck there'): I knew her slightly, a friend of a friend, and wish she had lived longer and written more.

2026/053: How to Fake it in Society — K J Charles

"...in effect, you must paint what you see, and not what you know to be there. Because what we see and what is there are not always the same thing. I suppose it is important to learn that." [loc. 2026]

My initial mini-review is here: I reread the novel for this full review and can confirm that it is still an utter delight.

Titus Pilcrow is a colourman, a maker and supplier of paints and colours for artists. As the novel opens, he is in despair, because his landlord (also his ex) is evicting him. By a stroke of fortune, the client he visits that afternoon has a once-in-a-lifetime offer for him: she's on her deathbed, after a suspicious accident, and she wishes to marry to deprive her unpleasant nephew of her fortune. She has the license ready, because she was planning to marry a French count -- but he's AWOL, so Titus will suffice. 

The deed is done, Mrs Pilcrow (nee Whitecross) is dead, and Titus finds himself in possession of eight thousand a year and a plethora of conmen, beggars, representatives of charities, and other ne'er-do-wells who presume, correctly, that he has no idea how to handle his new-found wealth.

Enter Miss Whitecross's intended: Nicolas-Marc, Comte de Valois de La Motte, exquisitely dressed and outrageously handsome, and more than happy to assist Titus in refreshing his wardrobe (Titus likes bright colours, and Nico persuades him to indulge himself), entering Society, and dealing with importunate friends, relatives and hangers-on. Nico tells Titus that he is hoping to restore his mother's reputation after the scandalous Affair of the Diamond Necklace.

This, regrettably, is a lie. Nico and his beloved cousin Eve are down on their luck, pursued by brutal gangsters for a loan they can't repay. Yes, his first thought was to swindle Titus: no, he didn't expect to like him.

Titus, meanwhile, is not stupid. He is fairly sure that Nico wants something -- and Titus, a decent bloke, is happy to grant it, whatever it may be, in exchange for the pleasure of Nico's company. Nico is kind, and witty, and protective: Nico helps Titus stand up to both his ex and his older brother, and exacts vengeance on those who abuse Titus's good nature. He may be a criminal, but he is also a decent bloke.

This was a highly enjoyable novel, with a setup worthy (and reminiscent) of Georgette Heyer, a satisfying amount of technical detail about 19th-century paint and dye technology, and vivid, witty dialogue. There was a genre-typical 'dip', shall we say, near the end, but I was confident in the author's ability to resolve it in a credible and dramatic manner -- which she did, with a definite emphasis on the dramatic. 

I don't think this novel would have worked as well as it did without the dual viewpoints: it did mean that the reader knew more than the characters, but that's better than knowing less (as in, for instance, Any Old Diamonds). And I loved the supporting cast: Eve in particular, who deserves a novel of their own, and the Thorpes who keep house for Miss Whitecross and then Titus, and Titus's nicer brother Vespasian.

Thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for the advance review copy, in exchange for this full honest review. UK Publication Date is 30 April 2026.

2026/052: The Sapling Cage — Margaret Killjoy

“Regardless of how we're born, we get to decide who we are and who we want to be.”

Lorel has always wanted to be a witch. Growing up in her small village, and helping her mother run the stables, is not the life she wants. But there's one problem: she was born in a male body, and there are stories of what the witches do to men who try to infiltrate their ranks.

Luckily her friend Lane, promised to the witches from birth, is determined to be a knight instead -- so Lorel takes Lane's place, while Lane heads off to the city. Loren, meanwhile, has to contend with being called a 'whelp' (the witches' term for apprentices) and walking all day. And of course she can't bathe with the other girls, despite making tentative friendships with some of them. Meanwhile, a magical blight is killing trees in the forest and disrupting the natural order. [NB: As a British reader, I found the term 'blighters' insufficiently villainous. This is a term for a nuisance, not an existential threat.] And the country as a whole is being threatened by an ambitious duchess, who's moving in on the vacant throne -- much to the disapproval of the witches (who are pretty anarchic) and the Ilthurian Knights (who are, delightfully, even more so).

The novel is presented as Lorel's first-person viewpoint, which does mean that some of the other characters are a little two-dimensional. I found the pacing uneven, and I would have liked a little more detail on the world in which Lorel and the witches are adventuring. Instead, there was more telling than showing.

But there's a lot to like. I enjoyed Killjoy's subversion of common fantasy tropes -- the knights, the nobility, the patriarchy (there was little sense of this being a patriarchal society: women seemed as empowered, or disempowered, as men of the same class.) Lorel is a seething mass of resentment, romance, ambition and hubris (100% accurate teenage mindset) which was sometimes a little wearing, but she is also brave, loyal and determined. It's a queernorm world, more or less, and Lorel is attracted to both male and female characters: she's not the only queer character, either, and learning about the different issues which others have faced is part of her growth.

Good narration by Jackie Meloche, who was great with character voices and pronunciation -- though I'm not sure why 'Dame' was pronounced 'Dam', and I spent much of the book wondering if one character was really called 'RNA' (no, it's 'Araneigh').

2026/051: The Library at Mount Char — Scott Hawkins

“You shall be the thing [X] fears above all others, and conquers... Your way shall be very hard, very cruel. I must do terrible things to you, that you may become a monster." [p. 355]

On Labor Day, 1977, in the sleepy American suburb of Garrison Oaks, Carolyn's life changed. She and a dozen other children were orphaned, their homes obliterated, and they were adopted by 'Father'. Father, who seems very powerful, tells the children that they are Pelapi -- an old word that means 'librarian, but also apprentice, or perhaps student' -- and assigns each of them a Catalogue. Carolyn's Catalogue is language: all languages, human and otherwise. ("What if I don't want to?" she asks Father. "It won't matter," he replies. "I'll make you do it anyway.") 

And so Carolyn grows up in the Library, studying and learning to live with the other Pelapi. Nobody is allowed knowledge of anyone else's Catalogue: this is a crime with appalling punishments. Time passes, but perhaps not chronologically. And then Father vanishes, and David (whose Catalogue is war) convenes the Pelapi to try to discover whether Father is dead. And if he is, which of the other powers -- eldritch beings whose ascendance would mean the end of complex life, and possibly also the sun -- will take his place?

This is not a novel for the faint-hearted: there are some truly harrowing scenes. And it's not a novel for the easily distracted, as it's fast-paced, told out of sequence and includes a labyrinthine plot that even the plotter can't think about (due to some of the others being mind-readers). The story is peppered with foreshadowings, and with asides that indicate a very different, and decidedly more horrific, history than the one we think we know. Luckily there are a couple of Everyman characters -- wanna-be Buddhist plumber Steve, and career soldier turned special agent Erwin -- to temper the extreme weirdness and growing inhumanity of Carolyn and her siblings. 

For they are, in their various ways, losing whatever human emotions they possessed when Father brought them to the Library. Carolyn knows all languages but is laughably bad at actual communication. David is certain that violence solves every problem, and enjoys killing. Jennifer, the healer, uses drugs to soften her world. And Margaret hangs out with the dead...

The horror elements are extremely horrific: The Library at Mount Char is told, though, with black humour and a strong sense of the ridiculous. The characters are fascinating, though seldom likeable. Only near the end of the novel do we find out what really happened on Labor Day 1977: only after calamities have been averted and retribution awarded does Hawkins reveal, and conclude, the overall arc of the narrative.

Despite some pacing issues, and the ubiquitous sexual violence against strong female characters, it's a massively impressive debut novel (published in 2014: Hawkins' second novel is due in September 2026) and I would like to reread it at some stage. At least I'll be able to skip braced against some of the nastier scenes: and I'd like to see just how the overall plot is constructed, and appreciate the worldbuilding, without being distracted by atrocities.