2026/104: Tasmakat — Rachel Neumeier

When we ask the gods to be merciful, we have no idea what we’re asking. [p. 469]

After the events of Tarashana, Aras and Ryo travel back to the summer lands -- via a wedding -- and to the king's judgment. Aras seems sanguine on the long journey from the winter lands (a journey which I now realise comprises more than half of the novel) but there's a strong possibility that the king will have him executed.

Instead, he sends Aras and Ryo to the Land of Two Suns, ruled by the Ro-Antalet (sphinxes), where the envoy Tasmakat (a jackal-headed woman) has suggested there might be an adept who can lighten the sorcerous madness that is beginning to afflict Aras, and break the bond -- the 'leash', as the Ugaro call it -- between Aras and Ryo.

Of course it is not that simple.

This novel is packed with thorny issues of loyalty, honour and mercy. Ryo is strong and stubborn, but can he prevail against madness? He has to contend with false memories and guard his mind (though he's already proved he can mask his thoughts): he's sorcerously altered to withstand the tremendous heat of the Two Suns ... and all the while he worries about what's happening in the winter lands, what's happening with his wife and her other husband.

Intensely emotional, sometimes very dark, sometimes unevenly paced: the climax of this novel is a triumph, and the finale hopeful. I enjoyed it very much despite sometimes wearying of the interminable journeying. And I'm keen to read more of the novels set in this world -- though perhaps not quite yet.

Read because: This concludes the Ryo-centric trilogy that started with Tuyo and continued with Tarashana -- I wanted to follow that story to its conclusion, especially while the events of the previous two books were still fresh in my mind.

2026/103: Why We Swim — Bonnie Tsui

For many swimmers, the act of swimming is a tonic, in that old-fashioned sense of the word: it is a restorative, a stimulant, undertaken for a feeling of vigor and well-being. The word tonic comes from the Greek tonikos, “of or for stretching".

Read by Angie Kane. I spotted this in the Libro.fm audiobook sale and thought it looked intriguing: I didn't expect such a comprehensive survey of the history of swimming, from prehistoric times (I was especially fascinated by the chapter on the likelihood that the humans at Gobera swam in their lake) to modern competitive swimming.

Tsui covers five major reasons to swim -- survival, well-being, community, competition and flow. She discusses how various communities throughout history have adapted to swimming -- for instance, free-diving fishers in south-east Asia and Japan, or 'human seal' Guðlaugur Friðþórsson who survived six hours in 5^o water -- and the ways in which swimming has been used and recommended as a therapy for centuries. She describes the creep of racial segregation in twentieth-century America, reducing access to swimming for non-white Americans. It's not just a leisure issue, but a question of being able to swim -- being able to avoid death by drowning.

I learnt about samurai swimming, and was inspired by the accounts of people who've overcome major physical challenges via the 'salt water cure' -- sea-swimming. "Being in the ocean, you can become part of the food chain at any moment," writes Tsui. (In 21st-century Britain you are, sadly, more likely to encounter the end product of the food chain if you swim in the sea.) And Tsui's mention of Lewis Pugh, who swam across the North Pole to highlight the climate catastrophe, led me to some videos that I swear will cool you down on the hottest of days.

Reading this book made me want to swim more often, especially in rivers and the sea. I already know it improves my health, mentally and creatively as well as physically. 

Read because: I am a keen swimmer and was intrigued by this history of swimming.

2026/102: Tarashana — Rachel Neumeier

I think everyone behaved courageously and honorably, until courage and honor were not enough. [p. 328]

Second in the 'Tuyo' arc, despite it being book number 3... A year and a half after the events of Tuyo, Lord Aras is encountering some political issues in the summer lands, where Ryo still serves him. A reprieve of sorts is offered when a message comes from the winter country, asking for Aras' help. Apparently a Tarashana woman (from another cosmological realm, beyond the winter lands, lit only by starlight) has approached the Ugaro: she seems to be mute but clearly needs help of some kind. Can Aras (and Ryo) assist?

Cue an expedition through the winter lands -- with various Lau allies, including the excellent Lalani -- and a chance to see Ryo in his homeland, with his people. After they leave the Ugaro and cross the steppe, the world becomes very much stranger: ghost tigers, paths that don't lead where they appear to, and the horrors that the Tarashana woman has fled from. Some appalling things happen, especially at the book's climax. Honour, respect, trust and kindness prevail, eventually. And Aras and Ryo have some difficult conversations.

Also, Ryo wants to get married, but there's competition...

This is a vast book, 700-odd pages in print, and I did occasionally feel that some passages weren't essential to the plot. But every action, every reaction, every line of dialogue matters... And when the bad things happened I could not stop reading, because Neumeier knows how to play arpeggios on my heartstrings. The plot here -- and the worldbuilding -- feel more complex than in Tuyo, and as soon as I'd finished this I went on to the third of the Ryo-centric novels...

Read because: Having finished Tuyo, I wanted to see what happened next: I like the characters and am intrigued by the worldbuilding.

2026/101: Tuyo — Rachel Neumeier

Every man is glad to stop looking for the truth when he’s handed a lie he likes better. Sorcerers are no different in that. [p. 129]

Ryo InGara is nineteen years old, a warrior of a nomadic tribe that dwells in the winter country. At the beginning of Tuyo, he's been left as a kind of sacrifice to the opposing army -- the Lau -- in a minor skirmish: he expects to be killed slowly and painfully, and it is a matter of honour that he meets his death bravely.

Instead, he finds himself given guest-right by his captor, Lord Aras Eren Samaura, who says that Ryo is more useful alive than dead. Aras is trying to determine the cause of the recent unrest between the Ugaro (Ryo's people) and the Lau (Aras' people). He suspects sorcery is involved -- and Ryo comes from a culture where sorcery is punished by death. Ryo does indeed encounter sorcerers, plural: his memories are changed without his consent, and only his own strength of will -- and his trust in Aras' essential good nature -- saves him.

What I liked most in this novel was Ryo's narrative, and the close examination of the changing relationship between Ryo and Aras. (NB This is not a romance.) Neumeier depicts the minutae of Ryo's emotional landscape, and the evolution of his understanding of Aras, credibly and without sentiment.

The worldbuilding is fascinating, too: it's clear almost from the start that this is a radically different cosmology. A river separates the winter lands of the Ugaro from the summer lands of the Lau. In the winter lands, the moon is always full, but in the summer lands it ('she', the goddess) has phases. There are stories of another land beyond the winter land, lit by starlight, and a sunless sea; and Aras has travelled beyond the summer land, where jackal-headed sorcerers dwell. 

One brief complaint: there is a great deal of story-telling in this novel, but we don't get the stories themselves.

Ryo and his culture reminded me of Ariantes, the Sarmatian narrator of Island of Ghosts, one of my favourite novels: I was pleased to read Neumeier's post on that novel, which acknowledges it as an influence.

Read because: I'd read a sample after seeing it recommended (and I'd already enjoyed The Year's Midnight by the same author). Amazon stealthily offered me a month of free Kindle Unlimited, and I bit.

2026/100: The Killing Time — Elly Griffiths

It’s hard enough being a woman in 2024, what must it be like when you’ve almost no agency and are imprisoned by your clothes? [loc. 3368]

In this, the second of the Ali Dawson time-travel thrillers, Ali is confounded by bureaucracy. After the problems of her previous expedition to 1851 -- and the disappearance of star physicist Jones, presumed lost in the nineteenth century -- the Cold Cases Unit is banned from further excursions. 

Ali distracts herself by investigating the contemporary case of a young man who fell to his death after being told by a charismatic psychic that he could fly. Prepared to find a fraud, Ali is unnerved when the psychic, Barry Power, seems to convey a message from Jones. And Ali already knows that she'll return to the 1850s... though she doesn't expect it to happen when she's trying to go back just a few minutes to close the cat flap and prevent her beloved kitty from escaping. 

This excursion was less harrowing than the first, although I was anxious about Terry the cat. (Naturally he has landed on his feet.) And there are hints of the directions the series might go: the connections between the members of the Cold Case Unit, Ali's romantic entanglement, the collective unconsciousness, Jones' new life. I remain intrigued. 

Read because: I enjoyed The Frozen People, and was eager to discover what happened next...

2026/099: Around the World in 72 Days — Nellie Bly

"It is impossible for you to do it... In the first place you are a woman and would need a protector, and even if it were possible for you to travel alone you would need to carry so much baggage that it would detain you in making rapid changes. Besides you speak nothing but English, so there is no use talking about it; no one but a man can do this."
"Very well," I said angrily, "Start the man, and I'll start the same day for some other newspaper and beat him." [chapter 1]

Inspired by Jules Verne's novel (and desperate to write about something interesting), New York World reporter Nellie Bly suggested to her editor in 1888 that she might attempt to recreate the fictional journey of Phineas Fogg. (Her editor's initial reaction is quoted at the top of this review.)

Bly's only luggage was a single bag: she'd commissioned a lightweight dress, but refused several society invitations on her travels due to lack of the proper attire. She sailed to England, then took the boat train to France, where she met Jules Verne himself; then another train to Brindisi, a ship through the Suez Canal, a stay in Ceylon: then Singapore, Hong Kong, China, Japan, a Pacific crossing, and a breakneck railway journey on a specially-commissioned train -- greeted everywhere by cheering crowds -- from San Francisco to New York. 

Her account is generally witty and gossipy, poking mostly-gentle fun at fellow travellers. Obviously, it's also packed with period-typical racism and some old-fashioned attitudes. Occasionally she encounters an importunate gentleman, who she dismisses with charm. She's quite rude about British trains, but who isn't? And she does go into a little too much detail about Japanese executions.

And she leaves a lot out. In Hong Kong she's told of a contender in the 'race', another reporter who has set out to beat Bly's time. "I will not race. If someone else wants to do the trip in less time, that is their concern," she declares. And we never hear anything more about the competition -- or Elizabeth Bisland, who travelled in the opposite direction (setting out across the Pacific, returning across the Atlantic) and made the trip in 78 days. 

I would have liked more about the mundane problems -- did she wish she'd packed more clothes? what were the sanitary facilities like? did she like any of those importunate men? -- but nevertheless this was a fascinating account of travel and travellers in the 1880s.

The Librivox audiobook, which is in the public domain, was excellently narrated by Mary Reagan, whose voice suited Bly's light tone very nicely. There's a good summary here, which also includes context lacking from Bly's sometimes-breathless account.

Elizabeth Bisland's memoir of her trip is also available as a public-domain audiobook.

Read because: it fills two challenge prompts -- non-fiction published before I was born, and a work written in the nineteenth century. Bly's journey took place in 1889, and her account of it was published in 1890.

2026/098: The Frozen People — Elly Griffiths

‘Whatever you do, don’t trust Dickens.’ [loc. 696]

Ali Dawson is fifty years old, with fire-engine red hair and a son who's working as a special advisor to Isaac Templeton, a Tory MP. Ali herself works for the Cold Case Unit -- 'so cold they're frozen' -- which uses a top-secret time-travel device to investigate crimes.

Ali's first experience of time travel, in the first weeks of Covid lockdowns, went smoothly: she and her companion travelled back a single week, weren't visible to those around them, and returned to their present once they'd worked out that they had to stand exactly in the spot they'd arrived. Sent back to 1850s London to clear the name of Isaac Templeton's ancestor, things fall out rather differently.

There was a lot to like here: Ali's discoveries about Cain Templeton, presumed murderer, and the Collectors' Club of which he's a member; Jones (a.k.a Serafina Pellegrini), the brilliant Italian physicist who developed the time travel device; the subplot involving Finn; Ali's Siamese cat Terry (even though I hope the description of him as 'sleek teal' is a misprint). As long as I didn't think too hard about the time travel -- and the likelihood of it being used to solve crimes, rather than for military or criminal purposes -- my disbelief stayed manageable. And there's enough of a cliffhanger that I went straight on to the second in the series...

Read because: I'm a big fan of Griffiths' Ruth Galloway mysteries, and had bought this some time ago... then the second in the series showed up as a Daily Deal, and friends waxed enthusiastic about this first volume. After reading, it fitted nicely into a challenge prompt -- 'suspension of disbelief'!