2019/98: Fall, or Dodge in Hell -- Neal Stephenson

"I would say that the ability of people to agree on matters of fact not immediately visible—states of affairs removed from them in space and time—ramped up from a baseline of approximately zero to a pretty high level around the time of the scientific revolution and all that, and stayed there and became more globally distributed up through the Cronkite era, and then dropped to zero incredibly quickly when the Internet came along." [loc. 4027]

The title is a spoiler, really, for values of 'spoiler' including 'this is a theory posited about halfway through the book'. Dodge is Richard Forthrast, protagonist of Reamde, a novel about (amongst other things) gaming. In Fall, or Dodge in Hell, Richard dies during a routine medical procedure -- the nature of which is never disclosed -- and is immediately cryogenically frozen. The problem with cryogenics, though, is that you only get one chance to defrost: much more sensible just to scan the frozen brain and upload its connectome, its map of neural connections, to the cloud.

Meanwhile in America, digital terrorists fake atrocities, and the internet has become an addictive, fact-free, mind-altering Miasma that effectively turns humans into zombies. Some of these humans are discovered crucifying a hapless stranger, who turns out to be our old friend Enoch Root. (One of the more satisfactory aspects of this novel is that it explains Enoch Root, though I am not especially keen on the explanation.) Enoch, and his old friend 'Solly', join forces with various of Dodge's old colleagues, relatives et cetera, and helps to instigate the Process -- a kind of digital afterlife in which an amnesiac Dodge creates a new world for himself and other uploaded connectomes.

This world, which begins with a leaf falling -- a splendid and evocative piece of writing -- has everything. Leaves! Wings! Feudalism! Capitalism! A class system! (Dodge is of course at the top.) Then it all gets rather Biblical: and, much later, rather Epic Fantasy.

One of the problems I had with Fall was the unevenness of time. The first chapter spends pages and pages on Richard Forthrast's musings as he wakes, snoozes the alarm, showers, walks to the clinic. At other points, years go past without much indication of relative time. This may well mirror the subjective passage of time in Dodge's afterlife: it's still perplexing to read.

Another problem, and sadly one that's familiar from my previous encounters with Stephenson, is the treatment of female characters. A major female character dies -- well, fair enough, nearly everyone dies in Fall, because death is merely a change of state. But this character is murdered, rather unpleasantly, and as far as I can tell nothing is ever done about it: no justice, no vengeance, no outcry. A relative does suffer PTSD, but that's about it as far as consequences go.

Some of the female characters are outstanding: I especially liked Edda the Giantess, and 'Prim'. And I was charmed, too, by Dodge's old colleague Corvallis -- C-plus -- who has a good, and long, life. But, as in Reamde and other Stephenson novels, I found many of the characters unlikeable.

I would have liked more about the remnants of 'live' humanity, on a world where the population rate is in decline, the living are massively risk-averse, and most of the planet's resources are devoted to maintaining Bitworld, where the dead live (and are watched by the living via VR-style simulations). I would have liked to find out whether there were people who still believed that physical life was better than the alternative -- I mean, they can see some of the terrible abuses to which the newly-deceased are subjected -- and whether the post-truth internet / Miasma evolved or fizzled out.

There are so many good ideas, glorious images and philosophical debates in Fall: but also so many irritations, missed opportunities, shoehorned Biblical / fantasy tropes, characters whose stories just fade to black, and pontificating one-per-centers. And, perhaps, too many words: this novel could have been tightened to half its length and been a better read. Yes, Stephenson is inventive and interesting when he gets going, but sometimes he doesn't seem to know when to stop.

LARB review which examines the technological and social themes in greater depth

The living stayed home, haunting the world of the dead like ghosts. [loc. 8812]

2019/97: The Frozen Lake -- Elizabeth Edmondson

‘Duplicitous. I love the way that rolls off your tongue, it isn’t a word you hear every day.’
‘You might if you came from Wyncrag. It’s how we all live.’ [p. 233]

The Frozen Lake opens just before Christmas of 1936, with several characters independently learning that a Cumbrian lake freezing over, and deciding to visit Westmoreland, which holds so many memories for each. Alix Richardson is finding the hectic whirl of London increasingly hollow; Hal Grindley sees newspapers when his ship calls at Gibraltar, and is overcome with homesickness; Michael Wrexham, invited for the skating by a friend, is haunted by nightmares that seem to stem from the time when he was ill with pneumonia, on a childhood visit to the lake.

The Richardsons and the Grindleys are prosperous families, neighbours whose lives are entwined and whose relations are usually cordial. Lady Richardson, matriarch of Wyncrag, rules her extended family with an iron fist, and has alienated most of the younger generation. Peter Grindley, ostensibly a man of reason, is keen to acquire his brother Hal's shares in the family company, since Hal has been out of touch for nearly twenty years.

But the cheerful facade of snow, skating, preparations for Christmas and amiable family reunions is paper-thin, threatened from within (there are some deadly secrets in the Richardson family) and without (the threat of war with Germany looms large, and Alix's brother Edwin's new lover is a Jewish refugee).

Edmondson writes the smooth-rubbed conflicts of family life, as well as the casual affection, so very well: this was what hooked me, years ago, on the Mountjoy books (written as Elizabeth Pewsey), and though it's not always a prominent theme, The Frozen Lake is full of family intrigue. The dialogue flows well, and is often very funny, and the strands of the story -- as seen from the viewpoints of multiple characters -- tie together to tell a dark and complex tale. It's not all gloom, though: there is a satisfactory, though quiet, romance, and happy endings for the deserving majority.

A delight to read this on one of the hottest days of the summer! It's as evocative of grand wintry landscapes and a lost way of life as Arthur Ransome's Winter Holiday, which I used to regularly reread in the summer holidays.

2019/95: After Me Comes the Flood -- Sarah Perry

I’ve wondered if it ever really happened. Madmen turned out of towns and villages and sent to sea, and allowed to get on with being mad as hatters, without bothering anyone by it. [p. 33]

A devastatingly hot summer: London bookseller John Cole decides, on the spur of the moment, to pay a visit to his brother who lives on the Norfolk coast. Within a couple of hours he's lost in the woods. Then, searching for help, he finds himself at a grand house. They've been expecting him, they say: they call him by name. He keeps meaning to correct them, to apologise for imposing on them, but somehow the time is never quite right.

And he is captivated by the six people who call the house their home: Hester the theatrical matriarch, twins Clare and Alex, former preacher Elijah, beautiful Eve, and suspicious Walker. They are bound together by a complex web of love in many different forms, and John -- to whom love is a foreign country -- can't help wanting to draw closer. Life here is idyllic, almost childlike. There are long afternoons in the garden, and piano music, and drink. On the one occasion when they venture out into the world, it is brutal.

This is not an Eden without a serpent, though. Alex is receiving poison-pen letters about flooding, which is his obsession. The letters are signed 'Eadwacer', a name from an Anglo-Saxon poem (read it here), and is becoming increasingly distressed by what he believes are cracks in the reservoir beside the house. John wonders if the poem has some other relevance. What binds these people together?

This is an odd novel, dreamlike and Gothic and claustrophobic. I'm not sure I like the characters, and really very little happens: but there is something mythic about the week that John spends in the house, and something Biblical about the setting.

This was Perry's first novel: I enjoyed The Essex Serpent more, but After Me Comes the Flood has a surreal atmosphere that lingered long after I'd finished the book.

2019/94: The Loney -- Andrew Michael Hurley

I often thought there was too much time there. That the place was sick with it. Haunted by it. Time didn’t leak away as it should. There was nowhere for it to go and no modernity to hurry it along. It collected as the black water did on the marshes and remained and stagnated in the same way. [p. 41]

The narrator of this novel, known only as Tonto, is in therapy, because he's been lurking outside his brother's house. His brother (author of My Second Life with God) is the only person who Tonto really understands: their parents, who Tonto refers to as Mummer and Farther (masked; distant), are staunch Catholics. Mummer is addicted to ritual, Farther is emotionally absent.

Reading a news item about the discovery of a child's remains in a landslide, Tonto recalls their last visit to the Loney, a desolate stretch of Lancashire coastline, some time in the mid-Seventies. Mummer, Farther and the boys used to make an annual pilgrimage to the area, to visit St Anne's shrine and pray for Hanny's recovery -- for Hanny was mute and had learning difficulties as a child. That last pilgrimage, shortly after the death of much-loved Father Wilfred, was led by a younger man, Father Bernard. Mummer does not take to him, though he makes a great effort to befriend the boys.

Time is strange at the Loney: apple trees in fruit at Easter, a swarm of butterflies above a field, green grass instead of dead vegetation. The locals are strange, too, prone to cryptic warnings and superstitious habits. And there are strangers in the area, a sharp-looking chap in a Daimler, speeding down the country lanes with a woman and a young girl. They're heading for Thessaly, an imposing house on the tidal island of Coldbarrow. Hanny becomes obsessed with the girl, Else.

Mummer hopes for a miracle, and strives for it through prayer. But if there are miracles here, they are not the sort to be approved by the Catholic Church.

The Loney has a marvellously gothic sensibility, and some truly gorgeous prose. It's a slow and subtle book, where the unnatural is never explicit but always present. Is it a horror novel? With another narrator (or another author) it might be framed as a fantasy, or as a story of unreliable perceptions, or as magic realism. Perhaps the unease comes from the tension between religious faith and its absence: The Loney explores faith, and the loss of it, in ways that go beyond the religious aspects. Father Wilfred's crisis of belief is achingly desolate, Mummer's dependence on ritual anatomised.


I was reminded of David Mitchell's Black Swan Green and, to a lesser extent, The Bone Clocks. Maybe it's the youth of the protagonist, and the sense of an adolescent world that can never be understood by adults. Or perhaps it's a certain clarity of vision, a way of looking at the world. I don't think Tonto is quite as self-aware as Mitchell's narrators, but he sees enough to recognise what is happening at Thessaly. No wonder he's in therapy.

I really enjoyed this novel, despite shuddering at the evocation of dank, cold countryside in the Seventies -- a setting reminiscent of my own childhood.

2019/93: The Coffin Path -- Katherine Clements

For every life, something else must die. [loc. 4083]

It's 1674, and Mercy Booth, thirty-two years of age and unmarried, manages her ailing father's land, which he has promised she'll inherit. Scarcross Hall has a reputation for being cursed. It's high on the fells, accessible only by the old coffin road that leads from the village church to the stone circle, the White Ladies, at the top of the moor. Mercy doesn't believe in the curse. She works hard, alongside the men and women of the village employed by her father: she dresses in men's clothes for practicality, and can ease a difficult lambing, nurse a sick child, gather the harvest. And she is fearless: when she sees a shadowy figure at the gatepost her instinct is not to flee, but to run towards it.

Mercy's father is distressed by the loss of three gold coins that he once found up at the White Ladies. There are stories about those coins: they won't stay lost for long. One turns up under the pillow of Sam, a boy who helps on the farm; another is found in the hayloft by the new hire, a man named Ellis Ferreby, who Mercy does not altogether trust. Ellis -- who is the third-person narrator for substantial parts of the novel, alternating with Mercy's first-person narrative -- finds other things, too: a lamb that has been messily killed, an illicit sexual liaison, perhaps even a home.

This is a suspenseful novel, packed with sensory detail: the feel of ewe's blood on the skin, the pain of cold hands when you come into a warm room, the glimpse of a pale figure at a window, the dull thud of a child bouncing a ball in a locked and empty room. There is a sense of quiet menace, of something eerie threatening Mercy's way of life: but there are also very real threats from superstitious villagers.

I found the ending a little weak, and I wasn't sure which of the various folk-tales -- ancient evils, murdered children, simple witchcraft -- were more true than others. On reflection, there's a strong theme of vengeance throughout the novel: Ellis, Mercy, Bartram (Mercy's father), John Ravens: perhaps the story about ancient invasions is key.

The Coffin Path is tremendously atmospheric, very much rooted in its place and time, and features strongly-characterised individuals with complex motivations. Mercy's and Ellis's voices are distinctive, and their perceptions of the world contrast very effectively. This may not be, as the blurb has it, 'the perfect ghost story', but it is certainly chilling.

2019/92: Under the Pendulum Sun -- Jeannette Ng

"If the Christ Our Lord was made wholly human in order to bear human sin, does that mean he must also have been wholly fae to bear our sins?" [loc. 512]

The novel opens with the arrival of Miss Catherine Helstone in Arcadia, land of the Fae, a realm that can only be found by the lost. She has come in search of her brother, missionary Laon Helstone, and has also been tasked with retrieving (but not, under any circumstances, reading) the journals of Laon's predecessor, the Reverend Roche, whose fate is unknown.

Catherine is met by Ariel Davenport, a changeling, and conveyed to the gloomy manor house Gethsemane, where she meets the Faelands' only Christian convert, Mr Benjamin. He asks a plethora of theological questions that Catherine's ill-equipped to answer: but neither he nor Ariel will tell her what has happened to her brother, or to the Reverend Roche. Instead, she is warned not to venture beyond the walls; not to look portraits in the eye; and not to trust the Salamander (whom she has not met). The house is full of shadows and strange noises, and a door in Catherine's bedroom opens onto empty air -- and cannot be kept locked.

Then Laon reappears, and tells Catherine that the Pale Queen and her court are on their way ...

Under the Pendulum Sun has a Gothic sensibility -- I was especially reminded of Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre -- and a sedate pace: it took a while for me to warm to it, but I was fascinated by the theology, the oddities (the sun really is a pendulum; the moon is a fish) and the looming sense of menace. The Fae Court, when they arrive, are classic Fae, icy and beautiful and amoral. Catherine, her brother, Mr Benjamin and Ariel Davenport all discuss the Fae's relations to God, their natures, their souls: this element is emphasised by the reworkings of classic philosophical and scientific texts that preface each chapter.

The relationship between Catherine and her brother is strongly reminiscent of Cathy and Heathcliff's: it's uncomfortable to read -- especially given the series of revelations (not all of them truthful) that Catherine experiences -- but it is a key element in the resolution of the novel.

There are some errors that should have been picked up before publication, mostly words misordered or missing ('discovered that he been sent', 'now I here I was'). I'm not sure if the name of Catherine's former employer was deliberately misspelt throughout as Lousia, rather than Louisa, March.

Reading this novel sent me in search of more Gothic ...

2019/91: The Gurkha and the Lord of Tuesday -- Saad Hossain

... pretty soon it was obvious that if you had enough people, your city or town or whatever would win the nanotech battle. Survival. All of a sudden, cities wanted refugees... [loc. 1039]

Somewhere in the Himalayas, a djinn awakes. He is Melek Ahmar, the Lord of Tuesday, and he has slept -- or, rather, been imprisoned -- for a very long time.

The world, it turns out, has changed a great deal. While he was out of the picture, empires rose and fell; clouds of nanotech permeated the atmosphere, maintaining micro-climates; and an artificial intelligence known as Karma rose to power in Kathmandu, allocating points for public services, and maintaining equilibrium.

Melek Ahmar, hearing all this from Gurung the Gurkha, is unimpressed. Life nowadays sounds somewhat thin and unsatisfactory. He sets out to amend this, aided by Gurung (who has exiled himself from the city, and from Karma, for reasons that will gradually become clear) and, later, a manic pixie djinn girl known as ReGi who deals drugs from her Garden. On Karma's side are Hamilcar Pande, who has the (usually very unexciting) task of acting as Karma's failsafe, and his occasional lover Colonel Shakia. Possibly not on anyone's side, and certainly not on Gurung's, is the oligarch Doje, who seems to be trafficking in refugees.

I wasn't wholly convinced by any of the female characters (including Karma, who is cast as feminine) and I didn't much like any of the male characters, except perhaps for Gurung who is ... well, I suppose he fits the Solitary Psychopathic Rebel trope (see also: Mycroft Canner, Shuos Jedao) who commits atrocities in order to overthrow the status quo.

I'm tempted to read Hossain's Djinn City, because I do like his depiction of djinni (Melek Ahmar is, perhaps, not the finest example of his species; ReGi might be more interesting when she stops channelling a teenage goth).

2019/90: Deeplight -- Frances Hardinge

Stories were ruthless creatures, and sometimes fattened themselves on bloody happenings. [loc. 113]

The gods of the Undersea are dead, but there's a thriving market in their remains, known as godware: the men and women of the Myriad archipelago risk their lives to retrieve such relics from the depths of the ocean. Since the Cataclysm forty years ago, no sacrifices have been made to the gods. The Myriddens live free of fear, and tell stories about the gods that have taken on a life of their own.

Hark and Jelt are teenage con-artists, orphans, chancers who'll turn their hands to any enterprise that might be lucrative. Hark is the more decent of the two, and doesn't always like his best friend: but 'nobody was permanent ... except Jelt'. Their toxic codependency is strained when Jelt ends up as an indentured servant at the Sanctuary -- a refuge for priests made redundant by the Cataclysm. Some of the priests, such as old Quest, have very interesting tales to tell, and Hark -- who loves stories -- is eager to learn.

But Jelt is working with 'cold-eyed' men who want to use Hark's new position -- and his access to the work of Dr Vyne, practical theophysicist -- for their own ends.

Deeplight is a marvellous example of worldbuilding: the gods, monstrous Lovecraftian creatures who dwelt in a sea beneath the sea, are vividly individual, and their legacy -- fear of invasion by the continentals now that the Myriad's natural defenses are dead; the trade in godware, and the injuries and mutations caused by diving for salvage; Dr Vyne's scientific investigations of the gods' natures -- is thoughtfully explored. There are evocative descriptions of the vasty deep, stories of the time of the gods, plenty of skulduggery and some rip-roaring adventure. And weaving through all that, there's the human debris: Hark's queasy loyalty to Jelt, the PTSD and deafness suffered by Selphin (who was a girl of ten when she nearly died underwater), and the ways in which people try to change other people. The scene where Selphin's family try to 'cure' her, against her will, is compelling and emotionally raw: Jelt chooses his (very literal) metamorphosis, while Hark's life changes course without his having much say in the mechanisms. It's how he reacts to that course-change, how he interacts with others, that shapes him. "We are all squeezed into new shapes by the people around us. If we are paying attention, though, we always have some say in how we are altered." [loc 2612]

All the characters were credible, though I found Hark a little too passive in his dealings with the vile Jelt. I especially liked Dr Vyne, who is sharp and idealistic and happens to be a woman, and exhibits a reckless joy in her work. ("... every voyage is a safety test, and it'll be scientifically fascinating if we die ...")

I wasn't wholly convinced by the ending, which Hark and company heard about at one remove; and I'm not sure there was a sufficient sense of resolution. But overall, a fascinatingly weird read.

Also, I have learnt the term for a group of jellyfish, which is a fluther.

Thanks to NetGalley for the advance review copy, in exchange for this honest review!

2019/88: Lost Feast: Culinary Extinction and the Future of Food -- Lenore Newman

Think of a great library of flavours. For the last century we have been recklessly burning all of the books. [loc. 1824[

The author is a professor of culinary geography, a job I had no idea existed: 'combines my love of travel with my love of eating'. Her investigation of species extinction and its impact on cuisine takes her from Iceland to Hawaii, from musings on mammoths -- the wave of their extinction moved at a human's walking pace -- to being eaten alive by mosquitoes in Canada's far north whilst in search of bison. (Newman is Canadian, and frequently contrasts food availability and gastroculture in the US and in Canada.)

Humans have domesticated, farmed or industrialised only a tiny percentage of edible plants and animals. Megafauna such as mammoths, dodos and aurochs have been driven extinct, or bred into safer forms, but there are vast swathes of the invertebrate kingdom left untasted. As Newman's subtitle indicates, this book is not merely a paean to vanished species, but an exploration of alternatives to the resource-intensive, ecologically-damaging agricultural methods that are devastating ecologies worldwide.

Lost Feast is packed with memorable (and often horrifying) statistics, presented in an accessible form. On American farming: "Roughly half of the calories we grow on the 14 percent of the earth’s land surface used for crop farming is actually eaten by people; 36 percent of the remainder is eaten by animals, with the last portion used for ethanol.In the meat-loving United States, only 27 percent of crops are eaten directly by people... it takes one hundred calories of grain to produce twelve calories of chicken; the same grain produces only three calories worth of beef." [loc. 933] Some of the assertions seemed wildly improbable -- were there really no honey bees in North America until 1621? yes, really!-- but there is a substantial bibliography, and plenty of citations.

Kudos, by the way, to Newman: many of the books she cites as inspiration are the work of female academics, for instance How to Clone a Mammoth, by Beth Shapiro; Defending Beef by Nicolette Niman; and The Sixth Extinction by Elizabeth Kolbert, a key text.

Interspersed with Newman's explorations are 'extinction dinners', in which her friend Dan creates a meal that approximates the extinct, or problematic, food that Newman has discussed. Some of these dinners are more appealing than others (pears with fish sauce? I don't care if it was a Roman delicacy) and some -- such as the feast of invasive species Dan prepares during their Hawai'ian trip -- are mouthwatering. Perhaps most germane is the 'Burger 2.0' meal, in which Dan explores alternatives to the traditional beefburger. ('recent studies suggest that each cow is more damaging in terms of climate change impact than the average car.' [loc. 753]). The 'taste testers' include enthusiastic carnivore Dan, and a vegan friend: their consensus was that the Beyond Burger (pea protein, yeast and coconut oil) is a serious contender, and also waaaay too meaty for the vegan.

This is a marvellous read, reminiscent of Margaret Visser's Much Depends on Dinner in its discursive approach, its weaving together of social, geographical and historical factors, and its occasional wry humour. Highly recommended.

Thanks to NetGalley for a free ebook in exchange for this honest review!

2019/89: Dark Mountain -- Helen Susan Swift

I had seen Kate's bullying, Christine's fear, and Charlie's dislike of men, Lorna's terrible memories and Mary's bitterness over the Clearances. How about me? What aspect of my character or personality was being revealed? I did not know.[p. 106]

October 1921: the six women of the Edinburgh Ladies' Mountaineering Club have set out to climb An Cailleach, a brooding peak that's never been summitted. Men -- including the brother of one of the women -- have died in the attempt, but the six are convinced that they can succeed.

Their love of climbing, and their determination to be independent and successful in a male-dominated world, are not all that unites them. Each has a secret, a dark side -- ranging from a family history of oppression to an orphan's quest for identity to unspoken romantic aspirations -- and as they ascend the mountain, the tensions between them reach crisis point. Was the woman they saw, washing linen at the stream, a supernatural harbinger of death? Are Brenda's dreams of ancient rituals some kind of insight into the prehistory of the place? Is An Cailleach really cursed?

I acquired this novel via Kindle Unlimited, and found it very readable. Some of the characterisation was a little heavy-handed, and I'm not wholly convinced by the finale. But there are some genuinely chilling scenes, and it becomes more and more obvious that Brenda (the narrator) may not be as reliable and steadfast as she presents herself.

2019/87: The Immortalists -- Chloe Benjamin

It’s the prophecy, something he would very much like to forget but has instead dragged behind him all these years. He hates the woman for giving it to him, and he hates himself for believing her. If the prophecy is a ball, his belief is its chain; it is the voice in his head that says Hurry, says Faster, says Run. [p. 77]

In the summer of '69, the four Gold siblings -- Simon, Klara, Daniel and Varya -- visit a fortune teller, who tells each of them, with perfect accuracy, the date on which they will die.

This knowledge changes them all in different ways. Klara and Simon leave home and head for San Francisco: Daniel is determined to discredit the fortune teller: Varya devotes her life to anti-ageing research. Are they fighting their destinies, or fulfilling them? Would things be different if they had remained as close as they were in 1969? They don't all know one another's predicted expiry dates: do they trust -- and / or believe -- the predictions, or not?

The Immortalists begins in 1969, and ends in 2010. It's divided into four sections, one for each of the siblings in order of death. Simon becomes a dancer; Klara performs as a magician (with some experiences that might be literal magic) under the stage name 'the Immortalist'; Daniel is caught up in the FBI investigation of a Romany fraud ring; and Varya is involved in a decades-long study of ageing in primates. All four grasp at humanity, at love and life, despite their foreknowledge.

I finished this book feeling that I hadn't liked it much, and that I rejected the premise that a life full of human interactions (and families, and children) is better than a long, solitary existence: but I'm still thinking about it, and about the Golds, and their parents and lovers and friends, and the occasional, inexplicable weirdnesses of their lives, nearly a month after reading.

2019/86: Sixteen Ways to Defend a Walled City -- K J Parker

I’m an engineer, I told myself. People bring me problems, and I fix them. ... I fix broken people with things, with stuff; with tricks, lies, devices. I’m resourceful and ingenious. I don’t confront, I avoid; and one of the things I do my best to avoid is justice, and another one is death. [loc. 3967]

According to the manuals, there are fifteen ways to defend a walled city. 'You can try one of them and if that doesn't work ...' Colonel Orhan of the Engineers finds himself in the unenviable position of defending a city that's besieged by an enormous army of mysterious origin -- a city in which, despite his rank, he's a second-class citizen by reason of his skin colour. Orhan has no resources, no authority, and no particular loyalty. He can fake or finagle two out of the three.

Orhan's life has been a series of abrupt changes: orphaned by war, sold into slavery, captured by the other side, freed, promoted. He's appreciative of his luck, and wryly amused that his various enemies have done him more good than any of his friends. (Of which more later.) He's ingenious, corrupt and untrustworthy -- both as a character and as a narrator: an amiable sort, thoroughly competent, though with a bit of an attitude problem -- he does like to be right, even when it's not politic -- and a chip on his shoulder.

I did not warm to him.

I've read and enjoyed many novels by K J Parker (see some of my reviews) and I know the kinds of things to expect. There's nothing as nasty here as in, for instance, The Belly of the Bow; nothing as apocalyptic as the Scavenger trilogy; and nothing as poignant as in the Engineer books. But I disliked Orhan more than most of Parker's characters: I detected an underlying bitterness and a streak of sheer nastiness, and felt that if I met this man in real life I'd be constantly on my guard.

Orhan regards love as a 'major pest', like hope. He's been in love once in his life, and is determined not to do it again. His love affair was not a wholly satisfactory experience, as it led to him plotting to murder his best friend. Orhan has reason to reflect upon this, for a similar situation arises in Sixteen Ways to Defend a Walled City. This time around, though, his loyalty to his friend (a different friend, obviously) wins out. But in both cases the women seem like ciphers, tokens to be won or stolen.

(Delightful statement in a positive and thoughtful Amazon review: "Some suggest it denigrates women (I disagree, there are three female characters and two of them are amongst the smartest people in the book)". Three female characters! Well, that's all right then ... I should not mock: the novel is told from the viewpoint of a character who really isn't that interested in women, embedded in a society where women seldom have any kind of power or agency. It is not surprising that there are few female characters, but it's worth observing that those who do appear are mostly not treated well by the narrative.)

An early title of this novel was Worms and Lions, contrasting the mundane and the heroic: the lions will fight gloriously, but the worms will eventually triumph. This would be a very different novel if told from the viewpoint of one of the stereotypically heroic characters -- the leader of the besieging army, for instance, or the military leaders of the city. Or perhaps one of the women ... But what we get instead is a gritty, hyperrealistic novel that doesn't gild slavery, genocide, treachery, military technology or matters of the heart. It's a good novel, but not a cheering one. Sometimes a little gilding helps the horror go down.

2019/85: The Zig-Zag Girl -- Elly Griffiths

... even now, even after completing a crossword had indirectly led him to the Magic Men and some of the worst experiences of his life, he still saw an unfinished puzzle as a treat, something to be savoured at the end of the day. [p. 10]

Brighton, 1950: police detective Edgar Stephens is investigating the grisly murder of a woman who's been cut into three pieces. She was a stage magician's assistant, and the magician in question is Edgar's old wartime comrade Max Mephisto. The two served in a unit nicknamed the Magic Men, creating illusions and false trails for the enemy. Could something or someone from that period of their lives have a vendetta against Edgar or Max?

Meanwhile, the world of showbusiness is changing. Audiences are less interested in variety shows, the shows that have kept Max and his colleagues in work for years. Instead of seeing a comedian, a singer or two and a magician, they prefer plays, such as the new Agatha Christie that one character disparages: 'it’ll only run a few weeks, never make it to the West End'. (This is a rather heavy-handed nod to contemporary readers who will be aware that The Mousetrap is still going strong in the West End after nearly seventy years.) Max and his fellow ex-Magic Men mourn the death of a way of life: changes are coming, not all of them good.

I guessed the identity of the villain quite early, but the plot and the characters kept me reading: I wanted to see how it was done, the 'reveal'. I didn't find this first volume in a series as engaging as Griffiths' 'Ruth Galloway' series -- starting with The Crossing Places -- but The Zig-Zag Girl was very readable, well-paced and with rounded characters and a good sense of place.

2019/84: Hexarchate Stories -- Yoon Ha Lee

She’d eaten Jedao’s memories, crunched down the carrion glass and felt it pierce her on the way down. They were part of her now, sharded through her in ways that she couldn’t explain in ordinary human terms. [loc. 3866]

I bought and read this mostly for 'The Glass Cannon', a novella which wraps up some loose (and sparking) ends in the Machineries of Empire trilogy. Set two years after Revenant Gun: Jedao finds himself obsessed by the memory of his long-dead schoolfriend Ruo, and decides that he needs to get his memories back from their guardian.

Cheris, meanwhile, is teaching mathematics on a backwater planet that isn't even wholly terraformed. She has changed her name and her appearance. But that's not enough to keep her past from knocking at the door.

Cue body-horror, some unpleasantly visceral scenes, and virtuosic levels of scheming from Mikodez and Zehun. The ending is perfect.

I'd already read quite a few of the other stories on the author's blog, but it was good to have them brought together in a single volume, and it's interesting to see Lee's experiments with various narrative voices. The authorial notes are charming and give a glimpse of how the author's work is informed by his own interests and life experiences. The stories range from humorous to poignant: there are quite a few focussing on Jedao, some that feature Cheris, and a delightful vignette of Zehun and one of their cats. I especially liked the glimpses of Jedao's life before Hellspin, and his family interactions. (Of course Jedao would buy his nieces toy assassin's tools!)

2019/83: Raven Stratagem -- Yoon Ha Lee

Immortality didn’t turn you into a monster. It merely showed you what kind of monster you already were. [loc. 4627]

General Khiruev's war-swarm has been mobiised to fight the invading Hafn, whose technologies -- unlike those of the Hexarchate -- seem to work pretty much anywhere. They are a threat to be reckoned with: and Kel Command have seen fit to send Khiruev an undistinguished captain, one Kel Cheris.

Except that it's not exactly Kel Cheris who shows up. Instead, it's apparently the undead mass-murdering military genius Shuos Jedao, inhabiting Cheris' body and invoking Kel formation instinct -- the emotional need to maintain hierarchy -- to create instant, fanatical loyalty.

General Khiruev does her best to stand up to Jedao. So does Lieutenant Brezan, whose formation instinct is weak enough to let him pull a gun on Jedao: Jedao sends him away, because his loyalty is unreliable. Brezan can't help wondering if Jedao's aim is really to defend the Hexarchate, and not to defeat it ...

I read this middle volume of the Machineries of Empire last, having started with the finale (Revenant Gun) and continued with the first in the sequence (Ninefox Gambit). Finally everything has slotted into place! I understand what Jedao / Cheris accomplished; I appreciate why Brezan is so popular; and I have a better sense of the wider Hexarchate. The things I liked about the other novels are still true of Raven Stratagem: characterisation, depictions of gender and sexuality, glimpses of the cultures that comprise the Hexarchate, the weirdness of the calendrical system. Memory and its lacunae, loyalty and sacrifice, atrocity and love.

Interestingly, despite having read the bracketing novels, I didn't work out the plot of Raven Strategem -- the long game, with many players, at its heart -- until well into the book. I think that's a positive indication of the complexity of the novel, and the choice of viewpoint characters (Brezan, Khiruev, the Shuos hexarchate Mikodez, and more) who illuminate different angles of the game.

And there is a random glimpse, almost an aside, that makes me wonder if Cheris was uniquely qualified to play host for Jedao: a memory of a folktale from her people, the Mwennin. 'The story of the raven general who sacrificed a thousand thousand of his soldiers to build a spirit-bridge of birds to assault the heavens.'[loc. 3624]