2021/013: Captain Vorpatril's Alliance -- Lois McMaster Bujold

“So, have you become a security risk, Vorpatril?”
“I don’t know, sir,” said Ivan, as honestly as possible. “Nobody tells me anything.” [loc. 4168]

I bought this several years back, but have only just got around to reading it: it was perfect for my customary late-winter reading slump, in which I tend to crave either rereads, cheerful romances or fanfic. I think this is the last of the Vorkosigan books that I hadn't read, but late January in lockdown was absolutely the right time for it.

This is, in short, a romantic novel about a marriage of convenience. Ivan Vorpatril is enjoying his usual comfortable lifestyle -- low-risk employment, bachelor-about-town, content to be treated as an idiot if it makes his life easier -- when his cousin Byerly asks him to engineer a meeting with Tej, a young woman who's fleeing homicidal enemies and, more recently, the local security forces. Tej is alone in the world after a rival House moved in on her family: her only companion is her friend Rish, a genetically-engineered dancer with blue skin. Tej has reached the end of her resources when Ivan offers marriage as temporary protection, and Rish gets the benefit of his protection too. But Byerly has an agenda of his own: and when figures from Tej's past collide with Vor high society, the consequences are ... unexpected.

Ivan, here, is a very Heyeresque hero: good-looking, courageous, kind-hearted and much less stupid than his behaviour might suggest. (Someone online compared Ivan to Prince Harry, his loutish youth behind him, marrying an 'unsuitable' bride now that the social pressure for a grand wedding has lessened. Brilliant, except I just don't see Ivan as a redhead.) He has never shown any sign of wanting to be married before, but thinks he might be enjoying it. Byerly, on the other hand, whose effete habits and air of dilettantish dissolution conceal an excellent brain and a surplus of secrets, is more of a dark horse, though it's harder than he expects to deceive Rish.

Confession time: I do not find Miles Vorkosigan himself especially engaging. The books in this series that I've enjoyed most tend to be those which focus on other characters. (As we shall see.) And it's a very long time since I read A Civil Campaign, so I'd forgotten all about Byerly Vorrutyer -- who, to be fair, is not a major character therein. But despite Captain Vorpatril's Alliance focussing on Ivan, Byerly was the character who appealed most to me.

I very much enjoyed Ivan and Tej's romance, and Byerly and Rish's ... liaison, and the heist, and the further insights into Vorish society. Also, as usual with Bujold, there are strong themes of feminism, prejudice, misunderstandings between parents and children, and the disastrous effects of boredom on intelligent minds. I am happy to report that there is not much Miles, but a great deal of Alys and Simon, herein. Great fun, and an excellent excuse to indulge in a reread of a few more Vorkosigan books ...

2021/012: A Beautiful Poison -- Lydia Kang

She sighed and let her fingertip run over the chemical formula for cyanide. By God, it was a thing of beauty and simplicity. One nitrogen and one carbon atom married together with three bonds. Not one, not two. Cyanide demanded a trifecta of irresistible gravities. Such a thing of dark beauty created from the basic matter of life present in all living creatures. [p. 36]

Murder mystery set in New York in 1918, near the end of the First World War and at the beginning of the Spanish Flu. The story opens at a party celebrating the engagement of Allene Cutter to wealthy, brash Andrew Smythe Biddle. The glitterati of the Gilded Age are in attendance; and so are Allene's childhood friends, Jasper Jones (dropped by the Cutters when his family lost their money) and Birdie Dreyer (dropped by the Cutters due to some secret scandal involving her mother, formerly Mrs Cutter's companion). Allene is a chemistry nerd; Birdie works in a factory painting watch dials; Jasper is a hospital janitor, trying to save enough to take medical exams. When one of the guests, gossipy socialite Florence Waxworth, falls to her death on the staircase, it quickly becomes clear to the three friends that this was no accident. But who left the note -- 'You're Welcome' -- in Allene's chemistry book?

This was a good, well-constructed whodunnit: my guesses as to the identity of the murderer were all wrong! Kang's depiction of the class-based tensions between the three young protagonists, each trapped by circumstance and constrained by family, was well-executed and compelling. I was pleased that some class barriers weren't overcome: that, though justice was served in a sense, the old inequalities persisted. Impressively, despite each of the protagonists carrying some of the narrative, there were still surprises at the climax of the novel -- and that those surprises did not feel forced or dishonest: no sleight of hand here.

I acquired this book in 2017 and I don't recall there being much emphasis, in the promotional material, on the role of the Spanish Flu. It's barely mentioned in the first two-thirds of the novel, though after that it becomes an overwhelming and cataclysmic element of the plot. At least the flu, unlike Birdie's mystery illness -- radium poisoning, which the author notes in the Afterword wasn't really understood until the 1920s -- was recognised by those exposed to it.

2021/011: Hide Me Among the Graves -- Tim Powers

“My patron,” said Trelawny, “would like to do again what she did in A.D. 60.” [p. 262]

On paper (ha, or on Kindle) this should have been a novel I adored: Pre-Raphaelites, vampires, Boadicea (sic), subterranean London ... But somehow it didn't click. This might be a case of right book, wrong time: it might be that Hide Me Among the Graves is a (more or less standalone) sequel to The Stress of Her Regard, of which I recall little other than disliking it. Or it might simply be the cat-ghosts, which distressed me.

The vampiric spirit of John Polidori, formerly physician to Lord Byron, is haunting -- and inspiring -- his niece and nephew, Christina and Dante Gabriel Rossetti. Worse, he plans to possess a young girl, surprise daughter of a veterinary surgeon and a now-reformed prostitute who's known to Christina. And Polidori is not the only threat to them, nor the most impressive.

The relationship between Christina and Polidori is abusive, unpleasant and likely metaphorical: the curse that's visited upon Dante Gabriel's wife Lizzie intersects nicely with known history. The sense of a magical underlay to ordinary life is very well done here, though Powers' supernatural London occasionally felt somewhat thin. I did like the reworkings of 'Bells of St Clements' as ancient invocations: but I'm not convinced that Thames water is as salty as it would need to be for one element of the plot to work. Maybe in Victorian times ...?

It's hard to pinpoint why this didn't really work for me. Powers' prose is vivid and inventive, and his plot well-constructed. I knew enough of the real history of the Rossettis to appreciate how the fantastical elements wound through it. The characterisation -- especially of the original characters, Cavendish and McKee -- is solid, and the magical system coherent enough that I suspected one of the twists from early on. (Sadly, like quite a bit of the plot, it involved a woman being tricked or compelled into sexual activity. Hmm, that might have something to do with my lack of enjoyment.) In terms of ancient, inhuman entities interacting with historical figures, I'd rather reread Powers' Declare.

This is, incidentally, the second novel I've read this year (the first was Affinity) where one of the characters has a house on Cheyne Walk in Chelsea.

2021/010: In the Company of Thieves -- Kage Baker and Kathleen Bartholomew

I know that history can’t be changed. But it can be lied to, and it’s no better at identifying a fake than anyone else.[loc. 4525]

I very much enjoyed Kage Baker's 'Company' books, about the corporate entity called Doctor Zeus, and uni-directional time travel (you can only travel back in time: the return journey is the slow route, one day at a time) and the historians, preservers and specialists -- all immortal cybords -- who carry out the Company's assignments and sometimes side-missions of their own. It's over a decade since I read any of the series, though, and I'd forgotten some of the detail. This anthology of short works, edited (and in one case completed) by Baker's sister, was at once a pleasure and a disappointment.

Disappointing, as several of the Amazon reviews mentioned 'The Women of Nell Gwynne's' but that novella (which I'm eager to read) is no longer included in this collection, though there is fossil evidence of its former presence in the Contents section. I was disappointed, too, that some of the introductory paragraphs (not to mention the title on the title page!) featured typos, and could have done with proof-reading.

There are five works herein. 'Hollywood Ikons' is a new story featuring Preserver (and Literature Specialist) Lewis and Facilitator Joseph, set in Hollywood in the Second World War. This story was completed by Kathleen Bartholomew from Kage Baker's notes, and I have to say it's a very smooth co-authoring, no seams visible.

'The Carpet Beds of Sutro Park' is a bittersweet story about a defective cyborg (he can't communicate, but wanders Los Angeles in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, 'a bee collecting the pollen of my time') and a woman dying from cancer. (I liked this one a lot.)

'The Unfortunate Gytt' is a Gothic adventure featuring Edward Bell-Fairfax, Rosslyn Chapel and a new initiate.

Mother Aegypt features a pre-modern con artist, Golesco, and the immortal Mother Aegypt, about who he understands nothing. I was not much better off, as -- although one character's idiosyncrasies rang a bell -- I couldn't recall enough from the novels.

And completing the collection, the novella 'Rude Mechanicals', which I'd already read (review here. As usual, I had forgotten enough of it to be entertained all over again ...

Certainly not a bad collection, but really only 'Hollywood Ikons' and 'The Carpet Beds of Sutro Park' were what I actually wanted. Though now I'm terribly tempted to reread the entire Company series ... and I am, again, disappointed to discover how much of Kage Baker's work is available only in high-priced physical formats.

2021/009: The Morning Gift -- Eva Ibbotson

‘I want to live like music sounds,’ she had said once, coming out of a concert at the Musikverein. [p. 12]

Reread, though I don't think I've read this since the last millennium, and (as usual) I recalled only the broad outlines of the plot.

Ruth Berger grows up in 1920s and 1930s Vienna, the adored only child of a university professor and his elegant wife. She falls in love with music at an early age, and subsequently with her cousin Heini, a gifted (though egotistical) pianist. Her idyllic childhood is terminated by the Nazi Anschluss in 1938: Heini is in Budapest and Ruth's parents en route to London, but Ruth finds herself alone in occupied Vienna due to an unfortunate mix-up with visas.

Luckily there is a white knight at hand: a friend of the family, paleontologist Quin Somerville, who offers Ruth a marriage of convenience so that she can escape Vienna on his passport, and be reunited with her family. Of course the marriage will be dissolved as soon as Ruth is safe...It is probably not a spoiler to say that, like so many 'convenient marriages' in fiction, this marriage is not dissolved, despite several major miscommunications and the competing charms of Heini (for Ruth) and the sleek, ambitious Verena Plackett (for Quin, who is oblivious).

The charm of The Morning Gift is less about the romantic element than the characters and their situations. Ruth is an extrovert, amiable and sociable and fascinated by people, the kind of girl who knows someone's hopes and fears and secret joys an hour after meeting them. She's educated, intelligent and passionate about the natural world, whether the physiology she studies at university (how unfortunate that Quin is one of her lecturers) or the glories of the landscape surrounding Quin's ancestral home on the Northumberland coast. Her parents and her uncle and aunt, accustomed to the refined and cultured life of the Viennese upper middle classes, are adjusting slowly to life as refugees in their squalid Belsize Park lodgings, frequenting the Willow Tea Rooms where Ruth ends up working. Each of the older generation has a plot-thread of his or her own, from Uncle Mishak's radishes to Quin's snobbish aunt. There's a real sense of community among the dispossessed immigrants, and I believe it's based on Eva Ibbotson's own experiences.

A cheerful, comfortable, amusing read, with just enough drama and (temporary) despair to keep the plot moving, and plenty of personable individuals with their own sub-plots. Beauty, kindness and compassion triumph, despite the looming horrors of the imminent war. Ibbotson described her romantic novels as being written 'for intelligent women with the flu': I think they're a pleasing distraction against many ills.

2021/008: Crooked Heart -- Lissa Evans

It was as if her life was being deliberately unpicked, the seams parting, the whole thing dropping shapelessly to the floor. [p. 198]

Prequel to V for Victory: I didn't find this one quite as enjoyable, perhaps because it's set at the beginning of the Second World War rather than the end, or perhaps because Vee, in this novel, is rather less likeable than in the later novel. As, to be fair, is Noel, who after the death of his godmother is sent to St Albans as an evacuee, or -- from where Vee's standing -- a lucrative little earner. He even arrives with an introductory food parcel!

Vee, struggling to make ends meet, lives with her feckless, uncommunicative son and her mute, obsessively letter-writing mother in a small flat. They grudgingly make space for Noel, and he becomes involved in some of Vee's less above-board enterprises. Sharp, unscrupulous Vee and bookish, idealistic Noel, it turns out, make good partners: inspired by the crime novels that Noel loves, they end up exposing a criminal who (unlike themselves) preys upon the vulnerable and helpless. Eventually, too, they find a place of safety together, where they can live as family: and they commit one last (is it last? is it hell) criminal act to secure that refuge.

But that's just the plot: this is the story of two difficult individuals, cleverer than those around them, forming a lasting relationship -- one that's stronger than the ties of blood that Vee has fought to preserve. Interesting how in some ways this summary reads like the summary of a romance: there's nothing like that going on, nothing sordid or inappropriate, just ... two lonely people together. And yes, I know that line is from a love song.

It's the little details of life during wartime that bring Crooked Heart to life, the reek of sweat and urine in a tube station the morning after a night of air raids, the 'vinegar and fireworks' smell after a bomb has hit, the unremarkable corruption going on everywhere all the time, the whale-meat sold as cod. There's a strong sense of the ridiculous, of people trying to cling to the banalities of pre-war life and the comforts of bureaucracy. But I did feel that this was a far bleaker novel than V for Victory, and I wonder if I'd have read that if I'd read this first.

2021/007: V for Victory -- Lissa Evans

...all was quiet, a full moon prinking the frost so that the ruined houses looked like cliffs of quartz, and then, as she’d stood listening, her breath fogging the view, there’d been another blast, this one preceded by a noise like a rifle crack, and followed by a flood of orange light above the rooftops to the east.[loc. 893]

This is a sequel, though I was only vaguely aware of that fact when I started reading, and I didn't find the story difficult to follow even though I didn't know the previous histories of the protagonists. It's autumn 1944: Noel Bostock is fifteen, growing up in the Hampstead boarding house kept by his Aunt Margery, whose name isn't Margery and who isn't really his aunt. Noel never knew his parents -- the surname he uses is his deceased godmother's alias from her suffragette years -- and he's never quite taken to conventional life. It's possible to read him as 'on the spectrum' or simply very intelligent: his thirst for knowledge is fulfilled, to some extent, by the lodgers, who teach him Polish, maths, and so on, and he is becoming an excellent cook. (Just as well, since Margery -- Vee -- is not especially gifted in that area.)

Vee herself is the second in the triumvirate of protagonists: she has a murky past and a precarious existence. Like everyone else, she is struggling with the deprivations and dangers of life in wartime London, but when she witnesses a traffic accident and ends up in court to give her account of events, she has more to lose than a few hours of her time.

The third of the protagonists is Winnie, an Air Raid Warden who's trying to hold onto the memory of the man she married at the start of the war, who's now in a prison camp. Winnie (a former member of the Amazons, the girls' club founded by Noel's dead godmother) has a twin named Avril, who's Winnie's polar opposite -- sophisticated, elegant, privileged -- and who has just written a rather steamy novel about a female Air Raid Warden ...

Vee contemplates the possibility of romance, Noel finally meets someone he's actually related to, and Winnie wonders if the Romeo she married has turned into the editor of Homes and Gardens ... and their stories converge, overlap, ricochet, in ways that are both satisfying and credible.

And it is almost the end of the war, though the characters don't know it, though the rockets keep coming and London's in ruins. I was very appreciative of the final chapter, which wraps up the stories and shows us the long-awaited victory in a wealth of mundane detail: a man sitting on a raft in the Mixed Bathing pond, playing the clarinet; a Dalmatian with a Union Jack tucked into its collar; 'no drums, no bells, no fireworks or sirens'. I think it's the details (not all of them pleasant) that drew me into this novel; the actual plot is fairly slight but the characters hum with life, and their concerns are ordinary despite the tensions of the time in which they live.

After this, I bought and read the prequel -- one of the prequels, as it turns out -- Crooked Heart...

2021/006: Affinity -- Sarah Waters

The rain was fine — too fine to spoil the surface of the Thames, it shone like glass, and where the lamps of the bridges and the water-stairs showed there were wriggling snakes of red and yellow light. The pavements gleamed quite blue—like china plates. I should never have guessed that that dark night could have had so many colours in it.[loc. 4393]

Set in London in the 1870s, this is a compelling psychological drama centred on Margaret Prior, a middle-class lady who, after a nervous breakdown, becomes a prison visitor to the women's wing of the Millbank Penitentiary. Among the prisoners she encounters is Selina Dawes, spirit-medium, who is serving a sentence for fraud and assault. Still miserable and angry after the termination of a relationship with another woman, Margaret is drawn to Selina, who tells Margaret that they have an 'affinity', they belong together.

Interspersed with Margaret's first-person account are excerpts from Selina's diaries, from the time before her arrest when she was a successful medium. From the outset of the novel it's clear that things are not quite as cut-and-dried as they appear.

Or is it?

I began to understand, as I read Affinity, that two of the characters might possibly be the same person known by different names. I congratulated myself on my perspicacity. And then I finished the novel, and went to add it to LibraryThing, and realised that I'd read it 15 years ago ...

In hindsight it's not odd that I'd completely forgotten it: that was a strange time, with my father in his final months of life and me planning a move out of London that would end up being of longer duration than initially supposed. The life I had then was very different from the life I have now, and that's not simply because of the pandemic.

But I think I did retain some of the novel: the Impressionist images of the Thames at night, the dank prison (where the Tate stands now), the Crystal Palace lit up on its hill.

And I think, rereading my earlier review, I enjoyed the novel more this time around...

Original review from May 2005: since when a great deal has changed.

Read for the 'About incarceration' element of the Reading Women Challenge 2021.

2021/005: The Thief on the Winged Horse -- Kate Mascarenhas

"Stories about the Thief are rarely factual accounts,” Persephone said. “But they’re still true – they’re full of the fears and anxieties of everyone who lives here.” [loc. 2602]

The Kendricks doll factory is hidden away on Paxton's Eyot in the heart of Oxford, a strangely liminal place where there's no mobile phone signal. Every Kendricks employee is descended from one of the founding Peyton sisters (the oldest married a man named Kendrick, hence the trade name) and they keep the family's secrets, most importantly the magical method for imbuing each doll with a specific, and powerful, emotion. Life on the eyot is peaceful, conservative, and hedged around with superstition -- not least the shadowy Thief on the Winged Horse, a powerful fae who's held responsible for thefts, losses and the pregnancies of unwed mothers.

Not everyone at Kendricks, or in the wider world, is happy with the status quo. Persephone Kendrick, whose uncle Conrad is the head of the family, is incredibly frustrated at not being allowed to work with the dolls: worse, her father won't even reveal to her the single hex to which she's entitled. Hedwig Mayhew, Conrad's housekeeper and a descendant of one of the sisters, has grand ambitions (and a gift for persuasion) but is expected to know her place. And Larkin, a newcomer to the island who claims to be descended from the fourth Peyton sister -- believed dead in childbirth -- is desperate to learn the magic that makes Kendrick's dolls so valuable.

Then, soon after Larkin's arrival, the oldest and most precious doll of all is stolen, despite her magical safeguards. Surely only a Kendrick could have stolen her? Or perhaps the Thief is back...

This was an interesting exploration of patriarchy gone rotten: the Peyton sisters were the first to enchant dolls, but now the women of the family are relegated to dolls-house design ("They’ve a knack for that, because they tidy homes in real life") and working in the shop. On their thirteenth birthday, they are given a hex, or enchantment: or rather it's given to their fathers, to bestow when they see fit. The Thief on the Winged Horse is also a series of interlinked family intrigues: Larkin and his shadowy past, Hedwig's uncertain parentage, Persephone's exasperation with her father Briar, and the silent smouldering feud between Briar and his brother Conrad ...

Change is afoot. Each of the three young protagonists has an agenda, and pursues it energetically. Will the stolen doll be found? Will Persephone ever be given her hex? Will the identity of Larkin's mysterious London contact -- who may be connected with his hasty departure from Italy -- be revealed?

I was reminded of Rotherweird (the little enclave of weirdness) as well as of a plethora of novels depicting the fae and dealings with them. There are some interesting ideas in this novel, and many shades of motivation. None of the characters are wholly 'good' or 'bad', and several of them learn and evolve over the course of the story. And yet, and yet ... I enjoyed reading it, but I didn't fall in love with it, and the memory of it faded quickly.

2021/004: Harrow the Ninth -- Tamsyn Muir

“Awake Remembrance of These Valiant Dead Kia Hua Ko Te Pai Snap Back to Reality Oops There Goes Gravity,” he recited, all in one breath. “Correct?”
“They’re dead words—a human chain reaching back ten thousand years,” said the corpse. “How did they feel?”
“Genuinely sad, bordering on very funny,” said God. [loc. 7844]

For much of this novel I was in a state of happy confusion: I had no idea what was going on, or who some of these people were, or why Harrow's narrative appeared to be in second person. I suspect I will need to reread to fully comprehend where this takes the story. But that will not be a hardship, because Harrow the Ninth is a fun rollercoaster, peppered with pop-culture references ("Yes, well, jail for mother") and serious weirdness, cosmic horror and body horror, the perils of global search-and-replace, marvellous reversals and resurrection beasts, and some very cool immortals. (I do like the grown-ups, and they feel very grown-up beside Harrow). The narrator is extremely unreliable, the story seems to move through a set of alternate universes ("Is this how is happened?" other characters enquire, as Harrow develops an insta-crush on the person serving her -- a red-haired woman -- in a coffee shop ...), and Harrow herself cheerfully admits that she's mad, hallucinating et cetera.

Fortunately Ortus, her cavalier, is always ready to declaim some of his epic poem about a legendary warrior of the Ninth House. He -- wait, what?

I doubt I can do the plot justice. In brief: Harrow is now half a Lyctor; she's being trained by antagonistic teachers, and can barely manage the huge two-handed sword she drags everywhere with her; she's becoming an incredibly powerful necromancer, but is still somewhat in awe of the Emperor, the Necrolord, whom she calls God (though his saints, or Lyctors, sometimes call him John: I liked him very much and his story is compelling); and an implacable enemy is homing in, across billions of light years, to destroy them all.

This is a grandiose, melodramatic novel and I enjoyed it a great deal, even when I couldn't work out what was going on: and when I did work that out, and began to appreciate the true scale of the book, my emotional engagement went into overdrive. Wish I'd read it all in one bone-spiked, blood-bathed, cosmic swoop.

Alecto the Ninth is not out until 2022! WOE.

2021/003: Gideon the Ninth -- Tamsyn Muir

“I would have thought you would be happy that I needed you,” [Harrow] admitted. “That I showed you my girlish and vulnerable heart.”
“Your heart is a party for five thousand nails,” said Gideon. [loc. 836]

It took me, despite the word-of-mouth encomia and Hugo shortlisting, several tries to get into this. I kept baulking at the bleakness of the first chapter, where Gideon Nav -- orphan and indentured servant -- is all packed and ready to escape a gloomy, lifeless planet inhabited solely by ancient warder-nuns, labouring skeletons, and Gideon's nemesis Harrow, heir of the House. And I wasn't convinced by Gideon placing the key to her security cuff on her pillow, 'like a chocolate in a fancy hotel', since I did not see how she would have any idea about hotels fancy or otherwise.

But one day I was ready to relax and go with the idiosyncratic, pop-punk flow. And it was an immensely fun ride. Muir's language is lush and pacy and witty, and Gideon's narrative voice relishes the gruesome and the weird. Which is just as well, since the whole novel (the whole trilogy) is deeply weird, and replete with body-horror. This is a universe in which necromancers tap into thanergy, the energy produced by death, to power animated skeletons and create weapons from their own flesh and blood and bone. There is a lot of blood and bone in this novel, much of it originating from Harrow, who chooses Gideon to be her cavalier (bodyguard, minder and muscle) following a summons from the Emperor. (To be fair, there is not much competition for the role of cavalier, as Gideon and Harrow are the only two survivors of a 'flu pandemic', which wasn't.)

Off they go to the First House, where the heirs of all the nine Houses have assembled in order to undergo the tests and trials that, if successfully passed, will permit them to become Lyctors -- immortal 'saints' who support the Emperor's rule. However, the Emperor is not present; the guardians of Canaan House warn them against the dangers of the place; and suddenly the novel becomes a country-house murder mystery (in spaaaace), except with more skeletons, more lesbian necromancers, and a great deal more body horror.

The prose reminded me, at times, of Neal Stephenson at his most exuberant: colloquialisms, hyperviolence, flowing and pacy. Muir, though, has a great many more credible female characters: I am always happy to find a novel in which many / most of the significant characters are women.  I also thought, from time to time, that this'd make a great video game: room after room, level after level, boss after boss ...

I really liked the ways in which the rules of the universe, the cult of the Locked Tomb, and the stories of Gideon and Harrow, were gradually revealed. Gideon is an excellent narrator, tough but compassionate, vulnerable in weird ways and fierce in others, and her observations about the other heirs and their cavaliers are a delight: '“Hm,” said Camilla neutrally, and Gideon knew immediately that she organised her socks by colour and genre.' 

Which is not to say that I didn't spend a lot of the novel wondering what the hell was going on, and losing track of the various tests and experiments, and getting characters confused with one another. The volatile relationship between Gideon and Harrow, and the glimpses of the deep history underlying the Houses, kept me interested enough to be willing to go along with the story. Similarly, the humour and wit balanced out the gore and bone (did I mention bone? Gideon, or Muir, mentions bone a lot) and let me feel charmed by the characters even while they were committing or suffering atrocities. And Muir's sheer glee at her own creation, foregrounded in the Appendices, was immensely cheering.

I liked it enough to immediately embark upon the second volume, Harrow the Ninth -- not least because, yes, kind of a cliffhanger there.

2021/002: Empire -- Devi Yesodharan

I would have been someone with a destiny. A hero is loved. A wife, a mother is loved. Am I in any way loved, Avvai? You have gifted me my loneliness. [loc. 2063]

I wasn't familiar with the history of the Chola empire, which dominated southern India for nearly a thousand years: Empire, which focusses on the experience of a female Greek prisoner-of-war during the 11th century, was fascinating and educational as well as being a good read.

A Greek pirate fleet attacks the Chola city of Nagapattinam, 'the jewel of the Indian Ocean', and is roundly defeated. Anantha, the Chola commander, requires compensation for the men he has lost: sixty able-bodied Greek youths. What he gets are twenty teenaged boys and one adolescent girl, Aremis, who's already proficient with a sword. (Her father is the Greek captain's second-in-command.) The Chola don't think women can wield swords efficiently, so they train her up as an archer. She grows up an outsider, always wary, often in danger: but she's a good enough warrior to be chosen as the bodyguard of the emperor, Rajendra Chola -- and, later, to carry out 'dark' missions for her king.

Anantha, meanwhile, is becoming disillusioned with Rajendra's politics. He believes that an ancient prophecy about a dark woman warrior with dagger and bow may refer to Aremis, and that she, having no family and no ties, might be the perfect tool with which to shape the future of the empire.

There's a marvellous sense of the wider world here, a world where Roman coins are still in circulation, where the Cholas trade with China for silk and steel, and Greek sailors trade and pillage all around the coast of Asia. The Chola empire is also vividly depicted, with its patriarchal restrictions (Aremis is told to smile more: nobody cares if the male warriors smile) and the everyday life of its citizens as much a part of the story as the political machinations of the neighbouring Srivijayans or the mystery of the queen who's returned after having been assumed dead for many years.

The plot seemed to fade away towards the end of the novel: or perhaps the focus on the emotional relationships, especially between Anantha and Aremis, assumed more importance than the palace intrigues, the grief and vengeance, and the empire-building. Both protagonists are, first and foremost, soldiers -- Anantha with a rather idealistic streak, Aremis with a burden of resentment -- and I didn't find their motivations altogether relatable. But the depiction of medieval India was fascinating, and even minor characters were brought to life by Yesodharan's prose, which reminded me in places of Rosemary Sutcliff.

Read for the 'Longlisted for the JCB Prize' rubric of the Reading Women Challenge 2021. I wasn't familiar with the JCB Prize, which is awarded for 'a distinguished work of fiction by an Indian author': I probably wouldn't have found this novel, but a friend sent me a link to Amazon, where it's available for 49p!

2021/001: The Affair of the Mysterious Letter -- Alexis Hall

Co-tenant required. Rent reasonable to the point of arousing suspicion. Tolerance for blasphemies against nature an advantage. No laundry service. Enquire S. Haas, 221b Martyrs Walk. [loc. 160]

A Sherlock Holmes/Lovecraft pastiche, with a trans narrator and only the slightest hints of romance. Captain John Wyndham, returning to the cosmopolitan city of Khelathra-Ven after five years spent fighting a war in another universe, is prone to a recurring injury inflicted by an extratemporal jezail, and is struggling to find somewhere acceptable to live. When he sees an advertisement for a co-tenant, he is quick to visit the property, where he makes the acquaintance of consulting sorceress Ms Shaharazad Haas, and encounters landlady Mrs Hive, who infests the attic.

Ms Haas is bored, unpredictable and usually several steps ahead of the more pedestrian Wyndham: but she appreciates his sanguine nature and steadfast loyalty. When her ex-lover, Eirene Viola, enlists Ms Haas' help in a case of blackmail, Wyndham is drawn into a mystery that involves sharks, dead gods, lawyers, vampires, witches, ghosts, a multi-dimensional theatre, and an elegant fishmonger. Also some truly appalling puns (tort law...) and a great deal of witty dialogue.

Ms Haas is a violent, decadent, melodramatic delight, though I don't think she is quite as likeable or compassionate as Doyle's original Holmes. Captain Wyndham, the Watson-analogue, is perhaps slightly too strait-laced, with frequent asides concerning his authorial choices. ("I have taken some licence in representing her use of language in order to protect the sensibilities of my readers.") Yet as the histories of both characters are revealed, it's evident that their past experiences have shaped them -- and that their continued association will change them both.

Very enjoyable, comfortably weird, and utterly different to Boyfriend Material, which was my first encounter with Alexis Hall's work. I liked the playful worldbuilding and the vivid characterisation, and I'd love to read more in this setting.