2022/46: Dreaming Spies -- Laurie R. King

‘Allowing the world to think I am a character in some stories is the only way to obtain a degree of freedom. Fame is a sword with two edges: it permits a man to cut through the inconveniences of bureaucracy, but it also threatens to open one’s life to the world. [p. 146]

I enjoyed this rather more than Garment of Shadows, perhaps because much of it is set in Imperial Japan, a location I found fascinating. The first part of the novel is set in spring 1924, following the events of The Game and preceding those of Locked Rooms: this means that some of the weightier plot threads of the series are yet to come, though their shadow is evident in later chapters.

The novel opens with Russell and Holmes embarking on a steamer bound for California. This is not where they end up, due to the presence onboard of (a) the Earl of Darley (possibly a blackmailer) and (b) a young Japanese woman known as Haruki San, who is not what she appears. Diverting to Japan, Holmes and Russell become involved in an attempt to prevent blackmail causing an international incident: but after their return to England -- the second half of the novel, set after Garment of Shadows -- it becomes apparent that their efforts may not have resolved the matter as conclusively as they'd hoped. Haruki San reappears in, of all places, Oxford, where Mary Russell maintains a house: taking pity on the young woman, who seems to be out of her depth, Russell ends up investigating forgery, more blackmail and a soupçon of sexual deviance.

I was reminded, at various points, of Elizabeth Peters' Amelia Peabody: Mary Russell makes a number of self-justifying utterances that had a familiar tone. I did find this an engaging read, though: Haruki's shipboard lectures on Japanese culture were extremely interesting -- even if they're a form of infodump -- and Holmes and Russell's decision to avoid the tourist trail in Japan gave King (an excellent researcher) the opportunity to explore everyday life as well as the glitter of the Imperial court. She avoids exoticising the Japanese, though makes it clear that Russell and Holmes are oblivious to the context and subtext of some of the events they observe: and in Haruki she creates another excellent and strong-willed female character, of whom I hope to see more.

2022/45: Garment of Shadows -- Laurie R. King

Ali snorted. ‘Amnesia! We seem to have entered an Ethel Dell novel.’
‘You don’t believe me?’ I demanded.
Holmes said, ‘You must admit, Russell, amnesia is more commonly found in fiction than it is in real life. And to have you of all people living out a lady’s—’ [p. 94]

Morocco, 1924. A woman wakes up in a strange room, wearing a man's clothes, with blood on her hands. There are soldiers at the door: she flees into the twisting streets of the city, and finds herself adept at pick-pocketing, lock-picking and other handy skills.

Meanwhile, Sherlock Holmes is trying to ascertain the whereabouts of his wife, who has disappeared without trace from the film location where she was last seen. (I think this was where Pirate King, which I read a decade ago, left off.)

There's a lot of historically-accurate detail about the Rif rebellion, and the political maneouvring of the English, the French and the Moroccans: there are coded messages, written and verbal, and secret assassins, and plucky teenagers running errands. There are old friends, and some excellent new characters. And yet, and yet: it didn't draw me in as King's novels used to. I remember finding Pirate King pretty disappointing too, after the intricacies of previous novels. Perhaps my tastes have changed?

But I liked this enough -- liked the familiarity, the Russell/Holmes relationship, the evocation of the world a century ago -- to pick up the next in the series, Dreaming Spies, which I'd acquired a while back.

2022/44: Fieldwork in Ukrainian Sex -- Oksana Zabuzhko (translated from Ukrainian by Halyna Hryn)

... Eastern fatalism, oh yes -- the Russians have it; we’re in worse shape, we, actually, are neither here nor there, Europe has managed to infect us with the raving fever of individual desire, faith in our personal “Yes I can!” -- however, we never developed a foundation for such faith, those structures that might support that “I can!” and thus have tussled about for ages at the bottom of history -- our Ukrainian “I can!” helpless and alone. Amen. [p. 23]

Not always an easy book to read, and definitely not easy to sum up or review. It's a stream-of-consciousness narrative (in first, second and third person) focussing on 'Oksana', a Ukrainian poet who lectures at Harvard; who reflects on the painful end of a passionate relationship with a Ukrainian artist; who tries to reconcile the pre-independence Ukraine in which she grew up with the raw new country that is still reclaiming its own culture and language.

Fieldwork in Ukrainian Sex is poetic, cathartic, headlong: I lost my way in some of the more baroque run-on sentences, but never doubted their construction. Zabuzhko (or at least her narrator) is endlessly discursive, distracted, struck by an idea or an echo, plunged into suicidal depression or elevated to ecstasy in a moment. Her affair with the Ukrainian artist is quite stormy on both sides: Oksana is not a delicate romantic, but an independent woman with agency, aware of and revelling in her sexuality. Exploring the darker aspects of the relationship (arguments, emotional abuse), she finds resonances with the Soviet miasma of fear and mistrust. She's also fiercely in love with at least some elements of Ukrainian culture, while trying to balance Ukrainian mores with her experience of American life.

This novel was on the Ukrainian bestseller list for years after its first publication in 1996, and in 2006 was named “the most influential Ukrainian book for the fifteen years of independence.” I suspect that it was groundbreaking for its use of (Ukrainian) language, as well as for its rich and explicit depiction of female sensuality, sexuality and love. I found it a surprisingly easy read once I got into the rhythm of the sentences, and the English translation never felt clumsy or forced, though of course I am no judge of what might have been lost.

Not sure I liked the book as much as I liked the writing. I'm aiming to read more by Zabuzhko.

2022/43: Peter Darling -- Austin Chant

From down the hall, he heard a creak of bedsprings, and his mother called: “Wendy?” Panic shot through Peter and he stared at Tink, afraid she hadn’t known.[loc. 565]

A transformative (and trans-formative) work riffing on Peter Pan: Peter returns to Neverland after ten years away, and reencounters his old nemesis Hook. There's another boy, Ernest, leading the Lost Boys, who don't really seem to need Peter any more and -- horrors! -- have become rather less bloodthirsty in his absence. But Hook and his pirates still pose an existential threat, and Peter leaps back into the fray with relish.

Hook, though, has some important lessons to impart to Peter, not least that Neverland is powered by story, and creates the characters the story needs. It was Hook's story once, before an obnoxious brat showed up claiming to be the spirit of youth and joy. But both Hook and Peter are older now, and Neverland has changed as well. The two arch-enemies must form an alliance in order to survive -- and Peter must stop rejecting and repressing memories of his real life.

I very much enjoyed this, not least because in my mind Captain Hook bears a strong resemblance to Jason Isaacs (a preference shared by the author) and I found this oddly vulnerable, grieving, yet still flamboyant Hook perfectly in alignment with the one in my head. I also managed to read this 'cold', without realising that Peter is trans, and the way that his identity was built up over the first half of the book was marvellously done. It's an exemplary transformative work, too, unpicking the original story and knitting it into a new shape: all the original elements are present, but they no longer look the same.

I was slightly confused by the timeline: Hook came to Neverland after losing a lover who went off to the Great War, and it's implied he'd been there a long time before Peter's first appearance. But I'd always thought of Wendy and Michael and John as Edwardian children, which would mean they visited Neverland before Hook arrived... But this is really not important to the story, or stories, and it did not detract from my experience of the novel.

A gift from a dear friend: thank you, N!

“I always thought the only way to grow up was to be someone else. I don’t know what to do as me.”

2022/42: Sister Noon -- Karen Joy Fowler

She wanted to imagine the things the ocean hid, fish with bulbous eyes, forests of coral, clams the size of bathtubs. She wanted a moment in which to feel her life for what it was, an inconsequential bit of noise at the edge of something deep and vast. [p. 225]

Set in San Francisco in the 1890s, a city of great wealth and tremendous squalor, of Black and Chinese and European and American, of seances and scandal and charity. Lizzie Hayes, forty-something and unmarried due to a clause in her father's will that promises disinheritance, volunteers at the Ladies' Relief Home for orphans and destitute adults. To Lizzie, one day, comes the notorious Mrs Pleasant, a woman who has passed for white and then publicly announced her Black heritage. She is bringing little Jenny Ijub, whose mother apparently died and was buried at sea. Lizzie is reluctant to accept another charge, especially one of such mysterious origin, but something about Jenny persuades her to say yes.

Thus she becomes entwined in the thicket of rumour surrounding and generated by Mrs Pleasant and by Mrs Bell, a close associate of the former. People say that Mrs Pleasant is a baby farmer, or a voodoo witch (she certainly provides an effective medicine for Lizzie's headaches), a former slave, a secret millionaire. People say that she used to arrange parties where wealthy men (like Lizzie's deceased father) met young women for extra-marital liaisons. Lizzie is not sure what, or who, to believe: but Jenny Igbo's arrival changes her life.

This is a slow and understated novel, or perhaps an overly subtle one: I'm not sure I ever quite got the key of it. Beautifully written (as is to be expected from this author) and focussing on the lives of women -- not only Lizzie and Mrs Pleasant, but Mrs Bell, her daughter Viola, the orphaned Jenny, the staid Mrs Putnam and the confused Mrs Wright -- in a society where they have to find their own various ways to power. I found it interesting, not least for the historical aspects, but it didn't truly engage me in the way that other novels by Karen Joy Fowler have done, and I'm still not sure that I unravelled, let alone understood, the truth about Mrs Pleasant. (A real historical character, as Fowler mentions in her Afterword, but one about whom a plethora of myth has accreted.)

2022/41: The Devil You Know -- K J Parker

Those awesomely strong monarchs of the deep had brains the size of walnuts. And so it is, as far as I can tell, with the gods. All power and no intellect. Strength makes you stupid. It’s the weak who grow smart. [p. 111]

A sequel, of sorts, to Blue and Gold: Saloninus, the philosopher-protagonist of that earlier work, makes a deal with a demon. Twenty years of restored youth, invulnerability to accident, and a demonic servant to obey his every whim: and, yes, straight to hell at the end of the contract. This contract has been drawn up by demonic bureaucrats (is there another sort, I hear you cry) and is guaranteed loophole-free. But Saloninus, the alchemist, is good at changing things beyond recognition.

The story is told in alternating first-person narratives, Saloninus and his unnamed demonic liaison. One ends up rather liking the latter, with his (its?) appreciation of human art, enjoyment of tea, and growing conviction that Saloninus has something up his sleeve. Saloninus himself is a thoroughly unreliable narrator, prone to recounting an incident -- for example, the death of his wife -- and later explaining that appearances might have been deceptive and something completely different occurred. As, indeed, seems to have been the case with that contract.

The Devil You Know (second book with this title that I've read recently!) is vastly entertaining, darkly amusing and pleasingly complicated, a riff on the Faust legend with a protagonist who's cleverer and more cunning than Faustus. An excellent reminder of how much I enjoy (most of) Parker's fiction.

2022/40: The Last Days of Jack Sparks -- Jason Arnopp

‘Probably bad to laugh during the exorcism of a thirteen-year-old girl, right? Well, I just did. You should SEE this bullshit.’ [loc. 517]

The eponymous Jack Sparks is a bit of a lad: bad-boy former music journalist making a name for himself with books such as Jack Sparks on Drugs, Jack Sparks on a Pogo Stick and -- forthcoming -- Jack Sparks on the Supernatural. Except that the latter is never to be completed, because Jack Sparks, attending an exorcism in an Italian church, mocks what may or may not be a demon, and finds himself targetted by something very unpleasant.

The novel is presented as Sparks' last work, with additional material by his estranged brother Alastair, his editor, a combat magician, various social media... Sparks is loudly and belligerently sceptical about the supernatural: he dismisses ominous incidents as fakery and illusion, and refuses to credit the evidence of his own senses. Is he just being thoroughly obnoxious, or does he have something to prove?

Sparks, it quickly becomes obvious, is a thoroughly unreliable narrator: he claims to have quit drugs, he concocts an elaborate fantasy centred on his flatmate Bex, he gives an account of a childhood incident which doesn't match what Alastair has written. Though Alastair is not much more reliable, or much more likeable.

There are some unpleasant scenes in here -- not all of them depicting demonic carnage -- but I found it more gory than scary: perhaps that was due to the pacing, which seemed rather uneven, or the fact that I disliked most of the characters and did not care what became of them. If Jack had been a little more forthcoming about his secret hopes, or his own vulnerability, I might have warmed to The Last Days of Jack Sparks: as it was, I remained unengaged and kept reading simply for closure. The denouement, with the smell of burning and the cloakroom, was nicely done and perhaps the scariest thing about the novel.

Features guest appearances by film-makers Eduardo Sánchez and Daniel Myrick, of Blair Witch Project fame.

2022/39: Lucky Woman -- Patricia Finney

This is why middle-aged mothers like I was then go to watch movies like Lord of the Rings or King Alfred or Gladiator, full of noble stoical men who fight and get knocked down and then get up again, about men who are competent, who don’t run away or whine or hide, who keep their promises, whom you can trust. Mythical beasts, of course. [loc. 350]

When I bought this (in 2014) it was entitled Love Without Shadows. As a teenager I'd obsessively reread Finney's two novels about an Irish bard in Roman Britain, A Shadow of Gulls and The Crow Goddess: later, I'd enjoyed her 'Elizabethan noir' novels, Firedrake's Eye and the rest. I was intrigued by what she might do in a contemporary setting -- though, obviously, not intrigued enough to read this novel as soon as I'd bought it...

The setting is, I think, the early years of the 21st century, or possibly the late 1990s. There are mobile phones and VHS tapes and indoor smoking. So much smoking! Anna Clements lives in south Cornwall: she has a husband (successful author of historical fiction, when he's not in the throes of depression) and two teenaged sons, and works as a community nurse, caring for the terminally ill. In her spare time, she's a karate instructor. She's pretty much given up on there being more to life, untilhen a visitor shows up to see one of her terminal cases -- a big guy with a bike and a facial tattoo, whom Anna thinks of as Tattoo -- and Anna finds that there can be more to life after all.

Obviously it's not that simple or straightforward. Tattoo has something of an identity problem, and Anna, though she's tough and competent, does not always act in her own best interests. It turns out that while she's keeping secrets from her family, they're keeping secrets from her, and Tattoo (or whatever his name is) has a few things to sort out before he can be truly honest with Anna.

This wasn't the sweet rural romance I'd expected from the first few chapters: a great deal changes for Anna, and there are some pretty brutal moments. Anna is as self-sufficient as the heroes of the films she loves, and remarkably forthright: we get a lot of her opinions. The story was well-paced until the last 10%, when it all became a bit melodramatic, hectic and over the top. My eye also snagged on a few typos and names spelt differently from one page to the next. Made me want to visit Cornwall again!

Fulfils the Book with an Alternate Title prompt of the '52 books in 2022' challenge.

2022/38: Three Twins at the Crater School -- Chaz Brenchley

What kept the girls of the Crater School safe, what their parents trusted more than walls and rules and governance, was the bold nature of the girls themselves, the pioneer spirit of Mars Britannicus. So there were merlins in the lake. So what? They weren’t Earth girls, to cower indoors and never venture forth for fear of being eaten. [loc. 451]

The setting is Mars Imperial, settled by the British more than a century before our story opens. (The Russians got Venus, but do not much care for it.) As in the prototype Raj, boys are sent back to England for their education, while girls attend local boarding schools ... such as the eponymous Crater School, with its deep blue lake, Lowell Lake, wherein lurks a naiad, the mature and most deadly form of the alien species known as merlins. (There are hints that merlins brought humanity to Mars. Brenchley's worldbuilding is full of intriguing asides like that.)

Twins Tasha and Tawney -- more properly, Natasha and Tatiana -- are in the Lower Fourth. They're asked to welcome Rachel, another twin, who's been separated from her sister Jessica because their parents thought they would do better apart. Monstrous! Luckily Tawney and Tasha are kind and likeable girls, and Rachel thaws a little, especially when she becomes involved in all the usual school-story adventures: exploration of forbidden areas, secret feasts, dormitory life, creative interpretation of rules, encounters with aliens and Russian spies -- what do you mean, that's not usual? I'm sure I remember lots of suspicious male characters in Malory Towers and the Chalet School, at least some of them probably spies (and possibly aliens, who knows), and all of them easily defeated by plucky teenaged girls. Nowadays, one would ascribe sleazy motives to any men lurking around a girls' school, but classic boarding-school stories were set in, and to some extent created, a more innocent world, and Brenchley has retained this perspective. 'Rachel couldn’t imagine why grown men might want to spy on schoolgirls...' [loc. 3536]

A fun, joyful read with a surprising amount of world-building tucked into the corners. There are friendships, mad adventures, competent and capable young women, alien kitties, and teachers who are strict but fair. There are secrets only gradually revealed, and tropes from Golden Age SF. There are mild cliffhangers -- this was originally published in serial form on the author's Patreon -- and absent parents. Three Twins at the Crater School was just what I needed, even before a delightful cameo appearance by the indefatigable Pat Cadigan. I have promised myself the next in the series very soon.

2022/37: Honey and Pepper -- A J Demas

"Nothing we did in bed together changed the truth of who we were to each other -- you know, 'owner' and 'property'." [loc. 1866]

The first in a new series ('When in Pheme'), Honey and Pepper is the story of two former slaves, both trying to adjust to life as free men. Nikias has come to the city after the death of his beloved master, a country landowner who lived quietly in the mountains, and is now working as a short-order cook at a snack stand: Kallion was freed when his not-at-all-beloved master disappeared, believed murdered, and is making a career for himself as a law clerk. Each likes the look of the other, but both are dealing not only with the novelty of freedom, but with the lingering mental damage of having recently been regarded as property.

Like Demas' other pseudohistorical romances, this is set in a milieu that resembles, but isn't, the ancient Mediterranean. She has an eye for the little details that bring an antique setting to life: Nikias' octopus fritters, Kallion's unused kitchen, bags of hazelnuts at the races, a high-born lady wiping her fingers on her mantle after eating a snack 'in the street, like a dockworker'. (Food is an important element in this novel, not least because Nikias enjoys cooking so much. I want the recipes!) There are some familiar names from the other novels: Eurydemos, Nione, Lysandros ... And, though this is a romance between two men, there are several excellent women, including Nikias' employer the widow Pyke, his new patron Satteia, and -- glimpsed only briefly -- an inspirational lady pirate. There are also tantalising hints of potential future protagonists: ex-archon Polydoros, in particular, intrigues me greatly.

The plot's driven by a villainous scheme which affects Kallion closely, but that isn't the focus of the novel. Instead, Honey and Pepper tells the story of two young men (and their growing circle of friends) coming to terms with, and overcoming, the after-effects of slavery: the acts for which they weren't truly responsible, the power imbalances, their different ways of learning to own their selves, their lives.

I liked this very much indeed: Nikias and Kallion are delightful, the secondary characters all felt rounded and realistic, and the setting -- Pheme, a cosmopolitan city with an ambience that reminds me of classical Rome as depicted by Lindsey Davis -- is fascinating. After I'd finished this, I went back and reread most of Demas' previous novels, and I'm already eager for the next 'When in Pheme' novel.

Thanks to the lovely author for an advance review copy!

2022/36: Act Your Age, Eve Brown -- Talia Hibbert

She had a mature, adult plan, and staying here in this happy little fairy-tale town with a delightful big bad wolf was not conducive to that plan. It couldn’t be, because she wanted it so badly. [p. 256]

Eve Brown prefers to quit while she's ahead. Failures hurt, especially when she's failed at something she loves. She's quite aware of being an immature brat: she doesn't need her parents to tell her what a disappointment she is. When they try, she takes off, driving with no actual destination in mind, and finds herself in the quaint little town of Skybriar.

And finds herself in the quaint little town of Skybriar ... as well as encountering, under admittedly inauspicious circumstances, the handsome but prickly bed-and-breakfast owner Jacob Wayne. Eve ends up working at the B&B, though she tells herself it's just for a few weeks. Of course she can waltz away and leave Jacob behind. Of course.

I liked awkward Jacob and somewhat slapdash Eve, both of whom recognise that they are 'on the spectrum' and have learnt to accept themselves: it makes it easier for them to accept one another, too. (When I was younger I used to read romances and wistfully dream of that grand romantic love: now I read them and wistfully dream of being understood, respected and comfortable.) Hibbert's romances are immensely soothing and warm-hearted: even when my critical faculty was wondering why Eve's family didn't seem to care about where she'd disappeared to, I was confident that Hibbert would handle all my doubts. (Spoiler: she did.) Charming, sweet and occasionally (consciously and affectionately) ridiculous.

2022/35: Declare -- Tim Powers

“I was trying to forcibly impose upon the djinn the experience of death... It was a refinement of a technique the wartime French DGSS had used to try to kill the one in Berlin. Their scientists in Algiers had cut a cylinder from what was allegedly a Shihab meteorite, one of the spent ‘shooting stars’ that has knocked down and killed a djinn. Our SOE was able to get the specs on the operation, and the meteoric iron the French had used did have a peculiar internal structure: fine straight fissures—something like the Neumann lines that are found in ordinary meteorite cross-sections, and which result from interstellar collisions—but these were all at precise right angles, and the French had concluded that this configuration was a unique result of fatal collision with a djinn. The scientists believed ...that the iron ‘contained the death of one of these creatures,’ and that firing the death into the Berlin djinn would kill it.” [p. 327]

One of the first novels I read on Kindle: my review from 2011 is here, and mostly still applies. This time around I was more aware of the period-typical attitudes: racism in particular, also colonialism, sexism, and classism.

I still admire Powers' portrayal of the djinn, a truly alien species, and his diligence on fitting known facts into a fictional history. The spycraft elements have more than a tinge of Le Carre, while the occult elements reminded me of Lovecraft (except without the racism, sexism and homophobia). Definitely my favourite of Powers' novels, though I keep meaning to give the Fault Lines series another try ...

2022/34: The Anna Karenina Fix -- Viv Groskop

... as they say in Russian, 'life is better there where we are not'. This, said in an extremely categorical and depressing voice, is probably the best Russian saying of all time. Is there any more fatalistic thought in human existence? [p. 128]

Viv Groskop grew up believing herself to have Russian ancestry, and became a devoted Russophile in her teens. Russian literature was her gateway drug, and as she takes us through a series of 'life lessons' (ranging from 'How to Know Who You Really Are: Anna Karenina', via 'How to Not be Your Own Worst Enemy: Eugene Onegin', to 'How to Know What Matters in Life: War and Peace') she describes her own love affair with the great Russian novels (and with a less-great Russian rock star), and how she learnt to appreciate the quintessential Russian obsession with Fate and Soul.

Groskop is very funny, sometimes uncomfortably so: her account of a Russian funeral, and her gradual realisation that she'd been asked to bring cosmetics to make up the corpse's face, made me wince even as I laughed. She's also good at making these classic novels feel more accessible, and at combining literary and historical commentary with her own experiences, and with plenty of pithy commentary. Of Nabakov's translation of Eugene Onegin, which adds more than 1500 pages of footnotes to the original text, she notes 'quite possibly the biggest act of pedantry in the history of literature', and goes on to detail Nabakov's Onegin-inspired feud with critic Edmund Wilson.

Amid the humour and the anecdotes are some really valuable insights: A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, Groskop points out, is 'the account of someone whose head is bowed', who does not look up. I suspect what spurred me to finally finish reading this book was my recent reading of The Half Life of Valery K, which begins in a gulag: Groskop's analysis of Solzhenitsyn's work also gave me a greater appreciation of Pulley's descriptions.

I enjoyed The Anna Karenina Fix more as a work of literary criticism than as a self-help book, though Groskop has tempted me to read those texts with which I'm unfamiliar. And the 'life lessons' are straightforward and relatable, though it can be hard to identify the sweeping grandeur of Tolstoy or Pasternak in one's own daily grind.

Groskop, incidentally, turns out to have Polish rather than Russian forebears:

It’s good to know where you come from in the past, but it’s more important to know who you are right now.

2022/33: The Half Life of Valery K -- Natasha Pulley

"I know the value of the data. But those people have a right to try and live, at least, they --"
"A right?" she said, incredulous. "Christ, that's the most American thing I've heard anyone say in years. Rights are not biological law, you of all people should know that. They are a luxury, granted in times of peace and plenty." [loc. 1905]

It's 1963, and Valery Kolkhanov, formerly an esteemed physicist, has been a prisoner in a Siberian gulag for six years. Abruptly, he's told that he's being moved: he'll be working out the rest of his sentence as a prisoner-scientist at the Lighthouse, seventeen hundred kilometres from Moscow, where his old university lecturer Elena Resovskaya is leading research into the effect of radiation on the local ecology. It's all quite safe, Moscow -- in the person of KGB operative Shenkov -- assures Valery. But Valery is not convinced.

The Half-Life of Valery K is quite a departure from Pulley's earlier novels, in that there is nothing of the supernatural or mystical here. Instead, Pulley's latest novel is based on historical events in the USSR in the 1950s and 1960s. There are some familiar themes: people turned monstrous by circumstance; queer romance; a delightful octopus (this one is named Albert); the importance of kindness; the contrast between appearance and actuality.

Valery, whose narrative forms most of the novel, is an intriguing protagonist, a brilliant scientist with a stoic acceptance of life's unpredictability. He loves children and animals (in the gulag he has a pet rat named Boris) but is convinced he'll never have children of his own, that family life is 'not for him'. He cultivates a sunny disposition and a boyish appearance, both of which reduce the likelihood of confrontation. And, very early in the novel, it's revealed that he has prison tattoos which alarm new inmates.

Shenkov, the KGB Head of Security, is glacially smooth, softly spoken, handsome and well-groomed. Valery is initially terrified of Shenkov, expecting brutality and trickery: but Shenkov, it turns out, is a good man trying to make the best of an appalling career. He tries to keep orphaned children together, arranges adoptions, offers chocolate. He is also in charge of ensuring that no news about the Lighthouse gets out into the wider world, and his techniques are just about what you would expect for the Cold War USSR.

Shenkov, incidentally, is a family man: he's married to a redoubtable physicist, Anna, who I think might be Pulley's most sympathetic female character to date. There's a trio of extraordinary women at the heart of this novel: Anna, Elena Resovskaya with her sparkly red shoes, and Nanya the retired engineer. And behind those women are the ghosts of others, their appalling story only gradually revealed.

The focus of the plot is Valery's investigation of the irradiated landscape, and his growing conviction that he hasn't been told the whole truth about the 'radiation ecology' study. Valery, as a student, worked with Josef Mengele in Berlin in the 1930s: he knows about human trials, and he understands the importance of scientific data and the necessity of research. Despite that background, he isn't comfortable with what he discovers about the projects running at the Lighthouse: and his ethics aren't quite like anyone else's.

On the whole, I found this an incredibly engaging read. I didn't feel that the epilogue (with its musings on gender roles, a theme throughout the novel but never quite as prominent as in the last chapter) was wholly necessary: it felt as though a lot of issues were being glossed over. I would have liked some closure, something more than 'he never found out', on one significant strand of the story. And there are a couple of minor errors with historical detail: cassette recorders, BBC broadcasts from Parliament...

This is definitely a novel that gained depth on the second reading, simply because of how the story is paced, and how the characters and their relationships evolved. And it's full of the observed minutae that characterises Pulley's work: a glance, a gesture, a teacup, a scarf. Also very educational, not only about Soviet physics in the 1950s and 1960s but also about forest glass, bananas, gulag economics. Highly recommended.

Review copy provided by Netgalley. UK Publication Date 23rd June 2022.

2022/32: The Neuroscientist Who Lost Her Mind -- Barbara Lipska

...the same brain structure that I sabotaged in thousands of rodents will begin to malfunction, spectacularly, in my own brain. [loc. 422]

Barbara Lipska, director of the Human Brain Collection Core at the National Institute of Mental Health, developed a model of how brain damage can cause schizophrenia. Then she began to experience visual distrubances and behavourial changes, which turned out to be caused by tumours in her own brain.

Lipska feels that her 'brush with madness' gave her insight into 'what it's actually like to lose your mind and then recover'. Her accounts -- necessarily incomplete, as she can't directly recall the emotions she experienced before the tumours were treated -- of how she changed, and the effect her illness had on her family, were disturbing and poignant. I also found them horribly relatable, since my mother underwent what I experienced as a massive personality change following brain surgery. At the time I think this was explained to me, or interpreted by me, as a result of constant pain and sensory changes: now I wonder if it was perhaps a result of physical damage, as per Dr Lipska's experiences.

There's quite a bit of biological and neurological detail in this book, often repeated: it's balanced by Lipska's accounts of her own life before and after the tumours, and her recklessness in undergoing treatment without disclosing pertinent test results. I now have a better understanding of how physical damage, including swelling, can affect brain function and personality, and of how precise the treatments for such damage need to be.

Do not read this book if you have a headache. It will not improve matters.

2022/31: Kindred: Neanderthal Life, Love, Death and Art -- Rebecca Wragg Sykes

Things look different now that we know the blood feeding neurons crackling like fireworks in 6 billion living brains – yours, as you read this page – carry the legacy of the Neanderthals. That the vast majority of living people are their descendants is, by any measure, some sort of evolutionary success.[p. 377]

This is a splendid book, pulling together a vast amount of research from diverse disciplines and arranging it thematically. Each chapter is prefaced by a short, poetic passage depicting an imagined Neanderthal: Wragg Sykes leavens what can often be a dry catalogue of finds and theories with digressions, anecdotes, vivid metaphors and witty asides. (I groaned, cheerfully, at her remark about the DNA analysis of dental calculus: "as a technique it’s still teething".) She's very good at contextualising and comparing. Discussing the population density of Neanderthals, who thrived as a species for half a million years and whose remains are found from Wales to China, Siberia to Gibraltar, she writes: "Total population estimates tend to be in tens of thousands or even less. At any point in time there may have been fewer Neanderthals walking about than commuters passing each day through Clapham Junction..." [p213].

Wragg Sykes focusses on the Neanderthals themselves, rather than their contribution to the human gene pool or their similarities to and differences from ourselves. Throughout Kindred, though, she asks the big questions that help to explore their humanity: did they have possessions? did they make art? did their lives have a spiritual aspect? did they really eat their dead? (The answer to the last, intriguingly, is 'not as often as H. Sapiens'.) And yes, they did interbreed with H. Sapiens, at various points during the period of overlap -- and the Neanderthals, at least, took good care of the hybrid children.

I was charmed to read, in the afterword, this acknowledgement: "I want to proudly acknowledge the debt I owe to Jean Auel. The great trouble she took to try and represent tiny details of Palaeolithic life fired up my nascent childhood interest in prehistory, and in many ways her depiction of Neanderthals was prescient." [p. 382] My interest in Neanderthals was also sparked by Jean Auel's novels, and I'm continually fascinated by how new discoveries and theories fit into her fictionalised theories.

This was a delightful and intellectually stimulating read, and made me want to catch up on other non-technical books on the Neanderthals -- not to mention news articles about new archaeological / paleontological discoveries. Impressive, readable and humane.

2022/30: The Atlas Six -- Olivie Blake

Here at the library, their lives would change. Here their former selves would be destroyed, like the library itself, only to be built back up again and hidden in the shadows, never to be seen except by the Caretakers, by the Alexandrians, and by the ghost of lives uncrossed and paths untaken. [loc. 61]

Six candidates, the best young medeians (magic-users) in the world, are invited to join the Alexandrian Society and gain access to a vast trove of arcane knowledge. The Library, which has achieved a kind of sentience of its own, contains not only volumes from the ancient Library of Alexandria, but materials from other collections throughout history. Atlas Blakely, Caretaker, has personally selected the six: Libby and Nico, who loathe one another, can both manipulate the physical world; Reina has an affinity with plants; Parisa is a telepath, who also uses sex to get what she wants; Tristan can see through illusions; and Callum is a very particular sort of empath.

There is, of course, a catch. Each decade, six people are chosen for initiation, but only five will proceed to their second year of study. Who's going to be disqualified this time around?

I was reminded of The Magicians (not least because several of the characters are, at least initially, unlikeable), of Donna Tartt's The Secret History and of Ninth House. The Atlas Six is as much, if not more, about the interactions between the characters as it is about the magic that they perform. The magic is intriguing, but the sharp edges and soft places of the six initiates -- not to mention their friends and associates -- make for an intense, often claustrophobic black comedy. Allegiances and affections (definitely not the same thing here) shift and fray, magic isn't the only strength, and not everything on the page is what it seems.

I found this an immensely engaging read. There are flaws (the occasional clunky phrase, the lack of foreshadowing regarding a particular plot twist) and it is claustrophobic, with a tight focus on the protagonists that's seldom, and fleetingly, broken by scenes outside the house. I would have liked more about the wider world, and how a small but significant population of magic users have affected it. I also felt that some of the characters were much more developed than others, but that might be a 'volume 1 of X' issue. For yes, there is another volume coming, The Atlas Paradox, in which the twisty cliffhanger will be either resolved or multiplied, and in which I hope to see more of some vastly intriguing secondary characters, such as Max. Happily, this is due quite soon (autumn 2022): The Atlas Six, though only just picked up by a major publisher (and also optioned for TV), has been available since 2020 as a self-published work.

2022/29: Shards of Earth -- Adrian Tchaikovsky

Unspace was different. Things from real space – such as humans – had a tenuous existence there. It was a terrible, lonely place, until you sensed something . . . other. Then being alone became preferable to the alternative. [p. 38]

Idris Telemmier is an Intermediary, an engineered living weapon. Myrmidon Solace is a beautiful, genetically-altered battle angel. Together they turned aside an Architect -- an immense, inscrutable destroyer of worlds, one of the race? species? type? that had destroyed lost Earth. That was decades ago: now it seems that the Architects have returned, and Solace and Idris -- together with the rag-tag crew of the Vulture God -- have to convince both humans and aliens of the clear and present danger.

There are so many aspects of this novel that should have engaged me: diverse and intriguing characters; aliens who speak in iambic pentameter; the unsettling Presence that everyone experiences in unspace; themes of disability vs eugenics; space smugglers; alien archaeology ... and it's by Adrian Tchaikovsky, who has written some of my favourite SF of recent years. (For instance, The Doors of Eden and Dogs of War). Yet I didn't especially enjoy Shards of Earth, first in a new trilogy and shortlisted for the Arthur C Clarke Award, and probably wouldn't have persevered past the sample chapters if it hadn't been a book club read.

Part of the problem was that there seemed to be a lot of infodumping. I don't appreciate lengthy asides on the socio-political context of a scene: if that information is essential, weave it more neatly into the narrative. I didn't really warm to either Solace or Idris, though they were both interesting characters. And though Shards of Earth features several topical themes -- disability, slavery, gender -- and some solid space opera tropes (from games, films and comics as well as written fiction), it didn't quite cohere for me.

That said, I'll probably end up reading the rest of the trilogy once it's all available, because I want to know about the moon and the Presence and the Architects and the archaeology.

Read for Lockdown Bookclub.