2022/164: Tomb of the Golden Bird — Elizabeth Peters

‘You ought not have cursed Lord Carnarvon, Emerson.’
‘Bah’, said Emerson. ‘He was already out of temper with me.’
‘You threatened him with everything from dying of the pox to being devoured by demons in the afterlife.’ [p. 174]

The final novel, chronologically, in the Amelia Peabody series, Tomb of the Golden Bird follows directly from The Serpent on the Crown, and deals with the discovery and excavation of Tutankhamon's tomb in 1922. Peters does a good job of fictionalising the historical excavation, with misbehaviour on the parts of Carnarvon and Carter (rumoured to have broken the terms of their permit) and a very credible reason for excluding Amelia and her family from the site (Emerson's fury at their slapdash methods and general arrogance).

The entire Peabody-Emerson clan is assembled here, including Sethos; Ramses and Nefret and their dear little children; David and Lia, out from England and trying not to get entangled in newly-independent Egypt's politics ... and of course Amelia and Emerson, both older and (arguably) wiser but no less passionate about Egypt, about archaeology and about each other. There is a mystery of sorts, but one does get the feeling that Peters was bidding a fond farewell to her characters and her setting. (Two novels were published after this: A River in the Sky, set in Palestine in 1910, and The Painted Queen, set in Egypt in 1912 and completed by Joan Hess after Peters' death. I don't feel the series would be diminished without them.) There are some charming family vignettes, some moderate excitement, and a definite sense of loose ends being tied off: a fitting candidate for the last novel of the year.

2022/163: The Man Who Mistook his Wife for a Hat — Oliver Sacks

...our ‘evaluations’ are ridiculously inadequate. They only show us deficits, they do not show us powers; they only show us puzzles and schemata, when we need to see music, narrative, play, a being conducting itself spontaneously in its own natural way.[loc. 2829]

Neurologist Oliver Sacks' compilation of twenty-four of his most interesting clinical cases, organised into four sections: 'Losses', 'Excesses', 'Transports' and 'The World of the Simple'. This was first published in 1985 and I suspect neurology has advanced in many of these areas: I definitely found some of the language more, ah, robust than would be usual today. (Sacks refers to his patients as 'morons', 'retarded' and so on: these are used as simple descriptions rather than slurs, but the terms feel harsh and jarring.)

Sometimes Sacks errs too much on the clinical side, but on the whole I found this a very readable account of the various ways in which the brain can malfunction. Sacks is keen to appreciate the marvels, as well as the tragedies, of neurological conditions: the lady who suddenly wakes up hearing the music of her youth, the twins who communicate In a 'thought-world of numbers' by sharing prime numbers with one another, the 'innocent wonder' of a man who can't recall the last few decades of his life, the sheer intensity of heightened sensory input. I was particularly taken with Sacks' aside about Shostakovich, who had a physical brain injury: "a metallic splinter, a mobile shell-fragment, in his brain, in the temporal horn of the left ventricle. Shostakovich was very reluctant, apparently, to have this removed: Since the fragment had been there, he said, each time he leaned his head to one side he could hear music. His head was filled with melodies – different each time – which he then made use of when composing." [loc. 2281]. An interesting read, though I think I enjoyed his autobiography, On the Move: A Life, more, because Sacks' voice is so engaging there, and his compassion and humanity so vivid.

Fulfils the ‘Throwback | Published In 1980s or 1990s’ rubric of the Annual Non-Fiction Reading Challenge.

2022/162: Cloud and Ashes: Three Winter's Tales — Greer Gilman

By one and one they rise and stare about them at the timbers of the Ship, and at the wreckage of their world's mythology: a sickle, buried to the haft in sand; a sieve; a shuttle wound with bloodred yarn; a bunch of keys, rust gouted; ruined hay, a dazed goat browsing it; the rootstock of a thorn, salt-bare. The tideline is a zodiac. [loc. 5214]

This book comprises three works set in Gilman's mythic, allusive, alliterative world of Cloud: the short story 'Jack Daw's Pack', the novella 'A Crowd of Bone', and a full novel, Unleaving. Cloud is shaped and kept by its seasonal rituals, by its goddesses and its constellations, by witches and mummers and sacrifice. It is pagan and cruel and densely layered, and the stories here will bear rereading, not once but many times. Which is to say that I'm not sure I have understood more than fragments of those stories, or their underpinning.

The axle of the story is Ashes, a role which a woman chosen by chance must play each winter so that spring will come; a role which steals her voice, bestows some arcane gifts and some sexual freedom (welcome in an otherwise judgemental society) but also imperils her ...and which requires the sacrifice of any child conceived when she was Ashes. All three of the female protagonists -- Whin, Thea and Margaret -- take on the role of Ashes: all three are changed, and in changing change their worlds.

There are no pretty fairytales here: there is raw, rough, rude language, and raw rude behaviour. There are rapes and murders, treachery and trickery, loves unrequited and doomed. But there is also great beauty, and a binding-together of threads by unbreakable bonds of story, and the celestial storytelling of constellations and zodiacs which is, in this world, literal truth. And there are echoes and mirrors of our familiar world: language that is often on the verge of iambic pentameter, quotations or riffs on Shakespeare and Donne and a dozen others, images familiar from myth and folksong. It's a dizzying novel, like looking up at a clear night sky: it's sometimes terrifying and sometimes brutal, and sometimes mercifully kind. I shall reread, in a future winter.

As an aside, I did have some issues with the ebook: I couldn't change the style of the font, and for a while I was trying to puzzle out why some 'i's were dotted and some not, until I realised that this was an artefact of my Kindle: searching the text or my highlights revealed no distinction between i and ı.

(Compare the i in eight and in grinning.)

Fulfils the ‘a book that intimidates me’ rubric of the 52 books in 2022 challenge. I have owned this book since 2011! I've started reading several times, but been awed or cowed or envious of the language: and it is not always easy to focus on the underlying story when one is glamoured by Gilman's language. I also think this would not be a good book for me to read if I were in the middle of writing something myself: I'd end up a mere mimic.

Handy lexical reference: A Cloudish Word-Hoard, by Michael Swanwick.

Interview from 2021: The Matter of Cloud: An Interview with Greer Gilman (Uncanny magazine). (Oooh, and an earlier interview from 2000: Inside Jack Daw's Pack: An Interview with Greer Gilman.)

2022/161: The Untold Story — Genevieve Cogman

‘Aunt Isra, I’m a Librarian, and – as you’re doubtless aware – Kai here is a dragon. We don’t live in stories the way that you Fae do.’
‘Ah, but you do,’ Aunt Isra said, unruffled. ‘You just don’t recognize it. Nobody ever does – at the time.’ [loc. 2549]

The finale of the Invisible Library series (first of which was The Invisible Library, read in 2015 and reviewed with the comment 'sets up admirably for a sequel or three' -- The Untold Story is the eighth). There were several unresolved plot threads at the end of The Dark Archive -- Irene's parentage, the balance between chaos and order, the nature of the Library itself -- and these are satisfactorily, though not predictably, resolved.

Irene's superiors at the Library encourage her to pursue Alberich, the rogue Librarian who's been revealed as her father. However, this can't be seen as official policy: she must appear to have gone rogue. Meanwhile, worlds are disappearing, and balance between the dragons of order and the chaotic Fae is deteriorating. Irene's original role was as a stealer and preserver of unique books, but in recent novels there's been more emphasis on diplomacy and mediation. Irene's friends -- notably Vale the Great Detective, Kai her dragon lover, and Catherine her Fae apprentice -- have been wondering why she hasn't questioned this change of role, or shown much interest in who's pulling her strings. Could there be a narrative at work here? The Fae archetype known as the Storyteller may have some of the answers...

It was very pleasing to see more of the Library's internal workings, and to discover more about individual Librarians such as Melusine and Bradamant: Alberich's backstory is expanded, too, in unexpected but credible ways. Though Irene's quest in this novel doesn't deal with book-theft or other heist narratives, there's plenty of action and some genuine peril. I do find her sheer competence (and confidence) a little offputting at times, but there are enough moments of vulnerability and fallibility in this volume to balance that. A great conclusion to the series, with some images and ideas that will linger.

My reviews of the series can be found here, most recent first.

2022/160: Black Sun — Rebecca Roanhorse

“...all peoples of the Meridian have banned human sacrifice. It is considered uncivilized, barbaric...Too powerful for humans. Best we stick to sacrificing people the old ways, with wars and famine and despot rulers.” [p. 297]

Black Sun (first of a duology) is set in a world with a pre-Columbian, Mesoamerican flavour. There are four focal characters: Naranpa, the Sun Priest, who grew up in the squalor of the Maw; Xiala, a Teek sea captain regarded as not quite human; Okoa, a warrior prince called back to the city of Tova after the death of his mother; and Serapio, whose own mother made him into a god, or the vessel for one. All are drawn towards Tova, for the Convergence -- a spiritually-significant eclipse which may revive the fortunes of the Carrion Crow clan, still recovering from the Night of Knives massacre a generation before the novel opens.

Roanhorse has chosen her viewpoint characters to display the different facets of Meridian life: their voices are distinct, and their stories very different. I found Xiala the most intriguing of the protagonists, with her Teek magic, her pain at being exiled from her people, and her weakness for casual sex and strong liquor. Naranpa's rise from obscurity to power was mostly backstory, and her narrative focussed on the political machinations of the priesthood, and her attempts to reform it. (Some interesting interactions with her former lover, though.) Serapio was fascinating, but a lot of his story was told in flashbacks to his youth and training: most of his most powerful scenes were told from other perspectives. Okoa, rider of the giant crow Benundah, felt the least-developed of the protagonists, but I suspect he'll have a larger role in the second book.

This may have been a case of 'right book, wrong time': I found the worldbuilding, the diversity, and the character interaction fascinating, but I don't think I gave the novel as much attention as it deserved (and needed). Still, I'll revisit it before I read the sequel, Fevered Star.

One minor niggle: 'acre' is a measure of area, not distance, so a circle can't be 'two acres in diameter'.

2022/159: The Serpent on the Crown — Elizabeth Peters

There was a hole on the Blue Crown, in the centre of the brow. Here the uraeus serpent, the symbol of kingship, had reared its lordly head. ... ‘Poor little king,’ I said whimsically. ‘Without the guardian serpent on his brow he was helpless to prevent the humiliation of being passed from hand to greedy hand, and exposed to the gaze of the curious.' [loc. 472]

Egypt, 1922: Amelia Peabody and her family assemble to plan more excavations in the Valley of the Kings, but their attention is diverted by the appearance of Magda Petherick, writer of sensational novels and widow of a notorious collector of antiquities. She claims that the small golden statue she's brought with her is cursed: she deems it responsible for the death of her husband (and her dog). It certainly attracts attention, as evinced by the arrival of her stepchildren -- who believe they have a right to the statue -- and a number of other interested parties. Perhaps it's just a publicity stunt? But when Magda's body is found in the hotel gardens, rumours of the curse proliferate.

I've enjoyed most of the rest of the Amelia Peabody series, and had saved this and the next (last) in the series (Tomb of the Golden Bird) for a time when I wanted a light, cheering, well-researched read. It didn't disappoint. As is often the way with long series, the pleasures here have more to do with the ensemble cast than with the plot, though the latter is well-paced, the perils real and threatening, and the resolution satisfactory. Howard Carter appears in this novel, and of course 1922 is the year of his discovery of the lost tomb of Tutankhamon. Amelia's dreams of Abdullah indicate two undiscovered tombs in the Valley of the Kings ...

Exactly what I needed when I read it: gripping plot, likeable characters, humour and affectionate mockery. Plenty of fascinating historical detail, too -- not just about Ancient Egypt but about the Egypt of a century ago.

2022/158: Keeper of Enchanted Rooms — Charlie N Holmberg

“Haunted? This is Rhode Island, not Germany.”
“Agreed.” While it was possible for magic to root itself in inanimate objects, it had become so rare — especially in a place as new as the States — that the claim felt incredible. [loc. 260]

Rhode Island, 1846: Merritt Fernsby, moderately successful novelist, has inherited remote Whimbrel Island in Naragansett Bay, and the house that stands there, unoccupied for years and reputedly haunted. Merritt is pleased by the prospect of a solitary writing retreat, but quickly realises that the house is magically active, and that it will not let him leave. Enter -- literally -- Hulda Larkin of the Boston Institute for the Keeping of Enchanted Rooms, an experienced consultant who nannies the house into compliance, recruits some staff, and helps Merritt make sense of his new home.

Both Hulda and Merritt have secrets in their pasts, failures and betrayals that have made them wary of emotional involvement. Hulda's experiences at Gorse House, indeed, come back to haunt her; and Merritt, encountering his former fiancee at a concert, discovers that the defining tragedy of his life did not play out quite as he'd thought. His growing regard for Hulda, and her determination to repress her own attraction to him, resolve very satisfactorily, as does the plight of Whimbrel House and its unmoored spirit.

This is the first in a promising new series. There was slightly too much explicit worldbuilding for my taste (though Merritt's blithe ignorance, borne of an American education that doesn't really cover magic except as a historical phenomenon, gives Hulda a good excuse to explain everything) and I felt that the villain(s) of the story, though definitively villainous, could have been treated more sympathetically. I did enjoy this, though: I think it was the first of Holmberg's novels that I'd read (though there are several in the TBR) and I'd be interested to see more in this world.

2022/157: One Night in Hartswood — Emma Denny

Raff wanted to be free, just as Penn had, and this thing between them was that freedom. [loc. 2132]

Oxfordshire, 1360: Raff is travelling south with his brother Ash and his sister Lily, for Lily's marriage to William de Foucart, heir to a newly-minted Earl with a dark reputation. Raff would far rather be out in the forest, hunting: when they make camp he wanders into the woods, and encounters a young man named Penn. They walk together, share a kiss ... and are reunited when Raff returns to the forest the next day, commanded by the Earl to search for his missing son, Lily's husband-to-be. The Earl, unaccountably, does not provide a description of William, so Raff is to be forgiven for not realising that Penn and the wayward son are one and the same.

The pair travel north, each concealing his identity, each drawn to the other, each convinced that the other won't want him. Braving the perils of winter in medieval England (floods, snow, belligerent nobles, fearful villagers, bandits, wolves) they make their way north to Raff's home. But truth will out, and Penn's father won't hesitate to rally his supporters ...

This was a sweet romance between two likeable, and very different, protagonists. Penn has suffered abuse at his father's hands, but comes into his own when Raff needs protection. Raff has always preferred his own company, until he meets someone with whom he can truly be himself. I'm not over-keen on romances built on a foundation of lies, but at least here the lies go both ways -- and the truth-telling is credibly anguished for both Raff and Penn. The middle third of the novel, where they're travelling and getting to know one another, is quite slow: more than made up for by the hectic pace of the last third.

Given the setting, I'd have liked a little more historical detail. We don't really get much sense of medieval England. Religion is barely mentioned; 'the King' (Edward III, at this point) is a vague shadowy figure; there's surprisingly little superstition. In some ways One Night in Hartswood feels more like a fantasy novel -- albeit one without magic -- than a historical: but given that this is first and foremost a romance, the setting is scenery. A pleasant read, with good characterisation and a love affair that works on several levels.

Thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for the advance review copy, in exchange for this full honest review. UK publication date is 19 January 2023.

2022/156: The Sentence — Louise Erdrich

'Sadly, or heroically, depending on the way you look at it, books do kill people.’
‘In places where books are forbidden, of course, but not here. Not yet. Knock wood. What I’m trying to say is that a certain sentence of the book — a written sentence, a very powerful sentence — killed Flora.’
Louise was silent. After a few moments she spoke. ‘I wish I could write a sentence like that.’[p. 171]

The Sentence opens with Tookie, an Ojibwe woman with some reckless habits and a sharp, mordant sense of humour, being sentenced to 60 years by 'a judge who believed in the afterlife'. Her crime? Accidentally smuggling a cocaine-laden corpse across state lines. Prison is not as awful as it might have been, because Tookie realises she has a library in her head, made up of all the books she's ever read. And people are working towards her freedom: after ten years, she's freed. She marries Pollux, the tribal policeman who arrested her, and takes a job in a bookstore specialising in Native books.

In another novel, that would be the novel. Here it's the setup, the first fifty pages. The real story starts on the Day of the Dead -- 2nd November, 2019 -- with the death of Flora, a white woman who claimed Indigenous origins. ("The woman in the picture looked Indianesque, or she might have just been in a bad mood," Tookie decides, on being shown a photograph of Flora's purported forebear.) But Flora has not departed: she's haunting the bookstore, and there's something she wants. Maybe it's to do with the book she was reading when she died, which Tookie has inherited: The Sentence: An Indian Captivity...

And then Covid. And then the murder of George Floyd.

There are a lot of layers to this novel, and -- like the nuances of the setting -- I'm not sure that I, a white British reader, am qualified to appreciate or understand them all. I did appreciate the ways in which Tookie was haunted, not only by Flora (who becomes much more menacing as the book progresses) but by her own past, her family heritage and the expectations (positive and negative) of others. I was fascinated by the complexity of the relationships, especially between Tookie's generation and the younger generation. There was an uplifting sense of community, even while Erdrich acknowledged the issues experienced by and within that community: and there was a spirit of optimism, of hope, after the outrage sparked by Floyd's murder. (I fear that optimism has dissipated in the intervening years.) The heart, the purpose, of the novel is Tookie, and she is such a compelling and engaging character that I wasn't bothered by uneven pacing or elided details. There's magic here, as well as the mundanity of pandemic life (were US bookstores really deemed 'essential services'? Hurrah!) and the tensions between family members, between employees, between neighbours. The Sentence made me happy, even when it was enraging or poignant or tragic or, sometimes, a little too rose-tinted.

NB: features the author as a character: yes, 'Louise' in the quotation above is Louise Erdrich, owner of an Indigenous bookstore, haunted by a kinder ghost than Flora.

Fulfils the ‘featuring a library or bookstore’ rubric of the 52 books in 2022 challenge.

2022/155: Pandora — Susan Stokes-Chapman

...he gave Pandora a jar – not a box, as many believe. That error is due to a mistranslation attributed to the Dutch philosopher Erasmus. In his Latin account of the story he changed the Greek pithos to pyxis which means, literally, “box”. But the point is there was a pithos, and Zeus ordered her never to open it.[loc. 4240]

London, 1798: Dora Blake, an orphan, lives with her wicked uncle Hezekiah and his 'housekeeper' Lottie, and spends much of her time in her draughty attic room, kept company by her pet magpie Hermes, producing extravagant jewellery designs. She is appalled by the ruination of her dead parents' antique business: they were professional achaeologists, but Hezekiah is more interested in selling forgeries and making dodgy deals. And he won't let her down into the cellar, where his latest acquisition -- a huge pithos, or jar, which is reputedly cursed -- is being kept.

Bookbinder and antiquarian scholar Edward Lawrence is intrigued by the trade in black-market finds and forgeries, and when he hears of the pithos, and finds that it is so old that it seems to predate history, he is convinced that it could be the making of his antiquarian career. His friend Cornelius Ashmole (no relation, apparently, to the founder of the Ashmolean Museum) vows to assist him, though his motives may not be entirely pure.

I found this slightly disappointing. There are hints of the supernatural, but they fade away; the plot is, I think deliberately, predictable (deprived but virtuous heroine, wicked uncle, mysterious legacy, love at first sight, happy endings for the deserving); there is a rather cliched gay character, and an entirely unnecessary death; many of the characters feel two-dimensional, and don't change much over the course of the novel; and there are a number of anachronisms and errors which, while not affecting the story, vexed me. ("I might get run over by a tandem": in 1798? "His pupils look almost black": do you mean his irises? "Their salvation and their purist hell"? An aristocratic lady saying, of a high price, "You know I'm good for it"?)

I'd have liked more of the mythological, and more examination of the 'curse': the setting was intriguing, but the story unevenly paced, and the inclusion of historical characters such as Sir William Hamilton and his lovely wife Emma was well-researched but seemed superfluous.

2022/154: The Cat and the City — Nick Bradley

...there it was, neko – cat. But it was different to how it was written normally. The normal way to write the character was 猫 – with this radical 犭 on the left. The character Ogawa had sent had 豸 on the left. That was the tanuki radical. This must be an older version, relating the cat to other shapeshifting animals like the badger, fox and tanuki. [loc. 1656]

A series of interlinked stories set in Tokyo, in what's turned out to be an alternate, Covid-free reality where the Tokyo Olympics of 2020 weren't postponed to 2021. The stories range from the tale of Ohashi, a homeless storyteller who's arrested and 'rehoused' in the pre-Olympic clearup (and who feeds tuna to a stray cat), via a rejected lover who lashes out at the cat who tries to offer comfort, to an agoraphobic and his young friend who care for the injured cat, to a young woman who's having the whole city tattooed on her back -- including a cat who seems to move through the tattoo ... Each story has a distinctive voice and style: the story of the agoraphobic and the boy who befriends him is a manga, while others are told in first or third person, present or past tense, deliberately 'literary' or briskly colloquial language. The stories connect their characters in ways that aren't always obvious: the moment when Ohashi almost encounters his estranged brother, the moment when Flo, the American translator, forgets her manuscript in a cat cafe ...

This reminded me of some of David Mitchell's fiction, not least because of the tenuous but significant connections between characters (and of course the Japanese setting). I appreciated the emotional and tonal range of the stories, and the inventiveness with which they were told; I liked the way the larger stories became clear gradually and without direct focus, like a Magic Eye picture; and I think I'll need to read again with an eye to the more esoteric aspects of the cat, which may be more than it seems.

I was charmed to discover that Bradley 'has a PhD focusing on the figure of the cat in the country’s literature' (source). His next novel, Four Seasons in Japan, is out in June 2023, and there is a cat on the cover ...

For Shop Your Shelves Bingo: purchased 02MAY21, animal on the cover.

2022/153: Masters in this Hall — K J Charles

He liked the carols that reeked of ancient madrigals, the ones that made you imagine snow and wolves out there in the darkness, kept off by fire and song. [loc. 144]

Short, sweet, surprise Christmas novella set in the same milieu as Charles' 'Lilywhite Boys' series (Any Old Diamonds and Gilded Cage), and featuring a character from those books. The focus here, though, is on the festively-named John Garland, disgraced hotel detective, who has thrown himself on the mercy of his elderly uncle Abel, who hosts an annual Christmas party and loves antique Yuletide customs. John's choice of festive venue is not entirely random: his nemesis, stage designer Barnaby Littimer -- whose affections cost John his job -- is in charge of organising the festivities, and John would dearly like some vengeance this Christmas.

Of course it is not that simple. Of course there are communication issues, a dastardly plot, an imminent wedding, and one or two guests who are not quite what they seem. And there is a delightfully menacing appearance by 'the lean terrifying one known to hotel detectives across England as ‘that bastard’'. Mmm, Jerry ... This was a splendid, cheering pre-Christmas read, refreshingly free of Victorian sentimentality and rich with pagan tradition: now I want to go back and reread the novels.

2022/152: Silver Skin — Joan Lennon

He tried to imagine what it would be like to actually believe this stuff. To feel invisible danger all around. To not know if the next person you met was human or something else entirely that was out to get you, one way or another. When they’d studied the superstitions of early cultures it had never occurred to him just how stressful it would be, just how paranoid it must make you feel. [loc. 942]

Rab lives in Stack 367-74, Delta Grid, Northwest Europasia. It's far in the future, after the Catastrophe Ages -- the Nadir, the Flood and the Bulge, the latter an immense population explosion which led to the Alexander Decision and antaphrodisiacs in the drinking water. Rab wants to be an archaeologist, and his mother is keen for him to move ahead, move out: she buys him a Retro-Dimensional Time Wender with Full Cloaking Capability, a wearable time-machine which will transport Rab to a different time while keeping him in the same geographical location. He makes a quick trip to 1850, anchoring his trip to the massive storm that exposed a Neolithic village buried under the sands -- but disaster strikes and he finds himself, injured and amnesiac, in Skara Brae just before it was abandoned.

Rab was seen falling from the sky (his journey began high up in a Stack) by a young woman named Cait, who's also an outsider, an Offlander. Cait is apprentice to the village wise woman, Voy, who's taken custody of Rab's 'silver skin', believing him to be a selkie. Perhaps because of something she's seen in a vision, Voy is more than happy to let Rab and Cait spend time together, and Rab learns a great deal from Cait about Neolithic society and religion, about life close to nature, and about love. But he also knows the settlement is doomed -- and with his suit, and his implanted AI, damaged, he's afraid that he will share the villagers' fate.

I enjoyed this novel, with its framing Victorian narrative which describes the uncovering of Skara Brae in 1850 through the perspective of a young woman woken by the storm. There were a couple of elements I wasn't entirely convinced by (for instance, the word 'seal' -- meaning both the closure of Rab's suit and the aquatic mammal -- being a word recognisable by Neolithic Orcadians when Rab says it) and I felt the ending was rather abrupt. But I'd recently been reading about Skara Brae (see Shadowlands) and it was fascinating to see it brought to life, with great attention to detail and respect for the archaeology done at the site.

This is a YA novel and Rab and Cait come across as quite young, though there are some fairly adult themes hinted at throughout the story. Joan Lennon seems to write mostly for younger age groups, but I do hope she writes more YA.

2022/151: Iorich — Steven Brust

No one can do everything perfectly; mistakes happen. But we’re assassins: when we make mistakes, people live. [p. 81]

I used to be a huge fan of Brust's Vlad Taltos books: I lost track some time in the first decade of this century, possibly after not really engaging with Jhegaala (though I note I accidentally reread Dzur back in 2017: coincidentally, just after I purchased Iorich.). Anyway, this felt like a return to form (assuming form had been departed from), and reminded me of how much I like the characters, the setting and the style.

Iorich brings Vlad back to Adrilankha, despite the fact there's still a price on his head, because his friend Aliera has been arrested on a trumped-up charge. Vlad, with the help of an Iorich named Perisil, investigates the case, works out what it's really about, and ... well, 'resolves' is probably not the right word here. 'Terminates' might do better: 'with extreme prejudice' certainly applies.

Very nice to see Vlad back on familiar territory both geographically and psychologically; good to renew my acquaintance with his friends, especially Morrolan and Sethra, and to see him getting along with ex-wife Cawti and their son. There's some great dialogue, as usual, and a hilarious set of deleted scenes. I enjoyed this more than I'd expected when I dredged it from my TBR.

Yes, Deverra is in this one.

Yes, one of these days I will reread the whole series from the beginning, including the ones I've missed. I see Tsalmoth (book 16!) is out in April: that might prove a sufficient spur ...