2023/016: The Redoubtable Pali Avramapul — Victoria Goddard

“There have been few things I wanted I did not want to earn... I could have wished for my friends, to find them … but wishes are dangerous, Elena. One must be careful they do not come too true. But the possibility of a wish, now, that is a fine and splendid thing.” [loc. 2433]

This is the second in the 'Red Company Reformed' series, set in Victoria Goddard's 'Nine Worlds' universe: though it's a direct sequel to The Return of Fitzroy Angursell, it doesn't start where that novel left off, but rather some time before, when Pali Avramapul -- also known as Domina Black, a professor of Late Astandalan History at University of Stoneybridge -- sets off on a journey to Solaara to do some research and to meet the Last Emperor, Artorin Damara. En route to Solaara, she also passes through Ragnor Bella, where she encounters an old friend, and the two visit an inn in the village of St-Noire. And thence to Solaara, and her interview with the Emperor. (That encounter appears in The Hands of the Emperor: I developed an antipathy to Pali at that point in the earlier novel, but confess I liked her rather more after reading her account of their conversation.) Then back to Stoneybridge, where she resigns from her position and sets out on an adventure, hoping that the time has come to use the third of three wishes that she was once granted by a magical being. But her quest does not go exactly to plan: and by halfway through the novel, the story's caught up with the end of The Return of Fitzroy Angursell, and it's time for Pali to start to deal with her emotions, and reconnect with her friends.

I am still not especially fond of Pali, but I did feel I understood her better. And I know what it is to suddenly, sinkingly realise that one's light-hearted banter has been immensely hurtful to a friend, so I can empathise with that aspect of her story. Her relationship with Fitzroy does become easier, though her attitude towards one of his dearest friends ("I despise him... I have sworn vengeance upon him for the hurt he has done one of mine." [5219]) needs some work.

Pali's origins have an intriguing, distinctly 'Arabian Nights' flavour: at some point I shall get around to the 'Sisters Avramapul' series, especially now that I have encountered Pali's delightful sister Sardeet, and her 'tigers'.

2023/015: Stargazy Pie — Victoria Goddard

Now that you’re finally back to scandalize the good gentry, life should be much more interesting. Fire, mermaids, herring pies, gossip, and half the town jammed with fools debating the folly of the rest, and all of them talking about you. I’m delighted you’re back.

Cosy crime novel, the first in the Greenwing and Dart series, set in Victoria Goddard's 'Nine Worlds' universe. From other novels (specifically The Return of Fitzroy Angursell and At the Feet of the Sun) I know more about some of the characters than Goddard tells us in this first installment: I wonder if she had their later stories in mind when writing this?

It's a frothy, cheerful novel, despite some fairly dark undertones. Jemis Greenwing, our first-person narrator, has returned in disgrace to the sleepy, notoriously dull town of Ragnor Bella where he grew up. Due to illness, he missed the death and funeral of his stepfather; his stepfather's second wife is happy to give him a home, but she can't help with the rumours about his dead father, or the lingering illness that still afflicts him, or the disaster of his time at university, or the heartbreak at his lover's betrayal. Jemis should have inherited the Greenwing estate: instead, he's working at Elderflower Books, for the charming and genteel Mrs Etaris. Luckily his old friend Mr Perry Dart is in town, and invites Jemis to go mushroom-hunting. Jemis thinks this is a veiled excuse for gambling or poaching (both popular local pastimes) but it turns out to be an expedition to spy on a secret cult in the forest...

There is a mermaid; an actual stargazy pie; a decadent dinner party, with matching footmen; a young lady dressed as, but not pretending to be, a young gentleman; allusions to the work of banned anarchist poet Fitzroy Angursell; a drug-smuggling operation; a villain quelled by sneezes; and a number of surprising, and positive, revelations for Jemis.

I enjoyed this a great deal, though I was almost as frustrated by Jemis' constant sneezes as his companions were. It's very nice to read a fantasy crime novel in which (almost) nobody behaves in a way that'd be out of place in the works of Austen or Heyer! (Well, apart from the ritual sacrifice. And the orgy. And ... But those are mostly off-screen!) The novel is available for free as part of Sword and Magic: Eight Fantasy Novels: I'm quite likely to dip into the series further, not least for glimpses of those characters mentioned in other strands of Goddard's work.

2023/014: At the Feet of the Sun — Victoria Goddard

The book of censored poetry was the only thing he’d ever stolen from the Palace. Well. Except for the government, of course. [loc. 7710]

Sequel to The Hands of the Emperor. This is much further along the axis towards traditional 'epic' fantasy -- it has quests, and journeys through magical realms, and parallel universes -- and I probably wouldn't have started reading if I hadn't already formed strong positive attachments to the protagonists. It's well over a thousand pages in print, and the pacing is uneven: but any novel featuring Cliopher Mdang, now Viceroy of Zunadh and still working on his promise to light a new hearth-fire for the world, promises something extraordinary.

A great deal happens in the first third of the novel, including a realisation and a reunion that I would have expected to occur rather later in a more traditional novel. At the Feet of the Sun then becomes less tumultuously eventful, though still far from dull. There is a great deal of travelling, with particular emphasis on navigational techniques (a strong Polynesian flavour here), and plenty of authentic interaction between the mythic and the mundane. Cliopher has surely now fulfilled his ambition to be sung of in the Lays, and both he and His Retired Radiancy perform feats that are the stuff of legend. Of course, they are still mortal men, and communication is not necessarily their forte. Cliopher in particular spends quite a bit of the novel fiercely lying to himself. On which subject ...

Cliopher (much to the distress of many, I suspect) is one of the most vividly-drawn asexual characters I've encountered in fiction. His lack of sexual interest is suggested in The Hands of the Emperor, but here it's explicit. He is dismayed to discover that his mythological heroes, Aurelius Magnus and Elonoa’a, were lovers. ('It did not matter, Cliopher told himself fiercely, that they were lovers as well as friends. They could still be the greatest of friends. They could still be fanoa, reaching across cultures and across oceans and even across the divide between the human worlds and Sky Ocean, the realms of the gods. It did not matter what he, Cliopher, had thought they were, or what he wanted. It did not.' [8493] And, discussing it with someone who's asked if Cliopher dreamt of kissing: 'it had always been so important to me that in the stories they were not lovers. That two people could love each other like that, but it didn’t need to be about sex. That you could find someone who was your match. Your other half. Your equal.” [12922]) Some of the scenes between Cliopher and his beloved made me weep: some of them made me angry. There's no definitive resolution in this volume, but the prognosis is positive.

There are some parts of the plot that feel unfinished. I'd have liked more of Cliopher's family, especially his mother and sister (who I suspect will get a spin-off novella of their own, about their adventures on holiday with Conju). Ser Rhoden turns out to harbour some enticingly batshit theories, which I hope will be explored in a future tale. The situation with 'Domina Black' (I wholeheartedly agree with Cliopher's opinion of her) is still a prickly one, and there are some lacunae between The Redoubtable Pali Avramapul (review forthcoming) and this volume which I'm eager to have filled.

I didn't adore this the way I adored The Hands of the Emperor, but the characters are fascinating and the cosmology vivid and fresh. Perhaps At the Feet of the Sun suffered from being a middle volume: I understand there is a third novel planned, which will complete Cliopher's story. I shall very likely preorder it!

Fulfils the ‘high fantasy’ rubric (here defined as 'set in an alternative world that is independent of the real world') of the 52 books in 2023 challenge.

2023/013: Petty Treasons — Victoria Goddard

in a tiny, unbelievable gift, treason according to the absolute letter of the law, Cliopher sayo Mdang would look up after his obeisance and meet my eyes and smile and say, “Good morning, my lord.” One moment each morning in which you spoke as a person to another person, and was greeted as a person by another person: on such did the entire machinery of apotheosis stutter to a halt. [loc. 393]

A novella set three years after the Emperor's awakening, and well before the events of The Hands of the Emperor, covering the first days of Cliopher Mdang's employment as secretary to the Last Emperor -- from whose point(s) of view this tale is told -- and the effect that his presence has on His Radiancy, and indeed on the world.

I liked it a great deal, especially on rereading when I could better appreciate the gradual shift from 'you' to 'I': the narrator reclaiming himself and his magic, separating that self from the symbol, the god, the figurehead that is (or was, before Kip) the Emperor. He, our narrator, finds a way to touch the world as something other than a tyrant or a deity: and he discovers that he is not wholly severed from the ordinary people around him, and that his magic (as opposed to the straitjacketed magic defining and wielded by the Emperor) is not lost for ever.

It's very cheering to see Kip from the viewpoint of Artorin Damara, and to see the first glimmers of friendship between His Radiancy and those who'll become the closest members of his household.

Fulfils the ‘Under 200 pages’ rubric of the 52 books in 2023 challenge.

2023/012: The Return of Fitzroy Angursell — Victoria Goddard

I confess that the thought of the likely reactions to my grand exits of the past two nights...pleased me greatly. Anyone who had doubts that I truly was Fitzroy Angursell might well still prefer to believe me a madman instead; but at least they could hardly deny that I was a madman with style.[p. 82]

It's difficult to review this without spoilers -- indeed, even the publisher's blurb gives the game away -- but I imagine there'd be added joy at the revelation, very early in this novel, of just what renowned poet, anarchist and mage Fitzroy Angursell, late of the Red Company, has been up to in the 30-odd years since his 'spectacularly bizarre disappearance'.

I picked this up after The Hands of the Emperor, which I adored: The Return of Fitzroy Angursell, though delightful, is a very different novel. Told in the first person by the infamous Fitzroy, it's an exuberantly picaresque adventure, full of swashbuckling and derring-do, grand exits, serendipitous encounters, lost cities, curses and kindness, and gleeful subversion. There is a lot more plot here than in The Hands of the Emperor! Or perhaps there are simply more events ... Fitzroy is fascinated by the stories he hears, and he's fascinating in and of himself, even without the mythmaking that's kept his story alive, and the mystery of his disappearance, and his quest for ... well, perhaps it really is simply for what he is and for where he belongs.

Is he a trickster god? Perhaps. Is he a liar? He tries to avoid lying ('the greatest truths, most plainly spoken, are the least likely to be believed'). Is he truly Fitzroy Angursell? (He's wearing the colours associated with the famous revolutionary.) Whoever or whatever he is, he has verve, and the joie de vivre of someone given a new lease of life, and some very refreshing views. I look forward to meeting him again.

2023/011: The Hands of the Emperor — Victoria Goddard

“The soup was hot, I tell you.”
Cliopher smiled thinly at him. “It was hot because I know how to light a fire without magic, without matches, without anything but two sticks and a string. I lit the first fire in the Palace after the Fall of Astandalas—and I tell you, sir, I have not let it go out since.” [loc. 9901]

This was my first 5-star rating of the year: reading it was an utter and unmitigated pleasure, so much so that I almost immediately read it again. (This does not count as rereading. This is luxuriating.) The Hands of the Emperor, in print, is nearly a thousand pages long, and its protagonist is a middle-aged civil servant who wants to change the world and is trying to balance his career as the Last Emperor's secretary (and thus the second most powerful person in the world) with his family's casual dismissal of his achievements. The setting is a fantasy world, but there's little on-page magic (our protagonist Cliopher, Kip, is not a magic-user) and the focus is on government policy, and on family, friendship and fealty. And yes, it's a love story, though not a sexual one.

This is an unusual fantasy novel in that it's not about war, or conquest, or even colonialism (except inasmuch as the Empire was 'built on the blood of slaves, on the subjugation of conquered peoples, on stolen magic, and on the predication that the peace and prosperity enjoyed by most was worth the suffering of many': but Cliopher is steadily dismantling that system). There is a living god, the Emperor, but Cliopher intends to make it possible for him to retire. There was a magical apocalypse, the Fall, but that was a thousand years ago -- at least in Solaara, the Imperial capital: time flows differently there than it does in Cliopher's homeland, the Polynesian-inflected Vangavaye-ve. Instead of flamboyant folk heroes (though people still quote rebel poet Fitzroy Angursell, and tell tales of the Red Company) there are middle-aged people with proper jobs, museum curators and environmental health inspectors. There are feathered thunder-lizards (more of these, please!) and magical photocopiers, sky-ships and gates between worlds, mannerist manouevres, subtle nuances and cuts direct. And though this is not a novel about murder or war or daring heists, there is plenty of conflict: between Cliopher and his family, between Cliopher's career and his heritage (which matters a lot to him), between the role of Emperor and the man imprisoned by that role, between Cliopher Mdang -- 'personal secretary to the Lord of Rising Stars, Secretary in Chief of the Private Offices of the Lords of State, official head of the Imperial Bureaucratic Service, unofficial head of the world’s government, the Hands of the Emperor' -- and Cousin Kip, the one who left.

Imagine my delight on discovering that Goddard has written many other books set in the same milieu, with some characters appearing in multiple works. Though I have also had to reassure a friend that, as far as I can tell, The Hands of the Emperor and its direct sequel At the Feet of the Sun [review soon!], can be read as a single long work, without any need to read the shorter works or the other series. And indeed, having read At the Feet of the Sun, I'd say that The Hands of the Emperor stands alone: unless, like me, you fall in love with the characters and the setting ...

Fulfils the ‘sends me down a rabbithole’ rubric of the 52 books in 2023 challenge. Welcome to Victoria Goddard Binge-Read Week!

2023/010: Children of Time — Adrian Tchaikovsky

Portia is not tuned to God’s frequency, but the tumultuous response from the ground tells her what has happened. ... translations come through swiftly, passing across the face of the planet as swift as thought. God has apologized. [p. 478]

Twenty light-years from Earth, Dr Avrana Kern is about to witness the triumph of her career: the release of an uplift nanovirus, and a barrel-full of monkeys, on the terraformed planet she thinks of as 'Kern's World'. But there's a saboteur on board the Brin (nice genre-savvy nod there) and her best-laid plans are thwarted. Confined to an orbiting satellite, she uploads her personality to meld with the vessel's AI. And on the planet she orbits, the virus is doing its work -- though, in the absence of primate life-forms to be uplifted into 'sentient aides and servants', not quite as she'd hoped.

Children of Time chronicles the rapid ascent to intelligence, civilsation and scientific endeavour by the planet's arachnid inhabitants. Their lifespans are short -- we don't get to know any individual very well -- but through three main lines of descent (Portia, Bianca and Fabian) Tchaikovsky sketches the evolution of a female-led, interconnected network of nests, of inherited knowledge, of ant-domestication and a very different aesthetic to what Avrana Kern, or what she's become, had expected.

When the sleeper ship Gilgamesh, fleeing the ruins of Earth and desperate to find a viable colony, reenters the system, only the 'classicist' Holsten Mason, unique in his ability to understand ancient languages, can communicate with the entity in the satellite. And that entity, now known as the Messenger to those who watch the skies, is coming to terms with the fact that her creation is 'further away from her than she would have anticipated from fellow primates'. Xenophobia, arachnophobia, human expansionist and colonial tendencies, and a society with a distinctly alien mindset... the outlook is not good.

I can't say I actually liked any of the characters, except perhaps Holsten. Some of them are monsters; some of them are spiders. But the evolution of spider-society was fascinating: the metamorphosis of truth into myth, the strategies of 'a species that thinks naturally in terms of interconnected networks and systems', the arguments for the rights of males ... And, beside all that, the pitiful remnants of the human race, scrabbling in the ruins of their ancestors, trying to find a home. I'm glad I finally got around to reading this novel, winner of the Clarke Award back in 2016: but I confess I like Tchaikovsky's recent work -- especially The Doors of Eden -- rather better, perhaps because it seems more light-hearted and playful.

Fulfils the ‘Time in the title’ rubric of the 52 books in 2023 challenge.

2023/009: Roseanna — Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö (translated by Lois Roth)

‘The Central Telephone Office has advised us that there is a phone call coming from the United States. It is coming in about thirty minutes. Can you take it?’ [loc. 991]

Sweden in the mid-Sixties: the body of an unknown young woman is discovered in a canal. She has been murdered, but there are no clues to the murderer's, or the victim's, identity.

Published in 1965, Roseanna is the first in the Martin Beck series, featuring a very ordinary detective with none of the flair or eccentricities of popular detectives such as Holmes, Wimsey, Poirot. Martin Beck isn't a genius, he isn't prone to flashes of insight, he doesn't single-handedly unravel the case: instead, he does the dull but necessary procedural tasks, as do his colleagues in the Stockholm police, and other investigators further afield. Martin Beck (always referred to in the text by his full name) is dedicated and stubborn, unhappily married and resigned to it, middle-aged and prone to indigestion: he describes himself, to himself, as 'stubborn and logical, and completely calm'. While the newspaper headlines describe the crime as 'barbaric' and 'repulsive', he thinks of the unknown murderer as 'maladjusted'.

Quite aside from the murder mystery, this was a reminder of just how far criminology has come in the last sixty years. The murder victim turns out to have been American: even establishing that fact takes months. Martin Beck suggests that the investigators look at photographs taken by passengers on a tour boat, but collecting the physical photos takes quite a while. Each potential witness must be interviewed in person, and the passengers and crew of the boat are scattered all over the world. There is no DNA testing; there is no central repository of missing-person reports; international phone calls tend to be of poor quality, and are scheduled in advance. There is a great deal of waiting around (everybody smokes) and the case takes months rather than days to solve. Sixties Sweden doesn't have the distant glamour of pre-war Europe. Indeed, it feels rather bland. But Martin Beck is also bland -- or seems so to those who encounter him -- and he's a marvellously understated protagonist. I look forward to reading more novels by Sjöwall and Wahlöö: there are ten in the series.

Fulfils the ‘Nordic Noir’ rubric of the 52 books in 2023 challenge.

2023/008: Shrines of Gaiety — Kate Atkinson

The Bright Young Things were idiotic lotus eaters, but their inane excesses could provide a bitingly cynical chapter ... Not to mention the potential for piling up the corpses, because someone ought to murder those awful people, even if only between the pages of a book. [loc 5236]

Shrines of Gaiety opens with the release of Nellie Coker -- night-club supremo, single mother of six, epitome of the view that 'there was nothing wrong with having a good time as long as she didn’t have to have one herself' -- from prison, where she's served six months over the trifling matter of a liquor license. Immediately surrounded by her adoring offspring, she is also keenly observed by DCI Frobisher and Miss Gwendolen Kelling. Frobisher is eager to infiltrate Ma Coker's emporia, and Miss Kelling, recently come into a fortune and in London to seek two teenage girls who've run away to seek fortunes of their own, has the makings of an excellent double agent.

There's a wealth of period detail -- Molinard’s Habanita perfume, sensational novel The Green Hat, cocktails and champagne, silver shoes and Egyptian decor, Mrs Coker's Lenormand cards and their uncannily accurate predictions -- and a strong cast, predominantly but not wholly female. (The Great War, and its generation of dead soldiers, is less than a decade in the past. Niven and Gwendolen both have war stories.) Despite the title, though, there is surprisingly little gaiety, even for would-be novelist and repressed homosexual Ramsey Coker. Instead, the relentless commerce of the city, under and over the counter, is evident in every chapter. For the Cokers, there is nothing that cannot be bought or sold. For naive runaway Freda, like so many of the lost girls of London, there's the sordid trade of unwanted touches, leering looks.

Like many of Atkinson's novels, the plot is a tangle of coincidences and connections. Gwendolen's handbag is stolen by a member of the notorious all-female Forty Thieves gang: Mrs Coker's eldest, war veteran Niven, is in a position to return it. Freda's friend Florence sends postcards home, from a stall which may be surreptitiously trading cocaine. Edith Coker seeks an abortion from the Cokers' ex-landlady, whose house Florence and Freda are living in. And so on and so forth. There are uncoincidences, too: missed opportunities, almost-encounters, glances not met. Atkinson plays with our expectations right up to the final pages. I did feel somewhat short-changed at the end of the novel. There's the jolt of an unexpected death (foreshadowed early in the novel) and a number of threads left hanging. 'And there they must remain, suspended between coming and going for ever' made me shriek with thwarted expectations. Nevertheless, I liked this a lot, though perhaps not as much as Life After Life.

2023/007: Hell Bent — Leigh Bardugo

Her life had been built on lies and stolen chances, a series of tricks, and evasions, and sleight of hand. She already knew the language of demons. She’d been speaking it her whole life. [loc. 7235]

I liked Ninth House so much that I preordered this sequel as soon as it was listed. My expectations were high: unrealistically so, perhaps, for this was something of a disappointment. Perhaps it's 'unexpected trilogy' syndrome, or rather 'unexpected middle book of trilogy'. The world-building is as dark and as fascinating as in Ninth House (which I reread immediately before reading this) but the plot feels less coherent, more a rollercoaster of triumph-defeat-triumph-defeat, and I didn't feel the characters were as fully realised in Hell Bent as in the earlier volume. I was hoping to get more insight into Dawes, and I didn't find Mercy's role in this novel especially credible.

There are a lot of new elements (including a vampire, and salt spirits, and a cat with a history, and a serial killer) and also a couple of elements that really shouldn't be new -- that is, they should have been mentioned, at least, in Ninth House, given how much they matter to Alex.

Pleased to see that an imprisoned demon is familiar with the works of Diana Wynne Jones ...

Fulfils the ‘title starts with H’ rubric of the 52 books in 2023 challenge.

2023/006: The Secret Pilgrim — John Le Carré

I lived the wrong life, that’s all. You don’t know till it’s too late, though, do you, sometimes? You think you’re one person, you turn out to be another, same as opera. [p. 384]

Not so much a novel as a set of short stories, framed as the reminiscences of Ned, a former spy now in charge of the Service's training academy: he's invited his old colleague, the legendary George Smiley, to address the new intake, and Smiley's after-dinner speech -- about how the world has changed but also stayed the same, about the many reasons that lead people to choose a career in the intelligence services, about the difficulty of distinguishing the truth -- sparks Ned's memories.

There are recurring themes here, including the sense of purpose felt by a good intelligence agent, the fallout of betrayal, and the ways in which people can survive the most appalling experiences if they have a single fixed point of goodness. The trope of the womanising spy also appears: Ned, it turns out, is immensely attractive to women (and at least one man), despite his comfortable, if not happy, marriage. We get to see events from other Le Carré novels, including the unmasking of Bill Haydon, and several familiar characters appear in one or more of Ned's stories.

I'm a great admirer of Le Carré's prose, and the layered deceptions and truths of his plots. In these episodes there's less room for him to expand on each situation, but Ned's account of his career, from youthful idealism to mid-life angst to greater self-knowledge, is a splendid character study.

Fulfils the ‘about secrets’ rubric of the 52 books in 2023 challenge.

2023/005: Beowulf for Cretins: A Love Story — Ann McMan

She wasn’t sure how news of her getting caught, half-naked, in a clinch with the new president — by the president’s mother — would go over with the dean. [loc. 2915]

Lesbian romance that hits all the beats and many of the tropes of traditional romance novels: surprise new boss, unfounded jealousy, awesome best friend, moments of doubt ... There's an additional layer of doubt, as Grace, our viewpoint character, is exclusively attracted to women (and, as the novel opens, is recovering from a bad break-up) while recently-widowed Abbie has been married to a man.

This was a light read, but an enjoyable one. Grace is an interesting lead: she's attempting to write a Great American Novel based on the theft of an abstract painting, Woman-Ochre (the retrieval of the painting dates the action of the novel to 2017) and, as a teacher of literature at a small New England college, has some excellent asides about Beowulf (I agree 100% about the failings of the 2007 film). There is also an intriguing backstory involving nuns. Abbie is more opaque, as we're seeing her from Grace's perspective, and Grace is unaware of some salient facts -- facts that, in true romance fashion, could easily have been communicated earlier in the novel, thus avoiding a lot of anguish and some hilarious shenanigans. Still, Abbie is a good romantic interest, and there are happy endings all round. Also includes a cute dog (named Grendel), an envious colleague, a Trump-voting relative, and a student with a crush. Great fun!

Fulfils the ‘has a Dedication’ rubric of the 52 books in 2023 challenge.

2023/004: Motherthing — Ainslie Hogarth

It’s going to be okay. Because there’s logic to a ghost, rules and methods for getting rid of one, unlike depression, for which there is nothing but stubborn despair. [loc. 2342]

Abby and her husband Ralph are both children of dysfunctional mothers, and have been living with Ralph's mother Laura. Now Laura has committed suicide in the basement, but she's not gone: she seems to be haunting the house, or perhaps haunting Ralph (who has his own mental health issues). Abby, scrubbing the blood out of the carpets, is determined to have a new start. She's very attached to one of the elderly patients she cares for, Mrs Bondy, a non-verbal woman who is at once a sweet mother-figure and Abby's 'baby'. Abby wants to start a family, to be the kind of mother that neither she nor Ralph ever had. But Laura's ghost, according to a (probably fraudulent) medium, would rather see Ralph dead than happy with Abby. And Mrs Bondy's daughter is planning to remove her from the care home where Abby works.

Motherthing is described as a blend of domestic horror and dark humour, but I found the humour scatalogical and the 'horror' too psychological. I did learn about the psychiatric industry around 'borderline parents' -- that is, parents with Borderline Personality Disorder -- and the notion of BPD fleas: 'the little bugs of dysfunction that mothers like ours leave crawling all over and inside you. “If you know you’ve got them and you know what they are, you won’t give them to anyone else.” [loc. 1176] Abby is a marvellously-written character whom I disliked intensely, which sums up my reaction to the whole novel: splendid prose, but I didn't care for the plot or the characters.

Fulfils the ‘first word is the’ rubric of the 52 books in 2023 challenge.

2023/003: Iron Widow — Xiran Jay Zhao

What is it about gender that matters so much to the system, anyway? Isn’t piloting entirely a mental thing? So why is it always the girls that have to be sacrificed for power? [loc. 187]

Very loosely based on the historical figure Empress Wu, the only female sovereign in the history of China, Iron Widow tells the story of Wu Zetian as she wreaks vengeance on the individuals and institutions which she holds responsible for the death of her sister and for the oppression of thousands of women, including herself. In a setup reminiscent of Pacific Rim (and many, many manga / anime works in Chinese and Japanese culture, with which I'm unfamiliar), linked pairs pilot Chrysalises -- giant robots -- to fight the fearsome Hundun invaders. Each Chrysalis is piloted by a boy and a girl (I'm using these terms deliberately: this is very much a YA novel) and the boy, of course, is the dominant one. The girl, the concubine, often doesn't survive battle. 'The important thing was that her family would receive a nice compensation.' And so there is a constant demand for more concubines -- like Zetian's sister, whose death she is determined to avenge.

The opening chapter put me off for a while, as it's from the perspective of a male pilot, off to fight the Hundun and justifying to himself the death of his concubine-pilot. While that sets the scene for the novel, it doesn't set the tone or the mood. Once Zetian takes over the narrative, her rage and pain and power carry the story forward. She becomes a concubine and is paired with the pilot who she holds responsible for her sister's death. This does not end well for him. Zetian, it turns out, is unusually powerful (she has immense qi), and a valuable asset. Instead of being punished for the pilot's death, she's paired with a murderer plucked from death row to fight the Hundun. Li Shimin is immensely powerful, but he's an alcoholic (thanks to his trainers) and not entirely safe to be around. From him, though, Zetian learns enough about her world to begin to topple the status quo.

Zetian is not always -- not often -- a likeable character, though she's easy to relate to. She's crippled by her bound feet; she is regarded as a commodity by her family; her only friend from home turns out to be the son of a powerful oligarch. But Zetian has nothing to lose, and she's not afraid to take risks.

This was splendidly visual, emotionally melodramatic, and surprisingly brutal. There are on-page murders, sexual assaults, torture scenes, humiliations: there are discussions of suicide, plenty of gaslighting, and endemic misogyny. I'd have liked Zetian to have some positive relationships with other female characters, but given the way her female relatives have treated her it's understandable that she's resistant. Her growing connection with Li Shimin is fascinating, as is her view on bringing a third person into their relationship: a triangle, she says, is the strongest shape.

There's something of a cliffhanger at the end, to do with the gods (whose Heavenly Court, in orbit, can be seen every few months) and the Hundun: I am looking forward to a resolution in Heavenly Tyrant, due in August 2023.

Fulfils the ‘enemies to lovers’ rubric of the 52 books in 2023 challenge.

2023/002: Remarkably Bright Creatures — Shelby Van Pelt

“Marcellus is your friend.”
“Yes, I suppose he is.”
“When you went up there to save him, you weren’t afraid of him at all.”
Tova clicks her tongue. “Certainly not! He’s gentle.” [loc. 2575]

Tova is seventy, and works as a cleaner at Sowell Bay Aquarium. Thirty years ago, her son Erik disappeared without trace. More recently her husband died, and Tova is very aware that she's alone, with no family to care for her when old age makes life more difficult. She does have friends: a group of women who call themselves the Knit-Wits, and Ethan, the owner of the local store. And Marcellus, of course. Marcellus is a giant Pacific octopus who lives at the aquarium, and who bonded with Tova after she rescued him during one of his out-of-tank excursions.

One night, Tova has a fall, and is unable to work for a while. Fortuitously, young drifter Cameron Cassmore has just come to town: Ethan, who's befriended him, helps him apply for the temporary role of cleaner, and he and Tova get to know one another. Cameron is not a likeable character at the outset -- a man of poor decisions and rich in self-justification, if nothing else, he's come to Sowell Bay to find his biological father, from whom he hopes to extract some financial support. But Ethan and Tova, between them, are stabilising influences, and soon Cameron becomes more likeable, more altruistic and less mercenary, saving money to repay a loan from his aunt, getting acquainted with Marcellus, relaxing into this new life.

Marcellus is the most intriguing of the three narrative voices. He's capable of reading the plaque by his tank, and he knows he is nearing the end of his life-span. He's established just how long he can be out of his tank (18 minutes) before he experiences The Consequences. And he has some other intriguing (and scientifically attested) talents, including the ability to recognise humans by gait, and to make fine distinctions between objects. He understands Tova when she speaks to him, and he understands her grief for her lost son. And when connections are needed, Marcellus makes them. His friendship with Tova is an absolute delight. (I note that Shelby van Pelt has also written short SFF, and wonder if that mindset helped her create Marcellus' vivid character.)

In some respects the story is predictable: but that does not make it any less cheering. Remarkably Bright Creatures is a story about resistance to change, about ageing, and about connections, with happy endings all round -- even for Marcellus. It's full of hope and devoid of cruelty, and I need more of that.

Fulfils the ‘has an epilogue’ rubric of the 52 books in 2023 challenge.

2023/001: Unraveller — Frances Hardinge

In the Shallow Wilds, you kept your doors shut after dark, to stop strangeness getting in. In the Deep Wilds, you offered the strangeness shelter and dinner, to stop it getting annoyed. [loc. 3634]

In Raddith, spidery creatures known as the Little Brothers bestow 'curse-eggs' upon those who feel wronged, granting the ability to curse those who've wronged them. Kellen has the unusual gift of unravelling curses. With his friend Nettle -- who was once cursed herself, and still exhibits lingering side-effects -- Kellen makes a living by ridding people of their curses: but there are rumours that some of the cursers (imprisoned, for life, in the Red Hospital) have broken free and are coming after Kellen.

Unraveller is a thoughtful and sometimes challenging exploration of the ways in which righteous anger can crystallise into hatred, which 'eats you up and makes everything worse'. To be cursed is to be objectified: to be someone to whom things happen, rather than someone with any agency. Those who house curse-eggs have been given the power to 'hold ... persecutors to account': but does that gift have to be acted on? ('just because somebody feels wronged, that doesn’t mean they are'.)

Though this is marketed / labelled as 'young adult', and has teenaged protagonists, it's layered and twisty enough to satisfy more jaded readers. There are some fascinating secondary characters: I was especially fond of Gall, who has made a pact with a fearsome marsh horse ('eating from a nosebag with a disturbingly loud crunching noise. The ground around the horse was scattered with small feathers') and whose moral alignment is only gradually revealed. The story of Nettle's brothers, its roots familiar from folktales, was incredibly poignant: some things can't be healed.

I did feel the pacing was uneven, and some secondary characters weren't sufficiently fleshed out to bear the weight of their eventual plot-relevance. Also, I didn't especially take to Kellen. But Hardinge's prose, and the strangeness of Raddith -- its marshes, its isolated villages and its cities -- kept me enjoying and engaged with this novel.

Fulfils the ‘Published by Macmillan’ rubric of the 52 books in 2023 challenge.