2024/112: Enlightenment — Sarah Perry

‘I supplement God with physics, and understand each as well as the other. Which is to say: not in the least! But I find it magnificent, knowledge piled on knowledge, and the matter never closed – it’s all no less strange and marvellous to me than the Resurrection, and it takes as much faith for me to believe it.’ [p. 191]

Set in Essex in the 1990s and later, in the town of Aldleigh (just up the road from the village of Aldwinter, now deserted, which was the setting of Perry's best-known novel, The Essex Serpent), this is the story of Thomas Hart, confirmed bachelor and columnist for the local Chronicle, and Grace Macauley, the pastor's daughter. Both worship at Bethesda, the local Calvinist chapel, though Thomas struggles to reconcile his homosexuality with his faith ('in Bethesda I’m the worst of sinners, and in London I’m the strangest of saints'). After a chance assignment he takes an interest in astronomy, just as comet Hale-Bopp is approaching.

A previous column by Thomas, about the ghost that's rumoured to haunt derelict Lowlands House, leads to a meeting with James Bower, curator of the local museum. A bundle of documents has been found at Lowlands: would Thomas be interested? Very much so: he and James, and to a lesser extent Grace, become fascinated by the author of the diary, Maria Văduva, who seems to have vanished from history around 1889. And Thomas is also fascinated by James...

Thomas takes in an old Romanian exile with ruined hands, found sleeping rough in the grounds of Lowlands, who has some things to say about faith and its absence. He translates the diary of Maria Văduva Bell -- revealing her as a Romanian, an astronomer, a woman who married a wealthy man because the man she loved did not love her. Perhaps that's why Thomas, who knows something of unrequited love, makes a decision that will affect the rest of his life.

Enlightenment is a novel about faith and physics, about the importance of being loved: about women in science (Cora Seaborne, fossil-hunting heroine of The Essex Serpent, is mentioned), about the tension between religion and modernity, about the ways in which a spectacle such as Hale-Bopp can bring people together. Perry's prose is magnificent, and often beautiful: her characters felt utterly real, and their intellectual and spiritual journeys were intriguing and profoundly satisfying. I loved this novel and suspect it will become a regular reread.

2024/111: The House of Shattered Wings — Aliette de Bodard

Every child in the city knew what a conclave meant, and how the previous one had ended—too many people with magical powers, too much pent-up rage and too many grievances. The Houses hadn’t meant to start a war ... [p. 126]

In a Paris devastated by magical war, the great Houses -- many led by one of the Fallen, who were angels but recall nothing of the time before their fall except a lingering sense of loss -- are the only protection against rampaging gangs and general anarchy. Philippe, a former Immortal from Annam (Viet Nam), finds himself connected to Isabelle, one of the Fallen, and effectively imprisoned in House Silver spires, which is established in the ruins of Notre Dame. The head of Silver spires, Selene (who was mentored by Morningstar himself before his disappearance) quickly realises that Philippe is something of a wild card: but she does not expect the horror he unwittingly awakens, and mortal alchemist Madeleine (addicted to angel essence) is unable to counter the damage done by an ancient curse.

The worldbuilding is lushly detailed, melding mythologies from East and West in an almost science-fictional post-apocalyptic urban milieu: the characters are fascinating and their interactions highly charged. Friction between the Houses is exacerbated by rumour and deliberate sabotage. Tantalising hints at what's happening in the wider world kept me reading. There is a lot to like here, and doubtless in the subsequent volumes.

And yet I didn't really engage with this novel, which I suspect was a case of 'right book, wrong time': perhaps my experience was also coloured by the knowledge that the prime villain appears in a spin-off series of romances described by the author as 'fun and fluffy'. I wanted to see that side of him. But I will almost certainly read the other two novels in the main trilogy before branching out to those romances: otherwise, I suspect I'd miss a great deal of context.

2024/110: A Land — Jacquetta Hawkes

The mountains would endure to feed those roots of human nature which are starved in cities and even among cornfields. It was a hunger that began to be felt in the eighteenth century when Englishmen had won their battle against too much darkness and began to be conscious of too much light. By the end of the Palaeozoic era the possibility of Wordsworth was assured. [p. 62]

This post-war classic, published in 1951, is an account of the geology, archaeology, history and geography of Britain: 'the image I have sought to evoke is of an entity, the land of Britain, in which past and present, nature, man and art appear all in one piece'. It's beautifully written, vividly imagined, and sometimes patriotic (as Robert Macfarlane writes in his introduction, 'its well-intentioned rhetoric of ‘the land’ and ‘the people’, its mobilising of a ‘blessed heritage of farmers, sailors, poets, bravely advancing into the age of radar and jet propulsion’'). 

Hawkes is good, and often very poetic, on prehistory and the shifting geology of the British Isles, and on the migrations of prehistoric people. She is perhaps less convincing when she asserts that the eighteenth century was the height of human achievement ('Only the most prejudiced can deny that the eighteenth century, and especially the reign of Queen Anne, was for all classes one of the best times to have been alive in this country.' [p. 184]) and that the Industrial Revolution was a step backwards. But she does excuse her observations on the 20th century as 'murmurings representative of a consciousness subjected to the conditions of the year A.D. 1949.' (p. 198)

This was my bedtime reading for months, and it was a pleasurable experience even when I disagreed with the author. I fell asleep with Hawkes' images in my mind: 'the three eyes of trilobites perhaps dazzled by flames and flashes while the floating colonies of graptolites were flung into the air, when volcanic energy was enough to break through the water and make a true eruption in mid-ocean' [p. 44]; of Roman statues buried beneath the earth: 'did these impassive and unseen heads remain unchanged by the mental tides flowing above them; can they be said to have been the same objects in the Dark Ages, in medieval times, in the eighteenth or the nineteenth century?' [p. 169] She pokes gentle fun at America, refers to Robert Graves' The White Goddess as history, and discusses the Bronze Age custom of burying sea-urchin fossils with the dead. Engrossing, occasionally outdated, and often full of joy.

...what could be more youthful than England in April? It has taken three thousand million years to create that youthfulness, those fierce young buds and frail eggs, greenness that seems to cry aloud, those songs in the throats of birds... [p. 37]

2024/109: The Pigeon Tunnel — John Le Carré

... my readers will see for themselves to what extent an old writer’s memory is the whore of his imagination. We all reinvent our pasts, I said, but writers are in a class of their own. Even when they know the truth, it’s never enough for them. [loc. 3938]

Subtitled 'Stories from My Life', this is a collection of essays that Le Carré describes as 'true stories told from memory', with the roles of nuance and creativity acknowledged. Here we find Margaret Thatcher arguing with Le Carré about the Palestinians; Yasser Arafat with a soft and silky beard; Rupert Murdoch, who has 'that hasty waddle and little buck of the pelvis with which great men of affairs advance on one another'; Alec Guinness, who became friends with Le Carré after starring as Smiley in Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy; Nicholas Elliott, whose friendship with Kim Philby was the focus of Ben Macintyre's A Spy Among Friends; Graham Greene, who was delighted to find that there was a code sequence for 'eunuch' ... and newsreader Reginald Bosanquet, whose inexplicable largesse kept Le Carré (or rather David Cornwell) at Oxford when he'd run out of funds. There are poignant passages about his difficult relationship with his father (con artist and gambler) and his emotionally unavailable mother. There is surprisingly little about his time as a spy ("I feebly protested that I was a writer who had once happened to be a spy rather than a spy who had turned to writing") or about his personal life.

But what engaged me here was the same phenomenon that engages me when I read his novels: the precise observation of minutae, like that description above of Rupert Murdoch's waddle-and-buck, and the ear for voices which is evident in his accounts of meeting warlords, journalists, businessmen, politicians. Some of these, he tells us, were foundations for some of his characters. He is interested in them as people: he is profoundly interested in people.

2024/108: Mary Ellen, Craterean! — Chaz Brenchley

Her friends were made of sterner stuff, seemingly -- or else just more used to being schoolgirls, and therefore deceiving adults for their own good. [p. 86]

I enjoyed Three Twins at the Crater School enough to sign up for the author's Patreon, which recently bestowed Mary Ellen, Craterean! on its subscribers. (This is the third in the series: must get around to the second ...) Imperial Mars, the Eternal Empress in her coccoon, and boarding-school hijinks! Mary Ellen has been granted a scholarship to the Crater School, funded by a best-selling lady novelist who's an alumna of the school, and who visited Mary Ellen's isolated farmstead to do some research. At first Mary Ellen is overwhelmed by her schoolmates -- especially the Crew, a gaggle of nine girls who support and help one another and who are honourable, good sports et cetera. Mary Ellen is the one who's good with words: but school is so full of opportunities that it drains her energy, even before a horrid revelation that may mean she has to turn her back on friends, school magazine and all those books, and return to the farm where she grew up.

This is immensely evocative of all those breathless boarding-school novels -- Malory Towers, Chalet School -- though the discipline is sometimes a little harsh, and perhaps I did not need to read quite so many pages about game-playing: but Mary Ellen and her friends are cheerful and likeable, and there's something very cozy about the setting. I long for more of the Imperial Mars, and the naiads, though ...

Hmmm, I see I do own the second in the series, Dust Up at the Crater School. Soon!

2024/107: The Duke at Hazard — K J Charles

Daizell was ingenious, and Cassian was a duke, with all that entailed: wealth, power, authority. Between them, they’d come up with something, just as soon as Cassian admitted that he’d been lying to him from the moment they’d met. [p. 211]

The Duke of Severn is an unassuming young man with many names and titles. He goes by his favourite of those names, Cassian, when he's travelling the West Midlands incognito -- ostensibly because of a wager with his cousin Leo, that he couldn't survive for a month without the trappings of his title, but actually because, following an ill-judged liaison with a handsome young fellow at an inn, the Duke's ancestral ring (along with everything else he carried, including his clothes) was stolen. Cassian is still smarting from having been duped, and he's determined to find the man in the mulberry coat. 

En route, he encounters Daizell Charnage, disgraced minor nobility now making a living as a shape-cutter. (Think silhouettes, but as per the author's afterword, 'the word silhouette was not used in English until around 1825... you can't find this more annoying than I did'. [p. 324]) There's a strong mutual attraction, but Cassian dare not reveal his true identity: or rather the identity he's trying to escape from. The novel also features a carriage accident, an eloping heiress, Cassian's other and much more likeable cousin Louisa, a kidnapping, and the dastardly Sir James Vier. And there are cameos from some of the characters from previous novels in the 'Gentlemen of Uncertain Fortune' books (A Thief in the Night and The Gentle Art of Fortune-Hunting).

This was an absolute delight: I raced through it, reread the two earlier works and then read it again. There's something about the dialogue, or the ways in which even minor characters feel like glimpses of people with whole lives, or the ever-present class conflict, or the fleeting allusions to other novels by the author... whatever it is, it has me hooked. I especially enjoyed the contrast between 'Cassian' and 'the Duke', sometimes in a single scene: Cassian says at one point that 'I cannot be Severn all the time, only doing what Severn does and behaving as Severn must, with no life of my own ... I will die in there.’ There is an absolutely splendid shape-cutting metaphor for those two identities, which made me want to applaud. Daizell, too, is a likeable and complicated man with a great line in metaphor: and the scandalous events that overshadow his life may not be entirely insoluble, either.

A splendid read, with complex emotional stakes, lots of period detail, sex scenes that are thoroughly in character, and plenty of humour.

2024/106: The Instrumentalist — Harriet Constable

He lifts his arms. They lift their instruments.
A curl of red from the violins, a spiral of gold from the cellos.
And his face instantly drops.
Because this is not what he planned. This is not what he expected at all. [loc. 4840]

As a baby, Anna Maria della Pietà is deposited at the Ospedale della Pietà by her sex-worker mother. Like her mother, Anna Maria 'sees' colours. She is a naturally gifted musician, and attracts the attention of the music master, who agrees to teach her. (His full name is not given in the text, but he is Antonio Vivaldi.) Anna Maria grows up determined to make a name for herself, sacrificing everything -- especially friendship -- for her ambition to be a famous composer. She certainly receives a great deal of popular acclaim, and the famous Tartini declares her 'maestro'. But this is 18th-century Venice, and her teacher (having taught her and the other girls of the figlie di coro to compose in his own style) makes it clear that no female name shall appear on any of the compositions they have worked on together.

Constable evokes the sounds, scents and tastes of Anna Maria's world, from the fish and salt and spices of the waterfront to the colours of the music that drifts through Anna Maria's dreams of drowning. Though Anna Maria's life is sheltered, the darker realities of life are never far away: illness, unwanted pregnancy, theft, the men who attend concerts solely because they wish to marry Pietà girls. And the girls themselves can be cruel -- Anna Maria most definitely included.

Perhaps the novel would have been better without the introductory chapter, describing Anna Maria's conception and birth and the origin of her nightmares about drowning: and perhaps her behaviour is sometimes anachronistic. But her rage at her teacher's duplicity, and her determination to perfect her art, are all too familiar, and Constable weaves an engaging account of Anna Maria's disillusionment, and her vengeance. The novel is well-researched and the author's afterword provides a useful list of sources, and a summary of Anna Maria's life after the end of The Instrumentalist.

Fulfils the ‘Author debut in second half of 2024’ rubric of the 52 books in 2024 challenge.

Thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for the advance review copy, in exchange for this full honest review. UK Publication Date is 15 AUG 2024.

2024/105: Shark Heart — Emily Habeck

...it was happening: the holiest of creative experiences, when two ingredients, the actor and character, combined to form a new substance entirely, one resembling nothing of its parent components. Lewis would enter the uncomplicated consciousness of a great white shark in extended flashes, desiring nothing but food and survival, and then return to himself, the human, with all his hopes, loves, dreams, and memories. [p. 72]

This is the story of Lewis (failed actor and enthusiastic high-school drama teacher) and his wife Wren, in their only year of marriage. Soon after the wedding, Lewis begins to suffer mysterious symptoms, and is eventually diagnosed 'with a mutation. Carcharodon carcharias'. He is turning into a great white shark: the mutation is rare, but not unheard of, and the process is irreversible. In parallel to his narration (some of which is presented in the form of a script), we see Wren's fear and determination. But not until the second part of the novel, which is the story of Wren's mother, do Lewis and Wren's stories begin to come together, to make something more than the sum of their parts.

This is a love story, and a novel about a world in which zoomorphic mutations (which have a genetic basis) afflict some small percentage of the population. The animals these people become are typically released into a 'placement' when their mutation completes. Before that, their animal instincts may overcome their human impulses. While Lewis is mourning the loss of colour as his eyes mutate, Wren is trying to negotiate life with a dangerous predator.

Which may be a metaphor. 

And it's possible to read the mutations as metaphors for illness, especially the forms of illness that transform a person into something unknown and unknowing. But this beautiful novel (which I needed to read twice to fully appreciate) doesn't require interpretation. I think it will live in my head for a long time, and I shall follow the author's career (this is her first novel) with hope and fascination.

2024/104: Temples, Tombs and Hieroglyphs — Barbara Mertz

Admiring students of ancient Egypt have credited the Egyptians with the invention of many interesting and useful pursuits, but no one has ever given them their due as the originators of the pernicious habit of scribbling on tourist attractions. [p. 56]

First published in 1964, and updated several times since then (for instance, to acknowledge the 'enormous fun' of Raiders of the Lost Ark), this is the classic 'popular history' of Ancient Egypt: it turns out also to have influenced Rosemary Harris' trilogy (starting with The Moon in the Cloud) set in Old Testament times, in which Canaanite animal tamer Reuben visits Egypt several times. And Mertz, as Elizabeth Peters, also wrote the immensely popular Amelia Peabody books (starting with Crocodile on the Sandbank) with their 'lady Egyptologist' heroine, and mostly set in late 19th century Egypt. Excellent credentials, and this book did not disappoint.

Temples, Tombs and Hieroglyphs is an enjoyable and informative read, covering the history of Egypt from Menes, the first King of the Two Lands, to the decline of Egyptian civilisation under the Romans -- a period of three thousand years. It's enlivened by the author's distinctive voice and sardonic observations: she has no time for 'pyramidiots' but is fond of theories that have a romantic resonance. Her love for her subject is evident on every page. I learnt a lot about the different dynasties, the role of women (and especially royal women), and the changing fashions in burial, from pots of aromatic ointment to mere depictions of those pots. 

She also has an excellent summary of Egyptian artistic style, with its faces in profile and eyes in front view: 'The Egyptians did not work in this way because they could not draw a face in front view; behind their technique was a concept of the universe that made visual impressions unimportant. They did not care what something looked like, but what it was like, and they worked out a way of expressing the essential qualities of objects that satisfied them so thoroughly that they continued to use it for three thousand years.' [p. 73] And her account of some of the enduring puzzles of Egyptology (empty sarcophagi, Akhenaten's physiognomy) are engaging and clear.

One vexing issue was that 'off' had been replaced by 'of' nearly everywhere -- 'she cast of the trailing skirts of a woman and put on the kilt and crown of a king, and she carried it of for twenty years' and, even more egregiously, 'the of spring of the reigning monarch'. Confusing, until I'd identified the issue.

2024/103: The Dragon, the Thief and the Princess — Gillian Bradshaw

“I’ll pray to the gods for you, dragon, and ask them to bless you!”
“Stop calling me ‘dragon’ like that, as though I were a dog,” said the dragon. “My name is Hathor. And I don’t believe in your human gods.”
“But you have the name of a goddess,” said Prahotep.
“You mean, she has my name,” replied the dragon. “You humans stole names from us dragons. What’s she goddess of, then?”
“Of love and beauty. It’s very appropriate.” [loc. 467]

First published in two volumes (The Dragon and the Thief and The Land of Gold), this is an historical novel for children set in a fantastical version of ancient Egypt. The 'thief' (though he's not very good at stealing things) is Prahotep, a young fisherman who's nicknamed 'Bad-luck' because that's what he brings; he encounters the dragon, last of her kind, in a cave near the Valley of Queens whilst escaping the gang of quarrying convicts whose overseer he's just injured; we meet Princess Kandaki, who's Nubian, in the second volume.

Prahotep is likeable and wily: he thinks fast and has a talent for making friends and telling stories. ('That's how you kill a lie. You tell another lie, only bigger!') The story is fast-paced and fairly simple, but Bradshaw's gift for historical ambience is always present, from the seventy days Prahotep has to wait until his father can be embalmed and buried, to the civil war raging in Nubia after a traitor assassinates the king and queen. It's light-hearted, exciting and focuses on friendship and loyalty. A charming novel: I wish more of Bradshaw's novels were available for Kindle.

2024/102: The Cat Who Solved Three Murders — L T Shearer

‘He’s twenty-two, just out of university,’ said Tracey. ‘He has a degree in English and Philosophy.’
‘Well, I suppose he can discuss the whys and wherefores of sixteenth-century poets as he’s putting crims behind bars.’ [loc. 2010]

Lulu, retired police detective, and her cat Conrad who talks (but only to her) are in Oxford for a party celebrating the sixtieth birthday of an old friend. She's happy to spend time with Julia, whose husband is the birthday boy -- but then (see title) there's a murder.

I enjoyed the first of this series, The Cat Who Caught a Killer, but was less enthusiastic about this one. For one thing, Conrad is less proactive: here, he's really just there to notice things and to discuss the case with Lulu. (Oh, and to have his claws swabbed for DNA after attacking a potential villain.) Is he just a figment of her imagination? For another, the 'canal boat' ambience is minimal: most of the action takes place in Julia's house. (Lulu even borrows clothes, presumably including underwear...) 

It's also horribly repetitive -- I lost count* of the times Lulu 'bent down so that Conrad could jump onto her shoulders'. And the Daily Mail undertones are stronger in this volume. (Blood is spattered on the wallpaper. 'It's one of your namesake's, five hundred pounds a roll ... Lulu Lytle, the woman who did Boris Johnson’s interior design at Number 10. When Bernard heard that, he insisted we use her wallpaper in the study.' [loc. 556]) I still like Conrad, but Lulu is beginning to remind me of an unpleasant former colleague: not a welcome recollection.

*(just checked: 12 times). 

2024/101: Things They Lost — Okwiri Oduor

December staggered in like a weary mud-encrusted vagabond who had been on her way to someplace else but whose legs had buckled and now she was here. On the second, which in Mapeli Town was known as Epitaph Day, the townspeople awoke while the sky was still silver, still tinged with ruffles of pink and blue. They gargled salt water. They greased their elbows. They tucked a flower in their hair or pinned it on their lapel. They marched to the schoolhouse, where the flag flapped at half-mast for all those who had drowned in the river or choked on a fishbone or stepped on a puff adder while walking to the marketplace. With eyes bleary and heads bowed, the townspeople thought of all the ones they had ever lost. [p. 1]

It's twelve years since Ayosa Ataraxis Brown was born to Nabumbo Promise Brown, but Ayosa's memories go back to 'the Yonder Days, before she'd turned into a girl'. She is often lonely, despite the Fatumas who live in the attic, 'half girl and half reverie', caught by a fisherman four centuries ago. Though her mama is often absent (she's an award-winning photographer), the sense of her is always present for Ayosa, who experiences her mother's memories -- and those of her grandmother, flying doctor Lola Freedom -- in the house that was built by her great-grandmother, irascible English colonist Mabel Brown, after whom the town (Mapeli) was named.

Oduor's prose is intoxicating (I've marked almost every page with highlights). The people of Mapeli are vividly strange. There's Sindano, the café owner who never has any customers and has had ten fiancés die before she could marry them; there's a milkman who never speaks; there's the apothecary Jentrix and her snot-nosed granddaughter Temerity. And there is the river, which never drowns people on Christmas Day, but which swallows and spits out Ayosa several times, and deposits lost things for her to find.

Ayosa is the heart of the novel. Even when she's lonely and miserable her essential joyfulness shines through. She's amiable, curious, clever and lonely: part of the story is about her making friends with Mbui Dash, a 'throwaway girl' who feels even more magical than Ayosa herself, and who is accompanied by an excellent cat named Bwana Matambara. 

Things They Lost is not always a happy novel -- Ayosa's glimpses of the Yonder Days, oppression and slavery and murder, are horrific, and there's an ancient murder twisted up in her family history -- but it is always beautiful. It's full of women and girls who find their own paths, make their own rules: it's alive with the smells, sounds and tastes of Ayosa's life (and insects, soooo many insects). Family secrets, surreal death notices on the radio, wraiths who stalk the living: and 'Ayosa Ataraxis Brown, who can't go too many days without listening to a poem.'

This review helped me understand Things They Lost's 1980s Kenyan context and how it's reflected in the novel. It includes a link to a connected short story. 

Fulfils the ‘Author from East Africa’ rubric of the Something Bookish Reading Challenge.

2024/100: Claws and Contrivances — Stephanie Burgis

And the very idea of a brilliant, kind-hearted, and scholarly gentleman choosing a reckless, impoverished dreamer like herself was so laughable that she should only find it amusing. So she did. She was excessively amused. Her chest hurt from the effort of withholding what could only be laughter. [p. 250]

Having greatly enjoyed Scales and Sensibility, the first in the Regency Dragons series, I'd been saving the second in the series for when I needed a cheering, witty read. Claws and Contrivances was so enjoyable that after I'd finished it, I went back and reread the first book again!

Scales and Sensibility introduced Elinor, impoverished orphan, who'd grudgingly been given a home by appalling relatives. In contrast, the home offered to Elinor's younger sister, Rose, is the comfortable (though crumbling) Gogodd Abbey, deep in the Welsh countryside. Rose's aunt writes Gothic novels, and stages readings of them; her uncle is eagerly awaiting the arrival of a notable dragon scholar; and their neighbour, Sir Gareth, is Etonian and Dastardly. There are also cousins, and dragons -- the first of which appears in the buttery, and is rescued by Rose. And that's before the notable dragon scholar arrives...

Rose is a delight, determined to take care of everyone around her and full of schemes to outwit the wicked Sir Gareth -- schemes that involve her relatives, and any passers-by who don't refuse quickly enough. Shy, bookish dragon expert Cornelius Aubrey (last seen in Scales and Sensibility) is beguiled, but cannot square his emotions with his scientific methods. And the little dragons are cute and personable. A diverse cast, too, including an Anglo-Indian heiress, Rose's decidedly queer cousin Georgiana, and neurodivergent Aubrey. Everyone is lovely (except Sir Gareth and his staff) and everything ends happily. I am already looking forward to the next in the series!

2024/099a: On the Fox Roads — Nghi Vo

The cops came through sometimes, collecting the eyes of gas-station attendants and diner waitresses, and the best way to get your eye back, Jack told me later, was to empty it straight out into the dirt...“The law says they can only take one, but it don’t say how good your eye needs to work when they give it back.” [p.11]

Two bank robbers, known to the press as Chinese Jack and Tonkin Jill, travel American small towns during the Great Depression: they acquire a stowaway, who's keen to retrieve the deeds to her parents' store. She's also Chinese-American, and travels with Jack and 'Jill' (whose name is actually Lai) for a while, learning about the fox roads (which can take you anywhere: 'all you need is a reason to get out', says Lai) and about who she really is.

This was super-short but wistful and evocative, with three intriguing characters (we don't get much background on any of them) and some elements from Chinese mythology. I enjoyed it, but the 'novelette' length (up to 17,500 words) is frustrating: I'd have liked more.

Shortlisted for the Hugo Award for Best Novelette, 2024: read as part of the Hugo Voters' Pack.

2024/099b: Mammoths at the Gates — Nghi Vo

At Singing Hills, we deal in memory. The things we remember last as long as we do and longer. The thing itself, well, it goes away. It breaks. It sinks to the bottom of the river. It dies or leaves or is lost. [p. 71]

Cleric Chih returns to their abbey, Singing Hills, to find the eponymous mammoths at the gate, and their beloved mentor Cleric Thien dead. These two facts are not unrelated. Chih's old friend Ru is now the acting Divine, and Chih isn't sure how to relate to them. There are many stories to be told, and Myriad Virtues, Thien's neixin (magical hoopoe) tells one of the darkest.

Lots here about stories, identity, and the work of the clerics, as well as the inevitability of change. I would have appreciated this story more if I had read the rest of the series, instead of only the first part. (That's a me problem: it was quite clear what was happening, and I wasn't confused, but there is depth and subtlety to the characters which I couldn't appreciate in context).

Shortlisted for the Hugo Award for Best Novella, 2024: read as part of the Hugo Voters' Pack.

2024/098: Translation State — Ann Leckie

The treaty was everything. The treaty was why we existed to begin with. The way that Reet had talked about the treaty, the way it was talked about in Pirate Exiles of the Death Moons, you would think that only the treaty stood between all humans and certain death. Which maybe was true... [p. 352]

It's a decade since I read Ancillary Justice, and for some reason I never finished the trilogy: but I did not find Translation State impenetrable or especially confusing. It helps that Enae, one of the viewpoint characters, is being slowly introduced to the wider universe after years spent tending hir recently-deceased grandmother. Sie's free to travel, and encouraged to take up a role that involves invstigating the disappearance, two hundred years ago, of a Presger Translator. The Presger are fearsome inhuman aliens: their Translators are modified humans. Another of our viewpoint characters (and the only one with a first-person narrative) is Qven, a young Translator who's been singled out for great things: and the third protagonist is Reet, who prefers to work alone and shuns social events, instead eating takeaway and watching his favourite show, Pirate Exiles of the Death Moons. (I sympathise.)

These three stories converge, via historical conflict between the Hikipu and the Phen. Enae is caught up in a pro-Hikipi political demonstration; Reet is heralded by the local 'Siblings of Hikipu' group as a descendant of legendary Hikipi rulers, due to his genetic anomalies; and Qven, whose great future is in ruins, is forced to make an alliance of convenience. The three voices are distinctive, and their concerns and actions are convincing. But I wasn't entirely satisfied by the last third of the book, which felt at once hectic (trapped in a maze!) and handwavy (major developments happening off-page, emotional bonds formed very quickly). Plus, my hackles rose at the phrase 'For reasons that it would take too much time to explain just now' -- uttered by a character, felt like the author taking a short cut.

But I did enjoy reading Translation State. It's an interesting exploration of self-defined identity, how a personality is shaped (the Translator juveniles are literally little monsters), and how ancient history can still be acutely relevant.

Having read this, I shall be rereading Ancillary Justice and following it with Ancillary Sword and Ancillary Mercy: I had forgotten how much I like Leckie's writing.

Shortlisted for the Hugo Award for Best Novel, 2024.

Fulfils the ‘About finding identity’ rubric of the 52 books in 2024 challenge.