2025/027: The Expensive Halo — Josephine Tey

On Sara the riot of peacock greens and blues and iris yellows [of her silk offcut dressing-gown] looked barbarically appropriate. Every time her eye lighted on the splendour and the subtlety of them she had a moment of pleasure, and each time her eye lighted on herself in the splendour her pleasure was renewed. She was Egypt, she was Diana, she was Circe. Sara’s dressing-gown was one of the things that helped to make life bearable for Sara. [loc. 404]

Published in 1931, this standalone, non-thriller novel by Josephine Tey is the story of two brother-and-sister pairs -- one aristocratic, the other working class. The actual plot (bored socialite Ursula Deane falls for Gareth, a penniless but ambitious violinist, while her brother Lord Chitterne falls for the violinist's sister Sara, a dressmaker: Sara persuades Ursula to give up Gareth so he can marry his childhood sweetheart) is fairly thin: what made this such a compelling read was Tey's descriptions of her characters, and her depictions of family life. Sara and Gareth's father is a monstrous authoritarian, and their mother 'still loved [him], because she had never analysed herself sufficiently to find out that she didn’t'. Ursula's friend Daphne is prone to cocktails and shrieks of mirth. And Mrs Marsden, who cleans for the Ellis family, 'had four absorbing interests in life: contraception, the price of boiling beef, the rent money, and the Duchess of York.' 

I'd have liked more examination of the differences between Ursula and her brother -- why the brother is a decent prospect for Sara despite the gaping chasm of class difference, while Ursula's love for Gareth is to be set aside before she gets bored of him -- but Tey seems more concerned with the horrors of working-class life.

Many of Tey's novels (some, like this, published under the name 'Gordon Daviot') are now in the public domain, and therefore available very cheaply. I shall read more...

2025/026: Edge of Nowhere — Felicia Davin

Kit was afraid to speak aloud what he’d seen—a man, trapped and screaming—because it sounded so crazy. And yet this was his life: teleportation, asteroids, other realities. What was one more thing in the mix? Why not a tortured ghost? [loc. 1966]

Kit is a runner, which means he can teleport to any coordinates he's given, usually with some illicit package, or a mob boss's gift (a stressed and vomitous dog) to his girlfriend. Runners, who teleport by moving through a dark featureless space called the Nowhere, are rare: they've made limited space colonisation possible. Dr Solomon Lange, a scientist working at QSF, an orbital facility in lunar orbit, has vanished while running experiments on the Nowhere: the sole witness to the accident, Emil Singh, has been thoroughly questioned by Quint Services. Now he's due to be returned to QSF, sedated and blindfolded -- and Kit is the runner chosen to transport him. But the Nowhere isn't empty...

Edge of Nowhere is an effective combination of M/M romance and science fiction. Emil is a sensible botanist who's loyal to his team, while Kit is a purple-haired, flamboyantly-dressed orphan who lives under the radar, mostly working on the wrong side of the law, unwilling to trust anyone. As Quint Services' nefarious schemes come to light, and Kit is menaced by some kind of entity in the Nowhere (could it be connected to the 'poltergeist' that haunts QSF17?), both men have to reassess their assumptions and prejudices -- and consider the possibility of a multiverse.

I liked this enough to immediately buy the sequel. There is a delightful (though outrageously neglected) cat named Niels Bohr; a former pop star who runs a bar with her wife; some extremely extra fashion choices; a lightly-sketched future (the end of the 21st century) in which climate change seems to have destroyed New York City; an appalling techno-trillionaire; and a light sprinkling of romance tropes. The science-fictional side of the novel was satisfactory -- yes, the science of the Nowhere is a bit handwavy but that's as much to do with our viewpoint characters as with the underlying logic -- and the romance works nicely. I'm not sure who recommended this to me, but thank you!

2025/025: Ludo and the Star Horse — Mary Stewart

You mean to keep faith with your friend... lead him as best you can along the path the sun is taking, through the good lands and the bad... The sun left my house this very day. If you can catch him before he reaches this spot again, your life's wish will be granted -- or else it will not, and who is to say which of the two will bring more happiness? [p. 54]

Audiobook (read by Paul Eddington) via the Internet Archive, as this childhood favourite seems to be unobtainable in ebook format. I adored this book when I was at primary school, and it holds up pretty well half a century later. 

Ludo is an eleven-year-old boy who lives in Bavaria, probably some time in the 19th century. One winter night, while he's alone at home, the family's elderly horse Renti escapes from his stable. Ludo is sure he'll be blamed, so he sets out through the snow to find Renti, who he's known all his life: who he loves. He falls into a cave and meets the Archer, a centaur, and is told that Renti is a star horse, like the horses who pull the sun's chariot. Ludo and Renti must follow the sun through the twelve houses of the star country, encountering perils and wonders -- not all of them predictable even by a reader who, unlike Ludo, is familiar with the houses of the Zodiac.

Ludo's not the brightest protagonist, but he is loyal, humble and kind -- all traits that stand him in good stead with the creatures and entities he meets. I had forgotten many of the details, such as the archer who restrains the Twins, and the rather dull embodiment of my own birth sign: but I remembered the book's climax, and it was just as compelling this time. I think the text was somewhat abridged for this audio version (which comes in two files, possibly from an LP) but the story remains intact, and Paul Eddington's narration is excellent. (Yes, he does voices, but not silly ones. The Scorpion was really chilling.)

I also noticed aspects of the story that I probably didn't recognise before. When Ludo meets the embodiment of Aquarius, he's a lad named Gula, which is the Babylonian name for the constellation. That archer who hangs out with the Twins, who introduces himself as Lykeios, is Apollo. The Archer is probably Chiron, since his pupils include Peleus. Even at nine, I was familiar with some Greek myths, but I'm not sure I spotted every reference.

An absolutely lovely 'reread', which has tempted me to re-skim a scan of the actual book. (Thanks, Internet Archive!)

2025/024: In the Land of Giants: A Journey Through the Dark Ages — Max Adams

Perhaps post-Roman Britain, far from the desolate, ruinous, plague-ridden chaos of Gildas’s portrait, was a genteel, faded seaside town of a land. Perhaps. [loc. 344]

In which Max Adams travels -- on foot, or by motorbike or car or boat -- through the British Isles, exploring early medieval sites and discussing their context. In the Land of Giants is as much a travel book as it's history in action: though there's little documentary evidence for life in Britain between the departure of the Romans and the time of Alfred the Great, there remain buildings, artefacts, monuments and landscapes from the 'Dark Ages'. Adams discusses the population decline in this period, but makes clear it wasn't a chaotic apocalypse of sword, fire and famine. 'People survived; some thrived; some left in the hope of a better life...' [loc. 775]

As well as the narrative of a country living amid the ruins of Romanisation -- Dark Ages armies marched on Roman roads, but town life had disintegrated -- this is a book full of fascinating facts. I learnt that Baldock, in Hertfordshire, was named after Baghdad; that Viking ships sailed up the Lea all the way to Hertford, and were stranded there when the river was dammed and drained; that the Scillies were a single landmass in the early days of the Roman occupation; that brewster and baxter are surnames deriving from female occupations (a baxter is a female baker, a brewster a female brewer)... And Adams' writing about walking to quiet one's thoughts, walking to regain a sense of the landscape, make me want to leave the city and head for the empty places.

A few typos, which really should have been fixed by now (it was slavers, not slaves, who took St Patrick to Ireland) and a few references to page numbers rather than locations. Most of the photographs are rather dark and indistinct in the ebook, but it's easy to find online images of the sites Adams visited.

I bought this in October 2016, and finally read it (very slowly) as part of my 'Down in the Cellar' self-challenge, which riffs on the metaphor of to-be-read pile as wine-cellar rather than to-do list.

2025/023: Mr Mustachio Gets Collared — Dawn McKinnon

There was little about Sam’s life anyone would believe. A gay ex-cop orphan living in a mansion owned by his ... boyfriend and their adopted litter of kittens? Nah. Couldn’t happen. Sam kissed his ... boyfriend as their children swarmed over him and thanked his lucky stars that sometimes fairy tales really did come true. [closing paragraph]

Third, and apparently final, novel in the 'Mr Mustachio' series. Engaged to investigate a mysterious lack of profit at Peabody's premier restaurant, Gourmand's, PI Sam Jones and his boyfriend Algernon have ring-side seats to the attempted murder of an annoying socialite, Meghan Wallach. Meghan has also accused Mr Mustachio of fathering her prize-winning cat's forthcoming kittens: but Mr Mustachio is gay^*... Sam and Algernon find themselves dealing with suspicious deaths, further outbreaks of 'food poisoning', and Mr Mustachio (who does not have a collar, a microchip or a current rabies vaccination) getting locked up by Animal Control -- and there's more than one tough decision to be made about feline welfare.

Fun, and twistier than the previous novel, but part of the entertainment was the build-up to the Big Reveal in Mr Mustachio Sings Like a Canary: the events of this novel couldn't have happened without that reveal, though. I think I read all three novels within 24 hours; they were the perfect antidote for low mood and gloomy weather. Mr Mustachio's chapters are splendid, the found-family theme is strong, and there's a subtle dry humour that suited the characters very well.

^{*"He doesn’t know what gay means, but he knows how it feels. Girl cats are only friends." [loc. 322]}

2025/022: Mr Mustachio Sings Like a Canary — Dawn McKinnon

"...Once he gets fixed, his face will thin out some.” That didn’t sound desirable. Mr. Mustachio’s face was Mr. Mustachio’s face. Sam didn’t want it changed. He only wanted Algernon to be a responsible pet owner. Representative, he corrected himself, because Algernon hated the word owner too.
...Celine Levesque had left her millions to Mr. Mustachio instead of to Algernon specifically for the purpose of giving Mr. Mustachio the right to remain intact. [p. 43]

The primary plot here is about the unexpected demise of Joan Peabody, an old lady with a heart condition and a bad temper. Her will has gone astray, and PI and author Sam Jones becomes involved when the dead woman's niece asks him to help find it. Features an exploding mailbox, unpleasantly healthy baking, and small-town politics.

I enjoyed this one a lot (though the mystery of Mrs Peabody's death was not especially mysterious), and the scenes from Mr Mustachio's perspective were great. There's also further character development for some of the other residents of Chez Celine, and the central mystery -- which seemed apparent to me from the first chapters of Mr Mustachio is Falsely Accused -- is revealed late in the novel.

A quick, cosy and enjoyable read, so on to the next one!

2025/021: Mr Mustachio is Falsely Accused — Dawn McKinnon

“This is for the cat?”
“We don’t call him the cat,” Hannah said quickly.
“This is for Mr. Mustachio?” He’d moved in with a bunch of delusional cat-fiends, but as long as he was here, he would have to cater to their delusion. At least he liked cats. Better than he liked people most of the time. [p. 28]

Quintessential cosy crime: stoic ex-cop Sam Jones has moved into Chez Celine, an artists' cooperative, where he hopes to write detective novels and maybe have a sideline in private investigation. Sam is surprised to find that his landlord is a cat -- the eponymous Mr Mustachio, a splendid orange Persian -- but intrigued by Algernon, the late owner's cute ward, who signs things. ("Mr Mustachio doesn't have hands.") When Mr Mustachio is accused of breaking a million-dollar vase, Sam discovers the unsavoury undercurrents of Chez Celine. 

This was great fun, with a vividly-written cast and a central mystery that ... well, seemed obvious to me, but the individuals concerned didn't know they were living in that kind of novel. I read this in a couple of hours, on a cold and gloomy day, and went straight on to the next in the series.

2025/020: The Glow — Alistair McDowall

Even if everything else is stolen from me, I'll remember you. Always.
I'll chain you to my thoughts and drag you through time. [p. 90]

I saw 'The Glow' at the Royal Court Theatre in 2022, when it opened, and bought the playscript the next day -- not least for the additional material.

The play opens in 1863, with spiritualist medium Mrs Lyall selecting a nameless girl from the local asylum to 'amplify' her own mediumistic talents. Mrs Lyall's son Mason finds the girl disturbing, even before her first séance, when she begins to chant Latin amid unsettling crashes. After that, things become stranger and bloodier.

1979, and a dropout named Evan is telling the girl about a mysterious figure who appears in old manuscripts: 'She looks a bit different each time but you can always tell it's her.' His source is an obscure book of folklore or mythology, by Dorothy Waites, called The Woman in Time. (Excerpts from this imaginary book are included with the play text.) The Woman -- immortal, invulnerable, singular and infinitely lonely -- knows that love matters more than anything. Her story unfolds from 1345 to 346AD to prehistory and into the future: but some characters are constant.

I did find the Afterword, in which a fictional academic is rather scathing about Waites' book and McDowall's play, entertaining: it definitely fleshed out the underlying myth of The Woman, while poking fun at conspiracy theorists and ambitious young playwrights. But the text of the play works without any of that context, and even without the impressive staging I recall.

For the 'genre picked by someone else' prompt of the 52 in 52 (2025) challenge: Nina picked 'a play' for me.

brief review of the play, from 2022.

2025/019: When the Moon Hits Your Eye — John Scalzi

We are confronted with a seemingly impossible proposition, that the moon has turned to cheese. And we live in an age where disinformation not only exists, but is actively used as a tool by pundits and political parties. [loc. 514]

Scalzi's latest novel, very much in the vein of Starter Villain and The Kaiju Preservation Society, takes a light-hearted concept -- here, it's the moon (including moon rock samples) suddenly turning into cheese -- and explores the consequences in twenty-eight sections, one per day of the lunar cycle, recounting the experiences of ordinary Americans.

We begin with the director of a small Air and Space Museum: other stories feature a retired philosophy professor, two assistants in two cheeseshops both alike in dignity a small town in Wisconsin, a Sunday School teacher, an appalling billionaire (when asked what he'd say to other billionaires with space companies, his answer is 'Hey, Elon and Jeff? Ha ha ha lol suck it dudes'), a Vice-President of development in Hollywood^*, a sex worker in Las Vegas...

I recall several novels, a while back, examining what would happen if the moon suddenly disappeared or had never existed: Seveneves, The Fifth Season, to name but two. (I'm sure there were others which I cannot recall or locate. Any suggestions?) This novel also fits the premise, albeit with more comedy. It reminded me, in parts, of the film Don't Look Up, and of Ben Winters' Last Policeman trilogy: but the scope is broader, and so is the humour. It's sometimes tragic, sometimes (surprisingly?) profound, and a very good read.

Interesting post about translating the title for audiences unfamiliar with the Dean Martin song.

Thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for the advance review copy, in exchange for this full honest review. UK Publication Date is 25th March 2025.

^*This is where Scalzi stashes most of his appalling puns.

2025/018: A Radical Act of Free Magic — H G Parry

Something terribly important had happened, she thought. Some great and wondrous step toward magic that didn’t control, didn’t restrict or confine or destroy or even burn the world on its way to freedom, but liberated. [loc. 7079]

I liked A Declaration of the Rights of Magicians very much, so dived straight into the second volume of the duology. A Radical Act takes place from 1797 to 1807. While magical war engulfs Europe, the Saint-Domingue slave rebellion continues. Fina continues to support Toussaint L'Ouverture in the Caribbean; Wilberforce, in London, continues to fight for abolition; Pitt continues to conceal his deadly secret. In France, a young battle-mage from Corsica, working with a mysterious 'friend', has summoned a kraken to lay waste to the British navy. Other new characters are introduced, too: Kate Dove and her brother Christopher, mudlarking orphans who were tested for magical ability at birth, and forced to wear bracelets to suppress their magical talents. But in wartime, Britain will take all the magical help it can get ...

This is a fast-paced and thrilling account of the Napoleonic Wars. In this volume, we're shown magic having more effect on the history of individuals and of nations: this is not quite our history, and there are more opportunities for women and for Commoners. It also highlights the conflict between Pitt and the centuries-old 'enemy' (Bonaparte's 'friend') and explains why the Templars have turned a blind eye to Pitt's difficult heritage. It's exciting and hopeful and heroic.

That said, I didn't enjoy it as much as the first novel: towards the end, events seemed tumultuously hasty, without enough foreshadowing or description. (The splendid Lady Hester Stanhope has a crowning moment of glory that's barely a page long.) And there are elements of the story which, though they are foreshadowed, seem to fade away (vengeance of bound shadows, for instance). Still a splendid read but less satisfying than A Declaration. Despite a vague sense of disappointment, I did enjoy this book and I'm still looking forward to reading more of Parry's novels.

2025/017: This Way Out — Tufayel Ahmed

'Maybe I don’t want to always be a learning experience for you. Maybe we just haven’t realised how different we are, how different our worlds are.’ [loc. 2083]

Amar Iqbar is Muslim, gay, and about to get married to a white guy. His family learn the latter two facts from a message in the family WhatsApp. They are not impressed: elder sister thinks he's mentally ill, younger sister cries, one brother stays quiet and the other says he 'can't have no faggot for a brother'. Their father tells him 'Look to God to forgive you'. All of which demonstrates why he hasn't come out to them before, and also provides a concise summary of typical attitudes in a second-generation Bangladeshi family in contemporary London.

Amar is still dealing with grief after his mother's death, and has always been troubled by the conflict between his faith and his sexuality: and then he discovers he's about to lose his job at a small independent bookshop. It doesn't help that Joshua, his boyfriend, stands by while Amar is (as he sees it) insulted by his future mother-in-law, Josephine. Luckily, Amar still has friends, and one suggests therapy...

This was an easy read, often repetitive, but a good window onto a culture that isn't my own. The least credible aspect of it for me was the therapist who never says the wrong thing or suggests anything unreasonable! I liked the sense of Amar discovering who he was without the filter of family or relationship, and I liked his new 'found family' and his realisation that there's more to Islam than the faith he grew up in.

I read this in sync with a friend and felt more sympathetic towards Amar than she did. I also found the culture clash more interesting -- the sense that at least some of Amar's behaviour (such as avoiding difficult conversations) is cultural. At one point when therapy is suggested, he replies 'it just seems like kind of a white people thing. They feel sad and then they go and see a therapist and pop a couple of antidepressants. No offence. That just isn’t how we do things in my family, in my culture. There aren’t just some magic words that make everything okay.' [loc. 970]. And yet the therapy is what saves him.

I bought this in June 2022, and finally read it as part of my 'Down in the Cellar' self-challenge, which riffs on the metaphor of to-be-read pile as wine-cellar rather than to-do list.

2025/016: Jessica Jones: Playing with Fire — Lauren Beukes, Vita Ayala, Sam Beckbessinger, Zoe Quinn, Elsa Sjunneson: narrated by Fryda Wolff

The only thing I'm better at than beating myself up is proving people wrong out of spite. [chapter 11]

Audiobook, well-narrated with excellent sound effects and a personable narrator. I enjoyed the TV series, and this has very much the same ambience: Jessica Jones is superpowered (though the book doesn't go into the details of how she acquired her powers) and suffering from CPTSD due to horrible things in her past (again, not explained here: Kilgrave is mentioned a couple of times in passing). She investigates crimes. Her therapist, Mel, suggests that she take on a straightforward case with low stakes, so Jessica begins to investigate a missing person -- Jamie Green, twenty years old, formerly estranged from his father due to his powers, but turned up missing when they were supposed to reunite. Needless to say, the case is not straightforward and the stakes are high. Jessica's usual approach of drinking whiskey and hitting things may not be enough.

I really liked this, though I do find audiobooks harder to keep in my mind than ebooks or physical books: something about not being able to page back and forward, or highlight key passages. Still, the story flowed well despite each chapter being written by different people: this is the Serial Box model and it worked very well here. I'm no more than vaguely aware of this corner of the Marvel universe, but that plus the contextual material in the novel was sufficient for me to make sense of character interactions. The story was packed with dark humour, gritty realism, alternative lifestyles and well-rounded characters. I liked it a lot, and will try more Serial Box audiobooks, especially if they're in the Audible Plus catalogue!

2025/015: A Declaration of the Rights of Magicians — H G Parry

The National Assembly of Magicians had risen up, exactly as Robespierre had hoped. They had issued a proclamation declaring it the right of all citizens to be free to practice their own magic: a Declaration of the Rights of Magicians. Within a day, the Temple Church in Paris had been stormed... [p. 179]

Having enjoyed Parry's more recent The Scholar and the Last Fairy Door, I bought A Declaration of the Rights of Magicians when it was on offer: I love it, and am currently reading the second book in the duology, A Radical Act of Free Magic -- which means I don't yet know how the overall arc resolves.

Set mostly between 1783 and 1794, this is a novel about an Age of Enlightenment complicated by magic. Briefly, this is a world where some individuals have magical powers, connected with but not reliant on heritage; generally, aristocrats are allowed to use magic and commoners are not; 'blood magic' (a combination of mesmerism and vampirism, apparently uniquely European) is banned, a ban enforced by the Knights Templar who slew the monstrous Vampire Kings who ruled Europe centuries before, as well as every blood magician they could find. 

There are three strands to the novel: William Wilberforce and William Pitt the Younger, trying to abolish the slave trade and (in Pitt's case) come to terms with magical heritage; Fina, an escaped slave in Jamaica, fleeing to Toussaint L'Ouverture's rebel army; and Camille Desmoulins and Maximilien Robespierre working towards revolution in Paris. Each of these subplots is as much concerned with friendship as with magic or revolution. Parry's version of history adheres closely to our own, but with additional magical elements to amplify the horror: the guillotine's victims are transformed into an army of the dead; the slaves in the colonies are kept obedient by a potion that renders them unable to speak or move of their own volition.

And behind the slave revolt, the Revolution and even the repeated failure of British attempts to abolish the slave trade, there's a hidden force, known to Robespierre as his benefactor, to Pitt as his enemy, and to Fina simply as 'the stranger'.

This is a long, slow, dense novel, and I found it a compelling read: the blend of fantasy and history felt credible, and I very much enjoyed the friendships, especially that between Pitt and Wilberforce. I also found myself warming more to Robespierre than ever before. Though the history and worldbuilding are quite lightly sketched -- we learn little of the world outside Britain, France and Haiti -- there are plenty of little details, such as the laburnham-and-silver panels in the House of Commoners that respond to the speeches with sound and harmony, which make this world feel real.

I'd have liked more female characters, but can understand their absence. (There are more women in A Radical Act of Free Magic, including Pitt's awesome niece Hester Stanhope.) And I did find some of the scenes of Parliament rather long-winded. But this, for me, was an utterly splendid read, and the very first thing I did after finishing it was to buy the second volume of what's effectively one long narrative.

2025/014: The Athenian Murders — V J Randle

He agreed, of course, that murder was most terrible. But she had not used the modern Greek word, tromeros, instead using the Ancient Greek, deinos... [p. 60]

Sergeant Michail Mikras of the Athenian police is assigned, with his partner Katerina Galanis, to the investigation of a gruesome murder with mythic undertones: the body was arranged to suggest the birth of Athena, who was freed from the head of Zeus by an axe wielded by Hephaestus. It's Mikras who finds the axe, hung from Hephaestus's temple -- a fact that fascinates the tabloids. And a group called The Awakening is claiming that Athena has arisen to cleanse the city of Athens. Michail Mikras's superior, Sofia Sampson, is unimpressed with his suggestion that they consider other Athene-related myths to 'locate' further crimes. Nevertheless, Michail and Katerina identify the next target...

Like many crime novels, this is more about the detectives than about the crimes. Michail Mikras is neurodivergent and bad at people, but familiar with mythology and Ancient Greek; Katerina is trying to separate from her husband Theo, also a police officer, because of his involvement with far-right, anti-immigrant groups; Sofia Sampson has personal history with one of the ringleaders. Two retired British classicists are also involved in the case, providing some scholarly input as well as some red herrings.

This was a quick and easy read, and I was interested by the depiction of modern Athens (a city I know better from historical novels and non-fiction set in the ancient world). The characters were likeable, if somewhat stereotyped, and the crimes were complex and unusual. I don't feel compelled to read more in the series, but I think I might revisit this author if I were to visit Athens.

2025/013: A Line You Have Traced — Roisin Dunnett

...when we talk about time, we should really talk about history, because that's the only element of time that we understand. ... some parts of time are actually thinner than others ... what wears it thin? Stories, narrative, expression. [loc. 2422]

A Line You Have Traced is the story of three women living in East London, in three different centuries: Bea, a silversmith's wife, in the 1930s; Kay, devoting her life to partying in something like contemporary London; and Ess, living in a near-future collective which believes that humans will soon be extinct. (All the character names in this novel are letters of the alphabet, from Bea's husband Ade to Ess's friend Zizi. This became annoying until the story really got going.) The three are related by more than blood. There's an angel whose appearances Bea records in a small red notebook, Kay's fantasies about being watched by time travellers, Ess's friendship with an elderly man whose vast personal archive of photographs and documents holds the key to an ambitious plan. There are also three cats, named Tuna, Mackerel and Sardine, who may also be related...

Each viewpoint was fascinating, though perhaps Kay's less so (because more familiar) than Bea's or Ess's. Bea's story includes the story of her husband's friendship with a novelist, who presents a warped and misogynist portrait of Bea in his account of Ade's life: it also includes the Battle of Cable Street and the rise of fascism. Kay's account is a portrait of contemporary queer life, with the looming climate emergency and a lack of direction. And Ess's future, with its antique Tupperware and acceptance of doom -- and its radical solutions -- feels horribly credible.

Dunnett's prose is fluent, and each voice is distinctive: she's very good at dialogue, and her depictions of the changing face of misogyny -- especially in the context of female fertility -- over the three narratives is acute. I'm still not clear about the novel's resolution: Dunnett presents us with possibilities rather than a definitive event. But that's the nature of the beast, that's the multiverse, that's history for you.

Thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for the advance review copy, in exchange for this full honest review. UK Publication Date is 15th April 2025.

2025/012: Someone You Can Build a Nest In — John Wiswell

...if her biting off a bunch of people’s heads was how Homily learned her identity, it would probably stifle their relationship. Romance was awful. She couldn’t even do something as simple as murdering rude people anymore. [p. 69]

Shesheshen, an amorphous shapeshifting creature, lives in the cellar of a ruined mansion. She is woken by the latest set of monster hunters, who are keen to slay the Wyrm of Underlook (Shesheshen, apparently) who has cursed an entire family. Poisoned by a rosemary-anointed arrow, Shesheshen flees ... and is rescued by Homily, a healer who turns out to be a scion of the Wulfyres. Homily does not get along with her bellicose, golden-armoured siblings, but still: a family curse is a family curse. It's love at first sight for Shesheshen -- masquerading as a human -- who fantasises about laying her eggs in Homily's lungs, and wonders how Homily will receive the revelation of Shesheshen's true nature.

I am still not sure what I think or feel about this novel. On the one hand, it's a delightful romance between Homily, a woman who is abused by her family, and Shesheshen, a gelatinous blob who likes killing at eating people. On the other hand, it is full of therapy-speak about identity, parenting and abuse. On the third hand (Shesheshen probably has a few hands to spare, given her fondness for removing them from humans) it is an intriguing horror-romance about disability, toxic families and boundaries. It's often very funny, and the violence, though extreme, is rather cartoonish and not especially shocking or cruel. Seen through Shesheshen's eyes -- or whatever she is using to perceive the world with -- the humans seem ridiculous (can confirm), and what is a poor lonely monster, the last of her kind, to do?

I'm puzzled by how Shesheshen became so good at identifying and describing psychological and physical abuse amongst humans, and I'm not comfortable with the relationship's foundation of lies. But this was fun, albeit uneven, and I shall look out for more by Wiswell.

2025/011: The Surfacing — Cormac James

Worse, he had never known, and could not imagine. This is the worst moment of my life, he promised himself, counting everything to come. It would be a useful memory, he knew, if he survived. [loc. 2242]

Echoing some themes from recent polar reads... The Impetus is one of the many ships searching the Arctic, in 1850, for Sir John Franklin's lost expedition. Captain Myers is stubbornly determined to continue the search, though it's late in the year: 'matters as they stand do not quite suit his convenience, and must therefore change'. Lieutenant Morgan, the second-in-command, has a lightly-sketched (but possibly shady) history and a mutinous streak. Ashore in Greenland while a broken rudder is mended, he briefly becomes involved with Kitty, the sister of the local governor: some weeks later, he discovers that the chaplain, Mr Macdonald, has smuggled Kitty aboard the Intrepid. She is pregnant.

Over the course of that pregnancy, the Intrepid heads north, under sail and then trapped in the ice. There is heroism, and there is violence. The crew -- DeHaven the doctor, Cabot the cook, Petersen and Brooks and Banes -- become distinct individuals. Morgan's relationship with DeHaven (friends since childhood) is strained: his relationship with Kitty is cool and distant. James' prose is also cool, distant, formal. His dialogue is unpunctuated, which made me pay more attention to distinguishing it from the surrounding prose:

I heard about your passenger, Austin said...
I think everybody has by now.
Unfortunate.
For me or for her? Morgan said.
For you both, I presume. Inconvenient too.
That's one way of putting it.

I found Morgan absolutely fascinating, perhaps because his past is so indistinct. One has a sense of scandal, of melancholy, of a man always in search of a fresh start. Hidden in The Surfacing amid the ice and the masculine environment and the beautiful terror of the high Arctic, between the moments of peril and the days of boredom, there's the story of Morgan's redemption, of his re-engagement with the world. A slow, quiet novel, in which actual events take second place to the characters', and especially Morgan's, inner lives.

One aspect of the story that seems strange to me is Kitty's, and Morgan's, confidence: they never seem to consider Kitty to be in danger (and especially sexual danger) from the crew. Does her social status make her invulnerable, or is it her pregnancy? 

I bought this in August 2015, and finally read it as part of my 'Down in the Cellar' self-challenge, which riffs on the metaphor of to-be-read pile as wine-cellar rather than to-do list.

2025/010: Thin Air — Michelle Paver

Being on a mountain forces us to confront the vast, unsentient reality that’s always present behind our own busy little human world, which we tuck around ourselves like a counterpane, to keep out the cold. No wonder that when we trespass into the mountains, we create phantoms. They’re easier to bear than all this lifelessness. [loc. 1325]

Reread, after reading Into Thin Air: my review of Paver's novel from 2017 is here. Paver's 1930s team are climbing Kangchenjunga, rather than Everest, and the novel is as much about the rivalry between two brothers as it is about the technical and emotional demands of the climb. But there's a lot of resonance. The topography of the mountain, with icefalls and buttresses and peaks, feels familiar after Everest. And the ghost story at the heart of Thin Air is rooted in the experience of a man left to die.

This is still one of my favourite ghost stories. Yes, period-typical racism; yes, classism; yes, an overwhelmingly masculine cast. But I love it, and it is terrifying.

2025/009: Into Thin Air: A Personal Account of the Everest Disaster — Jon Krakauer

The ratio of misery to pleasure was greater by an order of magnitude than any other mountain I’d been on; I quickly came to understand that climbing Everest was primarily about enduring pain. And in subjecting ourselves to week after week of toil, tedium, and suffering, it struck me that most of us were probably seeking, above all else, something like a state of grace. [loc. 1952]

Krakauer's decision to join one of the Everest expeditions in 1996 was professional rather than personal: he was initially only going to climb as far as Base Camp, and report on the commercialisation of Everest. Having been a keen mountaineer in the past, the prospect reignited his enthusiasm for climbing, and he decided he wanted to make the ascent to the summit.

What sets Into Thin Air apart from other survival / mountaineering works is Krakaeur's examination of his own culpability. Despite a somewhat defensive afterword, he's very much aware that his presence on the expedition may have influenced decisions made by the team leader, Rob Hall, and that his own actions and attitudes likely caused at least one death and perhaps more. Because, through sheer bad luck^*, Krakauer was making the final ascent in May 1996, when twelve climbers died: 'the worst single-season death toll since climbers first set foot on the peak seventy-five years ago' (now the third worst, due to the 2014 avalanche and the 2015 earthquake).

Krakauer writes clearly and evocatively about the joys and miseries of climbing: he portrays interactions objectively, for the most part, and lets the reader draw their own conclusions: he describes the history and sociology of Everest ascents, and the ways in which the climb has become a commodity. I had a strong sense of the heroism of some individuals, and the appalling behaviour of others (refusing to loan a radio to help coordinate rescue; not stopping to help climbers in mortal danger). Krakauer does point out that 'lucid thought is all but impossible at 29,000 feet', due to altitude sickness and hypoxia: and more recent studies have shown that the lack of oxygen was worsened by the weather: 'atmospheric oxygen levels fell by an additional 6% as a result of the storm, resulting in a further 14% reduction in oxygen uptake' (source).

In some ways 1996 is a very long time ago: reading about 'technological limitations' brought home how much things have changed since then. "E-mail was received in Kathmandu, printed out, and the hard copy was transported by yak to Base Camp. Likewise, all photos that ran on the Web had first been sent by yak and then air courier to New York for transmission. Internet chat sessions were done via satellite phone and a typist in New York..." [loc. 4551]. One of the climbers was attempting to 'live-blog' her climb, which seems ... ambitious. And the mountain itself has changed: the Hillary step, a major chokepoint for climbers, is no longer there.

In some ways an inspirational read, in others a reminder that the heights of Everest are inimical to human life. Either way, Krakauer's account engaged and compelled me.

^* And bad decisions by several individuals, and poor communication, and other factors...

There is an opera...

I bought this in October 2014, and finally read it as part of my 'Down in the Cellar' self-challenge, which riffs on the metaphor of to-be-read pile as wine-cellar rather than to-do list.

2025/008: The Greatcoat — Helen Dunmore

It seemed as if she could put out her hand and touch thousands of lives which had never ended but had broken off into a silence that hung more heavily than any noise. [p. 56]

Set in Yorkshire in the 1950s, this short novel is, I suppose, a ghost story: except that the ghost is more alive than most of the living.

A prologue set on an air base during the Second World War shows us the crew of a Lancaster bomber preparing for their twenty-seventh mission, with all their superstitions and songs and the knowledge that if they survive this and the next three missions, they'll be stood down. The body of the novel, though, focuses on Isabel, newly married to Philip, living in a rented flat in a town where Philip is the new GP and Isabel knows nobody. Their landlady, Mrs Atkinson, is a malevolent grey presence, her footsteps audible overhead all night: Isabel suspects that she noses around the flat when Isabel is out. It's a cold winter, and Isabel, looking for another quilt or blanket, finds an old RAF greatcoat in a cupboard. She spreads it over her bed. Then there's a tapping on the window...

The shadow of the War hangs heavily over this novel: Isabel's parents died in a Japanese labour camp, Mrs Atkinson lost her whole family, and everyone is accustomed to bad food and not enough of it. The old 'hostilities-only' airfields are running wild, overgrown with brambles. Isabel, lonely and isolated and inevitably self-centred, is as lost as Alec, who was tapping at the window. 'He had missed so much. He’d been outside for so long, in the dark and cold. Why not let him come in?'

Dunmore's prose is clear and unsentimental, and she doesn't attempt to explain everything, simply sets out the story with an implacable inevitability. I should ration her novels -- there will be no more -- but I've read three in the last year (The Siege, The Betrayal and The Greatcoat), all very different, all set in WW2 or its aftermath. And I think I own all the others...

2025/007: The Ministry of Time — Kaliane Bradley

The time-travel project was the first time in history that any person had been brought out of their time and into their far future. In this sense, the predicament of the expats was unique. But the rhythms of loss and asylum, exodus and loneliness, roll like floods across human history. [p. 271]

The near future. The British government has a machine which allows a limited kind of time travel: the Department of Expatriation extracts doomed individuals from their own times -- just before their deaths, so that their removal won't impact history -- and studies them to learn about the side-effects, if any, of time travel. The unnamed British-Cambodian narrator of The Ministry of Time is recruited as a 'bridge', a person to act as companion, supervisor and teacher to one of the ex-pats. She's assigned to Eighteen Forty-Seven -- Commander Graham Gore, formerly of the doomed Franklin polar expedition.

Gore finds the 21st century challenging, but acclimatises fairly well. He and the bridge smoke a lot of cigarettes (and some recently-legalised cannabis), ride bikes, and explore Spotify ('Any music? Any performances, any time, whensoever you wish it?'). They interact with Sixteen Sixty-Five (Maggie, who is an Absolute Delight) and Nineteen Sixteen (Arthur, who starts off thinking he's a prisoner of war, and ... is not exactly wrong). There is bureaucracy; there are spies; there is romance, and comedy, and hand-wavy science, and hints of a grim future. There are short chapters of Gore's last days in the Arctic, in 1847. And there is a blink-and-you'll-miss-it a Wilfred Owen cameo.

The Ministry of Time explores colonialism, Empire, refugees and exiles, the nature of history, racism, and loyalty. That it does so with humour, pathos, and some truly hilarious scenes is a triumph. Our unnamed narrator is burdened with her refugee mother's experiences in Cambodia (she'd 'witnessed the sort of horrors that changed the way screams sounded'), with her own place in the mechanism of the British civil service, with her dual role as friend and as observer. She's constantly (and perhaps rightly) critical of her actions and choices, sometimes well before we're shown their consequences: this maintains tension throughout, and even the ending is less definite than one might wish.

I love this novel. It engaged me so much emotionally that the flaws (uneven pacing, some threads left dangling, that ending) don't matter. It is fun as well as inventive, and I'm looking forward to a future reread.

‘What happens if they survive?’ I asked.
‘Then you will have the lovely warm glow of having contributed to a humanitarian project.’
‘And if they die?’
‘Then you will have contributed to a scientific project.' [p. 38]

2025/006: The Terraformers — Annalee Newitz

...researchers found the H. sapiens germline in a seventy-thousand-year-old biobank that had been moldering in the museum basement. Nobody is really sure what the biobank was for, but archaeologists think it probably had some kind of ritual use. Back then, people had all kinds of superstitions about their genomes. They would send their genetic material to this biobank, and analysts would tell their fortunes by grouping them into categories like ‘West African’ or ‘European’ or ‘Indigenous American.’ [loc. 5568]

Told in three parts, The Terraformers is set in the far future, on a planet known as Sask-E. The terraformers are employees (or perhaps slaves) of Verdance, an interstellar corporation whose goal is to recreate Pleistocene-era Earth -- before the Great Bargain which endowed some non-human animals with human-level intelligence (subject to certain controls) and averted ecological catastrophe. It was at this mythical time that the Environmental Rescue Team (ERT) was formed, its remit to manage ecosystems.

The first third of the novel, 'Settlers', is the story of ERT Ranger Destry and her companion Whistle. (Who is a moose. Who can fly.) Destry and Whistle discover a subterranean city inhabited by the original terraformers, all Homo Diversus -- a generic term for customised hominin builds who were designed to perform the earliest stages of the terraforming process. They prefer to call themselves Archaeans, and they're unimpressed with Verdance.

The second part of the novel, 'Public Works', is set some centuries later and deals with a team trying to design a public transit system, despite Verdance's best efforts to keep the unwashed masses at bay. 'There would be excuses about how trains messed up the Pleistocene purity of Sasky, but really it would be about not wanting to deal with the class of person who took public transit.' (The moral of this section of the novel is 'always read the appendices to the planning reports'.) And the final third, 'Gentrification', deals with corporate greed and 'cleansing' of undesirables -- mostly non-human people, an ever-broadening category that includes the section's protagonists, a cat named Moose who works as an investigative journalist and a flying train named Scrubjack. Verdance has always intended Sask-E to be a place where H. Sapiens can reign supreme, just as it was before the Great Bargain...

There is a lot in this novel. Many of the little details of worldbuilding (such as swearing and profanity being scatalogical rather than sexual; such as robot kink bars) have stuck with me. But The Terraformers is not only a novel about the far future, it is a novel about now: what makes a person a person? Does a small vocabulary -- Whistle can only speak in one-syllable words, as per design -- mean a person is unintelligent? Can people be owned? How do revolutions happen? Is authenticity another name for prejudice? Are all corporations evil?

For me this was an engaging and richly detailed novel -- or rather, three linked novellas -- though I did not engage with (or like) all the protagonists, and some of the plot turns seemed to depend on people making improbably poor and/or draconian decisions. Newitz, who's also a professional science journalist, presents scientific ideas clearly, and the relationships at the core of each part of the novel are just as vivid as the futuristic sciences. 

Kim Stanley Robinson, author of many geoengineering epics, told me (jokingly) that he would permit me to write about terraforming as long as I included a character named Kim, and so I have. [loc 5939]

2025/005: The Shock of the Fall — Nathan Filer

He was everywhere, and in everything. The smallest parts of him; electrons, protons, neutrons. If I were more perceptive, if my senses weren’t so blunted by the medicine, I’d be better able to decipher, understand what he meant by the movement of the leaves, or the sideways glances of patients as we sucked endlessly at cigarettes. [p. 196]

Matt's brother Simon died in August 1999, while the family were staying at a caravan park in Dorset. Simon had Downs syndrome, and Matt was devoted to him. He blames himself for Simon's death, and he's struggled with mental health issues ever since. The Shock of the Fall is presented as Matt's therapy, trying to make sense of it all by (as his medical notes have it) 'engaging in writing behaviour'. His typed account of life in a secure ward, his difficult relationship with his mother and the comfort he gets from his nan, his theories about the interconnectedness of everything, is punctuated by letters from health workers, collaged words, little sketches. And while we know from the start that something terrible happened that August night, the truth of that night's events don't become clear until very late in the novel.

Matt's black humour and the vividness of his perceptions make this a fascinating read. I don't know if it is an accurate portrayal of schizophrenia, but it feels like an honest account of life with a mental illness, life in an institution. Filer is, or was, a mental health nurse and I assume some of the details -- like the plethora of drug-company promotional mugs, mousemats etc -- is from life. I'm pretty sure Matt's refrain of 'there is nothing to do' is the experience of many.

Sometimes the novel is a bit sentimental: sometimes I found Matt's emotional shifts overwhelming. But overall I liked it: a witty and accessible account of mental illness, and of grief, and of guilt -- subjects that in a more serious narrative would be hard to read.

In the novel, Simon's death took place on 15th August 1999, and when I saw that date I wondered if the family were in Dorset to see the 1999 eclipse ... it's not mentioned, but surely would have been experienced, if only as 'much more traffic on the roads than usual'. And young Matt did seem to be interested in the world around him.

I bought this in February 2014, and finally read it as part of my 'Down in the Cellar' self-challenge, which riffs on the metaphor of to-be-read pile as wine-cellar rather than to-do list.

2025/004: The Fox Wife — Yangsze Choo

A hundred years ago, the family might have called in an exorcist and then I might really have been in trouble, but as it was, his steward could only regard me with nervous suspicion. [p. 209]

Manchuria, 1908. A woman known as Snow is searching for a Mongolian photographer; an elderly man named Bao has been asked to discover the identity of a woman found dead outside a house. Complicating the story is Snow's dual identity (she is also a fox, though she remains in human form throughout the novel), and Bao's ability to recognise when somebody is lying. There is also a family curse that's falling due, a long-lost childhood sweetheart, and a trio of youthful revolutionaries.

Snow's story is a tale of revenge, told in the first person; Bao's story, more reflective and more mundane, is the hunt for a murderer, and is told in third person. This, and their very different concerns and perceptions, make their voices distinct and complementary. Choo's depiction of Manchuria in the last days of the Qing dynasty is vivid and believable, though occasionally she over-explains some aspect of that place and time. The slow adoption of twentieth-century technology and culture was fascinating, too. I liked the two protagonists very much, and in general the story was well-paced, though towards the end the revelations and explanations came rather too quickly. I'm looking forward to reading more of Choo's work.

For the 'A book with white in the cover design' prompt of the 2025 #SomethingBookishReadingChallenge.

For the 'title is ten letters or fewer' prompt of the 52 in 52 (2025) challenge.

2025/003: number9dream — David Mitchell

The fortress-grey mountain-faces, the green river snaking out of the gorge, the hanging bridge, mishmash of roofs and power lines, port, timber yards, school soccer ground, gravel pit, Uncle Orange’s tea-fields, our secret beach, its foot rock, waves breaking on the shoals around the whalestone, the long island of Tanegashima where they launch satellites, glockenspiel clouds, the envelope where the sea seals the sky. [p. 45]

Eiji Miyake is twenty years old and has grown up in rural Japan: the novel opens with his arrival in Tokyo, in search of his father. Eight chapters later, he's made contact with a parent, witnessed some appalling violence, fallen in love, benefitted from the kindnesses of others, and had (or dreamt) a conversation with John Lennon about the song 'Number Nine Dream'.

It's fair to say that number9dream is something of an emotional rollercoaster. It's stylistically exuberant, springing from cyberpunk to thriller to murder mystery to family saga to gang warfare to surreally fantastical -- with Goatwriter, who is a writer and also a goat. (Like all writers he devours his drafts.) There is a lot going on, and not all of it is reliably narrated. Eiji is prone to daydreams and fantasy, and he's naive in some ways and melodramatic in others. He has a difficult family history (sister dead, for which he blames himself; mother alcoholic and absent; father married to someone else and absent) and he once sawed the head off a thunder god with a hacksaw from a junior carpenter set.

I found some of the violence difficult to read, but I enjoyed the rapid switches of mood and genre, and the depiction of life in modern Tokyo. And I greatly appreciated the ways in which Eiji was open to kindness -- both in acts of kindness towards others, and in being able to gracefully accept help and support. Mitchell's writing is dense and allusive (everything is connected! but not always in obvious or even realistic ways) and often very funny, though I think I like his landscapes best. And there is an actual cat.

I bought this in October 2015, and finally read it as part of my 'Down in the Cellar' self-challenge, which riffs on the metaphor of to-be-read pile as wine-cellar rather than to-do list.

For the 'title starts with letter N' prompt of the 52 in 52 (2025) challenge.

I imagined there lived somewhere, in an advertland house and family, the Real Eiji Miyake. He dreamed of me every night. And that was who I really was – a dream of the Real Eiji Miyake. When I went to sleep and dreamed, he woke up, and remembered my waking life as his dream. And vice versa. [p. 407]

2025/002: The Bride of the Blue Wind — Victoria Goddard

"Never once," said Sardeet, "did he ask me my name." [chapter 5]

I started reading this expecting a novel: it's a novella, the first in Goddard's 'Sisters Avramapul trilogy', featuring the three daughters (Sardeet, Pali and Arzu) of the Bandit Queen of the Oclaresh. This is the story of how Sardeet became the bride of a powerful spirit, the Blue Wind, and how Pali and Arzu rescued her. It's a version of the Bluebeard story with an Arabian Nights flavour, intense and poetic. 

I think I would have liked it better if Sardeet (later to be known as the most beautiful woman in the Nine Worlds) had been older, but she's fourteen when the Blue Wind makes her his bride -- and yes, she's consenting and happy (or thinks she is), but I couldn't help thinking of her as a child.

I'm looking forward to the other two novellas in the trilogy, though. Possibly I will like Pali more if I read about her youth: and I know so little about Arzu, the Weaver...

For the 'A book with an adjective in the title' prompt of the 52 in 52 (2025) challenge. Blue!

2025/001: The Masquerades of Spring — Ben Aaronovitch

Later, when I told Lucy about the love that dare not speak its name, he held me close and said that it may not speak its name, ‘But it sure as shit sings the blues.’ [loc. 263]

New York in the Roaring Twenties, the height of the Jazz Age: a city where an expat English magician can listen to the best jazz in the world, seek out the company of like-minded (i.e. queer) men, and avoid the attentions of the Folly, who took a dim view of his youthful japes. Augustus Berrycloth-Young, man about town, has a Black lover (Lucien, or Lucy), a Black valet (Beauregard, who arrives under mysterious circumstances), and a taste for the finer things in life. But he's loyal to his country. When the Folly's chief fixer, one Thomas Nightingale, arrives from London on the trail of an enchanted saxophone, Gussie rises to the occasion and assists, financially and esoterically, with Nightingale's investigations.

This was immense fun, a great start to 2025, and features a drag ball, the Harlem Renaissance and a tantalising catalogue of (sadly fictional) volumes in 'The Further Adventures of the Remarkable Beauregard', which seem to have a Jeeves and Wooster vibe, and make me suspect that there's much more to Gussie's valet than meets the eye. I'd love to read them...

For the 'Set in Spring' prompt of the 52 in 52 (2025) challenge.

For the 'Seriously Long Series' prompt of the 2025 Speculative Fiction challenge. This is part of the 'Rivers of London' series, though it's a side-story rather than the main arc.