2025/071: The Lost Books of the Odyssey — Zachary Mason

Now every debt is paid, every sin erased and I can begin anew, I who was once Odysseus and now am no one. [p. 145]

The conceit of this novel, or collection of short stories, is that the Oxyrhynchus Papyri contain 'forty-four concise variations on Odysseus’s story that omit stock epic formulae in favour of honing a single trope or image down to an extreme of clarity'. These are those variations, some more credible than others, which are effectively Odyssey AU^*. 

What if Odysseus were a coward? a sorcerer (making the golem Achilles)? What if he returned home but found Penelope dead? or remarried? or aged in some 'malevolent illusion'? What if Agamemnon, after the war, hired a master assassin to kill the overly-cunning Odysseus, but that assassin was Odysseus himself? What if Odysseus is the author of the Odyssey? What if the Odyssey is actually a chess manual?

There are a couple of stories about side-characters, too, such as Polyphemus. And the Cyclops' remains are shown to one Odysseus: "a huge skeleton embedded in a cliff-face. The skull had a single wide orbit flanked by fearsome tusks nearly half as long as its body" [p. 223]. The footnote to this scene references the excellent The First Fossil Hunters by Adrienne Mayor. Mason provides thorough footnotes throughout, explaining real or imagined theories underlying each story, and tantalising me with the goddess Quickness, with Egyptian colonies, with Helen's veils.

I bought this book several years ago, but the time to read it fell after seeing The Return (which I enjoyed very much): it was a perfect complement. The prose is powerful, the tone and style varied, and though not every story hit the mark there were some truly memorable variants on the myth.

I fear global replace has corrupted this text in an attempt to anglicise it: 'prizes' become 'prises', 'seize' becomes 'seise', 'sizes' becomes 'sises'.

^*AU: 'alternate universes': a fanfic term. I note there is no gender-swap variant here.

2025/070: Hy Brasil — Margaret Elphinstone

Sometimes I seem to recognise things, as if I’d dreamed it all already. Like ... this road through the orchards. The apple trees. Meeting you like I just did. The way the sun makes patterns on the gravel.I keep having the feeling that it isn’t new. People say autumn is melancholy, but I find it’s the spring that feels so old. [p. 153]

Hy Brasil is a group of volcanic islands in the mid-Atlantic: a former British colony, a former NATO base, a former pirate kingdom. It's hard to find due to magnetic and meteorological anomalies, and for centuries its actual position was a matter of debate. Travel writer Sidony Redruth (whose career is founded on the lie of her prize-winning article about Ascension and St Helena, researched solely in her local library) is commissioned to write a book about the islands. Hy Brasil incorporates her working notes for Undiscovered Islands, along with the narratives of some of the islanders: Lucy Morgan, in love with a dead man, rattling around in ancient Ravnscar Castle; Colombo MacAdam, a reporter for the Hesperides Times; and Jared Honeyman, who's trying to fund a dive to raise the Cortes, a 17th-century Spanish galleon, from where it sank near the small Ile de l'Espoir. 

Hy Brasil is geologically, politically and economically unstable. There seems to be plenty of money for new swimming pools and the Pele Centre volcanic observatory, but for some reason President James Hook (one of the four men who sparked the Revolution and won Hy Brasil's independence from the UK) is oddly reluctant to approve a grant for Jared's research. Could his history with Jared's father, another revolutionary, be the reason? Or is there something about the Ile de l'Espoir -- commonly known as Despair -- that he'd prefer remained secret?

There are echoes of other islands: references to The Tempest ('Caliban's Fast Food Diner', Mount Prosper), to Odysseus (Hook's wife waited ten years for his return, weaving) and to Tennyson's Ulysses, to Treasure Island and Robinson Crusoe. There are references to St Brendan, to Vikings, to the Matter of Britain (those treasures in the Metropolitan Museum in New York: a chalice, a spear, a cauldron...) Yet Hy Brasil is also a part of the modern world -- well, the world of the late 1990s, which feels astonishingly remote now: no internet, no mobile phones.

The novel was first published in 2002 and I think I read it fairly soon after that, certainly before 2005. Very little felt familiar, except the mythic element of the treasures: I'd completely forgotten that it is also a story about political corruption, a thriller, and a romance. This time around, I found it as delightful as it is in my vague distant memory: and I think I appreciate Elphinstone's prose, and her characterisation, more than I did when I first read it.

2025/069: The Only Good Indians — Stephen Graham Jones

“Why are you doing all this?” If you tell him, he would get to die knowing it was all for a reason, that this has been a circle, closing. Which would be more than you ever got, that day in the snow. [p. 247]

Four young Blackfeet men once went hunting in winter on restricted ground, breaking an important tribal code. Ten years later, Ricky dies in a brawl outside a bar; Gabe is an alcoholic who seldom sees his daughter Denorah; Cass is planning to propose to his girlfriend Jo; and Lewis is married to a white woman. But Lewis starts to hallucinate a dead elk, and then his dog dies horribly.

It's a novel of three parts: Lewis' descent into madness and paranoia; the story of a young woman who becomes interested in a sweat lodge ritual that Gabe and Cass are planning; and Gabe's daughter Denorah, star basketball player, fleeing something terrible. The characterisation is subtle, and the events of a decade ago are revealed only gradually. Themes of family, cultural heritage, alcoholism, racism, the environment...

... and, oh yes: violence against women (and other females). It all starts with that hunting trip, and the age-old prohibition against killing a pregnant animal. The vengeance enacted on those who slew her is one matter, but they aren't the only victims: the women close to them, uninvolved in the original slaughter, also meet horrific fates. It's not really fridging: it's not a motivation for the male protagonists. It's just ... collateral damage.

This, I suppose, is folk horror in an American context, or a Native American context: Jones, like his protagonists, is a Blackfeet Native American -- and an elk hunter, apparently, which might be why that scene is so very vivid. I loved the prose, and the dialogue, and the little details: I hated the deaths of the innocent. And I'd like to read more of Jones' work, but I shall be wary of collateral damage.

2025/068: Bonds of Brass — Emily Skrutskie

I’m watching out for him, and no matter where he goes, I’ll be there to defend him. Even if it’s wrapped in layers upon layers of deception. Even if it can never last. [loc. 2515]

Ettian, as a child, survived the brutal invasion of his world (and the massacre of his family) by the Umber Empire. Seven years later, he's the star pilot at Rana's Military Academy -- until the day when his classmates attempt to assassinate Ettian's BFF, Gal, because Gal is the heir to ... the Umber Empire.

Oops.

Ettian doesn't think twice before saving his friend, but there's plenty of time for second thoughts later when the two of them are on the run, trying to get Gal to safety. Can Gal single-handedly transform the Umber Empire from the merciless juggernaut it's become under his mother's rule? Will he continue her quest for galactic domination? Or will he join the rebellion and fight to save Ettian's home world? (Also, will Ettian ever get to kiss him?)

First in a trilogy, this was great fun, though I did occasionally wonder why Ettian remained so devoted to Gal, who often seemed rather shallow. Much more interesting as a character was Ettian's new friend Wen, a con artist who he meets when trying to buy a used spaceship. Wen is chaos incarnate, clever and competent, a survivor to the core. She might be the most likeable person in the novel.

Huge twist at the end which was foreshadowed, but certainly not inevitable. I'm still trying to decide whether I want to read the rest of the trilogy: on the one hand, Bonds of Brass was well-written and well-paced (though everything speeded up and got twistier in the final few chapters) and the world universe-building was intriguing. On the other hand, Gal and Ettian's relationship didn't ring true for me -- though, again, that might be just me and my bad cold. (Which you will be pleased to hear has now faded away.)

2025/067: The Girl from Everywhere — Heidi Heilig

“The age of exploration is long over, amira. Now it’s the age of globalization. And once everyone agrees something is one way, all the other ways it could have been disappear.” [loc. 958]

Nixie Song is sixteen years old and lives aboard her father's pirate ship, the Temptation. This is not your usual pirate scenario, though, for the Temptation can sail to any place or time, as long as Nixie's father Slate has a hand-drawn map to that place. And given the fantastical nature of some cartography, their voyages are not limited to the mundane. Nix's best friend, Kash (short for Kashmir) seems to have originated in an Arabian Nights-flavoured city, while the ship is illuminated by glowing fish from a mythical land named Scandia. 

Nix is as much at home (or as much a stranger) in 21st-century New York as in 18th-century India. But her father, opium-addicted and probably bipolar, is obsessed by a single place and time: Honolulu, 1884, where Nix's mother died giving birth to her. He's determined to find a way back to save his lost love -- but then what will become of Nix?

I loved the mechanics of Navigation, the piracy, the ancient tombs, the tiger-smuggling and the sense of danger in the margins of the maps. (And Swag, the miniature dragon.) I liked Nix's pragmatism and competence -- she's the one in charge of trading, and she really wants to learn Navigation so that she can have a ship of her own --  though was less impressed with some of her more stubborn decisions. I liked the twisty and evolving plot, and the secondary characters, and the audacious heist in 19th-century Hawai'i, and the vividness of Heilig's locations. The romantic triangle, however, left me cold.

That said, my recollection of The Girl from Everywhere (which I bought in 2017!) is somewhat blurred by the bad cold I was enduring when I read it. I'd like to reread before embarking on the sequel, The Ship Beyond Time.

2025/066: Taking Stock — A L Lester

"…being decent about…you know.” He gestured vaguely. Portnoy nodded, interpreting his hand wave as he meant it…being a queer, shacking up with a criminal, having poor judgment in my personal life generally. [loc. 1475]

Another novel set -- coincidentally -- in the early 1970s, mostly in rural England. Laurie Henshaw has been working on his uncle's farm since his teens. At thirty-two, he has a stroke, and is struggling to accept that some things are now impossible for him. Meanwhile, in the City, Phil McManus is on extended leave after his boyfriend set him up to take the fall for an insider trading deal. He retreats to a country cottage to wallow.

They literally bump into one another at the local Post Office. (Yes, it is set in the past, when rural post offices existed.) It's nto a meet-cute, though. Laurie is mourning the loss of his strength and coordination: Phil is grieving his lost career and his London life. And it's not long since homosexuality was decriminalised: 'Phil hadn’t made a move or said anything and Laurie hadn’t liked to ask. You still didn’t, unless you were sure, despite the change in the law.' [loc. 1016]

Strong themes of found family (I liked Cat, a homeless girl who's found refuge at the farm) and echoes of a lost rural past. Lester evokes the period nicely: the possibility of simply going to ground and not being connected, the prejudice, the traces of old superstitions and beliefs, the existence of flourishing farms. A small gentle story which was just what I needed when I was in bed with a bad cold.

2025/065: Levitation for Beginners — Suzannah Dunn

...surely anyone could see that this new girl was . . . well, what? I wanted to say she was a liar, although I couldn’t think of any actual lies she’d told. It was more that she was somehow all lies, I thought: made of lies; one big lie. [loc. 1399]

The setting is June 1972, somewhere in the south of England. Deborah (who's looking back from the vantage point of her sixties) is one of a close-knit group of girls in their last year of primary school. Deborah is the clever one: come September, she'll be going to grammar school while all the rest of them go to the local comprehensive. She has a secret crush on Tutankhamun, a widowed Scottish mother given to gnomic pronouncements ('the way to make me strong, she thought, was to make me scared') and a love of swimming.

Then comes Sarah-Jayne, whose family moves into the Vicarage -- which allegedly has its own swimming pool -- and everything begins to change. Sarah-Jayne has a fancy haircut and a red trouser suit and proclaims herself in love with David Cassidy. Sarah-Jayne goes out for lunch with her sister's boyfriend Max, who lets her drink wine and buys her presents. Sarah-Jayne tries to teach the other girls to levitate. And Sarah-Jayne, Deborah realises, doesn't know the secret at the heart of her own family.

In some respects, nothing much happens in this novel: it's a vignette of rural life and undercurrents that are only vaguely apprehended by the narrator. In other ways, it's an unsettling story about lies and sexuality and adolescent friendships. I'm just a little younger than Deborah and I recognised so much of my own childhood in this novel: even the characters' names were the names of girls in my class at school. There's a marvellous passage in the first chapter (it convinced me to buy the book) about the underlying horrors of the Seventies: Deborah concludes the litany of dangers with "I’m only half joking when I say I’m surprised that any of us lived to tell the tale." 

Reading this was weirdly nostalgic, but also horrific. It made me wonder about the secrets I didn't know in our small village, the kinds of secrets that Deborah observes but doesn't understand. And it makes me glad that I was blithely ignorant.

I’ve been lucky, I’ve led a sheltered life and to this day no one else has ever looked at me the way that man did ... He knew before I did that I could see through him. Which meant I was in his way. [loc. 3271]

2025/064: The Incandescent — Emily Tesh

Demons were attracted to complexity and personhood. Laypeople assumed that this meant every magicians was on the brink of getting possessed all the tie, but really demons entering the mundane plane moved into complex and person-shaped spaces, like hermit crabs moving into shells. If you were unlucky enough to meet a magician with a demon looking out from behind their eyes, you could usually assume they'd invited it in. [loc. 225]

There are some books I read, and think about, and then review. There are others that I read, and think about, and then succumb to a reread before I review. The Incandescent is in the latter category, and I enjoyed it differently but just as much the second time through.

This is a dark academia novel, in the sense that it's set at a school for magic: but our protagonist is not a student, but Dr Walden (Saffy to her friends), 38 years old, Director of Magic at Chetwood School. Her career is her life, and she's constantly busy: teaching (the four students in her Upper Sixth Invocation group are important characters); negotiating with the demon in the staff room photocopier ('No representation without exsanguination!'); dealing with the Marshals, who police the school for stray demons; implementing a strict Personal Electronics Policy; filling out risk assessments for practical classes... 

Dr Walden is an alumna of the school herself, though she doesn't like to talk about the events of her final year: she is also a powerful magician. Everything goes pear-shaped when Nikki, one of her best students, summons something out of her league: and suddenly Dr Walden is fighting for her life, revisiting the catastrophe that happened when she was the star of the Upper Sixth, and revealing a dangerous secret to the abrasive (but attractive) Marshal Laura Kenning. 

The novel's plot is demon-heavy: none of your potions, herbalism et cetera, just invocation (demons), evocation (spells) and instantiation (alchemy). But the demons are as much characters as the humans, and more likeable than some. The school is vividly described (Tesh was a teacher, though possibly did not have to deal with a demonically-possessed photocopier) and the secondary characters -- from Walden's rather judgmental perspective -- well-observed. The magical system makes sense (though there was one element where I wondered how a magical oath might manifest; surely more efficiently than that?) and there's a strong sense of how this magical school fits into the real world: newsletters, legal responsibility and so on. 

But what I liked most was the journey from 'Dr Walden' (superiority complex, arrogance, cosplaying her grandmother, dry humour) to Saffy. I also liked the distinction between her two major adult relationships -- with Laura, and with Mark, a security advisor -- and how differently she thinks and feels about them. I loved the Phoenix, too, though I should not.

There's a point in the last third of the novel where everything changes, and it is truly shocking. Even on first read, I had to go back and reread a few pages to check whether what I thought had happened was what was on the page. It was. Splendidly done! The ending felt a little anticlimactic (but that's resolution for you) and there were a few loose strands that didn't seem resolved. (One character's employment, or rather who they're working for; another character being accepted in a new role...) But overall, an extremely enjoyable read with a relatable protagonist, a twisty plot and plenty of emotion.

Thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for the advance review copy, in exchange for this full honest review. UK Publication Date is 13th May 2025.

2025/063: The Tainted Cup — Robert Jackson Bennett

That’s the problem with the damned Empire these days . . . All these complacent bastards think the only thing that matters is which tiny beast is dancing in your blood, altering your brain, making you see and feel and think differently. The person an enhancement is paired with is just as important as what enhancement they get. And we get some say in what kind of person we are. We do not pop out of a mold. We change. We self-assemble. [p. 65]

I read and enthused about Robert Jackson Bennett's 'Divine Cities' trilogy, beginning with City of Stairs, though was a little disappointed by the trilogy's conclusion: that might be why I skipped the Founders trilogy (though I note I own the first volume). The Tainted Cup -- the first in yet another trilogy a new series (source), 'Shadows of the Leviathan' -- has been shortlisted for the Hugo Award for Best Novel of 2024, and was on offer, so I thought I'd give it a try.

In the Empire of Khanum, augmentations (temporary grafts, long-lasting suffusions) are used to shape living beings -- plants, animals and humans -- to imperial needs. Chief amongst those needs is the annual wet season, with its incursions of leviathans from the eastern ocean. The leviathans can be detected days or weeks before their arrival by the seaquakes which signal their movement out of the depths towards the continent. They are mountain-sized, unique, devastating. Walls are built to keep them out, and the Legion attempts to distract them with gunnery. (But every augmentation is sourced from the blood and bone of leviathans...)

The story opens with a death: or, rather, with the arrival of Dinias Kol, youthful apprentice to Iudex investigator Anagosa Dolabra, at the house where the death has occurred. An Imperial engineer has died in a peculiarly horrible fashion, burst apart by the explosive growth of vegetable matter from within his body. The household staff are not especially helpful, but Din, augmented to have perfect recall of every experience, returns to his master and recounts what he's seen and heard. Ana Dolabra -- eccentric, neurodivergent, constantly blindfolded ('best to keep the senses limited... too much stimulation drives a person mad') but able to read print with her fingertips -- deduces that the engineer was murdered, and that he may not be the only victim.

Din has some neurodivergence of his own (he's dyslexic, though has developed workarounds in order to keep this secret) but he can't comprehend Ana's leaps of intuition, or her rather brutal sense of humour. And this is their first murder case: until now, they've worked only on cases of pay fraud. Still, his stubborn determination pairs well with Ana's intense focus and gift for pattern recognition, and he discovers more about his own unique set of skills as well as learning to appreciate hers.

It's a pretty good murder mystery, obfucscated by the sheer biopunk weirdness of the setting: but what I liked most was the characterisation of the protagonists. Din's first-person narrative (like Doctor Watson's) gives us the chance to see Ana's brilliantly non-linear deductive process. I am looking forward to reading the second in the series (out now...).

A final thought: this is very much a society which thinks all the danger comes from outside, and has built up a framework to deal with an external threat while ignoring internal matters. This, from the author's afterword:

Regulations have their uses, but we cannot allow them to form the jar that will eventually be used to trap us and pickle us in our own brine. I wanted to write about civil servants and bold builders for that exact purpose. Keep up the fight! [p. 410]

2025/062: The Road to Roswell — Connie Willis

“Are you sure this here’s a good idea?” Joseph whispered to Francie. “In every dang Western I ever seen, people who pretend to get married end up really gettin’ hitched by the last reel.” [loc. 4613]

Tropetastic romantic comedy set in, and near, Roswell during a UFO festival. Francie is in Roswell to attempt to prevent her friend Serena marrying a UFO hunter, one of a series of unsuitable swains. She is abducted by ... well, by an alien, who she genders as male and soon nicknames Indy (for 'his' prowess with tentacles, reminiscent of Dr Jones' whip). They pick up a hitchhiker named Wade; then another UFO nut, a retiree who's a fan of Westerns, and an old lady who likes playing cards. Each, of course, has something to add to the plot, which mostly consists of driving around New Mexico and Nevada, learning to communicate with Indy, helping Indy search for a mysterious 'tsinibitai', and evading the FBI. Oh, and preventing an alien invasion.

I've enjoyed several of Willis's romcoms (though not in the last, er, twenty years, according to my blog) but this one felt rather shallow and even more improbable than my plot summary might suggest. Francie's fun, but superficial; Wade is obviously hiding something (which Francie never seems to consider is a possibility) and so is the elderly Western fan. And the elderly card-player. There is a romance which, despite apparently popping out of nowhere, was the obvious 'happy ending'. There are aliens, of varying types (but apparently at risk from rattlesnakes, despite biology). And somewhere under the romcom there's an interesting story about Monument Valley and aliens and language. Unfortunately, it's very well concealed.

I ended up returning this novel because of the plethora of unnecessary hyphenations -- 15 in the first chapter or so, including defi-nitely, uni-forms, be-cause, her-self... Publisher, do better! Author, please return to form!

2025/061: Checking Out — Meryem El Mehdati (translated by Julia Sanches)

I find it harder and harder to put my finger on what exactly incenses me: whether it’s the knowledge that no matter how long I live in this place, some people will never believe I’m from here, or the fact that I am not and never will be from there. [loc. 236]

This caught my eye because I'm familiar with the big Canarian supermarket chain HiperDino -- who are, I'm sure, nothing like Supersaurio, the big Canarian supermarket chain for which Meryem, the narrator of Checking Out, works. The daughter of Moroccan immigrants, she's started as an intern: as the novel opens, she's working in Compliance and wondering if her boss Yolanda actually wants to send her home in tears three days a week. She no longer has time to write fanfic, or read, or do much except survive the commute and daydream about people spelling her name correctly.

This is an excellent novel about gradually selling out and becoming a cog in the corporate machine; about the exhaustion that comes from constantly having to push back against sexism, racism, and classism; about being an outsider; about Canarian life. The translation seems smooth (I had to look up a few colloquialisms, but I'm glad they were left untranslated) and I found Meryem extremely relatable. (Especially the line 'I’ve learned that growing up is about pretending, day after day, hour after hour, that you don’t want to just go home and be on your own.' [loc. 1910].)

Things I learnt from this novel:

• guiri - 'a colloquial Spanish word often used in Spain to refer to uncouth foreign tourists'
• Harrylatino, a Spanish Harry Potter fanfic site
• 'It’s impossible to live in the Canary Islands and not feel like you’re in a developing nation instead of Europe. I mean, come on, H&M doesn’t even deliver here.'

And I have a better sense of what it's like to grow up in relative poverty in a major tourist resort. 

Thanks also to anyone who’s ever made fun of fanfiction. I’ve got a book. I don’t know about you. [afterword]

Thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for the advance review copy, in exchange for this full honest review. UK Publication Date is 8th May 2025.

2025/060: The Vengeance — Emma Newman

“Alas, mademoiselle, there are some problems that cannot be solved with violence.”
“Nah.” Morgane sheathed the knife. “Any problem involving a man can always be solved with violence. Violence or gold, to be fair.” [loc. 2374]

Morgane has grown up crewing on a 17th-century pirate ship, the Vengeance. It's a marvellous life and the ship's captain, Anna-Marie -- Morgane's mother -- is notorious for daring raids, especially on the ships of the Four Chains Trading Company. She's also famous for being the first captain to put in the Articles that women can be crew, with equal shares. And she's brought Morgane up to fight, to be brave, and to eschew shore life.

But Anna-Marie is killed, and Morgane heads for distant France (which she believes is an island) to track down her family and the Comte who ruined them. Of course, it is not that simple: Morgane is confronted with con-men, feral wolves and, worst of all, courtly etiquette. Only with the help of the sensible Lisette, initially engaged as her governess, does Morgane begin to solve the mystery of her birth and of the reasons her mother is called a monster.

Despite the piratical elements (left behind when Morgane set out for France), the cross-dressing (Morgane, of course, disguises herself as Lisette's brother) and the queer relationship (which seemed to come out of nowhere), I didn't engage with this novel. Most of the characters seemed shallow and one-note, and had a terrible habit of dying violent deaths just as they were about to reveal the Shocking Truth. Morgane did not show much in the way of common sense: yes, France is very different from Port Royal, but surely by observing the behaviour of others, and listening to those who are more familiar with the local customs, she might have avoided some of those inconvenient deaths? 

And the grammar is shaky: far too many paragraphs where the third-person pronoun is used for two different people. ('Anger at what she’d been told and anger that she’d been killed'; 'She was petite, looked to be about the same age as her'; 'So she had been duped, just as much as she had?'). Also, though Morgane's dialogue is not too horribly anachronistic, some of the surrounding prose really jolted me out of the historical period. 'She was given the chance to speak but shook her head, feeling like she’d forgotten how to do that. What even were words?' What, indeed...

If I had seen the cover properly, or even the series title, I would probably not have read this novel: it is the first in the '--- of Dumas' series, which is a massive spoiler considering that the presence of --- is only revealed very late (and rather abruptly) in the novel.

Thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for the advance review copy, in exchange for this full honest review. UK Publication Date is 6th May 2025.

2025/059: Agent Sonya: Mother, Lover, Soldier, Spy — Ben MacIntyre

Mrs Burton of Avenue Cottage drank tea with the neighbours, joined in their complaints about the shortages and agreed that the war must soon be over. ... Colonel Kuczynski of the Red Army, meanwhile, was running the largest network of spies in Britain: her sex, motherhood, pregnancy and apparently humdrum domestic life together formed the perfect camouflage. Men simply did not believe a housewife making breakfast from powdered egg, packing her children off to school and then cycling into the countryside could possibly be capable of important espionage. [loc. 4269]

Another of MacIntyre's entertaining biographies of 20th century spies, this is the story of Ursula Kuczynski, a German Jew and communist who spied for the Soviet Union before and during WW2, and was instrumental in the USSR's acquisition of 'the science of atomic weaponry'. Hers was a fascinating life: China in the 1930s, then Poland, Switzerland, and finally England. She was married twice, had three children by three different men, and was never exposed as a spy. In 1950, on the day before the trial of Klaus Fuchs (one of her major contacts), she returned to Berlin, where she began a second successful career as ... children's author Ruth Werner, who (writes MacIntyre) 'has been described, with only slight exaggeration, as East Germany’s Enid Blyton' [loc. 5535].

Why wasn't she exposed? Perhaps because she looked like a respectable housewife: perhaps because Roger Hollis, MI5, was 'either a traitor or a fool'. MacIntyre holds the latter view, describing him as 'a plodding, slightly droopy bureaucrat with the imaginative flair of an omelette' [loc. 4360] and 'really quite thick'. The only person who might have recognised 'Mrs Burton' for the spy she was seems to have been Milicent Bagot, apparently the inspiration for Le Carre's Connie Sachs. She campaigned to keep Ursula's brother interned, and was immensely suspicious of Ursula's husband Len. But Hollis saw only a housewife, devoted to her children.

MacIntyre manages to strike a balance between admiration for his subject's backbone, steely nerve and commitment to a cause, and the consequences of her actions. Her first husband was imprisoned in a Soviet gulag for years; her lover Richard Sorge was hanged by the Japanese; her children (especially her son Michael) were scarred and traumatised; and her work was pivotal in starting the Cold War. An astonishing woman, and a well-paced and thoroughly referenced biography.

2025/058: The Mask of Apollo — Mary Renault

... a show put up by some Etruscans from up north. ... their faces were quite bare; they were using them to act with. It is hard to describe how this display affected me. Some barbarian peoples are ashamed to show their bodies, while civilised men take pride in making theirs fit to be seen. But to strip one’s own face to the crowd, as if it were all happening to oneself instead of to Oedipus or Priam; one would need a front of brass to bear it. [loc. 1579]

I believe this is technically a reread: I certainly owned a copy of this novel in my early teens. But nothing felt at all familiar, and it's possible I found it too difficult back then.

The narrator is Nikeratos (Niko), an Athenian actor, and the time is around 350BCE. Niko is noticed by Dion, advisor to the tyrant Dionysios I of Syracuse. ('Tyrant' in the original sense: a ruler who holds power without any constitutional right.) After Dionysios' death, Niko becomes a witness to Dion and Plato's efforts to mould the dead king's son, Dionysios II, into the platonic ideal of a ruler. It does not end well.

I found the political plot less engaging than the theatrical scenes. Niko has an antique mask of Apollo, made of olive wood, which seems to speak to him and guide him. He is a successful actor (and sometimes also a courier for Dion and his allies): passionate about his craft, appalled by Plato's ideas about reforming the theatre ('the parts of base, or passionate, or unstable men should be related in narration' [loc. 2547]), and dedicated to Apollo, whose mask he wears and whose role he plays at three key moments in the novel. One is during the (or 'a') sack of Syracuse, which Renault describes with understated horror: 'It took them a good while to go through the temple. After a time, we heard the wails of the women left alive, being dragged off to Ortygia. The child screamed on one note until, I suppose, it died.' [loc. 4584] In that scene, Niko uses the theatre's special effects -- a sounding-board with particular qualities, the thunder machine -- to strike the fear of Apollo into the invaders.

Many of the plays Niko performs in, or mentions, have been lost to us. I was especially struck by the use of Aeschylus' The Myrmidons as a cultural marker: "Lovers meet at it, as if it were a shrine like that tomb in Thebes," muses Niko, realising that Dion and Plato had been lovers. Renault slyly slips in a reference to Hamlet: 'I dreamed I was beside some tomb or grave, holding a skull in my hand. It was clean, and I knew this was a play. Some flashes still come back to me; I was the son of a murdered king whose shade had cried me to avenge him...' [loc. 2146].

And the final page has Niko reflecting on how 'All tragedies deal with fated meetings; how else could there be a play? ... No one will ever make a tragedy – and that is as well, for one could not bear it – whose grief is that the principals never met." Renault has written that tragedy, and made it clear that Plato was wasted on Dionysios II, and Aristotle inadequate for the young Alexander (whom Niko meets). Someday soon I'll need to (re?)read the Alexander trilogy...

Renault's afterword, which sets out her sources and provides some context for the lost plays she mentions, also includes this comment: "No true parallel exists between this passage in Syracusan history and the affairs of any present-day state. Christianity and Islam have changed irrevocably the moral reflexes of the world." And yet it's easy to see partial parallels, of corruption and nepotism, fascism and oligarchy, dictatorship and tyranny.

2025/057: The Gentleman and his Vowsmith — Rebecca Ide

What is unethical is ... a society where we’ve turned magic into a cage and love into an impossibility, such that murder is an easier resort than words... [loc. 4733]

A delightfully Gothic country house murder mystery set in a Regency-flavoured queer-normative England, with magic, automata, dark family secrets and a legal mechanism for severing one's family ties and owning oneself. 

Nicholas Monterris, our viewpoint character, is 'gay as a spoon' [do not expect historically-accurate slang here] and has seldom left the draughty and probably-haunted decay of Monterris Court. He's aghast to discover that his father, the Duke of Vale, has arranged a marriage between Nic and Lady Leaf Serral, daughter of a wealthy family. Worse, the bride-to-be and her family have descended on Monterris Court, where all those in possession of Brilliance (magical ability) will be locked in while the marriage contract is vowsmithed. And worst of all, the master vowsmith engaged to make sure that contract is watertight and magically binding is Nic's ex -- Dashiell sa Vare, who left abruptly and without explanation nine years ago.

Monterris Court has all the trappings of a Gothic mansion: Nic's mother, gently mad and reclusive; the mysterious fate of Nic's uncle Francis; a grotto full of automaton parts, and the sigil tape on which automaton-instructions are magically encoded; secret passages, rumours of ghosts, crumbling stonework and moss and mould. Leaf, who is an avid reader of murder mysteries, wants to start a school for young women, and does not want to marry (or have sexual relations with) anybody, is a breath of fresh air for Nic. And soon enough there's a murder to solve... and then another... 

Meanwhile, Dash and Nic warily circle one another, failing to communicate. (Indeed, Dash's version of 'closure' seems to be anything but.) Who's the murderer? What really happened to Lord Francis? Why did the Duke not marry the man he loved? What is the Duchess writing so obsessively? And why is it so vital that Nic and Leaf's marriage be accomplished as soon as possible?

Despite the presence of books by Mrs Radcliffe and Laurence Sterne, it's not 'the Regency' -- for one thing, there's a king -- and the history of this alternate Britain is only lightly sketched. The magic seems to be syllabic, and can produce startlingly vivid effects. Nic, though immensely talented as a magic-user, has seldom left Monterris Court: instead, he's devoted his time to making mechanical frogs, and to reading. Leaf quickly becomes a friend (a much more pleasing development than the all-too-common 'obstacle to true queer love') and Dashiell and Nic manage to resolve the issue of Dash's sudden departure all those years ago. The epilogue ties everything up neatly, and the author's afterword explains the notion of 'sasine' ('a historical word meaning the conferring of possession of feudal property') and how it can be used to confer self-ownership -- something Leaf has requested nearly thirty times since her eighth birthday, and you can see her point. 

I enjoyed this immensely, and forgave the occasional typos. Nic and Leaf were delightful, the villains were suitably wicked, the victims were sympathetic enough that their fates were shocking. I'm fascinated by this world of Brilliance and sasine, and would love to read more about it.

2025/056: 24 Hours in Ancient Athens — Philip Matyszak

Long-distance runners exercise themselves to a point where the walls of reality become thin. He fondly recalls the time – on this same run – when a troop of centaurs emerged from the woods and trotted alongside him for part of the journey. Labras is still unsure whether this actually happened, but very much looks forward to it happening again. [p. 165]

Twenty-four interconnected short stories, each focussing on a scene from life in Athens in 416BC, just before the festival of Dionysia. It's a brief interlude of peace (after the Peace of Nicias five years previously) but Alcibiades is keen to invade Sicily. Meanwhile, the ordinary folk of the city -- hoplite and hetaira, slave and spy, fish-seller and fig-smuggler, vase painter and long-distance runner -- go about their business.

Matyszak is a witty and well-informed writer, drawing from classical texts and art as well as the archaeological record. I learnt some fascinating facts ('Figs are not really fruit at all, but a specialized environment called a syconium...The actual ‘fruits’ of a fig tree are the many tiny single-seeded fruit contained within the skin of the syconium...' Those who inform on fig-smugglers 'are called ‘sycophants’ (literally ‘fig-tellers’)' [pp.207-12]) and gained a greater understanding of the cultural ambience. 

I was particularly struck by the perspectives of various enslaved characters: 'Both girls have been slaves all their lives, and regard themselves as well above some of the freeborn poor whom they regularly see begging in the gutter. At least they are fed and clothed and have a warm bed to sleep in at night. [p. 27] and 'In Athens, a regular job with a single employer makes one barely a step above a slave. A slave looks to one man for food, housing and clothing. It is hardly different when one man instead supplies the money with which food, housing and clothing are purchased.' [p. 200]. 

And I enjoyed the ways in which the stories were connected to one another: the councillor who has to spend his lunch break with the appalling Critias, while in another chapter his wife meets her lover; the owner of a failing tavern employing a sorceress to cast a curse on his more successful rivals, whose son-in-law is the temple guard whose story opens the book...

This is the first book by Martyszak that I've read (thanks, Kindle Unlimited!) but it definitely won't be the last: readable, informative, well-researched and with credible and appealing characterisation.

2025/055: Gods and Robots: Machines, Myths and Ancient Dreams of Technology — Adrienne Mayor

Hephaestus’s marvels were envisioned by an ancient society not usually considered technologically advanced. Feats of biotechne were dreamed up by a culture that existed millennia before the advent of robots that win complex games, hold conversations, analyze massive mega-data, and infer human desires. But the big questions are as ancient as myth: Whose desires will AI robots reflect? From whom will they learn? [loc. 3576]

Intrigued by the mechanical marvels of The Hymn to Dionysus (which the author has said are based on the writings of Hero of Alexandria) I wanted to learn more about ancient machines. Gods and Robots is perhaps not the ideal book for this, but it was fascinating. Mayor (whose The First Fossil Hunters I found immensely readable) covers mythological and historical stories about immortality, mechanical humanoids, artifical limbs, and Daedalus's self-powered flight to Sicily from Crete. While the focus is on Greek texts, Mayor also mentions Indian, Sumerian and Etruscan myth. And she references modern concepts and culture, including Blade Runner, Karel Čapek, the uncanny valley effect and the current debate about the merits and pitfalls of AI.

The recipes for immortality were interesting (as was Mayor's explanation of the death of Jason's father Aeson by drinking bulls' blood, believed to confer immortality but lethal because of 'the relatively high coagulation factor of ox blood, an effect later affirmed by Aristotle' (loc. 780)) but I was really there for the moving statues and other mechanical marvels of the ancient world. Mayor includes images from vases, carved gems etc which show scenes of techne: Prometheus building a human from the skeleton outwards, or Athene constructing a horse. 

Mayor refutes the argument that Bronze Age humans couldn't conceive of automatons because their technology wasn't sufficient to make such things: firstly, one doesn't need to be able to make what one imagines (see under 'fiction') and secondly, the Greeks (and probably other cultures) did make automata, animated statues etc -- though perhaps not as marvellous as the ones they imagines the god Hephaestus making, as mentioned in the Iliad: “Fashioned of gold in the image of maidens, the servants moved quickly, bustling around their master like living women”. She explores accounts of bronze figures that moved and made sounds, and suggests ways in which these might have been made and powered (mercury, steam, water...) and Socrates' argument that such automata should be chained, to prevent them from escaping -- like human slaves.

I also learnt a lot about agalmatophilia 'statue lust': "another infamous case, reported by Athenaeus (second century AD), one Cleisophus of Selymbria locked himself in a temple on the island of Samos and tried to have intercourse with a voluptuous marble statue, reputedly carved by Ctesicles. Discouraged by the frigidity and resistance of the stone, Cleisophus “had sex with a small piece of meat instead” [loc. 1903]. Mayor describes the Pygmalion myth as 'an unsettling description of one of the first female android sex partners in Western history' rather than a romantic love story.

A fascinating read, thoroughly referenced and with plenty of illustrations: very readable.