2026/096: I May Be Some Time — Francis Spufford

Romantic vocabulary, and Romantic hopes and horrors, remained important ways of negotiating the perceptual maze of the polar regions. They helped; they answered to the experience of light and motion, dark and stillness. They described the shock of finding nature other than you thought it was. [p. 93]

Recently the subtitle has changed to 'The Story Behind the Antarctic Tragedy of Captain Scott', but I prefer the original, which is much more accurate: 'Ice and the English Imagination'.

Spufford's first book is a social and cultural history of the great age of British polar exploration, from the Admiralty's push for Arctic expeditions after the Napoleonic Wars to the Edwardian explorations of Scott and Shackleton. He explores the Romantic notion of the sublime, the attitudes of the women left behind, and -- with compassion -- the vainglorious dreams and arrogant incompetence of the explorers themselves.

There is a vast amount in this book, and I read it very slowly, enjoying the cadences of Spufford's prose, his gentle mockery of Victorian ideas and ideals, and his clarity. The final chapter of the book, a fictionalised account of Scott's solitary death, moved me to tears but also exasperated me: as Spufford suggests, there's a sense of 'a fatalism so profound it became a kind of violence, a spiteful refusal to look out for themselves' (p. 346). Scott had opium tablets but did not take them to ease his passing. Instead, only 12 miles from the nearest camp, he lay with his dead companions and died in agony.

Spufford also explores perceptions of the Inuit ('Eskimos') and the ways in which their existence complicated the narratives of exploration: the Arctic was not, after all, pristine and empty, and some people did know how to survive there. Not, of course, that a British explorer would take advice from the locals... And he writes about the divisions of social class on board pole-bound ships: "the tasks [the officers] do on board are so far beneath their class’s roster of possible destinies that doing them does not feel like any conceivable backward step, it feels like a holiday" (p. 302). Polar exploration, and the myths around it, had a vast influence on everyday culture. For instance, I learnt that 'north', previously slang for 'clever', came to mean 'strong' in terms of drinks. 'Too far north', once slang for 'too clever by half', came to mean 'desperately, incapably drunk – ... hopelessly lost up there in the ultima Thule of booze.' (p. 237).

It’s too big, too silent, too cold. It’s all too much. ‘Coo-ee!’ shouts Ponting. Pause. Moonstruck immensity. ‘Coo-ee!’ replies the Barne Glacier. A perfect echo! [p. 326]

Read because: it's been on my wishlist for ages, and I have a long-standing interest in Arctic and Antarctic exploration. This was my bedtime read for well over a month: the cadences of Spufford's prose, and the lengthy excerpts from Victorian accounts of expeditions, were very soothing.

2026/095: The Gate, the Girl and the Dragon — Grace Lin

“Jin was carved face upward, looking at the sky. Watching people is not in his nature.”
“Watching people is in the nature of all Gongshi,” Ba protested. “Protecting and caring for people is the purpose bestowed on us by the goddess!”
Jin winced… People! There were so many of them, rushing around and squeezed together in their gray, grubby world... Watching people was the most boring thing ever. [loc. 500]

Jin is a Gongshi, a stone spirit dwelling in a statue: he's also a young lion cub who's passionate about zuqiu, a soccer-like game, and is forever being told by his parents that he's irresponsible. One day, in a fit of pique after a match is stopped just as he was about to score the winning goal, he accidentally kicks the Sacred Sphere, a relic of the Goddess, through the magical City Gate and into the human world. Rushing after it, he finds himself trapped in mundanity -- and nobody can come to his rescue, because the Gate is closed.

Jin was exasperating, but I felt very sorry for him, and was glad when he found a friend. Lulu is a human girl who nobody else seems to be able to see. She's very sad. The two also meet a worm who claims to be a dragon. And, in a secondary plotline, there's a sculptor who wishes his two masterworks would come alive: after all, they were carved from stone that used to be a dragon's pillow.

There's lots of excitement and tension, woven through with retellings of Chinese legends and folklore, but the core of the story is Jin growing up a little, learning to empathise and work with others. I understand the print version is beautifully illustrated -- a shame to have missed out on that -- but the audio was clearly and sympathetically read by Mesmi Chu. (Jin's voice did grate occasionally, but that fitted the character!)

Read because: challenge prompt for 'middle-grade novel by non-Caucasian author' -- this was in the Libro.fm sale and looked fascinating -- and it was.

2026/094: Pandemonium — Daryl Gregory

Jungians saw evidence that archetypes had been seizing human minds since prehistory. In America demon sightings had been recorded since the Pilgrims, but most scholars pegged the start of the modern possession epidemic at the first publicized appearance of the Captain on July 12, 1944. [p. 205]

Del Pierce has grown up in a world where demonic possession -- or, to put it in medical terms, the 'possession disorder' -- has changed the course of history. Eisenhower was killed in 1955 by a man possessed by -- sorry, suffering from the Kamikaze strain of the disorder -- and O J Simpson was shot down in the courtroom by a janitor temporarily hosting the strain known as the Truth. Possession can happen to anybody, anywhere, at any point in their life.

It happened to Del when he was five years old: he was possessed by the Hellion, a Dennis-the-Menace type. Because all the demons are types, archetypes: they have a single story that defines them, and they act it out. Del, though, is starting to wonder if his demon ever left. 

With the help of his brother Lew, and exorcist Mother Mariette (real name Siobhan O'Connell, a cigarette-smoking skinhead nun who's highly reminiscent of Sinead O'Connor), Del attempts to discover the history and origin of the demons. Along the way he meets Philip K Dick (and the demon Valis), and is pursued by the Human League -- no, not that Human League, but an organisation that has interpreted Van Vogt's Slan as a manual for how to rid humanity of demons.

It's a wild ride with lots of nods to genre and a surprisingly poignant denouement. Del's first-person narration made it feel breathless and fast-paced, and this was a quick read for me, which probably helped to keep my disbelief suspended. Then the questions bubbled up. When is this set? (It feels like early 2000s.) Presumably the whole world is affected? (Who knows. We only see America.) Del may have discovered the source of his demon and a few others, but what about the other ninety-odd? And isn't that finale really quite horrible for his family? 

I did enjoy the reading experience, though, despite not finding the characters either likeable or relatable. And I note it's Gregory's first novel (though he's written award-winning short fiction): I will keep an eye out for his later novels.

Read because: a random pick from my TBR, for a change. No challenge, no book club, probably recommended by someone online at some point.

2026/093: When There are Wolves Again — E J Swift

You want to believe the tide is turning. You want to believe you will die in a better world than you were born in. [loc. 2070]

A hopeful novel about the future of the UK, the ecology, and the climate crisis (yes, really!), beginning in 2020 and ending in 2070. It follows the lives of two women: Lucy Gillard, whose ecological awakening comes when she's sent to stay with her grandparents during Covid, and Hester Moore, whose story starts in Chornobyl, where she's making a documentary about a team of vets who care for the abandoned dogs. 

Lucy and Hester do eventually meet, but their paths are very different. Lucy is inspired by Greta Thunberg, becomes an activist, and helps set up an ecological form of peace camp. Hester, who does not get along with people but loves her dogs, wins awards for her documentaries and tries not to let her personal issues get in front of the camera.

There is a lot in this novel, and probably a lot that will not come true. Which is not to say it's wishful thinking: Swift's future seems firmly grounded in the present (or the recent past), though her fascist Albion party are less popular than Reform seem to be... There are other horrors. The Endling Market, where collectors vie to own the last survivor of a species (there are online forums where they discuss the least damaging ways of killing a bird of animal); heat domes that devastate western Europe; extinctions, NIMBYs, bird flus... But there is also positive change. The dissolution of the US; a moon habitat (not American); Net Zero; and an astonishing bequest.

I especially liked that this novel doesn't attempt easy answers. It gives both sides of the argument about rewilding schemes; it balances the vast expense of space missions against their role as a beacon of hope. And there is a great deal of kindness -- and respect -- from humans to other humans, from humans to animals and birds.

Also really refreshing to read a novel where there are no romantic subplots. There are male characters (I liked Lucy's grandfather, and could relate to Hester's brother: and Jerome is proof that people do change) but they're not the focus of the female characters' lives. And When There Are Wolves Again is realistic about the people -- like Lucy's parents -- who don't believe in climate change, don't think the ecology is important, cling to their old habits even when those habits become deeply unfashionable.

This has prompted me to push Isabella Tree's Wilding up my TBR, and to visit a couple of rewilding sites. And to be slightly more hopeful than I've been in recent years.

you think about what you said to the farmer: is it about autonomy? And what he said in return: it’s about respect. It must be possible to have both. To nurture a space of one’s own in the knowledge that this too is transitory, communal. Shared between humans and non-human animals. There were languages for this, once. There were words, before the conceit of ownership consumed everything else. [loc. 2170]

Read because: The heat, the heat! I knew this was a novel about the climate catastrophe, so it felt like perfect reading in the June 2026 UK heatwave. I didn't expect to like it as much as I did. I dunno, you wait ages for a great SF novel and then read two in the same week...

2026/092: The Last Hawk — Elizabeth Wein

Emil had told me to get out. But like a pilot in a damaged plane, I had to keep flying blindly before I was able to land. [loc. 784]

Ingrid Hartman has been deemed 'a disgrace to Germany' because of her stammer, and her failure to greet an SS officer with 'Heil Hitler'. Her widowed father urges her to get a job at the gliding school where she helps out: Ingrid, at seventeen, is already one of the best glider pilots there. The plan keeps her out of the way, and her friend Emil, a Luftwaffe pilot, recommends her as assistant to test pilot Hanna Reitsch. 

Hanna is doing a series of air shows to inspire German youth -- and she has an ambitious plan to create a 'Leonidas Squadron' of suicide pilots. (“I am volunteering as a pilot for the manned glider bomb,” read the pledge... “I fully understand that this mission will end in my death.” [loc. 660]). Ingrid's loyalty to Hanna is shaken, especially when she hears about conditions inside the factories where the 'manned bombs' are being built. But Hanna won't believe the stories...

A short but vivid novel, with lots of period detail (as I've learned to expect from Wein): fake coffee made from acorns and barley, Ingrid's devotion to Saint-Exupery's Wind, Sand and Stars, the aviator chocolate (Scho-ka-cola, with cola and caffeine) that Emil gives Ingrid. (I have now tried this: it's ... invigorating.) Wein's note at the end details her research -- she based Emil on the pilot who shot down Saint-Exupery! -- and also gives resources and reassurance for stutterers.

Read because: I rate Wein very highly as an author, and this was the last of her books aimed at less-confident readers (after White Eagles and Firebird, which I 'read' as an audiobook) that I hadn't read. It initially didn't seem that The Last Hawk had as much weight as the other two novels, but I think that's simply because it has neither personal tragedy nor a twisty revelation.

2026/091: Baba Yaga Laid an Egg — Dubravka Ugrešić

As we grow older, we weep less and less. It takes energy to weep. In old age neither the lungs, nor the heart, nor the tear ducts, nor the muscles have the strength for great misery. Age is a kind of natural sedative, perhaps because age itself is a misfortune. [loc. 2704]

A book of three halves. Part One ('Go There, I Know not Where – and Bring Me Back a Thing I Lack'), set mostly in Zagreb, is the first-person narrative of someone who might be the author, coping with her own ageing and with her widowed mother's dementia (and with their relationship). There's a young female folklore student who seems determined to make the narrator into a mother figure, too. This is the most realistic and thoughtful section of Baba Yaga Laid an Egg, dealing honestly with the indignities of old age and the ways in which the self remains unchanged.

Part Two ('Ask Me No Questions and I’ll Tell You No Lies') deals with the visit of three old ladies to a 'wellness spa' in Czechoslovakia. The three have lived through the worst of Yugoslavian history (one has spent time in prison) and each has her story to tell. They're contrasted with three men: a masseur with a permanent erection, a doctor who seeks the secret of immortality, and the cynical owner of the spa.

And the third part ('If You Know Too Much, You Grow Old Too Soon') is presented as a 'Baba Yaga for Beginners', the author being the folklore student from Part 1. Her name is Aba Babay... Lots of mythology, some of it rather reductive and some of it absurdly Freudian: old women, it turns out, are monsters all over the world (though some are kind to the deserving, or to children). 

I cannot say I engaged with this novel, though I did enjoy the triumphs of the three crones in Part 2, and I admire the craft of Part 1. It's a sobering reflection on ageing (though I do not feel I will ever be as old as the crones, if I live to be a hundred: my life has been easier).

Translated by Ellen Elias-Bursać, Celia Hawkesworth and Mark Thompson, who between them have (according to the Internet) managed to render Ugrešić's wordplay into English without losing the humour.

Read because: I'd enjoyed other volumes in the Canongate Myth series (for instance, Where Three Roads Meet, The Penelopiad, Ragnarok ) -- when I discovered that this was set in Croatia and written by a Croatian author, it fitted a prompt in 'The Storygraph Reads The World Challenge' nicely.

2026/090: The End of Everything — M John Harrison

Several [fallen trees] could be found in a single glade, many with younger trees growing from the earth caked in their ripped-up root balls, so that it looked as though a different species was springing out of the carcass of the original. Birch from beech, Marnie thought. Holly from ash. A sense of horror overcame her. [50%]

The setting is the Kent coast, some years after what may be an alien invasion by the iGhetti. Humans are waging an ineffectual war against the invaders, who are rumoured to originate from the astral plane; who manifest as 'tall writhing bursts of light'; who may not have noticed that humans even exist. There are three protagonists. Richard Tennent is a mudlark who, at the beginning of the novel, has just found an iGhetti artefact in the surf. Marnie, his aunt, lives near the beach, in the shadow of the wing of a crashed aeroplane, and may be suffering dementia. Hampson, to whom Tennent tries to sell the artefact, is a collector who obsessively chronicles his experiments with similar artefacts. (If I add that the artefact is humanoid and apparently sentient -- and the most likeable character in the novel -- you can probably imagine some of the more horrific consequences.)

But there is a great deal more than inhumanity in this novel. Europe, and possibly the rest of the world, has vanished ('How do you misplace a continent?' Marnie writes on a protest-adjacent sign) but people still queue to board ships and head out in the hope of something new. This future England (and it's a very English novel, with old men dreaming of Agincourt and the Battle of Britain) is full of people who have adjusted, not entirely without complaint, to life in the ruins, where 'bad patches' can produce timelooped experiences or affectless states of mind. The infrastructure has collapsed, and mere anarchy is loosed upon the world. And because nobody in the novel understands what is happening, neither do we -- though it's possible to piece together an extremely unsettling version of the narrative.

Intrigued by a review which mentioned the iGhetti's appearance in an earlier short story, I found 'The Crisis', which contains some passages very similar to passages in The End of Everything, though may be a different iteration of the same scenario.

Excellently read by Russ Bain: I highly recommend the audiobook, though am not wholly convinced by the voice he uses for Marnie.

Read because: I have enjoyed many (though not all) of Harrison's previous novels, and the mudlarking aspect of this work intrigued me. And now I am on my third listen...

...we pretended our scientific epistemy was still serviceable... the apocalypse seemed to withhold itself, quicky becoming just another historical continuity. That is to say, we got used to it. [40%]

2026/089: The Most Secret Memory of Men — Mohamed Mbougar Sarr

...just because you’re wounded doesn’t mean you have to write about it. It doesn’t even mean you have to consider writing about it. I won’t bother bringing up ability. Time heals? Wrong; it kills. It kills the illusion that our wounds are unique. They’re not. No wound is unique. Nothing human is unique. Everything becomes terribly banal over time. There’s the conundrum; but somewhere in there, literature has a chance to emerge.

Translated by Lara Vergnaud, and read by multiple narrators: Ayesha Antoine, Chris Thompson, Kyle Gabbidon, Masimba Ushe, Musu-kulla Massaquoi and Nile Faure-Bryan. (Not all the female-viewpoint chapters are read by women.)

It's a novel 'about' a lost Senegalese author, T C Elimane, and his infamous novel The Labyrinth of Inhumanity -- at first lauded by the French literary establishment as the work of 'a Negro Rimbaud', and later reviled as plagiarism. (This aspect of the novel mirrors the career of Malian author Yambo Ouologuem.) And it's also 'about' the narrator, another young Senegalese writer named Diégane Latyr Faye, living in Paris and hanging out with other African writers, bemoaning the lack of success of his own first novel, which sold 79 copies.

 One day he encounters another compatriot, the outrageous author Siga D, who lends him her copy of The Labyrinth of Inhumanity and tells him to visit her when he's read it. He is rivetted by Elimane's prose and desperate to learn more about the man -- and his subsequent conversations with Siga D (not to mention a visit home) help him to unravel the mystery of the author's disappearance. Via Argentina, wartime Paris, Senegal and Amsterdam, Elimane's legacy is discoverable.

I found parts of this novel hard going: for instance, there is a deeply unsettling scene featuring the depredations of soldiers in wartime. And Faye's sex life did not enthrall me. But the magic realism, the long feuds and deceptions of families, the ways in which lives are shaped by wars, racism, religion, colonialism... those aspects of the novel kept me listening. Faye is sometimes ridiculous, sometimes pompous, and sometimes very relatable: and I appreciated his growth over the course of The Most Secret Memory of Men.

Read because: a challenge prompt for Senegal. Looking for something that fit the prompt, I found this novel -- which won the Prix Goncourt, the first win by a sub-Saharan author -- and was intrigued by the sample chapters. Unlike some books I've read purely to fulfil a prompt, I have no regrets about having read this.

2026/088: The Widows' Guide to Murder — Amanda Ashby

... up until this week she’d never found a dead body, adopted a stray cat or drunk Drambuie on a Thursday night. [p. 72]

Ginny Cole is sixty years old and recently widowed. She's moved from Bristol to the village of Little Shaw to make a fresh start -- though she isn't sure she quite knows how to do that. And she's found a job as a library assistant, working for an unpleasant woman named Louisa.

On her second day at the library, she finds Louisa dead: murdered, it transpires. (Ginny used to work as a receptionist at her husband's surgery: she knows the signs of poisoning.) Then she's befriended by a trio of other widows -- Hen, Tuppence and JM -- who want to investigate the death... not least because Hen's daughter Alison is a suspect. And Ginny also finds herself adopted by a black cat whom she names Edgar.

Sufficient red herrings to keep me guessing, a lesbian character, a kitty, some distinct derring-do, and a cast of vividly-drawn characters: this was the perfect read for a summer's afternoon. I may even read the other books in the series...

Read because: I wanted a light, 'cosy' read, and the Something Bookish reading challenge prompted 'a book with widow or widows in the title': this one popped up on Amazon Prime.

2026/087: 1177 BC: A Graphic History of the Year Civilisation Collapsed — Eric H Cline & Glynnis Fawkes

A gorgeously illustrated update to Cline's original 1177BC: The Year Civilization Collapsed, featuring Cline and Fawkes as narrators with a modern viewpoint (for archaeological discoveries et cetera), as well as a pair of fictional characters -- Pel, of the Sea Peoples, and Shesha, an Egyptian scribe. 

Together Pel and Shesha time-travel through the Bronze Age, the centuries leading up to the collapse: and they travel physically too, from Amenhotep’s palace to the city of Hattusa via shipwrecks, battles and quayside bartering. Their interactions help to humanise the stories of the people affected by the collapse: migrants (with a comparison to Syrian refugees), merchants (whose luxury goods are no longer obtainable), families listening to grandfather's stories about the good old days...

The book has been updated with recent archaeological discoveries, and there's more emphasis on the probable mega-drought that contributed to the collapse. The format lends itself to maps and images, which was extremely helpful (the original book, read on Kindle, was sometimes difficult to follow because the maps were separate from the text), and though it's dense with facts, names, and theories, there is also plenty of humour. Fantastic, and highly recommended. 

Read because: I was fascinated by the original version (1177BC: The Year Civilization Collapsed) and happened upon this marvellously illustrated, updated version. Shamefully I bought it as a gift for someone else before purchasing it for, and reading it, myself!

2026/086: Glyph — Ali Smith

Whoever you thought you weren’t speaking to must’ve heard you after all. [loc. 607]

This is indeed connected to Gliff, but not in the way I think I expected. The roughly contemporary setting allows the characters -- Petra, her estranged younger sister Patricia ('Patch'), and Patricia's adopted daughter Billie -- to literally and figuratively protest the war in Gaza, and to tie society's lack of empathy to the Covid pandemic. But there are parallels with other wars: with the First World War, and a story about a man leading a blind horse out of the trenches; and with the Second, and a story about a person being flattened to two dimensions by a tank convoy.

This second story prompts Petra and Patch, as children, to invent (and in Petra's case to 'speak to') a ghost they call Glyph, so named because the only sound he can make -- 'partly like a cough, partly like someone breathing out very suddenly' -- sounds like 'glyph'. But Glyph is not the only ghost in the novel: one night Petra's bedroom is trashed by what seems to be the ghost of a blind horse...

The seeds of Gliff are being sown in this world. When Patricia tells Billie about Glyph, the girl responds with 'like the word at the start of the weedkiller?' and talks about glyphosphate -- the cause of the ecocide underlying Gliff's dystopian future. 

But the most blatant connection is the strangest: the novel Gliff exists in the world of Glyph, and all three women have read it. Petra says it's 'a bit too dark for me. A bit too clever-clever, a bit too on the nose politically, for a novel. I’d have preferred a bit more world building. And what’s with all that horse stuff? It could’ve been a bit more sci-fi.' Patricia, who sent it to Petra, thinks it's 'rather good about siblings'. Billie, who read it first, says 'What if nobody knows what happened to them? ...And what if that’s the thing that makes you care?'

I'm not sure that the connections in the other direction are as effective: that Glyph is a story 'hidden in' Gliff. I found it at once more relatable and more ordinary.

Read because: I recently read Gliff, and was hoping this paired novel would shed further light on it. Yes and no. But Ali Smith's prose is always a delight.

2026/085: The Cat and The Masked Woman — Colette (translated by Helen Constantine)

Though Saha, like a human, was watching Camille leave, Alain was sprawling in the chair, his upturned palm like a paw, skillfully playing with the first green prickly conkers of August. [final line of The Cat]

The Cat (original French title La Chatte, feminising the masculine noun) is a short novel set in 1920s Paris. It opens with Alain about to marry his childhood friend, the gorgeous Camille. Alain's pleasure in her company is tempered by his reluctance to leave his childhood home: the servants he's known all his life, his mother's luxuriant garden, and especially his cat Saha. The plan is for Alain and Camille to move into a nearby property, but it's not yet finished: instead, after the wedding, they stay at a friend's chic high-rise apartment in Paris. Meanwhile, Saha pines, and Alain soon decides to bring her to the apartment. Camille -- who is bourgeois, insensitive and shallow -- becomes increasingly jealous of Saha, and tries to kill her. Saha survives, Alain realises what's happened, and the marriage is over.

It's effectively a love triangle, except that one of the contenders for Alain's affection is a cat. Colette doesn't anthropomorphise Saha, or gild her essentially animal nature (litter trays are mentioned): but Saha is as much a character as Camille, and a more likeable one. The critical interpretation seems to be that Saha symbolises Alain's childhood, which he doesn't want to let go of. I am perfectly happy to take the novel as literal: I would absolutely leave a partner who tried to murder my cat.

The Masked Woman is a series of vignettes and short stories about men and women dealing with love. The stories focus on the moments that change a life, from the apprehension of a murderer to a woman who apparently revels in living alone, yet is full of regrets. The writing is perceptive, dwelling on little details (the more mundane the better) and evoking French life between the wars.

Narrated by Machteld van der Gaag, who's Dutch but grew up in Paris: her pronunciation of French names was really evocative, and she injects just the right amount of emotion into the prose.

Read because: 'Storygraph Reads the World' challenge, 'France': and I read, or attempted to read, La Chatte as a teenager, an optimistic gift from a French cousin: I wanted to see how much I remembered ... and discovered how much I had not understood.

2026/084: Heaven's Graveyard — Grace Curtis

"No one can decide if it was a mass hallucination or a -- a mir --" Her lips convulsed. "Some kind of divine event... But I know what this is. It's fuckery." [loc. 3613]

Heaven's Graveyard is a fantasy novel, set in the same world as, though long after the events in, Curtis' earlier Idolfire (which I have not read), and featuring archaeology, sapphic romance, a protagonist who mostly lives in her head, and a murder mystery.

Cod -- short for Coda -- is an archivist, working in blissful solitude in Asha's Civic Museum. One day, she receives a message saying 'historic discovery, come home urgently'. It's signed by her friend Denali Marr. Since she first encountered his Ashan Myths for Children, Cod has been captivated by the story of Aleya Ana-Ulai, and she and Marr both believe that the legendary heroine really existed. Surely it's worth taking leave of absence and heading back to Palgaro, where she grew up in poverty with an emotionally-distant mother.

Except, of course, it's never that simple. Cod encounters her ex, Sparrow, who is apparently now a travelling saleswoman; she learns more about Marr's great discovery, and makes discoveries of her own -- not least that there is, after all, some truth in the old stories.

I didn't initially warm to Cod, but as her own history was revealed, and as she began to connect to people (and indeed to the world in which she lives, which is on the brink of war; which has 'rattlers' and 'rails' instead of cars and buses; which is plagued by religious schism) I became more engrossed in her story. That said, I found the book's climax frustratingly rushed, and the epilogue -- though it provides closure to one element of the story, and opens up new possibilities -- doesn't give much idea of just how much the world has changed. Though perhaps that's Cod (who is autistic-coded) simply not paying much attention to it...

From the author's afterword: "I'd like to ask [you] to keep this book's surprises to yourself, at least for a little while. Together we can horribly betray many more people to come."

Read because: I recently read and enjoyed Floating Hotel (which is more SFnal). Thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for the advance review copy, in exchange for this full honest review. UK Publication Date is 18th June 2026.

2026/083: A Trade of Blood — Robert Jackson Bennett

We have stolen secrets from the bloods of the titans and taught all of nature to grow and warp and shift at our pleasing. [loc. 545]

Cat-herders! Unexpected siblings! More of Ana's background! Another ill-judged liaison! Blue grass! And a very knotty murder mystery... This was an excellent read, and very much not the culmination of a trilogy: this series could run and run, and I for one will be grateful for each new volume.

Full review nearer publication date, but I note that the 'Shadow of the Leviathan' series is rooted firmly in the mundane world, the place where we're reading. The first novel, The Tainted Cup, explored civil servants and builders, and regulatory frameworks: the second, A Drop of Corruption, tackled autocracy, with a side order of shady banking practises. This time...

Farms are not sites of hallowed tradition. They are, if anything, laboratories for profound biological change. [Author's Note]

Read because: I enjoyed the first two books so much, and leapt at the chance to get an ARC. Thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for the advance review copy, in exchange for the full honest review I'll write closer to UK publication date -- 4th August 2026.

2026/082: Generation Loss — Elizabeth Hand

I’ve lived my entire life expecting the worst, knowing it will happen, seeing it happen. Making it happen, people used to think, then photographing it and making other people see it too.

Cass Neary works in the stock room of a New York bookshop. She was a famous photographer for fifteen minutes back in the Seventies: her book Dead Girls was a hit. But her later photography, of dead or dying punks and addicts, didn't have as much impact: a brutal assault, and a series of failed relationships (her last girlfriend died in the 9/11 attacks) have reduced her to a shadow of herself. Then an old friend tells her he's recommended her for an interview with Aphrodite Kamestos, the legendary photographer who inspired Cass. Kamestos lives on a remote island off the coast of Maine, but Cass could do with getting out of the city for a bit: she pops some speed and sets out.

She winds up in Burnt Harbor, a seaside town down on its luck. The motel is unpromising, the man in the next room gives off vibes of damage, and the owner's teenage Goth daughter, Kenzie, wants to go to New York more than anything. Cass escapes to drink at the Good Tern, Burnt Harbor's one restaurant/bar, and encounters some of the locals. Due to a hangover, she's late to Aphrodite's island the next morning -- where she discovers that Aphrodite did not, after all, ask for Cass.

There's plenty else to occupy her in Burnt Harbor. Aphrodite's aloof son Gryffin; the plethora of missing pets and people (including Kenzie, who vanished the night Cass arrived); the cold; the bleakness; the occasional mysterious, beautiful work of art; the wild animals she glimpses in the woods.

This is a noirish crime novel, quite slow -- apart from the unexpectedly mainstream climax of the murder/disappearance mystery -- and beautifully written. It's hard to like Cass, whose emotional damage expresses itself in alcohol and medication abuse, rudeness to strangers, and putting art before everything else. (Her unpleasant traits pale into nothing beside the true villain of the novel, though.) And I did appreciate her devotion to photography, her respect for the craft and her sense of light and shape. 

Read because: I think someone (Mark?) recommended Generation Loss to me -- on the basis of Cass's punk days, and her appreciation of Patti Smith -- when it first came out, nearly twenty years ago. I'm glad I've finally followed up, via a cut-price audiobook. Carol Monda's laconic narration suits this novel very well.

2026/081: Gliff — Ali Smith

Every classic old horse story I’ve ever chanced upon in this brave new unlibraried world deals with the bloodiness of humanity to other creatures as well as each other and more often than not ends in dutiful sadness as if the story, not totally broken, is at least broken in. [loc. 992]

Rose and Bri come home from a visit to their mother (who's taken on her sister's job). Their mother's boyfriend, Leif, is driving the campervan, but he abandons them after they find a red line painted around the outside of their house -- and later, of their campervan. He leaves them with enough canned food to last them a while...

Bri is befriended by an elderly activist, and introduced to a loose collective of 'unverifiables', who've been excluded from the system, from society -- like Rose and Bri themselves, and likely also their mother and Leif. "One person here had been unverified for saying out loud that a war was a war when it wasn’t permitted to call it a war. Another had found herself declared unverifiable for writing online that the killing of many people by another people was a genocide. Another had been unverified for defaming the oil conglomerates by saying they were directly responsible for climate catastrophe." 

Bri is all for revolution: Rose befriends a horse in a field near the empty house they're squatting in, and names it Gliff. Bri, who loves words, finds an actual printed dictionary and discovers that 'gliff' has a multitude of meanings. 

And then Rose and Bri (the latter of who's non-binary: to the question 'are you a boy or a girl?', they answer 'yes') are separated, and there's a gap of five years when the grimness of the 'reeducation centres', and the more-or-less-forced labour awaiting the underclass, is exposed. But there's a hopeful ending, too, and a spark of revolution.

I love Ali Smith's wordplay, especially in the seasonal quartet (Autumn, Winter, Spring and Summer, plus Companion Piece) though didn't quite connect with Gliff. In some ways the future it depicts felt all too probable, and horribly close: in others, it lacked detail, depth. And Bri's story didn't feel resolved. Gliff does have a companion volume (Glyph), which I own and have pushed up the TBR list. Perhaps reading that will help me appreciate Gliff as the author intended.

Read because: Ali Smith! And fits the reading challenge 'about a horse, or a horse on the cover' (both).

2026/080: A Natural History of Dragons — Marie Brennan

What sort of woman, upon being kidnapped by smugglers in the middle of the night, would jump for joy at the thought of questioning them about dragons? [p. 130]

Set in a world reminiscent of our own in the nineteenth century, where dragons live wild in the remote heights and forests. Our narrator, Isabella (née Hendemore) -- who will, we are assured, later become the world's pre-eminent authority on dragons -- is the child of wealthy gentry. Aged seven, she dissects a pigeon with her brother's penknife to see how the wishbone works. Aged fourteen, she dresses as a boy to join the hunt for a wolf-drake that's plaguing the local farms. 

She would rather not marry: but her (excellent) father gives her a list of eligible young men who own Sir Richard Edgeworth's A Natural History of Dragons, and she encounters one of them, Jacob Camherst, at a menagerie. (Where, of course, she is not supposed to be.) Marriage ensues. And Jacob proves willing to let her accompany him on a scientific expedition to the remote, somewhat Slavic-flavoured land of Vystrana. There, Isabella sees her first wild dragons, and makes some discoveries, and has plenty of adventures. Not all of these are cheerful.

Isabella, with her passionate drive for knowledge and her often-reckless decisions, reminded me strongly of Amelia Peabody (see Crocodile on a Sandbank and others), though she has the added complication of being a teenager. She's intelligent, driven and thoughtful -- though sometimes not as considerate of humans as of dragons. And she grows up very quickly in this novel. I did enjoy it, though the pacing was uneven and I'd have liked more worldbuilding: and the dragons (beautifully illustrated throughout by Todd Lockwood: you don't get that in an audiobook) were quite distinct from most fantasy dragons, being neither vocal or amiable. I got a real sense of them as creatures of flesh, blood and bone -- their bones being especially intriguing.

I think this suffered by my reading it so soon after The Signature of All Things, which also featured a female scientist and was also unevenly paced: that was a more literary novel than this grand adventure, though. I intend to read more of Brennan's series, because I'm fascinated to discover what Isabella does next.

Read because: fancied something light; the 'Exploring Science Fiction and Fantasy' reading challenge has 'Dragons' as a prompt; I bought this book in 2017, which is a long time for it to languish unread.

2026/079: A Magical Girl Retires — Park Seolyeon (translated by Anton Hur)

In an act of balance, the universe conferred power on those who had the least, and that was why magical girls existed.

The nameless protagonist of this short novel is 29 years old, unemployed and burdened with credit-card debt. She's also still mourning her dead grandfather, a watchmaker, whose trade she once dreamt of following. One night she decides to kill herself by jumping from a bridge. But she's interrupted by a stranger, a magical girl (the 'girl' is not age-specific) named Ah Roa, who believes that our protagonist is the Magical Girl of Time -- the most powerful Magical Girl of all.

Our protagnist is taken to a union meeting, and learns that magical girls -- the phrase is synonymous with 'female superheroes' -- have to deal with the harsh realities of the world, just like everyone else. Every Magical Girl gained their powers at a moment of powerlessness; every Magical Girl has to work, to pay the bills, to deal with everyday microaggressions. And some aspects of a person are deep-rooted: when our protagonist finally manifests her talisman, it turns out to be ... a credit card

This is a short, sweet novel, only 160 pages in print; the audiobook, narrated by Shannon Tyo, is under three hours, and I listened to it in a single evening. Though it's ultimately life-affirming, there are dark undercurrents: also a hint of sapphic romance, a nihilist Magical Girl who doesn't think humanity worth saving, and an exciting encounter with terrorists at Heathrow Airport. 

Read because: 'Listen to an audiobook by an author of Asian and/or Pacific Island descent' prompt in the Libro.fm 2026 Audiobook Listening Challenge. The author is Korean.

2026/078: Slow Gods — Claire North

It is not that I am not moral, in my own way.
It is simply that sometimes, rather like the rules of physics that should contain me, I forget. [loc. 1814]

Reread for book club: my initial review is here. This time round I listened to the audiobook, not least because I was intrigued by how the narrator (Peter Kenny) would handle the multiple pronouns... extremely well, as it turned out.

Unusually for the Lockdown Bookclub, everyone liked the book! We discussed the supernova as a metaphor for climate change (everyone knows it's happening but some people refuse to believe it can be that bad); what constitutes a god (the title has plural gods: is Maw one? is the Consensus?); why a couple of us initially read Maw as female; whether North's space opera is comparable in scale and scope to the works of Iain M Banks (I think we agreed it was, though more humane and compassionate, and without awkward / improbable sex scenes: also, first-person narrative).

Read because: bookclub pick.

2026/077: The Palace Beneath the Sea — Lauren Wiesebron

"I am the korrigez who founded Ys, both above and below the waves... and now I am here to take back what's mine and lay waste to what never should have been built!" [loc. 4508]

Nolwenn and her family are lighthouse keepers, defending the city of Ys. They use lenses to focus the moon's rays, to kill teuthes -- great monsters from the deep -- that threaten the sea-defences. She's been lucky, finding seasilk (a rare and precious commodity that can protect against the black tide) and is summoned by the queen, who flirts with Nolwenn and tells her to fetch enough seasilk to provide shield-nets for the lighthouses as well as the city.

Nolwenn recklessly rows out one night and is attacked: but she's rescued by a merperson, a korrigez who she names Morvan after the chieftain in a popular serial. Morvan takes Nolwenn to Ys-below, a coral palace deep in the ocean: she learns a lot (some of it rather uncomfortable) and falls in love, but yearns for her family, for sunlight, for air.

The worldbuilding is a delight: I loved the reimagining of the Breton folk tale about a city drowned by the sea. The half-humanoid, half-fish korrigez (Breton for 'mermaid') are fascinating, as are the ecology and economy of Ys-below. Coral for communication! Wiesebron is a marine ecologist and admits in her afterword that 'the fantasy of suddenly sprouting fins is one that I enjoyed, albeit from the safe and dry distance of my pen and paper' [loc. 4923] And I loved the resonances with the in-universe fiction 'Leylou Among the Korrigez'.

But I do think this novel could have done with another edit. There are pacing issues: the first third of the book is really slow, and the last third feels rushed. There are typos and infelicities: 'discretely' instead of 'discreetly', 'it's' instead of 'its', someone knowing something and a few pages later not knowing it. And Nolwenn, though she's twenty-three, sometimes behaves like a much younger girl: she's prone to impetuous behaviour, and doesn't always know the rationale behind her own decisions.

Really interesting setting, slightly disappointing prose -- but there's a fascinating romance, and a suitably epic finale.

Thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for the advance review copy, in exchange for this full honest review. UK Publication Date was 21st May 2026.

2026/076: A Fair Maiden — Joyce Carol Oates

Just a roll of the dice. She was risking nothing. No danger in upscale Bayhead Harbor, which was very different from Atlantic City, fifty miles to the south, where Katya Spivak would never have been so naive as to go to a man’s house, no matter how harmless he appeared, how gentlemanly or how rich. [p.13]

Katya Spivak is sixteen years old, working as a nanny for a rich family in the upmarket coastal town of Bay Harbor -- a far cry from her working-class origins in New Jersey. One day, while admiring lingerie in a shop window, an elderly man asks her what she would choose. He is Marcus Kidder, nearly seventy but still elegantly dressed: a former author of childrens' books, a sophisticated artist. He befriends Katya -- is it friendship? -- and gives her not only money but attention (commodities lacking until now in Katya's life): and, chastely, beguiles her.

For three-quarters of the novel (which is only 166 pages in print) this seems like a routine seduction, with an older man preying on a very young woman -- albeit one who, because of past experiences, thinks she can handle whatever Kidder might do. Katya's independence and confidence, though, is at least partly a facade covering an absent father (who she misses a great deal), a neglectful mother who tries to borrow money from Katya to pay her gambling debts, and an emotionally distant employer. Kidder's attention seems harmless at first, and even when it becomes less so Katya is convinced that she can handle it. 

Then, when the ante is upped, a fairytale is told, the story of an old king and a Fair Maiden: and it is the pivot on which the whole story rests.

Oates manages a happy ending, of sorts, and presents a duo of fascinating character studies: of Katya herself, out of her depth for most of the book, and making some bad decisions; and (at one remove) of Marcus Kidder, who we only ever see through Katya's eyes. I cannot say that I liked either of them: both manipulative, both a little lost. But I did feel compassion for both.

2026/075: The Signature of All Things — Elizabeth Gilbert

Alma’s world and the moss world had been knitted together this whole time, lying on top of each other, crawling over each other. But one of these worlds was loud and large and fast, where the other was quiet and tiny and slow—and only one of these worlds seemed immeasurable. [p. 162]

Alma Whittaker, the focus of this novel, is born in 1800 and grows up in a wealthy household on the White Acre estate just outside Philadelphia. Her father Henry grew up in poverty, impressed Sir Joseph Banks with his initiative and his horticultural gifts, and made his money cultivating cinchona, a remedy for malaria. 

Alma is brought up to be fascinated with the natural world and to think for herself. At first, the only surviving child of Henry and his Dutch wife Beatrix, Alma is rather lonely: suddenly she acquires an adopted sister, Prudence, who is beautiful but reticent. She and Alma (who is plain) are never close.

The girls grow up. Alma develops a fascination with mosses, and conducts scientific correspondence with botanists all over the world. Prudence marries and becomes a committed abolitionist: Alma marries rather later, but her husband -- Ambrose, an artist -- is ... not what she had expected, wanted, craved. After her father's death she makes some momentous decisions, travels to Tahiti (where Ambrose had been exiled), and thence to Amsterdam.

I've done my best to avoid spoilers in that summary: I found the novel very slow, but a lot happens, actually as well as emotionally. I very much liked Gilbert's depiction of Alma as a sensual, as well as an intellectual, individual: I was fascinated by Alma's mosses, and her theories. I did not warm to any of the other characters -- perhaps because Alma, though she loves them, maintains some emotional distance.

This is also, in a way, a novel about early nineteenth-century science, and especially the theory of evolution. Alma considers the possibility: 'those who survived the world shaped it—even as the world, simultaneously, shaped them'. But there is no room in this world view for compassion, altruism, selflessness. Only on her return from Tahiti does she read of a new book by Charles Darwin...

Looking back on the experience of reading this novel, I find much to admire. Gilbert's prose has an Austenesque cadence that fits Alma very nicely ('her botanical drawings—which were never exactly beautiful, but always beautifully exact') and there are many vivid moments. But it felt so slow and claustrophobic while I was reading: and Alma's escape departure from White Acre, though an immense relief to me as well as her, did not immediately improve matters. And there's one scene, on Tahiti, that really bothered me: but ... spoilers.

...she knew that the world was plainly divided into those who fought an unrelenting battle to live, and those who surrendered and died. This was a simple fact. This fact was not merely true about the lives of human beings; it was also true of every living entity on the planet, from the largest creation down to the humblest. It was even true of mosses. This fact was the very mechanism of nature—the driving force behind all existence, behind all transmutation, behind all variation—and it was the explanation for the entire world. It was the explanation Alma had been seeking forever. [p. 434]

2026/074: Ring the Hill — Tom Cox

I didn’t see the Tor at its best that evening. Dusk was coming on but the weather was a little drappy — a Somerset word I’d recently learned, which means ‘starting to rain slightly’. Even without the benefit of one of its legendary sunsets, the view from the top pushed you back onto your heels, opening the world’s mouth and allowing you to see humblingly down its throat. [loc. 146]

Read by the author, so it felt almost like going for a long walk with Tom Cox and listening to him talk -- about moving house with plants and cats, about hares and the lack of them in the West Country as compared to Norfolk, about life on the Dartington estate in Devon, about his cats (I teared up hearing him talk about the deaths of two elderly felines).

The book is (notionally) based around hills: Glastonbury Tor, the hill in Derbyshire where he lived one winter, the hills of Dartmoor, et cetera. But Cox rambles in prose as well as in the countryside, so he might be walking up a hill and thinking about a pheasant named Clarence (though the pheasant does not know his name, of course). Ring the Hill -- the title is from a medieval text about nicknames for hares -- was gentle and funny, gorgeously written and endlessly intriguing. It made me want to get out in the countryside and walk for miles, preferably alone. And then go to the beach and swim in the sea^*.

^*Assuming no sewage alerts :(

2026/073: Platform Decay — Martha Wells

Mensah just looked at me and said, “SecUnit.” In that voice. The voice that’s the only reason I’m still here and alive and surrounded by … friends. (Emotion check: Good, actually. Really good.) (Emotion check: It is still hard to say the friends part.) [loc. 2474]

Murderbot is asked by Dr Mensah to help some family members escape from a space station run by evil corporation Barish-Estranza. Turns out the family members (including children, ugh) are being more or less held hostage and may be forced to work for B-E. There are also multiple SecUnits on the loose, running Murderbot's 'hack your own governor module' code. This includes Three, previously liberated by Murderbot and still looking to its liberator for guidance.

I liked the space station -- actually a torus surrounding a mined-out planet, with distinct zones -- and the exploration of forced labour, corporate abuse of power, and (maybe?) racism. And I loved Murderbot's self-help module, which pings every time Murderbot's neural chemistry goes weird, and asks for an emotion check. But there's more action here, and less reflection, than in the earlier instalments: I missed Murderbot's downtime. And there's no ART, and precious little Sanctuary Moon. An enjoyable read (and it's not a long novel) but I still prefer the novellas.

Zero. Mass. Transport. This is supposed to be a civilized space station, in space, why the fuck am I driving a ground vehicle to get to a fucking port on a fucking— (Emotion check: I am absolutely fine.) [loc. 2150]

2026/072: Disfigured — Amanda Leduc

Why, in all of these stories about someone who wants to be something or someone else, was it always the individual who needed to change, and never the world?

Subtitled 'On Fairy Tales, Disability, and Making Space', this is partly a memoir of the author's experience of cerebral palsy, and partly a survey of the ways in which fairytales 'other' people with disabilities, people who don't look right, people who are different. Sometimes fairytales depict outward disability / difference as a sign of inward wickedness, for example ugly stepsisters or a hunchbacked witch; in other stories, it's the result of a curse or a spell, and can be 'mended' by completion of a quest or a trial.

Leduc doesn't restrict her analysis to the tales popularised by the Brothers Grimm or Madame d'Aulnoy: she also examines the 'Disney princess' genre, and Marvel's superheroes -- for instance, Steve Rogers' disabilities pre-supersoldier serum. Blending her analysis with subjective personal experience and medical documentation sometimes sits oddly with the more scholarly discourse, but it also makes the book feel more personal.

This worked very well as an audiobook -- read by Amanda Barker -- though I kept wanting to highlight particular arguments or facts!

2026/071: Planesrunner — Ian McDonald

It was a deep, dark shock, a fist clenched around the heart, for Everett to realise that every decision he had made, every action he had taken, had caused someone to pay a high and terrible price. It was never like that in the action movies. There were never any consequences. [loc. 3205]

On a rainy December night in London, thirteen-year-old Everett is walking along the Mall to meet his father Dr Tajendra Singh: they're going to a lecture on nanotechnology at the ICA. Then Tajendra is abducted, leaving Everett with a few photos of the car in which he was taken away -- and, soon, an email that plunges Everett (named after Hugh Everett, who developed the Many Worlds theory) into a complex and perilous quest through multiple realities. Tajendra knows his son's aptitude for maths, pattern-spotting and connections. He's made plans to cover every contingency, and his priority has been to safeguard the infundibulum, a map of the multiverse which can lead the bearer -- via Heisenberg gates -- to trillions of other Earths.

I love the worldsbuilding: the world where Einstein was a quantum theorist, the world where the Moors invaded Britain after the Romans, the world where something mysterious has happened to the moon, even the world where, in 2010 or so, Michael Portillo is PM.  And of course E3, which is where Everett finds himself at the end of Planesrunner -- on an airship, in the company of multiple strong female characters. (E3's London is fascinating, not least for its variations on the inequalities of race, class and gender.) The YA label, and the sometimes-predictable plot beats, don't detract from Planesrunner's pleasures, and Everett is a likeable, relatable and interesting protagonist, solidly grounded in the mundane realities of teenage life despite being plunged into adventure.

This is Ian McDonald's first YA novel, which I purchased in 2013 and have unaccountably left in the TBR for all those years. I shall be reading the other two novels in the Everness trilogy soon, and not only for Everett's adventures and a conclusion to the story. 

2026/070: The Paranormal Ranger — Stanley Milford Jr

Just because I cannot fully explain the event doesn't make me think it wasn't real... my experiences with the paranormal have taught me to coexist with mystery when I must.

Subtitled 'A Navajo Investigator’s Search for the Unexplained', this is Stanley Milford Jr's account of his life as a Navajo Ranger -- a law enforcement officer in the Navajo reservation, responsible for a vast area with a relatively low population. While much of his work was mundane, there were some cases that (at least in the eyes of those involved) had a paranormal aspect: skinwalkers, aliens, hauntings, Bigfoot. Always careful to ensure that the person reporting a crime or an issue felt heard, Milford was also intrigued by the unexplained.

Much of the book is narrated by Milford himself (he has a very restful voice), with Duane Milard voicing the chapters that recount Navajo myth. Milford's parents were Navajo and Cherokee, and he grew up hearing the legends and traditions of both tribes. His theories about the paranormal, unsurprisingly, draw heavily on these legends, especially the concept of parallel planes of existence. And he does present his views as theories, rather than certainties.

This book offers an insight into 21st-century indigenous attitudes towards the unexplained, and towards mainstream Western culture that dismisses 'superstition'. And it reminds us that 'urban myths' (here, of course, not exactly urban!) serve a social purpose -- warnings and checks on antisocial behaviour -- as well as, perhaps, documenting the incursions of the uncanny.

2026/069: Floating Hotel — Grace Curtis

Media featuring extra-terrestrial intelligence (‘subversions of the supremacy of man’) had been banned Empire-wide for several generations. Even the word ‘alien’ made Uwade flinch with taboo. [p. 37]

It's the 29th century. Humanity has spread across the galaxy. The Empire -- and its 500-year-old Emperor -- governs many planets, quite a few of which are gutted for their resources before being abandoned, their populace sent to mine the next resource-rich world. 

But there is still luxury: the Grand Abeona Hotel (really more of an interstellar cruise liner) travels its leisurely circuit, offering an 'analogue paradise' that is screen-free, along with the luxuries and services of a lost golden age. The hotel's manager is Carl, who came aboard as a stowaway some decades before and became the protege of the then-manager, Nina Windrose. The crew members he's recruited are, like him, people with secrets in their pasts, people with something to run away from. But this circuit is different: the seditionist revolutionary known as the Lamplighter has been traced to the Abeona, and the Empire are keen to apprehend him.

Each chapter focuses on a different individual, from Carl himself to Daphne (brought aboard as the maid to a vapid socialite, abandoned by her and promptly offered a waitressing job) to Professor Azad (a delegate at the annual Problem Solvers’ Conference, held on board, who's paired with a young analyst who's her polar opposite), from Mr and Mrs Applegate (Imperial spies and torturers) to Angoulême the lounge pianist, from Rogan (the lifeguard who can't swim) to Uwade (the receptionist who believes someone is sending her love poems -- actually Shakespeare sonnets). Switching from character to character gives the novel a somewhat fragmented feel, but the plot ticks along in the background, sometimes very subtly.

Floating Hotel has been acclaimed as 'cosy found-family in space' -- though see above under 'torturers': there are some dark and nasty scenes). I'd disagree. There's an ambitious plot thread about what the Problem Solvers' Conference is actually solving, as well as the quest for the mysterious Lamplighter and the undercurrent of revolutionary sentiment. Though the denouement felt somewhat flat in contrast to the rest of the novel, I thoroughly enjoyed the entire experience.

I was reminded of  The Grand Budapest Hotel, and also of Claire North's excellent Slow Gods, perhaps because of the broad sweep of different cultures, perhaps because of the foregrounding of social class. Narratively speaking, they are very different -- tight first-person versus multiple vignettes -- but there's an innate optimism to both.

A couple of editing quibbles: a place where metal things are made is not a 'forgery', and if someone has omitted a pedicure they will not demonstrate unpainted nails by spreading their hands...

2026/068: She Made Herself a Monster — Anna Kovatchevka

"Humans have always needed people like me—as long as we’ve needed monsters.”
... “Do people need monsters?”
“A person can’t fight a plague, but they can fight the beast that cursed them with it. If not vampire or varkolak, it’s the Devil, or it’s witches. My way doesn’t end in witch burnings.” [loc. 1308]

Anka was orphaned on the night she was born: a house fire, a mother giving birth on bare earth lit by flames. The people of Koprivci, a small town in Bulgaria, believe Anka is the reason for the streak of stillbirths and fevers that has claimed nearly all of the children born in the last sixteen years.

Anka is miserable and lonely: her only close friend, Margarita, is to be married soon, to her childhood sweetheart. Her cousin Kiril (with whom she's had a love-hate relationship since they were little) is back from medical school, planning to rid the town of superstition and apply the techniques of modern medicine. And her uncle, known as the Captain, is determined to marry Anka herself as soon as she starts menstruating. Luckily the housekeeper, Yulia, is on her side, and helps her conceal her periods and consult with Minka, the village midwife.

Then a stranger comes to Koprivci: Yana, whose face looks shadowed even in bright light (I think she has vitiligo) and who is a self-proclaimed hunter of vampires and witches. There's certainly a witch in town, according to the townsfolk: Nina, a young widow, who's spent four months in the town jail. But when Yana arrives, occult signs multiply: dead hens, eggs full of blood... It's beginning to look as though there is a vampire in Koprivci: there is certainly a predator.

She Made Herself a Monster builds slowly, exploring ritual and story-telling: it's punctuated by Slavic folk tales, which cast the story's events in different lights. There's a deliciously Gothic ambience, but the rumours and stories of the supernatural are never precisely resolved. The focus is on Anka, and her relationships -- with Kiril, with Margarita, with the Captain, and especially with Yana. Anka is stronger than she seems at first, and she has agency: and in the febrile, superstitious atmosphere of Koprivci, the right words at the right time can spark a conflagration.

NB: The author was born in Bulgaria, but now lives in America: the novel was written in English.

2026/067: How to be Human — Paula Cocozza

She stared at him, her gaze a kind of cage, throwing down bars to the lawn to keep him trapped. One moment of inattention, and he would be free. [p. 7]

Mary, who lives in East London, has recently split up with her abusive fiancé Mark: she's kept the house, and has a comfortable life with little excitement or social contact. Her next-door neighbours, Michelle and Eric, have a new baby named Flora, to whom Mary is drawn. But she's also fascinated by the dog fox who frequents her garden. 

Gradually, as her life outside the house diminishes (signed off sick from her stressful job, more or less disconnected from her mother) she begins to form a kind of relationship with the fox. 'He was her friend. He alone knew that she was not so strange.' He comes into her house, he brings her presents -- boxer shorts, an egg, a shoe, a glove -- and she tries to name him (Sunset? Darcy? Red?) without success. '...he really wasn’t hers to name.'

It's soon obvious that Mary is not only introverted, but possibly losing her grip on reality. On the other hand, the fox is very real, and some of the novel is narrated from his viewpoint. His pregnant mate was killed by a car last autumn: now, in an urban summer, he forms a definite bond with 'human Female' and mistrusts Mark when he reappears at Michelle and Eric's barbeque. ('Salty snail odour tunnelled into his muzzle. From the fresh male who was an old male who was a slithery male...Come fresh to stalk around the human Female with sly feet and rippety eyes. Spruckling toadsome.')

Mary's slide into insanity -- taping up the front door; obsessing about Flora and the need to teach her Mary's own, new-found, love of the natural world; basically abandoning her job -- was uncomfortable to read, but her joy in the fox was a delight. It's hard to tell, though, how much of what happens on the page is real in any objective sense. For instance, it becomes clear fairly late in the novel that the 'abusive' Mark may have been a victim of Mary's own violent impulses. (He's still unpleasant, though.) Mary isn't the only character with psychological issues: Michelle is clearly suffering from post-natal depression. When Flora briefly goes missing, it triggers some unpleasant scenes.

Despite the anguish, the psychological issues and the tensions, I liked this novel a great deal, especially the fox-viewpoint passages and Mary's bliss in the natural world. How to be Human is a twisty novel, and while Mary is not a wholly likeable character, Cocozza's portrayal of her is a fascinating portrait of an unusual human.

...he bent one ear back \ to the human Female on the move through the ferns / one ear forward to the new noise. [p. 183]

2026/066: Beyond the Blue Horizon — Alexander Frater

[the] Imperial passengers... set off knowing they were flying the flag that held sovereignty over much of the territory through which they would pass. That, I thought, must have been immensely reassuring. All I had were a lot of last-minute worries, a closely typed seven-page itinerary and a booklet of tickets which, my exhausted travel agent said, was probably the largest ever issued on British Airways coupons. [p.40]

Frater, who was deputy editor and travel editor for the Observer, took a break from journalism to attempt a recreation of the Imperial Airways 'Eastbound Empire' service, inaugurated in 1936, which took nine days and stopped at 35 airports en route.

Frater is fascinated by the machinery of flight (he's keen on telling us about the engines of each plane he flies on) and, especially, by the travails of early air travel. Imperial Airways used 'flying boats' for much of the journey from London to Brisbane, which wasn't an option open to Frater: instead he zigzagged around the route, having to backtrack in order to visit every stopping-point. Desert forts in Saudi Arabia (where Imperial's aircraft used to fly in pairs), small towns on remote islands... 'It was thus essential to get to Calcutta in time for the Dhaka flight but, by the same token, I had to make my way there via Kanpur and Allahabad, both Imperial fuelling halts.' [p.212]. Some stops were more fraught than others: though he was welcomed everywhere, the welcome sometimes -- for instance, in Timor, mid-civil war -- firmly prevented him from exploring on his own.

Of course the world has changed since 1936... though it's also changed since this book was written in the early 1980s. ('I smoked a cigarette, recalling that I wouldn’t have been allowed to do so aboard an HP 42...' [p. 42]). Some of Frater's attitudes felt very dated to me: the way he sums up every woman he meets -- stewardesses, airport operatives, hotel staff -- by their size, eye colour and demeanour; his way of reporting the speech of those for whom English is a second language; his visit to a sex club in Bangkok. On the other hand, some things don't change: a security officer warns Frater that there are rumours of Iran closing the Straits of Hormuz...

I learnt a lot about early aviation, with particular reference to this most luxurious of routes: the steward's first duty in the morning, apparently, was to uncork the clarets and let them breathe in time for lunch. The technology in use was primitive in the extreme: 'Imperial’s engineers were asked urgently to devise equipment that would give a true indication of altitude. What they came up with were net containers secured to each wingtip and filled with pingpong balls. At the appropriate moment the nets were released and the balls bouncing across the limpid surface gave the pilot his crucial visual reference.' [p. 55]

A very enjoyable and informative read, despite my sense that I wouldn't have warmed to the author in person. That said, his enthusiasm, knowledge and gift for conversation -- he seems to have talked to everyone -- did a great deal to balance his flaws.

Apparently there's a film, The Last African Flying Boat, partly based on this book: it won a BAFTA for Best Documentary.

2026/065: Renaissance — E H Lupton

“Ulysses?”
When he looked back, Eli said, carefully, “It’s pull the lever, not throw yourself in front of the trolley to save everyone.”
Ulysses exhaled. “It’s a thought experiment, Doc...” [loc. 3320]

Fifth in the 'Wisconsin Gothic' series which began with Dionysus in Wisconsin: in this instalment, Sam and Ulysses are planning a quiet summer, until Ekaterina (Ulysses' Russian grandmother) is hospitalised by a fall which she claims was due to a magical phenomenon. 

Sam, meanwhile, is sad that Ellen and Harry are moving to California -- and perturbed by the sense that there's something the library wants to tell him. While Ulysses is running himself ragged juggling hospital duty and mentoring a non-binary student, Sam wonders if last year's prophecy of 'something bad' might be coming true.  Is it coincidence that, Ekaterina incapacitated, an old enemy has resurfaced?

Oddly slow, despite the various menaces, though things speed up rapidly at the end. I'm intrigued by glimpses of Laz and Eli (the latter searching for premises in which he can set up his clinic for magic-users) and sad that, per the author, this is the last in the series to be focussed on Sam and Ulysses. I'll miss them -- but I am interested to see how things work out for Laz and Eli, and what becomes of Peregrine. And maybe one day we'll get more of Tim's story...

Coincidentally, I started reading this as I was finishing Silent Spring -- which is mentioned in the novel!

2026/064: Silent Spring — Rachel Carson

...genetic deterioration through man-made agents is the menace of our time, the last and greatest danger to our civilization. [ch 13]

Published in 1962, this book had a massive impact on the environmental movement -- indeed, may be said to have kickstarted it. Silent Spring inspired the creation of Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth, as well as influencing scientists, naturalists and politicians, from David Attenborough to Al Gore.

Carson relates, in horrific and exhaustive detail, the damages done to the natural world by pesticides such as DDT. She traces the roots of the widespread use of synthetic pesticides to the aftermath of WW2 -- not only were there chemical plants that had specialised in chemical warfare now lying idle, there was a surplus of newly-unemployed pilots to carry out crop spraying.

The sections detailing the death and destruction wreaked upon American farmland are appalling. And the effects are not limited to wildlife: Carson (herself suffering from cancer, diagnosed while she was writing Silent Spring) sets out evidence indicating that DDT, and similar compounds, are carcinogenic. Several researchers experimented on themselves to determine the effects of various pesticides on humans, with damaging and lingering results.

Carson argues that humanity is a part of the world: we live in it, and we depend on the ecosystems in which we live. Disturbing those ecosystems -- for example, by 'incidentally' killing earthworms, and thus affecting soil creation -- has widespread and often unforeseen effects. She also argues that, per Darwin, 'pests' will quickly develop an immunity to any given pesticide, so that repeated applications are less effective. instead, she champions biotic methods: biological solutions based on careful research and a holistic understanding of the ecological context. For example, introducing sterile males to a population of 'pests' can vastly reduce their numbers. Imported predators or parasites may also provide a solution, though their impact on the environment must be fully understood.

A groundbreaking work, and one that made me think about modern disease and the rise in cancers... Carson called for humanity to stop its war against nature -- it's an unwinnable conflict, and we are casualties.

2026/063: Queen James — Gareth Russell

...given how obvious James’s affection was in public, nobody at court doubted what was happening in private. George [Villiers]’s contemporary Sir Henry Rich allegedly turned down an advantageous post in the King’s Household because he did not want anybody to assume he owed his position to his looks or an intimate relationship with the King. [loc. 5901]

A biography that doesn't shy away from James' homosexuality, but treats it as an integral part of his character. Becoming King of Scotland at the age of 13 months, his childhood was full of trauma: he was kidnapped several times, was served (or 'served') by four regents of varying calibres, beaten by his tutor, and endured the deaths of many close to him , including his mother, who he likely had no memory of: they'd been separated when he was a year old. The violence and death didn't stop when he was proclaimed ruler, at the age of 13: he was imprisoned by a faction who felt he was becoming too close to Esmé Stewart, a Catholic-turned-Protestant, who may have been the first man he fell in love with.

Russell documents James' life, with copious references and a sufficiency of political context: from reigning in Scotland, to becoming Queen Elizabeth's heir; marriage to Anna of Denmark, who sounds absolutely splendid; James' persecution of witches; the Gunpowder Plot; matters of religion (his Bible; the oppression of Catholics); his determination to avoid war -- with Spain, with the Hapsburg Empire... And woven through it all, his 'favourites', with whom (Russell argues) he was certainly having sexual relations of some kind -- though he wrote of sodomy as ‘a sin which ye are bound in conscience never to forgive’, so it's not clear what his own definition of sodomy might have been.

Russell is also at pains to show us the private man: the author of Daemonology, Basilikon Doron and A Counterblast to Tobacco, the avid hunter, the king who was happiest 'reading in his rooms, responding to letters, playing chess with Robert, taking care of his new pet armadillo'. I admired his wife immensely: well aware that he had male lovers, she supported George Villiers' ambition to become the next favourite. It was a political marriage but there is evidence of affection between James and Anna -- they produced seven children, though only three (Prince Henry, Elizabeth of Bohemia and Charles I) survived the first two years of life -- and she was also a noted patron of the arts, and a keen dancer.

A very readable biography of a complex man. I came away with a more nuanced impression of James than I'd had before reading: a man who was paranoid, but not without cause; bisexual, with a strong preference for men; a pacifist who smoothed over internal conflicts and balanced political factions; and, as Russell remarks, 'the first reign in centuries during which there had not been an invasion by, or of, England'.

2026/062: My Beloved Brontosaurus — Brian Switek

'Going the way of the dinosaurs' should really mean becoming undeniably awesome, rather than sinking into inevitable extinction.

Subtitled 'On the Road with Old Bones, New Science and our Favourite Dinosaurs', this is Switek's^* account of various dinosaur-related trips across the United States. Along the way, the author discusses the demise of Brontosaurus, deemed a misclassification of an Apatosaurus fossil (a decision that was reversed in 2015: My Beloved Brontosaurus was published in 2012); reveals their childhood fascination with dinosaurs; discusses dinosaur fighting, mating and parenting; dinosaur physiology, and why those old accounts of dull, slow-moving brutes is probably wrong; dinosaur vocalisation.

There's affection for the 'old' dinosaurs and for the joy that children -- especially this child -- found in them: but there's also great enthusiasm for the ways in which dinosaurs are being redefined, rediscovered, and reinterpreted. 

This is definitely the kind of book to be classed as Popular Science: it's aimed at a generalist, rather than specialist, audience. Which is not to say that it's lacking in theory, or that it fails to convey the wonder of science: question after question! I found it delightful: the author's passion for their subject, and their ability to explain scientific theories in simple terms, was refreshing.

^*My audiobook edition was read by 'Brian Switek' who has since transitioned: the book is soon to be republished under Riley Black's name.

2026/061: Eyeliner — Zahra Hankir

I found eyeliner in the Arab world’s deserts and in the savannas of Africa, in the hair salons of Iran, and in the alleyways of Kyoto. I found it on the faces of Indian storytellers, Latin American freedom fighters, and Palestinian activists.

A surprisingly wide-ranging and fascinating cultural history of eyeliner, from Queen Nefertiti (an influence on the author as a teenager) to New York drag queens. It begins with her own experiences as a British-Lebanese teenager, and covers the different types of eyeliner -- kohl, sormeh, kajal, and more, each with different origins and recipes -- and the manifold reasons for which people wear it. From ancient times, kohl was regarded as protective (studies have confirmed its antibacterial properties) as well as decorative: today, eyeliner is ubiquitous.

The book is organised geographically. Hankir starts with ancient Egypt and the bust of Nefertiti (with added Orientalism): then on, through the Wodaabe tribe of Chad (where it's the men who paint their eyes and flaunt their beauty); the use of sormeh as a political statement in Iran; use of kohl by both sexes in Jordanian Bedouin; Chola (Latinx) looks in California; kajal used on babies in India to ward off the evil eye, and in traditional theatre where it's used to blur gender roles as well as accentuate expressions; geisha traditions and colours, and more gender queering; drag queens in New York; Amy Winehouse and her legend; and the trend for ornate eyeliner 'graphics' on social media. 

There were a few points where connections were somewhat vague (commenting on Stevie Nicks and Patti Smith wearing eyeliner feels like commenting on random passers-by: it is, these days, more exceptional for a performer not to wear it!) but on the whole Hankir sticks to her thesis, which is that eyeliner is not only a cosmetic but a powerful connection to culture. She also interrogates the appropriation of Black and Asian trends by white influencers, the political and religious views on eyeliner in Islam (Muhammad is thought to have used kohl), and an expression of identity.

Written during the Covid years: Hankir thought it was a 'trivial' subject but her mother corrected her. 'A layered study of cultures of colour... that also brings delight to readers'. It delighted me.

2026/060: Titanium Noir — Nick Harkaway

“You’re the shock absorber. From the Titans’ point of view, you stop the masses from realising the extent of their subjugation. You relieve them of the need to exercise raw financial and political power in the protection of their interests where those interests collide with the law. But ... you also protect ordinary humans from the consequences of that subjugation as best you can. Yours is an equivocal profession. But I hear you’re not entirely an asshole.” [loc. 2879]

Cal Sounder, consultant detective, is hired to investigate the murder of a reclusive scientist, Roddy Tebbit, who died in his own home and apparently by his own hand. Complicating the matter is the fact that Tebbit was a Titan -- a recipient of a genetic therapy called T7 (possibly something to do with telomeres) which reverses ageing, increases muscle and bone density, and incidentally makes Titans literally larger than life. On the downside, it's extremely expensive; it affects memory; and the process can be very painful.

Being at least in part a noir novel, the city features prominently in Titanium Noir. (It's unclear what the city is called, or where it's located. All we know is that it lies on the shore of Lake Othrys.) Cal knows everyone in the city's murky underworld: bar owners, weapons dealers, criminal masterminds. He also knows some of the Titans: his ex-girlfriend, Athena, is the daughter of Stefan Tonfamecasca, the man who discovered T7, and is a Titan herself. And as Cal's investigation develops more twists and complications, he needs to talk to Tonfamecasca himself.

I enjoyed this a lot, despite the genre-typical violence. There are satisfying twists and surprises, a good use of SFnal ideas, and some fascinating minor characters. (At one point Cal is lectured on the Titans by a Marxist bar owner -- see the quotation at the head of this review). I liked the blend of noir dialogue, near-future setting and elements of Greek mythology. 

I've owned this book for several years: now congratulating myself on buying the sequel, Sleeper Beach, when it was on offer.

2026/059: A Legacy of Spies — John Le Carré

...how much of our human feeling can we dispense with in the name of freedom, would you say, before we cease to feel either human or free? [loc. 3719]

Published in 2017, and very much a post-Brexit novel: at one point Smiley says to Peter Guillam "was it all for England, then? Of course it was... But whose England? Which England? England all alone, a citizen of nowhere? I'm a European."

Told from Peter Guillam's point of view: he's an old man now, retired to his family's farm in Brittany, but he's called back to London to explain his actions during Operation Windfall (as told in The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, which unaccountably I have not read in the last two decades) and refute the accusation that he's a 'professional Lothario hired by the British Secret Service, [who] roped in susceptible girls as unwitting accomplices in hare-brained operations that fell apart at the seams'. 

To some extent this is true (parallels can be drawn, as Le Carré reminds us, with the spy cops scandal) but Guillam nevertheless denies everything. He does not accept responsibility -- at least, not out loud -- for the deaths of other operatives or innocent dupes. His interrogators are dogged, but Guillam is still a professional, and still loyal to the mysteriously-absent George Smiley.

Le Carré's prose is in a class of its own: reading his work is a delight. He is the master of the balanced sentence, and his depiction here of an ageing intelligence operative, looking back on love and danger and subterfuge, is as compelling in its recreation of 1960s spycraft as in its exposition of Guillam's emotional landscape. I liked Guillam as a character, and found his inventive rebuttals of accusations very satisfactory. One interrogator tells him 'I'm trying to read your emotions. I can't. You either have none, or you have too many.' The latter, I think, is more accurate.

2026/058: Hidden in Snow — Viveca Sten (translated by Marlaine Delargy)

All these fucking men, exploiting vulnerable women. [p. 386]

First in a new series of crime novels set in the Swedish town of Åre, a quiet ski resort surrounded by mountains and forest. Hanna Ahlander's life has imploded, both professionally and personally: her boss has 'sent her home to think things over' and clearly wants her gone, and her boyfriend has broken up with her -- leaving her homeless. 

Salvation comes in the form of her sister Lydia, who suggests that Hanna spends some time at Lydia's lodge in Åre. Hanna finds herself helping the local police with a missing-person case, a young woman who disappeared on her way home from a party. She works with Detective Daniel Lindskog, who's recently become a father (though seems to prioritise his job over his family). Soon, she's asked if she'd consider transferring to Åre...

There were some interesting themes here -- the influx of migrants in Swedish society, the multiple ways in which men abuse and prey on women, the grandeur of nature -- but I disliked both Hanna (who takes a lot of risks, not all of them legal) and Daniel (who is prone to fits of rage, can't deal with the press, and keeps complaining of the effort of fatherhood while his girlfriend is left to do almost all the work). Sten's prose style (at least in translation) failed to engage me, and I wasn't a fan of the 100+ short chapters. I also felt that there wasn't enough foreshadowing of the villain: and I wasn't a fan of opening with the discovery of a body, in a flash-forward, before introducing the characters and the missing-person case. One last niggle: Hanna's ex is (justifiably) furious that she destroyed his clothes and shoes before leaving. He's threatening to report her to the police. But she has a minor car crash, and 'when he heard about the accident, all his anger melted away.' Yeah, right.

Oh, and the Kindle edition has some weird formatting -- place names in bold italic...

Lovely wintry atmosphere, great sense of the dangers of the natural world: but I would prefer it without these people in it.