#12: Coalescent -- Stephen Baxter

First in a series, not always a good thing ... I'm always impressed by the sweep of Baxter's ideas, though he's no literary stylist: the content kept me turning pages even when the prose seemed dry. What impressed me most about this novel (and what urged me to pick it up in the first place) was his depiction of the slow inward collapse of Roman Britain; the towns gradually abandoned, the Saxons invading from the east, the gathering of the tribes beyond the Wall .. His modern-day plot thread is also intriguing, dealing with a lost twin, and family tensions, and a conspiracy theorist who's obsessed with dark matter ... I'd have liked more resolution for a couple of the plot strands, but I enjoyed this enough to want to read the next, even though I understand it's more a thematic sequel than a continuation of these threads.

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#11: The Clerkenwell Tales -- Peter Ackroyd

A medieval thriller with obvious literary antecedents (there are 22 chapters, each titled after a character in the Canterbury Tales, though they're not the same individuals that Chaucer wrote of) and the usual Ackroyd themes. It's an interesting read, and Ackroyd wears his learning lightly: I found his archaic vocabulary (bonchief as the opposite of mischief, and a number of others that I've scribbled down to check later) very clearly presented. The conceit of 22 characters, each with a different point of view on a different part of the action, works very nicely, and the characters have distinct voices -- though those voices are all much more similar to one another than any of them to a modern voice: there's a clear sense of how foreign the London of 1399 was. Shame I read this just after reading the Alan Wall anthology (see below), the first story of which deals with a series of ritual events, corresponding to the wounds of Christ, played out across London ...

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#10: Last Breath: The Limits of Adventure -- Peter Stark

Splendidly gory book about the medical details of various deaths -- hypothermia, drowning, altitude sickness, jellyfish stings ...Picked this up in the remainder shop on Saturday and had finished it by Saturday night. Each chapter's a fictionalised account of a death, or near-death: Matt, who decides to walk the rest of the way after his car breaks down at night on a snowy mountain; Phil, stranded on a sailing voyage with only Steller's Journal of a Voyage with Bering, 1741-2 for reading material, and no Vitamin C to hand; Mary, who fancies a swim even though there's no nets around the beach ... The author is an extreme-sports enthusiast, and his descriptions of the thrills of climbing, white-water kayaking, desert travel etc are extraordinarily vivid. There's also a spiritual element to the book: the mountaineer who succumbs to altitude sickness is sent on her way with a whispered reading of the Tibetan Book of the Dead, and the journalist stranded in the desert is haunted by his encounter with a Sufi master. A surprisingly gripping read, rich in medical and historical detail (what happens to your lungs if you ascend too fast from a dive: 'more and more air bubbles raced from his [ruptured] lungs to his heart until it beat only a bloody foam', ewww) and excellent research material for anyone writing about violent deaths. He copped out on the climbing story, though.

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#9: Eva Peron -- -- Alicia Dujovne Ortiz (trans Shawn Fields)

Had an urge to watch Evita (the movie, which I've never seen) recently: couldn't, so read this instead. The first cassette I ever bought for myself was the original Broadway cast recording of Evita, and I know the songs on that by heart: read a couple of biographies in my teens, too. This one is far more critical of the whole Evita-myth, and Peronism, and Argentinian politics in the post-war period. Also covers the mutilation of Evita's embalmed corpse, and Nazi gold smuggling. I have a major problem, though, with the translation: all too often it's word-for-word from the original Spanish, which is quite emotive and idiomatic, and there are phrases that I assume to be Spanish idioms that simply don't make sense. Also (pet peeve) Mr Fields thinks the past tense of 'shine' is 'shined'. Interesting, but not a pleasure to read.

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#8: 31 Songs -- Nick Hornby

Not just any 31 songs -- and not, in fact, 31 songs that I know, though obviously I recognise quite a few of 'em -- but 31 songs that illustrate parts of Hornby's life. I'd expected 31 distinct essays on memory, feeling, appreciation, context etc: but, especially in later chapters, there's a sense of narrative. Particularly moving are the chapters which discuss Hornby's autistic son, and his experience of music: these might be sentimental if Hornby didn't write with such clarity. He's witty and critical, intelligent and wry, and sometimes even rude, about the songs and the musicians. Has a lovely turn of metaphor, too: Nick Cave plodding his way through As I Sat Sadly By Her Side 'as if he were eating an overfilled plate of decent but plain food at a grandparent's house'.

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#7: The Grand Tour -- Patricia Wrede and Caroline Stevermer

Sequel to Sorcery and Cecilia, the prototype Regency-romance-with-magic. I didn't enjoy this quite as much as the first novel, but the plot's rather bigger, dealing with a European conspiracy and a set of magical objects. Some lovely observation, though it doesn't have the Heyeresque social-comedy feel of its predecessor. Kate and Cecy's travels around 19th-century Europe are fascinating, and historically credible: magic as a way of dealing with flea-ridden beds ...

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#6: The Book of Dead Days -- Marcus Sedgwick

The 'dead days' are the days between Christmas and New Year, when I started reading this. It's a YA novel, quite dark, and the first volume of a series. The protagonist ('Boy') is servant to a magician who's under a curse. The setting's a dark, Baroque city, rather Italianate and 18th-century but with elements of both fantasy and science -- electricity regarded as a dark art, etc. The writing's terse and choppy and quite well-paced, but I found the setting much more interesting than the events. A tendency to paint characters in black and white, too, though that leads to assumptions (by characters and readers) that are proved incorrect. Not desperate to read second volume.

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