Annie's Reading Diary - 2015, Q2 edition

And time to move to a new thread.

Welcome to the thread for the second quarter (and third as it looks like) of the year. It will continue to be a mix of all I read(which means a mix of a lot of genres) although it will also start featuring stories (I at least think so - had not been in the mood to read any so far and this is unusual so I suspect it will change.

Read books so far no touchstones here or it gets very hard to load very fast.

===JANUARY===
1. Doctor Who: Silhouette by Justin Richards
2. Saga of the Swamp Thing, Book 1 by Alan Moore
3. The Fortunes of Africa: A 5000-Year History of Wealth, Greed, and Endeavor by Martin Meredith
4. The Meaning of Human Existence by Edward O. Wilson
5. Saga of the Swamp Thing, Book 2 by Alan Moore
6. Vanished Ocean: How Tethys Reshaped the World by Dorrik Stow
7. Galaxies: A Very Short Introduction by John Gribbin
8. Evensong by John Love
9. Saga of the Swamp Thing Book Three by Alan Moore
10. Scenes from an Impending Marriage by Adrian Tomine
11. A Murder of Clones by Kristine Kathryn Rusch
12. Bound by Flames by Jeaniene Frost
13. Spillover: Animal Infections and the Next Human Pandemic by David Quammen
14. The Thirty-Nine Steps by John Buchan
15. Trafalgar by Angélica Gorodischer

===FEBRUARY===
16. Martian Sands by Lavie Tidhar
17. The Evolutionary Void by Peter F. Hamilton
18. Karen Memory by Elizabeth Bear
19. Kittyhawk Down by Garry Disher
20. Boxers by Gene Luen Yang
21. Saints by Gene Luen Yang
22. Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino
23. Motive by Jonathan Kellerman
24. The Yard by Alex Grecian
25. Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie
26. Range of Ghosts by Elizabeth Bear

===MARCH===
27. War Dogs by Greg Bear
28. The Clockwork Dagger by Beth Cato
29. World of Trouble by Ben H. Winters
30. Ghosts by César Aira
31. The Race by Nina Allan
32. Ancillary Sword by Ann Leckie
-- Red Queen by Victoria Aveyard - abandoned
33. The Dragon Man by Garry Disher
34. Obsession in Death by J. D. Robb
35. Snapshot by Garry Disher
36. The Strange Library by Haruki Murakami
37. Europe In Autumn by Dave Hutchinson
38. Maplecroft by Cherie Priest
39. Get in Trouble by Kelly Link
40. Half a King by Joe Abercrombie
41. The Marriage Game by Alison Weir
42. Midnight Riot by Ben Aaronovitch
43. Brown Girl Dreaming by Jacqueline Woodson
44. Chain of Evidence by Garry Disher
45. Barefoot Dogs by Antonio Ruiz-Camacho
46. Search & Recovery by Kristine Kathryn Rusch
47. Mindstar Rising by Peter F. Hamilton

===APRIL===
48. Border Princes by Dan Abnett
49. Mightier than the Sword by Jeffrey Archer
50. The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August by Claire North
51. Dead Heat by Patricia Briggs
52. Sanctuary by Faye Kellerman

===MAY===
53. Blood Moon by Garry Disher
54. A Quantum Murder by Peter F. Hamilton
55. Persona by Genevieve Valentine
56. The Bone Tree by Greg Iles
57. Seveneves by Neal Stephenson

===JUNE===
58. Dark Rain: A New Orleans Story by Mat Johnson
59. All Star Comics Archives, Volume 0
60. Superman: Day of Doom by Dan Jurgens
61. The Dying Hours by Mark Billingham
62. Hawkeye & Mockingbird/Black Widow: Widowmaker by Jim McCann
63. JLA Classified, Vol. 4: The Hypothetical Woman by Gail Simone
64. Superman: Phantom Zone by Steve Gerber
65. Batgirl: Kicking Assassins by Andersen Gabrych
66. Superman: The Third Kryptonian by Kurt Busiek
67. Wolverine: Wolverine vs. the X-Men by Jason Aaron
68. Superman/Batman: The Search For Kryptonite by Michael Green
69. Wonder Woman: Gods and Mortals by George Pérez
70. Wolverine & the X-Men, Vol. 1: Regenesis by Jason Aaron
71. Wolverine and the X-Men, Vol. 2 by Jason Aaron
72. Wolverine and the X-Men, Vol. 3 by Jason Aaron
73. Wolverine and the X-Men, Vol. 4 by Jason Aaron
74. X-Men: Age of X by Mike Carey
75. The Water Knife by Paolo Bacigalupi
76. Birds of Prey: Sensei & Student by Gail Simone
77. Wonder Woman Vol. 2: Challenge of the Gods by George Pérez
78. Wonder Woman: Second Genesis by John A. Byrne
79. DC Greatest Imaginary Stories, Vol. 2: Batman & Robin by Bill Finger
80. Green Arrow: The Archer's Quest by Brad Meltzer
81. Green Arrow and Black Canary: The Wedding Album by Judd Winick
82. Before Watchmen: Ozymandias/Crimson Corsair by Len Wein
83. Who is Wonder Woman? by Allan Heinberg
84. The Nano Flower by Peter F. Hamilton
85. Superman/Batman: Public Enemies by Jeph Loeb
86. Superman/Batman: Supergirl by Jeph Loeb
87. Superman/Batman: Absolute Power by Jeph Loeb
88. The Buried Giant by Kazuo Ishiguro
89. Iron Man: War of the Iron Men by Fred Van Lente
90. Iron Man 2.0 - Volume 1: Palmer Addley Is Dead by Nick Spencer
91. Iron Man 2.0 - Volume 2: Asymmetry by Nick Spencer
92. Marvel's The Avengers Prelude: Fury's Big Week by Chris Yost
93. Frozen Assets by Quentin Bates
94. Black Jack, Volume 1 by Osamu Tezuka
95. Black Jack, Volume 2 by Osamu Tezuka
96. Murder in Belleville by Cara Black
97. Cocaine Blues by Kerry Greenwood

===JULY===
98. Valour and Vanity by Mary Robinette Kowal
99. Avengers vs. X-men by Brian Michael Bendis
100. Justice League of America Archives: Volume 1
101. Superman/Batman: Torment by Alan Burnett
102. The Goblin Emperor by Katherine Addison
103. The Three-Body Problem by Cixin Liu
104. The Flicker Men by Ted Kosmatka
105. Whispering Death by Garry Disher
106. Black Diamond by Zakes Mda
107. Speaking in Bones by Kathy Reichs
108. All Star Comics Archives, Volume 1
109. Black Jack, Vol. 3 by Osamu Tezuka
110. The Bones Beneath by Mark Billingham
111. Life After Life by Kate Atkinson
112. Time of Death by Mark Billingham
113. Bloodchild and Other Stories by Octavia E. Butler

===AUGUST===
114. Falling in Love by Donna Leon
115. Two Years Eight Months and Twenty-Eight Nights by Salman Rushdie
116. Happy are the Happy by Yasmina Reza
117. God help the child by Toni Morrison
118. Marvel Masterworks: The X-Men Vol. 1
119. Shattered Pillars by Elizabeth Bear

Orphan stories (not in a book)

Running Statistics

48. Border Princes by Dan Abnett

Type: Novel
Length: 254 pages
Original Language: English
Original Publication: 2007
Genre: SF; TV tie-in
Part of Series: Torchwood (2)
Format: Hardcover
Publisher: BBC Books
Finished: 06 April 2015

Set very early in season 1 (before Cyberwoman from the way everyone is behaving), it is somewhat strange to read this novel now, after all the seasons of the series. Ianto is still only staying in the office and making coffee (pointed out in the same over the top way the first episodes of the series were doing it) and working security monitors and whatsnot around the office, Rhys still has no idea what Gwen is really doing. Except that here the team has another member - James - who seems to be part of the team even though we never saw him on TV.

And as expected with a Torchwood novel, the team is off and running against all kind of weird issues. However, there is also a big bad in town - except that this time it is not exactly a bad thing. The Rift is the boundary between worlds so it is kinda expected that other worlds will have some type of a Torchwood organization. And on the other side of the Rift in Cardiff are the Border Princes. But it cannot be straight forward of course, they cannot just come and say hello so while the team is running around trying to save everyone, the guys from the other dimension in turn help and then hinder them. Add a few weird technologies that make it into the wild at the same time (one of them managing to get to the heads of everyone on the team; another one being a war robot that has personality issues and really likes killing) and the picture is complete.

If I had read this book when it was published or at least before the second season of the show, it would have taken me a lot longer to figure out what is happening and why. But having watched "Adam" in the series, I was pretty sure this is where this is going. It was a nice read for what it was but unless if you really liked the series, it won't work - it relies on inner jokes and on the series to keep the characters three dimensional and even then, it is just too tied to the early versions of our guys (and those early versions were not exactly the best versions).

Ah! memories of a great show.

49. Mightier than the Sword by Jeffrey Archer

Type: Novel
Length: 400 pages
Original Language: English
Original Publication: 2015
Genre: Family saga
Part of Series: Clifton Chronicles (5)
Format: Hardcover
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
Finished: 10 April 2015

The previous book finished with the new liner taking its first transatlantic trip in 1964 and IRA planting a bomb on the ship (and most of our main characters being on the ship). And this is exactly where this one opens - with the planting of the bomb itself and the actions of everyone while the minute when it needs to explode comes. It won't be much of a spoiler to say that it does not happen because Harry is clever enough to spot a problem (and all this happens in the first 10 pages or so). So the cliffhanger from the last book is dealt with and now we can go ahead with the story and see what happens next. (I am not a huge fan of cliffhangers that get resolved in a few pages in the next book - technically with the non-exploding, there was not so much that can be done but still... )

This 5th entry in the series takes us from 1964 to 1970 - with another generation of Cliftons entering the scene (albeit in a weird way), with Harry leading a campaign to liberate a Russian author, Emma fighting another set of really idiotic men (with Lady Virginia Fenwick behind the scenes as usual), Alex Fisher doing all the dirty work for the Lady as always (and getting involved in yet another election against Giles), Giles falling in love again and Sebastian doing more mistakes than both of his parents managed to make in the first 4 books (and they did quite a lot after all).

The details of the banking scene are always fascinating; so is the insight in the political situation - both in UK and abroad (with Giles's position we get to see the Eastern Germany while Harry manages to get to USA and USSR - which is persistently called Russia - I am not sure how much that was true for the UK press and people but I won't be surprised if that is the case). We even get a glimpse of the courts of law in USSR and in UK (although the Russian experience is so exaggerated that it is comical - everyone there is presented as incompetent imbecile - so don't look for a real experience of USSR in the 60s - he does get all the politicians right so at least this is there). And while Harry is dealing with the Russians, Emma is getting hounded by Virginia - for an incident that took place in a previous book but now resurfaces because it is the right time.

The book finishes on a cliffhanger again - with a missing letter and a trial that is still running. And somewhere along the line, we lose a good man and a bad man - as is it life - villains do die now and then but so do good people.

Overall a good entry in the series - I wish it was longer - and I am waiting for the next book next year.

>6 baswood: Yeah :) If they won't make more episodes, there are at least the novels. :)

Jeffrey Archer's life has been as filled with intrigue as his novels are. It's been a while since I read him, but this series sounds interesting.

I am back... I think.

I hit two months of almost no reading, then finally switched to a collected comics/graphic novels for a bit in June - which got be back on track - and I am back and reading.

The good news is that unlike previous years, I kept noting down what I had read. So... I will be back with reviews shortly - maybe not all the books that I had read and there will be some catch up but... :)

Welcome back!

Ditto.

Glad you are back.

C'mon Annie

105. Whispering Death by Garry Disher

Type: Novel
Length: 343 pages
Original Language: English/Australia
Original Publication: 2012
Genre: Crime
Part of Series: Hal Challis (6)
Format: Hardcover
Publisher: SOHO Crime
Finished: 19 July 2015
Rating:

In the first two books of the series, Disher created a set of weird and interesting characters, each with their oddities and personal stories. Then he realized that he has too many of them - so since then he had been busy killing them, sending them off for a whole book, splitting them from the team and whatever else you can think of. This time around, Ellen is shipped off to Europe for training and exchange of experience (so we see her only a few times, talking with Hal - and giving a chance to something like a relationship between them), Tankard makes a few appearances (in important places but outside the team) and after all that happened in the last few books, we have only Hal, Pam and Scobie in the team.

And while our team is busy with a rapist, we meet Grace - a thief with a complicated past and running out of luck. If you are reading the book, you know that these two stories will converge sooner or later - and when they do, people are under stress again. Somewhere in the middle of all that, Hal talks to a reporter about the financial cuts and the policies in the department and that gets him in trouble. Again.

The description of Australian life and scenery are fascinating as always and because the reader should know the main characters, private lives and thoughts are revealed with sketches - which will be a problem if you had not read the previous books - because this makes the characters sounding almost two dimensional - the third dimension comes from knowing these people; knowing what things mean (like Scobie's wife). Disher adds some backstory so things do not sound out of context but you need the real backstories to get all the meanings.

By the end of the book, Disher had put enough hints to ensure that someone else from the team can be missing from the next book - actually there are enough hints to make me wonder if there will be another book. I hope there is - I really like this series.

>11 RidgewayGirl:, >12 rebeccanyc:, >13 NanaCC:, >14 baswood:

Thanks ladies and gentleman :)

>10 AnnieMod: - Good to see you back. I've also found that switching to something fast and light when you're in a reading ditch is helpful.

106. Black Diamond by Zakes Mda

Type: Novel
Length: 315 pages
Original Language: English/South Africa
Original Publication: Copyright 2009/This publisher 2014
Genre: Contemporary
Part of Series:N/A. Publisher Series: The Africa List
Format: Hardcover
Publisher: Seagull Books
Finished: 21 July 2015
Rating:

That is one of those books that could have been a lot better. Should have been even - all the elements to help that are present and yet something does not click. Set in post-apartheid South Africa, the novels follows the lives of people that are so different that you would not expect them to meet. And yet they do. The white magistrate Kristin Uys, the black ex-model and now an owner of a model agency Tumi Molefhe, her boyfriend and ex-guerrilla fighter, current security company employee Don Mateza and the criminal family Visagie (and even if the two brothers are the nasty ones, the really scary one is the mother) get introduced very fast and on decision of the magistrate to hit Stevo Visagie with 6 months for contempt changes all their lives.

The Visagies (or at least Stevo) swears to take revenge, Kristin ends up needing a bodyguard and Don is sent to her and things go downhill. The story itself is almost a cliche but the background of Johannesburg and Soweto keep the book from being boring. You can see actions happening long before they do, you know where the story will lead (or most of it anyway - the end managed to surprise me) but that different world is there.

Some of the characters are exaggerated to the point of a caricature - Tumi for example is so 2-dimensional that in some places I was loosing even the sense of the second dimension; her constant whining about Don's inability (or maybe lack of desire) to become more and her trust in him are almost comical. The Visagie brothers are more types than real people. On the other hand their mother and their ex-maid, turned helper Magda are so exotic that you cannot stop wondering if they are not based on real people - there is a sense of the different and the unknown in them that adds that additional dimension. At the same time Don and Kristin are fully realized, with their complex backstories and thoughts (and as any normal person with their faults and issues). Even if their story is cliched, it works to some extent.

The author's style is a mix between second and third person narrative, with a few notable moments when he is talking directly to the reader. And this works better than anything else - it adds to the exotic feeling of the whole text. I had not read a lot of African literature so I am not sure how common that is but it is an interesting way to differentiate and highlight some places.

And somewhere between the storyline and the annoying characters, lays the real character of the story - the South Africa of now, a country trying to change but getting stuck in the middle, with problems that are unique for it and some that are the same as anywhere else. I wish Mda had spent more time on this than on the banal story - but then I guess the character story was supposed to be the story. And I suspect the fact that I am not a big fan of contemporary fiction did not help my reading of the book either. Still the novel is worth checking, despite its flaws.

>108 An interesting review. I'm sorry this didn't turn out that great: from the story, it sounds like an interesting premise that could have been well worth the read. I don't know of a lot of fiction from contemporary South Africa (the only other recent South African writer that I've read is Lauren Beukes, whose work I enjoyed).

>19 reva8:

It still is worth reading if you are not from the region though - and after reading a book about Africa earlier this year, some things and nuances actually clicked very nicely in min mind. I'll try another of Mda's books one of those days - I liked the style enough for that.

104. The Flicker Men by Ted Kosmatka

Type: Novel
Length: 338 pages
Original Language: English
Original Publication: 2015
Genre: Science Fiction
Part of Series: N/A
Format: Softcover/ ARC
Publisher: Henry Holt and Co.
Finished: 18 July 2015
Rating:

According to some of the theories in quantum mechanics, waves collapse only if someone observes them (oversimplification of the science but all that needs to be known in order to understand this book). Add a scientists that suddenly decides to repeat an old experiment -- and somehow manages to break reality in the process. Just like with his previous novel ("Prophet of Bones"), Kosmatka takes a real scientific discovery, adds a few SF-inal elements (or are they?), sprinkle with action and beings that pretend to be humans, a few what ifs and then hits the on button of a mixer. And then let it run for a bit.

The end result is somewhat fragmented novel that seems to be trying to be too many things at the same time. A scientist after a nervous breakdown is hired from a corporation and given free reign of what he wants to do. And with no real reason, he decides to go after the quantum mechanics postulates for the wave collapse. The experiment ends up as expected but then something unexpected happens and it turns out that not everyone can collapse the wave. Which should not be possible. And apparently, there are people that already knew that - and they really wish to stop the world from learning about them (or about the people that cannot collapse the wave). And the race is on - the scientist is on the run, there is a resistance to help him, people die, experiments start getting weird results and according to some, the world is now broken. And somewhere in the middle of it is hiding the truth about the creation of Earth and its future role in the universe.

It is an uneven novel - some parts work better than others and even if the science and the what if scenarios are interesting, they seem to be thrown almost haphazardly - almost as if the author was afraid that the readers will be bored so he had to keep throwing more and more at them. And if he had stopped at that, it would have actually worked. But he had to add the action scenes - and they read as a story that you had read before, as a story which you know where it will lead; they feel like a filler.

At the end of the day, I am glad that I read the book. It was entertaining and made me want to read more about the new developments in physics. Which may not have been the goal but still is a good result. But I really wish that Kosmatka will decide to write a book that does not try to mix thrillers and SF -- because the mix simply does not come off even.

>20 AnnieMod: Fair enough! Bookmarking it for later.

50. The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August by Claire North

Type: Novel
Length: 405 pages
Original Language: English
Original Publication: 2014
Genre: Science Fiction
Part of Series: N/A.
Format: Kindle
Publisher: Redhook
Finished: 11 April 2015
Rating:

Immortality and multiple lives are old tropes in science fiction. And after a while, all the stories start to sound the same. But in this sea of sameness, Claire North (or if we want to use her real name - the quite accomplished author Catherine Webb) managed to find a new story.

When Harry August is born in 1918, nothing marks him as different. He lives his life. He dies. And then he is born again. At the same time, in the same year. When he is a few years old, he remembers his previous life. And when he eventually dies, the story happens again. And again. 15 times in the novel; with no end in sight.

A it turns out, he is not the only one and once a new Ourobouran is found, he (or she) is taken care of. And as all of them get born at the same time every time, messages can be passed forward (from an old man to a child) or backwords (from a child speaking to an old man/woman that is dying and will pass the message when they are reborn).

If this was all that was in the story, it would still be a charming story. But North added another layer by having someone that is trying to destroy the Ourobourans -- forever. Because even if they can keep being reborn, there is a way to kill them. And make it stick.

The structure of the novel is not exactly linear - Harry is narrating his lives so he jumps between lives here and there. And in each life, WWII and the followup of it always happens, even if Harry participate in different ways. And he needs 15 lives to get to a point where he can save the people like him - from a treat that noone sees coming.

For a while, in the middle of the book, the story drags a bit - there is no way not to if you want to see the differences between the lives. But as a whole novel it works beautifully. I almost wish that North had made a series out of it instead of finishing it in one volume - but then the shortness of the text adds to the magic.

Highly recommended even for people that do not like SF.

107. Speaking in Bones by Kathy Reichs

Type: Novel
Length: 304 pages
Original Language: English
Original Publication: 2015
Genre: Crime
Part of Series: Temperance Brennan (18)
Format: Paperback/ARC
Publisher: Bantam
Finished: 23 July 2015
Rating:

Note to myself - the series and the books are very different. Not I did not know that starting the book but somehow I had forgotten just how different they are. I like both - for different reasons.

At the start of the book, Tempe is about to catch a plane for Canada, still trying to decide if she wants to accept Ryan's marriage proposal. And then, just as it happens a lot to her, a dead person drives her attention elsewhere. Or someone that may be dead anyway. Partially to delay the answer and partially because she is really interested, she decides to investigate the missing young woman - which she believes to have pieces of already in storage.

Religious cults, a priest that is not what he looks like, an actual murder, surprising behaviour from an old friend (if we can call Slidell that), a new acquaintance that seems to be happy to listen to her and bones. Nothing unusual for a story from the series. Add Daisy and her erratic behaviour and it is what you expect after so many books in the series.

I am not sure if it will be a good start for anyone that had not read the series before (or for anyone expecting Bones' like story) but if you had been reading the series, it is a solid entry. And now I need to wait probably a year about the next one...

108. All Star Comics Archives, Volume 1

Type: Collected Comics
Length: 270 pages/ 4 issues
Original Language: English
Original Publication: Collected edition: 1991/ Comics: 1940-1941
Genre: Superhero
Part of Series: All Star Comics - Archives, All Star Comics 3-6
Format: Hardcover
Publisher: DC Comics
Finished: 24 July 2015
Rating:

When you read a book with collected comics from the 40s, you need to be prepared for both the style and the cheesiness. After all - they were marketed and written for kids and this collections shows it.

Issue 3 which opens this collection is the issue that gives the world the Justice Society of America - the first (I believe?) superhero team. But if you expect a joint adventure, you will be very disappointed. In that first issue, the charter members of the Society (The Flash, The Green Lantern, The Spectre, The Hawkman, Dr. Fate, The Hour Man, The Sandman and The Atom) meet for the first time and decide to tell each other stories of their war against the criminals. The lack of Batman and Superman is obvious but at that time they have their own books - so no need to add them in yet another collected books (all other books that DC publishes at the time contain the separate adventures of a lot of different heroes). The stories are classic tales with heroes that you know (although everyone is introduced; each adventure drawn with the specific style and lettering usually used for that specific hero. In a way, it is a patched issue and at the time probably noone realized what it will end up being. And then there is Johnny Thunder - annoying, unknown (to me anyway) and added for some unknown reason - with his lack of control of his special talent, he is so different from anyone else.

And while issue 3 was readable enough, issue 4 summons the newly created society to Washington and they are sent to fight the Fifth column. Everyone has their own adventure, everyone does their own things. Calling the style old-fashioned will be an offense to the words. And even knowing that it was written for children, it feels didactic and forced. With Europe just getting in the throes of WWII, this is somewhat expected. But still...

Issue 5 sees a master criminal called X (ok, the early creators of comics are not even bothering to invent names) decides to obliterate the society because they are way too effective against his operations. Each of the heroes end up having their own adventure and it is as good of a story as you expect from the era - cheesy, full of plot holes and silly - but solid in its own way.

And then DC decided that the Flash is getting his one book as well so he is moved to a "honorary member" (as are Batman and Superman) and the annoying Johnny Thunder gets his chance to become a member. Of course he almost manages to bungle a very easy job and it requires every single one of the heroes to go and try to save him before he is saved. By the end of the story, he is a member. And he is still annoying.

If you have issues with women that live only for their men and stupid criminals and superheroes that are so cheeky that you wonder how anyone buys what they are saying, you should not be reading this book. But if you want to see how the things started, it is what it is.

I thought for a while how to rate this book. I loved it as a history of the comics team but it has flows. On the other hand, a book does not exist in vacuum so I am rating based on the collection itself and the comics in the context of the time.

109. Black Jack, Vol. 3 by Osamu Tezuka

Type: Collected Manga
Length: 318 pages
Original Language: Japanese
Publication: Collected edition: 2009/ Individual issues in Japanese: 1973-1983
Genre: Medical; SF
Part of Series: Black Jack, Volume 3
Format: Paperback
Publisher: Vertical
Finished: 24 July 2015
Rating:

Another 15 stories from the long running series. Pinoko is as annoying as always although in this volume she is almost bearable. This time around, Black Jack gets to Australia, sees one of his mentors die (after failing to save him), operates on himself, ends up in hospital (and almost get killed there from a doctor that really do not like him) and things go as usual. The very first story in this collection tackles the old story of the successful children and the ones that are perceived the bad ones - and how this separation is meaningless.

In some of the stories, he still asks for a lot of money but only when someone can afford it. In most cases, he is the usual doctor with a heart of gold. It's a solid entry in a solid series - and even if I usually do not like Manga, I quite enjoy this one.

61. The Dying Hours by Mark Billingham

Type: Novel
Length: 387 pages
Original Language: English
Original Publication: 2013
Genre: Crime
Part of Series: Tom Thorne (11)
Format: Hardcover
Publisher: Atlantic Monthly Press
Finished: 08 June 2015
Rating:

The novel opes shortly after the previous one closes - with Tom getting demoted for his creative handling of the case in the previous book. He looses his Detective status but he is still an Inspector - which considering the years of not really following protocol and dismissing authority is almost a surprise - he could have ended up demoted all the way down to a street cop after all. The only good thing seems to be Helen - who is now in Tom's life and they are trying to build something of a relationship.

Of course the biggest issue with him being demoted is that he don't have his usual team. Which does not mean that he won't work with them of course - there will not be a novel without them. Although it will take a bit of a creativity to pull it off. Which is exactly what Tom Thorne is known about after all.

A series of suicides make Tom wonder if there isn't something sinister behind them. A Detective dismisses his concerns but him being himself, he decides to pursue the cases - calling favors from his old team, from Hendricks and from anyone he knows. It looks like he does not care about his career anymore; but he also does not seem to care about the careers of his friends. Anyone that had read the series up to this moment knows that all this will backfire at some point, not very clear when and how but the team was never lucky in that regard.

By the end of the book, Thorne will be proven right (of course) and he will be almost killed (anyone surprised?) but the careers of everyone in the team will remain unclear for a bit.

It is a good entry in a long running series. Because of the circumstances, it is a somewhat unusual book - I was missing the usual interactions of the team. But things always change in real life so in a way a book like that was expected - Tom could not have continued to be almost untouchable.

As always, the book closes the story of the crime but leaves the characters' stories open - this time with everyone's careers in jeopardy.

110. The Bones Beneath by Mark Billingham

Type: Novel
Length: 376 pages
Original Language: English
Original Publication: 2014
Genre: Crime
Part of Series: Tom Thorne (12)
Format: Hardcover
Publisher: Atlantic Monthly Press
Finished: 25 July 2015
Rating:

Tom Thorne is a London cop - and all of the books in the series, London is always there in the background, giving life and character to the stories. This novel turns out to be different.

After the previous book, Tom is reinstated as Detective Inspector and reunited with his old team. But at the same time he receives a weird task - which puts all other consequences of the previous book on hold and gets him out from London. Which he would have hated even of it was not because of Stuart Nicklin.

Thorne's nemesis, Stuart Nicklin, decides to admit to an old murder and offers to show where the body is - but only if Thorne takes him to Bardsey Island, a place he had escaped from once in his youth. Bardsey Island, off the coast of Wales, is one of the most remote islands in UK - one I had never heard of. Billingham added some information about the island and of course inside of the story, some changes from reality are made but it is a nice introduction to a place that people would not know about.

But let's get back to the novel and the story. Nicklin insists on bringing one of his prison friends with him and the police decides to agree (not that they seem to have any choice). So Thorne picks his team - Holland and Sam Karim and Wendy Marhkam - and goes on a trip. Keaton is left home to deal with relatives and to try to figure out what is happening really. Of course this being Nicklin, not everything is as it appears to be. What seems to be a pretty straightforward "discover the bones and solve an old murder" novel is interrupted by chapters about abduction and murder. It also contains chapters in the past, showing how Nicklin escaped the previous time but these are logical. The other ones, the dark ones, take a while to be explained. You know something bad is happening, you know that it ties to the story but even this way, it feels like a punch when you finally realize what really is happening.

It is a masterfully constructed novel. What would feel like a gimmick in the hands of a worse storyteller works beautifully. It is one of those stories that you cannot read twice - or at least you cannot feel about it the same way twice - for the second time you will know where it is leading. And it has nothing to do with the murder or the case - it all turns out personal for the team.

At the end, the careers of a lot of our team are still in an unknown status - the resolving of the last book's end is delayed for the next one. And I have a bad suspicion that we will be hearing from Nicklin again.

111. Life After Life by Kate Atkinson

Type: Novel
Length: 530 pages
Original Language: English
Original Publication: 2013
Genre: Science Fiction (~y)
Part of Series: Todd Family (Book 1)
Format: Kindle
Publisher: Little, Brown and Company; A Reagan Arthur Book
Finished: 26 July 2015
Rating:

It took me almost two months to go through the first half of the book; it took me three days to finish it. This initial delay had nothing to do with the quality of the book though - not in the negative way anyway. I just needed time between the lives, time to think and assimilate. But at the end, I could not put the book down - and maybe in a different time, I would have read it a lot faster. As it is - I almost wish I am just starting it again - for the first time.

Meet Ursula Todd. Born in 1910, dying in... well, it is complicated. You see, the book follows her story through her different lives - where things go the same up to a certain point and then diverge. And this divergence leads to different life and sometimes a different death.

The first half of the book shows the life of an English girl that has enough money to be comfortable. She dies from fever, she dies in the sea; she survives the fever, she survives the sea. Every choice leads to somewhere - some choices made by her, some made by others. That part of the novel is a beautiful rendering of England during WWI and between the wars - even if some of the stories move to after WWII, the war is there mainly as a time more than really influencing anything. And somewhere there, Ursula start getting premonitions, she seems to think she knows what is about to happen. She does not remember her full lives but she remembers pieces in some cases and she acts on them - although in some cases the end result ends up being worse than the original.

And then in the second half of the book, it is the WWII years. Ursula dies in the raids, Ursula survives them, Ursula helps as a warden, Ursula end up as a German citizen - pretty much any possible permutation is covered. And a lot of those end up badly - one way or another. London and Berlin during WWII are two places everyone had read about but Atkinson somehow manages to find a way to make them new and exciting; seeing the connections between lives is fascinating. The action that saves her life in one life is what kills her in another; a chance meeting changes everything. Until almost the end when she seems to remember all, she seems to know why she has been having these multiple lives; until the day she lives the life that may have had saved Europe and the world.

The novel is as much a history of Ursula as it is a history of the English family; a way to explore the possible histories of the family. A single novel that tells the story of a lot of different people - by using the same people. It's one of those novels that stay with you, that make you want more. And at the same time - you know that it finished where it should have - exploring a history without Hitler to lead the war is not something that belongs to a family story.

Highly recommended.

>17 DieFledermaus:

Yeah. I hate hitting reading blocks - I read across almost all genres and finding something different to read is not always that easy. Worked this time though :)

>29 AnnieMod:. That is a great review of Life After Life, Annie. The book has so many layers. When I first read it, I couldn't put it down and yet didn't want it to end. I re-read it recently before reading A God in Ruins, and I was glad that I did. I wanted to refresh my memory before reading the second book, but found I also got even more out if it.

>31 NanaCC:

Thanks :)
I am not sure I want to reread it now. It was pretty interesting to see the parallels between lives and I probably missed some of the internal connections but... maybe in 10 or 20 years, I will decide to reread it and find them again.

It is kinda interesting that I managed to read two different books on what is basically the same topic in the last few months - The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August and Life after Life. The details are very different (in terms of what is remembered and how it works); the end result is very different (saving the ones that live life after life vs saving the world) but they are two variations of the same story - what if you could live your life over and over again. Ursula is unique; Harry is part of a community (well... kinda). The two books kinda compliment each other - covering similar grounds and having read both, I appreciate both more than I would have if I had read just one of them. I am not sure if I make much sense here :)

Enjoying your reviews Annie. The Tom Thorne series sounds a goodie.

>33 baswood:

:) Barry, I think we talked about Kellerman in a previous thread and just how grizzly his latest are? Billingham is a lot milder and a lot less shocking - not that there isn't enough violence and what's not but it is tuned down. It is a bit British vs American to some extent. Plus in Kellerman's case he needs to keep dialing it up while Billingham has the characters lives at the front and as such does not need to make it grisly. Don't get me wrong - it is a crime novel, it won't ever compete for the Agatha Awards but it is a lot less bloody and gruesome than most of the American alternatives. Plus Thorne is a character you cannot not like - the guy breaks every rule in the book (for good reasons) and pays for it... :)

60. Superman: Day of Doom by Dan Jurgens

Type: Collected Comics
Length: 96 pages/ 4 issues
Original Language: English
Original Publication: 2003
Genre: Superhero
Part of Series: The Death of Superman (kinda)
Format: softcover
Publisher: DC Comics
Finished: 07 June 2015
Rating:

In 1992/1993, the Death of Superman had been the biggest event in the DC Comics lineup. Deaths in comics are almost never final but this is before the era of shocking events following by even more shocking reappearances so it was quite a big deal. 10 years later, Jurgens returned to the same story with a miniseries - a story set 10 stories after the original story.

In the intervening 10 years a lot had happened in the way comics were written and the pure human stories had become a lot more common. In that case, the story is about how Superman's death affected ordinary people. And in between this story shows up another - about what happened to ordinary people 10 years before that - Superman returned but the devastation that was caused by the fight with Doomsday and the disasters that followed had seen a lot of death and injured people; a lot of ruined lives and families.

Of course, that being Jurgens, we also need another story behind it - disgruntled idiot that wreck havoc in the same places where Doomsday had - all in order to show everyone how evil Superman is. Or something like that. The story does end on a high note - with a pretty standard existential question of "will the world be safer if Superman did not exist?" but then it is expected from this kind of work.

It could have a lot better story but I still liked it. It's a nice epilogue to the old story and I only wish it had concentrated more on normal people. But then I am not sure how much people would have liked it.

Now I want to reread the original story again...

112. Time of Death by Mark Billingham

Type: Novel
Length: 434 pages
Original Language: English
Original Publication: 2015
Genre: Crime
Part of Series: Tom Thorne (13)
Format: Hardcover
Publisher: Atlantic Monthly Presss
Finished: 29 July 2015
Rating:

And a second book in a row from the series that is not set in London. This time the team is also missing - Hendricks shows up at one point but noone from the others is even mentioned, let alone the problems from 2 books ago (when everyone went on a limb for Tom) resolved. Maybe next book.

This time around it is St. Valentine day and somehow Tom Thorne had decided to take Helen out of town on a romantic vacation in a beautiful part of the country - they are even discussing escaping for a bit out of the country (ok - what happened to Thorne and who is that guy?). Of course things are bound to turn badly - a case of missing girls in Helen's birth town and arrest of the husband of an old friend of hers send the pair to it and in the middle of a new investigation, old problems and small town mentality.

The inspector that handles the case thinks that he had solved it, Thorne disagrees, Hendricks comes to the rescue and by the end of the book Thorne gets beaten again (no surprises there), learns a secret from Helen's past and solves the case.

I missed the London team. The novel was great and it was nice meeting the 3 characters that I had grown to really like but I missed the rest. And I am not even going to start on how sloppy Helen's reason to help her friend after so many years is - it works, it explains a few things and her chosen career but it is a cliche that I really did not expect from Billingham. And yes - cliches are cliches because everyone is using them but still... it should have been anything else.

At the end I did enjoy the novel - and the resolution of the crime. Now the year long wait for the next one...

113. Bloodchild and Other Stories by Octavia E. Butler

Type: Collection
Length: 144 pages - 5 stories and 2 essays
Original Language: English
Original Publication: 1995
Genre: Science Fiction mainly
Part of Series:N/A
Format: Hardcover
Publisher: Four Walls Eight Windows
Finished: 30 July 2015
Rating:

The short collections contains an introduction, 5 stories and 2 essays. The author also added notes at the end of each story about why she wrote the story and what she was thinking when writing it. According to the cover, these are all the stories that Butler had published up to the year when the book had published (1995).

In the introduction, Octavia E. Butler explains that she does not like writing short stories. Considering that she is pretty good at it, that comes as a bit of a surprise. But she also admits that some stories need to be short stories - they cannot work otherwise.

"Bloodchild" (1984) would have been classified straight into the horror genre if it was published today. It is technically a science fiction story - humans living on a different planet together with an alien race. Butler complains in her note that too many people read this story as a slavery story and I am not surprised - this is how it sounds to me as well. Yes - it is somewhat of a love story but the humans are forced to help their hosts to survive. It is extremely disturbing story but at the same time it is also a exploration of how humanity can live in a planet where it is not the race at the top of the evolutionary chain. It is an ugly picture - but it is a strangely good story. And it deserves all the awards it had won. And it is one of the most terrifying stories I had read - not because it is pushed too much into the horror realm but because it sounds as something that might be.

"The Evening and the Morning and the Night"(1987) is a cautionary tale about the result of drugs that had not be fully tested. Of course, it takes a while for that story to emerge - it starts with something that resembles zombies. It will also end up as a zombie story - but from the type that does not sound stale and similar to every story someone had read. I loved this story - it was subtle enough (for the most part) even if it, as much as the first one, really belong to the horror genre. It is a story about blessings and curses and where the line between them is. And then in the notes, Butler explains the science she used and mixed together and added a list of recommended works if someone wants to explore some of the issues. This note was at least as entertaining as the story itself.

"Near of Kin" (1979) is a strange story. It is very well written but I do not understand what it is making in a book of science fiction story. I really disliked where it went and why - even if I can recognize a good story, I really did not like it. The note about it was also quite disturbing. I am not sure that I can ever think of incest in a good way.

"Speech Sounds" (1983) is another story that will probably stay with me for a very long time. In a future where a disease had damaged the human brains, people had lost the ability to talk, recognize speech or read. Some rare individuals still have some of those abilities but most of the humans had slipped back in time. And in the middle of this, Rye decides to visit her family - or at least the area where the family used to be. Things go wrong on the way there and in a few short hours she will find and loose a friend; and then find the future and hope. It is a marvelous little story - you know how awful that past is but it still manages to be such a hopeful story.

"Crossover" (1971) is hardly genre story. It gets credit as genre but for me it is more mainstream than a lot of what passes for mainstream lately. Hallucinations (even when it is not clear if they are hallucinations when you talk to them) are not genre. On the other hand, it does not really matter. The story is a pretty bleak counterpart to the previous one - where the other started bleak and ended up hopeful, this one starts bleak and goes bleaker. I am not sure how much I understood of this story - and if I did not miss anything but it was a short and bitter examination of a relationship that had ended abruptly and a life that had pushed a woman to her limits. And yet she somehow persists.

The two essays had also been published before:

"Positive Obsession" (1989 as "Birth of a Writer") - autobiography in 10 pages (small ones at that). The love of reading, the love of writing and how you become a science fiction writer when you are black and a woman. These days authors publish books about that. Butler used the short form - and did it a lot better than a lot of the long books I had read.

"Furor Scribendi" (1993) - and almost as a companion piece comes the advice piece - the advice to people that want to be writers. Short, sweet and powerful..

And then in the "about the author section", there is a quote from Butler: "I write about people who do extraordinary things. It just turned out that it was called science fiction." And that is probably one of the best definitions of the genre I grew up with.

Highly recommended and I need to correct the absolutely unforgivable fact that I had never read any of her novels.

114. Falling in Love by Donna Leon

Type: Novel
Length: 264 pages
Original Language: English
Original Publication: 2015
Genre: Crime
Part of Series: Commissario Brunetti (24)
Format: Hardcover
Publisher: Atlantic Monthly Press
Finished: 1 August 2015
Rating:

24th book in a long running series relies on the already known characters and actions. That's part of the reason I like series - you can have a big universe in a single novel. And in the case of Commissario Brunetti series, one of those main characters is the city of Venice.

And we meet an old friend - Flavia Petrelli is back in town and getting in trouble again. This time noone dies almost until the end of the book - which is unusual. Which does not make it less of a crime book - just not one that deals with murder.

Flavia seems to have a stalker (even if it takes forever for the team to call it that) that sends flowers and demands attention. It all looks just annoying or just a bit disturbing until someone get pushed down the steps of a bridge. Brunetti decides to follow the case, despite it not being his job exactly and things starting to unravel.

Add to this a production of Tosca, a semi-strike in the police department and the world of Venice - with its streets and canals and the people that live there - Guido's family, Paola's parents, the policemen and policewomen of the city.

If you had read the rest of the series, it is a good entry in the series. But if you do not know the characters, they may sound a bit unfinished.

And after finishing the book, I almost want to go back and reread the early books in the series - in their proper order.

I have got to read something by Octavia Butler.

115. Two Years Eight Months and Twenty-Eight Nights by Salman Rushdie

Type: Novel
Length: 286 pages
Original Language: English
Original Publication: 2015
Genre: Fantasy/Mythical/Speculative Fiction
Part of Series: N/A
Format: Softcover/ ARC
Publisher: Random House
Finished: 6 August 2015
Rating:

It's a chronicle of a war that was lead 1000 years ago. It is a love story. It is a chronicle of our times. It is the story of the last time when the Fairy world touched ours. It is a story about language and stories. It is a story about the war between faith and reason. It is a story about humanity. It is none of these and it is all of them.

Rushdie's narrator lives 1000 years in the future although we do not know that from the beginning. Neither we know that it is a war story. Rushdie weaves the tale slowly, the same way as Scheherazade waved hers (and in case the title does not point to the direct connection, the title when calculated in nights is actually 1001 nights - a number that turns out to be of importance in the world of myth... which may just be our world).

The story opens 800 years in our past to show us the love story that starts it all and that leads to humanity changing and being able to tell the story so many centuries later. A jinnia (a female jinn) falls in love (despite her kind not usually being able to fall in love) and marries a philosopher. A brood of children follow and then the man abandons her - and then after she returns back to her own realm, the doors between the worlds are closed. Until our time.

A freaky storm brings an age of strangenesses. A time in which people with lobeless ears seem to start getting weird powers and the laws of physics seems to start bending and changing. A baby that is better than any lie-detector in the world; a comics writer that ends up with the powers of his invented character, a gardener that walks on air (and cannot switch it off so it becomes troublesome), a woman that can throw thunderbolts from her hands and so on and so on. The fantastical seems to be bleeding into the reality and the boundary flickers and changes. And then the dark jinns, the great Ifrits decide to come to Earth. And our Princess Dunia (for the jinnia that started all this turns out to be a powerful princess) needs to start a war. Add a pair of dead philosophers (one of them the one that started all that all those centuries before) and things start to take shape.

Rushdie never uses real names for places and countries (except for the ones that are needed for the story like Spain and New York) but it is not hard to recognize which lands are hiding under the initials; neither it is hard to see the nowadays events being recasted and reexplained in the reality of that world. It is as much a story of our world as it is of the imaginary one created from the author; the war on terrorism and the war that Dunia leads are the same - as are the actions of everyone involved. It is a contemporary novel wrapped into the fantastic; a legend showing the reality we all live in. The great literature of the world and the myths of the East are used to add another dimension to the story. And by the end of the novel you still remember places and phrases and sentences that opened a door to another place and time and makes you want to read more - both from the novel and from the works it uses for references or in passing.

It a marvelous novel - a Chinese box of stories inside stories that never end and just give birth to new stories. It's a novel that will hold different message to every reader - based on what they had read and learned - and that has the ability to shift and change and add new meanings when you concentrate on different parts.

Highly recommended!

Great review! I've never read any Rushdie and this book sounds intriguing. Do you think it's a good place to start or should I read some of his earlier works first?

Great review. I haven't read Rushdie in decades, but this might bring me back to him.

I'm glad to see that you enjoyed Two Years Eight Months and Twenty-Eight Nights as much as I did.

>41 japaul22: Thanks. You can start from this one if you want - they are independent (but then I had read only one of his before that one)

>42 rebeccanyc: I loved Midnight Children when I read it a few years ago- never got around to reading anything else by him. I suspect that I will read more in the next few months and years

>43 StevenTX: Not very hard to like it :)

I just want to say that I love Garry Disher.

...AND, it's nice to read your comments on the Rushdie. Intriguing. We have an arc of it banging around the house somewhere. Hard to ignore your five-star rating!

>45 avaland:

Disher is a new discovery for me - one of those chance encounters of books in a library - and I really enjoy his style. :) 6 down, seems to have a few more published in the USA to go (outside of that series).

Rushdie won't be for everyone. The book's prose is extremely flowery - and even in that, you can see the hint of the East. But then so was Midnight Children so I think it is just his style. And it just hit in all the right spots for me. Thus the rating. And the comments. Plus - I stopped worrying long time ago if people will agree with my reviews:) I will probably be reviewing The Buried Giant this weekend - I read it during the time I was kinda away from here and there is a lot of parallels to be made between these two books. They cannot be more different but they also have something that ties them together...

116. Happy are the Happy by Yasmina Reza

Type: Novel
Length: 148 pages
Original Language: French
Translator: John Cullen
Original Publication: 2013 French/2014 English
Genre: Contemporary
Part of Series: N/A
Format: Hardcover
Publisher: Other Press
Finished: 6 August 2015
Rating:

A novel in 21 vignettes - some of them a bit longer than the traditional format but still short enough to use the word. Told in the voices of 18 interconnected people - family members, friends, doctors. It's a story of loss and family - and it does not work.

The format requires the author to be able to make the voices distinctive, to give them something special - in the thinking, in the expressions, in something. And that is missing from the book - you can read any part and not being able to recognize who is speaking - the story itself shows who the character is but the distinctive voices are missing. Add to this a few instances where the author pushes so hard with the only reason to shock and I wonder why the author chose the format at all. Considering that she is a play-writer, it is even more bizarre - she should be good at writing different characters.

Most of the women are weak and submissive - even when they seem to have a personality, it gets buried and almost treated as a fault. The men, all of them, are broken in their own ways. Either France is a terrible place these days or Reza decided to show a set of characters that are more flawed than usual.

117. God help the child by Toni Morrison

Type: Novel
Length: 178 pages
Original Language: English
Original Publication: 2015
Genre: Contemporary
Part of Series: N/A
Format: Hardcover
Publisher: Alfred A. Knopf
Finished: 7 August 2015
Rating:

She calls herself Bride. It was not the name her mother gave her but they were never close and never talk these days. When she was born, she was a lot darker than her parents and that caused the father to run and the mother to teach her that she is inferior.

He calls himself Booker - and that was the name given to him by parents that named their kids alphabetically. She saw a child raped when she was a child and had to keep quiet not to loose her home. He lost his older brother to a child abuser when he was young and had to keep quiet because his family wanted to move on. Their childhood made them what they are and when they met, it made their relationship almost impossible despite the attraction and the love. Until things changed.

She had to face a choice she made when she was a child, a choice that changed a woman's life. He had to face the choice she makes now. Their histories stops them from confiding in each other and makes them feel alone in a world full of people. It will take a savage beating and one of them getting mad enough to try to follow the other to start untangling the mess of old half-truths and child trauma and find a way to deal with them. It will take a death and a near death to get them together.

It is a novel about child trauma and what childhood experiences can cause. A novel about what children can do for their parents' love. A story about how experiences shape us and change us.

The story is filled also with secondary characters which are there almost to prove a point - they feel black and white to the full color rendition of Bride and Booker - a woman from her life, a woman from his present and past, her best friend, the family that helps her (complete with another abused and saved child). But that does not make them less important - they make the main character more pronounced.

It is a hard novel to read in some places - sexual abuse is always a hard topic but when children are involved (in this case both as victims and as viewers) it is even harder. Listening to Bride describing the rape she saw when she was little is hard; seeing Booker's anger at his brother's abuser is as bad. Both the main characters were never abused but it was in their life and it marked them. And under that all is the color of Bride's skin - in a changing world, it still matter. You wonder if she would be that damaged if her mother had not decided to teach her how the world works; is she had not made sure that Bride knows her place in the world. You want to hate the mother but she is part of her own world - she did what she thought was the best for her daughter. That turned Bride into a young woman that is fighting for what she wants but at the same time really messed up her ideas of what is important.

It is a powerful story about how childhood experiences influence someone's life and about the hidden traumas - you do not need to have been abused in order for it to mark and define your life. Something with the pacing of the novel is somewhat wrong - the start is clunky (as it is the first Morrison I read, I was wondering why she is so liked considering that prose) but then it picks up and evens out and the style is pretty readable after that.

118. Marvel Masterworks: The X-Men Vol. 1

Type: Collected Comics
Length: 233 pages/ 10 issues
Original Language: English
Original Publication: 1963-65
Genre: Superhero
Part of Series: X-Men
Format: Hardcover
Publisher: Marvel
Finished: 07 August 2015
Rating:

Once upon a time X-Men were not part of the cultural landscape of the Western world. Back in 1963, they appeared for the first time and the rest is history. This collection collects the first 10 issues of the series and contains quite a lot of surprises if you do not know the history of the Marvel mutants.

The initial lineup consist of Professor Xavier as the leader of the team, Beast, Angel, Iceman and Cyclops. In the first issue Jean Grey shows up and ends up the fifth member of the team - Marvel Girl. Knowing where her story will lead makes those beginning days pretty interesting. No Wolverine (surprising for someone like me that grew up with him being a part of the lineup)

But let's talk about the issues. The very first issue introduces us to Magneto - the mutant that is all that the professor is not - where Xavier is trying to save mankind, Magneto wants to destroy them so the race of Homo Superior (aka the Mutants) can rule the world. Some 50 odd years later, they are still at it.

It will take a few issues for the other recognizable names to show up - Toad and Mastermind (both of them helping Magneto willingly), Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver (not so willingly). The two groups fight more than once and it is the latter two, the siblings Pietro and Wanda, that fail to make sure that the X-Men are beaten (and vice versa - the evil ones survive because the good guys do not want to kill the siblings). We also meet mutants like The Blob (twice - once joining the X-Men, once the evil ones and ending up with neither) and The Vanisher.

One of the other surprises was how often the Marvel books crossed over in those times - Namor, the Submariner shows up (and manages to complain about the Fantastic Four and Hulk) and the Avengers show up (again complaining about the Fantastic Four). I've always thought that the crossing over was a thing from the 80s and 90s but this collection showed something else. And in issue 9, we see the first appearance in the Marvel universe of Lucifer.

The first issues are a bit tedious - too much training, too little actions but once the Evil Mutants show up, the stories end up being closer to what you would expect. It is still very 60s (when the cook leaves for a day, it is Jean that ends up cooking and serving wearing an apron and the boys are all in love with Jean (including the professor (ok, I did not see that one coming)); Cyclops and Jean love each other and are not ready to tell each other.

It's a good start of a series that will become so much more - and it was less cheesy than I expected (and don't read this the wrong way - it is cheese, just not as much as I expected.)

119. Shattered Pillars by Elizabeth Bear

Type: Novel
Length: 333 pages
Original Language: English
Original Publication: 2013
Genre: Fantasy
Part of Series: The Eternal Sky (2)
Format: Hardcover
Publisher: Tor
Finished: 9 August 2015
Rating:

NOTE: Spoilers for the first novel; almost no spoiler for that one.

If you had not read the first book in the trilogy, don't even try to read this book. It starts exactly where the previous finished and it sets the stage for the third one nicely. It is one long story - just split into three pieces. Technically each of the novels has its own stories to tell but the whole tapestry of Bear's novel is covered in the three books.

This book, the second in the trilogy, starts exactly where the previous finished: Temur, Samarkar, Hrahima and brother Hsiung in Asitaneh with Temur's grandfather Tesefahun, on their way to try to save Edene; Edene wandering around after she managed to escape and starting to realize that there is no free lunch and the ring she stole is not just a great helping tool but a cursed object. Meanwhile the plague in Tsarepheth is getting worse and Temur's uncle is trying to consolidate power while the Al-Sepehr keeps manipulating everyone to get the Rahazeen in power.

And as a middle book of a trilogy, its main job is to put all the people in the correct places for the big finale. Edene ends up being the easiest to get there (and there ends up being Erem - the old world that everyone believes not to exist anymore) - this is where the rings ends up being from and she ends up being the queen of the ghulim (it was about time for the Ghuls to make an appearance after all. Before the book is over, the djinn and dragons will also make an appearance). Her story continues in the realm of Erem and it almost feels like time is just marked - things do happen but she gets where she needs to be too fast and her story is almost expected at this point.

In the meantime Temur and his company go on a grand adventure - crossing mountains and seas, fighting and bribing, getting almost killed more than once. And in between all that we learn more about brother Hsiung (who finally has something to do) and Hrahima; and Samarkar and Temur continue their affair (and he finally learns that Edene is pregnant). And finally everyone acknowledges that Bansh is not just a mare.

Add to this an empress that finally realizes what she had done, the understanding of what the plagues is, Edene's tribe ending up in Tsarepheth and a volcano starting to erupt. And as if it is not enough, a saddle ends up where it should not have, a man get trapped in someone's head and Temur learns that he may be able to find his real name -- while at the same time learning to be a ruler without anyone to rule for now.0

By the end of the book, there is a baby born, a baby on the way and a baby colt with unusual coat. Everyone knows that all of these will be important - as will be the changing skies over areas that in some cases had never seen those skies. And Temur finally raises his banner.

It is a great continuance of the first volume - and I will be reading the third one shortly.

Enjoying your reviews Annie

Thanks Barry. :)

Catching up and impressed at all the diverse reading you're doing.

I always enjoy reading your comics reviews - lots of good background. Sometimes I've wondered about reading some for an upcoming movie or something, but it always seemed hopelessly daunting, what with all the years of backstories and retconning and such.

Really need to read some Octavia Butler, and you make the Rushdie sound very tempting. I think I read an excerpt of that one in the New Yorker and enjoyed it.

I read Death at La Fenice last year and liked it - although wow, 24 in the series now. Might be a good time to read #2 in the series since I'm in a bit of a book slump.

>53 DieFledermaus: Thanks

Part of the diversity comes from me not being able to settle into reading lately - I just need to hop genres or I get really bored. And then the library always manages to convince me to read something weird :) The book just sits there...

The big universes of the comics are convoluted and crazy - retcon on top of a retcon followed by another one. It is fun to read them if you can keep straight which reality has what...

Flavia shows one more time between that one and the first book (the fifth I think). It was kinda fun to meet her again - and if you remember her well from the previous books, she had changed - she had grown up in a way....

And here I am falling behind again - I need to start posting again - just busy at work and when I have time, I prefer to read than to write about reading. Meanwhile, I am back to reading some of the magazines that had been piling next to my bed - reviews of an issue of Folio Magazine and an issue of NYRB over in my Magazines thread if someone is interested (https://www.librarything.com/topic/196197). Should be posting some reviews later this and next week here as well.

>55 AnnieMod: "...just busy at work and when I have time, I prefer to read than to write about reading."

I hear that! I am currently 6 books/3 weeks behind on my reviews.

Catching up with your August posts. Very interesting about Rushdie. And I'm grateful to read your Morrison review of God Help the Child as I think knowing all that will help me approach the book. I plan to read it later this year.

The X-Men history in your review was so interesting to me. I only know them from early reader books for my son. They were actually fun to read about.

>56 ELiz_M:

A lot more than 6 for me - but I may be able to catch up... soonish. :)

>57 dchaikin:

Thanks, Dan. Morrison's is one of those books that you better come into prepared - I knew nothing about it before I read it (or about her style - did some reading after this and some of it makes me more prepared for her other books) and it was a harrowing read. I still would have read it - but I would have expected some of the ugliness. And I plan to read some more of her books.

120. Vile Bodies by Evelyn Waugh

Type: Novel
Length: 209 pages
Original Language: English
Original Publication: 1930
Genre: Contemporary
Part of Series: N/A (technically anyway)
Format: Hardcover
Publisher: Folio Society
Finished: 15 August 2015
Rating:

I like the period between the two great wars. Or I should probably say that I like he literature produced in that period. Waugh is one of those authors that manages to write something that gets lauded as comedy while presenting an almost complete picture of the world of that time. I cannot read his novels one after the other - in small doses I find him amusing and interesting; in big doses he is boring and repetitive in my mind.

The youth of London (upper class one of course) is the main character of the novel. Yes, there is a real protagonist (Adam Fenwick-Symes) who really wants to get married - but every time he gets enough money, he does something stupid and looses them. His fiancee is almost comically flippant about the problems and between the two of them, you are never sure who to like less. Add a dead body, a few misunderstandings and a lot of reversed fortunes and before you are ready for it, the novel is over.

It's a novel of the absurd. A reader today is missing some of the back-stories - Waugh had been writing for the world he knows, using real people for inspiration - people we do not know and cannot know. But even without that, the novel has that special brand of English humor that makes you want to read more. At the same time, it is not a novel that will make you a fan of his writing if you are not one already (or of the British humor at least).

122. Touch by Claire North

Type: Novel
Length: 426 pages
Original Language: English
Original Publication: 2015
Genre: Science Fiction
Part of Series: N/A
Format: Hardcover
Publisher: Redhook
Finished: 28 August 2015
Rating:

It all started with a murder - Josephine Cebula was killed at the steps of a station. Except that she was not alone - a ghost was using her body and the bullets were as much for her as they were for the ghost. The ghost managed to jump out and tell us the story (or that would have been an awfully short book).

North seems to be redefining the standard tropes of the genre one by one - the rebirth and reliving lives in her previous book, the possession and ghosts in this one. Ghosts here are not the non-corporal entities we are used to be reading about (well... not exactly anyway) - instead our ghosts are riding people - they move through touch and the host is just loosing the time - sometimes minutes, sometimes hours, sometimes years. And just like in the previous book, someone is trying to kill them all.

What follows is a chase through Europe - from one country to another, from one clue to another. The killer, the ones that are getting killed, the ones that are trying to survive. In a way it is the same novel as "The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August" - our main protagonist is trying to stay alive while someone unknown is trying to kill him and his kin while being functionally immortal. Of course that can be told for a lot of thrillers so that is not so surprising. But that comparison adds a layer to Touch that makes it a lot richer novel than it is on the surface.

But the novel is not just a thriller - it is also the story of loss and lack of family - being immortal also means not having a family and jumping between bodies means that having possessions becomes very hard. Under the thrill and the chase is the story of the people that cannot have what we take for a given. And that is what makes the novel actually good.

It is weaker than the previous novel by North but if you had never read the other one, maybe that one will work better. They tackle similar topics under very different circumstances - and while Harry August lived full lives (more than one), Kepler and his kin here leave fragmented ones, never at the same person or place for long; while Harry had to live through whatever life throws at him, Kepler could just go to another body. At the same time while Harry knew than he can send a message back or he can change the world the next time he is around, Kepler is moving only forward - mistakes cannot be fixed. In a way the two novels are mirror images of each other - two sides of the coin of immortality.

I will be very interested to see what North does next.

And bringing in a few things I posted elsewhere first (the whole point of this thread is to be my reading record, right? :)

M1. Folio Magazine - September 2015 - 48 pages, paper - read Sep 21, 2015

"Lo. Lee. Ta" by Michael Dirda - (don't read this if you had not read Lolita yet) - written in the style of those annoying introductions that tell you what is happening in the book before you read the book, at least this is not an introduction. And there is no way to write it in a different way - Dirda goes down to the way the novel is written, the ideas and the language, the way Nabokov had been thinking about the world and the readers. And mainly about the main story. It's almost a love letter to a book that Dirda calls Nabokov's love letter to the United States.

"An Artist in Provence" by Gerald Scarfe - the artist in question is Ronald Searle and Scarfe relays a memory of Searle - or I should say memories - the artist became Scarfe's hero when he was a boy and one day they met. The piece is heartfelt and honest and one of those small stories that you would have heard from your grandmother if it was about your family - the kind of memories that we all are too busy to listen to anymore

"Richard Feynman - A Very Curious Character" by Marcus Chown - and another memory piece. Chown had been one of Feyman's students but he does not talk only about his history with him - he writes a short biography of the man and scientist (a very short one) which makes you wish you had met Feyman.

"Darkness Made Visible: The Art of Annotation" by John Mullan - Alastair Fowler is one of the best known specialists on Paradise Lost and Folio had just published a Limited edition of his work - both the edited work and his commentary. Mullan's essay discusses that work - not the book as craftsmanship or an object but the scholarship and the love of Fowler for the work.

"The English Rubens with Jokes" by Jess Wilder - I've never heard the name of Beryl Cook before I read that essay. And after reading it, I find her an interesting artist that I want to know more about. I guess this shows that Jess Wilder had done the work they were asked to.

"On Abe Lincoln" by Jan Morris - everyone knows who Lincoln is. And everyone has an opinion on him. Jan Morris starts by admitting that he thought that the constant worshiping was too much. Time and experience intervene and the things change. So when the new collections need to be edited, Morris finds the way to do it. It is a personal story of his understanding of the American president and a story of Lincoln, all wrapped into one. And she somehow manages to involve grape jelly as well - and it fits the story.

"Madeleine and Meg" by Leonard S. Marcus - Marcus recalls an interview with Madeleine L'Engle - an interview that went from a disaster to a very enjoyable one. And in that memory, the author comes alive as a human being. Add some more notes about her and about her most popular heroine (Meg in the title is A Wrinkle in Time's Meg Murry of course) and it is yet another love letter to a book and an author.

I really wish Folio commissioned longer essays. On the other hand, part of the charm is that they are not the usual long-winded stories that never finish. So maybe the length is for the best.

M2. The New York Review of Books - October 8, 2015; Volume LXII, Number 15 - 60 pages, paper - read Sep 22-23, 2015

"Ukraine & Europe: What Should be Done?" by George Soros - of course Soros has an idea how all the problems of Europe can be solved - the fact that his previous one is now not workable is used to strengthen this new one. I suspect that he will have another one if that one also proves not to be viable. I remember Soros from the years of the collapsing economy of Bulgaria - he always had plans and always was ready to share... and none of them ever worked out. Not surprising that I cannot take him too seriously now.

"'Satanic Seduction' - Online" by Francine Prose discusses Joshua Cohen's "Book of Numbers" and has a lot to say about that story of a software company and its strange owner - and the success of the company - and the society that lives under a microscope. The parallel to the real world are obvious from the review, Prose does point out some of them, leaves the reader to see some. I am not sure if I will like the book and I am not planning to find out for now but the essay was pretty readable and enjoyable.

"Sargent & His People" by Jean Strouse - the biographical essay about John Singer Sargent was triggered by the exhibition of his portraits and its catalog. But Strouse almost does not mention either - they are used as anchors for telling the story of the artist. I don't think that I had seen any of his work before now and his life is fascinating - as are most of the lives of the artists of his generation. I don't think that I would ever read a book about him but that essay was informative and well-thought out and made me learn something new.

"TV vs. the Internet: Who Will Win" by Jacob Weisberg - reviewing two books (one claiming that TV will win; one claiming the opposite), Weisberg writes an essay about the future of TV, the way the landscape of TV had changed, the way the digital world had changed everything and so on. Nothing new, nothing that is not visible and clear for anyone that can think. The fact that books are published on the topic had always made me scratch my head; them being reviewed is not less of a head scratcher.

"The Amazing Inner Lives of Animals" by Tim Flannery is one of my favorite stories in this issue of NYRB. Reviewing two books: "Beyond Words: What Animals Think and Feel" by Carl Safina and "The Cultural Lives of Whales and Dolphins" by Hal Whitehead and Luke Rendell, Flannery talks about the members of the animal kingdom that seem to be closest to us in term of intelligence. Both books complement each other, the review and the additional details connect them even more. Even if you never read the books, the essay is entertaining and interesting and explains a lot about dolphins and elephants and wolves.

"Joan Didion: Risk & Triumph" by Joyce Carol Oates - the new biography of Didion gives Oates an excuse to write this essay. Maybe if I had heard of Didion before, I would have been more interested. Although I am not sure even in that case. It's a nice essay, very well written and researched but it did not really move me or make me want to learn more.

"The Pope & the Market" by William Nordhaus takes on the Pope's Laudato Si' - mainly to explain why the pope is wrong about the market and to show how important the market is for the global warming policies. I would have preferred for him to have just written a straight essay on the topic than using the Pope's work as a crutch - in places it almost sounds like looking for a reason to disagree with him. But the reasoning is good and interesting.

"Video Games: The Secret Life" by Gabriel Winslow-Yost is a review of 2 different books - half memoirs, half stories of the video games of the years that the authors are talking about. At the same time it is also a meditation on what games are and how games influence here. I don't like video games, I almost never play any (but I used to develop them once upon a time) and the story does not even say anything I had not heard before.

"The Return of Foxy Grandpa by T.S. Eliot is a first printing of an essay that was written in 1927 - a review of the works of Alfred North Whitehead. As short as it is, that is also the essay I almost did not finish in this issue of the magazine.

"The Myth of Cesar Chavez" by Timothy Noah discusses a movie and a book about the titular character - and as always in such cases ends up writing a short biography of the man. It is very readable and engaging - the same as the essay about Sargent, it is highly informative about a man I knew nothing about.

Guillaume Apollinaire's "Shadow" is really not my type of poetry.

"The Wonder-Wounded Harold Bloom" by Christopher Benfey is technically about the last book by Bloom but spends more time discussing Bloom than the book. When it talks about the book, it is somewhat interesting but outside of it it has the same problem as Oates' portrait of Didion - it is well written and I really don't care about it.

"The Unique Qualities of Joe Alsop" by Isaiah Berlin reprints a letter from Berlin to Robert Kaiser concerning Joe Alsop. Despite the copious number of footnotes, it is almost indecipherable for me. It was a nice look at the world of 1989 but it contained too many references that meant nothing to me.

"A New Vision of the Holocaust" by Christopher R. Browning is about the new book by Timothy Snyder "Black Earth: The Holocaust as History and Warning". Browning mostly disagrees with Snyder's arguments of a new reading of why Hitler initiated the Holocaust the way he did and I cannot say who is right. He acknowledges that the book has a lot of positive characteristics but he also spends a lot of time disagreeing on a point that was probably unimportant and at this point not provable - did the Holocaust happen as a consolation price for Hitler or as a result of the initial success of his war.

"Who Can Find the True West?" by Ian Frazier reviews Rinker Buck's "The Oregon Trail" - his story of traveling the historic route with his brother a few years ago. Comparisons with Parkman's book with the same book are inevitable and it sounds like the two books are two sides of the same story - differently done, written and lived in different centuries but companion volumes nevertheless. It is a wonderful essay and even if I will probably never read the book, I liked reading about it.

"What Philosophers Really Know" by Rebecca Newberger Goldstein takes a look at "Philosophy of Language: The Classics Explained" by Colin McGinn. Philosophy is hard to understand without knowing the background and history and McGinn builds his book around some of the classic texts of his field. The works themselves are not in the book, it is a companion volume and it sounds a lot like my philosophy textbook from high school - and it sounds fascinating. Goldstein writes a wonderful essay about it and between what she says about the book and about the field, she convinced me that I want to read the book (and the books it is explaining). That will be a long project.

"The First Great Arabic Novel" by Robyn Creswell talks about the just published "Leg Over Leg" - a book I had never heard of and which seems like a fascinating old book - the first Arabic novel. Creswell does a wonderful job in putting the novel in context - both historically and linguistically and tells a fascinating story of a novel that noone in the West had ever read - and which probably should be read together with the Chinese classic novels.

"In the Depths of the Net" by Sue Halpern talks about the Dark Net - mixing a book review, news coverage from the last few years and some old style musing on the topic. It's similar to what had been in the press in the last few years so not really my favorite article of the issue.

Nothing really interesting in the Letters. Some of the books in the ads did catch my eye though - as if I needed more books to look for...

>59 AnnieMod: I love Waugh. His writing cracks me up, but yes, it's pretty much a lovely scathing picture of how moronic people are.

And this is the last one I read (then I am back to play catch up on reviews and notes... and maybe stay on top of things :) )


136. Slow Bullets by Alastair Reynolds

Type: Novella
Length: 2047 Kindle positions/192 pages
Original Language: English
Original Publication: 2015
Genre: Science Fiction
Part of Series: N/A
Format: Kindle
Publisher: Tachyon
Finished: 7 October 2015
Rating:

The novella is the native genre of science fiction - even though nowadays most books are a lot longer, that is the length that allows the storytelling to shine - not too short (short stories are great but they rarely have enough space to expand on the story), not too long to need padding and secondary story lines. And Reynolds's craft shines in this one.

Slow Bullets are used as recording devices for the soldiers in a war - they hide in their bodies, they cannot be removed without killing them (or it is very hard anyway) and they contain information about who they are (like high-tech version of dog tags except carrying a lot more information). Their name comes from the way they are put there - they are injected and then the AI bullet finds its place to the middle of the body, carefully skirting any areas where it can cause damage. But they are not that harmless either - they can be ordered to kill (or really do anything else depending on what the person programming them wants to do). And hat duality is what Reynolds uses to build his story.

Scur is a soldier at the end of a war that had devastated the worlds (of course all is happening in space and on a lot of planets - this is Reynolds after all). And just when she believes she is done with the war she is captured by one of the worst from the other side - a man that is considered a monster from both side; a man that is heading to the war tribunals no matter who wins. The irony of the fact that the war is over and the Scur should not have been in the war to start with is just part of it; the fact that she is going to die is the bigger problem. Although her being the narrator, we already know that she somehow survives - although for a minute here I did wonder if she will end up being trapped in a bullet or something.

She does survive - just to wake on a half-dead ship, bound to military prison and the war tribunals. Where she does not belong. And while protesting her innocence, she realizes that it does not matter - technology backfired a bit and she and everyone on the ship are the last chance of humanity to survive an alien threat. Of course the story takes its time revealing the pieces of it and how things happened - there is enough material in that story to cover a trilogy (and a sequel to it) and Reynolds condenses it in a way that proves again that he knows his craft.

And then the real story begins - because the ship is full with both good and bad people (including the monster from the start of the story) and everyone needs to make a decision - are their old deeds more important than humanity; can monstrosity be forgotten and forbidden for the sake of survival; what is more important - personal history and memories or the memories of the race.

In a way it is a story of redemption but it is also a story about the hard choices that everyone need to make; about memory and belonging; about desperation and hope. It is the kind of story that made me fall in love with the genre all those years ago.

>63 .Monkey.:

Yeah... that's a very good definition of his style :) I love him - in small doses - but I also can see why a lot of people do not.

Great review of Slow Bullets one to look out for.

I'm really enjoying your descriptions of the essays and reviews you read.

>66 baswood: Thanks Barry :) A lot of people seem to not like it... I still find it great. Happy reading when you get to it.

>67 RidgewayGirl: Thanks. I wondered for a bit if I want to post them here but then decided that it is my thread, why not? :)

Great magazine summaries. I'm wondering how exactly one makes Joan Didion uninteresting. I think JCO might have let you down a bit.

Thanks , Dan.

Maybe by presuming that you know who Didion is Or that you know enough to connect dots in the essay. I am not sure. And especially compared to the Chavez or the Sargent pieces - two other people I knew close to nothing about ( at least I had heard the name Didion before even if it was without any deep knowledge) - it just did not work for me. Maybe too clever and too high level for me:)

Well Sargent was absolutely fascinating. Hard to go wrong there too. I don't know much about Chacez...I should read the article!

>69 dchaikin: I think JCO might have let you down a bit. I would agree there.

>62 AnnieMod: ...it did not really move me or make me want to learn more That may have been JCO's intent.

>72 SassyLassy:

Then why review at all? :) The point of reviewing a book (that she likes actually) is to make you want to read it.

>73 AnnieMod: A great topic for discussion!

On a broader scale, with no reference to JCO, unless you are employed by the publisher, or related to the author, I don't think that the point of reviewing a book is necessarily to make you like it. Rather, I think it is to give the reader of the review an idea of the book, its theme(s), its style, how it relates to other books by the author or on the topic; and if it is a review on a more personal level, to give the reader an idea of how the reviewer responded to the book. A reader of the review needs to know at least some of this if s/he is going to decide whether to read it or not, or whether it might be a good book for someone else.

Some of the best reviews I have read on LT are those where the reviewer is working through why s/he did not like the book. This can be skilfully done without resorting to nastiness as you demonstrated in >47 AnnieMod: above.

>74 SassyLassy:

I agree but... she did like the book. The essay/review is reading as a positive one. That's what got me and this is why I think it should have been better at convincing me to buy the book (or at least wish to learn more about Didion). It just does not make the subject sound interesting (and from what I gathering, this probably was not the idea - Didion being actually a pretty fascinating person). I really have a suspicion that in this case it was just something that flew so high over my head that it did not connect at all - the literary cycles will probably appreciate it more.

>62 AnnieMod: Enjoyed your review of the New York Review of Books; they tend to pile up in my apartment!

>76 rebeccanyc:

Same here - and not just NYRB :) There will probably be some reviews for issues from 2010-2015 - there is a pretty sizable stack I never got around to... and may one day. I just decided to try to keep on top of it and read current issues - and catch up when I can :)

And after a crazy few weeks at work (will be posting about that reading in the next few days), an article I read yesterday. As I am not planning to read that much from the newspaper (or if I do, I can post about it), it just goes on its own with separate counter I guess. :)

A1. "The Strange Case of Anna Stubblefield" by Daniel Engber - New York Times, Sunday Magazine, Oct 25 2015. Available online here: here

The author uses a single case - that of Anna Stubblefield - to write a pretty powerful article about what intelligence is and how it is measured, managing to add a pretty good history of the field of Facilitated Communication (a term I had never heard of before) and the checkered past of the technology. Add racial conflict and the story becomes pretty polarizing. In the middle of the piece is a person story - a love story if you like - between Anna and a man she had been helping. Some of the writing is uncomfortable (the writer uses only scripts from the trial and similar documentation as the main actors refuse to be interviewed) and the author is straddling the line between abuse and reality without forming an opinion - leaving the reader to decide which side of the story they want to believe. I am not sure that I know if Anna is guilty or not (the laws say she is - the moral part is a different story - my reaction is that she overstepped a boundary she should have never even considered stepping over) and the story will stay with me for a while - it is the kind of story where we may never know the truth - did the non-verbal D. J. really talk and agree or is Anna simply projecting? Not for people with weak stomachs - the article gets quite weird in places. But it is important - even of that technique does not work, the people that fall off the plane of understanding are important and ways to make them part of the world we live in need to be pursued.

M3. Interzone 260, Sep/Oct 2015 - paper, 96 pages, read Oct 12-13

In the Interface, Ian Sales talks about the Puppies affair and this year's Hugos. Nice for someone that had never heard of that mess; nothing new if you had been anywhere around SF related sites this between April and August this year.

Jonathan McCalmont's "Future Interrupted: How to Lose Friends and Objectify People" looks at "Ex Machina" and the way it treats women, robots and well... essentially everyone that is not a man. The classical comparison with Data's trial on Star Trek: TNG is also presented; so is Frankenstein. It is actually a pretty nice piece - albeit a bit heavy handed towards the end.

Nina Allan's Time Pieces is about "Satin Island" - the only one of the Man Booker Prize nominees that is Science Fiction. I looked at this book a few times, it sounded way too abstract but that review/essay convinced me that I should read it. The Ballard comparison is part of the reason - and now I have a lot longer TBR list because of a few more novels she mentioned.

Ansible Link is as informative as always - even when you get the news before the magazine goes to the printer.

And then it was time for the fiction.

"Weedkiller" by John Shirley (and with a very nice illustration by Richard Wagner) flips the viewpoint between an assassin, a woman that lives only for a game and the target of the assassin. The whole thing does not make much of a sense at first but the world in which they live emerges slowly - a world in which people seem to be killed when they do not contribute enough. Despite the shifting viewpoint that should have covered the weakness of the backstory, it still shows - the story reads more as an outline than a real story - way too many things are just thrown in. The story does have a logical end but it still feels thin.

"Blonde" by Priya Sharma plays on the story of Rapunzel - and is not even trying to hide it - our heroine is named like that. And while at the start you may decide that it is a reimaging in our world, the fairy tale unfolds - it is in our world and it is not. It is cruel, obscene in places - and absolutely brilliant.

"No Rez" by Jeff Noon is set in a world where people need high resolution images to see - but the high resolution is expensive. It is a mess of a story - I can see what the author is trying to achieve but I am not a fan of fragmented stories like that. Interzone even printed it on rotated pages (because the lines being as short as they are for the most part, that takes less space would be my guess) and it is innovative - and absolutely not my kind of story.

On the other hand, "Murder on the Laplacian Express" by C. A. Hawksmoor (with a great illustration by Warwick Fraser-Coombe) is exactly as much fun as the name hints at. The Express is interstellar of course and there is a secret society, a murder and people that just should not be where they end up being. It is a funny romp - the kind of stories I seem to find rarely - not taking itself too seriously, not trying to solve the problems of the world or reimage something - just a well-done old-style story (without the issues of the old-time stories) that is pure fun to read.

The last story - "The Spin of Stars" by Christien Gholson is following an old pattern - a traveler is helped by a local and ends up almost eaten by a monster. It is well done and the story's buildup is not bad at all but it is also a bit too familiar - you know where it is going as soon as the guy gets the offer for help - and the story goes exactly there. It is not a bad story at all - it has its good pieces and a pretty good writing - it is just a bit too familiar.

In the reviews section, an interview with Becky Chambers (following a review of her book "The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet" ) by Shaun Green is entertaining and surprisingly lively. The review is also good - and between the two that book is currently living on my Kindle.

In other reviews, Maureen Kincaid Speller takes a look at the first English language book of Taiyo Fujii - "Gene Mapper" and is not very happy with it. I got this book at the Worldcon (and had not gotten around to read it yet) so I was interested to see the review - and some of her issues with the book sound more like positives for me. So we will see how that one shapes out.

Duncan Lunan's review of "The Fifth Dimension" by Martin Vopenka (second translated book in the reviews in a row, this time from Czech) ends with a pronouncement that this is not SF. Which may as well be true but the book do sound fascinating and with the morality questions which the reviewer does not seem to like much in the book, it is close to what SF had been in the Eastern block. I suspect that I will try to find the book and read it - it may as well be a bad book but it sounds fascinating.

John Howard's review of "The Feminine Future", edited by Mike Ashley on the other hand is trying to walk the like between liking the idea and not really liking the selection but accepting it. Ashley is a known quality in the world of old stories anthologies and this one sounds like something I may want to check - I like looking at where the genre actually started.

Juliet E. McKenna's look at Chris Beckett's "Mother of Eden" is more than positive. I knew I am reading this book even before I read it - although I need to read the first one before that.

Ernest Cline's "Armada" is getting yet another trashing review by Stephen Theaker. Oh, it is absolutely civil and nice and so on - and it is explaining very clearly what is wrong with the book.

At the same time Paul Graham Raven seems to have issues with the dark future in Paolo Bacigalupi's "The Water Knife". I do knot know why anyone would expect anything but gloomy and ugly future from Bacigalupi - it is his style. That happens to be the only one from the reviewed books that I had read and I actually liked it - it is weaker than his previous one but it is more relevant and feels more urgent (not only because I live at the place where he sets the story).

Ian Hunter's review of China Mielville's "Three Moments of an Explosion" left me scratching my head. Being a story collection, he seems to be lamenting the fact that it is not enough while at the same time praising the stories. Reviewing collections is hard and the chances of someone liking every single story in one is not very high -- and at the end I am still not sure what Hunter really expected. (And another book gets added to the TBR...)

Ian Sales looks at Ilka Tempke's "Skin" and tries to present a balanced review of a problematic book - he even finishes on a high note but in direct opposite of Maureen Kincaid Speller's review earlier in this issue, the gaps and problems he points out are not getting negated from the positives. It is the kind of review I like finding - telling me exactly what is good and bad about the book.

Jack Deighton's review of Gene Wolfe's "A Borrowed Man" makes the book shine - a murder mystery in a future that does not feel very different but is very different. As any good review, it does have early spoilers but they just make you want to read more. It is not a gushing positive review - as with any book, there are issues and whatsnot but it is a positive one. And well done one.

And in the last review of this issue, Jim Steel is discussing Blaylock's "Beneath London". I must admit that I have a few of the books in this series but had not read them yet. This new one sounds as fascinating as the old one. One of those days... Maybe even starting with this one - as Steel helpfully clarifies that this can be a starting point in the world of Blaylock.

The films, DVDs and other visual media reviews by Tony Lee and Nick Lowe had some interesting bits and pieces and are worth reading for some trivia details and hilarious titles and movies I had never heard of - but they are also the two sections I skip occasionally in Interzone.

Overall a solid issue. And a very bad one for my TBR list!