imyril admires the north face of Mount TBR in 2015 (part 2)

Load times suggest it's appropriate to start a new thread for the second half of the year, so here we go.

In re-cap, I'm aiming for

• 50% female authors
  
• 10% non-fiction
  
• 20% diversiverse
  
• 80% off the shelf

...and to make some progress up this north face of Mount TBR. So far I seem to be very gently sliding backwards...

I'm abandoning any goal in terms of absolute numbers of books - I tend to read more than I expect anyway, and I don't need/want any pressure to hurry along.

Total read: 72 (14 books / 39 ebooks /19 rereads)
Total off the shelf: 53 (74% / 80% of books read)
Total acquired: 66 (excluding duplicates) ...and I think I missed a few
Mount TBR score (off the shelf - acquired): -14 (it got icy, okay?)

Jan (8 | 1/6/1)
The Girl With All The Gifts - M R Carey (OTS)
Mockingjay - Suzanne Collins (OTS)
John Saturnall's Feast - Lawrence Norfolk (OTS)
For Want of a Nail - Mary Robinette Kowal (OTS, novella)
Silently and Very Fast - Catherynne Valente (OTS, novella)
Blood and Iron - Elizabeth Bear (OTS)
The Explorer - James Smythe (OTS)
The Martian - Andy Weir

Feb (4 - 1/3/0)
Golden Witchbreed - Mary Gentle (OTS)
On a Red Station, Drifting - Aliette de Bodard (OTS, novella)
Scattered Among Strange Worlds - Aliette de Bodard (OTS)
Ajax Penumbra 1969 - Robin Sloan (OTS, novella)

Mar (8 - 3/4/1)
The Invisible Library - Genevieve Cogman (OTS)
Ancient Light - Mary Gentle (OTS)
A Study in Scarlet - Arthur Conan Doyle
The English Monster - Lloyd Shepherd (OTS)
Liza of Lambeth - W. Somerset Maugham (OTS)
Red Planet Run - Dana Stabenow (OTS)
Reading Like a Writer - Francine Prose (OTS)
Midnight Blue-Light Special - Seanan McGuire (OTS)

Apr (8 - 1/7/0)
Lost London - Richard Guard (OTS)
The Guest Cat - Takashi Hiraide (OTS)
London Falling - Paul Cornell (OTS)
The Three-Body Problem - Cixin Liu (OTS)
Shadow Man - Melissa Scott (OTS)
The Signature of All Things - Elizabeth Gilbert (OTS)
The Steerswoman - Rosemary Kirstein (OTS)
The Book of the Unnamed Midwife - Meg Elison (OTS)

May (6 - 1/1/4)
Snare - Katharine Kerr
Station Eleven - Emily St John Mandel (OTS)
Order of the Stick: Start of Darkness - Rich Burlew
Order of the Stick: On the Origin of PCs - Rich Burlew
Order of the Stick: Dungeon Crawlin' Fools - Rich Burlew
The Echo - James Smythe (OTS)

June (5 - 1/1/3)
Matter - Iain M Banks
Dreams of Gods and Monsters - Laini Taylor (OTS)
The Steel Remains - Richard Morgan
The Cold Commands - Richard Morgan
The Dark Defiles - Richard Morgan (OTS)
(The Night Watch - Sarah Waters abandoned)

July (4 - 1/3/0)
The Godless Boys - Naomi Wood (OTS)
The Mermaid's Sister - Carrie Anne Noble (OTS)
Spirits Abroad - Zen Cho (OTS)
What If - Randall Munroe (OTS)

August (4 - 1/2/1)
Infidel - Ayaan Hirsi Ali (OTS)
Green Smoke - Rosemary Manning
(Lion's Blood - Steven Barnes abandoned)
Snowblind - Ragnar Jonasson (OTS)
The Ultimate Time Traveler's Almanac - Ann Vandermeer (OTS)

September (9 - 2/6/1)
The Time of the Dark - Barbara Hambly (OTS)
Judging a Book by its Lover - Lauren Leto (OTS)
The Walls of the Air - Barbara Hambly (OTS)
The Armies of Daylight - Barbara Hambly (OTS)
Downtime - Cynthia Felice (OTS, ER)
The House of Shattered Wings - Aliette de Bodard (OTS)
In Morningstar's Shadow - Aliette de Bodard (OTS)
Lifelode - Jo Walton (OTS)
Watership Down - Richard Adams

October (5 - 1/3/1)
Maps for Lost Lovers - Nadeem Aslam (OTS)
Dragon in Danger - Rosemary Manning
Binti - Nnedi Okorafor (OTS)
The Apex Book of World SF: Book 4 - Mahvesh Murad (OTS, ER)
Sorcerer to the Crown - Zen Cho (OTS)

November (5 - 1/2/2)
The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
Return to the Secret Garden - Holly Webb (OTS, Blog Tour)
Blindsight - Peter Watts
A Long Way to a Small Angry Planet - Becky Chambers (OTS)
The Three - Sarah Lotz (OTS)

December (6 - 1/0/5)
Over Sea, Under Stone - Susan Cooper
The Dark is Rising - Susan Cooper
Greenwitch - Susan Cooper
The Grey King - Susan Cooper
Silver on the Tree - Susan Cooper
The Abyss Surrounds Us - Emily Skrutskie (review copy)

Male / female authors: 25 / 45 (36% / 64%) +2
Male / female SFF authors: 14 / 36 (28% / 72%) +2

Non-fiction: 5 (7% / 10%)
Diversiverse: 12 (17% / 20%)

41) The Mermaid's Sister - Carrie Anne Noble
at least (I'm being indecisive)

I picked this up on a whim, because it sounded delightful and you know what? It was. After trudging around a shellworld (Matter), wars of angels (Dreams of Gods and Monsters) and provocative/clever grimdark (A Land Fit For Heroes trilogy), this was just what I needed - balm to the soul.

Clara was delivered to Auntie's door by a stork. Her sister Maren was found in a clam shell. Her brother O'Neill was found in an apple tree. Clara and Maren are inseparable; their beloved O'Neill wanders the world having unlikely adventures with Auntie's old flame Scarff, returning as often as Scarff's curse permits to visit their loved ones on the mountain and share their stories.

But 16 years have passed, and Maren is finally turning into the mermaid she is. Scales are appearing; her voice and legs are disappearing. Soon she will not be able to flirt and dance with the village boys. Soon she must return to the sea, or die.

Clara is heartbroken. She will lose her sister and then perhaps everything else, if she too transforms into her natural shape (a stork) as she comes of age. Does she have the courage to set out on the road with Maren and O'Neill to find a cure or the sea before Maren shrinks away to nothing?

This gets marketed as YA and it will certainly play to that audience, but happily it works at any age. This is fairy tale or magical realism depending on your taste - the girls live on a mountain in Pennsylvania and their neighbours are homely villagers of the entirely human sort, but the world is full of faeries, dragons and curses they don't notice.

The simplicity of the tale and the storytelling are charming, focusing on Clara's emotions and determination rather than high adventure. The supporting cast are colourful and entertaining (not least the pet wyvern, who is uncertain whether to behave like a cat or a dog), although Maren the mermaid is little more than a pouty plot device, which is a bit of a shame.

It's not full of twists and turns - the delight here is in forging a new fairy story from familiar components, but one that doesn't relegate it's young heroine to prize or damsel. Do expect a fair wallop of romance - Clara is 16 and her emotions slosh about accordingly - but at least it's not inappropriate or insta-love, nor does it diminish who she is or what she is capable of.

Highly recommended, like an iced sorbet on a summer's day.

I am amused and entertained. We are rewatching The Prestige this evening, which I am enjoying enormously - the more so for having read the book last year, I think. I can now honestly say I appreciate both versions hugely and differently (and Sarah Borden still breaks my heart).

However, the thing that has just caught my notice for the first time is the bill of magicians on the wall behind Alfred when he performs the bullet catch. Two-thirds of the way down, it announces one Harry Dresden will be performing that evening :)

The film was made several years after Storm Front came out. I think someone was a fan! It does make me wonder if all the names on the bill are fictional magicians...

>4 imyril: Good catch!

4> I really love the movie The Prestige. I should get around to reading the book.

>6 pwaites: I was reminded last night just how different they are. It's a bit like Stardust - the themes and broad strokes are there, but the detail is reimagined. The film is just so beautifully put together!

Just noticed that you are no longer tackling the north face of the mount. Should we assume that admiring is the same as watching it grow?

>8 suitable1: I just noticed that, too. I interpreted it as meaning that @imryl has given up on making any inroads, and has come to accept the TBR pile as a force of nature.

You would both be absolutely right. It's a lovely outcrop and I'm a) impressed by good tectonics and b) utterly terrified of heights ;)

Perhaps what you need is a good bibliosherpa?

>11 mrgrooism: I can offer excellent reading material and a nice cup of tea? :)

I am flitting between numerous things at the moment - once again jumping through time in The Time Traveler's Almanac, but being distracted and delighted by Spirits Abroad, a short story collection featuring Malay witches, vampires, ghosts and an abundance of spiky Hokkien mother figures. Poor Lifelode isn't getting a look-in, mostly because it is a hardback and I've been commuting so it has stayed at home!

I am off to Bristol and Dorset tomorrow, so Lifelode will be remaining on the bedside table, but I may at least make some substantial progress with the short stories on the various long train rides over the weekend. In between train rides, we shall be walking the Dorset hills and coast, and I shall be trying to remember my Neolithic archaeology (which I have failed to refresh in advance).

Oh, enjoy! We walked Dartmoor in May and had a delightful surfeit of Bronze Age hut circles, then went fossil-hunting at Lyme Regis.

>12 imyril: A BiblioSherpa"s dream! I am currently enjoying iced lemon-ginger tea with Stevia, yummm!

>13 Marissa_Doyle: I love Dartmoor (I love the bleak British uplands generally - I grew up between the heather moors of Northumbria and the jagged scarps of the Yorkshire Dales, and I've never got over it) - I am spending Hallowe'en weekend down that way, which should be cold, wet and awesome.

Oh, that sounds lovely! We had the gorse in bloom up on the moor, and the bluebells in the woods below it, but I'd love to see it in the autumn as well.

Is it possible to acquire more volumes (and thereby add greater height to Mount TBR) when visiting Dartmoor? Is this a safe vacation spot?

I came home with a lovely selection of books about Dartmoor. Purely for research purposes, of course.

What a fabulous trip! We walked at least 10 miles each day, apparently, so I've got blisters on my blisters and a vague air of tottery smugness. I shall marshal a trip report in the coming days.

Hey, she's back! Welcome home.

Ten miles a day! I salute you. Glad you are back!

42) Spirits Abroad - Zen Cho


This collection of short stories from young Malaysian author Zen Cho (full disclosure: a friend of a friend) is absolutely delightful. I picked it up on my friend's recommendation, and having finally got round to reading it I will now cheerfully buy Zen Cho's new novel out later this summer.

Zen Cho has a light touch that takes the sting out of her sometimes spiky tales of ghosts and spirits. There's a sense of humour and a fearsome resilience to her characters - both her heroines and their 'aunties' - that utterly endeared them to me. The tales themselves are very definitely from the Malay tradition of spirits and the author takes no prisoners here - the prose is peppered with Hokkien phrases, with no glossary provided. You work it out from context, and it never gets in the way. In spite of this, they feel more accessible than the two Aliette de Bodard novellettes I read earlier in the year.

Most of the tales are set in Malaysia, with a couple set in the UK (where the author now lives) and one on the Moon. Those in the UK were two of my favourites: a group of Malay teenagers at an English boarding school unexpectedly fending off an attack by an army of enraged faeries, the teachers having decamped over night, leaving a note that essentially says They don't like iron or running water. They have short attention spans. Good luck. We're sorry.; and a visit from a dragon come to claim his due ('You mustn't just go flying off with a virgin' - 'Oh no, consent is essential'), resulting in a massive upsurge of magical activity that turns the city on its head as he tries to woo his preferred bride.

The stories tackle topics ranging from self harm, self knowledge, family honour, interracial relationships (!) and immigration. All share a warm core, and there are repeated themes of the importance of family, friendship, respect and compassion.

Highly recommended. Unexpectedly comforting reading for a collection of ghost and spirit stories.

>22 imyril: This sounds like a wonderful collection of stories, I'll have to look for it!

>23 mrgrooism: I kept finding a big grin on my face as I read.

I'm really looking forward to her novel (Sorceror to the Crown - no touchstone yet) - it sounds a wee bit Jonathan Norrell and Mr Strange - an alt Regency London where the first African Sorceror Royal is juggling magical, faerie and mundane politics as the country struggles at war against France as the magic is running out. But that's okay, because there's an ambitious orphan girl called Prunella who has made a big magical discovery, so that can't possibly go wrong, can it? :)

22> I keep hearing good things about Spirits Abroad! I don't normally read short story collections, but I may need to pick up this one. I'm certainly going to read Sorcerer to the Crown when it comes out.

>22 imyril: I have this in my TBR pile- I've read a couple of the stories already in various places, and am definitely looking forward to the rest and Sorcerer to the Crown when it comes out. I liked her novella The Perilous Life of Jade Yeo too, even though it's not SFF.

I don't read a lot of ghost stories, but Spirits Abroad does look good.

43) What If - Randall Munroe


My second whole-hearted 5★ read of the year comes from the irrepressible Randall Munroe of XKCD (my favourite stick figure strip - sorry OOTS). This book applies almost serious science to daft questions, although he reserves the right to adapt both the question and the way in which he responds for scientific and comedic effect. Also, better stick (wo)man diagrams.

The book includes a selection of questions previously published online plus several new ones, and is a delight from start to finish. It examines the often unexpected consequences of questions such as 'what would happen if everyone on Earth jumped at the same time', sometimes adding dimensions such as 'in the same place' (answer: not much to the Earth, but we'd inadvertently cause the apocalypse by crashing our infrastructure when we tried to go home) or 'what would happen if we drained the seas through a hole at the bottom of the Challenger Deep?' (answer: uh, water levels would drop and we'd do some damage to our climate. But if we put the other end of this magic water-draining portal on MARS we could terraform! Briefly).

This is as much about humour as about science, with the selection of theories and mathematics applied part of the geeky joy. However, you don't need much (any?) science or maths to follow along and be amused - that's the joy of stick figures. Randall has done the hard work in terms of research and calculation, and translates it gleefully and accessibly (who knew the US Government had an official line on the sensibility of firing a nuke at a hurricane?)

Highlights for me were his digs at Wikipedia - [citation needed] is applied to some of the most outrageously obvious statements ('space is big'), whereas citations relating to his childhood exploits are sufficient for others ('ships made of Lego can't float'). Perhaps the most Green Dragon of these citations was his realisation that if he wanted a technical breakdown of temperatures for cooked meat he should stop looking at scientific papers and just pick up his cookbook :)

Well, I might have skipped over it, but you caught me with two aspects in your post. The fact that this was only the second of two five star reads in 2015 for you was the first attention grabber. (And you were right about Station Eleven being an excellent read.) The second was the parenthetical bit about the US government having a position on the viability of firing a nuke into a hurricane. Now I *have* to track this one down...

>29 jillmwo: I can't apologise for this book bullet. It's brilliant - read in a chunk (as I did) or as a coffee table / loo book for sporadic browsing as each question/answer is just a few pages.

In other news, the Man Booker Prize longlist has been announced and there's several things on there that have promptly caught my eye:

Satin Island, in which a 'corporate anthropologist' battles procrastination in trying to make sense of the world for his big consultancy client;

The Moor's Account, about the failed Spanish colonisation of Florida from the point of view of an Arabic slave who was one of the only survivors; and

The Chimes, set in an alternate London where music has replaced the written word, memories are physical objects, and rulers The Order have rendered the population amnesiac with a vast musical instrument.

Also worth noting is that the baker's dozen long list is actually slightly biased towards female authors rather than male, includes several authors of colour, and authors from around the world - several from the US, but also entries from Ireland, Jamaica, India and New Zealand - hurray for diversity!

>28 imyril: I am in complete agreement with both of your five star books!

In other updates, I've written up our walking holiday: day one (Dorchester to East Shilvinghampton, day two (East Shilvinghampton to Abbotsbury) and day three (Lulworth Cove to Bowleaze Cove.

>28 imyril: I too loved What if?; I think my favourite scenario was the one about arranging the elements in the order they are on the periodic table, which was hilarious.

The chimes is sitting on my tbr pile; I'll have to move it nearer the top so I can say I've read at least one of the longlist.

>33 Sakerfalcon: the periodic table was hilarious. How much harm can you do to one table? ;)

I'm a bit restless and can't settle on what to read next. As nothing in particular is calling to me, I'm going to take a tilt at reading something that's been on my shelf for years: Infidel by Ayaan Hirsi Ali.

I'm also back to chugging through The Time Traveler's Almanac and finally feel like I've made a dent in it! I thoroughly enjoyed the Adrian Tchaikovsky story - I've not read his work before (his Shadow of the Apt never really appealed, but I'll keep an eye out for him in future I think.

>35 imyril: I may be some time. I didn't realise I only had a physical copy of Infidel, so I'm rotating that at home with Lion's Blood on ebook for my commutes. I'm still 'suffering' from summer, so outside of the commutes I'm not doing much reading because sunshine! And running! And this weekend I really must do the gardening :)

I am so excited I am practically dancing. Another summer, another trip over from Germany with the car, another bag full of books from my mum's basement.

This time, the pile includes Green Smoke, which is one of my favourite childhood books and is what has me so excited. Mr R Dragon (who is indeed a Green Dragon) lives in a very cosy cave on a Cornish beach. When young Sue spots some unusually-coloured smoke coming out of a crevice, she stumbles over him and makes a fast friend. The book(s) relate their adventures and Mr R Dragon's history at King Arthur's court (every court needs a dragon, y'know).

I simply can't wait to reread this one.

Other goodies in the bag so far include various Asterix books in German, Dutch, French and Latin (my Mum cottoned on quickly to how to encourage my language skills, no?) and Lady Agrippa's Unshuttable Caboodlebox (and I can't tell you how amused I am that that already has an LT entry ;)

I'm curious to see what else is in here!

It's so cool to see your enthusiasm over a childhood favorite. It does sound like an appealing book. And what on earth is Lady Agrippa's Unshuttable Caboodlebox? There are no reviews either here or over on Amazon. (By the way, I feel quite overshadowed by your language skills. You can read Asterix in all of those? Dutch, even?)

>38 jillmwo: I had the advantage of growing up in Holland, as my Mum took a job there when I was only 8. So I learnt Dutch on the streets, and added German, French and Latin at school. I dabbled in learning Spanish and Old English at university, but I was so frustrated by the English approach to teaching language and the learning speed of the class that I dropped them both after a term. I'm terribly rusty these days - I expect to find Asterix a bit of a challenge ;)

Lady Agrippa's Unshuttable Caboodlebox is - from memory, and as far as I can tell from looking at it again now - one of those unlikely creations that takes a singular concept (English aristocratic eccentricity) and runs with it. Gleefully. It is full of random CAPITALISATION and appears to be a collection of oddments from Lady Agrippa's archives, such as poems, short stories, recipes and very old-school glossy-style editorial about the fabulous Lady Agrippa.

By way of example, I give you the note on the inside cover:

Cover: the Hon. LADY AGRIPPA DEADNETTLE, Ruling Authority on Chutney Affairs, displays a pickled onion, said to be 973 years old, - a legacy from her ancestor, Lorde Carrion Deddnettelle, who was Picklemaker-in-Chief to King Alfred. The unique CABOODLEBOX, upon which Lady Agrippa is gracefully poised, is thought to be the original container in which Lorde Carrion matured his EXTRA HOT PICKLED ONIONS, using a secret recipe that died with him. The BOX now houses the Deadnettle Collection of Fascinating Paraphernalia. Unfortunately the reek of pickled onions is so strong that it forces the lid upwards, thereby allowing all the contents to escape. Lady Agrippa, seen here with a jar of her special SCUM AND MILDEW CHUTNEY, - "There's nothing like it!" says Lady Agrippa. has donned this hardwearing Burnished Kettle Helmet with Real Steam, to remind us that Things are Bubbling in BUMPKETTLE, the HOME of CHUTNEY!

(I will try to take a better photo of the cover to replace the terribly fuzzy one currently available so you can see Lady Agrippa in her Burnished Kettle Helmet with Real Steam in its full glory ;)

Ooh! I loved Green Smoke! I read it and the next two books in what was then a trilogy over and over again, and I think they would still stand up to adult reading. I still have them, and should revisit them soon. I found the fourth book, Dragon in the Harbour, sadly disappointing when I read it recently. It was published over 20 years after Green Smoke.

>40 SylviaC: I read them repeatedly as a child - I remember Sir Griflet with fondness! - and having read the opening chapter of Green Smoke this morning, I think I'm going to love them just as much now. The opening lines remind me of The Hobbit in their place-setting, and I love Sue's envy of breakfast picnics, her concern at someone littering (rather than being even remotely concerned about a DRAGON) and the exchange with her mother (who clearly thinks the dragon is a new invisible friend). It's all quite irresistible, and just the pick me up I need after the (incredibly rewarding) intellectual challenge of Infidel, which I just finished (but need some time to absorb before I can write up).

I cannot believe I missed your jump to a second thread. This post is to ensure you show up on my home page under, "my posts".

I am still due to reread Matter.

44) Infidel - Ayaan Hirsi Ali

(I'm on a roll!)

I rarely read non-fiction and even more rarely autobiographies - I tend to be interested in themes, periods or cultures rather than people. That said, I’ve been curious about Ayaan Hirsi Ali for years and her autobiography successfully tackles issues of history, geography, culture and religion - so I was engrossed.

For those unfamiliar with this lady, she is a former Dutch politician who was born in Somalia and grew up in Somalia, Saudi Arabia, Ethiopia and Kenya. She moved around often as a child as her father was a rebel against the (nominally) Communist dictator, returning to Mogadishu as a teenager shortly before the civil war tore it apart. She got out of Somalia before the borders closed, then went back to help smuggle other refugees across. She speaks simply about these experiences, as she does of the beatings her mother inflicted on her and the ‘excision’ of her and her sister (i.e. genital mutilation) without sensationalism or even particular bitterness.

Strong-minded and insightful, she came to question the tenets of Islam (having at one point been a member of the Muslim Brotherhood) and eventually sought asylum in Holland when she was married off against her will. She put herself through school and university, joining a Labour Party (PvdA) think tank on graduation and unexpectedly being asked to stand for election for the Liberal Party (VVD) after regularly speaking out in the media on the social issues of integration for Muslims in Holland. Her infamous collaboration with controversial film director Theo van Gogh (Submission Part 1), led directly to his murder and she was sent into hiding by the Dutch government. After a bitter wrangle within the VVD, she was stripped of her citizenship (later reinstated) and moved to the US, where she still lives and works within a political think tank.

There’s no way to sum up her life that isn’t intriguing. Her autobiography is consistently engaging, always accessible, often heart-breaking. Her matter of fact approach is part of what makes the book so readable, regardless of how incendiary the topics. She speaks almost entirely of things that will enrage either Westerners or Muslims (and most of which would be banned in the Green Dragon so I'll not delve into her views!), unapologetically and in the interests of debate: she is single-minded in her understanding that we cannot integrate if there is no dialogue and no respect.

This has been my most thought provoking read in years. She challenges some of my liberal beliefs, and provides context for her arguments that are hard to refute. I have to argue in return that she grew up in a hardline Muslim context - I'd like to argue that there are moderate, liberal, reforming Muslims (in the West at least) - but the 10 years since publication have largely vindicated everything she says.

I am going to have to re-examine various of my views, and read more widely. I think she'd approve - reasoned and informed debate has shaped her adult life, and the fight to bring that freedom to her people will probably keep her beyond busy until she dies.

>42 pgmcc: welcome back :)

>42 pgmcc:

Please note that while you were away, imyril has abandoned tackling Mt. TBR and now merely admires it from afar.

>42 pgmcc: >45 suitable1: It's very pretty. Such slopes, such lofty splendour! Such sweet breezes that waft down the sides, all old leather and sun-warmed paper!

NB I resisted bringing 4 books home from the library (for now), which has thoughtfully invested in a number of books on my wishlist. So I might not slip too much further downhill at least :)

>43 imyril: Book bullet right between the eyes.

>47 Meredy: *passes some ice cubes for the bruising*

45) Green Smoke - Rosemary Manning


Okay, I admit it - there's some definite long-term fuzzies for me in this reread, which may be skewing my star rating slightly. You know what? I don't care.

This is a brief chapter book, with most chapters containing a story within a story - there's an argument that much of Green Smoke is simply an excuse to retell Cornish myths, and it was probably one of my earliest points of entry to Arthurian legends.

Young Sue stumbles across Mr R Dragon on her first day of a 2-week visit to Constantine Bay, and the two quickly forge a friendship based on a shared love of iced buns, stories, and genteel politeness (they meet when Sue buries a paper bag that the dragon has accidentally sneezed out of his cave). Objectively, Mr R Dragon is in fact a fairly self-absorbed, grumpy old man - he doesn't like it when he isn't the centre of attention, he dislikes interruptions and being contradicted, and he gets very snappy when he doesn't get fed his own way.

In spite of this, there's an irresistible charm about their relationship - and when Sue calls him on one unreasonable grump, he cheers up as quickly as he clouded over. Sue herself is delightful, as is her relationship with her mother.

Needless to say, I devoured the whole thing and intend to read the sequels again in due course. Absolute joy.

*book bullet hit fair and square*

Gosh my aim is good this week! You'll be pleased to know my read in progress is a solid 3 star of the 'it's fine but I'm not sure I can be bothered to finish it' variety, so this will be a safer thread again for the next wee while ;)

>51 imyril: Good shooting. @jillmwo is not an easy target.

She's deadly indeed this week. I must now embark on a quest to find a copy of Lady Agrippa's Unshuttable Caboodlebox, for which I have developed a deep need.

>52 pgmcc: *curtseys*

>53 Marissa_Doyle: do you have a burning interest in pickles? Lady Agrippa is certainly the world's foremost expert, and the caboodlebox can only help get you into the spirit.

—) Lion’s Blood - Steven Barnes
Abandoned

Okay, at just over half-way / just over 200 pages, I’m calling it a day on Lion’s Blood. This was a recommendation during SantaThing and I can absolutely see why - but sadly, it’s just not capturing my interest.

The premise is good - great, in fact. The fulcrum of change here is the Carthaginian assault on Rome. In the chronology of Lion’s Blood, Hannibal conquered Rome; and Alexander survived his Indian campaign and remarried, with the children of his second marriage founding two great African Empires. Without the power of a Roman Emperor behind it, Christianity is a two bit religion, and Islam dominates the Empire, which has conquered the New World and buys slaves from Europe.

So far, so good. Sadly, this is where I feel the invention stopped. While the curtains are all different colours, it’s a terribly familiar house - the first half of Lion’s Blood reads much like a race and religion-swapped Louisiana plantation narrative, and that’s part of my problem: I don’t get much out of those these days. Also, in embracing such familiar tropes, it's all a bit by the numbers once you get past the central twist.

I think I can see what Steven Barnes was trying to do, and points to him for trying. But the novelty wears thin quickly (not least because I don't need any convincing that slavery was a terrible, hideous thing), as do the characters themselves. Halfway through, and the best developed characters are those who rarely appear (Nandi the Zulu princess and Lamiya the Empress’s niece) rather than principal characters - young master Kai, slave Aidan and sex slave Sophia (no points for guessing she comes between our 2 male protagonists; worse, she essentially submits to an assault by Aidan because ’she wants it really because she’s so angry with Kai’. I have no words. No. Just no).

For me, it lacks the emotional depths of say a Guy Gavriel Kay alt history, and it feels under-researched (in retrospect, reading an alternate Islamic history straight after Infidel was probably setting it up to fail). While the world-building is very fine and internally consistent, the characters are not (decadent Kai suddenly becoming a Sufi, for example, makes no sense at all as any deliberation or conviction happens off-page so we don’t see it. This is clearly to set up conflict in the second half of the novel). Consequently the authorial hand feels pretty heavy.

I have read the Wikipedia summary of what I’m missing, and I’m disappointed to say it’s pretty much exactly as I called it, so I’m not going to read it. It’s okay, but it’s not for me. Those who enjoy plantation narratives and are more invested in American colonial history may get more out of it.

>54 imyril: A copy of Lady Agrippa is even now winging its way to me. I look forward to having my knowledge of pickles expanded.

>52 pgmcc: And I am? Oh, no! I see I have to acquire some more effective body armor. Either that or do a better job on the offense...

46) Snowblind - Ragnar Jonasson


Snowblind has several things going for it that win it stars. Firstly, the central character, Ari Thor. Young, smart, impetuous, and deeply confused, he's a convincing mid-20s bloke tackling his first job - all desire to prove himself and no common sense. Secondly, the location. I have developed a big soft spot for Iceland, and Siglufjordur is a perfect pot-boiler settings - a small settlement on the north coast, inaccessible in deep winter as the sea is wild, the mountain pass iced closed, and the single-lane tunnel through the mountain gets blocked by avalanches.

Needless to say, when young Ari Thor lands a job as the policeman on the block in November, he has no idea how isolated he is going to be. Leaving behind his girlfriend in Reykjavik, he soon realises just how small a community he has moved to - and how big a challenge it will be to make it home. When a local author dies in a fall, only Ari Thor is tempted to consider that it might not be an accident; but when a woman is found bleeding to death in the snow a few days later, the town is gripped by fear of itself. Cue avalanche.

So let's start on my issues: predictability, clearly ;) This isn't really a gripe - the expected elements give the novel some structure for Jonasson to wrap his mystery around. However, the author loses stars for stooping to the old trick of having Ari Thor have conversations on page without letting you know what gets said - just that he is told things that let him (but not the audience) know what's going on. This is an absolute killer for me as it feels lazy, especially when there are so many other ingredients that would let him maintain tension more cleverly.

The choice to use multiple POV characters is a difficult one for me. On the one hand, we get glimpses into the lives and sadnesses of a range of tiny-town Icelanders, and that's fascinating. And it does prevent the old issue of only glimpsing one, so knowing they will be murderer or victim! But combined with the writing style, it makes for a slightly choppy read, especially as there's typically only one brief POV from each of them. It puts me in mind of a TV script rather than a book - here's a quick intro to each of our principals. We'll be suspecting all of them, folks.

However, I'll be honest - these are fairly minor gripes. It's a perfectly serviceable fast-read potboiler (and would in fact make highly entertaining tv), if not the more nuanced, more atmospheric novel I was hoping for. Indriðason doesn't have to worry about his king of Icelandic crime title quite yet.

All our roses have come into bloom for the end of summer. I'm so happy - our yellow rose is at least 60 (and possibly 80-100) years old, and has survived 2 relocations in the past 2 years; our pink rose is a little younger and has also been moved twice - and it is thriving, as are all my offcuts. I made the mistake of planting about a dozen in a trough expecting 75% not to make it. I've only lost 3. It's going to be battle royale in there next spring unless we have a hard winter!

Here's the biggest bloom on my yellow rose:

That's a lovely sixty year old lady!

Isn't she just? There are about half a dozen other buds just coming through - she's putting on a proper show!

*applause* You're doing well, transferring and transplanting your roses.

>62 jillmwo: I cheat. I pour a little honey into the rootball (or rub it on the stem for a cutting) and the shot of sugar seems to coax them through the shock. We've also had fairly mild winters the last two years - wet and wild at times, but not cold, so no hard frost.

Honey, wow, I'd never heard of that.

>59 imyril:

Beautiful rose.

>59 imyril: I have an idea that there's a researcher at RHS Wisley who might be interested in a rose that old. Should I ask around?

So lovely. My roses (inherited from my grandmother) are struggling, but blooming a bit and surviving. For several years the deer chewed them down to the stems, no leaves or blooms. this in a garden full of other plants. I finally moved them from the back garden to a bed in the front between the street and the dog pen. The deer don't like it there much. I am do not have my grandma's love for them, but I don't want them to die.

>66 hfglen: There is a climbing rose here which my grandmother got from her father's garden back in the 1940s or '50s I think. My family is big on handing plants down.

Edit to add: It is much more common looking than imyril's. :)

>64 JannyWurts: The honey was a recommendation from an Australian aunt, but it seems to work well up here in the northern hemisphere too ;) I have to think it's the plant equivalent of feeding a toddler Red Bull though, so it's a one-time only treat (not to mention that pouring honey on topsoil is an ant magnet - so if you're not burying a rootball quite deep, I don't recommend it).

>66 hfglen: I'd be happy to share pictures and cuttings with anyone who has an interest. I don't have a birth certificate though, so the true age is subject to polite local speculation (i.e. my neighbours, who knew the previous owner well :)

>65 pgmcc: >67 MrsLee: Thank you. It's amazing how much abuse an old rose can withstand - I'm sure they'll settle in and thrive in their new home (away from those deer!)

So it's a bank holiday weekend here in the UK, and we're going to visit a good friend who recently moved to another city. It looks like we'll have reasonable weather, and we'll certainly have excellent company!

My reading goal for the weekend is to finally finish The Ultimate Time Traveler's Almanac - I'm so very, very close, but these last few stories are all longer, slower (and, if I'm honest, not particularly engaging at this point, although I might have enjoyed them more earlier in the process - it's just that the third quarter that I read were excellent, so these feel a bit anti-climactic).

And then, TBR be damned, I am almost certainly going to buy The House of Shattered Wings and devour it. And then buy Sorcerer to the Crown and devour that. Because I'm much too excited about both of them, and they will make me exceedingly happy.

Hope you enjoy your weekend and also that you enjoy your reading. It's good to be excited about something ahead. :D

Oh, you got me clean between the eyes with Sorcerer to the Crown. Anything described as a cross between Susanna Clarke and Georgette Heyer sounds like an auto-buy for me.

>71 Marissa_Doyle: it's irresistible, isn't it? Plus I read her short story collection recently, and it was just wonderful. So a win on all fronts!

Sorcerer to the Crown has been on my radar for a while but haven't managed to get hold of it yet.

I'm having to hold my finger back from that treacherous "One-Click" button. Because, yes, Sorcerer to the Crown looks very, very promising. But do you all (as a collective group) not understand that I'm about to embark on a very busy fall season and so don't really have time to properly absorb these book bullets? I mean, you @imyril advised me of Green Smoke and then @hfglen told me about a book, The Table of Less Valued Knights which sounds like it fits in well with Green Smoke. (The man swears it's quite funny and quite the romp.) And now, you advise me that this is another must-read?

You know, they frown on people reading fantasy novels while at work....

Jill, that was pretty darned sneaky, lobbing a book bullet on someone else's thread...

>75 Marissa_Doyle: very sneaky. Lady has skills. I note the careful reference to @hfglen to absolve her of responsibility too.

...and it does sound entirely amusing :)

Ah! A delayed-action book bomb that goes off two threads after the one it's planted in. Yay me!

I'm glad to see you stepping up here, @hfglen. I think "giving credit where credit is due" should be the rule in these matters. All I did was refer to your recommendation and yet, I was blamed for lobbing the incendiary device.

My nerves are quite shattered, said the woman who has been reading Georgette Heyer's Venetia because Michael Dirda had shot off his own book bullet through a chapter in Classics for Pleasure.

>78 jillmwo: Karma is such a you-know-what... ;)

>78 jillmwo: You're right, we're being unfair. You only dropped the incendiary, you didn't make it :)

...although I think we should come up with a new metaphor. All this carnage has to be bad for the shelves ;)

47) The Ultimate Time Traveler's Almanac - Ann Vandermeer


I've been reading it since February, but I've finally reached the end of this enormous time travel compendium from Ann & Jeff Vandermeer. There's a reason this is available in 4 separate volumes - I don't like to think how heavy the physical edition would have been. 65 stories and 5 essays by different authors old and new explore the concept of time travel, gathered around 4 themes. Following @sakerfalcon's excellent advice not to read from start to finish, I zipped from point to point like the various protagonists, reading a story from each theme and then putting the book down for a while so that it didn't get stale.

This is a massive undertaking from the Vandermeers and at this scale I knew I wasn't going to enjoy everything. That said, the overall quality is extremely high and there's plenty to admire if not always enjoy - plus I got to read short stories from a number of authors (including Kage Baker, Connie Willis, Nalo Hopkinson, and Charles Stross) I've been wanting to explore but haven't got round to, whetting the appetite.

Given it's been a 6 month exercise, my memory has blurred on many of the particulars. Several did little for me (I think I whinged about Turtledove's Forty, Counting Down at the time, but it wasn't alone); some doing so little for me that a quick skim of their opening paragraphs doesn't even raise a flicker of recognition as they've left no mark; and a very few were downright wrong (special demerits go to Moorcock's Pale Roses for the unpleasant Lolita overtones. I'd guessed the twist, but that didn't make the execution any better, frankly).

However, the majority were good to brilliant and I look forward to revisiting many of them in the future. My absolute best of the bunch:

A Fisherman of the Inland Sea - Ursula Le Guin
This Tragic Glass - Elizabeth Bear
The Mouse Ran Down - Adrian Tchaikovsky

...which makes me a bit sad, because The Shadows of the Apt sequence still doesn't really appeal, but I'd love to read more Tchaikovsky. I might have to dig out his stand-alone novel in the meantime.

I unexpectedly got to do a lot of reading this weekend whilst traveling in the North with the out-laws. It head been a fractious week, and the trip started in auspiciously with the car we were to borrow being missing, triggering a spat while we got hold of the previous borrower and retrieved it. Things improved after that, with everyone making an effort to put on a good face for each other and for the remarkable 97-year-old we spent Saturday with. Any day that involves Hexham Abbey, Durham Cathedral, a good lunch and a lady you'd love to be like 'when you grow up' is a good day. And for me it was a trip home. Once a Northerner, always a Northerner (and yes, winter really is coming, etc).

Unexpected reading time is always a nice surprise! Glad the trip turned out well despite the bad start.

Oooh, @imyril, tell us about Hexham Abbey. (I'm glad you had a nice weekend visit. Sometimes, when you really do have everyone trying to put on a good face, it can be the making of a successful outing.)

48) The Time of the Dark - Barbara Hambly


This is my first foray into Hambly, and I dropped into it like a stone into water. It reminds me strongly of (best bits of) the Deed of Paksennarrion and the (older) works of GGK (his more recent work hasn't floated my boat) - strongly drawn, richly imagined and a pleasure to read.

This is traditional portal fantasy: two outsiders from our world are sucked into a conflict with an ancient, (literally) nebulous enemy in a parallel fantasy world. Darwath is losing the war, its King is dead, his heir a baby, and the political powers are at one another's throats as they vie for control in spite of ongoing assaults. This first installment sets the scene and embeds the offworlders for (presumably) future glory.

It's the details that make the difference. PhD student Gil isn't given to romance or babies; she gravitates to the Guard to become a tough warrior, which the egalitarian society of Darwath fully supports. Self-absorbed biker artist Rudy is drawn to a noble lover and an unexpected profession in spite of a broad streak of cowardice. Ingold may be a Gandalf knock off, but he has rather more charm and self-deprecating humour at his disposal. Even the supporting characters are finely drawn, leaping into life from brief sketches and carefully-chosen interactions.

It is a great episode, and demands further reading in best serial style (it doesn't really succeed as a standalone novel). I look forward to continuing their travels (yes, Slogging Through The Mud factor rather high in book 1 at least, although enjoyably rather than onerously so).

There are a couple of niggles, of course - it does adhere to a well-trodden format, so there are no real surprises in the execution of the plot or indeed the character development. To this end, Gil seems to transition from skinny student to competent warrior a little too easily (there's being a natural talent, then there (ought to be) a question of muscle mass, fitness and malnutrition). The excellent tweaks of tone of voice and vocabulary do trip me up as Rudy's Californian vocabulary is so jarring in a faux-mediaeval world. But these are minor gripes. But really, I'm enjoying this an awful lot and I'm going straight to the sequel.

49) Judging a Book by its Lover - Lauren Leto


NB I read most of this before the Hambly, but didn't take it Up North as it is an Actual Book. I finished it off last night - it's not really a diversion from The Walls of Air ;)

This was a book bullet I think, but sadly turned out not to be for me - unexpectedly, I actually got more out of Francine Prose. Prose's work may have felt snobby, but it was passionate and honest; I don't share her taste in Chekhov, but I understand her love of books. Leto's work reads (perhaps unsurprisingly, given her background) like a snarky collection of blog posts for a select audience in on some joke that I never quite grasped.

It might just be some hidden cultural chasm - Leto snarks mostly about modern American literati who I've neither read nor aspired to read. But even her short-form snark - 3-word or 3-line demolition of a broader range of authors, books and their readers - didn't make it across that gap. In the UK at least, we don't have some hidden suspicion that girls who like Austen are bi-curious (huh?) so such jokes fell very flat.

While Leto is clearly well-read (not genre fiction though; that's the domain of teenage boys in black with unwashed long hair, apparently), her love for fiction eluded me, buried beneath the snark. Perhaps it's all very loving snark - she and James Frey may have some longstanding Twitter flirt feud - but I couldn't tell. I'm left with (snark alert!) an impression of her as the loud, bitchy one in the corner at parties, toasting you ironically for having the wrong opinions. Which is ironic in itself, given her opinions of such people.

I'd much rather have coffee with her Mum.

>84 jillmwo: The North-East is home to some spectacular ecclesiastical buildings and a rich monastic history. Durham Cathedral will always have my heart (it brings tears to my eyes and I'm not religious), but Hexham is pretty damn awesome. We bumped into a young-at-heart volunteer in his mid-70s called Winston, who spun the history with typically north-eastern charm:

"Well, y'see Wilfrid was a handsome fella who'd be welcome in any gang. So when his Da remarried, he went home one evening and knocked on the door and said 'Dad, I dinna get on with her indoors. I can't stay' and his Da said 'Are you sure, son? We'll miss you' and he said 'Aye' and off he went to Lindisfarne."

According to Winston, young Wilfrid carried on his travels to Rome and became a monk, returning aged 30 to be named the youngest Bishop of the land. With strong opinions (and, as it turns out, a strong ally in the Queen) "he wasn't very popular with Bede, y'know" (which is clever, as Bede wasn't even born when Wilfrid was named Bishop!) Winston's version of events wasn't entirely historically accurate, but it was highly entertaining and very colourful :)

To get back to the point, Wilfrid founded Hexham Abbey in the 670s using land granted him by a subsequent Queen of Northumbria (which is a fascinating story in its own right - she had taken a perpetual vow of virginity as a teenager, but married twice - apparently never consummating her marriage vows. Wilfrid forced the king to back down when he decided to claim his rights, instead persuading him to let her retire to the convent at Ely - and inadvertently starting a feud. Henry VIII wasn't the first king upset by the church meddling in their marital affairs!)

The original church was a graceful but simple structure, of which nothing remains but an underground crypt, which Winston cheerfully unlocked for us (telling us all about the knots you tie to winch out those who fall down the steep stair and need to be pulled out on a stretcher). The stones of the crypt are robbed from the Roman fort at Corbridge - the tell-tales can still be seen as geometric carvings and even faint tracings of inscriptions.

The Danes burnt the church down in the late 9th century, and it wasn't rebuilt for 200 years - largely on the same footprint as far as I could tell from the models. The current Abbey is largely Norman, making it English Gothic - massive stonework, a vaulted roof and elegant galleries that are now inaccessible. A huge open cross, it feels very spacious and open plan as it lacks the massive columns that usually line the aisle. The site of the original church was a garden until the early 20th century, when a wing was added (stylistically in keeping with the rest of the Norman building) on the original footprint.

They've recently added an exhibition, which is rather well done - very tactile, and with a super scale model. And, of course, a cafe, although we were sadly on too much of a schedule to sample the cake.

However, unlike Durham Cathedral, it isn't currently raising money by building a scale model of itself in Lego. Oh yes.

i'd heard about Durham Cathedral, but knew nothing whatsoever of Hexham Abbey. Thank you so much for sharing your experience with us here! I love it. (And it's another place to add to my Bucket List.)

>88 jillmwo: Hexham is a lovely town - old mediaeval centre around the Abbey and right up by the Wall for exploring the old Roman forts. Definitely worth a look in if you're up there ticking things off the list :)

>85 imyril: I enjoyed the sequel too - even more trudging through the mud! as another recent finder of Hambly, despite her being well known. But inexplicably I appear not to have finished the trilogy.

>90 reading_fox: I've jumped in and am enjoying the sequel. I still think Gil has had a magic Guard wand waved over her, but it's good to see Rudy is a slower bloomer ;)

>86 imyril: I too was disappointed by Leto's book. I see I rated it 3.5 stars but I think that was over-generous. Her assumptions and generalizations about books and their readers just didn't mesh with my own thoughts - or yours either, it sounds like.

I really need to make a trip to NE England. I think I went as a child but certainly haven't been since.

50) The Walls of Air - Barbara Hambly


The saga continues (with more slogging as @reading_fox promised). This is very much a Middle Book in which stuff is found out, additional civilizations feature to justify more worldbuilding and pieces are moved on (and off) the board in preparation for the grand finale.

On the plus side, I really enjoyed Gil's tale of life in the semi-besieged fortress. The explorations / historical studies with Alde and the inevitable social dilemmas of life under siege were far more interesting than the apprentice wizarding and slogging over in Rudy's storyline (although happily that had enough going on to stop it dragging). The discovery of ancient tech and the suggestions of the true nature of the Dark were also very intriguing.

So there's more than enough momentum to push me straight through to the third book for the denouement. Two thoughts along the way: I don't believe for a second that the Icefalcon is dead, and I'll be a little irritated if the final book sees Gil embrace the May to December trope and forgo her heartlessness in favour of throwing herself at Ingold. I might stretch a point if she threw herself at Alde, but I like a heroine unencumbered by romance!

51) The Armies of Daylight - Barbara Hambly


Rounding out the trilogy with a rousing conclusion, The Armies of Daylight largely delivers. I don't expect a major plot twist half way through the final book of a trilogy, but it worked well and made the final stretch a darker, more foreboding ride.

The focus is back on the politics. With uneasy allies camped under one roof, it can only be a matter of time until the survivors of the Dark turn on one another. Can the Alketch, the Church, the wizards and the Chancellor hold the peace long enough to invade the heart of the Dark and reclaim the capital? The creeping menace and shifting alliances made for gripping reading, along with many opportunities for wanting to shout 'he's BEHIND you!' as I read.

I'm smug enough to admit I was right about Icefalcon, and I twigged to why the Dark wanted Ingold and to how the final showdown would be resolved; but the journey (including a bit more slogging - much of it through the terrifying Nest of the Dark under the capital) was rewarding in its own right.

As a side note, I am a little irritated that Gil and Ingold got together; the more so as it allowed for a sequence in which Gil appeared 'too weak' to put down a perceived threat, having otherwise been entirely awesome. However, I can't complain about the characters for the most part - this can easily be upheld as a brilliant example of several different kinds of strong women (while in no way reducing the opportunities for strong, brilliant men).

In retrospect, it felt like we never left Rudy's POV in this final installment, which bothered me a little as I preferred the alternation of previous books. It wasn't that I was emotionally engaged by Gil (she's too aloof for that), but I preferred her way of looking at the world.

Highly recommended. I'm not sure I'll search out the later additions that extended the series, but I'll certainly be visiting other Hambly works in the future.

52) Downtime - Cynthia Felice


This was an ER title, and I'm afraid I persevered to the end only to feel able to write the review. It's not terrible, but it left me utterly indifferent to plot and characters, and it does contain enough stylistic issues to really irritate me.

This could have been a rousing political stew; or a simmering romance with an interesting angle on age difference (relativity is a bitch). Instead, I got the sense that the kitchen sink had been considered, but ultimately left in situ because Basil Exposition had gone on strike.

There are some truly egregious info dumps, but the editor should really have been spanked for letting through all the repetition. At its worst, the two flaws combined, with one info dump repeated as the second last paragraph of one chapter and the second paragraph of the next.

The prose and characters lack subtlety, reducing what should be a tense personal and political situation to a series of bald statements and awkward conversations. The ill-considered description of one character as a 'young girl' by the 40-year-old hero made him come across as truly creepy for several chapters until another character clarified her age.

The plot itself is fine; it lost me in the awkward execution. I won't rush to seek out other works by Cynthia Felice.

>95 imyril: Oh dear, I got that one too but haven't started it yet...

>96 sandstone78: it's not without merit, but most of the aspects I liked were minor background points.

I think it also suffered being my next read after Darwath, which had politics, nuance, good prose and a trilogy-long structuring of information to avoid dumps at all cost. Tough act to follow.

...so now I am going to give in and buy (and read) The House of Shattered Wings.

53) The House of Shattered Wings - Aliette de Bodard
(maybe 4.5)

I have thoroughly enjoyed Aliette de Bodard's scifi short stories and jumped at the thought of a sort of post-apocalyptic angel urban fantasy.

An alternate twentieth century Paris. The Fallen live amongst mankind, banished for crimes against Heaven. Stripped of their wings and their memories, each must rapidly come to terms with their new earthbound existence and find a home in one of the Houses - or die at the hands of humans who steal the magic from their body parts.

Philippe was brought to Paris from Vietnam when the Fallen forcibly drafted people from the colonies to fight in a great war between the Houses. Years later, Paris destroyed by the almost nuclear fall-out of magical pollution, he runs with the gangs, stripped of all hope of returning home. When he stumbles across newly-Fallen Isabelle in the wreckage of Les Grands Magasin, he - and the Fallen - are seized by House Silverspires and taken to Notre Dame.

But Silverspires - founded by Morningstar, its influence slowly crumbling in the decades following his disappearance - is under insidious attack. Philippe and Isabelle find themselves at the centre of the storm as loyalties shift and bonds are forged.

I ended up admiring and being incredibly frustrated by the world-building. It's good - very good - in the sense that this decaying, dull Paris feels real, it's inhabitants creeping through mouldering ruins and avoiding the terrors of the blackened Seine. The Houses have real stature in this landscape; the buildings as stricken as the rest, but looming large above the devastated city, bastions of power and influence run by Fallen overlords one can serve or avoid but rarely ignore. The Fallen, with their crisp suits and Louis XV furniture, are a lofty 1% who rarely value human lives as they play malicious games of influence.

The frustrating bit is the lack of detail. The Fallen know their own history on Earth; Philippe knows the history of the apocalyptic war that destroyed Europe; but none of this is spelled out. We get only fragments through memories and references, with nothing to string it together. I couldn't tell you exactly when the novel is set; I couldn't even tell you if the Great War it references is World War I or the apocalyptic war between Houses (at one stage I thought the Fallen War had replaced WW2, historically speaking, but by the end I was less sure - it may have replaced WWI). Part of me is rather impressed that de Bodard has managed to construct something that feels so real without ever really giving you more than glimpses of what holds it together, because technically it's not relevant to the modern story. It's history. It's background, and it's firmly kept out of the way. It frustrates me only because when I know I'm dealing with an alternate history, I like to know how it fits together. On the flip side, I guess there's a huge opportunity for her to write a lot of novels exploring different periods ;)

The story itself is fairly traditional, but expressed in interesting ways thanks to the infusion of Vietnamese mythology and enough twists to make you genuinely unsure of whether this will end well or badly. This is a dark (but not grimdark) story - as with The Time of the Dark, for much of the novel the enemy is literally a shadow - and the flawed, flailing cast of characters are riven by self-doubt and House politics in their attempts to face up to it. I couldn't guess how it would end, and I'm happy to say I didn't call it although I'll admit that one outcome was both so obvious and so unexpected I felt like a right twit. I've not missed something so obvious since a villain ordered a mind-controlled good guy to 'turn around and kill those behind you' (think about that for just a second; it's wonderful when poor grammar is technically a villain's downfall).

Doubleplus points for the range of on-page friendships, sexual pairings (NB no sex on-page - it's not that sort of fantasy), and for strong characters of both genders; also for shady morality, difficult decisions and proper consequences. Nobody gets off lightly here, and while it would be possible to leave this as a stand-alone novel, there are plenty of loose ends for characters and House politics that will make for fascinating future complications instalments.

I'll certainly seek out future novels in the same setting (there is a sequel in the very early works, and a number of short stories, some of which I'm going to read right now in the hope of more glimpses of that elusive history).

Oooh. I bought Sorcerer to the Crown as a birthday present for a good friend, and somebody beat me to it, so now I have a copy. Hurray! I know it didn't float @Marissa_Doyle's boat, but I'm still curious to see how I get on with it. I think I'll save it for the Diversiverse event in October.

55) Lifelode - Jo Walton


I honestly don't know quite how much I like Lifelode, or indeed what to say about it. I think I just have to go with 'it's delightful', in the end. It embraces the mundane, mostly describing a very small and very human drama (a complicated 4-way marriage being unsettled by the arrival of a handsome young man and an acerbic and unexpectedly alive great-grandmother) that just happens to be punctuated by little acts of magic that people take entirely for granted. Then at the end events get a bit out of hand and feel more like any other fantasy novel.

I loved that much of the book describes Taveth making dinner (and very ordinary dinner too - egg fried rice; lamb with peas - not the elaborate mediaeval cuisine of Westeros et al); and that pivotal conversations between life partners take place over everyday household tasks (as they do); and that they display their affection for one another by doing very small things (fetching a bucket of water) rather than needing to save the world with a magic sword. I also very much appreciated that Chayra recognises that Taveth really is having her cake and eating it with regards to her love life (even though initially it looks like the other way round), even if I didn't appreciate some of Chayra's behaviour.

Ironically, I probably loved it for all the reasons I normally avoid swathes of 'mundane' fiction. Putting the humanity back into fantasy? Putting the magic back into normal life? Whatever it's doing, I enjoyed it. There were also some seriously interesting conceits - such as time and magic flowing more slowly as you travel from East to West, and the nature of the gods.

It becomes less interesting in some ways as it becomes more traditional fantasy - when Hanethe's past pursues her into Applekirk, bringing trouble that feels epic by this point, given the scale of the narrative. It's an opportunity to explore the broader applications of magic in this universe, but it also feels weird, unexpected and surreal after the domestic focus - which just goes to show how successful the small scale has been, as I felt as blindsided as a reader as the characters were in-world by the mayhem disrupting their lives.

It won't fly at all for those who dislike present tense narration - although there's a reason for it, and it's a clever way of bringing home how certain characters perceive the world, it's not always easy to swallow and it deliberately obscures chronology in places.

But for me, it's another charming outing by Jo Walton, and one I suspect I'll revisit in the future.

>101 imyril: You. You are a dangerous person, and I should know by now that I (or my bookshelves) will regret stopping to read your posts.

Carry on. Ahem.

>102 Marissa_Doyle: *cough* sorry. Honest. Um, sort of.

>102 Marissa_Doyle: Don't you believe it for one minute! I don't think she's the least bit sorry. She's probably giggling and doing a little happy dance in glee.

(I only escaped because @imyril noted that Lifelode was in present tense narration. That was my dodge...)

>101 imyril: This is one of the few books where I thought the present tense narration was appropriate. Like you, imyril, I couldn't decide how I felt about the book while I was reading it - the characters could be very frustrating at times which is probably an indication of how real they felt - but it has remained in my thoughts ever since and it's definitely one that I'll reread.

>105 Sakerfalcon: Absolutely - the present tense narration had a purpose here (beyond supposed immediacy) because it was so integral to how Taveth perceived the world.

56) Watership Down - Richard Adams


This gave me goose bumps. It has been at least 20 years since I last read or listened to it, yet it remains so very familiar - not necessarily in plot details, but in the very phrases of the prose. As a result, I can't be remotely objective about it. I loved it as a child, and it didn't fall down as an adult - if anything, I was belatedly amazed at just how young I fell in love with it (6? 7?), given the reading age / vocabulary and challenging concepts.

The only criticism I can level didn't bother me as a child: female representation. It's a key plot point that the bucks escape Sandleford Warren without any does, and this gaping hole drives the second half of the novel, which is fair enough. When Hyzenthlay and Clover are eventually introduced, they're marvellous if in supporting roles.

The initial gap isn't the bit that rubs now - it's the random female casualties (Nildrohain, Thrayonlosa) in the absence of corresponding male deaths, and certainly in the case of Nildrohain used to motivate others. It's also some of the throw-away comments - 'what's another doe more or less?' asks a buck at one point and similarly 'only a doe'.

Adams does a great job of not anthropomorphising his rabbits (ahem, beyond, you know, devising a language for them, giving them a colourful mythology, poetry and a military dictatorship - err, other than that, yes?) and emphasises the lack of sentimentality. For the bucks, the absence of does is an imperative, but it's positioned as a need for breeding stock. This bothers me now in a way it didn't as a child, because I'd never (consciously) encountered sexism.

My comments focus on a nitpick - I remain in awe of this as an epic work, and I genuinely love the characters. This is a fabulous novel. The English countryside comes to intimate, intricate life; the level of detail is never stifling, but it bustles with hedgerow herbs and bird song. The rabbits interact as rabbits - scent, touch, mutual grooming and tending to wounds rather than raising non-existent eyebrows, smiling. When one rabbit laughs - an unknown phenomenon for rabbits - the others are terrified. The theme of rabbits embracing new things and encountering concepts beyond their ken runs throughout; we're meant to admire their resourcefulness without ever really forgetting that they're just rabbits.

Blast from the past. Very good stuff.

>107 imyril: I loved Watership Down when I read it many moons ago. It was much more brutal than I had expected.

>108 pgmcc: it pulls no punches, without being graphic. But it doesn't shy away from some really tough ideas - including forced sexual availability and auto-abortion - not to mention the political themes. I have to assume most of it went over my head as a child :)

I'm pretty sure that a lot of it went over my head, seeing as I listened to it on tape when I was home from school with the flu. Can't remember how old I was, but it has to have been before I was 13. I mainly recall the constant struggle for survival.

Now, see, of all of his work, I really found Shardik much more satisfying. Long, but really amazing in its examinations of belief structures and how those may be absorbed into political structures.

>109 imyril: Those ideas were certainly absent from my English class discuss of the book in my second year of high school! I too loved the book though.

>111 jillmwo: now forgive me for being untrusting, but I think you're absolutely succeeding in putting temptation in my path. I've always intended to hunt up The Plague Dogs too.

I read Watership ages ago, lugged Shardik to 4 different houses, but couldn't get through it, read The Girl in the Swing not long ago and enjoyed it. Certainly different than his others. I may have read The Plague Dogs in my youth, but I can't recall.

>111 jillmwo: I've read Maia which is set in the same world as Shardik, but haven't read it yet. Maybe I need to...

>115 Marissa_Doyle:, I tried but couldn't get into Maia at all. (Don't recall why).
>114 Bookmarque: I agree there were parts of Shardik where it did slog a bit, but again, for me it was all about the rise of a religious belief structure and where it could lead.
>113 imyril: I seem to recall that Richard Adams also did a lovely book of short stories (folk tales featuring animals, but written by Adams), but now can't recall what it was called.

Edited to note that the book I was thinking of was called The Unbroken Web: Stories and Fables.

>117 jillmwo: he also did a book of short stories specifically related to Watership Down - more tales of El-Ahrairah and pals - which I have a copy of somewhere. I intend to dig it out.

...in the meantime, there are many cheap laughs being had in our house because I've mislaid one of my current reads, leading to the ill-advised question of 'Have you seen Testicles?'

>118 imyril: Well, where did you leave them? I'm sure you'll find them hanging around somewhere.

*snickers*

>119 pgmcc: I'm sure it'll drop into place eventually...

I need a copy of that book! My daughter is at the age where she is appalled at the titles on some of the books that I leave lying around. She's old enough to know what they mean, but young enough to find them gross. Testicles: Balls in Cooking and Culture would definitely get a strong reaction!

Somebody needs to go write the haiku summary for that one...

>123 Marissa_Doyle: *giggle* I may have to have a stab at that once I finish it.

...Testicles found on the guest bed. Lucky guests.

>124 imyril: Wow! You obviously throw some interesting parties.

>125 pgmcc: the fact that I can't remember them is even more damning, y/y? ;)

In unrelated news, for those wanting a sample of Aliette de Bodard, she has now made In Morningstar's Shadow available for free on her website.

Um, dare one ask how you came to discover such an intriguing title as the aforementioned Testicles? How did it ever come to your notice? (Because I'm sure thereby "hangs" a tale (or even one might suggest a pair).

>126 imyril: Thanks for pointing that one out, though I've read and enjoyed a couple of her short stories I hadn't read any novel by her yet, House of Shattered Wings will probably be it, someday.

>127 jillmwo: there's an annual food fair nearby, and one year they had a book stall. We picked up two: Testicles (because how could we resist?) and a cultural history of curry in the UK called The Road to Vindaloo.

At the time, I vaguely thought they might make good presents, but I ended up keeping them :)

>128 Jarandel: you're very welcome.

Blimey, what a week. It's been exhausting mentally and emotionally, with complex and charged situations at work and a family emergency (my grandmother had an accident; she'll be ok, but you can't help but worry). I've a busy weekend ahead and jury service starting Monday.

All of which is a poor excuse for having not done much reading. I'm feeling the lack of it, but haven't got the capacity to take the words in when I try - I'm skimming Sorcerer to the Crown and struggling to engage.

Not quite sure what the answer is - here's hoping for a quiet couple of days next week waiting for a case rather than landing in something on day 1!

I continue to read slowly. I did get a Do Nothing But Read day my first day in court (err, in the court building; not actually in court! I was sitting in a waiting room all day), which I used to chew through half of The Apex Book of World SF: Volume 4. As ever with short story collections, these are variable - none are terrible, but several have been more horror than scifi in their speculation, and not wildly to my taste.

A couple of years ago, Mr B stumbled across a Dutch artist who makes enormous sculptures on the beach. These magnificent feats of art-engineering are mobile, walking up and down the beach based on the winds and tides (I highly recommend a couple of minutes watching them on YouTube).

So imagine my delight to find a short story in Apex (The Eleven Holy Numbers of the Mechanical Soul by Natalia Theodoridou) entirely inspired by these - in which Theo (also the artist's name) is an astronaut whose mission to the stars has gone awry, and who is creating these new forms of life on a desolate planet in a desperate effort to keep loneliness and despair at bay. It's haunting and beautiful, and I loved it.

I was also pleasantly surprised by the Thomas Olde Heuvelt short; I may have picked up an unfair impression during this year's Hugo nastiness. 'The Boy Who Cast No Shadow' has set me straight, and makes me think that I may brush up my Dutch by picking up some more of his work in the original language.

I'm looking forward to finishing the collection, and I'm keeping notes - I may wax lyrical at length in due course (if you're terribly unlucky).

My Do Nothing But Read Day also allowed me to make a start on Maps for Lost Lovers, which I've been wanting to read for years. This is painfully lyrical and utterly awful, and I suspect it's going to cut me to ribbons in similar ways to In the Eye of the Sun and A Thousand Splendid Suns. The tale is that of a Pakistani family in England who learn that a brother has been murdered in an honour slaying. I suspect (I'm not even a quarter through yet) that the rollercoaster is going to be ruthless as I'm already torn between pity and frustration with Kaukab, one of the main characters.

I had a little moment this morning, when I caught sight of the countdown clock o'doom to my next thingaversary. I suddenly panicked that I've not made a dent on this year's haul, and double digits doesn't feel like very long!

...imagine my delight and surprise to discover I have actually read most of them (and what a good bunch of books they have been). So I really just need to knuckle down and read The Mirror Empire (I'm saving The Greenhouse for our trip to Iceland at new year).

>132 imyril: I would love to visit Iceland. I hope you have a nice trip.

I may have mentioned this before, but given that Halloween approaches I will mention again that Icelandic was the first foreign language in which Dracula was published.

Any background on why that was the case? Dracula first being published in translation in Icelandic?

>133 pgmcc: I had totally missed that snippet - how fascinating! Having done some googling, I find there's a whole world of intrigue behind that fact (such as Stoker's preface to the Icelandic edition and confusion surrounding the original manuscript and its provenance).

>133 pgmcc: I didn't know that either. It sounds like there's an interesting book to be written on that subject--or has it been already? pgmcc, are you just baiting a BB trap?

Makes me wonder if, due to the documentary format of the book, with all that journaling and correspondence, people thought it was a true account. The Icelandic, of course, have a tremendous tradition of storytelling, some of it very shivery, and I imagine that some superstitions linger.

>134 jillmwo: >135 imyril: >136 Meredy:

If you look at the dedication in Dracula it is to Bram Stoker's "dear friend Hommy Beg" whose real name was Hall Caine, a prolific author of the time. Hall Caine's books were published in print runs of 18,000 and he was widely acclaimed. The first edition of Stoker was a print run of 3,000.

Hall Caine lived on The Isle of Mann, an island in the Irish Sea between Ireland and Britain. Bram Stoker sent Caine a copy of Dracula (and I have a story about the recent discovery of that specific volume, but that will have to wait) with a personal inscription as well as the general printed one. Stoker signed and dated the book with the date being the day before publication.

Caine had a friend staying with him shortly after having read the book. His friend was a publisher from Iceland and Caine advised the friend to obtain the Icelandic language rights to the novel. The friend promplty took the advice and hence was the person who produced the first non-English edition of Dracula.

There is another interesting tale about the tracking down of a first Icelandic edition of Dracula but that will also have to wait until I return home and am using a more comfortable keyboard. I am on an iPad at the moment and am all fingers and thumbs on it.

By the way, the interesting snippets about Stoker and Dracual are due to my knowing a man who has spent his life collecting Stoker memorabilia. I have asked him to write down his stories but he is reluctant to do so. He gives talks occasionally and it is at these talks that I get the fascinating pieces of history.

>137 pgmcc:, >138 pgmcc: How interesting! It would be great if your friend would publish his findings. He's probably also read books such as . . . damn, what is the name of it? a novel in which Arthur Conan Doyle appears as a sleuthing main character, and he visits his friend Bram Stoker while searching for a hidden manuscript.

Sorry, @imyril, this is major thread drift.

>139 Meredy: no apologies, I'm an enthralled hostess :) Hang on, let me get some cheese...

>140 imyril: I have some Gruyere and Munster if that helps.

>141 pgmcc: Marvellous. We're down to Cheshire and Parmesan. I thought there was some Cropwell Bishop, but I made the mistake of getting Mr B enthusiastic about it.

>142 imyril: I have a bottle of Bergerac that will help wash it all down.

I continue to make my way through Maps for Lost Lovers, which is indeed tearing me apart. I want so very much to be angry with so many of the characters, who are doing or permitting things I can't get on with, and am suffering an excess of empathy thanks to the excellent presentation. I have a few bones to pick when it comes to writing it up, but oh my - I can't put it down. Or well, I can and do, but I certainly can't pick up anything else instead. The short stories will wait.

I actually want to hear more about that one. I don't know how likely it is to make it to the TBR pile, but I'm intrigued.

57) Maps for Lost Lovers - Nadeem Aslam


Shamas and Jugnu are the unconventional sons of an accidental Muslim, a Hindu boy rendered amnesiac by a bomb blast in the wake of the Amritsar riots and adopted by Muslims. His younger sons (now adults) live with the slight tarnish to their name his legacy brings; the hothouse gossip-beds of their immigrant community in Britain thrives on such morsels.

When Jugnu falls in love with Chanda, twice-divorced daughter of a local shopkeeper, they outrage the faithful - including Kaukab, his sister-in-law - by moving in together. Months later, they go on a trip home to Pakistan and are never seen again. When Kaukab asks some boys to peer in their window, it becomes evident that they came home and a police investigation begins.

Picking up some months later, Maps for Lost Lovers explores the fractures and griefs within a community that holds itself wilfully separate from its host nation, fearful of ridicule, racism, and ritual pollution. Slowly unfolding stories that wind about the core tragedy, it is a little like a toccata and fugue, revisiting the same themes through varying iterations to underscore - or perhaps explain - the culturally acceptable murder that is an honour killing in Pakistan.

This is beautifully written stuff, shamelessly slow and given to evoking floral and butterfly imagery (Jugnu is a lepidopterist) in such detail that the colours and scents leap off the page, as do the sharp smells and rich flavours of Kaukab's glorious cooking. It contrasts harshly with the often-unthinkable beliefs that the novel confronts you with, and the human frailties that are exposed by them.

It's almost impossible to discuss in any detail within the Green Dragon, as the novel is shaped by and around religious belief. It lost me a little in the penultimate act, where it ultimately felt like polemic (in part because there is no illustration of a moderate or integrated Islam anywhere within the tale). Kaukab's confrontation with her beloved son Ujala is the only time we hear from him directly, and his assault on her faith feels like the voice of the author in part because Ujala has been given no voice of his own. I think I would have been happier too without the final act, where the truths of Jugnu's and Chanda's disappearance are spelled out; this wasn't a story that left me craving certainty.

It's a fairly minor gripe. This is a powerful novel, if difficult reading, and I highly recommend it.

PS @jillmwo tempted or not, I'll let you off the hook - it's predominantly written in present tense.

...I also now feel the need for something MUCH lighter to cheer me up. Blimey.

58) Dragon in Danger - Rosemary Manning


Never fear, R Dragon is here! The sequel to the fabulous Green Smoke takes a rather different format, as R Dragon decides that if Sue can take holidays so can he - so he will come to visit her in St Aubyns. Dropping a dragon into modern (*cough* ish) society can't be done without a few ripples, and he is soon called on to act in the town pageant and then dragon-napped by some entrepreneurs from a rival town (who find they've got rather more on their hands than they bargained for). Thankfully, the friendly removal men who gave him a lift from Cornwall are soon on the case to get him back to Sue and his star turn on stage...

I enjoyed just how ill-equipped the dragon is for holidays - he is even less capable of packing light than my mum - and the stern line Sue quickly takes with him to get his luggage down to a reasonable scale. It does, sadly, also allow for the now hopeless line (repeated twice, because Sue is so special) that Sue is so organised and thoughtful that she'll make a wonderful... explorer's wife. Thankfully, times have changed.

One of the things I liked best about rereading Green Smoke as an adult was the fuzziness surrounding the extent to which Sue's mother actually believed her daughter had befriended a dragon (rather than accommodating an invisible friend with a sweet tooth). In Dragon in Danger there's no question of disbelief - R Dragon is seen and interacts with hordes of adults, not least the redoubtable Mrs Wotherspoon and her hat of artificial roses.

It's all perfectly charming, with a couple of gags for the reading parent (I was particularly fond of The Visitor from Mars Welcomes You), but rather less magical than the original book. Sue and her friends are over-shadowed by the adult cast who drive the plot, and R Dragon has fewer opportunities to shine when not engaged in storytelling (although his duets with William the removal-man are lovely, as is his handling of the villainous Mr Bogg).

Still enjoyable, but not a patch on the first one. I do love the illustrations though.

I particularly like the illustration of R. Dragon and William sitting in the back of the moving van, flapping their wingselum. I find it satisfying that the dragon is undeniably real, with no implication that he could just be a figment of Susan's imagination.

>149 SylviaC: I also love the illustration of R Dragon playing the piano :) Although I love all the illustrations. R Dragon is particularly big-eyed, rotund and approachable in all of them.

I wasn't attached to the idea that R Dragon was a figment of Sue's imagination so much as the idea that Sue's mother believed he was. There was a definite lack of concern about Sue running off to play with a dragon in Green Smoke and a strong suggestion that she thought Sue just had an appetite for extra buns, so I did miss - just a little - a scene in which she and/or Sue's dad were taken aback to discover that R Dragon was in fact real and coming to visit...

And now for something completely different - I'm off to TalosFest tonight (and tomorrow) for a series of short plays on SFnal themes. I have no idea what to expect. The playwrights appear to be established professionals, so it shouldn't be dubious fringe / student stuff, but it will certainly be on a low-budget / fringe scale. I'm desperately curious and quite excited. I'm going as a favour to an old acquaintance who writes for Strange Horizons, so I shall be writing a review for them in due course (which is just a little bit daunting, if I'm honest).

>151 imyril: That looks like it will be fun. I look forward to hearing what you think of it.

It does seem as if it would be fun. Although I always think it's harder to review live performances. At least when reviewing books, you can always go back and verify. With theater, that's not possible. I hope you have fun with it!

Well that was fun. I can't call the festival entirely successful if measured against the yardstick of professional theatre, but as a genre outing for enthusiasts it was largely entertaining and bits of it were very good indeed. 8 short plays (ca 10-20 minutes each) in one evening, with practically nothing in the way of set or props. It's amazing what you can achieve with a half-decent actor and a chair; the plays that suffered were let down when the actors weren't really up to scratch.

I wouldn't say any of it was ground-breaking in SF terms or necessarily had a lot to say, and some of the plays were barely SF at all (or were about our relationship with current technology), but the (very tame) audience (local sci-fi bookclub!) seemed to have a blast.

I seem to have managed to write 1500 words on the experience, which I will now bat about for a day or so until I'm happy with it. Fingers crossed the editors are happy with it!

So I've hit my original target of 60 books for the year (80% of them off the shelf). As per last year, I'm not going to set new targets, I'm just going to keep reading to my heart's content and see where I end up. I will keep working on my percentage targets for diversity and non-fiction (neither of which I've achieved yet).

In the meantime, my two latest reads have been:

59) Binti - Nnedi Okorafor


I tend to like lush, rich prose that envelops me as a reader and sucks me in emotionally. There's none of that here, Okorafor writing sparsely - almost clinically in places - with a detachment that echoes the themes of social isolation and (literal) alienation. Young Binti is a genius, a daughter of an isolated tribe that holds itself apart from the world. When she is invited - the first of her people - to take a place at Oomza University, the foremost place of learning in the galaxy, she sneaks out to accept it, knowing her people will disapprove. Although she encounters cultural snobbery on her travels, she is accepted by her fellow students and thrives until a powerful alien species attacks their transport ship and she must fight for not only her survival, but that of all at the University.

While I never really warmed to the story, Binti's emotional journey and her physical responses felt authentic, and I had to admire her perseverance. Her realisation that she has excluded herself from even her own people - both by her decision to go to Oomza and by the consequences of her association with the Meduse - was an emotional beat I wasn't expecting, and is a heart-breaking conclusion for a story that revolves around being an outsider (although the story ends on an upward beat when she calls her mother).

Her adoption by Okwu also balances this out, although (inevitably) I was a little dismayed by a plot point that essentially makes physical penetration and physical/chemical change without (informed) consent an acceptable action. I don't think Okorafor was trying to draw any analogies to rape or medical ethics here, and it's worth noting that the action is in no way sexual - but both parallels are there, not least as Okwu is male (which did at least have me read up on whether jellyfish have separate genders: yes, they do). So, err, awkward. But hey, it all works out okay, right? ...except for that bit where we're genuinely unclear at the end of the story whether her family will ever talk to her again now she has alien hair.

This is a story about doing the right thing regardless of the personal costs, which doesn't shy away from acknowledging that it's a personal choice - and that not everyone may share your perspective. Binti know her decision to leave home will be considered selfish by her family; all the consequences that come from that only increase the gulf she will need to overcome to repair those relationships (if indeed she can). Put this firmly in the context of elites / majorities finding themselves beholden to someone they would rather look down on and this is a very long way indeed from your typical teen / YA story about using your innate awesomeness to become a big gorram hero.

It doesn't leave me rushing to pick up Lagoon, which I've had my eye on for some time.

60) The Apex Book of World SF: Book 4 - Mahvesh Murad (editor)


An Early Reviewer title, being the latest collection of speculative / science fiction shorts from around the world. This was a great opportunity to broaden my horizons (sorry) and get to know the works of international authors, many of whom I hadn't previously heard of. As ever with short story collections, not everything is for everyone and quality also varied.

A number of stories were positioned at the horror end of the spectrum, which is not to my taste, and a couple dabbled with concepts that I found squicky (such as an uncle burning a girl alive (against her will, natch) to send her through time to be his nephew's wife in Setting up Home. Certain African attitudes towards sex with minors (thankfully being called out in How My Father Became a God, not celebrated)). That said, I expect SF to challenge me with difficult ideas, and most stories were firmly challenging ideas not celebrating them (Setting up Home the only exception that leaps to mind).

I do think the collection would have felt stronger if stories had been collected in themes - as it was, the collection jumped from space opera to horror to apocalypse to mythology and so on with no obvious thread. I found it slightly jarring, not least because it left me uncertain at any stage what I would get next.

I was indifferent to about half the collection, finding them unengaging and at times confusing, but there was only one DNF (Like a Coin Entrusted in Faith). The rest were various levels of good to awesome, with particular favourites:

• The Vaporization Enthalpy of a Peculiar Pakistani Family, in which a girl with unusual powers fights rage and despair in the face of the human capacity for violence, which was both unusual and moving.
  
• The Language of Knives was also affecting, being a sombre, pathos-laden tale of a father trying to create a bond with his estranged daughter over (disturbing) burial rites.
  
• The Last Hours of Final Days followed a teenage couple awaiting the apocalypse in the ruins of Mexico - this was both well-written and well-observed, the prose clearly evoking the shattered ruins through which they went joy-riding in stolen cars and skateboards.
  
• I also thoroughly enjoyed Thomas Olde Heuvelt's The Boy Who Cast No Shadow - this managed to be more accessible and more human than many in the collection, with Olde Heuvelt capturing a tone of voice that suited his teen protagonist. Rather than equating weird attributes with superpowers, the story examines media attention, bullying and both the fragility and quality of life, being rather more introspective than I expected.
  
• My favourite of the lot (as mentioned in >131 imyril:) was The Eleven Holy Numbers of the Mechanical Soul, which got bonus points for being a good space-castaway / AI story and using one of my favourite artists as an inspiration.
  
  I found the second half of the collection weaker than the first, although thankfully there were some more good stories towards the end:
  
• The Good Matter, once again treating unusual attributes as things to be lived with rather than superpowers (in this case, 2 people who sense context / history of items - and people - through touch, handling three unique artefacts), and almost more powerful in terms of the imaginative implications than the story on the page (which remains very good). Apparently this is set in the same world as Nene Ormes's novels, which I may now have to seek out.
  
• a Zen Cho short that I'd read and enjoyed previously in Spirits Abroad about immigration (to the Moon - this doesn't make it easier) and integration
  
• Pockets full of stones filled my head with interesting ideas that it didn't pursue, but was a solid story in its own right - a woman on a relay station in the outer solar system must decide what to do when a message transmitted by a colony starship infects her systems with an alien virus.
  
• Sarama and A Cup of Salt Tears both left me feeling I would have got more out of them if I were more familiar with the Ramayana and Japanese mythologies respectively, but I particularly enjoyed A Cup of Salt Tears anyway with its delicate handling of grief, love and sacrifice.
  
  Overall, the collection left me entertained and there are stories here I will revisit as well as authors I must now explore, which is rather the idea with this compilation - job done!

>155 imyril: I keep eyeing the bundle of all 4 Apex anthologies on amazon and wondering if I should splurge. Your review of the fourth one is pushing me towards taking the plunge; I just wish there were more reviews of the earlier volumes.

>156 Sakerfalcon: I'm considering going back and picking up some of the earlier ones on the strength of this one. Even though it was really 50/50 between meh/yay, the yays were louder than the mehs.

In related random short stories - I really enjoyed the Water Rights short in this month's Lightspeed (free online).

61) Sorcerer to the Crown - Zen Cho


My second dip into Sorcerer to the Crown and I found the waters just fine. This is frothy fantasy farce with serious ideas under its lacy skirts; comparing it to Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell (as many people seem to) feels almost entirely inappropriate to me as I found that novel dour and slow. Sorcerer to the Crown may also be set in a Regency England with a well-established magical tradition, but it has a gleeful exuberance.

If the tone is whimsical, the context is anything but: we meet former slave and newly-appointed Sorcerer Royal Zacharias Wythe in mourning for his adoptive father. Elevated to the highest thaumaturgical office on his father's death, he is undermined and threatened by the racial prejudice of his sorcerous colleagues and under pressure from the Government to help them out with a 'little problem' in the colonies. The snubs and backstabbing provide a major plot thread, but the novel lays out the politics and moves right on without getting bogged down.

Zacharias travels to the country to escape a vicious rumour that he killed his father. He also needs to replenish England's diminishing magic with some clever spell-casting on the Fairy borders (another plot thread; needless to say nothing is simple), but he visits a school of 'gentlewitches' on the way as a favour to a good friend (the joke tied up with said friend took 250 pages to catch up with me - sometimes the intimidating aunt really is a dragon). Here we meet the outrageous Prunella Gentleman, orphan, magical prodigy and unstoppable force of nature.

One of the things I delight in across all of Zen Cho's work are her ferocious female characters. Prunella is half-'foreign' (uncovering her parentage being a peripheral storyline), with no prospects and absolutely no idea of how much is too much. She throws herself into situations that anyone with half an ounce of common sense would shy away from and pooh-poohs most of the strictures of polite society. She's delightful, and she gets away with it all by combining wide-eyed naivete with a self-absorbed lack of regard for the opinions of others. Prunella was made to tiptoe through Gothic corridors getting into trouble (but she'd probably frighten the monsters), or - as here - to storm the sensibilities of British Magic. She's arguably a little too perfect - too bright, too pretty, too talented, too brave - but I was too charmed and giggling too much to care.

She is a vivid contrast to poor, put-upon Zacharias, who is all woe and duty and has a dark secret besides. When he decides that women can and should be formally trained in magic (the school of gentlewitches actually teaches them to suppress their powers), and that Prunella will be his project, it's painfully clear that he's bitten off far more than he'd be able to chew even if he didn't have so much on his plate already. It's ironic that Prunella appears to be every bit as frivolous as England's thaumaturges fear 'females' will be (GAH. But, this is also a book laughing in the face of sexism, so) and in spite of this is a better magic user than any of them.

In spite of this, she's over-shadowed by Malaysian witch Mak Genggang whenever the cantankerous old lady is on-page. She is a powerful, browbeating archetype who is determined to get what she needs from Zacharias and stymie the British government in their interference. If Prunella doesn't much care for conventions, Mak Genggang simply doesn't know they exist - she is a hurricane that storms through a scene, upsets everything in sight (and, inevitably, makes Zacharias' life even more complicated).

Between the sorcerers manoeuvering to strip him of his staff, a fragile relationship with the Fairy Court, a magical situation even more complicated than it seemed, a mysterious illness he tries to hide from everyone, and a highly talented young lady more intent on finding a husband than mastering the principles of thaumaturgy (Prunella thinks magic is great; learning less so), Zacharias has more than enough on his hands.

It's sometimes silly, over the top stuff, and I had to be in the right mood to enjoy it. Thankfully, the writing is polished and Cho masters the mannered Regency dialogue, which could have been a real stumbling block if done poorly. She also sustains multiple inter-related plots and adds nuance around racism, sexism and colonialism without the whole thing feeling over-burdened. I liked the occasional darker touches - Cho has always blended sour with sweet in her short stories, and she's not afraid for her protagonists to be ruthless (Nidget!), which stops this being too saccharine however cosy it all feels (at no point did I think I was in for an unhappy ending, although I wasn't sure how the challenges would be resolved).

I think Zen Cho is one to watch, and I'll certainly watch out for the sequels.

Great review of Sorcerer to the crown. I'm glad you ended up enjoying it in the end.

158> I like your review! I had much of the same opinions towards the book.

>159 Sakerfalcon: >160 pwaites: thank you - I felt a bit like I was pouring reactions out without a lot of focus so I'm glad it makes sense to other people ;) But yes, it definitely won me over.

62) The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett


I have been invited to review a modern 'sequel', so I thought it a good excuse to (re)read the classic and remind myself how much I loved it as a child. I'm glad I did; the suck fairy hasn't been to visit, although I probably enjoy rather different elements now.

Mistress Mary (quite contrary) is orphaned by a cholera outbreak in India, and shipped to Yorkshire to be the ward of her remote uncle. Left to her own devices with nobody but a well-meaning maid to keep an eye on her, she spends much time outdoors and quickly blossoms from a tiresome little tyrant to a curious, energetic girl. When she begins discovering the secrets of the forbidding house and its tragic gardens, she brings magic and hope that changes the fates of all its inhabitants.

Read as an adult, it's unarguably moralistic stuff. We're repeatedly told that Mary is a horrid, awful child, but we really get very little evidence of it. For sure, she's quick to anger and likes her own way, but the Rector's children in India are worse-mannered. We only twice see her have a properly pettish fit, and they're both sympathetic in their way.

The first, to be fair, is inspired by snobbery, class values and outright racism (she thinks Martha considered her 'a native'), but in the context of a girl who has lost her whole family - however remote they may have been - and been uprooted from everything she has ever known and dumped in the most contrasting context - her sulky crying fit is remarkable for only happening the once.

The second occasion is glorious, when she faces down her cousin in the midst of his own hysterical tantrum and matches him strop for strop. From the start, Colin is indeed the little monster the narrative would have us believe Mary is/was, and the tale works much harder to show it.

I loved the first half of the book. Mary is cold and remote, almost certainly detaching from those around her to try and cope. Her oddly adult manners (which really don't fit with her upbringing, but work to keep the world at a distance) bemuse the adults around her and provide lovely exchanges with Martha, who is used to the affectionate rough and tumble of a dozen siblings in a tiny cottage. I

The second half loses pace and some of the charm. Mary is no longer exploring the mysteries of Misselthwaite, but acting as Colin's guide. Once Colin reached the garden and the focus shifted to 'curing' him, it felt like the pace slowed right down for me. I also got slightly tired of the extended digressions that essentially boil down to 'think positive, be healthy', 'fresh air is good for you' and 'be nice to people, kids'. It's not that these aren't lovely sentiments, but I preferred the lighter character-driven touches to the Voice of the Author intervening.

On the plus side, this remains a charming classic with a cast of delightful characters (Ben Weatherstaff!). It does show its age in the casual racism and the Victorian/Edwardian idealism - nature will cure all things (and disabilities are all in the mind; um) - but I can't get past the crafty conjuring of the Yorkshire seasons and the magic of growing things.

I'm so glad the suck fairy hadn't got her dirty little paws on this one; I reread another childhood favorite, A Little Princess, not too long ago, wincing and with one eye shut, but miraculously the evil little beyotch hadn't got to it, either. ;)

I reread and still enjoyed The Secret Garden relatively recently, but haven't had the nerve to try A Little Princess in the last 20 years or so. I loved it so much as a kid that I'm afraid to take the chance.

Oh dear. Return to the Secret Garden hasn't done a lot for me, but it was at least a quick read (review to follow; it's a bit manic at the moment) - and having finished it, I can rush back to A Long Way to a Small Angry Planet, which has been glorious delight from the off.

I promise to catch up with what's going on here in the pub over the coming week!

>165 imyril: I hadn't heard of Return to the secret garden but your comment makes me think I shan't look for it. Hilary McKay wrote a sequel to A little princess a few years ago that was well-received, called Wishing for tomorrow, which looks at life at Miss Minchin's after Sara Crewe left. I should find my copy and read it.

63) Return to the Secret Garden - Holly Webb


There's a danger of writing sequels to classics - it's impossible to please everyone, and ultimately - especially in the case of works that are unprotected by an estate - the author will have his or her own vision and story to tell, which may not be the one the audience longed to read.

Full musings to follow over on my blog next week (I've been asked to redact this until the promo tour finishes this week, which I'm happy to do).

In a nutshell, I found the style so at odds with the original it was hard to embrace it as a sequel. For me, a sequel is something you can read straight after the original - so retreading the same story doesn't win you any points, and writing in a completely different way is jarring.

If you're looking for the first half of The Secret Garden to be retold in a more modern manner with a new cast of characters 30 years later, you're in luck. If you disliked the sermons of the second half of The Secret Garden, you're also in luck - the second half here focuses on the inevitable cost of war, with the healing required emotional rather than physical.

But it lacked a sympathetic punch - I wanted more focus on the adults' emotional journey (as they were the children in the original book), which the 10-year-old orphan heroine can't really provide (she's not old enough).

Your mileage may vary. It will work just fine for readers who are less judgmental (I know I'm awkward), and for younger readers who will probably be delighted to revisit the Garden and the robin regardless - hell, I would have liked it just fine if I'd read it aged 10. As an adult though, it fell short of the mark.

Well, based on your commentary, I think I'll avoid Return to the Secret Garden, but I confess to being a bit intrigued by Sakerfalcon's recommendation of Wishing for Tomorrow. I'm not a big fan of sequels to well-established classics, because as you rightly note, @imyril, differences in writing style do make a difference to the reader's experience. But I do wonder what happened at Miss Minchin's Seminary after the fact. (I may not like what the author comes up with, but it's always fun to consider what might have happened to Ermengarde, for example. (If I'm remembering correctly, she was the one who couldn't recall specifics about the French Revolution until Sara told her stories.)

>166 Sakerfalcon: >168 jillmwo: apparently it could have been a lot worse. Another author had a stab at a sequel to The Secret Garden and wrote it strictly for adults - right down to a bisexual love triangle (with Colin shouting out the wrong name during a sex scene). So um, on that basis, this one's brilliant ;)

I remember reading and enjoying The Secret Garden many moons ago and enjoying it. I do not thing I shall chasing any sequels by the sound of things.

>169 imyril: Oh dear.

>171 sandstone78: funny how it's tricky imagining childhood characters in situations you wouldn't otherwise consider problematic. It's a bit like imagining sex and Peter Pan. I just can't do it.

>169 imyril: I'm always amazed at some of the re-imaginings of classic titles. And it doesn't matter if it's fan fiction or professionally published material. For example, Amy Ephron wrote a sequel to The Little Princess entitled A Cup of Tea: A Novel of 1917 and in an interview, she indicated that there'd been two starting points for the story -- one was Burnett's The Little Princess: Being the Whole Story of Sara Crewe and the other was a Katherine Mansfield short story. I was literally prepared to fall in love with Ephron's story and was so disappointed in it. Not a whiff of Burnett's virtuous character, not even a passing one.

But before I go to sleep tonight, I'm going to revisit the original. (I've always loved the scene where she returns to the attic, cold and hungry, and finds the dinner left by Ram Dass.)

>169 imyril: I saw this comment yesterday and had no words. I still have no words.

Full musings on Return to the Secret Garden now out of embargo and over in the other place.

Full marks on that commentary, @imyril. I agree with everything you said. It also put me in mind of a different book that was very similar to The Secret Garden. Have you read Mandy by Julie Edwards. (LT lists it as being by Julie Andrews, but when originally published, it was under her married name Julie Edwards). It was much more successful to my mind precisely because of the approach you express so well which is that it was inspired by Garden but not framed as a sequel to it.

Oh, I so loved Mandy as a ten-yr-old; though the writing was at times painfully heavy on telling and not showing the story, I still adored it. I haven't revisited it, though...

64) Blindsight - Peter Watts


I've read Hugo-nominated Blindsight before, but beyond the tiny fragment of comedy science (antiEuclidean drugs to stop vampires being 'allergic' to right angles), I couldn't remember a thing about it. However, I enjoy Peter Watts Rifter trilogy (no, wait: I enjoy the first two books, before it goes from problematic to hoooboy what now? No) so I thought I'd revisit Blindsight and read the sequel (Echopraxia, next up on TBR). After all, if I didn't remember anything, it can't have been terrible.

...and it's not. It's challenging, and difficult, and unlikeable in numerous ways, and features much harder science than I'm best equipped to deal with, and hinges around crucial questions of humanity, identity and purpose (and rejects more or less everything I feel passionate about), and, and, and - and at the end of it all I'm left (for a second time) not entirely sure what to do with it.

It would be relatively easy to write about it from several different angles, or even to stumble into essays (angry, impassioned, finger-pointy essays even) - all of which goes to suggest this is terribly good science fiction. It takes science and psychology and pushes (and then pushes a bit more) to ask and answer big questions. It made me think, and made me want to debate. All of which sounds like I should be giving it a glowing review and a high star rating.

However, I found it emotionally dissatisfying and at times downright confusing. As ever with Watts's work, there are places where I couldn't tell if certain behaviours were displayed to make the point they are inhuman/unacceptable, or because his view of humanity is so awfully bleak. I found it hard work, and there's even a hint of a story going on off-page that might have been further up my street (if less philosophical; I did enjoy the reflections on consciousness as a virus).

Ultimately, however much I appreciate the novel, I didn't really enjoy it all that much (no doubt in part because Difficult Stuff is going in my life, so something fluffier along the lines of A Long Way to a Small Angry Planet is far closer to what I need right now). So just the 3 stars.

As an aside, I note that on my first reading, Apple hadn't released their voice-activated PA. A book with a protagonist called Siri, who has basically no understanding of emotion - just a well-developed set of protocols to understand and respond to social cues based on available context - reads slightly differently now that they have. Unintended comedy for the win.

65) A Long Way to a Small Angry Planet - Becky Chambers


Rosemary Harper has faked a new identity and signed on with the Wayfarer as a clerk. Captain Ashby hopes she'll open doors to juicier contracts. Everyone else just hopes she's less of a pain in the ass than their fuel engineer.

A Long Way to a Small Angry Planet is science fiction in space opera mode. It's more interested in people than tech, and it's more interested in their development and feelings than their shenanigans. It's not remotely Literary with a capital L; it's sticky and fuzzy and given to wrapping it's observations about humanity in jokes made by aliens. In acknowledging and exalting emotion, it's (thankfully) about as far from Blindsight as it's possible to get. In the spectrum of SFF it's up near Firefly, but with pacifist engineers rather than smugglers.

I loved it. It wasn't a long slow dive of appreciation so much as a belly flop in the deep end.

The nominal plot: fly to newly-affiliated region of space inhabited by a tribe of ill-understood warfaring psychotics and open up a hyperspace tunnel back to civilization. The journey is the real story here, an excuse to introduce a richly diverse galaxy and spend as much time as possible with the affectionately squabbling crew. With no experience of deep space (let alone engineering) but a great deal of interest in aliens, Rosemary is a perfect entry into the fix-it world of the cobbled-together spacecraft on its long journey across the galaxy.

It's not brilliantly written, it's not shy of tropes, and it's not afraid to do exactly what you expect. But it's all executed with charm, making it irresistible (to me).

Highlights: effervescent engine tech Kizzy singing mondegreens to banned alien pop; reptilian pilot Sissix (yes, ok, she's another reason I love this book so much) having trouble typing because her digits are too cold; and - on a rather different note - exploring the limits (none) and post-traumatic responses (varied) of pacifists in the face of life-threatening violence. This book isn't afraid of its convictions; it's neither social justice war nor hand-wringing liberality; it's just life in many facets with different skins and surprisingly little judgment (except maybe the totalitarian Quelin).

I won't give it 5 stars right now, but I suspect it will upgrade on reread based on the absurd level of affection I've got rattling around my cold reptilian heart. Also, my huge crush on Sissix.

Great review! You sum up all the things I loved so much about the book perfectly.

>180 Sakerfalcon: I'm so happy to hear there's a 'companion volume' in the works (note: not being described as a sequel, so I wonder whether it will focus on the Toremi or Lovelace; my money is on the Toremi).

>179 imyril: I agree with Sakerfalcon! I like your review, it describes very well how I felt about the book.

>180 Sakerfalcon: >182 zjakkelien: thank you both! I think it was just lovely to read a book that was so positive and lacking in cynicism. I've now picked up a copy of The Goblin Emperor (finally!) as I recall that was described along similar lines. I'm enjoying heart warming after how devastatingly bleak Blindsight was.

66) The Three - Sarah Lotz


Before I get on to happier books again, a diversion via this slick, cynical thriller that sets out to illustrate T S Eliot's points: the best lack all conviction and the worst are full of passionate intensity. His comments about the centre and the blood-dimmed tide aren't far off the mark either.

Four aeroplanes crash on the same day. Investigators quickly rule out terrorism, but struggle to explain what was at fault. They are equally bewildered by the survival of three children, who come through the crashes with minimal injuries against all odds. The crashes and their survivors ignite global conspiracies as a right-wing preacher declares them the harbingers of the apocalypse.

After a difficult prologue (the last minutes of Pamela Donald as she records her final message), the novel presents itself as the best-selling non-fiction account by journalist Elspeth Martins.

I’ll be honest: I have a soft spot for fictional non-fiction. I think it’s an interesting format, and I enjoy the flexibility it gives authors in presenting their narrative. Lotz does a great job hear in capturing the tones of voice and vocabularies of the ‘interviewees' - arguably too good, as I found myself highlighting passages and adding angry notes in the margins. Repeatedly. Let’s just say that I don’t have a lot of time for certain political perspectives, and leave it at that. Still, it’s some good fictional non-fiction that is sufficiently realistic to cut through my belief filters quite so effectively.

The inclusion of chat logs, newspaper articles and twitter feeds were marginally less successful, but allowed Lotz to provide context and alternative perspectives that would have been hard to justify as interviews. Extra credit for her largely off-page handling of the media frenzy, focusing more on its impact than its execution.

It’s a fascinating stew. In the end, I didn’t much care whether the kids were possessed, aliens, the Four Horsemen (all three of them) or misrepresented PTSD sufferers. I just appreciated Lotz’s depiction of the irrational responses we have to things we can’t explain. The craving for patterns and clutching at the flimsiest straws is a familiar process, although It didn’t make me feel better about humanity.

However, what I liked best was the ambiguity. Was Elspeth coldly cashing in or genuinely trying to provide some perspective? (I liked that her letter in the final chapters makes it clear that even her nearest and dearest questioned this too). It’s clear that she had no agenda - her book makes her interviewees’ opinions clear, but crucially leaves room for her readers (fictional and real) to form their own (ir)rational opinion.

…which is why the epilogue left me mildly irritated. I’d have been happy for it to have formed the prologue to a sequel, moving the narrative along - but I would have been far happier with this novel if it had left the question of the children unresolved.

Nonetheless, this is an entertaining if not always easy read. I wouldn’t be surprised to see it hit the big screen as a thriller in the near future - it would translate a little too easily.

>179 imyril: I give up. I tried hiding in a bunker, but bunkers are no proof against book bullets. Sigh.

>179 imyril: Can you offer any insight as to why the "horror" tag is applied so frequently to this title? (If you look at the works page here on LT). I'm really tempted by your write-up but I'm not big on horror.

And wait a minute there, @Marissa_Doyle! Are you telling me that there are bunkers here in the Green Dragon somewhere? I thought we just had a wine cellar.

It used to be the wine cellar, but we seem to have finished off all the wine.

>185 Marissa_Doyle: oooops, let me turn down the rate of fire there.

>186 jillmwo: this is creepy in places, but I wouldn't call it horror as I tend to associate that with scares and gore. Still, it's a book about some children possibly being the harbingers of the apocalypse, so I see where taggers are coming from. Also, just don't if you've ever been in or lost some one in a plane crash, but that probably goes without saying.

It also depends on how closely you empathise with the interviewees. I didn't; they were as interesting to me as the events they recounted. Paul's storyline is probably the most trad horror - creepy child, night terrors, breathy recounting of nightmares into a dictaphone - on screen it would certainly be horror - but he's also a paranoid alcoholic, so it comes down to readers' filters. Mine were set to Highly Rational, I guess :)

Which leads me to a last thought, which has been bothering me since I posted the review. I like the book, but it occurs to me you can bring your own baggage in a big way. Some of the implications bother me more now I've reflected on them longer, notably whether the actions and beliefs of the religious hard liners are ultimately justified..

Still, I expect spec fic to be unsettling and sometimes dark. I'd still not call this horror, but maybe that's because 'I don't read horror' so it can't be? ;)

>187 Marissa_Doyle: there's no wine left? O.o

>184 imyril: Reading your review is interesting. This book has for various reasons been pinging on my radar of late and each time I've pushed it away thinking that on an overall, I probably don't want to read it. Your review pings it again and leaves that still uncertain curiosity that maybe I should try it (or maybe not). It's strange when a book provokes this kind of uncertainty - I'm never quite sure what to do - although for now, I'm going to leave it be, until an actual physical copy looms in my presence and then I'll have to make a decision. After all, it's not like the TBR pile is a small one, is it?

>188 imyril: *thumbs up* Thank you for clarifying!

>189 Peace2: very wise. Focus on the physical pile. It's more likely to topple.

67) Over Sea Under Stone - Susan Cooper


I couldn't resist an invitation to reread The Dark is Rising Sequence this December, and I've got stuck straight in. I read them out of sequence as a child, and this was one of the last one's I ever encountered - as such, I had only vague memories of it, so pretty much got the delight of rediscovering it from scratch.

I've finally got around to sorting out my blog properly, so full meandering over here.

I've got some thoughts tickling me about the handling of (social) class in The Dark is Rising. That said, it's a very long time since I read these books, and while Over Sea Under Stone seems to be setting up some points for discussion that tally with my memories of The Grey King, I'll read a few more rather than jump the gun. The thoughts didn't detract from my total delight in revisiting this mythology and these characters.

My only other thought is that I liked that so much of the perspective was given over to Jane Drew. On the flip side, this does ultimately play out by making Jane the observer - and although the narrative makes it clear all three children are terrified, she's the one who is carried through the night by a reassuring adult, and she's the one left to watch for the turning tide whilst the boys venture into a dark cave. It robs her of the agency that she seizes early on (going to visit the vicarage while the boys go fishing, and solving the second clue in their treasure hunt). That said, given I know what awaits her in Greenwitch, I'm not going to complain too much.

Ooooh and while I remember - my full comments on the TalosFest (SF theatre festival I attended a few weeks ago) were published in Strange Horizons last week!

I enjoyed your blog post on Over Sea, Under Stone. The Dark is Rising series was one of my favourites as a child, and I still love it. My mother used to read The Dark is Rising every December, and introduced me to the series when it was still pretty new. I've re-read all the books too many times to count.

I've always felt that Over Sea, Under Stone didn't really fit with the rest of the series. I'm pretty sure I read it first, and kind of forgot about it, then realized much later that it came before The Dark is Rising. My theory is that she wrote OSUS as a standalone, then decided to turn it into a series, and planned out the rest of the books all together. The first book was published in 1965 and the other four came out from 1973 to 1977, and the gap is pretty evident. I still like Over Sea, Under Stone, even though I don't think it shows the brilliance of the rest of the series.

I'm going to follow your blog so that I don't miss your thoughts on the rest of The Dark is Rising.

>194 SylviaC: Thanks! Starting The Dark is Rising last night (we had a bowling gale, if no snow, so it seemed appropriate), the differences are there from the get-go. Will is dropped straight into mystery and menace from the first chapter; none of the slow build of OSUS. Between the rook attack on the Walker and his fright in the night, it's almost outright horror.

OSUS reminds me more of Alan Garner, where perfectly ordinary children trip over the mysterious rather than being engulfed by it (poor Will).

Ooh, this is the perfect time of year for a reread of The dark is rising! It's one of my favourite depictions of Christmas in literature, especially with all the singing.

Good comparison with Alan Garner - I do love the way they both use British folklore as the basis for the magic in their books, and the very real sense of place they invoke.

>196 Sakerfalcon: I totally expect to reread my Alan Garner books v soon, perhaps for my birthday. His place making is just superb, and Brisingamen / Gomrath are so deeply rooted in my heart I can still remember the first time I finished Brisingamen, trying not to cry, trying to understand what had happened to Durathror.

In the meantime, I'm loving The Dark is Rising. Cooper's style has all grown up; it's getting on for GGK lush, but pitched a bit younger.

68) The Dark is Rising - Susan Cooper


Well here's an unexpected thing: I think I enjoyed Over Sea Under Stone more than The Dark is Rising this time around (not usually the case).

I think I'm a little more focused on what I feel are the shortcomings on this occasion - a certain simplicity and inevitability of the Light's victory - that I found at odds with the level of menace The Dark is Rising otherwise successfully conveys. But it never quite convinced me that Will Stanton won't succeed.

Don't get me wrong, this remains a stunning story, not least for the way in which it takes familiar legends and weaves them into something new. But it's pushing me even harder to reread Alan Garner.

Full musings over on onemore.

69) Greenwitch - Susan Cooper


Maybe it's just where my head is at the moment - I loved being back in Trewissick with the Drews. This is the book that hinges around Jane and goddesses and I like it all the better for it. The impartial power of the Wild Magic contrasts with what was - for me - the ruthless single-mindedness of both Light and Dark.

Extended musings on moral ambiguity and darker tones emerging. I loved this book, but it really really really makes me want the Dark to be given more page time. I actually feel sorry for the painter here, and find Merriman and Captain Toms just as creepy and manipulative (in some ways) as he is.

And now I get to read The Grey King, which towers over all the rest in my memory.

I've always really liked Greenwitch. I like that Jane gets to do her own thing, and does it so well. I find the reluctant acceptance of Will by the Drew children rather funny. I don't spend a lot of time pondering the moral ambiguity, but I have always been aware that the Light can be ruthless too. I think it is significant that the Wild Magic does not differentiate between Dark and Light.

>200 SylviaC: it's a lovely suggestion of 'there's more to heaven and earth Horatio..'. I think I was probably at most a teenager last time I read these, and raised on books revolving around heroes doing what wizards told them to (mostly), so a lot flew straight by me. It's delightful to find so much to think about coming back as an adult.

...and however I may arch my eyebrows at Merriman from time to time, I do enjoy him and I love Will Stanton.

70) The Grey King - Susan Cooper


The Dark is Rising Sequence gets all grown up in The Grey King. I can only assume that my brush with character deaths in The Weirdstone of Brisingamen and The Black Cauldron set me up to be very resilient, and that much of the adult drama winged straight over my head.

Having met Wild Magic in Greenwitch, we get High Magic here, and where the Wild Magic is neutral and won't take sides, the High Magic simply doesn't distinguish. Light and Dark are as good or bad as each other, and - reading between the lines - at the mercy of the High Magic. It's a lot of magic and capitalisation for something that doesn't really get explored ;)

I still love this book - it's spooky, and epic and terribly, awfully human. Will is fighting (for once) a properly great force of the Dark, but it's the human history and bitter feuding that really get in his way, easy tools for the Grey King to work with. I may have banged on about moral ambiguity before, but here it goes centre-stage as John Rowlands calls Will out on just how ruthless the Light can be.

No wonder I prefer books that don't have clear-cut good vs bad and that explore human frailties. Apparently I embraced them from the very start.

Full musings over here as usual.

This was always my least favourite book in the series, because there is so much sadness and anger. There is nothing comforting or reassuring about the Light here. It is a very well-written book, but not a comfortable one.

>203 SylviaC: Uncomfortable is a very good description of it - I think more so for me on this reading than in the past. I preferred Greenwitch this time around, but then this read I seem to be far more conscious of how male-dominated the sequence is. I'm now reading Silver on the Tree, and the Lady more or less says this to Jane - 'you and I are much the same in clear ways that separate us from all others concerned in this quest'. Yes, quite. And the Lady barely appears, although she's obviously staggeringly significant.

71) Silver on the Tree - Susan Cooper


Gosh this one frustrates me. Mostly because lots of it is really good, but then there's a section in the middle (the Lost Land and the inclusion of Owain Glyndwr) that did nothing for me, which made the pacing all weird.

I also find it the least tidy of the books from a narrative perspective - little things, such as the statement that the victory can't be complete without the Lady, but when she finally arrives she doesn't actually do anything (I think it's meant to be more about the Circle being incomplete than the Lady missing, but it doesn't quite come across this way); or the suggestion that each of the Drews will need to pass a test - but only Jane really has one (unless Simon and Barney fail theirs, with Simon being responsible for keeping Merriman from the Lost Land, and Barney once again snatched by the Dark. But if these were tests, it's not made explicit).

With Blodwen Rowlands, the Dark finally gets a face of sorts, even if we never really get closer to understanding what they're about. I also think there's a lost opportunity to properly define the Light (which is only ever defined as opposition to the Dark), and to explore the idea that if the Dark can't kill those who associate with Old Ones - it can only put them in the way of destroying themselves - what does this mean for the Light. It can put people in the way of doing the right thing? Or is it equally destructive, but only to those who associate with the Dark?

I never really felt I understood why the Withers siblings, young Bill Hoover, or the nameless painter supported the Dark - I'll give the Lords of the Dark a pass as it being part of some essential nature, just as Will gets no choice about being an Old One. This continues to frustrate me, although I accept that these books were written for children and such moral essentialism is more acceptable in that context.

However, I love the spirit of the speechifying at the end - the world is in the hands of ordinary men and women to do the best with that we can; there will be no more great heroes coming to clean up the mess - although this implies a loss of magic and death of legend that make me sad. It's arguably a duller world for the loss of Light and Dark, but it's a free one.

More thoughts and rambling over on onemore.

I enjoyed your comments here, and your thorough and thought-provoking review on your blog. I always considered Silver on the Tree one of my favourites, but as you also noted in your blog, it is now the least memorable book for me. Maybe I'll reread the series in the new year.

>206 SylviaC: thank you :) I have thoroughly enjoyed revisiting the sequence. I had to physically stop myself from picking up The Box of Delights as the other traditional Christmas fantasy, but I can see I'll revisit other childhood favourites next year. I might save John Masefield for next Christmas ;)

Delurking to say I've really enjoyed reading your comments on The Dark is Rising sequence. These books have remained favourites since I was a child and you've reminded me of all the things I love about them.

>208 souloftherose: hurray! Lovely to see you over there in the shadows - glad you're enjoying the chat. It's been such a delight revisiting these books; also paying so much attention whilst reading. I, uh, may have to raise the bar on my other reviews next year...

Well it's nearly the end of the year, and while I might finish one more book I already know that it's not going to make my top ten (I'm reading The Abyss Surrounds Us and it's entertaining, but it's a little too YA to win me over). So as I'm flying out to Iceland tomorrow morning, it's time to call my favourite reads of the year.

Only one 5* (fiction) read this year, so no surprises that Station Eleven remains my favourite book for 2015. The rest reflect just how much I've enjoyed immersing myself back in genre this year. I think I'll be reading a lot more SFF through 2016.

I've more or less failed all my personal challenges, but I'm still reasonably happy with the results: 74% off the shelf (and oh how I've enjoyed my rereads!); 17% by non-white authors; and 7% non-fiction. I'm not going to make any efforts to read non-fiction in 2016, but will continue to focus on reading diversely.

I'm going to wish you all a very happy new year now - I look forward to catching up with you all when I get back!

Happy new year! I hope you'll enjoy your time in Iceland! ^_^

Enjoy your trip!

Wow. Iceland. Are you going to see the temple in Reykjavik? (http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/11/going-pagan/407821/). I think that would be fascinating!

Oh, enjoy!! Iceland is so near the top of my to-visit list.

Wheeeee we're home and trying to adjust to warm wet temperatures. End of year posts and new threads and photos to follow (full photo stream over on instagram).

(Belated) Happy new year everyone!

>215 imyril: Happy New Year and welcome home.

>213 jillmwo: we didn't see the new temple - it's still under construction, so we'll leave that for a future visit :) We did get to celebrate New Year's Eve in Reykjavik, which is the biggest, loudest, brightest and most boisterous I've ever seen. The volunteer search and rescue organisation import fireworks and sell them to fund their activities - and the government don't put a huge number of restrictions in place (although as of this year they have insisted that all fireworks conform to the EU safety regulations) so the estimate is that over 600 (metric) tons of fireworks are let off (bearing in mind that the population is only 300,000, this is a LOT of explosives per capita!)

None of this is organised - families spend a small fortune on huge amounts of explosives and let them off in the street or the front yard. It had already started when we arrived the night before - we were woken at 1am by what sounded like a mortar round, and they were pretty much constant from dusk on New Year's Eve. There was a solid hour (11.30-12.30) where the whole sky was constant fireworks.

The Icelanders are very serious about their fireworks.

Now between that information re New Year's celebrations and the story that was circulating right around Christmas regarding the Icelandic tradition of giving books as gifts on Christmas Eve (and spending the rest of the evening in bed with chocolate), I am seriously intrigued by this culture.

>218 jillmwo: everything you hear about Icelanders and books appears to be true, in spite of the exorbitant cost of (physical) books. Every medium to large town we passed through had at least one book shop, and most book shops had cafes so you could sit and read with a hot drink for as long as you liked. Every window we inadvertently (who am I kidding - mostly) peeked in as we went by, we saw bookshelves.