February, 2026 Reading: "Each moment is a place you've never been." (Mark Strand)
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1CliffBurns
Starting off February with a novel, John Sayles' latest TO SAVE THE MAN.
I've loved all of Sayles' films and books--this is another good one.
The man can do no wrong.
I've loved all of Sayles' films and books--this is another good one.
The man can do no wrong.
2RobertDay
As another of my Christmas presents was the final volume in Philip Pullman's Book of Dust trilogy, I thought I'd better make a start on reading the whole thing. So I've just ploughed through the first part, La Belle Sauvage, and enjoyed it, though perhaps more for an appreciation of all the stuff Pullman put into the book's subtexts rather than the story itself. My review:
3CliffBurns
I enjoyed John Sayles' TO SAVE THE MAN but felt it lacked the emotional impact of his best work.
Still definitely a worthwhile read, covering the events surrounding the Wounded Knee Massacre of 1890.
Even second-tier Sayles is miles beyond most of the writing out there.
Still definitely a worthwhile read, covering the events surrounding the Wounded Knee Massacre of 1890.
Even second-tier Sayles is miles beyond most of the writing out there.
4iansales
Read: The Public Image, Muriel Spark
I read Spark’s The Girls of Slender Means back in 2010, and judging by the review I wrote on my blog at the time, I didn’t like it very much. I can now add The Public Image to the list of novels by Muriel Spark I don’t like very much.
It was nominated for the first ever Booker Award in 1969, which is why I read it. The story is relatively straightforward: Annabel Christopher stars in a film by an Italian director and becomes an international star – or perhaps European, given she never makes it to Hollywood. Annabel moves to Rome, with her semi-successful screenwriter husband. She has a baby. Shortly afterwards, her husband commits suicide and in his suicide notes (he wrote several) he accuses Annabel of promiscuity and throwing orgiastic parties. None of which is true. Annabel tries to control the narrative around her husband’s death before the Italian press destroys her career.
And, er, that’s it.
I have watched many 1960s Italian films, not just gialli or poliziotteschi, but also movies by Antonioni, Fellini, Pasolini, de Sica, Rossellini and so on. I’m a fan of the first three directors. So Spark’s depiction of Annabel’s career in Italian cinema never really convinced me. Neither did her husband’s suicide – there was nothing in the narrative to suggest he might take his life. There were clues he resented his wife’s success – but it’s a leap from there to suicide.
Then there’s the writing. Spark was nominated twice for the Booker Prize, and was much lauded critically – she was made an OBE in 1967 and a dame in 1993, for services to literature, and ranked number eight in the fifty greatest British writers since 1945 by the Times in 2008. But The Public Image reads more like reportage than fiction, and over-uses one of my pet hates in writing – the construction “was to be”. There are several auxiliary verbs which can be used in English, there are even grammatical moods available. So many different ways to add nuance and meaning instead of “was to be”. It’s no different to using “get” as a catch-all verb.
So, a lack of authenticity and too much passive voice using weak constructions, especially “was to be”. Not impressed. Annabel may have been reasonably well characterised, but the rest of the cast were ciphers. The Public Image is not a book I can recommend.
I read Spark’s The Girls of Slender Means back in 2010, and judging by the review I wrote on my blog at the time, I didn’t like it very much. I can now add The Public Image to the list of novels by Muriel Spark I don’t like very much.
It was nominated for the first ever Booker Award in 1969, which is why I read it. The story is relatively straightforward: Annabel Christopher stars in a film by an Italian director and becomes an international star – or perhaps European, given she never makes it to Hollywood. Annabel moves to Rome, with her semi-successful screenwriter husband. She has a baby. Shortly afterwards, her husband commits suicide and in his suicide notes (he wrote several) he accuses Annabel of promiscuity and throwing orgiastic parties. None of which is true. Annabel tries to control the narrative around her husband’s death before the Italian press destroys her career.
And, er, that’s it.
I have watched many 1960s Italian films, not just gialli or poliziotteschi, but also movies by Antonioni, Fellini, Pasolini, de Sica, Rossellini and so on. I’m a fan of the first three directors. So Spark’s depiction of Annabel’s career in Italian cinema never really convinced me. Neither did her husband’s suicide – there was nothing in the narrative to suggest he might take his life. There were clues he resented his wife’s success – but it’s a leap from there to suicide.
Then there’s the writing. Spark was nominated twice for the Booker Prize, and was much lauded critically – she was made an OBE in 1967 and a dame in 1993, for services to literature, and ranked number eight in the fifty greatest British writers since 1945 by the Times in 2008. But The Public Image reads more like reportage than fiction, and over-uses one of my pet hates in writing – the construction “was to be”. There are several auxiliary verbs which can be used in English, there are even grammatical moods available. So many different ways to add nuance and meaning instead of “was to be”. It’s no different to using “get” as a catch-all verb.
So, a lack of authenticity and too much passive voice using weak constructions, especially “was to be”. Not impressed. Annabel may have been reasonably well characterised, but the rest of the cast were ciphers. The Public Image is not a book I can recommend.
5RobertDay
>4 iansales: You wrote: "Annabel Christopher... becomes an international star – or perhaps European, given she never makes it to Hollywood."
I don't know about Scandinavia, but in Austria, describing someone as "an international star" is very likely to mean that they've been on television in Austria and Germany (or Switzerland; or exceptionally, both).
I don't know about Scandinavia, but in Austria, describing someone as "an international star" is very likely to mean that they've been on television in Austria and Germany (or Switzerland; or exceptionally, both).
6iansales
>5 RobertDay: to be fair, Italian films were popular throughout Europe, so technically international. But Italian cinema also used Hollywood stars - Burt Lancaster in The Leopard, for example.
7CliffBurns
SLUMBERLAND is another first-rate novel by Paul Beatty.
I fell in love with his work when I read THE SELLOUT and haven't looked back since.
This one involves a sound artist who moves to Berlin to discover the whereabouts of an obscure musical genius.
Beatty's books are hilarious, the satire sharp-toothed, the kind of humor that makes you wince (or cringe).
Grab a book by Beatty whenever you spot one--he's brilliant.
I fell in love with his work when I read THE SELLOUT and haven't looked back since.
This one involves a sound artist who moves to Berlin to discover the whereabouts of an obscure musical genius.
Beatty's books are hilarious, the satire sharp-toothed, the kind of humor that makes you wince (or cringe).
Grab a book by Beatty whenever you spot one--he's brilliant.
8KatrinkaV
>7 CliffBurns: I loved both The Sellout and The White Boy Shuffle (which for some reason, LT isn't letting me link to, though it suggests the title)! Now I've got to check out Slumberland!
9CliffBurns
My dear wife knows of my mixed feelings toward graphic novels but took a chance and bought me one for Christmas.
There's nothing cartoonish or fanciful about Joe Sacco's THE ONCE AND FUTURE RIOT--this is journalism at its best. Sacco, with the help of local journalists and handlers, investigates a region of Uttar Pradesh (northern India) where a series of ethnic massacres took place in 2013.
People live in peace with each other for generations and then one day something triggers division and the place is never the same again.
It's a depressingly familiar story.
Nationalism will be the death of the international order...and maybe our species itself.
There's nothing cartoonish or fanciful about Joe Sacco's THE ONCE AND FUTURE RIOT--this is journalism at its best. Sacco, with the help of local journalists and handlers, investigates a region of Uttar Pradesh (northern India) where a series of ethnic massacres took place in 2013.
People live in peace with each other for generations and then one day something triggers division and the place is never the same again.
It's a depressingly familiar story.
Nationalism will be the death of the international order...and maybe our species itself.
10iansales
Read: Uncommon Danger, Eric Ambler
I first saw mention of Eric Ambler on Paul Kincaid’s blog. He praised him as a superior writer of thrillers. For some reason, I had the impression he was a 1960s and 1970s writer like, say, Hammond Innes. In fact, Ambler is from an earlier generation, published chiefly in the 1930s and 1940s. And the plots of his novels reflect that period. At least, Uncommon Danger, his second novel, certainly does so.
Kenton is a freelance journalist in Europe, based mainly in Germany. After losing money in a game of poker-dice, he catches the train to Vienna to borrow money from a friend. Enroute, he’s asked to carry suspicious documents across the Austrian border, which he does for money. But then the owner of the documents is murdered and Kenton is the chief suspect.
The documents are copies of a Soviet plan to invade Bessarabia (now part of Moldova) and take over its oil fields. (History fans will already know Stalin led the Soviet annexation of Azerbaijan, which was famous at the time for its oil fields.) The Soviet plan is actually speculative, rather than intended, but a UK oil company plans to use it to hoist a right-wing government into power in Romania, which will then give them majority rights to Romanian oil.
None of which helps Kenton, who is wanted for murder in Austria. He’s helped by Zamenhoff, a Soviet agent, and Zamenhoff’s sister, and the three team up to retrieve the stolen documents and scupper the oil company’s plan, as managed by “political saboteur” Colonel Robinson and his sadistic sidekick Captain Mailler.
The end result is a solid thriller, like early Graham Greene, and very much of its time. There are telephones, but they’re not ubiquitous (no mobiles, of course). Long distance travel is chiefly by train. Kenton eludes capture by the police simply by eluding individual police officers. There’s no way the plot could be transposed to the present day - Kenton wouldn’t last a minute.
Which is not a complaint. The book was published in 1937 and that’s what the 1930s were like. The politics may not have changed much, but technology and infrastructure certainly have. Ambler’s prose is good, with an interesting tendency to delve into detail. The story is surprisingly violent for its time - more so than Greene, from what I remember of his books. Perhaps the characters are a little broad brush-stroke, and the story a little predictable - although explaining the underlying plot in a prologue is unusual.
Nonetheless, a good read. And for what it is, a between-the-wars political thriller, a good example of its type. I’ve another Ambler on the TBR, which I’ll read - but I’m not sure I’d describe him as a must-read author.
I first saw mention of Eric Ambler on Paul Kincaid’s blog. He praised him as a superior writer of thrillers. For some reason, I had the impression he was a 1960s and 1970s writer like, say, Hammond Innes. In fact, Ambler is from an earlier generation, published chiefly in the 1930s and 1940s. And the plots of his novels reflect that period. At least, Uncommon Danger, his second novel, certainly does so.
Kenton is a freelance journalist in Europe, based mainly in Germany. After losing money in a game of poker-dice, he catches the train to Vienna to borrow money from a friend. Enroute, he’s asked to carry suspicious documents across the Austrian border, which he does for money. But then the owner of the documents is murdered and Kenton is the chief suspect.
The documents are copies of a Soviet plan to invade Bessarabia (now part of Moldova) and take over its oil fields. (History fans will already know Stalin led the Soviet annexation of Azerbaijan, which was famous at the time for its oil fields.) The Soviet plan is actually speculative, rather than intended, but a UK oil company plans to use it to hoist a right-wing government into power in Romania, which will then give them majority rights to Romanian oil.
None of which helps Kenton, who is wanted for murder in Austria. He’s helped by Zamenhoff, a Soviet agent, and Zamenhoff’s sister, and the three team up to retrieve the stolen documents and scupper the oil company’s plan, as managed by “political saboteur” Colonel Robinson and his sadistic sidekick Captain Mailler.
The end result is a solid thriller, like early Graham Greene, and very much of its time. There are telephones, but they’re not ubiquitous (no mobiles, of course). Long distance travel is chiefly by train. Kenton eludes capture by the police simply by eluding individual police officers. There’s no way the plot could be transposed to the present day - Kenton wouldn’t last a minute.
Which is not a complaint. The book was published in 1937 and that’s what the 1930s were like. The politics may not have changed much, but technology and infrastructure certainly have. Ambler’s prose is good, with an interesting tendency to delve into detail. The story is surprisingly violent for its time - more so than Greene, from what I remember of his books. Perhaps the characters are a little broad brush-stroke, and the story a little predictable - although explaining the underlying plot in a prologue is unusual.
Nonetheless, a good read. And for what it is, a between-the-wars political thriller, a good example of its type. I’ve another Ambler on the TBR, which I’ll read - but I’m not sure I’d describe him as a must-read author.
11iansales
Read: Comanche Moon, Larry McMurtry
This is the fourth and final book set in the world of Lonesome Dove, but is actually the second prequel, predating the events in the original novel. The series in publication order is: Lonesome Dove (1985, USA), Streets of Laredo (1993, USA), Dead Man’s Walk (1994, USA), Comanche Moon (1997, USA). But the stories chronologically are: Dead Man’s Walk, Comanche Moon, Lonesome Dove and Streets of Laredo. It’s worth noting that Lonesome Dove was adapted as a successful television miniseries in 1989, and a sequel TV series was broadcast in 1993… which may or may not have prompted McMurtry to write an actual sequel himself, and its subsequent success may have then led to the prequels…
Certainly, Lonesome Dove was a fun novel, surprisingly funny, and while brutal in parts, mostly optimistic. Streets of Laredo closed off some of the characters’ stories, and added a little more brutality. The first prequel, Dead Man’s Walk, was unremittingly grim, with little of the humour or optimism of Lonesome Dove. And so it is with Comanche Moon, a direct sequel to Dead Man’s Walk.
So we have three books, of which Comanche Moon is the last written, likely only produced to capitalise on the success of the first, and while they feature the same cast they have lost the humour and enjoyment of the original.
Woodrow Call and Gus McCrae are still members of the Texas Rangers. Buffalo Hump (whose actual Comanche name apparently translated as “erection that won’t go down”) is still a thorn in their side. As is superlative Comanche horse thief, Kicking Wolf. McCrae and Call are members of Colonel Scull’s troop. When Scull’s Shire horse is stolen by Kicking Wolf, Scull sets off on his own in pursuit. Which leads to him being captured by psychopath Mayan bandit Ahumado.
McCrae and Call become captains in the Texas Rangers. They rescue Scull. Buffalo Hump is killed by his son, Blue Duck, another psychopath, who appeared in Lonesome Dove and Streets of Laredo. A lot of the narrative dwells on the tortures and violence inflicted by Blue Duck and Ahumado. The Comanche slowly disappear as the whites drive them from their lands. The American Civil War takes place but it doesn’t impact Call or McCrae much.
I really didn’t care for Comanche Moon - this is a series with diminishing returns - even though it finishes before Lonesome Dove begins. The first book I’d happily recommend, but I’d also recommend stopping there. The treatment of the Comanche and Apache and Mexicans in all four books is pretty racist. Everyone except the whites, and the one black character, are also complete psychopaths. Yet the myth of white colonisation of North America is built on the backs of sociopaths and psychopaths. It’s why US culture valorises such people. It’s why the US is like it is now.
This is the fourth and final book set in the world of Lonesome Dove, but is actually the second prequel, predating the events in the original novel. The series in publication order is: Lonesome Dove (1985, USA), Streets of Laredo (1993, USA), Dead Man’s Walk (1994, USA), Comanche Moon (1997, USA). But the stories chronologically are: Dead Man’s Walk, Comanche Moon, Lonesome Dove and Streets of Laredo. It’s worth noting that Lonesome Dove was adapted as a successful television miniseries in 1989, and a sequel TV series was broadcast in 1993… which may or may not have prompted McMurtry to write an actual sequel himself, and its subsequent success may have then led to the prequels…
Certainly, Lonesome Dove was a fun novel, surprisingly funny, and while brutal in parts, mostly optimistic. Streets of Laredo closed off some of the characters’ stories, and added a little more brutality. The first prequel, Dead Man’s Walk, was unremittingly grim, with little of the humour or optimism of Lonesome Dove. And so it is with Comanche Moon, a direct sequel to Dead Man’s Walk.
So we have three books, of which Comanche Moon is the last written, likely only produced to capitalise on the success of the first, and while they feature the same cast they have lost the humour and enjoyment of the original.
Woodrow Call and Gus McCrae are still members of the Texas Rangers. Buffalo Hump (whose actual Comanche name apparently translated as “erection that won’t go down”) is still a thorn in their side. As is superlative Comanche horse thief, Kicking Wolf. McCrae and Call are members of Colonel Scull’s troop. When Scull’s Shire horse is stolen by Kicking Wolf, Scull sets off on his own in pursuit. Which leads to him being captured by psychopath Mayan bandit Ahumado.
McCrae and Call become captains in the Texas Rangers. They rescue Scull. Buffalo Hump is killed by his son, Blue Duck, another psychopath, who appeared in Lonesome Dove and Streets of Laredo. A lot of the narrative dwells on the tortures and violence inflicted by Blue Duck and Ahumado. The Comanche slowly disappear as the whites drive them from their lands. The American Civil War takes place but it doesn’t impact Call or McCrae much.
I really didn’t care for Comanche Moon - this is a series with diminishing returns - even though it finishes before Lonesome Dove begins. The first book I’d happily recommend, but I’d also recommend stopping there. The treatment of the Comanche and Apache and Mexicans in all four books is pretty racist. Everyone except the whites, and the one black character, are also complete psychopaths. Yet the myth of white colonisation of North America is built on the backs of sociopaths and psychopaths. It’s why US culture valorises such people. It’s why the US is like it is now.
12Cecrow
I do plan on reading Lonesome Dove at some point, had no idea there were any related books. Sound advice, the same as I'd give for anyone reading Pillars of the Earth: read the one and just be done.
13iansales
>12 Cecrow: sadly also true for many series.
14iansales
Read: Glory Season, David Brin
I remember reading Brin’s Uplift novels many years ago and quite enjoying them, although something about them never sat quite well with me. I no longer remember what that was, although I’ve never made an effort to seek out his novels since. But Glory Season was nominated for the Hugo Award, and is set on a world of cloned women, so it sounded like it might be worth a go.
So I was surprised to discover Brin is actually a pretty bad writer – sloppy, a tendency to stretch his story long past what the narrative can bear, with a handful of good ideas buried under a mass of banal detail. Characters change hair colour between paragraphs, a woman described as Chuychin (one of the cloned women clans) becomes half-Chuchyin a couple of sentences later. The writing is mostly clumsy, but occasionally manages an easy readability.
The world of Stratos was settled millennia before by a group who wanted to create a society that was safe for women. They needed men to “spark” their parthagenetic clones, but they limited the male libido to a single season of each year, and allowed them to also produce non-clone children (needed to replace the men, of course, but also daughters). The clones live in clans, each of which fulfils some sort of “niche”, or specialisation, in Stratoin society. Non-clone daughters, known as vars, hope to find niches and so get permission to start their own clans of clones.
Maia and Leie are twin vars, who leave their clan on their majority to seek their fortune. They sign aboard a pair of coal hauliers travelling down the coast. Maia stumbles across a conspiracy to supply a drug to men which triggers their libido out of season. From there, it spirals into a plot between two hardline factions, at the centre of which is a recently-arrived scout from the interstellar society the founders of Stratos left millennia before. Maia learns more about her world’s history, about the Game of Life, which is important to the men of the world, and about humanity on worlds other than Stratos.
In the best of hands, that’s a lot to cover, but Brin still manages to make it drag over 600 pages. At one point, Maia and her companions are trapped in a room with a hidden exit, and Brin spends over twenty pages explaining how they eventually discover the exit. For huge chunks of the book, Maia has no agency, and is little more than a witness to elements of the world-building Brin wants to show off. It makes for an aggravating read.
There are also many similarities between Glory Season and Mary Gentle’s Golden Witchbreed. The plots are vaguely similar, although Brin’s novel is told from the perspective of a native of the world, not a visitor – but the same lost past, a high tech war fought thousands of years earlier, and an ancient high tech citadel… Coincidence, or did Glory Season simply “borrow” elements of Golden Witchbreed‘s plot? Glory Season may have been nominated for the Hugo, but Golden Witchbreed is greatly superior (it was nominated for the BSFA, but lost to Tik-Tok).
Discovering Brin was a worse writer than I’d remember was not a surprise. Spotting the resemblances between Glory Season and Golden Witchbreed was. I’ve no idea if Brin had knowledge of Gentle’s novel. I would like to think not, but it was definitely published in the US. Even so, on its own merits alone, Glory Season is not very good: overly long, and its poor writing works against its few good ideas.
I remember reading Brin’s Uplift novels many years ago and quite enjoying them, although something about them never sat quite well with me. I no longer remember what that was, although I’ve never made an effort to seek out his novels since. But Glory Season was nominated for the Hugo Award, and is set on a world of cloned women, so it sounded like it might be worth a go.
So I was surprised to discover Brin is actually a pretty bad writer – sloppy, a tendency to stretch his story long past what the narrative can bear, with a handful of good ideas buried under a mass of banal detail. Characters change hair colour between paragraphs, a woman described as Chuychin (one of the cloned women clans) becomes half-Chuchyin a couple of sentences later. The writing is mostly clumsy, but occasionally manages an easy readability.
The world of Stratos was settled millennia before by a group who wanted to create a society that was safe for women. They needed men to “spark” their parthagenetic clones, but they limited the male libido to a single season of each year, and allowed them to also produce non-clone children (needed to replace the men, of course, but also daughters). The clones live in clans, each of which fulfils some sort of “niche”, or specialisation, in Stratoin society. Non-clone daughters, known as vars, hope to find niches and so get permission to start their own clans of clones.
Maia and Leie are twin vars, who leave their clan on their majority to seek their fortune. They sign aboard a pair of coal hauliers travelling down the coast. Maia stumbles across a conspiracy to supply a drug to men which triggers their libido out of season. From there, it spirals into a plot between two hardline factions, at the centre of which is a recently-arrived scout from the interstellar society the founders of Stratos left millennia before. Maia learns more about her world’s history, about the Game of Life, which is important to the men of the world, and about humanity on worlds other than Stratos.
In the best of hands, that’s a lot to cover, but Brin still manages to make it drag over 600 pages. At one point, Maia and her companions are trapped in a room with a hidden exit, and Brin spends over twenty pages explaining how they eventually discover the exit. For huge chunks of the book, Maia has no agency, and is little more than a witness to elements of the world-building Brin wants to show off. It makes for an aggravating read.
There are also many similarities between Glory Season and Mary Gentle’s Golden Witchbreed. The plots are vaguely similar, although Brin’s novel is told from the perspective of a native of the world, not a visitor – but the same lost past, a high tech war fought thousands of years earlier, and an ancient high tech citadel… Coincidence, or did Glory Season simply “borrow” elements of Golden Witchbreed‘s plot? Glory Season may have been nominated for the Hugo, but Golden Witchbreed is greatly superior (it was nominated for the BSFA, but lost to Tik-Tok).
Discovering Brin was a worse writer than I’d remember was not a surprise. Spotting the resemblances between Glory Season and Golden Witchbreed was. I’ve no idea if Brin had knowledge of Gentle’s novel. I would like to think not, but it was definitely published in the US. Even so, on its own merits alone, Glory Season is not very good: overly long, and its poor writing works against its few good ideas.
15RobertDay
>14 iansales: At least Glory Season didn't have a map.
16iansales
>15 RobertDay: it might have helped as the geography was hard to picture.
17CliffBurns
Very much appreciated Ilan Stavans' QUIXOTE: The Novel and the World.
I'm been gearing up to read DON QUIXOTE for years, researching it and its author, acquiring the best contemporary translation (by Edith Grossman).
Now I just have to set aside a block of time, sit down, open it...and begin.
I'm been gearing up to read DON QUIXOTE for years, researching it and its author, acquiring the best contemporary translation (by Edith Grossman).
Now I just have to set aside a block of time, sit down, open it...and begin.
18iansales
Red: Alliance Unbound, CJ Cherryh & Jane S Fancher
The second book of the latest Union-Alliance series, the Hinder Stars trilogy, co-written with Cherryh’s long-term partner Fancher. Cherryh has a whole timeline worked out for her novels, which even includes the stuff that doesn’t, at first glance, seem to fit into her Union-Alliance universe, like the Faded Sun trilogy. But this new trilogy definitely does fit in.
There’s Earth, and Earth Company (EC), and it set up a series of stations orbiting nearby stars. Initially kept supplied by near-speed-of-light pusher ships, but then one station discovers FTL, and two breakaway polities form, one based around Cyteen and the other around Pell. The EC was unhappy with this, and this kicked off the Company Wars. All of this is covered in earlier novels by Cherryh.
The Hinder Stars are those stations closest to Sol. In the book preceding this one, Alliance Rising, the EC wants to reassert control, takes over Alpha (Barnard’s Star) and builds its own massive FTL troop carrier. Meanwhile, a FTL route was discovered between Alpha and Sol, meaning pusher ships will no longer be the sole link between Earth and the expanding number of stations, which by now are carrying on very happily by themselves.
Alliance Unbound is set after those events. While visiting Pell Station, the crew of Finity's End, a FTL megaship, which is on a mission to sign up all the merchant ships and stations to its Alliance, becomes suspicious of some luxury items it finds on the station. Which leads them to a supposedly mothballed station. And it turns out the EC is secretly supplying it with pusher ships, in the hope of… taking over the stations in the name of the EC.
At times, the prose felt almost like distilled Cherryh. It’s always been brusque and direct, but here more so; and yet there’s a lot of interiority, a lot of guessing and second-guessing. But the plot rolls on relentlessly, which makes for a fast read. I’ve read a lot of Cherryh’s novels, some of them so long ago the details are a little hazy… But even so, it felt like there was some retconning going on here. It’s intriguing stuff, and gives more of an insight into Cherryh’s universe, even if some of the details didn’t quite line up with what I remembered from other Union-Alliance novels.
It’s not like this has never happened before in fictional universes - cf John Varley’s Eight Worlds and Steel Beach - and it’s more or less inevitable as authors dig deeper into previously unexplored areas of their own universes. Having said that, the pusher ships as described in Alliance Unbound struck me as a fascinating concept to explore - cut off for years, while in the outside universe decades pass. And yet I don’t believe Cherryh has written a novel about the pushers. The first explicitly Union-Alliance novel she wrote was Downbelow Station, which won the Hugo, and that’s set during the Company Wars.
I think I’ve said before that I enjoy exploring science fictional universes, and will often forgive most, but not egregious, deficiencies in the writing while doing that. Happily, there’s nothing here by Cherryh to forgive. She’s an excellent writer, and still going strong, if Alliance Unbound is any indication. She has a huge back-catalogue to explore, and that’s not including the 20+ Foreigner novels, and it’s definitely worth doing so.
The second book of the latest Union-Alliance series, the Hinder Stars trilogy, co-written with Cherryh’s long-term partner Fancher. Cherryh has a whole timeline worked out for her novels, which even includes the stuff that doesn’t, at first glance, seem to fit into her Union-Alliance universe, like the Faded Sun trilogy. But this new trilogy definitely does fit in.
There’s Earth, and Earth Company (EC), and it set up a series of stations orbiting nearby stars. Initially kept supplied by near-speed-of-light pusher ships, but then one station discovers FTL, and two breakaway polities form, one based around Cyteen and the other around Pell. The EC was unhappy with this, and this kicked off the Company Wars. All of this is covered in earlier novels by Cherryh.
The Hinder Stars are those stations closest to Sol. In the book preceding this one, Alliance Rising, the EC wants to reassert control, takes over Alpha (Barnard’s Star) and builds its own massive FTL troop carrier. Meanwhile, a FTL route was discovered between Alpha and Sol, meaning pusher ships will no longer be the sole link between Earth and the expanding number of stations, which by now are carrying on very happily by themselves.
Alliance Unbound is set after those events. While visiting Pell Station, the crew of Finity's End, a FTL megaship, which is on a mission to sign up all the merchant ships and stations to its Alliance, becomes suspicious of some luxury items it finds on the station. Which leads them to a supposedly mothballed station. And it turns out the EC is secretly supplying it with pusher ships, in the hope of… taking over the stations in the name of the EC.
At times, the prose felt almost like distilled Cherryh. It’s always been brusque and direct, but here more so; and yet there’s a lot of interiority, a lot of guessing and second-guessing. But the plot rolls on relentlessly, which makes for a fast read. I’ve read a lot of Cherryh’s novels, some of them so long ago the details are a little hazy… But even so, it felt like there was some retconning going on here. It’s intriguing stuff, and gives more of an insight into Cherryh’s universe, even if some of the details didn’t quite line up with what I remembered from other Union-Alliance novels.
It’s not like this has never happened before in fictional universes - cf John Varley’s Eight Worlds and Steel Beach - and it’s more or less inevitable as authors dig deeper into previously unexplored areas of their own universes. Having said that, the pusher ships as described in Alliance Unbound struck me as a fascinating concept to explore - cut off for years, while in the outside universe decades pass. And yet I don’t believe Cherryh has written a novel about the pushers. The first explicitly Union-Alliance novel she wrote was Downbelow Station, which won the Hugo, and that’s set during the Company Wars.
I think I’ve said before that I enjoy exploring science fictional universes, and will often forgive most, but not egregious, deficiencies in the writing while doing that. Happily, there’s nothing here by Cherryh to forgive. She’s an excellent writer, and still going strong, if Alliance Unbound is any indication. She has a huge back-catalogue to explore, and that’s not including the 20+ Foreigner novels, and it’s definitely worth doing so.
19RobertDay
I've been reading Philip Pullman's Book of Dust, and have just finished the second part, The Secret Commonwealth. There's nothing all that unexpected for those used to fantastic literature; Lyra Silvertongue's quest for the source of rosewater and its significance to Dust and the interest of the Magisterium feels rather like a McGuffin. But I found more than enough to get my teeth into, and I shall look forward to finishing the trilogy with The Rose Field.
20iansales
Another one of my longish reviews of a book by an author I'd recommend but not this particular book:
https://medium.com/@ian-93054/the-jaws-that-bite-the-claws-that-catch-michael-g-...
21CliffBurns
TAKE YOUR BREATH AWAY by Linwood Barclay.
A good crime novel, but not a great one.
A woman disappeared 6 years ago, her husband the prime suspect. Now people in the area have reported seeing someone who's a dead ringer for the wife...and things take a turn for the strange.
Barclay built a whole novel around a cool idea and there's something about the book that seems very contrived and deliberate. Not badly written but no work of exceptional genius either.
Middle of the road murder mystery despite the glowing blurbs.
A good crime novel, but not a great one.
A woman disappeared 6 years ago, her husband the prime suspect. Now people in the area have reported seeing someone who's a dead ringer for the wife...and things take a turn for the strange.
Barclay built a whole novel around a cool idea and there's something about the book that seems very contrived and deliberate. Not badly written but no work of exceptional genius either.
Middle of the road murder mystery despite the glowing blurbs.
22iansales
Read: Atlas Alone, Emma Newman
The fourth and final book of the quartet which began with Planetfall. It was followed by After Atlas, Before Mars, and then Atlas Alone. The first book is set at a colony on an exoplanet, founded next to an enigmatic and seemingly deserted alien city. The mission was led by the Pathfinder, who invented FTL and then promptly went looking for God – and found it in the alien city.
After Atlas is set on Earth after the Pathfinder had left. It starts out as a murder-mystery, but becomes a conspiracy thriller in which a technocratic cult based in a theocratic USA secretly builds a second ship based on the Pathfinder’s. Before Mars takes place at a base on Mars. The narrator spots clues which suggest all is not as it seems and she has been there before but cannot remember it.
And so to Atlas Alone. Which takes place immediately after the events of After Atlas, but onboard Atlas 2, which is the second FTL ship. The ship is heading for the exoplanet where Planetfall takes place. It is staffed mostly by fundamentalist Christian Americans. And, as they left Earth, they killed everyone left behind with nuclear bombs. The narrator, Dee, is a last-minute addition to the thousands aboard, as is her friend Carl, the detective from After Atlas.
Dee is a gamer. An anonymous superhacker invites her to play a “mersive”, which proves to use details from her own life. The game ends with her finding a man about to destroy London. She suspects he is one of those responsible for the nuclear bombs on Earth, so she kills him. In the game.
Except he dies in real-life, and Carl is tasked with discovering how he died and who killed him. Meanwhile, Dee is offered a data analysis job by one of the senior crew, and then invited to team up with her new boss in another mersive, which again uses details from Dee’s background – thanks to the anonymous superhacker.
It’s not hard to figure out the identity of the anonymous superhacker, and it’s easy to sympathise with Dee’s mission to kill off the leadership of Atlas 2 once she discovers their plan to set up a God-fearing colony on the Pathfinder’s planet, with themselves as the gods and everyone else fearing them.
Perhaps back in 2019 when Atlas Alone was published, it might have felt a little implausible and OTT, but not now in 2026, with a cabal of apocalyptic Christian fundamentalists and paedophiles in charge of the US, secret police taking people off the streets and putting them in concentration camps, a president funnelling billions from the US Treasury into his own pockets, and a government that has long since lost touch with anything resembling truth.
Atlas Alone pulls a final bait and switch before ending, which, in hindsight, is probably the least satisfying part of the novel. But the book is a fitting end to the quartet, and if I thought its corporatised indentured slavery future Earth was a bit tired and banal these days, other parts of the world-building were much more interesting. But, on the whole, four books worth reading, although the first and third were the best.
The fourth and final book of the quartet which began with Planetfall. It was followed by After Atlas, Before Mars, and then Atlas Alone. The first book is set at a colony on an exoplanet, founded next to an enigmatic and seemingly deserted alien city. The mission was led by the Pathfinder, who invented FTL and then promptly went looking for God – and found it in the alien city.
After Atlas is set on Earth after the Pathfinder had left. It starts out as a murder-mystery, but becomes a conspiracy thriller in which a technocratic cult based in a theocratic USA secretly builds a second ship based on the Pathfinder’s. Before Mars takes place at a base on Mars. The narrator spots clues which suggest all is not as it seems and she has been there before but cannot remember it.
And so to Atlas Alone. Which takes place immediately after the events of After Atlas, but onboard Atlas 2, which is the second FTL ship. The ship is heading for the exoplanet where Planetfall takes place. It is staffed mostly by fundamentalist Christian Americans. And, as they left Earth, they killed everyone left behind with nuclear bombs. The narrator, Dee, is a last-minute addition to the thousands aboard, as is her friend Carl, the detective from After Atlas.
Dee is a gamer. An anonymous superhacker invites her to play a “mersive”, which proves to use details from her own life. The game ends with her finding a man about to destroy London. She suspects he is one of those responsible for the nuclear bombs on Earth, so she kills him. In the game.
Except he dies in real-life, and Carl is tasked with discovering how he died and who killed him. Meanwhile, Dee is offered a data analysis job by one of the senior crew, and then invited to team up with her new boss in another mersive, which again uses details from Dee’s background – thanks to the anonymous superhacker.
It’s not hard to figure out the identity of the anonymous superhacker, and it’s easy to sympathise with Dee’s mission to kill off the leadership of Atlas 2 once she discovers their plan to set up a God-fearing colony on the Pathfinder’s planet, with themselves as the gods and everyone else fearing them.
Perhaps back in 2019 when Atlas Alone was published, it might have felt a little implausible and OTT, but not now in 2026, with a cabal of apocalyptic Christian fundamentalists and paedophiles in charge of the US, secret police taking people off the streets and putting them in concentration camps, a president funnelling billions from the US Treasury into his own pockets, and a government that has long since lost touch with anything resembling truth.
Atlas Alone pulls a final bait and switch before ending, which, in hindsight, is probably the least satisfying part of the novel. But the book is a fitting end to the quartet, and if I thought its corporatised indentured slavery future Earth was a bit tired and banal these days, other parts of the world-building were much more interesting. But, on the whole, four books worth reading, although the first and third were the best.
23CliffBurns
Last book of the month (late posting):
RIVERS, a graphic novel written by David Gaffney, illustrated by Dan Berry.
Not impressed, despite the reps of the author and illustrator.
Uninvolving and disjointed, not particularly interesting.
Meh.
RIVERS, a graphic novel written by David Gaffney, illustrated by Dan Berry.
Not impressed, despite the reps of the author and illustrator.
Uninvolving and disjointed, not particularly interesting.
Meh.
