Interact: Buffy's blogs

NaNoWrimo

Source : In The Darkness, Hiding | Date : 20 Oct 2008 | 3:14 pm
So, I'm thinking about nano-ing this year. I keep thinking about writing a crime novel. Then I remember I don't write crime novels. I write SF&F.

I'm well prepared!

All this goes back to one of my appearances on Evil Editor, when I pitched a query for a novel I was thinking of writing at the time. The idea came from my extensive researches into Roman history and culture--I thought I might as well make use of all those books and scraps of information, even if the Marcellus novels never did sell.

So I wrote a query for a semi-humorous novel about a chap whose life is in ruins.

Coldharbour Lane.

No, it's not SF or Fantasy. What can I say? But EE's suggestion that finding a body might liven things up made me wonder if he had a point. And then my thoughts wandered to the Case of the Pictish Roundhouse, and whether that too (even though it doesn't exist as a story even in embryonic form) might also benefit from a body. Or two. By which time I had probably wandered as far away from SF&F as it's possible to get.

But it is nanowrimo after all, and the point for me is surely not so much about WHAT I write, but about whether I write at all. So I've been plot noodling for Roundhouse for a while now, inbetween travelling North, then South, then North again.

My understanding with a crime novel is that you write the ending first (whodunnit, how they got caught), which enables you to fill in the clues and the herrings once you revert to the beginning. This would be something of a departure from my usual organic approach.

I've also wondered about this BBC news story from my vast collection of "news stories that might provoke writing ideas" and if it would make a useful aspect of the novel. Maybe all this noodling and wondering will produce something worth working on. And maybe not!

:)

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100 Books 2008

Source : In The Darkness, Hiding | Date : 3 Aug 2008 | 9:27 am
It's that time again. Has the Reading Sqrl reached her total of 100 books for 2008 or will you all be forced to sit through this again in August?

Let's see!

Reviews and possible spoilers below.

First up is a book I bought some years ago and never got around to reading until now. It's somewhat outdated, as KAL007's cockpit voice recorder was found, and a transcript has since been released. It seems to indicate that the crew had no idea they were being targeted by Soviet aircraft. A lot of questions are still unanswered, however--and probably will remain so.

Massacre 007: The Story of the Korean Airlines Disaster by Richard Rohmer

My review

rating: 2 of 5 stars

I bought this book some time ago--probably secondhand--and rediscovered it when adding my aircraft books to GoodReads. So it's probably about time I read it.

Richard Rohmer tries hard not to be partisan, but the book is filled with Cold War rhetoric of a kind I haven't heard in years. It's actually painful. Rohmer does however make his best of the thankless task of trying to separate truth from lies in the story of the shooting down of Flight KAL007 in Soviet airspace in 1983.

He explains in detail how the South Korean crew could have used the 747's INS system to track the waypoints on which they faithfully reported as they flew off-course towards Seoul, while simultaneously using it to navigate their actual disastrous course.

Since this book was written, the recovered CVR tape has suggested the crew had no idea of the danger they were in. Whatever efforts the pilot of the SU-15 made to attract their attention were obviously unsuccessful.

And all this to save a few minutes of flying time and some fuel.

On to a book for Evil Editor's book chat--to be held in August. Not a book I would have chosen of my own accord.

The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair that Changed America by Erik Larson

My review

rating: 2 of 5 stars

Here's how I imagine it went.

Larson: I wanna write a book about the architects who designed the World's Fair in Chicago. Also, pork.

Publisher: Nobody wants to read about architects. They're boring.

Larson: But the World's Fair--

Publisher: Boring.

Larson: The mayor gets murdered.

Publisher: When?

Larson: At the end.

Publisher: (yawns) Too late.

Larson: If I could find some juicy murders to spice it up...?

Publisher: We'd take a look.

This isn't so much a book about Mudgett/Holmes and his unpleasant habit of murdering women and selling their bodies, not to mention murdering children just for the fun of it, but rather a book about the World Fair and its architects and how it was all built and how wonderful it was that Chicago managed to go "neenah neenah" at France for having the audacity to, yanno, hold a fair and get some visitors.

At times, the childishness is breathtaking.

Behind that, and the endless trumpeting of how wonderful it is to pursue power and wealth while people are dying of starvation in the garbage-piled streets (after all, you need all that wealth to get your own children the hell out of there), there's a fairly interesting story about the World Fair, and its architects, and how they all almost got it ready on time despite wasting months choosing a site for it. About Olmsted and his vision for the future of Landscape Architecture. About the electric launches and the first-ever Ferris Wheel. About the woman who won the competition to design the "Woman's Building", who was paid a tenth of what the men got, didn't get to appear in the group picture and was eventually driven into a nervous breakdown by a society dame who wanted to fill the Building with junk...and then disappears from the story. We get to find out all about the mayor's funeral, but not if Sophia Hayden ever recovered.

This book isn't kind to women. It sets the tone by referring to cattle in the stockyards being "murdered". Yep, the callous killings of women and children are equated with the slaughtering of animals. Throughout the book, Larson emphasises how Mudgett/Holmes had an almost vampirical effect on women, yet fails to explain why he had to go out of state to find a suitable victim. I'm sorry, wasn't he surrounded by them? Similarly, Buffalo Bill has all the women at the Fair staring lustfully at him. Sometimes this book has a bigger ego-trip than Mudgett/Holmes's.

Overall, Mudgett/Holmes and his Murder Hotel feel like an afterthought in a book about architects.

Then, onto a freebie acquired via BookRabbit from a publisher who really doesn't like you saying ungood things about their books.

The Affinity Bridge by George Mann

My review

rating: 1 of 5 stars

The Affinity Bridge has an intriguing title and some of the most gorgeous cover art I've seen in years. Just look at that airship! Even the back cover blurb is enticing. Who wouldn't want to know why nobody ever goes near The Natural History Museum?

Unfortunately, we don't get to find out. Maybe the answer will be in one of the sequels, as this is apparently the first novel in a series.

Here, we're introduced to Sir Maurice Newbury and Miss Veronica Hobbes. Newbury is a Crown Agent who also helps out Scotland Yard, whereas Miss Hobbes is ostensibly his assistant at the museum (never conclusively identified, but possibly the British Museum) where his everyday persona works. In a day when almost all office positions were filled by men, Sir Newbury has a female secretary and a female assistant. This could reflect his progressive attitude, or a significant difference between this steampunk Victorian era and the real one, or a lack of research. Given some of the other issues with this book, I'm inclined towards the latter.

It's unfair of course to maul an uncorrected proof for errors that will probably be corrected before the book goes to print, so I shall refrain from going beyond suggesting that a global find of "may" and its replacement with "might" might (!) be a start. However, some mistakes go beyond mere copy-editing--the contention, for example, that both helium and hydrogen are inflammable gases. Better check Google for that one, somebody.

The plot is decent, if a bit lacking in satisfying twists. Newbury is called away from an investigation into the mysterious strangling deaths of male paupers in Whitechapel to look into the death of a cousin of Queen Victoria's in an airship crash. Yes, one of those airships filled with the flammable helium. Mysteries abound--why were the passengers tied into their seats? what happened to the automaton pilot? why should an apparently airworthy airship crash (more on why airships crash later)? We're off and running, while at the same time Newbury's friend Bainbridge is trying to discover who's doing in the paupers. The investigations run together in an interesting fashion, and the resolution is modestly pleasing.

Unfortunately, this book is just badly written. It drags. The dialogue is unnatural, overlong, and often plain dull. The narrative repeats itself, explains what doesn't need explaining, and dwells too long on justifying split-second decisions. Where we've already seen something happen in one scene, we don't need a long conversation in another scene during which other characters are brought up to speed--just gloss it and thereby keep the pace going. Nor do we need to be told what we've just been shown. More faith in the reader is needed.

It's a shame, because the author obviously believes wholeheartedly in what he's writing, and Snowbooks have thrown the weight of a considerable promotional campaign behind this book. Yet parts of it are actively painful. An airship with integrity, ie one that is not losing buoyancy, has no reason to crash. It's not an aeroplane; it's lighter than air (because of all that flammable...oh, wait, I already made that joke). It will just stay where it is, or possibly even rise, unless acted upon by other forces. If you cut the engines, the only forces acting on it will be gravity (nullified by the lighter-than-air thing) and the wind. So it might get blown about, but it won't crash. It could be brought down by windshear, but even then its tendency would be to reascend once the downdraught was past.

Airships are not aeroplanes. Discuss.

View all my reviews.

(I would note that the author has indicated that the reference to inflammable helium will be removed from the final proof.)

Those aren't all the books I read in July, but they are the books needed to bring up to the magical figure.

100!

Woot!

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"Words From a Glass Bubble" by Vanessa Gebbie

Source : In The Darkness, Hiding | Date : 28 Jul 2008 | 8:53 pm
Words from a Glass Bubble by Vanessa Gebbie

My review

rating: 4 of 5 stars


"Words from a Glass Bubble" by Vanessa Gebbie is a collection of nineteen of her short stories, compiled in a handsome hardback from Salt Publishing. There's no overarching narrative, but although the stories are very different, some themes and images crop up more than once.

Gebbie's talent is to shine a light onto her characters, giving us brief insights into their lives, their hopes, their disappointments, and--most of all--their mistakes, before moving on, leaving us with the hope that the characters too will carry on, make better decisions, have better luck, once the spotlight is removed.

Each story has its own voice, from "Words in a Glass Bubble" itself, where a family tries to come to terms with the loss of their son, to "Smoking Down There", where a child naively recounts her friend's story of how she almost inadvertently saved her baby brother from being disposed of at birth. The fragmentary, butterfly narrative convinces as that of a child. 'But then, if you smoked down there why didn't the hairs catch fire? That's what I wanted to know. But the bucket. Why wash out of a bucket when there were perfectly nice china things?'

Gebbie doesn't shy away from the darker side of life. One story, "Irrigation", goes into great detail--too great detail for this reader--about an enema. In "Dodie's Gift", the central character is left lost and wondering, "...if someone takes something you were going to give them anyway, is that stealing?' Reading this story, it's hard to decide whether to give her a hug or a good shake. Either, you think, might damage her beyond repair.

This story contains an image that recurs--'But there, at the bottom of the hollow, a gull has had a meal, and the sand holds white bone, red bone, skin....' The predator devours, leaves what it doesn't want, and moves on. What's been devoured, abandoned, somehow has to move on, too. Its life now may not be what it envisaged, but it still holds significance.

None of the stories is too long, although it's easy to feel some are too short. The characters live on in our minds and we can't help wondering what will happen next. If they'll come out all right.

This collection is definitely one to savour. Read a story, put it down, think about it, come back--the whole can't be devoured in an afternoon.


View all my reviews.

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"Molly Fox's Birthday" by Deirdre Madden

Source : In The Darkness, Hiding | Date : 24 Jul 2008 | 3:44 am

Molly Fox's Birthday by Deirdre Madden

My review

rating: 2 of 5 stars
I think unfortunately I was in the wrong reading mode for this book. I've been set on SFF for too long and nobody switched me to litfic.

In SFF--nay, in commercial fiction generally--you're told:

NEVER begin with a dream sequence
NEVER begin with someone waking up
NEVER have someone describe themselves in a mirror.

"Molly Fox's Birthday" shamelessly breaches rules one and two. The playwright protagonist (who either isn't named or whose name is entirely unmemorable) wakes from a dream and then potters through the rest of her day thinking about her close friends, the eponymous Molly Fox, an attractive vivacious actor, and Andrew Forde, an art historian with a disturbed background and gravitas. It's Molly Fox's birthday, but she's in New York and she doesn't celebrate her birthday anyway.

The narrative goes on to explore the relationships between these three people, and a few others who wander in and out, while examining the nature of bereavement, acting, writing, and other significant topics. Most of this is done in a series of flashbacks, although occasionally characters in the story--who all seem incapable of remembering that Molly's in New York--wander on set for a while.

At first I was waiting somewhat impatiently for the backstory to end and the story to begin; nearly 30 pages in, I realised the backstory WAS the story. A disappointment, certainly--I like scenes, and this novel is 90% gloss. There's an interesting story to be told, but I think for me it would have been more interesting if the novel had started with the narrator's first meeting with Molly, or with the start of her friendship with Andrew, and told the story as it happened, rather than through ruminations and flashbacks.

There are other problems, as well. The dialogue all seems the same regardless of who's speaking, and much of it reads like extracts from articles rather than how people would naturally speak. A bit off-putting really. The narrator has an unfortunate tendency towards repetitiveness. But the worst issue, for me, was that insights that might seem touching and fresh were they come across by the characters in the course of an active narrative seem banal and obvious when presented as the culmination of hours of reflection.

The forty-odd-year old Andrew opines, "One thing the making of this series convinced me about--that memorials of any kind have more to do with the living than the dead."

If we'd seen him going through the process that brought him to that conclusion, if we'd really understood, rather than just being told, in the course of conversation, that his brother's murder had closed him off to this kind of analysis, maybe it wouldn't come across as quite so disturbingly trite.

I am I suppose too set in my opinions as to what makes for an engaging narrative. I like scenes, I like to be shown rather than told, I like elliptical and naturalistic dialogue. Too picky, that's me. Which leaves me thinking that there was a fascinating story here to be told, especially with the glimpses of genuine emotional insights on the part of the narrator that sometimes appear through the gloss. But this isn't the way I would have chosen to tell it.


View all my reviews.

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English Commonwealth Flag

Source : In The Darkness, Hiding | Date : 22 Jul 2008 | 4:09 pm
So I'm upstairs reading The Command of the Ocean: A Naval History of Britain: 1649-1815 by N.A.M. Rodger, which opens with the English Commonwealth's Navy (known as the State Navy). And I'm reading about the English Commonwealth's flag. And it occurs to me that never in my life have I ever seen this flag.



And that's ridiculous. So there it is.

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Issue 3 Pre-launch Buzz Contest

Source : In The Darkness, Hiding | Date : 19 Jul 2008 | 2:14 am

Issue 3 is an amazing creation, crammed full of stories and art, with poems, Flash fiction and an entertaining report to leaven the mix. Whether we're battling a mechanical daemon in "A Song, a Prayer, an Empty Space" or experiencing jealousy towards unusual rivals in "Soon You Will Be Gone and Possibly Eaten", we're following the theme of Mechanical Flight into strange and unexpected places (and at times flying further afield).

Here's the (self-referential) Pre-launch Buzz Contest: blog about the launch contest with a link back to this post--then leave a comment at this post with a link to your blog post.  You'll be entered to win A FULL SET OF GUD, HARDCOPY (Issues 0-3). If we don't receive at least 100 entries, we reserve the right not to award this prize, so BE SURE TO TELL YOUR FRIENDS!  You've got seven days to help spread the word (give or take -- through the end of Friday, Pacific Standard Time)

BONUS: First ten entries win a PDF of Issue 3!  And we'll spread a few more goodies around if response warrants it. :)

BONUS 2: Everyone creating an account gets a freebie from Issue 3 just for signing up (it'll be in your account, waiting).  Everyone who already had an account?  You've got a new freebie waiting for you, too.

What's in Issue 3?

 
SO SPREAD THE WORD! :D

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A Small Announcement

Source : In The Darkness, Hiding | Date : 18 Jul 2008 | 2:03 pm
I shall shortly have a slightly bigger announcement to make :). However, this just in:

Nancy Fulda has kindly accepted my story "The Grey" for Anthology Builder.

The idea behind Anthology Builder is devastatingly simple--would-be purchasers choose which of the stories available on the site they want included in their anthology, which is then printed just for them.

"The Grey" was first published in Issue 4 of NFG (RIP), and will, perhaps, feature in one or two future anthologies. Maybe? Who can tell!

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If Shackleton Had Had A Mobile Phone....

Source : In The Darkness, Hiding | Date : 14 Jul 2008 | 2:12 pm

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Two Water Shots

Source : In The Darkness, Hiding | Date : 6 Jul 2008 | 8:45 pm




Just a mallard variation? A mallard crossed with...what? It's a mystery!

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"The Devil in the White City" by Erik Larson

Source : In The Darkness, Hiding | Date : 3 Jul 2008 | 10:17 am
The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair that Changed America by Erik Larson

My review

rating: 2 of 5 stars

Here's how I imagine it went.

Larson: I wanna write a book about the architects who designed the World's Fair in Chicago. Also, pork.

Publisher: Nobody wants to read about architects. They're boring.

Larson: But the World's Fair--

Publisher: Boring.

Larson: The mayor gets murdered.

Publisher: When?

Larson: At the end.

Publisher: (yawns) Too late.

Larson: If I could find some juicy murders to spice it up...?

Publisher: We'd take a look.

This isn't so much a book about Mudgett/Holmes and his unpleasant habit of murdering women and selling their bodies, not to mention murdering children just for the fun of it, but rather a book about the World Fair and its architects and how it was all built and how wonderful it was that Chicago managed to go "neenah neenah" at France for having the audacity to, yanno, hold a fair and get some visitors.

At times, the childishness is breathtaking.

Behind that, and the endless trumpeting of how wonderful it is to pursue power and wealth while people are dying of starvation in the garbage-piled streets (after all, you need all that wealth to get your own children the hell out of there), there's a fairly interesting story about the World Fair, and its architects, and how they all almost got it ready on time despite wasting months choosing a site for it. About Olmsted and his vision for the future of Landscape Architecture. About the electric launches and the first-ever Ferris Wheel. About the woman who won the competition to design the "Woman's Building", who was paid a tenth of what the men got, didn't get to appear in the group picture and was eventually driven into a nervous breakdown by a society dame who wanted to fill the Building with junk...and then disappears from the story. We get to find out all about the mayor's funeral, but not if Sophia Hayden ever recovered.

This book isn't kind to women. It sets the tone by referring to cattle in the stockyards being "murdered". Yep, the callous killings of women and children are equated with the slaughtering of animals. Throughout the book, Larson emphasises how Mudgett/Holmes had an almost vampirical effect on women, yet fails to explain why he had to go out of state to find a suitable victim. I'm sorry, wasn't he surrounded by them? Similarly, Buffalo Bill has all the women at the Fair staring lustfully at him. Sometimes this book has a bigger ego-trip than Mudgett/Holmes's.

Overall, Mudgett/Holmes and his Murder Hotel feel like an afterthought in a book about architects.



View all my reviews.

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100 Books 2008

Source : In The Darkness, Hiding | Date : 30 Jun 2008 | 8:44 pm
It's that time again! And for June, I'm experimenting with using Goodreads' own blogging setup. We'll see how it works out :).

Reviews and possible spoilers below.

June began with Gavin Weightman's The Frozen Water Trade, an impulse purchase that 'just looked interesting'. A suitably chilly book for midsummer.

The Frozen Water Trade by Gavin Weightman

My review

rating: 3 of 5 stars



A well-written book that sets out the history and practice of the nineteenth century trade in American ice, as instigated by Frederic Tudor. Weightman writes engagingly about his subject, although he is a tad repetitive at times. It's astounding to think of the thousands of tons of ice shipped to and consumed by parts of the world as diverse as New York and Calcutta.

Worth a look, especially if you're inspired by "if you fail, try try again" narratives.

Then, on to a book for Evil Editor's Book Chat: Bet Me by Jennifer Crusie. The chat, moderated by one of EE's molier minions, was a great success.

Bet Me by Jennifer Crusie

My review

rating: 3 of 5 stars


Imagine sitting down to dinner and being served the most perfectly-cooked dish you can imagine, beautifully presented, exactly the right temperature, everything about it impeccable, except...it's a dish you don't like to eat.

That's more or less how I feel about this book. It's well written, it's full of life and heat and warmth, and it left even cynical little ole me with the warm fuzzies. If you like chicklit, you'll adore this.

But I don't.

I was however entertained, and found bits of it funny, and was glad about the HEA. Certainly not a waste of my time.

I did get a bit fed up of hearing about Elvis Presley, any reference to whom leaves me wanting to run for the hills. And then she names the poor damn CAT Elvis. Aaaargh!

And then there were the shoes. Dinky shoes. I've never been able to have dinky shoes; I always have to have the ones that fit, which usually means men's shoes, and they're never dinky. I didn't enjoy having my face rubbed in that. And I passed out from incomprehension and boredom halfway through the description of Diana's wedding dress.

But those are trifles. A fun read.

That out of the way, on to a Gardner Dozois anthology--the third Year's Best. It's been a long time coming, as they say, and sqrls are still desperately counting their pennies in the hope of one day affording the first and second anthologies in this series. Although they seem to be becoming more expensive by the day.

The Year's Best Science Fiction: Third Annual Collection by Gardner R. Dozois

My review

rating: 4 of 5 stars



I'm glad I finally found an affordable copy of this book. The first three "Year's Best" weren't published in the UK, and they're vanishingly rare even in the States. Hence ridiculous prices. This one was (relatively) cheap!

A very enjoyable anthology, with Kim Stanley Robinson's "Green Mars" a stand-out. Gripping climbing story with a mixed bag of characters and lots of excellent description. Left me green with envy :).

"Dogfight" I had already read elsewhere. It's a surprisingly poignant tale of loss set against a harsh world in which the protagonist 'gets by' through casual crime.

"Neat Thing" by James Tiptree Jr. (Alice Sheldon) has a protagonist who's perhaps a bit too girly-fussy-pink, but it's a fascinating story, in which even girly-fussy-pink proves its worth.

UK Le Guin's Gifts came next. A YA book, but worth a read for all that.

Gifts by Ursula K. Le Guin

My review

rating: 4 of 5 stars



Books like this leave me green with envy. In 288 pages, Le Guin creates a world, realises characters that resonate even after you put the book down, and tells a fascinating story.

Damn. I wish I could do that.

Next was Dan Ronco's Unholy Domain, but as that's a review book for GUD, you'll have to wait :). And on to a book picked up very cheaply from a secondhand shop: a multi-author novel, Years Is Dead.

Yeats Is Dead! by Roddy Doyle

My review

rating: 3 of 5 stars


This book is modestly entertaining, not least for the way the authors undo the work of the previous contributor, run off in different directions, unwind things, and generally do everything they can to make the story go how they want it to go. Only to be undone by the next writer. That aspect is hilarious.

Easily the best writer here is Roddy Doyle, standing head and shoulders above the rest. Nobody is a bad writer, although Frank McCourt annoyed me by using a fictional character to make broad (and inaccurate) statements about women. Surely that sort of thing went out in the 1970s? Maybe not.

There isn't a plot; there is instead a plethora of plots, and more people seem to get murdered even than in a series of Midsomer Murders. An astonishing death toll!

More non-fiction next, with Charles C. Mann's 1491. Mann is a journalist, and it shows--he writes engagingly and with clarity.

1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus by Charles C. Mann

My review

rating: 5 of 5 stars



Non-fiction writers who produce prose as dry as the Negev should take a leaf out of Mann's highly readable, very enjoyable, and, most important of all, enlightening book.

Mann provides an overview of recent research regarding the extent of city-building and agriculture in North and Meso America in the thousands of years prior to Columbus's arrival in 1492. Exposing the "pristine myth", Mann explores sophisticated societies, methods of agriculture, and writing systems that have no European equivalents.

Throughout, Mann strives to be even-handed, giving all sides of contentious issues, and exploring the evidence for each. This is a book that positively encourages further exploration and debate.

Recommended.

And onwards, ever onwards, to Mistress of the Art of Death by Ariana Franklin. A freebie from Transworld Publishers, given out on condition that it's reviewed and discussed on their Facebook site. Which is hardly any condition at all :).

Mistress of the Art of Death by Ariana Franklin

My review

rating: 3 of 5 stars



A likeable enough book, but I do wonder why it is that authors of historical mysteries seem to envisage the plot, then bend the history to fit it, rather than, yanno, the other way around. It's actually painful at times for someone with even a limited knowledge of medieval England to read these books. Although this one isn't as bad as the ones with Cadfael, who is clearly either an alien or a time-traveller.

The book opens with a bouncy, arresting style that draws the reader in. It's jovial, almost the voice of the marketplace. Unfortunately, perhaps inevitably, the novel can't sustain it. Soon, it settles down to more conventional story-telling, including some irritating head-hopping. I like to be in the same head for at least a paragraph, myself. This aspect is, however, inconsistent--and that sets the tone for the book. Some evocative writing, some info-dumps. Some well-rounded characters, some ciphers. When one of the ciphers turns out to be the evil child-killer who's been predating in Cambridgeshire and the Holy Land, you have to wonder if the book wasn't trying a little too hard to deflect suspicion.

The best character, for me, was Henry II himself, who wanders in at the end to dispense justice. He's instantly likeable. Adelia, the protagonist, is a bit too closed-up to be approachable, which in itself is an excellent piece of characterisation. But the novel blows it big-time at the end when it has her making a choice that I consider impossible for an educated, intelligent woman of her time to have made. Throughout the book, we're shown how she values respect for her status, and yet she voluntarily reduces herself to one of the lowest and most despised positions in her adopted society. I DON'T BELIEVE IT.

The last O'Brian I had on hand was Clarissa Oakes. Rather than hoarding it, I shamelessly read it, instead. La.

Clarissa Oakes by Patrick O'Brian

My review

rating: 4 of 5 stars


A move for O'Brian away from guns and action and more towards a character study, this novel presents us with the eponymous young woman, who is rescued from the prison colony in New South Wales by an enamoured midshipman.

O'Brian writes with a light, sympathetic touch and the reader moves from suspecting Clarissa of all sorts of infamy to sympathising with her approach to life.

There's action too, of course, as the Surprise sets all sail and cracks on to resolve a dispute between two rulers on a South Seas Island by persuading one--or the other--to ally themselves with King George.

A more thoughtful novel than some of its predecessors.

More ships in The Caliban Shore by Stephen Taylor. Wrecked in the middle of nowhere, a ship's crew try to save themselves in this true story--with varying results.

The Caliban Shore by Stephen Taylor

My review

rating: 4 of 5 stars



In this fascinating book, Taylor brings together what evidence he can find to explore the fates of the castaways from the Grosvenor Indiaman, which smashed into the coast of Africa and sank because of the captain's abysmal navigation and the refusal of the officer of the watch to listen to sailors' warnings that the ship was approaching the coast.

The captain, Coxon, then compounded his error by setting off in the wrong direction for help, and abandoning female and child passengers to their fate--even those two children specifically placed in his care by their parents when they boarded the vessel.

It's perhaps fortunate that Coxon didn't survive, as infamy would have been heaped upon his incompetent head.

Of the 140 people washed ashore alive, only 13 ever made it home. A few were even drowned after being rescued--a case perhaps of being 'marked for death'. But a few stayed in Africa, joined local tribes, and even had descendants. Tracing their stories is perhaps the most difficult aspect of the research Taylor has done, but also the most rewarding. It seems some of the women and children found kinder people than those who should have protected them, but who instead just walked away.

Something very different next (although there is a ship in it)--Katie Hickman's The Aviary Gate. Harems, sultans...all the stuff of romance except the HEA.

The Aviary Gate by Katie Hickman

My review

rating: 3 of 5 stars


"The Aviary Gate" takes the reader into the inner workings and machinations of a Turkish harem. I ought to write, "an Elizabethan Turkish harem", but unfortunately that's one of the major problems with this book--it has no redolences of the period in which most of it is purportedly set. It feels modern. It doesn't feel like it belongs to the age of the merchant princes.

Part of the problem may be that you don't expect to find mobile phones or DVD players in a harem; they are, to the Western imagination, timeless. But the modern feel goes beyond that, applying equally to the sequences with Sir Paul Pindar, the utterly ineffectual merchant prince, ambassador and so-say lover of the enslaved Celia. Yeah, this guy loves her--we can tell, because all the while he's bargaining for her freedom, he's trying to ogle the woman hidden behind the screen.

The language is too modern--that's where I think the novel falls down. The narrative is modern and the dialogue is modern. Nothing in the 'Elizabethan' part of the novel would be out of place in the C19th; not the fascinating astronomical instruments, not the ship in the harbour, not the Sultan and his pathetic collection of women for whom the harem is preferable to marriage to some farmworker. Hardly surprising, really, given that they can expect to get fucked less often, are able to be clean, eat excellent food, have access to medicine, recreational drugs and the opportunity to acquire wealth and power. That joining the harem is a voluntary act for many is hardly surprising when you examine the alternatives. That wouldn't occur to Celia, however, who comes from a more privileged background--the daughter of a sea captain, she's chosen her husband in Pathetic Paul. Her love for him comes across as almost as shallow as his for her, but she has more excuse; she's struggling to survive in an alien environment.

Pathetic Paul wibbles around for a while, making small forays into finding out if Celia really is in the sex shop, and very very carefully almost asking someone to help find her. The narrative even contrives to help out by arranging for him to take a cook with him--to enhance his status. Yes, a cook! They're the guys with status in 1599, I tell you! They are!

But you can see PP's not going to do anything. There'll be no midnight rescue, no laying of all his worldly goods at the Sultan's feet. Too much of the book is devoted to this wimp. Sir Walter Raleigh would have had Celia out of there, and damn the consequences!

The 'Elizabethan' part of the novel is framed by the confessedly modern-day research done by Elizabeth Staveley into the fragment of Celia's narrative she discovers in one of PP's books, research which takes her into modern Istanbul. Hers, too, is a love story, one almost as ashen-pale as PP and Celia's. She's torn between serial-adulterer Marius (sorry, that's the extent of his character) and sexy Turk Mehmet (sorry, that's the extent of HIS character).

The crowning glory for me, though, is that twice Celia is presented for the Sultan's pleasure, and twice she manages to escape virgo intacta. Yep, all of the eroticism of forced sex in an Oriental context, and none of the sordid reality. Pah.

For all that, it's an enjoyable book, if only because it presents the harem women as powerful and scheming, not victims. No, not victims at all.

Back to ships and shipwrecks with a telling of the story of Alexander Selkirk, the 'real' castaway whose story inspired that of Robinson Crusoe, in Diana Souhami's Selkirk's Island.

Selkirk's Island by Diana Souhami

My review

rating: 2 of 5 stars


This book is interesting mostly for the contrast it draws between the romantic figure of Robinson Crusoe and the somewhat coarser goat-fucker on whom he was based. Hmm, yeah, I said goat-fucker.

At times, Souhami speculates on how nice it would have been for Selkirk to have had women on his island. Nice for him, no doubt--I think the goats probably suffered less than women would have. One quick confusion, a notch on the ear, and it's over. They don't even have to pretend they enjoyed it.

Souhami charts two voyages by privateers seeking to prey on rich merchant vessels, both relatively unsuccessful. The suffering these men caused and experienced seems to be out of all proportion to what they achieved. It's instructive to see how, having preyed on the unfortunate people they encounter, they are, on their return to London, preyed upon in their turn.

For me, though, this book suffers from trying too hard to be arty. Constant references to "The Island" (it had a name, even if Selkirk didn't know it), which Souhami tries to bring forward as an actor in the story in its own right. Attempts to be lyrical that clash with the sheer callousness of Selkirk's shipmates. It's not right to try to be poetic when dealing in the sale of human beings, far from their homes.

So. Points gained for the history, which is interestingly told. Points deducted for over-writing.

A complete break from ships, sea, deserts and shipwrecks next with Philip K. Dick's Lies, Inc., a novel that's actually two novellas shoved together, with the joins somewhat visible.

Lies, Inc. by Philip K. Dick

My review

rating: 4 of 5 stars

Another notch on my belt of attempts to read every novel Dick ever had published :D.

Despite the fact that it's inchoate, this is a very enjoyable novel. Many of Dick's preoccupations are here--alternate realities, mind-altering drugs, mad scientists, a supra-potent UN--and we also have an almost-hero, Rachmael ben Applebaum, who plans an eighteen-year space voyage (alone) in order to uncover what's happening with what appears to be an ideal colony world, but which he suspects is an extermination camp.

It becomes evident a short way in that this is two stories shoved together and inadequately integrated. Ben Applebaum has barely glanced at the sexy siren figure before she's described by all and sundry as his mistress (this always happens in Dick books, but there's usually some interaction first), and he simultaneously travels to the colony world, Whale's Mouth, by spaceship and by teleport. Presumably Dick would have addressed these issues had he lived. But as the novel stands, they make it quintessentially Dickian--nobody knows what the hell is going on!

Nevil Shute's A Town Like Alice next. Nothing like following up obscure SF with a love story.

Town Like Alice by Nevil Shute

My review

rating: 4 of 5 stars



This book wasn't at all what I was expecting. For a start, I wasn't expecting it to be narrated by an elderly London solicitor.

It's a lovely book, though, of the sort of positive, warm, compassionate type that men don't seem to write these days--they're too busy doing their drugs and banging 'their' women. It's rare that you see a romance that actually is a romance--an intense attachment between two people who meet under extraordinary circumstances and carry each other away in their hearts. Rather than two people who just, yanno, want to get it on because they're so hot (or whatever).

Yes, I'm old fashioned. Or just old :D.

I liked this book so much I'm even willing to overlook at least one egregious POV violation.

Next, back to ships. You knew I couldn't stay away from them for long! Here we have Billy Ruffian by David Cordingly, the tale of a Napoleonic ship-of-war and her part in defeating the French, the Spanish, and anyone else who came near.

Billy Ruffian by David Cordingly

My review

rating: 4 of 5 stars


Patrick O'Brian taught me that ship of the line Bellerophon was known as the "Billy Ruffian" to her crew, so the title of this book immediately told me what it was about. Grab!

Cordingly traces the story of the Napoleonic Wars through the service life of the Bellerophon, a 74 gun ship built at Frindsbury on the Medway. The Bellerophon saw action on the Glorious First of June and at Trafalgar, and was the ship that carried Napoleon from France to England after his regime was destroyed at the Battle of Waterloo.

Condemned to spend her last days as a prison hulk, the Bellerophon seems to have run the gamut from glory to ignominy. A sad ending for a ship that was dismasted and nearly destroyed in a battle with the French flagship L'Orient, yet managed to win clear before the French vessel exploded.

Cordingly writes clearly and engagingly, and his description of the action on the Glorious First of June is so exciting as to stir some patriotic fervour in even the most undevout of squirrels. Definitely worth a read.

Next, abandoning the sea and ships once more, R.J. Ellory's A Simple Act of Violence, gifted by BookRabbit on condition that it be read and reviewed. Which proved to be more of a condition in this case, as else I would probably have stopped reading it about a third of the way in.

A Simple Act of Violence by R.J. Ellory

My review

rating: 2 of 5 stars



So. After 600 pages, I lost count how many deaths, and a lot of plodding from place to place, nothing is resolved.

Detective Robert Miller investigates the murders of four women, apparently beaten and strangled by a brutal serial killer who leaves a weird signature behind. But nothing, of course, is as it seems, and as Miller delves deeper into the case, and encounters the mysterious John Robey, he begins to fear for both his life and his sanity.

There's a gripping story at the heart of this book, and some of the descriptions of the killings are truly creepy, but overall it reads like a first draft. A first draft, moreover, in need of a brutal edit.

Either Ellory has a bad memory or he thinks we do, because there's so much repetition in this book that at times it was in danger of being hurled across the room. Yes, I know that. Yes, you already told us that. Get on with the story already! The repetition often isn't even of meaningful points. Do we really need to be told twice that the purloined hairbrush has been wrapped up in a baggie and hidden in a locker? I don't think we even needed to be told that once, especially given that nothing at all comes of it. Despite all the angst attached. Despite all the times we're told how Detective Miller has crossed a line, and put his career in danger, and put his friend Marilyn's career in danger, that danger never materialises. Never exists.

And, oh dear, all the info-dumps about Nicaragua and the CIA and drug-smuggling, as if it's Great Secret Insider Info rather than common knowledge. Then the book throws away what credibility it had by tying anything and everything it can think of into some CIA super-plot. I'm surprised UFOs weren't mentioned. But if knowing that the CIA smuggle drugs to fund their operations is Great Secret Insider Info You Can Be Killed For, I'd better go bar the door.

Many a time I simply put this book down because I couldn't go on. The weight of repetition, of attaching huge significance to trivia, of explaining things again and again and again, got to me. There's some gems in this book, but you'll need to be an expert book-miner to find them.

Gah. Where's my red pencil.

Next, a freebie from Canongate Books with no strings attached--Under Control by Mark Mcnay. Sqrls are spoilt :).

Under Control by Mark Mcnay

My review

rating: 3 of 5 stars


Social worker Nigel thinks he wants to help people, but when he decides he fancies Charlie, the prostitute girlfriend of one of his clients (Gary), all bets are off. He manipulates the situation so he can get Charlie into rehab and Gary sectioned. Presumably he imagines that once Charlie's clean, he'll have her all to himself. He obviously hasn't thought this through, however--clean, she'll have no need to semi-blackmail him for money for drugs. The dope.

This novel is very readable--I got through it in a few hours--and it presents a largely convincing picture of the lives of these losers and junkies. They're ruled by their addictions, but they come across as people as well.

One aspect that puzzled me is the 'mental illness' Gary is supposed to have. The symptoms seem consistent with some form of schizophrenia (in itself an unhelpful term, I know), but at one point the people who should know describe him as having a personality disorder. Now as far as I know, you can't section someone for having a personality disorder--it's untreatable, and therefore not covered by the Mental Health Acts. Gary may be delusional but it's debatable whether they have the evidence to prove he's a danger to himself or others. So I think a little poetic licence may have been applied. A shame, given even a small amount of research might have plastered over this plot hole nicely.

A good book for a train journey or for sitting on a bench in the park.

Next, more struggling for survival, not because of a shipwreck this time, but because of isolation at the South Pole. Jerri Nielsen's amazing memoir of her self-diagnosis and treatment of her breast cancer during the Antarctic winter, and her evacuation by LC-130, Ice Bound. Nielsen's grief at being estranged from her children runs through this book like a thread of pain.

Ice Bound: One Woman's Incredible Battle for Survival at the South Pole by Jerri Nielsen

My review

rating: 4 of 5 stars


I thoroughly enjoyed this book, which gives an insider view of life at the South Pole in the 1990s. Nielsen (and/or ghostwriter Maryanne Vollers) writes well and doesn't hold back from sharing her responses to the Antarctic or the incredible camaraderie she developed with her fellow overwinterers at the Pole.

Told partly through narrative, and partly through contemporary emails, this is a touching story of the intense closeness that grows between people facing isolation and the ever-present risk of death in the driest part of the world.

Although Nielsen's breast cancer was the inspiration for this book, and features large in the last third or so, the book is about far more than that. Well worth a read.

An excellent companion book to "Terra Incognita".

Yes, we're shipwrecked again, and walking for our lives, this time across the Americas, in Andre Resendez's A Land So Strange. If there's a theme for June, it's obviously sea, ships, and a lot of trudging....

A Land So Strange: The Epic Journey of Cabeza de Vaca: The Extraordinary Tale of a Shipwrecked Spaniard Who Walked Across America in the Sixteenth Century by Andre Resendez

My review

rating: 3 of 5 stars


I was disappointed in this book. Not because of any particular defect in it--it's well written, interesting, and only occasionally partisan. But because I was hoping for more detail about life in the Americas before its destruction. Unfortunately, there's a frustrating lack of detail. We hear about 'Indians', and one (abandoned) city is described in detail, but the depth of information I was looking for just isn't there.

Whether this is a lack in the source material, or in this book, I don't know.

Finally, I finished off this multi-book volume by R.L. Stevenson. I figure overall it counts as three books--Dr Jekyll & Mr Hyde & Other Tales, plus Kidnapped, plus Treasure Island. Others may disagree :).

The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde & Other Tales; Kidnapped; Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson

My review

rating: 3 of 5 stars


Kidnapped.

I've read this before, but it's no less enjoyable the second or maybe third time around. Dour Whig David Balfour and lively Jacobite Alan Breck Stewart make unlikely comrades-in-arms, but, thrown together in adversity, they come to depend on and care about each other. Set mostly in the Scottish Highlands, this book is full of action sequences and danger. The characters spark off each other, and there is some lovely observation. A good read.

Dr Jekyll & Mr Hyde

A quick read, although it gets dull towards the end when Jekyll's letter repeats a lot of what we've already been told in Lanyon's, albeit from a different viewpoint. The story is of course familiar, from the diabolical Mr Hyde to the steaming elixir that brings about the Jekyll/Hyde transformation. What's interesting is that the story is told not from the point of view of either Hyde or Jekyll, but from that of Mr Utterson, a dry, elderly lawyer. When Hyde is brought to his attention in casual conversation, he begins to investigate, and, by the end of the book, learns more than he could have ever wanted to know.

The Treasure of Franchard

An odd little piece, this. Well written, but puzzling in that it seems to have no particular plot until about halfway through, when the reader begins to get a glimmer of where it's headed. The foreshadowing could have been handled better--ie not introduced half a page before it becomes relevant--and the story could have introduced the plot problem a little earlier. But interesting, for all that.

The Merry Men

A moody, unsettling tale of shipwreck and madness. The narrator brings the islet of Aros and its inhabitants to life, and amply demonstrates his helplessness in the face of elemental and other forces. The description of the loss of the schooner is harrowing.

Overall, not a bad selection of Stevenson's works, although this cheap edition has errors where the text has been scanned and imperfectly proofed, and there's one very badly-printed page. The discerning reader might want to buy a better edition.

View all my reviews.

And so, for June, that's a respectable twenty-one books, making a grand total of ninety-five so far. I think I may be on track :).

---

100 Books 2008

Source : In The Darkness, Hiding | Date : 31 May 2008 | 6:32 pm
The latter part of May has been perfect reading weather. Wet and cold with a grey overcast. Might as well stay home and snuggle up with a book.

So, how well did I do this month?

Reviews and possible spoilers below.

May started with water of a different kind--the sea off Cadiz in Tim Clayton and Phil Craig's Trafalgar: The Men, the Battle, the Storm. I probably wouldn't have bought this book had I not picked it up cheap in a charity shop. (Sorry, Tim and Phil!) But there it was on the shelf.

Trafalgar: The Men, the Battle, the Storm

A solid Trafalgar book. Not as gripping as the Adkins book, but that may be only the result of coming second. Clayton and Craig emphasise many of the same points as Adkins, but have often used different primary sources, which makes for different perspectives on the battle.

What comes across most clearly is how Nelson's death affected, not the course of the battle, which was so well planned in advance that his loss was almost immaterial in terms of strategy, but what happened afterwards. Nelson had intended that the British fleet should "anchor at the close of day". Collingwood, who assumed command, tried to reach Gibraltar instead, in the teeth of a gale, with dismasted British ships and badly-damaged prizes in tow. We'll never know what would have happened had the ships anchored--maybe the storm would have driven many onto rocks and wrecked them all the same. But it does seem likely that Nelson's plan was the sounder one.

Then on to a review book--J.M. Mcdermott's Last Dragon. My review will appear on GUD in due course :).

After the intricacies of Last Dragon, I felt I deserved a treat. So, back to the sea with an O'Brian! Sad will be the day when I run out of Aubrey/Maturin books.

The Nutmeg of Consolation

I thoroughly enjoyed this book. With exciting action at the start, and more contemplative narrative towards the end, it's almost completely satisfying. There's not much to beat curling up with an author you know you can trust to deliver the goods, characters with whom you're familiar, and the dear Surprise.

Next, another watery book my father recommended some time ago--The Shipping News by Annie Proulx--and which finally showed up in a charity shop near me. Charity shops seem like really cheap places to get books, but that depends on your not grabbing ever single book you want. Ahem.

The Shipping News

This book couldn't be more steeped in its Newfoundland setting if it had been sunk in the bay. A fascinating glimpse of a way of life tuned to the weather and the seasons. The characters are boldly drawn, and the storyline contains one of the most believable, and touching, love stories I've ever seen in fiction.

It takes a little while to get there, though. The book has a slow start, yet the writing alone kept me engaged with it. I did find it hard to believe that Quoyle's wife Petal could be quite that bad--she's drawn almost as a caricature. Yet when Quoyle finally sees "the truth" about her, it's not her sale of their young children to a paedophile that's seen as her worst sin, but her endless adulteries. I'm sorry, but I think that's the wrong way about.

All in all, the book's attitude to rapes and sexual abuse of children--mentions of which feature repeatedly--left me a little queasy. It obviously doesn't condone. Yet at times I think I'm meant to laugh, and I don't feel like laughing. Hard to know.

The sea was left behind next in favour of a book of short SF stories by Carol Emshwiller, snatched from the maw of the Untidiest Secondhand Bookshop in Kent.

The Start of the End of It All and other stories

These are not your conventional SF stories, and they don't yield their meanings easily.

The collection suffers slightly from having so many first person stories one after another--it's hard to shift gears from one persona to the next, especially when some are male and some female, but it often doesn't become clear which until you're a fair way in.

That said, there's so much to intrigue and ponder here that a second reading is surely a must.

I'm tempted to put something here about how Emshwiller's work is much overlooked, but that would probably lead to my being trampled by a herd of rebuttals, so I shan't :).

And we're down to the sea in ships again for Dava Sobel's Longitude. Yes, I have only just read it! The charity shops have a slow delivery rate.

Longitude

It's a puzzle how this modest little book became an international bestseller. It's informative, accessible, and written with touches of humour. Is that enough?

Personally, I suspect that it benefits most from being short. Most non-fiction works require dedication that lasts weeks if not months, with frequent pauses to put the book down so the brain can accommodate what it's learnt. Not so here. I read this in a couple of hours or so, with little brain strain, and enjoyed learning about Harrison and Hs 1, 2, 3, and 4.

So here's a non-fiction book you can read in a sitting, and afterwards profess knowledge of How Greenwich Mean Time Came to Rule the World. Short and sweet.

(Although I couldn't help wondering how many more lives were lost while the Board of Longitude procrastinated and Harrison fiddled with his clocks.)

I would love to go to the National Maritime Museum and see the clocks. I'd also love a book I saw in Waterstones the other day about Samuel Plimsoll and the Plimsoll line. Money, where art thou?

And then on to a book for Evil Editor's Book Chat: Twilight by Stephenie Meyer. Please do not discuss in comments. Sqrls have suffered enough.

Twilight

my god this is an awful book, she encouraged dryly

i can't believe i finished it, she contra-indicated

And that is all I wrote about THAT.

Moving on, May continued in a better vein with a PKD/Roger Zelazny collaboration: Deus Irae. Last time I checked, I was fourteen books away from completing my PKD collection. But some of those books are So Expensive. Gah.

Deus Irae

Really enjoyed this one. It's tempting to see it as Dick constantly trying to wander off on not-entirely-related threads and Zelazny trying to keep him to the point, but that's probably not how it happened at all :).

Lots of Dick themes here, and I'm sure I remember the Great Computer that dissolves people from one of his short stories. Ew. It's an old idea--think the Sphinx--given a new twist. If the Computer can answer your questions, it gets to eat you. Again, ew.

Dick plays with identity, with futility, and has the ultimate helpless protagonist in Tibor--an "inc" who lacks both arms and legs, and relies on artificial arms called "extensors" and a cow-cart to live his life. He's an artist, charged with finding the Deus Irae (God of Wrath) in order to paint him into a murch (church mural) for the new SoW religion, one centred around the man responsible for WWIII. Tibor travels a stricken landscape, finding lizard men, bug men, and an apple that seems significant but then falls out of the story entirely.

I did feel that after a lot of setup and wandering around, the novel ended a bit abruptly. One minute Tibor and Pete seem doomed to wander forever; the next their quest is over. In fact, it's been over for a while, but nobody told Tibor.

Being familiar with Dick's work, but not Zelazny's, I'm puzzled to identify the latter's contribution here. Possibly the fragmented sentences, which don't seem typical of Dick. But there must be more to it than that.

A more accessible work than many of Dick's stand-alones, and an enjoyable and intriguing read.

Then, on to a book I bought for 10p in a remainder bookshop. I wonder if being remaindered in a remainder shop is better or worse than ending your days in Pulp City? In any case, I'm glad I bought Claire Kilroy's Tenderwire rather than leaving it to languish.

Tenderwire

This is a much better book than I expected to get for 10p.

Violinist Eva Tyne's life falls apart when she miscarries following a performance. She falls in with Alexander, who claims to be a Chechen, and offers to sell her what seems to be a lost Stradivarius, smuggled in from Russia, and with Daniel, a businessman who helps her raise the money she needs. Yet neither man is who he appears to be.

The violin offers a chance for Eva to progress in her career, but at the same time she's dogged by fears that she's being followed, and that Daniel is cheating on her with her best friend.

One serious problem I had with this book is that the narrator deliberately conceals information from the reader in order to ratchet up the suspense. Given it's first person, I reckon that's cheating. But the writing is top-notch, and the voice rings true throughout. Good stuff.

Since Tenderwire was a quick read, I followed it up with another of my 10p bargains--although Daren King's Mouse Noses on Toast turned out to be less of a bargain and more of a squib.

Mouse Noses on Toast

Okay, I'm not the target readership for this book, but I reckon it was pretty poor stuff anyway. Not even funny. And it promises on the very first page that we'll find out why a Tinby is called a Tinby when it falls out of a window later in the story, but it doesn't and we don't.

Mouses indeed.

After that, it was back to the sea for The Cruise of theAmaryllis by G.H.P. Muhlhauser.

The Cruise of theAmaryllis

The author sailed around the world in a small yacht with a variety of crewmen to help, but did not survive to finish the tale. Although most of the book is what he made out of his experiences, towards the end it is finished off in diary entries and letters to friends. Truth be told, these are slightly more interesting than the finished narrative.

Muhlhauser obviously saw and experienced a lot, but he had no turn for writing. Everything and everywhere is described in much the same terms. Rarely does he turn a poetical or evocative phrase.

It's a shame to have looked but not seen, to have seen but not to be able to describe.

A notable omission from this book is Muhlhauser's photographs. He talks about them in the narrative, but none appear.

More seaborne goings-on next in J.G. Ballard's Rushing to Paradise, a slim volume about...well, albatrosses and mass murder. Or something along those lines.

Rushing to Paradise

My theory that if I read enough Ballard, I'll understand where he's coming from, seems to be fundamentally flawed. I'm no further on than I was before.

Neil, a sixteen-year-old wastrel, hooks up with eco-warrior Dr Barbara, and is so besotted with her (apparently) that he's prepared to let her murder him just to be close to her. It's a bizarre storyline, but one that could work if Ballard managed to evoke Neil's feelings rather than telling us about them. As it stands, it doesn't work--we don't get deep enough into Neil's feelings to go along with them. He just looks to be behaving like an idiot--he's too stupid to live. It's also hard to find the book funny when people are dying left right and centre for Dr Barbara's ever-changing dream. The story doesn't come across as black humour, which can make you laugh despite yourself, but as a rather macabre attack on enthusiasm. Look where it can lead! we're told--and the crimes start right at the beginning, with Dr Barbara being somehow an impure activist because she attempts to manipulate the media. Apparently pure love for the environment expresses itself by being entirely invisible--and therefore useless.

I dunno. Lots of people rate Ballard's writing, but I'm still waiting for the light to dawn.

Continuing the maritime theme, I started reading The Dutch Seaborne Empire: 1600-1800 by C.R. Boxer but found the book made so many assumptions about prior knowledge that I think I'm going to have to get another book first. So I set that aside and instead picked up Don Foster's Author Unknown.

Author Unknown

This intriguing book explores the author's work in attributing texts to their authors. Foster looks into a variety of cases--the JonBent Ramsay murder, where he made serious errors--the Clinton/Lewinksy "Talking Points" (gone into in far more detail than someone not fascinated by cigar-sex and/or American politics could desire), "The Night Before Christmas" and more. No, not Moore--he didn't write it.

Foster's painstaking work, which involves uncovering which authors and texts were familiar to the author of the disputed text, as well as comparative analysis between known texts and the unknown one, explores how much is borrowed, how little is original. It might be worth getting his opinion on whether some recent plagiarism scandals are the result of deliberate or unconscious borrowing.

Not bad for 10p.

And on and further on, with Vanessa Gebbie's Words From a Glass Bubble. Another GUD review book, that one, so I'm afraid you'll have to wait :).

Next, I read Bellwether by Connie Willis. Didn't take me long, either.

Bellwether

A fun novel, sort of a proto-Passage, centring on two scientists, Sandra Foster (who's researching the origins of fads) and Bennett O'Reilly (who's investigating information diffusion), whose professional and personal lives converge, despite (or because of) the incompetence of Flip, an "assistant" with an "i" branded on her forehead and unusual uses for duct tape.

Many of Willis's favourite themes are here: the bewildering disconnectedness between what you want and what you get; the incompetent and acronym-obsessed management; impenetrable forms. And, of course, animals. In this case, sheep, including the bellwether of the title. The sheep are very funny, although I suspect their full depths of comedic potential were not mined.

The novel was a bit slow to start, and not helped by the publishers' choice of an illegible font for headings--it's hard enough to get my head around unfamiliar words like qiao pai without first having to puzzle them out letter by oddly-shaped letter. Further, my copy has a curious dual nature--some pages are printed black as pitch, and others so light that it's almost (but not quite) bad enough to justify sending it back and demanding a replacement. Beware clearance sales!

And, finally, a review book of sorts, Peggy Elliott's A Small Part of History (aka the book with the least memorable title ever). This came to me through BookRabbit, a British online bookseller-cum-social-networking site. Free ARCs for those prepared to review them. Irresistible!

A Small Part of History

This is not a bad book, although it could have been a better one. Author Peggy Elliott sets out to tell the stories of women on the Oregon Trail--stories that are very different from the men's. She does so mainly through two characters: Sarah and Rebecca Springer. Sarah turns sixteen on the trail, while Rebecca, about ten years older, is her step-mother. Occasionally, we get peeks into the lives of other women on the same journey, at least while they live.

It isn't clear whose story this is. Sarah's? The Springer women's? The Springer family's? The women's overall? The book itself doesn't seem to know; it flits from Sarah's narrative, to Rebecca's journal, to notes made by another woman, and peers inside all their heads at different times. To succeed, the book needed more focus, imo; it's too short and not dense enough to carry the weight of so many narratives. Further, the voice from Sarah's narrative seeps into the third person sections, leaving the reader wondering who's talking when.

Although the book is well researched, and a lot of thought and care has gone into it, I found it lacking in depth. The most strongly-drawn character is Sarah's, but even she feels at times like a character drawn from outside, from a distance--and this is especially a problem when parts of the narrative are written from her perspective, in first person. Somehow the touchpaper that might bring her to life never kindles.

There are awkward moments in the story. I found the brief descriptions of sex awkward and crude--crudely told. Although it's impossible to please every reader in that area, I think it would have been more in keeping with the novel's setting simply to have omitted those passages. And though Elliott tries very hard with the scene where buffalo stampede through the wagon train, it's flat, and there's no real sense of danger. In another scene, she telegraphs a character's imminent death so vigorously that nobody could miss it.

Too often, this novel relies on telling rather than showing. Telling is used as a short-cut, and that often undermines the exploration of character, or the evocation of trail life. It's so hard to pin down what was missing in this book. Something, some greater confidence in the author, perhaps, that would bring people and events to life. The author's background in tv and film writing may explain some of the problems--novels are very different in the way they work.

I can't help thinking that a novel about the men's experiences on the trail wouldn't have gone into nearly so much detail about the women and their lives and work, so it's tempting to wonder why so much of the narrative is devoted to the men. Seems they just can't be left out!

A good book, and I suspect Elliott's next novel will be better.

So, sixteen books for May, making a grand total of seventy-four for the first five months of 2008. Perhaps more importantly, I don't feel as stressed and read-out as I did at the end of March, where things got silly :).

May's recommended read: Words From a Glass Bubble by Vanessa Gebbie.

---

GUD meme

Source : In The Darkness, Hiding | Date : 27 May 2008 | 1:37 pm
* What was the last story you read?

I'm currently reading Vanessa Gebbie's short-story collection "Words From Glass Bubbles", which she was kind enough to send to GUD as a review book, and the most recent story I read was "On the Edge". Vanessa writes apparently straightforward stories that are full of meaning, and I usually find I need to put the book down after each one, and have a think, then come back to it :).

* What was the last poem you read?

I recently read a poem by John Masefield because it was quoted in G.H.P. Muhlhauser's "The Voyage of the Amaryllis". Muhlhauser doesn't give the title...lemme see...ah yes. Roadways.

* What was the last comic you read?

I have xkcd's feed on my friends page, and the latest one was this.

* What was the last movie you watched?

Uh, the Amityville Horror remake, last night on tv :). No, I'm not proud of it! But it was better than the original in many ways. More, umm, believable?

* What song are you listening to now? Say something about it--what it means to you, who introduced you to it, something like that.

After some months if not years of wilfully hiding from me, my Reveal album (REM) suddenly turned up today. I slammed it in and it's been on infinipeat ever since. The current track is "All The Way to Reno (You're Gonna Be a Star)". I discovered REM when Automatic for the People was released, and "Everybody Hurts" was constantly playing. After buying the album, I discovered that there were other songs on it that I liked better. And I've been a solid REM fan ever since. Their music batters my brain until it stops thinking about things it shouldn't, or gets me up and dancing around, or makes me think, or sometimes all three at once (and more). I'm even a "friend" of theirs on MySpace--how fangirly can you get!

* What's your guilty-reading pleasure?

Umm?

Er?

I don't have to own up, do I?

(in very small letters: Georgette Heyer's Regency Romances)

* Say something about the last poem you wrote!

I don't write much poetry, but it just so happens that Poor Mojo's Almanac(k) recently published my poem "The Bankside". Unfortunately, I don't have a working link to it at the moment! But that was the first poem I'd written in years, so it was especially gratifying to find a home for it.

* Say something about a story you're writing now!

I wish I could.

* If you were a fictional character, who would be writing you?

Thomas Hardy. The bastard.

* Last story you recommended to someone?

Honestly, I can't remember. I sent my dad a copy of Connie Willis's "To Say Nothing of the Dog" recently--because I loved it so much, and thought he would, too--does that count?

* And a link to your favorite magazine, because they probably need your help. ;)

You know who that has to be, don't you? GUD!

* Lastly, link to a friend's copy of this quiz!

Here be kaolin

---

100 Books 2008

Source : In The Darkness, Hiding | Date : 2 May 2008 | 12:13 pm
April is the cruellest month.

A much-anticipated visit from fellow GUD editor Sue Miller, lots of trips out, and a really long read hindered my progress this month. Not that I'm complaining about Sue's visit :). Lots of fun was had.

Reviews and possible spoilers below.

April swanned in with Terry Pratchett's Making Money. I wanted something light to read, and other half generously offered his Christmas present, which he hasn't read yet. He doesn't get much time for reading, poor soul. Too busy keeping me in books!

Making Money

Maybe my mood wasn't right, but I didn't enjoy this book as much as I've enjoyed previous Pratchetts. For me, I think part of the problem was there's nothing new. Usually a Pratchett book takes you into a new part of the Discworld, or introduces a new aspect that you haven't seen before, but here we're retreading old ground.

Pratchett writes lovely comic prose as usual, we get to meet some old favourites, the character of Cosmo is brilliantly done, yet there is this sense of "been there, done that".

Next on the agenda was a book for Evil Editor's Book Chat--Anne Argula's Homicide My Own. Argula is apparently a penname for a man, and I think it shows--but as I had that information going in, it's hard to say :). I couldn't buy into the book's premise, which meant I didn't enjoy it. So much hinges on the willing suspension of disbelief.

Homicide My Own

A thin story that goes from irrelevance to incredulance. Is that a word? Probably not, but it's more interesting than this book.

Passing over that in the fewest possible words, we come to a book snatched from the bookshelf with glee--Time Out of Joint by Philip K. Dick. I carry around with me a list of all the books by Dick that I own--together with all the alternative titles that I'm aware of--and it's a joy to find one on the shelf that isn't on my list. One day I will have a complete collection of Dicks!

Time Out of Joint

Shades of the Truman Show here--Ragle Gumm and his "family" live in the 1950s under constant surveillance, and discover that all is not what it seems when they intercept radio broadcasts using a crystal set.

At first, Gumm's efforts to escape are foiled, but eventually he escapes, to learn the truth about the artificial town in which he's been living, and his role in a bitter civil war.

Classic Dick stuff--nothing and no-one is as they seem.

I then started reading Rome and Jerusalem: The Clash of Ancient Civilisations by Martin Goodman. This went on for a while. And then for a while longer. And for so long that I read another book before I finished this one. And on.

Rome and Jerusalem: The Clash of Ancient Civilisations

Took me a long time to read this book. It's dense and hard going, but worth it in the end. Lots of solid information, presented with sources, although the author makes the occasional howler. Yes, Barrabas, who was selected by the crowd for release rather than Jesus, is described as a "robber", but is far more likely to have been another proto-messiah figure. But I digress.

Goodman performs an in-depth dissection of the differences and similarities between Romans and Jews in antiquity. He also describes the occasions on which they came into violent conflict, explaining the reasons why--which often have little to do with Judaism, and a lot to do with internal Roman politics. Laying bare the roots of European anti-Semitism, he reveals how far we are prisoners of the past.

Definitely worth a read.

Perhaps with diligence I will be able to read more than a few pages at a time of a non-fiction book. My brain will re-learn how to accommodate information!

Meanwhile, Gerald Durrell's My Family and Other Animals. They seem to have been a talented family--animals and humans both. I have a book by Lawrence Durrell somewhere that mysteriously keeps disappearing before I finish it--it's hilarious.

My Family and Other Animals

Inadvertently isolated from Rome & Jerusalem, I picked this up for a quick re-read. Where it's funny, it's hilarious; where it's not funny, it's still interesting.

Durrell massively overuses modifiers in a way that would be unacceptable in fiction, but somehow gets away with it (most of the time). His great love for his family, for Nature, for Corfu, gleams off the pages. Not for cynics!

After I finished Rome & Jerusalem, I felt I deserved a treat. So, an O'Brian! This time, The Thirteen-Gun Salute.

The Thirteen-Gun Salute

This book was a little disappointing. It starts with a long-winded recap of previous events. This may be necessary, but it's boring--and it's hard to know where to stop skipping it so you don't miss any important stuff.

O'Brian was not on form with this novel; it struggles. There are some great bits where the Diane is looking for the Surprise, and not finding her, and still not finding her, but Stephen's conviction that envoy Fox has gone mad isn't really supported by enough showing--we're told he's gone mad with self-importance (a marvellous idea), but it doesn't come across strongly.

Some lovely writing in the book and yet--I don't know why--it struggles. A shame.

Finally for April, we come to Connie Willis's To Say Nothing of the Dog. This is the July book for Evil Editor's Book Chat. So I read it a little early :).

To Say Nothing of the Dog

I vacillated between four and five stars for this one, and eventually settled on four. Not because it's not a brilliant, warmly hilarious book--because it is. But because it didn't also thrill me with its scientific ideas and a sense of peril like Passage.

This book brims over with humour, affection for its characters, and that underlying sense of compassion that's often found in Willis's writing. Modest historian Ned Henry is trying to track down a mysterious item called "the bishop's bird stump", last seen in Coventry Cathedral before its destruction, as part of a reconstruction project. Practical historian Verity Kindle is trying to get two people married to prevent an incongruity that could destroy the universe. One is Tossie Mering; the other is the mysterious "Mr C", whom Verity seeks, but never finds, in every man Tossie meets.

Apparently, a "bird stump" is a kind of flower vase popular in the Victorian era, although I didn't discover this until over two-thirds of the way through the book. Further to complicate matters, the "bishop's bird stump" isn't one.

There's complications, missed assignations, a very loving cat, and visits to the fourteenth century--to say nothing of the dog.

This would definitely be my recommendation of the month--if you only read one book out of these, read this one!

So, seven books read in April, making the total for the year so far...fifty-eight. Respectable :).

---

Oosterschelde

Source : In The Darkness, Hiding | Date : 27 Apr 2008 | 12:09 pm
Official site here.



"What's that on the horizon? With all the sails?"

"Three-master. Fore-and-aft rigged, with square tops'ls."



"Look, she's worn."

---

oemmypeommypoemmyp

Source : In The Darkness, Hiding | Date : 24 Apr 2008 | 2:39 pm
Hurrah! Poor Mojo's Almanac(k) has published my poem The Bankside :).

You didn't know I write poems? It's a rare event--"The Bankside" represents one-half of my total poetry output for probably the last twenty years !

---

Personal Demons by Stacia Kane

Source : In The Darkness, Hiding | Date : 24 Mar 2008 | 6:47 pm
Sparks fly in this hugely-enjoyable paranormal romance. When central character Dr Megan Chase takes a job as a counsellor on a radio show, the tagline, "how can I slay your personal demons?" attracts unwanted attention from, yes, personal demons.

Fortunately, Megan has fire demon Greyson Dante to protect her--or is the heat he gives off blinding her to his ulterior motives? Her life is further complicated when the reporter tasked with a puff piece to promote the radio show uncovers her involvement in a fifteen-year-old murder. And what exactly is going on at Art Bellingham's Fearbusters meetings?

Kane writes with conviction and verve, drawing the reader into the book's world with nary a blink of disbelief. Just as Megan is forced to be convinced by events that demons exist, and aren't exactly what we've been taught to think they are, so we are carried along to believe in them too--at least for the moment.

The book is nicely paced and the writing lively. The characters are fleshed out so well that they all seem to have lives outside the interactions we see when those lives collide. Megan in particular is a convincing mix of strength and vulnerability, and as for the fire demon, well...he's hot!

With exciting action scenes and hot, hot passion, this romance-with-a-plot is perfect for snuggling up with by the fire, or for wiping out the tedium of a train or plane journey.

---

Clueless

Source : In The Darkness, Hiding | Date : 16 Mar 2008 | 3:33 pm
£1,000,000

(more)

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100 Books in 2008 (Month Two)

Source : In The Darkness, Hiding | Date : 29 Feb 2008 | 12:04 pm
It's that time again--time for a round-up of the books I read this month. Technically, February isn't over, but my chances of completing another book before March roars in are slim. So, below, find out if I'm keeping up with my reading :) Also, reviews and possible spoilers.

February began with Ursula K. Le Guin's Voices, snatched off a bookshelf and purchased at Actual Real New Book Price.

Voices

This book leapt straight from "to-read" to "read". I picked it up last night to start reading before going to sleep, and finished it at four o'clock this morning. I don't know what better recommendation I could make!

The story is a gripping, yet simple, tale of Memer, a young woman living in the occupied country of Ansul, and dreaming about revenge on the conquering Alds. Yet Memer herself is half-Ald, a rape baby (or, as the narrative more gently puts it, a "siege baby").

Memer learns the dangerous skill of reading from the Waylord, the head of the Galva household. To the Alds, words are the breath of their god, and placing them in writing is blasphemy. They destroy books and kill anyone who owns them.

Yet the Galvamand, where Memer and the remnants of the Galva household live, hides a deeper secret than the hidden room of books. Here dwells the Oracle, able to tell them if--or when--to launch their revolt against the Alds.

This book makes heroic attempts to see the conflict from both sides, while sticking to a single viewpoint--Memer's. In a couple of places, I thought it preachy, and preachy's annoying even if you agree with what's being preached. The author's voice seemed to break through and put itself in Memer's mouth. But apart from that, this is a seamless, heart-wrenching narrative.

The month thus begun continued with a Mark Twain omnibus bought cheaply at the remainder shop.

The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

I started this book at the beginning, but the opening line of Huck Finn suggests that Tom Sawyer comes first, so I skipped HF for the moment and began with Tom instead. Obviously not a lot of thought was put into the order of the books.

I think I've read Tom Sawyer before, or I may just have seen a film or tv adaptation. Certainly some bits are familiar--the iconic fence whitewashing scene, and the young people getting lost in the caves. The book's written in a rollicking, friendly style that evokes affection for the characters.

The unselfconscious imaginative play of the boys is beautifully evoked. Less inspiring, sadly, is the way girls are treated only as objects of desire. When Tom and Becky are trapped in the caves, Becky is worse than useless. And that's putting it mildly. Product of its time, yada yada, but given Twain himself represents the story as being for boys AND girls, it's necessary to wonder just what impression he thought girls would take away from it. They exist only for Tom to want or not want--when he finally discards Amy, she disappears from the narrative. There's no further role for her to play.

The book ends somewhat abruptly, after giving the impression that it could carry on for a fair few more pages yet. An interesting read, though--and now on to Huck Finn!

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

Huckleberry Finn reads better than Tom Sawyer--perhaps reflecting Twain's growing maturity as a writer. It's an excellent yarn of Huck's travels along the Mississippi and his fallings-in with escaped slave Jim, a couple of hucksters known as "the king" and "the duke", and, finally, with Tom Sawyer his own self. The mood of the book changes when Tom comes along, and I think it helps here to have read Tom Sawyer first. Up until he appears, passing himself off as his brother Sid because Huck has already been taken for him, the book has been somewhat solemn and Huck's actions have been thought-out and reasonable. Not that there haven't been funny interludes, but when Tom appears it's almost all fun from then on. Were the reader not familiar with the didactic, over-imaginative Tom, this switch might not work, but when you know what Tom's like, it makes perfect sense. Well, almost.

The lengths to which Tom makes Huck and Jim go while they're trying to rescue him from a hut in which he's imprisoned, waiting to be returned to his owner or sold, have to be read to be believed. They're hilarious. I was laughing so much I could hardly focus on the page. Truly, a masterpiece.

What I also found interesting is how Twain doesn't compromise on Huck's mindset. He feels there's something low and shameful about helping Jim escape--stealing someone's property--and yet he can't bring himself to give the man up. His attempts to reconcile what he sees as low-down behaviour with his impulsive response to Jim's gratitude are funny and saddening at once. The book then has Tom lowered in his estimation when he pitches in to help Jim with no apparent twinges to his conscience at all. But eventually the book reveals what Tom knows but Huck doesn't--Jim has been free all along. It was all one huge jape for Tom. Huck is revealed as the more serious, deep-thinking character, and his conscience is probably relieved of the guilt of nigger-stealing.

A more complex book than Tom Sawyer, and one that would certainly bear re-reading. It's unflinching in its examination of the attitudes of the day, and the insights into superstition are fascinating.

And now, I suppose, on to the Prince and the Pauper.

The Prince and the Pauper

I didn't enjoy the P&theP as much as the other two books in this omnibus. I suppose I had a feeling of "what's the point?". Two boys, one highly privileged, the other very poor, inadvertently swap places. The poor boy finds the privileged position hard, but it has its compensations. The privileged boy finds poverty very hard, but manages to discover a true friend. Then they swap back.

Parts of the book are tedious, and I skipped the detailed account of the coronation. I suppose there is here a brave attempt to make history interesting--or rather alternate history! I wonder if there are earlier examples of the genre?

After ploughing through a great deal more Twain than I've ever read before in my life, I moved on to Lady Franklin's Revenge, a book with something of a saga inadvertently attached to it. To be brief: I ran across it in my explorations, and ordered an overstock copy (at greater expense than I usually pay out) from the US branch of Alibris. Although described as "excellent", the book when it arrived wasn't. Page 83 was torn, folded and bound into the spine. So, I sent it back to Alibris, who recently processed my refund--minus the £5.12 postage expended to return the book to them. Meanwhile, I'd found a cheaper, better copy on Amazon Marketplace. Still, that £5.12 rankles--I could buy another book for that!

Lady Franklin's Revenge by Ken McGoogan

The book takes a long time getting to the parts I bought it for, but that's okay. The history of Jane Franklin's time in Tasmania and her search for her husband when he goes missing in the Arctic make more sense in the full context of her life. It was particularly interesting reading about places in Tasmania that I've learnt about from Monissa. A lot of names were already familiar, which meant I could identify more with events.

Jane Franklin was a remarkable character, and particularly so when reinventing her husband's disastrous venture into the Arctic as heroism and discovery. She might have been a role model for Captain Scott's widow, who achieved a similar reimagining of history.

At times, the narrative is annoying--it sometimes leaps to conclusions on somewhat flimsy evidence. Two weeks of bedrest after a lot of travel does not equal proof that Jane was in love with someone during the trip. Bah. The author does however do a good job of demonstrating how she overcame the daunting obstacles to a woman born into the upper middle classes during the Victorian era. Monissa and I had a conversation not long ago in which I suggested that a woman wanting to strike out and make a name for herself should first "get rid of the husband". Jane Franklin took a different route--she married a pliable husband who basically couldn't stop her using "his" money to travel the world. Good for her.

Then, on to another non-fiction book, this one by Marion Schreiber and somewhat grimmer in its content.

The Twentieth Train: The Remarkable True Story of the Only Successful Ambush on the Journey to Auschwitz

Not sure if the clunky writing originates with the author or if it's crept in during translation. Either way, it's something of an impediment, but not much.

This books spends a lot of time on the buildup to the raid on the train, introducing those involved, those around them, and the general atmosphere and tensions of occupied Belgium. Unfortunately, this has the effect of reducing the raid's events to insignificance; they get far less detail devoted to them than, say, the routine in the Mechelen transit camp. This reduces the promised focus of the book to one of a number of small incidents.

There is so much here that's brave, and so much that's sad.

Normally, I avoid Holocaust material because it's so distressing, but this book seemed to offer a ray of light. More of a glimmer really.

And so on to what's frequently described as "escapism": some good old-fashioned SF by Arthur C. Clarke.

The City and the Stars

In many ways, this is typical Clarke--it talks about equality, but, at least in Diaspar, all those (at least nominally) in charge are, of course men. His imagination just doesn't stretch to "equal" women being on Councils or not having to do the cooking (okay, there's no cooking in this one).

Once again, we set out on a mission to learn why immortality is a Bad Thing. Abolishing death means abolishing children; citizens of Diaspar hatch almost fully grown. That this is a decision made by whoever founded the city, rather than an inevitable side-effect of immortality, is ignored. We're in preaching territory here, dudes.

Meanwhile, in much-more-down-with-the-Nature yet still scientifically-advanced Lys, an old man faces his forthcoming death with calm and equanimity. Yeah, because that's totally what all dying people are like.

Lys has *gasp* a woman in charge, but she's cleverly defeated by protagonist Alvin, and takes a back seat to the "men of Lys" from then on. Oh, and a woman also has a hand in defeating this woman's Irritating Plan, but only inadvertently. As it should be!

Alvin is a cipher whose actions drive the plot. He's a Unique in Diaspar--rather than having had many previous lives that will come back to him when he reaches twenty, he's never lived before. This uniqueness enables him to leave the city and, in an amazing feat of insight, travel immediately to The Only Other Inhabited Place on the Entire Earth. Yeah, right. Later miracles including finding The Robot That Controls the Only Surviving Spaceship, and Encountering the Magical Mind that Can Explain Everything.

Better or even more interesting characterisation might have concealed the Massive Plot Conveniences.

It wouldn't be book-reading month without at least one book by Patrick O'Brian. And so I give you:

Treason's Harbour

Cries of "Come on, Surprise!" probably aren't what one's other half wants to hear while they're trying to sleep. But certainly that's what the thundering climax to this book evoked. Riveting!

A shame the rest of the book wasn't as exciting. Just as many of O'Brian's sailor characters prefer to be at sea, so do many of his readers. Onshore scenes aren't nearly as interesting. To sea, to sea! and in the dear old Surprise, is a long time coming. Meanwhile, there's some intrigue with French spies, a British traitor and a compromised woman. After book after book of mooning after Diana, Stephen really shouldn't be lusting after someone else so soon!

O'Brian does a good job of evoking Jack's love for the Surprise, and his difficulty reconciling his pride in her with the knowledge that she's to be condemned or sold out of the service, knowledge that throws a pall even over her splendid victory against a French frigate. It's small touches such as this, as well as the splendid sea battles, that make these books unputdownable.

We're not finished yet! Stop running away!

The Gender Divide by David Boultbee

No review on this one yet--it'll appear on GUD shortly.

The Voyage of Charles Darwin: His Autobiographical Writings Selected and Arranged By Christopher Ralling

This book serves as a taster of Darwin's writing, as it includes extracts from the diaries he kept on board the Beagle, the official Journal of his five-year voyage, and his autobiography.

The book was published to accompany the BBC drama documentary that brought Darwin's voyage and the development of his thinking regarding the origin of species to a wide audience.

At times, the book is disappointing. It feels as if a fiction writer who had never visited any of these places could have written about them more evocatively. Darwin observes carefully, and thinks deeply, and yet there's something missing, something that might convey his experiences more vividly to the reader.

What is fascinating is the ability to trace how Darwin came to his revolutionary views. It's a long, deeply-considered journey, and there is sadness in the way a man who once intended becoming a clergyman finds that his own observations make the position of a believer untenable. Darwin even hints that spirituality might be an inescapable part of our genetic makeup--a position we now know to be true.

I would certainly be tempted to read more of Darwin's writing, especially the Beagle diaries.

(No mention of Lady Franklin, though!)

Long title, short book.

Then, back to SF, this time by Robert Charles Wilson. Evil Editor recommended this one and my dear friend ze bought a $1 copy on Amazon Marketplace US for me...and then read it! before I could!

The Chronoliths

Mysterious monuments appear from the future, celebrating victories that haven't yet been won--destroying cities and killing thousands. Asia is thrown into chaos. Kuin, the unknown conqueror, cannot be found or stopped.

Chronoliths is narrated by Scott Warden, whose life becomes inextricably bound up with these monuments, and with others who find the connection impossible to escape. Maybe it's just life or maybe it's tau turbulence--part of the mysterious physics by which the chronoliths are sent twenty-plus years into the past. Sulamith Chopra is determined to find out how the chronoliths work--and how to disrupt them--but her work makes her a target for Kuin fanatics, while inevitably making the possible the very threat she's trying to fight.

This understated novel is gripping. You never know what's going to happen next--to Scott, to his family, to the world. Narrated in a melancholy, reflective style similar to that of Dickens' Great Expectations, it neither sensationalises nor makes light of tragic events.

Well worth a read.

Next, more non-fiction--extracts from the log Captain James Cook kept as he searched for the fabled Southern Continent.

Great Journeys No. 7: Hunt For The Southern Continent

A fascinating introduction to Cook's fruitless search for a southern continent, land much believed in and even mapped, but not real.

He sails here, he sails there....

Short book, short review :). Seriously, though, fascinating enough to make me want to read the unabridged version.

Then, I read Marcus Zusak's odd novel, picked up cheap in the supermarket. It was a twofer deal: I got one book, my husband got another. He hasn't read his yet.

The Book Thief

An intriguing book, although Death, the narrator, does have a habit of stating the bleeding obvious--and more than once.

Nine-year-old Liesel is sent to live with foster parents on Himmel Street. She doesn't know what happened to her fat