Reading Roundup - February 2020

New Novels

At Childhood's End, Sophie Aldred
It has been years since Ace travelled with the Doctor. Now she goes by her real name and runs the philanthropic empire A Charitable Earth and keeps watch over the world in the absence of UNIT and Torchwood. When young people begin to be abducted, the trail leads Dorothy McShane to a hidden spaceship in lunar orbit, where she meets Yaz, Ryan, Graham, and the Doctor, who is now a woman, and looks younger than Ace. Can they overcome past distrust and work together to learn what links these events to Ace's past, and stop both the campaign of abductions and a relentless interstellar crusade.

The continuing story of Ace, as both written and read by the original Ace, Sophie Aldred, was an irresistable draw to me, and I was not disappointed. It's not the highest literature, and there are a couple of errors which should have been fixed either in editing or direction, suggesting that production was a little rushed. Overall, however, this is a cracking return for one of my favourite companions, without selling the current crop short, and confronts the sometimes manipulative nature of the relationship between Ace and the Doctor through the lens of an older, wiser Dorothy and the Doctor's newer, more open incarnation.

Aldred has her own character down, and does a fair job with the new bunch, both in writing and performance. I could complain that Dorothy's relationships post-series seem to have gone in a disappointingly hetero direction, and indeed I just did, but then Ace's sexuality was always a matter of interpretation. It's good to hear from an older Ace, even if for me - as a Big Finish fan - her younger incarnation is still going strong, and if this isn't a perfect work, it doesn't offend.

Re-Reads

The War of the Worlds, HG Wells
In the last years of the 19th century, an invasion force lands in England, carried by interplanetary missiles launched from the surface of the planet Mars. As the Martians stride forth in their terrible machines, and bring their superior weaponry to bear against the unprepared defences of Earth, the ordinary (upper middle class) folk of England are pushed to the limits of their own humanity.

HG Wells was one of the visionaries of early science fiction, and if his science wasn't up to Verne's exacting standards, his fiction was more gripping, and never involved three page descriptions of fish. The War of the Worlds was not only one of his finest works, but one that has provided a template for alien invasion narratives ever since. It's hard to think how it would have been received by a British middle class secure in their own power, this narrative of a quintessential English gentleman reduced to punching out a clergyman and contemplating the ultimate capitulation of suicide by Martian.

I revisited this novel as part of a collection of Wells' SF released by Audible. The War of the Worlds is read in this collection by David Tennant, who of course puts in a sterling performance.

The First Men in the Moon, HG Wells
During a sabbatical, failed entrepreneur Mr Bedford falls in with the eccentric scientist Cavor. Learning of the latter's work on a remarkable anti-gravity material dubbed 'Cavorite', Bedford is immediately gripped by the commercial and industrial possibilities, and throws himself into assisting the inventor, first in processing the material, and then in using it to construct a sphere designed to travel to the Moon. Here, the two men discover an insectoid race that they dub the Selenites. They are captured, but escape, although only Bedford is able to reach the sphere and return to Earth. Over time, he receives a series of messages from Cavor, describing the society of the Selenites, their physically differentiated castes, and their massive-brained leader, the Grand Lunar.

The First Men in the Moon was one of the Wells novels most closely paralleled by one written by his near-contemporary Jules Verne, and was cited by Verne in an attack on Wells' science (poo-pooing the invention of an anti-gravity substance in comparison to his own more solidly scientific 'giant cannon' lunar launch.)  It is less about the moon or space travel, and more about the callowness of the Empire spirit, with the alliance of Bedford's shallow commercialism and Cavor's blind scientific curiosity combining to court continual disaster.

The Audible version is narrated by Alexander Vlahos, who brings out Bedford's ambition, superficiality and self-serving unreliability as a narrator brilliantly.

Audio Plays
Curse of the Crimson Throne
Ezren the wizard, Merisiel the rogue, Harsk the ranger and Valeros the warrior travel to Korvosa - a city existing under the shadows of an assassinated king and past rule by a dark empire, whose inheritors oppress the native populace - and in search of Merisiel's friend, Kyra. What they find is a queen, seeking power, surrounded by enablers and willing to embrace any darkness, any cruelty in order to achieve her aim of eternal life. Working with and against nobles and commoners, criminals and monsters, seers and priests, the four heroes must first determine what is right, and then see it through.

The third, and so far final, series of audio adventures based on the adventure paths of the Pathfinder RPG, is - for the most part - an urban conspiracy with fantasy monsters. It's been a rare, and unusually successful exercise in fantasy audio drama, which has typically struggled with the show, don't tell nature of audio and its intersection with the monsters and magic of the genre. It also confirms the previously hinted bisexual identification of one of the iconic Pathfinder characters, and I am definitely here for increased representation in RPGs.

The Liberator Chronicles, Volume 1
Vila and Avon infiltrate a Federation research base, with Vila posing as a scientist and Avon as an advanced android. Their goal is to steal a Federation android prototype, but even if Avon can pass as a robot, can he successfully convince the scientists that he is a robot that can pass as human.

Vila wakes on the Liberator, his memory badly fragmented. His only companion is the voice of an Auron scientist named Nyrron. What happened? Where are his companions? And who is Vila, really?

Blake infiltrates a mine producing Illusium, a uniquely adaptable mineral which could make the Federation unbeatable. The scientists are less cooperative than he might have hoped, but he has an unexpected ally: The relentless paranoia and backbiting of Federation politics.

Having acquired the Blake's 7 license, Big Finish produced a number full cast audio plays - beginning with Warship - but with an increasing part of the original cast either retired or dead, the bulk of their output in the range came in the form of the Liberator Chronicles, a series of augmented readings in the vein of the Companion Chronicles for the Doctor Who range. In this case, featuring original actors Paul Darrow, Michael Keating and Gareth Thomas (two thirds of whom have since passed.) Like Terrahawks, it's a bit of a nostalgia fest for me, although I came to the original series a little later in life.  The performances here are on point, and the stories the classic mix of SF and human drama, without the original's telltale white plimsoles.

New Comics
Giant Days, Volume 11
The end approaches - for everyone but medical student Susan - as the final year of university rolls by. The end of the year sees Daisy stumble into the role of cult recruiter for a Christmas village, Esther fighting the siren call of 'sure thing' Ed after her years of turbulent and unproductive romantic entanglements, while Ed travels to Australia to visit his girlfriend's family. Daisy struggles with the continuing presence of her ex-girlfriend, and Susan with the looming spectre of domesticity in her life with McGraw.

Once again, not much to say about this volume that I haven't said about the others. I still hope that Esther and Ed don't end up together, since it would reinforce a fairly negative narrative track, although if I'm honest I trust Allison to do whatever he does well.

As with By Night, it's a bit odd to see Allison's style transplanted away from the North (in this case, to Australia, or some approximation thereof.)

Total read - 6
Female authors - 1
PoC authors - 0

Not a great showing on expanding my horizons this month then, but it's early days.

Reading Roundup - January 2020

Found Horizons
The Poppy War, RF Kuang
Rin is an orphan of the Second Poppy War, a terrible conflict in which the Nikara Empire secured a humiliating peace with the support of the western powers. Penniless and without status, her only escape from an arranged marriage comes when she aces the national keju exams to win entry into the prestigious Sinegard military academy. There, she finds herself tested to the limit by the brutal training regime and the scorn of the other students, who all come from high-status families, but becomes apprenticed to the eccentric lore master Jiang and begins to unlock strange and terrible powers, even as a third and even more terrible war looms on the horizon.

Kuang, a historian by trade and training, taps into the history of China to create The Poppy War, a brutal fantasy epic which combines a feudal Chinese aesthetic with direct parallels to the horrors of the Japanese invasion of China in the early twentieth century. In places, this creates an odd, tonal whiplash, as the Cike - the supposedly-terrifying, oddball supernatural assassin unit to which Rin is assigned - carry a conventional fantasy air right into the horror of the massacre of Nikara's capital city, which is closely modelled on the massacre of Nanking and I AM NOT OKAY after reading that chapter. The novel also takes an unexpected turn with Rin's character, as she ultimately makes choices more in keeping with a villain than the plucky underdog hero she initially appears to be(1).

While well-written, I did struggle with the tone, and moreso with a certain thematic drift, as the first part of the novel seems to stress that Rin's abilities are not hampered by her lack of birth, while the in the second she discovers that her powers are specifically tied to her previously unknown heritage.

New Novels
The Priory of the Orange Tree, Samantha Shannon
For a thousand years, since the defeat of the diabolical dragon known as the Nameless One, East and West have been divided by the dark waters of the Abyss where he lies, North and South by religion and attitudes to maic, and all by the suspicion and mistrust created by the ravages of the draconic plague. The mage-warrior Ead knows that the Saint, quasi-divine founder of the faith of Virtuedom, was a fraud, but is assigned to protect his last descendent, Queen Sabran the Ninth, just in case his bloodline does keep the enemy at bay. In the East, the young warrior Tane is chosen to ride one of the dragons that her people worship against the threat of the evil fire-breathers. These two, their own and adopted countries must unite, if they are to face the rise of the Nameless One and his draconic army.

The Priory of the Orange Tree takes its inspiration from the tale of Saint George and the Dragon (including the orange tree,) but is set in a richly drawn fantasy world. The different domains of the world are loosely based on real-world regions - Virtudom is early-Renaissance Christian Europe, the countries of the South Muslim Europe and North Africa, and the East divided between a roughly contemporary China and isolationist Japan - but only very loosely, with the existence of dragons - both the hateful, fire-breathing wyrms and their benevolent, semi-aquatic cousins - baked into the deep history. It is interesting to note that the choise of accents in the audiobook positions the East as American.

This is a big book, and its length is not always well-used. The core conflicts of the novel revolve around human ambitions and relationships, and the political tensions aroused by the existence of the threat of the Nameless One and the contradictory histories recalled by different groups. It is kind of a shame that so many are resolved by the uncovering of an absolute truth about an absolute evil. There is a feeling that a lot is going on that we don't really get to hear about. Three of the four viewpoint characters are fascinating and interestingly flawed, but this does rather show up the blandness of the fourth.

The Priory of the Orange Tree has a lot to recommend it. I'm not entirely convinced that there is enough for its length, but I'm not ruling out reading more of Shannon's work in the future and that's a lot better than some.

Every Heart a Doorway, Seanan McGuire
Nancy lived her life as a normal girl, before she went through a door into another world, the Halls of the Dead. Now she wears a lot of black, stands very, very still, and isn't interested in boys, or girls, at all. Her parents, wanting their real daughter back, agree to send her to a boarding school run by Miss West, which promises to help her recover. But this promise is a lie. Miss West and all her charges each went through their own door, and they know that most of those who journey are drawn to worlds that suit them far more than this one. Very few of those who come back ever return to the place they now think of as home, but this loss is the least of their problems, as Nancy's arrival coincides with a spate of gruesome murders.

You know what isn't too long? Novellas. Every Heart a Doorway is the first of McGuire's Wayward Children series, about the children who travel to secondary worlds in the manner of a children's fantasy. It's a study in the psychological impact of such a journey, and in the psychology of those who would be drawn to go through those doors. Some have little choice, but most of the journeyers went because they were not who their lives pressured them to be. It also manages to generate the necessary concern for the potential victims within the space of a novella, which is no mean feat.

The Water Horse, Holly Webb
Olivia is a princess, the daughter and heir of the Duke of Venice, whose magic keeps the city from falling into the sea. When her father falls ill and her aunt and cousin begin to manipulate the court against her, Olivia seeks the truth of the city's plight for herself, meeting a group of street children who possess the magic which was supposed to belong only to the aristocracy, and also Lucian, the magnificent water horse whose kind also defend the city. Together, they must defeat her aunt's schemes, before they bring the entire city to destruction.

The Water Horse is a book for older children that I have been reading with my daughter. It is the story of a magical princess, but distinguishes itself by the way it uses those very traditional elements. Olivia learns early that she has been controlled by her aunt's magic, making her act the perfect princess while blinding her to the resentment of her inferiors. Breaking free, she begins to recognise her own unconscious prejudices and work against them, and also discovers that magic is not the preserve of the aristocracy because they have some innate value, but because the powerful have hoarded a limited resource, rendering the city increasingly unstable by shifting that resource from preservation to personal gain.

Perhaps the best way to assess the value of this book is that my daughter immediately wanted to read the next in the Magical Venice series (The Mermaid's Daughter) and I had no problems with that.

Forward, Various
Forward is a series of six short stories exploring the march of progress.

Emergency Skin, NK Jemisin
A scout from an advanced colony returns to the ruins of old Earth in search of a MacGuffin that his people need. He is a lowly peon in his society, his self housed in an artificial shell, but success will earn him real skin. But the desolate homeworld is not as he was led to believe, and as the reassurances of his onboard conscience become less and less convincing, he begins to learn what really happened to Earth.

As might be expected from Jemisin, Emergency Skin has a distinctive narrative voice; essentially the entire story is narrated in the form of the AI 'conscience' talking to the protagonist. We sometimes hear what other people say, but never the protagonist, who is basically the literary equivalent of Gordon Freeman. It would probably be a bit much for a novle, but make sthe short story unique and intriguing. The story ties in tightly with the theme of the collection, exploring climate change and its potential solutions.

This is probably my favourite in the collection, and unfortunately the one I read first, so it was kind of downhill from here.

The Last Conversation, Paul Tremblay
A man wakes in a dark room, with only the distant voice of a doctor for company and no memory of who he is. Gradually, he remembers fragments of his life with his interlocutor, his wife, and finally she takes him to the home they are building together. All is not as it seems, however. His wife seems too old, and he starts to grow weak, even as he learns of the doom that came to the world around them, and the terrible truth of his own identity.

A psychological horror of identity, Tremblay's entry uses a limited voice to build tension and mystery, although in this case the nature of the collection acts against it by making the reveal more obvious than it should be.

Ark, Veronica Roth
As a comet bears down on the Earth, a small group of scientists hurry to catalogue as many plant samples as possible. They will leave with the last ark ship, but not all of them are sure that they want to leave.

Ark examines relationships, and the human drives to survival and self-negation through the lens of impending, global catastrophe.

Summer Frost, Blake Crouch
Software designer Riley discovers that she has accidentally created an artificial intelligence within a virtual reality game. Retrieving an NPC from the game environment, she spends several years trying to teach the programme to be human, even as her human relationships suffer as a result.

In many ways a psychological retelling of the classic Frankenstein story, Summer Frost is notable for its non-binary AI and lesbian protagonist, although I'm not sure that their use has problematic aspects. Despite this, and for all that this is one of the more well-trammelled concepts in the collection, Summer Frost has some interesting ideas in its exploration not just of AI, but of the nature of modern reality.

You Have Arrived at Your Destination, Amor Towles
A man is shaken by projections of his potential offspring's future presented by a fertility clinic that might also be a government research institute. Or something.

I... don't really get this one. It's about free will, I think.

Randomize, Andy Weir
A casino installs a quantum computer to give its gambling machines true randomness. The consultant and his genius wife use the nature of entanglement to win big, but get caught, leaving her to make one last roll of the - figurative - dice for her liberty and fortune.

I'm increasingly of the opinion that Weir, while a competent writer, shot his bolt with The Martian. The Martian was great, but Artemis and Randomize are only decent. Still, there are worse ways to finish a collection than with a heist.

The Princess Rules, Philippa Gregory
Florizella is a princess, and there are rules for princesses. They are supposed to be flouncy and fancy, to impress a prince with their modesty and swooning, and to get married and become a queen as soon as legally possible. Florizella has no time for the rules. She fights her own dragons, makes friends with princes - and wolves - and addresses the root causes of problems like rampaging giants instead of letting some man with a sword take care of it.

I was a little wary of this book, and reading it with my daughter there is a little of the old 'not like other girls' about it. This is a problematic approach to storytelling which simultaneously reinforces overarching stereotypes while suggesting that the value of your protagonist comes from her rejection of it, thus also supporting the idea of female relationships as intrinsically antagonistic. On the plus side, however, Gregory presents the titular rules as an encumbrance forced on princesses by an antiquated society, and while is might have been good to see at least one other princess who didn't buy into them, there is a lot more to Florizella than being 'not like other girls.' I also have a lot of time for a princess who just isn't ready to get married yet, and who can both reject quixotic and unnecessary rescue attempts and accept acts of genuine and useful concern.

Re-reads

Goth Girl and the Sinister Symphony, Chris Riddell
With Ada Goth at school, her governess has gone on to government service, leaving her and her friends with much reduced adult assistance when the Ghastlygorm Music Festival looks as if it might be hijacked by another sinister scheme. True, she is on better terms with her father, but he is distracted by his mother's attempts to see the notorious widower respectably married off to one of three highly appropriate - but altogether tedious - young ladies.

The fourth and final book in the Goth Girl series is another pun-filled exercise in Gothic pop culture references, as likely to feature a thinly veiled expy for a TV personality or pop singer, a beloved children's book character, or a pre-Raphaelite painter or romantic poet (along with the regulation reference to Lord Goth's habit of relieving stress by taking pot shots at lawn ornament(2).) This series is a weird gig, is what I'm saying, and I suspect that my daughter could spend her life getting more and more of the references (the ones that aren't already passe, anyway.)

New Audio Plays
Terrahawks, Season 2
Another bit of Big Finish-powered nostalgia, with the second season of the studio's Terrahawks revival. Regular readers may recall from my review of season 1 a year ago that this is a core part of my childhood nostalgic database, and if I can see, these days, that Tiger Ninestein is a bit of a dick (rather than #goals) then it doesn't diminish my enjoyment of one of the most arch of all Gerry Anderson's creations.

In this boxed set, the titular defenders of Earth must contend with the mendacity and stupidity of their own government, as well as the schemes of Zelda and her family, a lethally sadistic android game-show host - Nickelplate Starsen, played with gleeful savagery and self-parody by the late national treasure Nicholas Parsons - an evil dummy, and Global Rescue, a completely mercenary and amoral parody of Anderson's beloved International Rescue. It's huge fun, although once more I ought to admit that the Terrahawks theme tune - rendered in a new, extra-bombastic orchestral form for the final, apocalyptic episode - may just have the effect of completely nullifying my critical faculties.

Total Read - 8
Female authors - 5 (+2/6 in Forward)
POC authors - 1 (+ 1/6 in Forward)

(1) Her story is apparently in part inspired by that of Mao Zedong, just with added kung fu and firebending, in which case this shit has barely begun to get dark.
(2) Being a stand in for Lord Byron, he is of course mad, bad and dangerous to gnomes.

2019 in Books

Time to assess the year just gone, in terms of reading, since I managed to read basically nothing in December.

Total 'books' read: 79

Of which novels or fictional anthologies: 36

Of which nonfiction: 1

Of which comics: 13

Of which audio plays: 11

Of which novellas or children's books(1): 17

Not bad, especially given the constraints of listening over reading. Pretty much everything I have read has either been an audiobook I've listened to, or a book I've read aloud to Hanna or Arya, which puts a constraint on my reading speed, but does also keep me from skimming.

Of the book I read, only 18 were by women, and 5 by people of colour, so that's something to work on , hand in hand with my ongoing Found Horizons project, for which I read a total of 4 works this year.

Of those 79, and more specifically of the 36 novels and 17 novellas, 26 were rereads, either just revisiting an old favourite or sharing them with my partner or my daughter.

Novel of the Year: The Raven Tower, by Ann Leckie

(1) Not including very short works and picture books.