Reading Roundup - July and August 2019

And yet again, a twofer, covering July and August's reading/listening.

Found Horizons

The Fifth Season, by N.K. Jemisin
As a note, this is another of those books where I have no idea how most of the names are spelled. In this case, this actually masked a significant character note, switching a character's chosen name from Syenite - after a coarse, igneous rock - to Cyanite - a far more decorative blue silicate gemstone.

In a world of ceaseless, violent seismic activity, the Stillness is the only inhabitable land, and that with great difficulty. Long ago, humanity angered Father Earth, and now all life exists at the mercy of irregular 'seasons', when supervolcanoes, tsunamis and other upheavals destroy civilisations. The only civilisation to last is Yumenesce, which has harnessed the power of those 'cursed' with the power of orogeny, able to tap into the power of the Earth itself, to still and redirect the destructive energies, but despised as unnatural and treated as barely human assets of the state. The story follows three women, before and at the start of a season which begins with the deliberate destruction of Yumenesce: Damaya is a novice orogen, training at the Fulcrum. Syenite is a talented young orogen in service to the Fulcrum. Essun is an older former agent of the Fulcrum, living secretly until her children reveal themselves, and her husband kills their son and abducts their daughter. These stories unfold in parallels across time, as they and their companions uncover the secrets which underpin the survival, and ultimate destruction of Yumenesce, and perhaps the end of the world. For real this time.

That's a lot of text for a brief synopsis, and there's a lot to this book.

Spoilers follow.

As in many of the recent Found Horizon entries, it is set in a secondary world dominated by non-white races, and also features non-cishet characters and polyamory in a positive light.

Its structure is unusual, cutting between three internally linear narratives out of overall order, and featuring three protagonists who are ultimately revealed to be a single woman. I guess this is a spoiler, but not much of one, as it is a fairly obvious twist once you start getting the timeline straight. The novel also uses a very unusual second person voice in narrating Essun's story, which I'll be honest feels somewhat gimmicky and also means the book occasionally tells me that my daughter has been kidnapped and I am not okay with this!

Oh,yes; it's also a pretty bleak book, as you might expect from the end of the world. Like Black Leopard, Red Wolf, it begins with a dead child, and this one was apparently(1) murdered by his own father(2). As the narrative proceeds, we learn just how utter is the systematic abuse and persecution of the orogens, and Jemisin is unusually successful in presenting a world where those with power are downtrodden, with the orogen highly engaged in their own oppression, via the Fulcrum. Control over them is maintained by the Guardians, who are lauded as cunning heroes able to defeat an orogen through pure skill, but whose abilities are in fact far more horrible and unnatural than those of the 'monsters' they control. The rest of society isn't much cosier, with the population divided into 'use castes' which define them in strictly utilitarian terms which, while ordinarily just part of their names, have a material impact on whether they get kicked out of their self-sufficient walled communities when a Season comes. The Seasons may result from the spite of an angry Earth - or quite possibly from the long-ago careless detonation of the planet's moon - but the Stillness is a mundane hell of entirely human manufacture.

Wicked Fox, by Kat Cho
My knowledge of Korean language and mythology is second only to my knowledge of Korean nomenclature and Korean-to-English transliteration, so what I said about the names in The Fifth Season, but more so.

Miyoung is a gumiho, a nine-tailed fox in human form who must consume the life energy of men to survive. She is only half gumiho, however, and her human side rebels at the need to kill, driving her to only feed from the worst humanity has to offer. But then she rescues fellow sexy teen Jihoon from a goblin(3) and, in the process, loses her 'fox bead', a mystical item which might be her soul, and the two of them find themselves hurled together at the heart of a cruel conspiracy of revenge.

At two-thirds high school romance and one-third supernatural thriller, Wicked Fox is rather more of the former than I'd prefer, which I suspect means more than I'm not the target audience than that the book is bad. As it is, my main complaint is that I kind of wanted the relationship between the two leads to focus more on their friendship, rather than romance. I also had very little patience with the relationship between Miyoung and her gumiho mother, which consisted mostly of Miyoung getting kicked to the curb for being reckless and rebellious, and accepting all the blame even when her mother's actions - although in many ways justified by revelations in the course of the narrative - have directly led to the mistakes that Miyoung makes.

There is also a kind of a subtext that a powerful woman can only find love by becoming weak, and I don't really like that.

So, yeah. It's an interesting read for a glimpse into another culture's mores, but it's not a series I'll be following up on any time soon(3).

New Novels

Stan Lee's Alliances: A Trick of Light, by Kat Rosenfield, Luke Lieberman, Ryan Silbert and Stan Lee
Nia has grown up in total isolation, with only her father for company, only a series of virtual reality simulations to explore the world, and only the internet to meet other people. Cameron has grown up surrounded by people, but separated from them by the trauma of his fathr's disappearance years ago. His best friend Juaquo is growing increasingly disaffected in the wake of his mother's recent death. After Cameron is struck by lightning on Lake Erie, he discovers the ability to sense and control the interactions of electronic devices, which brings him into contact with Nia, and into conflict with a mysterious agency run by his father's ex-partner's daughter. Elsewhere, an alien is seeking the scientist who almost destroyed her hive-minded race.

Full disclosure: I would feel like a arse being too harsh on Stan Lee's final project. Also, I was completely unprepared to hear his intro for this, the opening volume of a planned ongoing series, so that coloured everything here.

That being said... damn, but Cameron is an old-fashioned superhero. His cyberkinesis is very now, but he is every inch the straight, white, cis-male nerd. This would probably bother me less if Nia - the more powerful of the two - wasn't so strongly defined by her relationship to him and to her father, and depicted as barely capable of maintaining her own identity without support, or if Cameron's Latinx bestie Juaquo didn't disappear for half the story until Cameron needs him, and then prove easily manipulated by the villains' power. It's not the only place where the novel suffers from an excess of conservatism. The chief villains are female but unfeminine, yet neither presented as being as immediately powerful or effectual as the male 2IC of the Sinister Government Agency(5).

The worldbuilding - a day after tomorrow America, with a human race on the brink of technological singularity, yet never more divided - is excellent, but the human stories are more than a little stock. Honestly, the superhero genre has advanced to the point where a new power set does not a character make. Nia and Juaquo are substantially more interesting than Cameron, but both end up strongly dependent and rather at the mercy of the villains' powers in a way that Cameron never is.

Galaxy Outlaws: Missions 2-6, by J.S. Morin
Rolling on with Galaxy Outlaws (see my last post for some background on this one) and... Man; some stuff happens. Tanny struggles with ties to her mob family and her dependence on Marine Corps super-soldier drugs, Mmri tries to reclaim her lost honour - because alien warrior culture - and a series of mini-episodes explore the backstories of the crew.

I'm going to be honest, I'm pretty much treating this series as filler. It's not bad, but it's not going to set my world on fire any time soon. As with A Trick of Light, its world-building is probably its biggest strength. Magic and SF are often an odd mix, but honestly, sorcery is as good an excuse for faster than light travel as any, and the notion that the galaxy is scattered with 'Earthlike' planets that are not merely similar in composition and environment, but literally identical in size and continental formation, raises a whole lot of interesting questions. I just wish I had more confidence that the answers would be as interesting.

Fright Forest, by Marcus Sedgwick
Terror Town, by Marcus Sedgwick
Creepy Caves, by Marcus Sedgwick
Okay; wrapping up Marcus Sedgwick's Elf Girl and Raven Boy series - more or less; I've now read all but the second volume - I read through the first volume - Fright Forest - followed by the fourth and fifth, Terror Town and Creepy Caves.

Elf Girl - not her real name - and Raven Boy - also not his real name - meet when their homes in the forest are destroyed by an ogre. With the aid of a slightly second-rate witch they elude a band of hungry trolls and discover that the destruction of their home is done at the behest of the Goblin King. They discover that they must find the Tears of the Moon and the Singing Sword to defeat him, and set off to do so.

Acquiring the Tears in Dread Desert, they proceed to Terror Town, a community under the shadow of the Goblin King's evil, where they uncover a civic traitor and get their hands on the Singing Sword, a blade which constantly performs terrible lounge numbers except when held by Raven Boy. Here they also find allies, in the form of the trolls, the lord of the town and his official wizard, and set out to confront the Goblin King himself in the Creepy Caves, and attempt to finally defeat his world-destroying ambitions.

Elf Girl and Raven Boy is a pretty fun adventure romp, with uplifting themes of friendship and hope at odds with some of Sedgwick's other work. It's a little repetitive for my tastes, but that would probably go down a storm with the target audience.

New Comics

Giant Days - Vol. 9 & 10, by John Allison
The chronicles of life at Sheffield University reach the end of the second year for Esther, Susan and Daisy, with the dissolution of their household in the face of conflicting emotional committments. Susan is moving into a house with McGraw, Daisy is moving into a shed in a warehouse with Ingrid, and Esther is moving into the depths of a crisis. At this moment of destiny, a visit from Esther's erstwhile croney Sarah Grote and her younger sister, youthful mystery-solver Charlotte, pushes Daisy to break up with Ingrid, while Esther knuckles down to study - for real this time - and takes a room in a house with Ed Gemmell, whose long-standing crush on her can only spell a complication-free final year.

The third - and final, for everyone but medical student Susan - year begins with intense emotional turmoil, as Esther struggles to make amends to Ed for capitalising on his feelings to secure the best room, Susan and McGraw's domestic bliss encounters teething troubles, and Daisy's gran finds out that she hid her entire, turbulent relationship with Ingrid. The job fair brings opportunities, and consequent existential angst, and somewhere in amongst all this there is a suggestion that perhaps our heroes are going to... I think they're called 'lectures'.

Volumes 9 and 10 of John Allison's campus epic Giant Days move us somewhat further than ever from the whole study thing, which is probably a good thing as there is probably only so much play there, and the domestic lives of our intrepid trio have drama a-plenty. The cameo from Bad Machinery's Charlotte Grote - technically, I think, a pre-Bad Machinery appearance - was also a delight to me, not just because BM is so much my jam, but because I always love seeing Lottie crash like a heavily-armoured and brutally-honest truth-wagon into the lives of complacent adults (a la the Shelley Winters one-shot Murder She Writes.)

Particular triumphs in this installement include Daisy's breakup with Ingrid, which effecitvely portrays the emotional rollercoaster of excising someone from your life who is incredibly toxic without having any malicious intent, and the fallout of Ed's incredibly drunken confession of his love for Esther, balancing Esther's unexpectedly self-aware reflection on the fact that she has always known that he loved her, just never wanted anything more than friendship, and Ed's mature realisation that he can't hold Esther accountable for his feelings.

I confess I was really worried about the Ed Gemmell dynamic early in the run, but my stars he's coming up a winner. I'm so happy to see the unrequited lover figure transcend the status of pathetic incel and show real growth. Esther also surprises once again, and again, I love the fact that wanting to be friends with someone you know had or has stronger feelings isn't a bad thing.

By Night - Vol. 2, by John Allison
Something is wonky in the state of South Dakota, and in particular in the dying town of Spectrum. Jane, Heather and their allies - Heather's dad, Chip, Jane's co-worker Barney - have returned with usable footage of the other dimension, but Jane is upset that Heather dropped her in a vampire nest, and Barney is harbouring a secret that could ruin everything. Meanwhile, in the other dimension, Gardt the troll-type-thing is condemened by his peers for aiding the human interlopers, and banished to the holy mountain where he finds the long-lost Chet Charles, and a mysterious predator escapes to the real world.

Up front, I want to say that I am waiting with bated breath for the worlds of Tackleford/Sheffield and Spectrum to overlap.

Volume 2 of By Night does a lot of establishing backstory, after the basic world-building of volume 1, and takes us through four volumes of a dimension-hopping story without any of the main characters hopping dimensions. It's a far cry from the episodic adventures of Sheffield University's most eccentric students, but Allison's pacing is solid, his characters as appealing and his humour as sparkling as in his less serial fiction. Jane and Heather's friendship is real and affecting, Barney's flaws both infuriating and sympathetic, and Chip is as delightful a sports-obsessed resting alpha as you could hope to encounter.

In many ways, By Night is a step on a path from the early, gag of the day Bobbins strips, through the increasingly pronounced narrative arcs of SGR and Bad Machinery, to the long-form character arcs of Giant Days to a work telling essentially a single story over an extended period. With Giant Days approaching the inevitable armageddon of graduation, I'm happy with the idea that By Night is the future of Allison's writing, whether or not it all truly exists in a fully shared universe. I'm also very pleased to see a creator I have long admired making a living from his art.

Podcasts
Tales from the Aletheian Society, Chapter 3
I've not done a lot of podcast reviews, but I finished a couple this month, so here we go.

Full disclosure, I actually know a bunch of people who are involved in the production of Tales from the Aletheian Society, which is how I came to find it in the first place. It's the serialised adventures of the members of the Glasgow Chapter of the titular organisation, a Victorian secret society devoted to battling the supernatural and riddled with vice, incompetence and apathy. Established under the dissolute leadership of Dr Hieronymus Cadwallader following the destruction of the previous chapter in and around 'the incident,' the Glasgow chapter muddle through one adventure, negotiate another under the oversight of Dr Cadwallader's ruthlessly driven aunt Cressida, bringing them to Chapter 3, and a clash with the Lovecraftian mathematics of Charles Babbage.

I won't drop many spoilers, since twists and turns are a hallmark of the series, alongside bawdy humour and surpising depths of character. It's an essentially amateur(6) production, supported largely by crowdfunding, but what it loses in forgiving production schedules and top-shelf foley work, it more than makes up in efficiency and independence - producing at least four times the content of a professional scripted podcast and presenting it without adverts - and there really isn't a big difference in acting or writing quality.

There are three seasons, so if the above sounds interesting and as long as you're reasonably comfortable with rough humour, give it a go.

Wolverine: The Lost Trail
Richard 'Thorin' Armitage plays Wolverine in the sequel to last year's The Long Night, a moody, horror-tinged piece set during the character's wilderness years. Pursued by the Prime Sentinels of Weapon X and mutant hunters of all kinds, Wolverine tries to find his missing ex - a perennial plot for old Logan, of course - while seeking vengeance against the programme that created him and wrestling with the better angels of his nature which drive him to help those in need. The Lost Trail is set in New Orleans, and follows Logan's search for Maureen, a Weapon-X scientist who helped him to escape and who was his lover for a time. While looking, he encounters Marcus Baptiste, a young man whose mother and entire community have vanished, part of a series of disappearances which point to a place called Greenhaven, and a mutant named Jason Wyngarde.

Armitage is an intense, growling presence at the centre of the story - a departure from The Long Night, in which he was more of a catalyst than an actual character - while a strong supporting cast put forth a variety of Cajun accents(7). Marcus is the emotional core of the story, but Armitage plays Logan as a particularly ferocious lost puppy who needs to learn how and who to trust, and that keeps him from being too bland a centrepiece.

Rachel Watches Star Trek
In 2017, podcaster and Star Trek fanatic Chris Lackey persuaded his Trek-skeptic wife, the eponymous Rachel, to watch the original series with him, and podcast her reactions as a new viewer, alongside his as he revisited episodes he might not have seen for some time. Episodes came out roughly once a month, with no definite promise that she would make it through the first series. Two years later, and episodes are coming out two or three times a month, alongside comment shows and other bonus content (including Chris Watches Musicals and analysis of episodes of other retro SF shows,) and Rachel regularly composes and performs songs and jingles dedicated to recurring Trek tropes. The final episode of season three, and of the original series as a whole, came out recently, and after a bit of series wrap-up the plan is to move on to the animated series.This is also one of two podcasts that I back financially.

I came to Rachel Watches Star Trek out of vague curiosity, but fell in love with the affectionate dissection of classic Trek. I think that what makes it work is that Rachel is not determined to hate Trek, and that Chris is not determined that she - or indeed he - must unequivocally love it. There is a pernicious idea in nerd-oriented media that a person must love the things you love for there to be a future in your relationship(8), which is unhealthy and unhelpful, so it's great to have something so nerdy in which this real-life couple put the lie to that bullshit. It's also fascinating to hear Rachel coming at Star Trek without all the accumulated baggage and trivia that I have in my head.

I don't know what you'd make of this if you didn't know Star Trek already, but as a fan - and having recently gone back into TOS on Netflix and noted some... troublesome aspects - it's utterly fascinating.

Monster Man (and Patron Deities)
The other podcast that I back is Monster Man, in which my university buddy James Holloway analyses the monsters of 1st edition AD&D (although when he finishes Monster Manual II, he might need to swap editions.) This could be a fairly mechanical process, but James comes at this as a highly qualified historian, archaeologist and GM, so rather than just looking at numbers or poking fun at some of the weirder monsters, he looks at their history within the game, their antecedents in real world literature and mythology, and at their potential uses as more than just dungeon filler. It's a process that has contributed more than a little to the homebrew setting for my own D&D game.

For Patreon backers like me, James also produces a companion series called Patron Deities, in which he is examining the Deities and Demigods supplement, analysing not only the presentation of the various real world deities within, but also the role of religuion and mythology within games more generally. Again, this has been a big influence on my setting.

Monster Man is both entertaining and a useful resource for anyone looking at creating a more coherent fantasy setting.

Re-reads
Coraline, by Neil Gaiman
Coraline lives with her mother and father in one of three flats in an old house. They have only lately moved and their neighbours are eccentric, leaving Coraline a little lost, especially as her parents have less time for her than she would like and her father is the world's most experimental chef. It is a relief then to find a way into an alternative world, where a button-eyed 'Other Mother' offers her the life she has always thought she would like. But is the life you want as good as you thought? Is it really better than the life you have? And is a woman with buttons for eyes and hands like needles really someone with your best interests at heart?

A midget gem from the ever-prolific Gaiman, Coraline is a novelette full of creeping existential dread and body horror, but y'know; for kids. Widely and justly considered one of Gaiman's masterpieces, it encompasses some of the darkness of The Ocean at the End of the Lane, but also hope and love and strength, and features at its core a girl who is part of a perfectly normal family. Coraline's parents are not cruel or neglectful, but operate at a highly relatable remove from the needs of a daughter who is not quote a little girl anymore.

You know, I still haven't seen the film adaptation. I should probably do something about that.

Stardust, by Neil Gaiman and Charles Vess
Speaking of Neil Gaiman, film adaptations and the like, the most recent novel I read to my partner at bedtime was Stardust.

Tristan Thorn is the son of a down to earth family in the not-entirely-down to earth village of Wall, a community that lies on the border of Faerie. When he sets out to return a falling star to the girl that he loves, Tristan puts his foot on a road which will bring him into a much larger quest, involving Lords of Faerie, Witch-Queens, and a luminous girl named Yvain, and lead him in the end to the fulfilment, not of his stated goal, but of his heart's desire.

Another of Gaiman's most popular works, Stardust was originally conceived as an illustrated work, with the images provided by Vess intended as an integral part of the text. It's a gorgeous production - it always feels a bit of a let-down to have it in paperback - and a compelling story, combining classic fairy tale tropes with a more modern narrative sensibility. Those who started with the movie sometimes have issues with the slightly more downbeat tone of the novel, which aims less for slapstick adventure than for melancholic romance, and in particular of the ending, but I've been a fan of it since before it was even optioned, and keep the original ending alongside The Little Mermaid on my very limited list of beautiful downers that I love anyway.

I Was a Rat, by Philip Pullman
Roger seems like a normal boy, apart from his tendency to gnaw on things, the vagueness of his past memories, his insistence that he knows the beautiful lady who has lately married the handsome prince, and the fact that he insists that he used to be a rat. Bob and Joan take him in and try to do right by him, but a parade of showmen, criminals and journalists see a freak or a monster to be exploited, reviled or destroyed. Will a terrible (potential) killer be put to death? Or will an innocent boy be saved by the unassailable goodness of a princess?

I Was a Rat is one of a number of children's books written Philip Pullman in the wilderness years before His Dark Materials made him a controversial titan of the young adult scene. It's a social satire with a quasi-Victorian setting, and if the freakshow itself isn't much of a hard target these days, the abuse of the young, the apathy of institutional education, and the malignancy of the sensationalist press are evergreen. The links to the Cinderella story of course serve to make the whole thing more relevant to a younger audience - this was one that I read with my daughter - and the whole is both satisfying nad accessible.

(1) I mean... probably actually. I live in hope.
(2) In review terms, the fact that I got through this opening to the rest of the novel, albeit on the third time of trying, is pretty telling of the overall quality.
(3) A dokebi (spelling almost certainly wrong,) which seems to be kind of a homonculus, created either to gather wealth or to be a sexy sidekick, depending on the individual.
(4) I mean, whatch this space for when I even get around to the sequels to books that I really enjoyed.
(5) Again, full disclosure, I've forgotten most of the actual names in this novel, which is perhaps telling.
(6) I think. I'm not privvy to the contract details, but it certainly isn't a big commercial gig.
(7) Yes; Gambit is in there.
(8) YouTube keeps showing me clips from How I Met Your Mother in which an otherwise promising relationship is scuppered because she doesn't care for Star Wars, just as an example.

Reading Roundup - January and February 2018

New Horizons Challenge: TheHandmaid's Tale

In January, I treated myself to the 4^th and 5^th volumes of Giant Days, John Allison's comic following the adventures of Scary-Go-Round alumna Esther de Groot and her friends at the University of Sheffield (as I'm sure I've explained before.) 

Volumes 4 and 5 follow the trio of Esther, Susan Ptolemy and Daisy Wooton through the final term of their freshman year, the summer vacation and the beginning of their second year. Independent film-making provides a distraction from the horrors of money troubles and house-hunting, and a new shadow falls over the group as shady entrepreneur Dean Thompson appears on the scene. The summer brings the excitement of the Wye Valley music festival, and then the new year the group's first shared housing. As ever, Giant Days combines its lively sense of the absurd with a touch of the mundane to produce a fast-paced, madcap bundle of fun. Well worth the reading. 

These volumes also feature a return to the nexus of weird that is Tackleford, and are notable for their treatment of supporting character Ed Gemmell. Previously Esther's nice-guy semi-stalker, Allison takes the unusual and refreshing step of having the character recognise that pining over a girl won't make something happen, and then move on before the whole thing becomes a festering toxic pit of entitlement.

Also courtesy of Comixology was The Witchfinder General, a six-part limited series, following the misadventures of Drew Jackson, a Pentagon intern who finds himself assigned as apprentice to the US Witchfinder General and then rapidly promoted to become head of the department after his boss spontaneously combusts. The Department of Witchfinding has a fine tradition of ruthlessly suppressing the supernatural, but Drew has a very different approach, trying to make friends out of enemies. It's a philosophy that looks set to cut little ice with the Nine, an ancient cadre of nigh-immortal witches set for their ninth and final assault on the pillars of reality, but it is the one thing he has going for him that generations of more powerful and experienced Witchfinders General didn't have. 

I really enjoyed The Witchfinder General. It follows the fairly well-trodden path of young rookie stumbles into contact with ancient mysteries, winds up out of his or her depth, tries to do something new, but it does it well and it's definitely better than holding up the witchfinders of the past as shining paragons of virtue. Also, it features Benjamin Franklin in the role of armoured, time-travelling badass the Clockwork Minuteman. That's the kind of secret history it's hard not to like.

Next up, I hit Stephen Fry's new collection of Greek mythological retellings: Mythos. This is an odd beast, with Fry - as both author and narrator, the latter continuing a recent trend in my listening, from Harry Potter and the Audible complete Sherlock Holmes collection, as well as the free sampler of their equally Frylicious reading of Holmes-adjacent detective series, Max Carados - recounting his material somewhat in the style of a media journo recapping the soaps. From the teenage emo crushes of the Titans to the sleazy leching of Zeus and the almost mature and considered love affairs of other gods and mortals, Fry focuses his gaze heavily on the early cosmic myths of creation and espeically the Theogony of Hesiod, rather than the more conventional greatest hits entries of the Age of Heroes: Heracles, the Argonauts, the Trojan War, and all of that jazz. This combination of voice and material results in something markedly different to your typical myth collection; a cosily accessible anthology of child-eating, spouse-eating, abuse cycles, metamorphoses and domestic douchebaggery. It's a lot of fun, but won't float your boat if you like your mythology done with proper epic reverence.

What the Hell Did I Just Read? is the third volume in the David and John cosmic horror series by David Wong. As with the previous volumes in the series - John Dies at the End and This Book is Full of Spiders Serious Dude,Don't Touch It - What the Hell Did I Just Read? is a fast-moving fusion of cosmic horror, supernatural action and scatological humour, as David and John bring their barely understood and virtually unearned abilities to bear on a case of monstrous child kidnapping. Now, if you know me at all - either in person, or through the blog - you'll know that this was always going to be a tough one for me. Whether because of this, or because the joke is wearing a little thin, I definitely found this tougher going than either of the previous novels. On the other hand, I was impressed that the book addressed a crucial and often overlooked point regarding its own protagonist: That it is entirely possible that someone faced with constant struggles with the supernatural, cursed with unique insight beyond the ken of ordinary mortals, and stalked by malignant extradimensional entities, could also suffer from serious, but treatable mental illness. Props for that.

Barchester Towers is the second volume of the Barchester Chronicles of Anthony Trollope. It continues to follow the doings of the clergy of the cathedral city of Barchester, as the Chapter faces the upset of a new bishop. Dr Proudie is a henpecked man, given the seat in preference over the Archdeacon, son of the previous Bishop and presumed successor until an eleventh hour fall of the friendly ministry. Along with his overbearing, self-righteous wife, Dr Proudie brings into the cathedral close the scheming and obsequious Mr Slope, one of literature's finest and most mundane villains. Once more, other men take up arms over Mr Harding's position at Hiram's Hospital, and the struggle between Mr Slope, Mrs Proudie and Archdeacon Grantly for control of the cathedral and the diocese threatens to overthrow all peace in the hallowed halls of Barchester. As with The Warden, the delight of Barchester Towers lies mostly in Trollope's wry, satirical style, and in particular his great pains to relieve the reader of any concern that his heroine, the widow Mrs Bold, might end up with the ghastlier of her suitors. I suspect that at the time it was pretty scathing satire, but with time it has become a rather cosy read for when you don't want to be doing with violence and inhumanity.

I also decided that I was going to go back to a YA series I never finished when I first read it, and so began from the start with the eponymous first volume of the Skulduggery Pleasant series. Stephanie is drawn into a weird secret world of secrets and sorcery when her uncle dies, leaving her a house, a fortune, and an occult secret or two. Attacked by magical henchmen, she is rescued by Skulduggery Pleasant, a skeletal magician with more than a few secrets of his own, who becomes her teacher as well as her guardian, as the two seek to prevent a sorcerer named Nefarian Serpine gaining ultimate power and returning his dark gods to the world. 

Skuldugery Pleasant is witty and fast paced, with a fairly rugged magic system and an effective, show-not-tell approach to most of its world-building. Bursting with one-liners, action scenes and more entertaining, misguidedly self-assumed nomes de guerre than you can shake a stick at, this is a solid opening chapter, and I think I'll make an effort to get through the whole series this time.

My final read for this period was a bit of a struggle. The Masked City is the second book of the Invisible Library series, following Irene Winters, a relatively junior agent of an extradimensional library devoted to maintaining the balance between order - represented by the dragons - and chaos - embodied in the fae. When a pair of power-hungry fae known as Lord and Lady Guantess abduct her dragon apprentice, Kai, Irene is willing to go to any lengths to prevent the long-standing cold war between dragons and fae erupting into open conflict, and to rescue her friend. There's a lot to like in the Invisible Library series, not least the fact that the masked city of the title is a high chaos world that is basically nothing but Venice in carnival, but also a lot that gives me significant pause.

There's a tentative romance between Irene and Kai that is literally the least interesting thing about either character, and tritagonist Peregrine Vale brings all the least appealing features of the Holmsian detective into play with his arrogance and effortless competence, not only assuming that a lady must need protection but somehow being able to offer that protection to Irene soundly within her sphere of competence. The book isn't terrible, but I wanted to like it much more than, in the end, I was able to.

Reading Roundup - November 2017

2017 Reading Challenge

I kind of made progress on the challenge this month, completing the first of a newly-instated 'Russian SF' category with Roadside Picnic, by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky. It's a bleak look at a capitalist response to an utterly enigmatic alien visitation, from the perspective of writers living and working within the Soviet Union and its centrally controlled publishing industry.

Otherwise, November has been very much a month of Discworld, as I continued my re-reading of the Pratchett canon with books four to eight: Mort, Sourcery, Wyrd Sisters, Pyramids and Guards! Guards!.

Mort is the first novel in the Death strand of the series. Death has appeared in every book so far(1), but this is the first time he has been given a starring role, rather than popping up in a cameo, perhaps to confirm that someone didn't make it. It's the story of Mort - short for Mortimer - an awkward youth who becomes Death's apprentice, learning the trade and giving his master a chance to experience something of humanity. Published in the same year as Equal Rites(2), it rapidly established itself as the first 'gateway novel' in the series, frequently recommended as a starting point to the new reader. It mixes wit and whimsy with more serious themes - such as justice, faith and the complex relationship of a ruler's personal qualities and their competence as a ruler - with the deftness that leaves The Colour of Magic for dust. It has a likable, if not particularly deep, quartet of characters in Mort, Ysabelle - making a much more sympathetic showing than in her cameo in The Light Fantastic - Princess Keli(3) and Cutwell, with able support from the irascible and enigmatic domestic Albert, although the star is undeniably Death himself.

Stern and kind, wise and wondering, ancient and innocent, the Death of the Discworld is one of the great literary creations. With him, Pratchett turned the end of life from horror into comfort, and sought to explore and expand upon the many mysteries of life. THERE'S NO JUSTICE, Death often reminds us. THERE'S JUST ME. I think I could, pardon the phrase, live with that.

Death makes his next appearance right at the beginning of Sourcery, in which the failed wizard Rincewind is once more called upon to prevent Armageddon(4). This time, a wizard has broken the usual rules of celibacy with such enthusiasm as to produce eight children(5), the last being a Sourcerer, capable of creating magic, instead of merely shaping it. This is arguably Rincewind's finest hour, although his supporting cast are only so-so. Conina - the daughter of Cohen the Barbarian and a temple dancer he rescued from an unspecified fate - and wannabe barbarian hero Nijel the Destroyer are independently quite interesting characters, but are awkwardly paired off; awkward because one of them is described as a highly attractive, adult woman, then other as a gangly teenager apparently still in the throes of puberty.

I have literally no clue what is
going on with this cover.

Wyrd Sisters picks up the adventures of Granny Weatherwax(6) after Equal Rites, now a member of a three-witch coven in the mountain kingdom of Lancre, with long-time best friend/archnemesis Gytha 'Nanny' Ogg, and hippy dippy newcomer Magrat Garlick. The three of them are caught up in a coup d'état when they rescue a young baby, the rightful heir to the throne, from the usurping Duke Felmet and his terrible wife. Borrowing heavily from Macbeth - among other things - for plot and dialogue, and introducing a solid power trio in Granny - the serious one - Nanny - the motherly one - and Magrat - the nice one - and more pathetic fallacies than Jove could cast a thunderbolt at, this is the real beginning of the Witches stream, with Equal Rites a sort of precursor. It is interesting in retrospect that Magrat decides that witches only do kind things for selfish reasons, given that Tiffany Aching later determines that witches even do selfish things for kind reasons.

Pyramids, on the other hand, is a standalone, featuring the prince of a small, yet once great, kingdom - Djelebeybi - returning home after the death of his father and seeking to overturn the millennia of stagnant tradition upheld by the priests of the kingdom's many, many, many gods. While the story stands alone, and Djelebey

bi would never make another significant appearance, the novel also introduces Tsort and Ephebe, the equivalents of Troy and the Hellenic city states, whose millennia old feud is checked only by the intervening territory of Djelebeybi; at least until an oversized pyramid causes a complete collapse of space time and makes the kingdom disappear. This is also the first major appearance of the ongoing theme of belief shaping reality, as the collapse of the kingdom into a pocket of time causes the myriad conflicting deities of Djelebeybi to simultaneously manifest.

There is a lot to like in Pyramids, and I'm a sucker for a good bit of fantasy Egypt, but overall this is a bit of an also-ran. Pteppic is a fair lead, but deuteragonist/quasi-love interest Ptraci(7) is underdeveloped, and both pale next to Dios, a classic Pratchett villain, determined to do what he believes is the right thing for everybody, no matter how many people it hurts.

Finally, we come to Guards! Guards!, the start of the City Watch stream and, as it happens, the first Discworld novel I ever read. It introduces Sam Vimes and his 'boots theory of socioeconomic unfairness,' and the rest of the Watch: Sergeant Colon, Corporal Nobbs and new bug Lance-Constable Carrot. While it features a dragon, the novel is pitched primarily as a police procedural, of sorts, and as such is probably the first step on the road to the Disc's transformation from high fantasy to industrial spellpunk. It is also probaball of the characters are brilliant. Not the watch, not the villain, and neither the Patrician(8) nor dragon expert Lady Sybil Ramkin are throwaway or half-finished characters. Everyone is sharing the love, and it's brilliant.

ly the first Discworld novel in which

But it's not been all Discworld, and I finally managed to get through the rest of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. The fifth book in the series is often held to be the weakest, but while I still feel that it is overlong and sags in places(9), it's definitely better than I remember; possibly because I didn't need to carry the hardback around to read it. It took a while to get through because of my intense dislike of Dolores Umbridge(10), the unacceptable face of the Ministry of Magic's slide towards a totalitarian cult of personality. I couldn't listen to anything with Umbridge in while I was going to sleep, which led to me favouring the Discworld novels all around. Much as I find the character uncomfortable, I acknowledge that the effect is intentional, serving to strip away the protected feeling which surrounds Hogwarts, and put the young leads well and truly on their own for the first time.

Of course, this all serves to highlight the frankly appalling level of pastoral care and gross favouritism in play at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry(11), even before Umbridge gets all up in it. It also exposes the deep corruption in the Ministry of Magic, and in many ways it's no wonder that a regime like Fudge's - broadly ineffectual, conciliatory, nepotistic, corrupt, and unduly tolerant of ultraconservative attitudes within society - would breed a far right revolution from those who simultaneously recognise the government's shortcomings, yet regard their centre right political leanings as insufferably liberal. While I joke about this, once more Rowling turns in an unmistakably political novel, with thinly veiled attacks on OFSTED, and the Hitler Youths of the Inquisitorial Squad. These are books to make children think, rather than simply to entertain them.

(1) And will appear in almost, if not every book hereafter.

(2) The first of six consecutive years to see a double Discworld event.

(3) Pronounced in the audiobook 'khey-lee' and not, as I had always assumed, Kelly.

(4) Or more accurately, the Apocralypse.

(5) Despite being a gold standard douchebag.

(6) Not that Granny would hold with adventures, most likely.

(7) Pronounced here 'puh-tra-chee', rather than as I would have thought, 'Tracy'.

(8) Making his first major appearance, after cameos in The Colour of Magic and Sourcery.

(9) It is no surprise that Rowling broke with her editors during the writing of the novel, as it is in need of some trimming just to tighten up the edges.

(10) Not least because of the utter chill factor of Stephen Fry's performance of her sickly-sweet voice.

(11) And that's another thing; are witchcraft and wizardry in any way distinct save in the gender of the caster? What would a non-binary magic user do?

Good Omens

About six months ago I posted a list of ten books that had affected me, one of which was Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman's Good Omens. With the recent passing of Sir Terry from this mortal coil to the etheric whisper of internet headers, I decided that I wanted to hit the canon again, and to start with one of my favourites.

At some basic level, Good Omens is a pastiche of The Omen (the original one,) complete with a Satanic conspiracy replacing the son of a US ambassador with the antichrist, filtered through a comedy of errors that is forever hovering one legs akimbo sight gag from a Carry On movie. An angel and a demon, both of whom have gone rather native, strive to save the world, while a moment of distraction leaves the antichrist to grow up as a perfectly normal boy. As the preordained moment approaches, the forces of Heaven and Hell, of England's once-proud Witchfinder Army, and of the well-informed descendants of Cromwellian prophetess Agnes Nutter, descend on the Oxfordshire village of Tadfield to do battle (because anyone who considers themselves to be a force is inevitably looking for a fight.)

Pratchett and Gaiman occasionally talked about a sequel - the title 668: The Neighbour of the Beast was touted sometimes - but in the end it never happened; partly because Gaiman moved full-time to the states, and partly because they never settled on the story. I'm rather glad of that, because Good Omens is something of a perfect storm, uniting two authors who were really just getting started in such as way that I believe it tempered both of their styles and signaled a sea-change in their individual writing, while at the same time producing something priceless.

Seriously; about 70% of all images resulting from a search for
'Good Omens' returns fan art of Aziraphael and Crowley, and
perhaps a quarter of that is explicitly shippy. I'm sure you
wouldn't have to look far to find one of those intertwining wing
and no clothes poses so popular with people who ship winged
humanoids and have any ounce of artistic ability.

Good Omens is a very character-driven apocalyptic narrative, and the characters are rather wonderful, from Adam's small and disorganised 'pack of ringleaders' to the bikers of the Apocalypse, and of course the fandom's favourite ship, Crowley and Aziraphael*. The authors also manage to slip in some social commentary - much of it a little dated now** - and even to get in a dig at people who wear sunglasses when it's dark, which in 1990 was only just starting to be a thing.

It is also unashamedly funny and, and this is important, doesn't pretend not to be or to have been during the big, dramatic denouement. It doesn't go all grimdark, and yet manages to have a sense of peril for characters the reader has grown to like. It may also count as one of the first truly transatlantic novels, its wry footnotes peppered with explanatory notes for the American reader which poke fun at the American and British people in more or less equal part.

In case I'm being too oblique, I love this book: always have done, still do. The only disappointment for me on this reading was the audiobook version I switched too while I was walking. It wasn't bad, but they did a Radio 4 adaptation just before Christmas*** and so I was disappointed to only get the one voice. All in all, I think I'm more of an audio play kind of guy.

* Because nothing gets shippers hot for a couple more than adversity, and what greater adversity can there be than explicitly stating that they are sexless beings? For myself I can see the sense behind the pairing, but they are more of an old married couple, rather than a white hot sexy pairing.
** Similarly, any technical references are pretty antiquated, from the wonder of a car with a phone in to printed manuals, and British fast food has come a long way since 1990.
*** Which is well worth checking out.

Lost in a Good Book and The Well of Lost Plots

Thursday Next is feeling pretty good about herself. Not only has she married the love of her life with a baby on the way, but her career is going pretty well and she has successfully given the finger to the almighty Goliath Corporation. Sadly, Goliath does not take defeat well, and decide to blackmail her, with the very existence of her husband Landen as their bargaining chip. To make matters worse, her revision of the ending of Jane Eyre is coming under scrutiny from Jurisfiction, a police force which exists inside fiction, her memory is under attack, her life is continually imperiled by coincidence and, just to cap off a bad week, all life on Earth is about to be reduced to an unidentifiable goo.

So, yeah, there is a lot going on in Jasper fforde's sequel to The Eyre Affair. Coming back to the series, I'm struck by the fact that while the first book, while not bad, mostly had novelty going for it, Lost in a Good Book is a more assured work which stands better on its merits for a second reading. The eradication of Landen and the insidious threat of Aornis Hades are both genuinely disturbing devices, and despite only a couple of appearances, there is a genuine tragic nobility to the Neanderthals.

Lost in a Good Book also gives us the character of Miss Haversham. Most of the Jurisfiction agents are a delight, but Miss Havisham is the pip. Combining elements of her personality in Great Expectations with a gung ho, no nonsense attitude to policing, fforde creates something altogether wonderful, at the same time faithfully literary and more than the sum of her parts.

This was the last volume to be widely published
in the original cover style (this is not that style),
making it impossible for me to collect a matching
set without rebuying. I'm kind of glad I switched to
Kindle.

Moving swiftly on (thank you Kindle omnibus edition, even if you do make it a little more difficult to crossreference the footnoterphone conversations and scenes,) in The Well of Lost Plots Thursday is on the run from Goliath, and seeks sanctuary in the one place they can't find her: In fiction. Taking a bit part in Jasper fforde's unpublished detective novel Cavendish Heights via the Character Exchange Programme, she is hoping for a quiet life, but soon finds herself drawn into Jurisfiction politics surrounding the launch of UltraWord(TM), an entirely new reading technology. Moreover, she has a parting gift from Aornis to cope with, if she ever wants to see her still-nonexistent husband again.

The Well of Lost Plots is the most solidly bookworldian of the first three Thursday Next books, and develops the high-concept of bookjumping with concepts including the inability of fictionals to detect scent, and unpronouncable words being easily spoken in a world where all sensory input and dialogue is actually text-based. This was my favourite of the three on first reading, and remains so; I am still in love with the concepts as much as anything, and it represents the work of a writer who is both fresh and matured.

The Eyre Affair

I'm sure that car was originally described as being
painted with Escher lizards, but the Kindle version
is just stripey. I wonder if ebook technology has
finally allowed Text Grand Central to issue proper
rolling upgrades (as promised in print editions of
the Thursday Next series.)

In a world almost, but not quite entirely unlike ours, Thursday Next works for SO-27, the specialist branch of the police force that deals with crimes involving literary heritage. A veteran of the ongoing (in 1985) Crimean war, she is called upon to pursue infernal supervillain and former English Lit professor Acheron Hades when he steals the original manuscript of Martin Chuzzlewit and starts bumping off minor characters. When he turns his attention to Jane Eyre, Thursday knows that it is only a matter of time before England's cultural milieu is irreparably damaged. After all, everyone loves Jane Eyre (even if most of them do think it would be better if Jane and Rochester had married at the end.)

I first read The Eyre Affair in print... many years ago, and have since recommended it to various people, to the point of buying copies for two friends whom I thought would enjoy it. Coming back to it in a Kindle edition, I'm less wowed than I was back then. I still enjoyed it and the writing is still witty and pacy, but I suspect that novelty was a big part of its impact. Having moved on to the later books (I bought it in a three pack with Lost in a Good Book and The Well of Lost Plots,) I find it to be a good start, but ultimately not as strong on its own as it was back then. This saddens me somewhat, although I;m finding the others good enough not to write off the entire canon based on a lukewarm re-reading.

As an aside, it's fascinating to read in ebook format a series which was originally written for purely print media and which postulated the advance of book technology to allow rolling updates and DVD-style special features; in short, something akin to an ebook, but with real pages.

This has been a brief review, I know, but I will probably add some additional thoughts after I wrap up The Well of Lost Plots.

The Hundred-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out of the Window and Disappeared

This cover is shamelessly misleading;
the only suitcase in the book is much
larger.

"Things are what they are, and whatever will be will be."

Allan Karlsson is turning one-hundred, a minor cause celebre in the quiet town where he lives in the old people's home. Then Karlsson climbs out of the window, walks slowly to the bus stop, impulsively steals a suitcase and catches a bus for any-old-where. It seems an odd time of life to start adventuring, but as the reader learns in parallel to the centenarian Karlsson's Odyssey, it's hardly the first time that he has traveled.

Jonas Jonasson's debut novel*, The Hundred-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out of the Window and Disappeared is the story - or perhaps two stories - of one Swede's journeys, first across the world and later across his home country. The modern-day story is a comedy of errors, as Karsson and a growing band of friends find adventure, love, and even God through a series of misunderstandings and in defiance of dogged lawmen and criminals alike.

The story of how Karlsson came to be in the old people's home in the first place is more like a globe-trotting, intellectual Scandinavian Forrest Gump, but with much more vodka and dynamite, as Karlsson rubs shoulders with Franco, Oppenheimer, Truman, Stalin, Mao and Albert Einstein's affably dim half-brother Herbert - among others - accidentally gives the world nuclear weapons, acts as spy and counter-spy, inadvertently burns down a major city and twice blows up his own house. Karlsson's anarchic trail leads across continents in fair weather and foul, with and without proper transportation and official documentation, as if to demonstrate the damage and good that one free spirit can bring about armed only with a keen mind, a moral compass uninformed by the slightest political stirrings, and a lifetime's experience of vodka and dynamite.

The whole thing is recounted with a dry wit and a prescient narrative voice that reminds me a little of Anthony Trollope, although again with much more vodka and dynamite (and elephants). It is defiantly lighthearted in the face of danger and age, and presents the great and the good of the twentieth century as a mixture of good and bad clowns for whom deploying an aging Swedish explosives technician is as good a medium of action as any in response to international communism or the rampant running dogs of capitalism.

The Hundred-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out of the Window and Disappeared is a real feelgood novel, and a wonderful palate cleanser after a few months of post-apocalyptic shenanigans and bloody murder (although not without a certain amount of murder itself).

* For completeness, the translation from Jonas Jonasson's original Swedish was by Rod Bradbury for my Kindle edition.

Redshirts

The Universal Union's flagship Intrepid is the most prestigious posting for the young officers of 'Dub U', and the most dangerous. Every mission seems to result in the death of at least one junior crewmember, and the old hands all duck out when the senior staff come looking for someone to add to the away team. Could a ship really be this unlucky? Could the amazingly handsome Lieutenant Karensky really survive so much punishment? And why is it that backstory seems to pop into people's heads as if it had always been there?

John Scalzi's Redshirts kicks off as a sort of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead for Star Trek, with a clear division between the scenes which are just the junior crew chatting and those where the senior crew drag the focus back onto them (mostly in the form of a change in the occurence of swearing and sexual references from 'lots' to 'none'). It then pushes into its own territory as Ensign Andy Dahl tries to escape the predestined fate of all short-arc supporting characters via a rogue mission to exploit the bad time travel mechanics of the Narrative and stop the deaths at their source: the basic cable show The Chronicles of the Intrepid.

Redshirts is not a new idea - within the text itself Scalzi openly refers to half a dozen implementations of the 'characters talk to their creator' concept, and people have been making jokes about red shirts for as long as I've been alive - but the central characters are lively and entertaining, and the bafflement of the various officers as the Narrative spotlight comes and goes is entertaining, as well as really rather creepy.

Once the main narrative is exhausted, Scalzi does go off the boil a little, however, and apparently needing some extra pages to make contract adds three codas, each one following one of the 'real world' characters. They're not bad in themselves, but they feel extraneous (which is, I suppose, why they're codas), and more like the author playing around with alternative approaches to his concept than like they are truly related to the main story.

John Dies at the End

I read kinda slow these days. As the weather gets nicer, I walk more often, which takes out my bus ride reading time, and at home I spend as much time as I can with the baby. Except when I'm right near the end of a book and become this shamefully neglectful lunk trying to finish.

I mention this largely because a distracted stream of consciousness seems the right way to review David Wong's 'comic horror' novel, John Dies at the End, which is sort of what you'd get if HP Lovecraft had done a lot of really relaxing medication and spent most of his life sitting around on the couch playing video games while August Derleth took notes and published them, only not actually like that at all.

What the book takes most of all from Lovecraft is a sense of cosmic futility. While our protagonists David and John battle monsters and gaze into the abyss with blithe disregard for standard Neitzchean safety protocols, they lack the triumphal surety of later Mythos heroes (if such a pair of words can ever be allowed). What they take from those later figures is the desire to fight instead of just fainting. To borrow a phrase from the movie I was watching yesterday - and honestly, that also feels like an appropriate thing to do in a review of this book - they are the guys who don't know what they should do, only what they can do, and choose to do it.

And the result is a lot of fun, and the kind of fun that keeps on giving. Hell, it was only looking out the image above that I came across the author's description of the book as a 'comic horror' and realised that this might be a pun on 'cosmic horror'; maybe I'm wrong, but it is apt.

I am excited to see the movie, if only to see how someone might make this book into a movie, let alone how well.