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 - October/November 2019

New Novels

Under the Pendulum Sun, by Jeanette Ng
From an alternate Britain, where Captain Cook discovered a (largely conceptual) passage to the land of Faery, Catherine Helstone takes ship to Arcadia in search of her missing brother, Laon(1), who has taken a post as a missionary there, preaching the gospel to the fae. Trapped for an unmeasurable period in Gethsemane, a house granted to the representative of the London Missionary Society. She learns a little about the fae during her stay, especially from the gardener, Mr Benjamin, the only convert in Arcadia, before her brother's return and a visit by Mab, one of the Queens of Arcadia, brings the offer of a chance to take the mission further into Arcadia, but also revelations about the nature both of Faery and the Helstones themselves which threaten to tear Catherine and Laon apart.

Under the Pendulum Sun is a gothic romance, with trappings of a Shakespearean fairy land, which reads as much as anything like a companion piece to Jonathon Strange and Mr Norrell set entirely in Faerie. The Helstones are subjected to all the cruelties of the fae, and this makes the story hard going at times, despite - or perhaps even because - several of the story's twists are easy to see coming. The strength of the novel lies in rich language and worldbuilding, but the characters are less compelling. Laon in particular is viewed only through the almost worshipful gaze of his sister, yet comes across as a bit of a dick, and as an atheist I personally found it very difficult to relate to their burning desire to spread the gospel to the faery.

As a debut novel, this is an impressive piece of writing, and Ng is the author whose acceptance speech for the John W. Campbell Award got it renamed to the Astonishing Award That Isn't Named After a Known and Unrepentant-in-his-Lifetime Fascist(2). The audiobook is not all it could be, with an American reader doing posh British, with a few really odd bits of pronunciation and, honestly, not a tace of the Helstones' native Yorkshire to be heard(3). The book also features some of the most toxic relationships I've read lately - much Wuthering, so Heights - but it does seem in little doubt that that is what they are.

I'd definitely read something else by Ng, but the further adventures of the Helstones hold no specific interest to me.

The Tyrant's Tomb, by Rick Riordan
Following the tragic events of The Burning Maze, the all-too human Apollo, and his master, Meg McCaffrey, make their way to Camp Jupiter in northern California. There they must commit a friend to eternal rest, before facing off against a direct assault by the forces, monstrous and mercenary, of the Emperors Commodus and Calligula, and their mysterious and terrifying allywhose tomb holds the secrets of life or death, not just for Apollo, but for all the gods of Greece and Rome.

Book four of The Trials of Apollo brings Apollo through the dark nigth of the soul which began in The Burning Maze and - by way of battle and suffering - to a brighter, better day. Mostly. Like most of Riordan's books, it is a fast-paced, emotionally engaging read, with Apollo continuing to be a surprisingly sympathetic narrator despite his constant name-dropping, self-pity and claims to have invented or inspired every major cultural or artistic achievement of the last three millennia. The reading is good, capturing Apollo's air of ironic melancholy nicely.

What can I tell you? If you like Riordan's work, you'll almost certainly enjoy this, but it's really not a starting point(4).

Guardians of Magic, by Chris Riddell
In a world of magic and fairytales, children wish on the cloud horses said to hatch in nests in the Forever Tree. But the Forever Tree and magic in general are in danger from rat gangsters, giant slayers and loggers, with only a handful of ballet dancing bears to defend them. Three children, Zam, Phoebe and Bathsheba - a baker, a musician and an apprentice giant-slayer with... questions - receive mysterious gifts of carved wood which grant them extraordinary abilities. Each driven out of their community by those who would see magic destroyed, the three must come together to save the Forever Tree and restore wonder to a world in the grip of greed and cruelty.

The first book in a new series by former Children's Laureate and big favourite of mine, Chris Riddell(5), Guardians of Magic is an ambitious work, introducing three characters, their friends and their cities within the space of a modest-length book, as well as telling its own tale of adventure and friendship, in which the real magic is empathy and understanding.

An excellent adventure story for bedtimes and young readers.

The Secret Commonwealth, by Philip Pullman
It has been twenty years since Lyra Belaqua was saved from the great flood, and almost ten since Lyra Silvertongue returned from her adventures in the North and beyond. Now, she is a student at St Sophia's College, and still lives at Jordan under the shield of scholastic sanctuary, but that may be about to change. In the Levant, powerful forces - the Magisterium and the puritanical 'Men from the Mountain'(6) - are seeking to control production of a specific rose oil, linked to a place where daemons do not go... and a place where perhaps only daemons go. Lyra and Pantalaimon are at odds when they stumble on a murderous plot, and are thrown together with Malcolm Polstead and the extraordinary intelligence service known as Oakley Street. Together, and separately, they begin to move against a Magisterial body known as La Maison Juste, and a plot to bring Britain back under the complete control of the authorities spiritual, and the ambitious Marcel Delamare. Both Delamare and his aleithiometrist, Olivier Bonneville have a personal interest in Lyra, and when Lyra leaves Oxford in search of the absent Pan, she finds herself wandering in the demimonde of the Separated, and the mystical hinterland known to her Gyptian friends as the secret commonwealth.

I... really wanted to love this book. I'm a big fan of Pullman, and there's a lot in here that I do like, but there is also a lot that I don't. The conflict between Lyra and Pan is heartbreaking, the language often mesmerising, and the villains are a strong component, but the tentative romance between Malcolm and Lyra is frankly a bit squicky. The twelve year age gap isn't insurmountable, but the fact that he first met her as a baby and she first met him as her teacher makes the whole thing a lot more... Well, it's not helping my opinion of either character. There's also a lot of women being terrorised by men, including an attempted rape, which I think puts The Book of Dust at two for two in using rape as a device, and that's really not good.

So, yeah. I wanted to love this book. I don't love this book.

Rites of Passage, by Mike Brooks
The Lady Chettamande is a Navigator, the widow of Lord Azariel, head of the wealthy and powerful House Brobantis. Moving to take control of the House and secure the legacy of her children, Chettamande finds herself not only mired in the politics of the Navis Nobilite, but uniquely placed to investigate a series of brutal murders and - possibly - prevent the machinations of a Champion of the ruinous powers, bent on plunging world after world into the roiling hunger of the Warp.

I'm not a huge reader of 40K fiction, although I have a more than passing familiarity with the setting and its lore(7). I made and exception for Rites of Passage primarily because an internet commentator got het up about a positive depiction of a nonbinary character within the Imperium. I mean, as positive as you can really be while still being within the Imperium, given that the Imperium is a festering sinkhole of oppressive superfascism.

So, you know, it's not ordinarily something I would read, but I enjoyed it. It contains a good depiction of the Imperium, in all its messed up glory. The Champion of Chaos is a serial murderer intent on the deaths of billions, but he is aided by a local cult whose goals and motivations for rebellion are more in the order of 'wanting to get into the restricted section of the library,' 'wanting to be accepted for what she is and not fed to the monstrous life-support machinery of the corpse-Emperor,' and 'because this universe is a crapsack.'

It's probably not a good point of entry into the 40K universe, but then I'm actually not sure that the 40K universe really admits of a point of entry these days.

New Comics

The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl, Vol. 1
Doreen Green, fledgling superhero, is going to college. Yes, this complicates her life of crime fighting and means moving out of the Avengers' attic, where they totally know she's been living, I'm sure, and it means living in halls with a roommate who might or might not be cool, and hiding her giant, fluffy tail down the back of her pants, but at least she can focus on a normal life, instead of fighting Kraven the Hunter, bank robbers or the world-eating monster Galactus.

Oh, wait...

I've heard a lot about Squirrel Girl for a while now, and I admit, at first I was kind of down on the idea of a character who seemed designed to make other superheroes look stupid. The more I learned, however, the more it sounded like it might be worth the hype, so I figured I'd give it a go, beginning with the first trade paperback of Doreen's own title.

And it's delightful. The key to its appeal is that Doreen is not overwhelmingly powerful, instead 'defeating' amazingly powerful foes through ingenuity and the willingness to engage them as thinking beings with motivations, rather than simple punchbags. I honestly dread the day that comic trends lead to someone writing a story where Doreen goes all dark and brooding - there's a lot of potential for a story in which Doreen is forced to confront challenges to her optimistic worldview, but it would have to be done with more nuance than, say, the 90s - but for now this feels like something very special.

Audio Plays

Jago and Litefoot, Season 8
Jago and Litefoot, investigators of the macabre and infernal, have faced many threats in their time, but many of the worst have emerged from the stage of the New Regency Theatre. Another of these appears in Encore for the Scorchies, a prequel to one of the Companion Chronicles, in which monstrous, psychic aliens in the form of puppets use the theatre to feed their hunger for lifeforce. Then a rival show of a scientific bent appears responsible for the appearance of The Backward Men. A long-dead gangster stalks the sewers; this is a case for Jago & Litefoot & Patsy, but when the peril proves too much, it falls to Higson & Quick to bring the case to a close.

When did I last talk about Jago & Litefoot? Probably a while ago, so as a reminder, the impressario Henry Gordon Jago, and London pathologist Professor George Litefoot were the joint Watsons to the Doctor in the classic, but problematic(8), Doctor Who serial 'The Talons of Weng Chiang'. The interaction between the blowhard Jago and fastidious Litefoot made the mlong-time favourites, and eventually Big Finish brought back original actors Christopher Benjamin and Trevor Baxter for one of the Companion Chronicles, The Mahogany Murders. This was such a success that they went on to commission an ongoing series which ran to thirteen four-disc boxed sets before Baxter passed away in 2017.

Season 8 follows a tried and tested formula, as well as offering slightly expanded roles for regular supporting characters, Ellie the immortal, ex-vampire barmaid, and recently promoted police Inspector Quick. It also features a full-fledged musical episode, as the Scorchies telepathically force our heroes to sing their inner thoughts. Musical episodes don't always work, but this one is a cracker.

Aquitane
Aboard the space station Aquitane, the main computer, Hargreaves, and his various bodies struggle to keep up with a growing to do list, as well as providing daily support to the crew... who are no longer there. The arrival of a blue box and its occupants is just one more mystery, but the Aquitane is the scene of much timey wimey shenanigans, so the Doctor might just be what the situation demands.

Aquitane is a full-on time travel, space gothic mystery, with robots and plant monsters and ghosts. It's a strong look for Doctor Who, and the script manages to balance the companion duties between Nyssa and Tegan via the tried and tested method of sending one of them off on their own. In this case, it's Nyssa who goes solo after being infected with a mystery disease, which I seem to recall is kind of a thing with her. Tegan is high-minded and aggressive, without being whiny, which is a hard balance to write - this is true of a lot of companions who were very much of their time, and for modern audio need to be written both true to their original characterisation and in a way that isn't really grating ot a moern audience - but they really hit it here.

Re-reads
Ottoline and the Yellow Cat, by Chris Riddell
Ottoline Goes to School, by Chris Riddell
Ottoline at Sea, by Chris Riddell
Ottoline and the Purple Fox, by Chris Riddell

Ottoline Brown lives in the Big City, with her best friend Mr Munroe - a small, hairy Norwegian bog man - curating the collections sent home by her explorer parents. Ottoline and Mr Munroe are born mystery solvers, and love nothing more than a good problem to get their teeth into, be it a devious cat burglar targeting the wealthy, an alleged haunting at an exclusive school, Mr Munroe's homesickness, or the tangled love lives of urban foxes.

Chris Riddell's Ottoline books are little treasures. I have the original hardback editions of all four books, and the four Goth Girl books (see below), and I adore them. Illustrated in Riddell's characteristic style, with a single colour - different in each book - added to the black and white images, the querky adventures are told by a mix of text and images which makes them a sort of mid-point between picture books and an illustrated novel, and they are really lovely.

Goth Girl and the Ghost of a Mouse, by Chris Riddell
Goth Girl and the Pirate Queen, by Chris Riddell
Ada Goth lives with her widowed father in a rambling hall, isolated by his grief and their geographical and social isolation. But then she meets the ghost of a mouse, and Emily and William Cabbage - the children of her father's resident inventor, and a new governess, and the Attic Club, a group of young servants who share their observations of the weirdness at Ghastly-Gorm Hall. With the annual metaphorical bicycle race and indoor hunt on the horizon, Maltravers the indoor gamekeeper is up to no good, and with her father sunk in perpetual melancholy, it is up to Ada to see justice done.

In Goth Girl and the Pirate Queen, our intrepid heroine takes a World Book Day trip to Brighton for the Prince Regent's ball, and must contend with high fashion, high society, theft, bathing machines and retired pirates.

The follow-up to the Ottoline series(9) features the adventures of Ada Goth, daughter of the famous bicycling poet, Lord Goth of Ghastly-Gorm. This book sets the format for the series, with a strange and eccentric event attracting strange and eccentric visitors, each of whom is a pastiche of an actual historical - or sometimes contemporary - figure. It is this that makes the book so rich for grown up readers, although it does require a pretty broad cutural base for a younger reader. On the other hand, it could provide an impetus to learn about 18th century poetry and art, or contemporary fashion and baking.

Sympathy for the Devil
The Doctor has been banished to Earth, but not in the 1970s (or is it the 1980s.) Instead, he has arrived in Hong Kong in 1997, just in time for the handover of British rule to China. Here he meets the Brigadier, retired and bitter and running a pub, and stumbles on a mission by the highly militaristic UNIT to extract a defector from mainland China; a defector who is not Chinese, but from somewhere far, far away. Someone who knows the Doctor of old, and has plans for a monastery on a hillside above Hong Kong.

Sympathy for the Devil is far and away the best of the Doctor Who Unbound series of audio plays, featuring alternative Doctors and exploring 'what if...' scenarios; in this case, what if the Doctor missed all of the alien invasions of the UNIT years, leaving the world to become increasingly paranoid and fragmented. David Warner as the alternate Third Doctor perfectly portrays the deep melancholy of the time traveller not only trapped in space and time, but separated from the place he was supposed to occupy. Nicholas Courtney did some of his best work as the aging Brigadier - both with Big Finish and in The Sarah Jane Adventures - in the years before his death.

It's been quite a month (or two) for since deceased Big Finish favourites.

It's steeped in Who lore, but Sympathy for the Devil is also one of the best things that Big Finish has ever done.

Full Fathom Five
Deep beneath the ocean, the work of a research lab is being co-opted by its military paymasters. Into this gothic nightmare of science comes the Doctor, a traveller in time and space, who will do whatever it takes to make sure that this research never sees the light of day. And many years later, the Doctor returns to the same lab, in search of... something.

Full Fathom Five was another Doctor Who Unbound audio play, and the only one in the original run released without a specific 'what if...' tagline, since its core concept was also its twist. It's a dark, dark tale, with David Collings as his most chillingly urbane as the Doctor, and Siri O'Neal as his soon to be disillusioned companion, Ruth, and the now-late Ed Bishop - seriously, what the hell? - as the driven and ruthless General Flint. It works best the first time, but the players still give it some punch on a second listen.

The Burning Maze, by Rick Riordan
I re-read this for my partner this month, but since I only finished it a few months ago, I won't go into it again. Short version - I love it, but my American accents suck.

(1) As always, kistening to books means I have to look up the spellings, and the fact that this was apparently not Leon, but Laon took me by surprise.
(2) Or something of the sort.
(3) Catherine had explicitly never left Yorkshire, but the reader's voice is 'generic posh' rather than remotely northern.
(4) One of the drawbacks to a set of strongly linked arc stories like Riordan's is that there are staggeringly few places to jump into his work, since his bibliography is basically one massive narrative, with even the Kane Chronicles and the Magnus Chase novels taking place in the same continuity.
(5) At a book signing, he drew a sketch of my daughter, which he absolutely didn't have to do.
(6) Who may be the same thing, or at least related.
(7) As was, at least; I'm a little out of the loop, and whatever some may say when vehemently denying that female Space Marines could ever be a thing, the lore has changed significantly over the years.
(8) The villain has such yellowface, so inscrutible.
(9) The first book appears in a bookshop in The Purple Fox, which is a bit meta, but was a grand hook for my daughter.

Reading Roundup - September 2019

Just one month, and no Found Horizons on this slate.

New Novels

Obsidian Mirror, by Catherine Fisher
Jake is an angry young man, convinced that his father was murdered by his friend and research partner, the wealthy explorer Oberon Venn. Managing to get expelled, he is sent to Venn's home st Wintercombe Abbey, accompanied by a teacher from his exclusive boarding school. Jake is seeking revenge, but even as he arrives, the mysterious Sarah finds her way to Wintercombe on a mission, with both of their fates hinging on the experiments that Venn and Jake's father were conducting on the Chronoptika, an obsidian mirror that may allow one to travel through time, and Venn's relationship with the faerie folk who inhabit the wood around the Abbey.

Aptly opening on a rehearsal of a scene from Hamlet, The Obsidian Mirror is a Shakespearean study of revenge and obsession, which daringly blends time travel and faerie without a beat of apology. I've been a fan of Fisher's since my teaching days, and her books are among the select group of children's and young adult novels that I've kept for Arya to read later in life rather than sending them to the charity shops to make room for Pratchett, variations on Harry Potter and cats. Obsidian Mirror is a typical Fisher novel, with just enough darkness and threat to have bite, enough complexity to be compelling but not frustrating, and some pleasingly disturbing weird science around the Chronoptika.

I read this in paper form, thanks to the local library.

The Raven Tower, by Ann Leckie
The god known as the Raven of Iraden has long watched over his kingdom, fed by the ritual self-sacrifice of the Raven's Lease, the ruler of Iraden whose days are numbered from the moment they are chosen. Mawat is the Lease's Heir, but returning to the capital city of Vastai with his aide Eolo, he finds that his uncle has claimed the bench in his stead, something that should not be possible. As Mawat fumes, his uncle schemes and Eolo inquires, another moves behind the scenes. An ancient force stirs as the Raven is denied his sacrifice, and the clash for the title of Lease becomes ever more trivial in the face of vaunting ambition and dying gods.

Ann Leckie steps away from the galaxy of the Imperial Radch to try her hand at a fantasy version of Hamlet narrated by an ancient god observing - and perhaps acting - from the wings. It's not an exact translation - Mawat's weakness is not uncertainty, but rather his absolute surety - but the parallels are there, and mean that various characters can rest in familiar niches which obviate the need for long-winded exposition. Instead, the focus is on that which is not familiar; on the gods who move behind the scenes, and whose actions or failures to act evoke the kind of pathetic fallacies which in a more conventional story are mere dramatic artefacts. Scotland suffers under Macbeth as a dramatic echo of his disruption of divine right; Vashtai is plagued with sickness because there is no longer a god substituting for effective sanitation strategies or public health awareness.

As with sections of last month's The Fifth Season, The Raven Tower is largely told in the second person, with a god known as the Strength and Patience of the Hill essentially telling the story to Eolo, including descriptions of Eolo's actions and blending contemporary events with its recollections of deep time, and the historical actions leading up to the Raven's dominance of the current landscape.

It's undeniably the worldbuilding that makes this novel. The human characters are mere players on the stage, as the Strength and Patience of the Hill views them as largely transient beings. During the historical episode when the Strength and Patience of the Hill joins an alliance of gods to protect the city across the Strait from Vashtai, the people of the city are barely mentioned apart from those specifically associated with the gods. (It is also in this part of the story that the gods invent Huel, as an aside.) As a result, much of the story is more interesting than involving, but definitely worth a read.

Artemis, by Andy Weir
Jazz Bashara, courier and smuggler, lives in Artemis, the only city on the Moon. Established when the Kenyan government kickstarted its economy by offering big ol' bennies to corporations investing in the space industry, Artemis is a pseudo-state with a weird legal status, although the proper authorities - an upright cop named Rudy - still take issue with Jazz's smuggling activities. When one of her clients hires her to sabotage a rival business, Jazz is drawn into the affairs of a powerful, Brazilian drugs cartel. Her contact is murdered, and Jaxx finds herself needing to complete her contract for the sake of the very soul of Artemis.

Andy Weir's follow-up to critical and commercial smash The Martian is a more conventional story, and perhaps not quite as successful because of it. The Martian was very self-contained, and very concerned with the science of the situation. Artemis has a lot of science in it, but mixed up with slightly more action and adventure, and a big increase in human drama which is honestly the weakest point in the book. Jazz also falls into a few of the pitfalls of men writing women. She never quite boobs tittily anywhere - I can't help but feel that would be hazardous in lunar gravity - but comments on her own physical attractiveness in a way that doesn't quite ring true.

Not bad, but it's no The Martian.

The Singer of Apollo, by Rick Riordan
Percy Jackson is just taking it easy with his bestie, the satyr Grover, when Apollo - at this point in the narrative, still a fully-divine, Olympian god; my next review block will include the continuing mortal adventures of Apollo, in the latest volume in the Trials of Apollo series - drops by to ask a favour, and by ask a favour of course I mean tell him that he's going to do something for him, or else. Specifically, he needs Percy to retrieve a missing automaton, one of the Celedones, to complete his backing group for a concert on Mount Olympus, otherwise the sound would be all wrong! And also, the Celadon might provoke panic on Broadway.

This is a bit of a cheat to include as a novel, since it's actually only a short story, but I've been a bit slack this month and I wanted to look a little less so. The Singer of Apollo is a fun little snippet, but really that's all. It's not intended to be anything more than that.

There is apparently some confusion as to the timing within the series, as in part of the chronology Percy is slightly indestructible, which would tend to lessen the dramatic impact of theat to life and limb.

So it goes.

Re-reads

Framley Parsonage, by Anthony Trollope
Mark Robarts has achieved early success in life, thanks to the patronage of Lady Lufton - the mother of his schoolfriend Lord Lufton - who has secured for him the living of Framley and introduced him to his now-wife, Fanny. Unfortunately, Mark falls in with poor company, and finds himself caught up in the money troubles of the dissipate MP Mr Sowerby. Meanwhile, Mark's humble sister Lucy attracts the affections of Lord Lufton; in opposition to his mother, because Trollope, and in favour to the aristocratic Griselda Grantly.

Framley Parsonage is vintage Trollope; a gently satirical portrait of country life and the politics of his age, combined with a condemnation of the money-lending trade - apparently a terrifyingly unregulated business at the time - and the kind of romantic subplot that is bread and butter to the author (and two or three secondary romances to boot.)

As a note, one of the things that I really enjoy in the Barchester Chronicles is the recuring theme of married couples loving and supporting one another, even after marriage. It's rare these days to see a maried couple as romantic.

Reading Roundup - February, March and April 2019

Three months at a pop this time (I missed two and its taken most of the third to get this written up.) I managed two entries for the Found Horizons challenge, three other new novels, seven comics, two audio plays and eight re-reads.

Found Horizons
Throne of the Crescent Moon, by Saladin Ahmed
Picked up on a recommendation from James Holloway, this has also started a bit of a kick on fantasy novels taking their model from something other than mediaeval European history and/or Tolkien. In this case, the setting is influenced by the Thousand and One Nights. The novel is supposedly part one of a trilogy, but is largely complete in itself and the second part hasn't emerged in the seven years since this one came out.

The novel follows the struggles of the ghul hunter, Doctor Adoullah Makhslood, and his friends and assistants against a mysterious and terrible dark sorcerer bent on seizing an ancient and apocalyptic power from the fallen empire on whose ruins the current Kalifate was built. The ageing Doctor battles using costly and exhausting sacred invocations, and fights alongside the holy swordsman Rasheed, lion shapeshifter Zamia, and his old friends the mage Dawoud and the alchemist Litaz. All of them have incredible powers, but the society in which they live has no respect for their abilities or their fight. In addition to the supernatural threat they face, they must struggle with social unrest: A revolution led by the charismatic Falcon Prince, and the violence of the thuggish zealots known as the Young Scholars, whose seeming-piety Rasheed admires, but who are little different from modern fundamentalists, white nationalists, or those who use the phrase 'Brexit means Brexit' without irony.

While the characters and plot aren't bad, the real strength of the book is in its worldbuilding, which is deep and compelling, and a refreshing change from more conventional fantasy.

Black Leopard, Red Wolf, by Marlon James
They call him Tracker, and it is said that he has a nose. One eye is that of a man, the other of a wolf. If you want someone found, he will track them into the underworld itself. Twice, he has been called upon to find a child, and now the child is dead. Someone wants to know why. Someone wants to know how. Tracker may be the only one who knows, but he isn't going to be quick to tell.

Black Leopard, Red Wolf is the first fantasy novel by Jamaican author Marlon James. It follows the deeply personal odyssey of Tracker - the wolf of the title - as he moves through the the great events of his day, across a sprawling secondary world steeped in the folklore of Africa (primarily southern Africa, I believe, but I'd still be writing these reviews in June if I tried to track down everything in this book to its source.) Tracker - a gruff, misanthropic loner by nature, whose motto is 'nobody loves anybody else' - is both our protagonist and our deeply unreliable narrator; called on to give testimony to an inquisitor, he instead tells a series of interlinking stories which lie somewhere nebulously between objective truth and outright lie. In his search for the missing boy and his monstrous captors, he is forced to work with an old partner - the shapeshifting black leopard - and a ragtag band of equally truculent souls, as well as navigating an increasingly complex web of lies surrounding the identity of the child in question.

Black Leopard, Red Wolf is an intricate exploration of internal and external truth, as well as a sort of survival-horror-level approach to fantasy, set in a world completely unfamiliar to the European reader. It also features another rarity in that its grumpy, anithero protagonist is gay. It's highly profane in its language, bleak in its outlook, and definitely on the dark side of the genre.

A word of warning: bad things happen to children in this book. A lot.

New Novels

The flamboyantly camp Dr Tachyon, depicted
on this cover, is 100% straight, as is pretty
much everyone in this book.

Wild Cards, edited by George RR Martin
An alien force comes to Earth, bringing with them a virus intended to transform the human genome to generate psychic abilities. Conflict with a defector and the interference of a human criminal result in the 'Wild Card' virus being released over New York, and so the age of superpowers begins. Some of those infected recover, most die horribly, and some are changed, into superpowered 'Aces' (a few with very specific, low-utility powers are called 'Deuces') or disfigured 'Jokers'.

First published in 1987, this first anthology in a shared world series edited by George RR 'Song of Ice and Fire' Martin... is really, really eighties. Almost all of the major characters are men, with women playing supporting and usually romantic roles. The two significant female Aces in the collection are a woman who absorbs the knowledge and personalities of other people, ultimately becoming overwhelmed by the burden of the minds of the great men whose knowledge she now holds, and a young radical whose rape caused her to turn into a vigilante subway car. Minor female characters include several Jokers with exotic deformities, and one who has passive sex powers. There is also a half-Japanese, half-African American Ace who is a pimp with sex-fuelled magical powers; not precisely a negative portrayal, but the book is hard into exoticism. Notably, this edition has three stories not in the original printing, which includes 'Ghost Girl Takes Manhattan', and that has a much more active female character, Wraith (although even she spends a striking amount of time naked.)

With all of this in mind, 'Wild Cards' presents a history of a world with superheroes in an interesting way. The quality of the stories varies, but they are generally well-written, albeit unevenly characterised. It's likely that, if this were written today - and edited by anyone by Martin - I wouldn't give it the time of day, but as a historical artefact I'm kind of interested to see how the series is going to progress and transform through the succeeding books.

Although there are twenty-seven of them, so don't hold your breath.

The Restless Girls, by Jessie Burton
So, here's a book that I saw on a poster at the railway station. Seriously.

In a Mediterranean-type kingdom, an adventurous queen dies, leaving a dozen daughters and an overprotective father who decides that they will be safer without hobbies, dreams or excessive direct sunlight. He locks them in a single dormitory, watched over by a portrait of their late mother. The girls discover a hidden door behind the portrait, and a path which leads to a hidden palace where they dance with a crowd of animals every night, until the King notices how fast they are going through shoes. He exiles the oldest daughter, and determines to marry one of the others to a man who can take up his crown. Only one prospective suitor meets the king's challenge, but is he all that he seems?

Jessie Burton's retelling of the Twelve Dancing Princesses - which I read to my partner, and let me tell you, I really need to pick books for reading aloud that require fewer than a dozen distinct voices throughout - is a gently subversive delight, which flips the script on the bartered bride mode of fairy tale. The princesses are great, and their mother - although dead for the entirety of the story - is an absolute baller.

It may be a bit of a liberty to call this one a novel, it's more of an illustrated novella, but I won't hold that against it.

The Battles of Ben Kingdom: The Claws of Evil, by Andrew Beasley
In Victorian London, apprentice cooper Ben Kingdom is about to stumble into an ancient conflict between the rooftop-running Watchers and the subterranean Legion: a conflict over nothing less than the fate and soul of the world itself. Subject of apocalyptic prophecy, Ben is fated to choose between good and evil and so bring an end to this war. But which side will he choose, and which is which anyway? (Spoiler warning, the ones who live underground, have violent hazing rituals, cages full of monster birds, and fantasize about world domination are the baddies, while the ones who work with an actual angel aren't.)

As I might have given away with that synopsis, the big problem with this otherwise enjoyable Victorian supernatural adventure is that its central conflict lacks a fundamental element of suspense. The story wants us to question which side Ben will choose - even throwing in a Macguffin to tempt him towards the wrong choice - but since it also wants us to like Ben, it's fairly clear that he's going to end up on the literal side of the angels. In fact, this means that the fate of dissenting miniboss Ruby 'too cute for villainy' Johnson is far more interesting than Ben's, because she genuinely could go either way.

I got this one from the library, so no telling if or when I might get hold of the second and third volumes, but if I see them I will.

New Comics
The Power of the Dark Crystal, by Simon Spurrier, Kelly Matthew and Nicole Matthews
The official continuation of the story of the movie The Dark Crystal - an absolute corker, if you don't know it - was going to be a film, but ended up as a 12-issue comic. Set many years after the film, the comic sees the Gelfling race restored and now ruling Thra from the Castle of the Crystal. Jen and Kira are ancient, and the rule of Thra is mostly undertaken by a corrupt priesthood who demand extortionate 'offerings' in exchange for access to the crystal and to Jen and Kira.

A being called Thurma, a fireling, comes to the castle, asking for a shard of the crystal to save her world, which lies deep beneath the surface of Thra. Denied, she steals a shard, bringing back the Skekses and Mystics, and flees with the aid of a conflicted temple acolyte called Kensho. As the two young fugitives bond, pursued by the agents of the priesthood, the tools of the Skekses now controlled by Jen, and by the whining Chancellor, the ancient Aughra struggles to understand what is happening, and how the world can be on the brink of destruction again.

As a huge fan of The Dark Crystal, and having written a failed pitch for inclusion in an authorised anthology, I was very keen to read this. It's pacing is a little slow, and honestly it probably could have stood to be six-to-eight issues, but I did enjoy the ideas and the sense of impending doom was on point. It is a fairly tragic capper to the story of Jen and Kira, as the hope of Thra - and the subterranean world of Mithra - is passed to Thurma and Kensho.

There's a follow-up being released at the moment, which I'll catch up with once it's in trades.

Rat Queens Volume 1: Sass and Sorcery, by Kurtis J Wiebe
In a world where the rough and tumble of high fantasy is giving way to a more orderly world of trade and culture, the town of Palisade is faced with the question of what to do with the adventurers who once tamed the land and protected the borders, but are now just a drunken, violent threat to civic harmony. Best - or worst - of the crowd are the Rat Queens, a quartet of hard-drinking, bar-brawling women: Hannah, an elf necromancer; Vi, a dwarf fighter; Delilah, a human cultist of a blood-drinking squid god, turned cleric of no particular deity; and Betty, a smidgen(1) with an appetite for drugs, ladies and stabbings. When the merchants guild hires assassins to wipe out the adventurers, the Rat Queens take it personally, which is going to be bad news for someone.

Probably the greatest triumph of this opening volume of the Rat Queens' adventures is not concisely presenting the above information to bring us into their world, but in creating characters who are not only complex and engaging - even likable, for all their rough edges - but convincing both as comic characters and as roleplaying PCs. Wiebe captures the weird banter of the game table with uncanny accuracy, but also creates convincing protagonists.

My only real problem with the book is that it kind of impinges on one of those ideas I probably wouldn't have had time to write anyway - what if a roleplaying world were real, and most of the monsters were dead now - although a) 'The Boys from the Borderlands' would be a lot less fun, and b) it woudl already have been clashing with Kings of the Wyld.

Rat Queens Volume 2: The Far Reaching Tentacles of N'rygoth, by Kurtis J Wiebe
Huh. So it turns out that I picked up volume 2 of Rat Queens in a sale pretty much right after writing the review above, but before publishing this roundup. (Seriously, I need to get on with these reviews a lot faster.)

Picking up directly from the end of volume 1, this one sees a revenge plot against the captain of the watch - a former assassin and Hannah's on/off booty call - expand to exploit Delilah's ex-deity and basically destroy the world, so that everyone can experience one man's pain (albeit only for the few moments it takes for the rest of existence to fold up like a barely-spoiled tablecloth.

While still not a million miles from the style of its roleplaying roots, The Far-Reaching Tentacles of N'rygoth is very much more a conventional narrative than Sass and Sorcery, which is probably a vital step after the establishing chapters. On the other hand, it has the sort of increasingly relevant backstory that is the hallmark of character-heavy RPGs, including an appearance by Delilah's never-before-mentioned husband, and flashbacks to Vi's break with her traditional dwarf family (in regards to which, I loved the fact that the family armoury business was run like a dynastic fashion house.) Betty has a bit of a side role in this, but I'm sure she'll get to break out of her tragicomic sideline in future volumes.

Still on board for this one. Roll on the next sale.

Giant Days: Vol 8, by John Allison
Man; what else can I say about Giant Days? While Vol. 8 brings new stories and new challenges, the series is sufficiently slanted towards character material that recapping the stories feels somewhat redundant. It's all 'Susan, Esther and Daisy do some stuff and shenanigans ensue', and as much as it's all glorious, its strength lies in 'Susan, Esther and Daisy,' rather than in the nature of either stuff or shenanigans. Maybe one of the girls gets into trouble due to romance, politics or a misunderstanding, or perhaps one of them tries to introduce the others to some new activity, but the drama, tension and comedy are in their reactions and interactions.

On the character front, Susan, Esther and Daisy continue to mature, and to grow apart, as Susan and Daisy's love-lives bring tension into the household (Esther's love-life is a train wreck, but a largely self-contained train wreck.) If I have a criticism of Vol. 8, it's that this growing-apartness cuts down that so-important level of interaction between the three central characters. I am also increasingly aware that a university-based series has a natural end point, which must be coming up in the not-too-distant future. This makes me sad, especially given that Allison's webcomic, Bad Machinery, has ended and that I am into the later stories re-reading it on Go Comics, but fortunately my next read was...

By Night: Vol 1, by John Allison
It is so weird to read a John Allison comic that isn't even slightly set in the north of England.

Jane is a chemistry major and aspiring documentarian whose awesome-if-unruly hair seriously suggests a way-back family connection to Giant Days' Daisy Wooton. Interning at a lab in her home town, she crosses paths with former BFF and early-onset silver vixen Heather, and the two of them set out to explore Charleswood, the recently-abandoned estate-cum-designer-community created by the town's founder, Chet Charles, and document its decline into ruin. There they unexpectedly discover a portal to another world, and with the assistance of Jane's work colleague and Heather's recently unemployed father they plan to expand their explorations into terra incognita.

Weird fiction, fantasy, mature exploration of the disconnection of youth and the collapse of the industrial society taken for granted by past generations, By Night is your typical John Allison mix of whimsy and introspection, and I am so here for it, even if I do assume on some primal level that all these small-town Americans are secretly from Yorkshire. I haven't embraced Jane and Heather as much as the Giant Days crew, perhaps because I don't have the 'in' of a familiar character (as Esther crossed from Scary-Go-Round,) but I'm happy to put the effort in to get to know them.

Vox Machina Origins, by Matthew Mercer, Matthew Colville, Olivia Samson and Chris Northrop
Speaking, as I was a couple of books ago, about roleplaying characters, I picked up the first six-issue arc of Vox Machina Origins, a comic recounting of the earliest adventures of the heroes of the Critical Role D&D(2) stream. Before they were a party, let alone heroes of Tal'dorei, the future members of Vox Machina were a scattered bunch of socially inept (either through inability or antisocial tendencies) sellswords doing grunt work in the swamp port of Stilben. What is the link between their various quests? Who is disappearing the poor? And what exactly is the legal, copyright standing of Scanlan Shorthalt's persistent filking?

I'm a bit of a recent convert to Critical Role, having started off at the top of Campaign 2 after failing twice to get into Campaign 1 - partly because of the relatively low video quality, partly because it comes in with the characters already at level 7 from the pre-stream game with the backstory to match, and partly because of the intimidating volume of video to go back through - I'm now working my way back through the Vox Machina streams. Moving up towards episode 100, I feel I know the characters well enough to pick up the backstory comics.

It makes an interesting contrast to Rat Queens, in part because, despite the characters actually being the PCs from a roleplaying game, they're written to be more like conventional narrative characters (probably in part because the CR team are fans of the Queens - that's how I came across that series - and are wary of too much parallel humour.) It's also interesting to get a look into the early days of the characters, before they had access to all the magic and all the powers. Good fun, and I'm looking forward to meeting early Pike and Percy later this year.

Heart of Empire, by Bryan Talbot
In 1999, Bryan Talbot released the sequel to his 1970s psychedelic epic, The Adventures of Luther Arkwright. Heart of Empire: The Legacy of Luther Arkwright had the characters of the original aged pretty much in real-time, and Arkwright's daughter, Princess Victoria, as its protagonist. Victoria's mother, Queen Anne, is the monstrous, psychic ruler of a global empire every inch as corrupt and repressive as the Puritan regime that it replaced, and much more powerful. The comic essentially follows Victoria's personal progress as she discovers the truth of the world she has been insulated for, and in doing so confronts the impending destruction of the multiverse and the real fate of her supposedly-assassinated twin brother and long-vanished father.

Heart of Empire is a much more conventional story than Luther Arkwright. It is a linear narrative and concerned with a much less philosophical threat at its core (the Disruptors wanted to guide history to their own, mysterious ends; the Heart of Empire just wants to rip everything apart at the molecular level.) It features the completion of a process shown in the end of the first graphic, where we saw the victorious rebels already beginning to become the new oppressors. This British Empire has a slave- and tribute-based economy, and a massive dose of legally-supported racism, contrasted with a more liberal America.

Ultimately, Heart of Empire lacks the iconic heft of Luther Arkwright. It also lacks the unfortunate 70s tropes, although it does have a few 90s tropes to regret in retrospect; in particular, Victoria lacks agency for much of the story, although less because she's a 90s female character and more because she, like her father, is a pawn of destiny.

It's okay, is what I'm saying. Easier to read than its predecessor, but with less staying power as a consequence.

Audio Plays

Last of the Cybermen
Jamie and Zoe are waiting for the Doctor to return, but when they see him take a fall and run to help him, they find in his place a large and more bombastic man in an outrageous coat. The Sixth Doctor has been transported into his own past, and he needs to make sure he doesn't change anything, doing everything as his second incarnation would do. Unfortunately, it's been a long time since he had to deal with The Last of the Cybermen.

This is the second part of the 'locum Doctor' sequence; a set of three plays in which the Big Finish Doctors are swapped with their past selves to interact with the surviving companions (although unlike Legend of the Cybermen, the director doesn't force poor Wendy Padbury to do an impression of her younger self, which can't be easy to maintain for an entire play.) Threatening the Doctor's mission are a cyber-cult within the elite educational institute that made Zoe the superlogical polymath she is, and the usual greed and corruption of humanity. The Sixth Doctor also lacks the Second's tenacious will to remain free at all costs, and if he succumbs to his own impulse to take the pragmatic course, how will that change the world?

The Secret History
Steven and Vicki are taking a break with the Doctor in Ravenna, capital of the Western Roman Empire, when their Doctor is swapped with his much less vacay-happy Fifth incarnation. Belisarius is struggling to reunite the Empire, against the paranoia of the Emperor Justinian, and someone is keen to get the Doctor involved in events. Quintus, a roman medic with too much knowledge of time and space, and an axe to grind against the Doctor for perceived past - or rather future - wrongs.

The final locum Doctor play sees the Fifth Doctor step into the shoes of the First, and the Fifth Doctor is very different from the First, the coolly pragmatic history tourist who seriously considered bashing a caveman's skull in with a rock that one time. Finally, the plan which has set all these events in motion comes to fruition, and the Doctor is left to struggle not just for his life, but for his very existence.

Re-reads
Doctor Thorne, by Anthony Trollope
After a bit of a break, I've taken another step on the re-visiting of the Barchester Chronicles with Doctor Thorne, which I think may be the last one I've actually read (although that might be Framley Parsonage.)

We take a step out of Barchester itself for this one, and into the genteel countryside of Barsetshire. Here, the eponymous Doctor Thorne has his practice. A modestly well-off, educated physician, Thorne is somewhat looked down on by his fellow doctors for his mercenary nature - he has a set schedule of fees for different visits, instead of just modestly accepting much more money without comment - and tendency to diagnose on the basis of symptoms and other such malarkey, but highly respected by the local worthies. The light of his life is his niece, Mary, who has been educated with the children of the Squire of Greshamsbury. In Mary Thorne we meet another of Trollope's saintly young women, who through the book weathers the condemnation of society after the penurious squire's son and heir, Frank, falls in love with her despite the family's injunction that he 'must marry money.'

Thankfully, she is in a Trollope novel and not a more harshly realistic milieu, so it all ends happily thanks to virtue, and indeed just about everyone ends up well, except for the most pernicious and unrepentant of Mary's nay-sayers, who loses two fiances in the course of the narrative, because that's the worst thing that can happen to a woman.

So, yeah; it's Trollope. It's lovely and fluffy and very old-fashioned, and also introduces Miss Martha Dunstable, a bastion of common sense and awesomeness.

The Sleeper and the Spindle, by Neil Gaiman
When a mystical sleep begins to spread across a kingdom, the young queen of a neighboring country, a woman with experience of magic, sets out with her dwarf companions to investigate. In a tower, in a castle, a maiden sleeps. While she sleeps, those in the castle sleep; all save a crone who watches over her. We know the story, we know the cure, but is this the story that we think it is?

Neil Gaiman is an accomplished reteller of fairy tales, and this Briar Rose/Snow White mashup - illustrated by Chris Riddell, which is something that, if you haven't gathered, I always have time for - has a definite twist in the tail. It also has a princess - or rather, a queen, who has no time to be waiting around for rescue, and indeed walks out on her own 'happy ending' to help others, swapping a wedding dress for armour and a sword - which, again if you haven't gathered, is something I will always have time for, as indeed are fairy tale retellings with a bit of a twist.

This is another story that I read to me partner at bedtime.

The Tales of Beedle the Bard, by JK Rowling
Another bedtime story for my partner, and another book illustrated by Chris Riddell (and not the last of either for these three months.) The Tales of Beedle the Bard is a metatextual DVD extra of a book, combining an in-universe collection of wizards' fairy tales with in-universe commentaries on the stories by Albus Dumbledore, providing the kind of Wizarding World deep cuts which have gained Rowling such derision from those who feel it is the fans job to create that sort of thing(3), and a few extra bits of metacommentary from Rowling herself in her role as... Harry Potter's biographer? It's all very literary agent theory.

The tales themselves are a mixed bag of morality tales, and perhaps most intriguingly quite deliberately feature magic which lies outwith that possible in the Wizarding World, which I suspect is a more interesting commentary on the nature of wizards than Rowling necessarily intended.

This is my second copy of Beedle the Bard, by the way; less because I love the stories than because Chris Riddell.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, by JK Rowling
And while we're on the subject, Arya and I finished the main Harry Potter series, wrapping up The Deathly Hallows almost exactly a year after we began The Philosopher's Stone. I re-read this myself not long ago, so I won't do any kind of in-depth analysis of the book itself at this juncture.

Arya did much better than I expected, vis a vis her aversion to emotionally challenging content. She took a bit of a pause after Dobby died, but wasn't as cut up as I thought about Hedwig. Then again, she's never fully accepted that 'cute little mouse' Scabbers was actually, in all conceivable meanings, a rat.

We've been trying since we finished to find another longer form story for me to read with her. We got halfway through the first book in The Land of Stories series before she complained that it was too scary, and dismissed my suggestion that Deathly Hallows was scarier 'apart from chapter 8.' We have, however, found a new jam at last, and indeed we have finished...

It's surprisingly hard to find an image
that isn't from the movie.

The Hundred and One Dalmations, by Dodie Smith
Nice, middle class Dalmatians Pong and Missis are shaken when their puppies are kidnapped by the malevolent, fur-loving Cruella de Vil to be made into coats. With the assistance of the nationwide network of the twilight barking, they set out across country to rescue their puppies from the wilds of Suffolk, only to find that there is much more on the line than just their one litter.

Arya got Cruella and Cadpig on World Book Day, a short story spin-off from a simplified retelling of The Hundred and One Dalmations, which she then asked to buy with her pocket money, so I thought I'd give her a go with the original.

Which is apparently out of print, so what the fuck is that about? I got a second hand set - The Hundred and One Dalmations and the sequel, The Starlight Barking, in which the dogs gain telepathic and telekinetic abilities from an alien god - and have also picked up the kindle versions for night reading.

This remains a damn good story, if a little old-fashioned in places. Missis is a good little wife, stronger in faith, but weaker in wits than Pongo, and the girl puppies are repeatedly noted to be weaker than their brothers, which I'm not sure is a thing. There is also a scene with gypsies which... Well, for starters it includes the word gypsy, and presents them as inveterate dog-thieves, although it also includes mention of the Romany language.

Good Omens, by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett
I re-read this one a couple of years ago, but hit it again with the upcoming TV adaptation finally on the definite horizon. I still love it, although I can appreciate some of the flaws in it more each time. In particular, Gaiman and Pratchett have always been a couple of white dudes, and in this and their other early work this is quite apparent, although the development of their female characters in particular marks them as very much white dudes who listened and learned.

Still love it.

The Bloody Chamber, by Angela Carter
Perhaps the best known work by the prolific British author Angela Carter, The Bloody Chamber is an anthology of richly Gothic fairy tales, including two takes on Beauty and the Beast - 'The Courtship of Mr Lyon' and 'The Tiger's Bride' - the titular Bluebeard tale, Puss in Boots as a bawdy sex comedy and of course 'The Company of Wolves', a version of the Red Riding Hood story, and a collection of other werewolf anecdotes which inspired the film The Company of Wolves.

Dark, sumptuous, oddly claustrophobic and by turns sensual and nauseous, The Bloody Chamber is arguably the prototype of the subgenre which Gaiman has made his own in works like The Sleeper and the Spindle. It's a lot of fun.

A Short History of Nearly Everything, by Bill Bryson
Almost done.

A Short History of Nearly Everything is an accessible potted history of science. It's a lively jaunt through the various developments of the last few centuries of thought, and the last few epochs of geological and evolutionary development. The problem, of course, is that as meticulously research as it was, who knows if the science stands up a decade and a half after publication.

Odd and the Frost Giants, by Neil Gaiman
And the last of our Chris Riddell-illustrated bedtime reads is this little gem, originally written for World Book Day many years ago and now re-released with added Riddell.

Odd is an odd boy, the son of a deceased viking who lives with his mother and step-family in a Scandinavian village. He is lame, having nearly severed his own leg with his father's axe, and considered something of a burden. When winter refuses to leave one year, he sets out into the wilderness, where he meets a fox, a bear and an eagle, and finds his way into an otherworldly adventure which might change the fate of the world.

Very much a novella, rather than a novel, this is a fairly straightforward coming of age tale, featuring a viking hero out of the classic bruiser mould (which is entirely suitable, as any saga would tell you,) learning to be more than a boy through wits instead of might.

(1) An off-brand hobbit.
(2) I think technically at this point they would actually have been Pathfinder characters, but who's counting?
(3) There are valid reasons to pooh-pooh this line of activity from Rowling, relating to the actual content and the decision to relegate it to deuterocanonical sources, but I'm pretty sure there are some nerds who just resent her basically creating her own wikia.