Heroes of Olympus - The Mark of Athena and The House of Hades

I've been getting caught up on Percy Jackson lately, inspired by my partner's run at the original heptalogy. The Mark of Athena was for a long time a sticking point for me, since my commute got bigger and more crowded and the hardback is fricking huge. So I bought the kindle edition as well and read that on the train.

Annabeth, Jason, Piper and Leo have flown to Camp Jupiter in the magical trireme Argo II, in the company of Coach Gleeson Hedge, action satyr. Percy and his friends Hazel and Frank are more than happy to sign on to the Quest of the Prophecy of Seven, but when Leo unaccountably opens fire on the camp, they are forced to set out straight off and pursued by Roman forces, heading for the forbidden Ancient Lands and a Greek treasure stolen long ago by the Romans. Banishing ghosts and battling monsters, they make their way across the Atlantic to the Mediterranean and Rome, where Annabeth has to go it alone in pursuit of the Mark of Athena, while Jason and Percy overcome their alpha-hero antagonism to take on a pair of giant twins.

Although technically victorious, our heroes begin the next book in the series, The House of Hades, separated, and indeed with Annabeth and Percy literally in Hell, or at least Tartarus.

With time running out, and at different speeds for those in and out of Tartarus, the heroes must make their way to the two sides of the Doors of Death in order to close them. En route, Annabeth and Percy must befriend those whom they might have thought implacable foes and learn the meaning of sacrifice. In the mortal world, Frank embraces his inner war god and Hazel is chosen by Hecate to learn to control the Mists. Meanwhile Leo, the perpetual seventh wheel of the quest, finds his destiny and proves that in some ways he is better than Percy Jackson, and Nico di Angelo comes out (which for a popular children's series is pretty huge.)

Riordan continues to combine rollicking adventure, snarky humour and mild horror to good effect. Especially effective is some of the soul-searching in The House of Hades, where Percy is faced with the consequences of his past heroism, not just in the resentment of monsters he has killed, but of those he has left behind and never thought of again (a not uncommon failing in ancient heroes.)

Dracula

Audible's new version of Bram Stoker's Dracula is a multi-voiced recording, each actor taking one of the epistolary narrators. Alan Cumming plays John Seward, while Tim Curry is Van Helsing (and thus has almost no lines; seriously, there's a couple of letters and some telegrams.) The promise 'all-star cast' is B-list at best, but competent. Especially interesting in terms of performance is the varied approaches to the dialogue of other characters. In particular, it is notable that Lucy mimics the accents of her friends, while Mina just reports their words.

Narratively speaking, revisiting Dracula always brings home that it's basically a story of a bunch of stuffy white blokes throwing money at a problem that happens to be a vampire. It's actually a very, very weird story by modern standards.

The Green Rider

Merchant's daughter Karigan G'ladheon is on her way home, having been expelled from school for whipping one of the posh kids in a fair fight, when she meets a dying royal messenger; a Green Rider. Entrusted with his last message and gifted with his horse and a golden brooch which grants her the power to become invisible, Karigan sets off on a desperate mission to deliver the message and protect King Zachary against a sinister plot, itself but a first move in a larger scheme against all that is good and right.

Some accuse fantasy, as a genre, of being too black and white, and Green Rider isn't about to change that. It's a tale of the virtuous against the vicious; a plucky young girl, a good and idealistic king and his loyal, courageous servants, against a soul-eating, monster loosing sorcerer, the king's selfish, sadistic brother, a gout ridden misogynist warlord and their drone-like soldiers. Karigan is a largely likable protagonist; if anything, too likable. An instant hit with anyone who isn't a complete and unmitigated villain, her path is largely untroubled by misunderstandings and even her sudden and unannounced mystical appearance in the throne room is soon glossed over. Very few characters are more than what they seem (two, I think) and the plot is pretty much a to b with detours at c, d and mortal peril at e.

Green Rider isn't a terrible book, and there are some interesting bits of world-building, but overall it lacks nuance and too much of Karigan's success is due to chance rather than wit or skill, despite establishing her as a capable fighter and survivor. It would have been good to see her working things out rather than being handed them in a machina.

Also, cream in tea. What the hell is wrong with you people?

Ellen Archer is a very capable reader, although I found it an odd choice to slip from narration in her slightly transatlantic New York accent to present the characters in faux-British of various stripes. Where is it written that fantasy belongs to Europe?

I sound really damning, and that's probably not fair, but I find I'm always less forgiving of a near miss than a total disaster.

Music in the Bone

I received a free Kindle copy of this book for review purposes.

A musician seeks the perfect sound through the perfect collaboration, no matter the cost to his partner. Seals sing on remote coasts and fiery elementals walk among the people of a shrouded, sunless land. Men dance with ghosts and gods live in cupboards, and aging cowboys sing their sad, sad songs.

Folk rites, ancient religions, horror, fantasy and science fiction blend in this collection of short stories by Marion Pitman. It's a very mixed bag, veering from the bleak and joyless 'Indecent Behaviour' to the mock-Gothic folly of 'Amenities', and from the phantasmagoria of 'Washing of the Waters' or 'Overnight Bus' to the dystopian SF Of 'Sunlight in Spelling'.

The most successful are the stories - including the titular 'Music in the Bone' - inspired by music, and in particular folk music, which rock an effective horror of identity and perception which feels linked to the modern culture of folk clubs and the intense yet transient connections with people encountered briefly and periodically in an emotionally charged atmosphere. I was also very fond of the more humorous vignette 'Amenities', in which a housekeeper shows the new owner the Gothic horror trappings of a house, and 'The Cupboard of the Winds', in which a woman negotiates with the goddess in her junk cupboard. I'm always a sucker for down-at-heels urban deity.

Other stories are less effective. 'Dead Men's Company' feels like an critical response to The Pirates of the Caribbean, but perhaps answering too much for its length, while 'The Seal Songs' has an evocative set-up, but doesn't do anything substantially new with its premise. I describe 'Indecent Behaviour' as bleak and joyless, and it is only the author's acknowledgement that it is a nasty piece of work that restrains me to that. If you miss one story in the collection, I recommend it be that one.

Overall, Music in the Bone and other stories is a little hard to quantify, given the mix of styles, subjects and tones. It's definitely worth a look for lovers of British folklore and folk music, although hardcore horror aficionados should look elsewhere.

The Barest Branch

In the late 9th century, Danish fisherman Dagfinn leaves his village to join one of the Viking crews sailing for England to join the great army of Guthrum in the conquest of Wessex. He finds England to be a strange land, and is never quite at home among the English, or indeed among the other Danes. Then, on a tax raid to the coast of East Anglia, Dagfinn and his mates encounter a village with an absurd fortune in gold. Where does it come from and how did they get it, and what price did they pay?

James Holloway is perhaps the greatest, possibly the only, proponent of the Gonzo style of history, which consciously abandons any attempt to portray people in history as basically like us but with better hats. At the same time, Gonzo history embraces the modern vernacular as preferable to coarse or flowery approximations of antique language or the dry language of science.In his own words:

"...fuck all attempts to portray the past in this reassuring light, because your ancestors were not just like you. They were in some ways, but in other ways they were huge fucking weirdoes, and the sooner you begin the process of trying to get your head around that, the smarter you’ll be, especially if you’re able to come to the conclusion that you also are a giant weirdo and half of what you do makes no sense whatsoever."

And that's basically the same approach Holloway's first novel takes, not just to history but to its other influence, the work of HP Lovecraft. Holloway's Vikings are brutal killers and - in some cases - casual rapists, but speak in a rugged modern dialect, while the first person narrative eschews the intellectual asceticism of the Lovecraftian voice in favour of the same tone, while maintaining the thematic hallmarks of alienation, isolation and identity.

While at first glance an axe-happy, weatherbeaten, foul-mouthed Viking sailor seems as far from Johnny Lovecraft-Protagonist as you could get, Dagfinn's origin as a beardless, slave-born bastard set him apart as much as a sense of obsessive historical romanticism, and the early sections of the book in which he contemplates with awe the cyclopaean relics of the Romans (not that Holloway resorts to using any of the touchstone words - cyclopaean, squamous, non-Euclidean) are actually more effective in terms of creeping, cosmic dread than the later sections with the actual monsters, although in the latter he does a good job of maintaining the appropriate sense of desperate futility in the face of armed and physically capable protagonists.

The Barest Branch is not going to be for everyone. It will not appeal to anyone who likes their Vikings pseudo-Shakespearean or their history clean, and it defies both of the predominant classes of Mythos protagonist - the wilting victim and the muscular hero. It is also very seriously not for anyone who has a problem with the word fuck. It could also use a final pass from an editor, but that's the nature of self-publishing. With those provisos, it is a well-written novella which manages to be effective both as Lovecraftian horror and as Gonzo history, and it's only a couple of quid on Amazon or DriveThru.

The Aeronaut's Windlass

With the surface of the world a lethally hostile place, the civilised nations of humanity live in towering spires of imperishable stone while bold aeronauts ply the skies between them. Captain Grim, privateer of Spire Albion, is caught up in the machinations of an ambitious rival Spire when he is retained to transport a team of inexperienced young guards, a cat and a mad Etherialist in search of saboteurs. Unfortunately, war is just the tip of the iceberg, with a swarm of lethal surface monsters and a sinister rival Etherialist manipulating events while being manipulated herself by... something else.

I've read a few of Jim Butcher's Dresden Files. I quite liked them, but I hit them at the last wind of my paranormal mystery period and there just seemed to be so many of them. The Aeronaut's Windlass is the first book in a new series (like, super new; I had no idea how new and now I'll have to wait if I want to read the next one) so doesn't have the terrifying prospect of trying to catch up with a jillionty titles, which is an advantage. Loosely it's somewhere between actually steampunk and conventionally steampunk, with Spire Albion (Britain) on the brink of war with Spire Aurora (clearly Spain, but also a bit Napoleonic France) in a world of titanic towers and technomagic. Oh, and intelligent, insufferable cats.

There is a lot to like about The Aeronaut's Windlass. Butcher writes good action and has created a neat system of technomagic in the etheric crystals and Etherialists which power the plot. There's a satisfying self-contained plot and plenty of hints at the longer arc story. The aerial combat scenes in particular showed both a deep love of naval extravaganzas and a fair degree of thought as to the implications of taking such a battle to three dimensions. The cats are brilliantly written; insufferable bastards the lot of them, but very convincingly cat, especially in their diplomacy. On the downside, Butcher is a bit patchy on the subject of tea - I will accept a world where the same pot is used for heating and brewing, but the idea of anyone, especially the pseudo-British, putting cream in tea is just wrong - and I began to regret after the first quarter that I wasn't keeping a tally every time someone ground their teeth (I do know that it happened a lot.)

I've caught a few fairly so-so audiobook readings, but Euan Morton (you may know him as the male Sith inquisitor in SWtOR) did an excellent job with this one.

I Shall Wear Midnight and The Shepherd's Crown

In 'I Shall Wear Midnight', Tiffany Aching is the fledgling witch of the Chalk, but the ancient revenant of hatred known as the Cunning Man is stalking to her. Born of twisted zeal and thwarted desire, the Cunning Man is the malevolent spirit of the witch hunt and hatred and strife follow in his wake. He brings the burning, and Tiffany will have to learn not to fear the fire and how not to fear the fire if she is to defeat him. And in 'The Shepherd's Crown', the death of a friend leaves Tiffany with too much to do and an old enemy pressing at the walls of reality trying to get in.

There's something decidedly melancholy about the conclusion of the Tiffany Aching series. Released in 2010, some suggested at the time that 'I Shall Wear Midnight' had something of the goodbye about it, but 'The Shepherd's Crown' is the farewell. It's Terry Pratchett's last completed novel - although the afterword notes that 'completed' is a strong term and it does feel as if Sir Terry had yet to perform the final pass at the last - and, taken with the later volumes in the main Discworld series, ushers in the last stages of a sea change on the Disc, the final transition from its roots as high fantasy parody in The Colour of Magic to something more akin to Downton Abbey with wizards. Cohen the Barbarian never met Granny Weatherwax, but it's certainly hard to think that his brand of unstoppable masculine senility would cut much ice with Tiff.

It's almost as if the Discworld has at last grown up, which is perhaps ironic for books aimed at younger readers, or perhaps not. The faeries are gone, the vampires have all taken the pledge and the barbarians are dealing with their problems like grownups. It's not just the setting either. 'I Shall Wear Midnight' opens with Tiffany intervening to prevent first the lynching and then the suicide of a man who has beaten his pregnant daughter so hard that she miscarried. The Discworld of Tiffany Aching is a tough, earthy place and Tiff is a tough, earthy girl.

And then 'The Shepherd's Crown' deals a great deal with loss, and in its way with the loss of its own author. The death which begins the novel leaves a gaping hole in the Discworld, as if the whole crazy place can't sustain without a rational centre, and it probably couldn't.

Am I rambling? Perhaps so. Perhaps I don't want to finish this review, because it feels so final. Perhaps I don't want to say that I felt that the rough edges showed a little too much in 'The Shepherd's Crown', or perhaps I only felt that way because I wanted it so much to be something sublime and it was only good.