#Blogtour #Review - Skin Deep by Antonia Lassa

Skin Deep
Antonia Lassa (translated by Jacky Collins)
Corylus Books, 30 April 2023 
Available as: PB, 136pp, e   
Source: Advance copy
ISBN(PB): 9781739298906 

I'm grateful to Corylus for sending me a copy of Skin Deep to consider for review, and for inviting me to join the book's blogtour.

About the Book - from the Publisher

When police arrest eccentric loner Émile Gassiat for the murder of a wealthy woman in a shabby seaside apartment in Biarritz, Inspector Canonne is certain he has put the killer behind bars. Now he just needs to prove it. But he has not reckoned with the young man’s friends, who bring in lawyer-turned-investigator Larten to head for the desolate out-of-season south-west of France to dig deep into what really happened. 

Larten’s hunt for the truth takes him back to the bustle of Paris as he seeks to demonstrate that the man in prison is innocent, despite all the evidence - and to uncover the true killer behind a series of bizarre murders.

Skin Deep is Antonia Lassa’s first novel to appear in English.

My review

Skin Deep is a short but addictive novella, of a length to gobble down in one or two sittings and written with an urgency which kept me wanting to know more. We're introduced to several spiky, interesting characters and I relished the way that the detective we meet first - Canonne, sparring irritably with the new know-it-all pathologist while lamenting his own dental problems - isn't, in the end, the focus of the story.

Rather, we're led to two equally - or even more - intriguing personalities. 

There's Larten, the private investigator and former lawyer, who operates from his mobile home - he likes to drive it to the scenes of his enquiries - which contains his office and wine cellar. And then there's Gassiat himself, the suspect, who shows an odd reluctance to talk, despite the legal danger he's in. What does he do on his mysterious nighttime boating trips? Is he a heartless gigolo, preying on elderly ladies - as Canonne believes? - or is there something stranger going on? Larten's investigation turns on his ability to walk the streets and uncover facts, but even more, on a sensibility he has which Lassa conveys as almost eerie, a sensibility for people and a willingness to see more than others do. It may be related to a certain unconventionality Larten shows (not giving details because I think the reader should discover this themself but he has depths to him! I felt of him as something of an outsider and one with a degree of daring, giving him a perspective that eludes those who exist in a more mundane rut.

Whatever, this is an excellent mystery, one which also poses questions about relationships, about convention and the value - or not - of appearances. It also examines our need for love and how that makes us vulnerable, while moving between superbly rendered locations in Paris and on the southern coast of France, as summer fades away and winter rolls in.

Great fun to read, and - when they ultimately come on the stage - there is a truly despicable villain here, see if you can spot who it is!

About the Author

Born in Paris, Antonia Lassa is an enologist who works as a consultant for different private wineries around the world. This passion for wine has been instilled in her singular detective Albert Larten, for whom each new investigation is like a meticulous tasting. Wine is savoured through the eyes, the nose and the mouth, just like the crimes found in Skin Deep, with readers being invited to get involved with their five senses.

Antonia Lassa is the pseudonym of Luisa Etxenike.

About the Translator

Dr. Jacky Collins, lecturer in Spanish and Latin American Studies at Stirling University, is the Festival Director for Newcastle Noir. As ‘Dr Noir’ she regularly interviews a range of internationally acclaimed and emerging crime fiction authors at national and international events. Her series of author ‘consultations’ on the Newcastle Noir YouTube channel - The Doctor Will See You Now - is where lovers of everything crime fiction can catch up on news about latest publications.

For more information about Skin Deep see the publisher's website here - and of course the other stops on the blogtour which you can see listed on the poster below. 

You can buy Skin Deep from your local high street bookshop or online from Bookshop UK, Hive Books, Blackwell's, Foyle's, WH Smith, Waterstones or Amazon.

#Review - The Lost and the Damned by Olivier Norek

The Lost and the Damned (The Banlieues Trilogy, 1)
Olivier Norek (trans Nick Caistor)
Maclehose Press (Quercus), 12 November 2020
Available as: HB, 304pp, e
Source: Advance e copy via Netgalley
ISBN: 9780857059628

I'm grateful to the publisher for an advance e-copy of The Lost and the Damned via NetGalley to consider for review.

Content warning: this book does depict some very unpleasant events, both instances of torture and sexual assault. I don't describe these in my review below.

The Lost and the Damned is an explosive police procedural/ thriller, set in Seine-Saint-Denis, one of the scuzzy northern outskirts of Paris. The place is all tower blocks, dereliction and the camps of refugees and outcasts. It's not a tourist district or a smart shopping quarter. 

Here, Capitaine Victor Coste is about to lose one of his most experienced officers, fleeing the city for a quieter life in the country, and to gain a new recruit in his place. This happens just as a perplexing series of murders begins - murders with a hint of the supernatural, murders that seem staged, with the Press informed of every detail. At the same time, Coste starts to receive anonymous letters, pointing to something rotten in his own department.

I loved this book - the characters, the seedy atmosphere, the air of cynicism. Coste is an honest cop, as these things go, but he's living in a very dirty world and it's impossible to pretend that all is well. Sometimes corners have to be cut. But we know - Norek uses several viewpoints in this book - that Coste and his team are crossing paths with monsters whose depravity would astound even him, world-weary detective or not. Stumbling around in the same maze are a crusading journalist and a hard-bitten PI. Each has fragments of the story, but very different interests.

It's an enjoyable book on several levels. 

There is the unfolding of the devilish events - events Norek takes his own good time to trace to their roots. There is the depiction of Coste and his team (in which I include pathologist Dr Léa Marquant, who clearly fancies the pants off him only he doesn't realise). They are real characters with foibles and a true sense of a shared history. Introducing them through the arrival of Johanna, the new member, gives us an outsider's view of the squad on which Norek then builds with deeper insights.

Also vividly portrayed is Seine-Saint-Denis - almost a character in its own right, lovingly (if that is the world - it's a grim place) described and explored. The cop's-eye view (Norek is a former police officer) is unsentimental, but still manages to be both empathetic to the the plight of those who wash up there and knowing of the political shenanigans that make that plight worse.

Re-reading that last paragraph you might doubt my use of the word "enjoyable". This isn't, as I have said, "nice" Paris, "tourist" Paris, "smart" Paris. But it feels real, it tells a truly gripping story and it makes you care about the people there.

Nick Caistor's translation is open, readable and strikes a good balance, I think, between retaining the sense (for an English reader) that this is a book about a foreign and different place and making the text familiar and readable. 

I'm very glad this is the start of a trilogy, I am looking forward to meeting Capitaine Victor Coste and his team again.

For more information about The Lost and the Damned, see the Quercus website here.

#Review - Paris by Starlight by Robert Dinsdale

Design by Amy Musgrave

Paris by Starlight
Robert Dinsdale
Del Rey, 5 November 2020
Available as: HB, 465pp, e, audio
Source: advance e-copy, bought copy from Wallingford Bookshop

ISBN: 9781529100457

I'm grateful to the publisher for an advance e-copy of Paris by Starlight via Netgalley to consider for review. 

In Paris by Starlight, we meet a nation of refugees, the People, whose country - never named - has been absorbed into "the Russias". It was, in olden times, a wonderful, magical country whose inhabitants lived by night, not day, under their own Seven Stars. They lived among wonderful, glowing plants - the "Flowers-by-Night" through which flitted birds called lightjars. They set sail on the Landlocked Sea, in which swam the Water Dogs - creatures with both legs and gills. And their stories were written down in a fabulous book called the Nocturne.

Those splendours are long past, but still remembered as the last of the People make their journey some three thousand miles through Europe, scaling fences, enduring prisons and detention centres, begging and stealing, to find somewhere they can make a home. 

At last, some of them come to Paris. (I think, by the way, this is a slightly alternate Paris - Dinsdale introduces it as "Paris, not so long ago" and the atmosphere had - to me - a slightly 50s vibe: no mobiles, the news is all on the radio and in the papers, no mention of Internet. But the events the book is founded on - the plight of refugees - feels very modern). 

Also in Paris, Isabelle is searching for the father who abandoned her nineteen years before. Club by club, night by night and bar by bar, she performs her music, hoping to eventually cross paths with him. But instead she runs across a girl of the People, wandering and starving, and is drawn into their covert world of loss and beauty. 

For things are changing in Paris. The presence of the People, and the stories from their Nocturne, seem to be re-creating their lost country. Water dogs flit in and out of the Seine and lightjars are seen blazing above flowers-by-night which spout among the concrete overpasses and tower blocks of northern Paris.

In the first half of the book, Dinsdale explores this glorious transformation as he establishes his group of characters. Besides Isabelle there is Levon and his family, which includes Arina, the girl she found scrounging for food in an alleyway, as well as his grandmother Maia. Levon also lost his father, Hayk, when the soldiers came and has protected his family along all the hard miles of the Trail. And there are others too whom Isabelle has connections with: Hector and his wife and young son and their circle. 

Things all seems to be going well, but the reader will suspect that trouble is ahead. Readers of Dinsdale's previous book, The Toymakers, will I think notice a similarity of themes in Paris by Starlight. In both, vagabond, outcast people from the East find their refuges in wealthy, complacent Western cities and kindle some of the magic of their homelands. In both, we see that this magic is not sufficient to ward off conflict, either within families and peoples, or between them. And in both, that conflict is destructive both of beauty and safety. In Paris, a "New Resistance" grows up, harping on a romanticised version of the Second World War and of the effort against German occupation but really a cover for thuggery and narrow-mindedness. Elements of the People respond in kind, seemingly dooming any hope of peace and acceptance, and things get very dark indeed.

It is a book I enjoyed a lot. However, I do one reservation about the central idea and about the way it is used and developed. Dinsdale's People clearly stand for the myriad refugees currently fleeing across Europe, denied shelter and safety, and the refusal of so many to accommodate these actual, real people should itself move and anger us. It shouldn't - surely it shouldn't? - be necessary to dramatise this idea by having the presence of people fleeing persecution generate a bewitching nighttime beauty and then having hoodlums trash that, and it bothers me somehow to see the crisis portrayed in that way. I'm not sure if I am right to be bothered, but this did make it hard at times for me to stay with the story, especially towards the end of the book.

That said, in Paris by Starlight Dinsdale creates a galaxy of characters (hard to avoid the stellar metaphor) who I found myself caring about a great deal. Paris by Starlight is beautifully, often movingly, written and the central love story is tender and sad, rooted in these well-drawn characters. The respective losses of their fathers have, for example, shaped both Isabelle and Levon. There's a touch of the unreliable narrator about Isabelle, for example in the way the novel gives us a certain impression of her mother as being slightly shiftless, romantic and unreliable which is then belied once she makes a (rather late) appearance in the book. That is typical of the writing here: despite the starkly contrasting positions taken up, the most arresting characters are conflicted, changeable and contradictory. I took a message from it that the way out may, perhaps, be embracing those contradictions, rather than trying to tidy them away.

It's a complex book and one that will stay with me. You really should try it and see what you think - I'm really looking forward to discussing this one!

Review - The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue by V E Schwab

The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue
V E Schwab
Titan Books, 6 October 2020
Available as: HB, 560pp, e
Source: Advance e-copy via NetGalley
ISBN: 9781785652509
Snap verdict: This is what you should be reading

I'm grateful to the publisher for an advance e-copy of The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue via NetGalley.

I finished this book, closed my Kindle, and just sat there, trying to work out what had HAPPENED. I've read quite a lot by V E Schwab (not everything - she is prolific and writes for many different audiences) and I THOUGHT I knew what to expect.

But this... this was simply astonishing. A game changer of a book, for the reader (and, I'd hope, for the author - but that's perhaps presumptuous to say).

It is SO good.

A book to sink into, to lose oneself in.

A book that plays games, switches, dives and comes back from a different direction, targeting you right in your feelings, tying you in knots, delivering the kill and then... then doing it all AGAIN with different feelings, different knots and a different kill.

OK, stop babbling David. (I told a friend on Twitter that reviewing this I might just gush and you can see, here I am, gushing). Let's try and get hold of this protean, gorgeous wonder of a book and review it properly.

Addie (Adeline) LaRue is a young peasant woman living an ordinary life in an ordinary village in France in the late 17th century. The great drama, great crisis of her life is that while she longs for more breadth, experience and more... just more life, her parents (as parents will) want her to marry, have children, be settled. She dodges this for a while but not, oh, the wedding bells are ringing and the dress is being laced upon Addie and the life that goes with the dress is being laced on her... the world is closing in.

So Addie makes a bargain. A bargain she really shouldn't, with one of the dark things in the wood, one of the powers you really, really shouldn't pray to - in case they answer. And so, Addie's soul is in hock and she's cut loose from that village and while she gets that breadth of life (well, sort-of life) that she wants, Addie discovers that the wider world is a cruel and cold place and that there's nowhere in it for her. Addie can't make a mark on the world ('If a person cannot leave a mark, do they exist?'), she can't be remembered once out of sight. She can have a love affair, but she has to restart it every morning. If she rents a room for the night, she'll be turfed out as soon as the landlord or landlady turns their backs and another customer arrives. With no persistence in memory, Addie can't earn money, can't live anywhere. She exists on the margins. All else changes but Addie stays the same, as those she knew, those she loved, crumble to dust. And across the years, she's tormented by the creature - the god, the devil? - that she bargained with. Luc, as she calls him, is, in a sense, her creation. Only Luc rememberers her, only Luc remains.

It becomes clear, over the years, that Luc wants more than her soul. That she, knowing nobody else remembers her, nobody else will ever know her, wants, needs him. Hatred and love dance together in a whirl that passes down the years in meetings and partings, in a strange kind of game as Luc tempts Addie to wish oblivion for herself, as she bargains with him for an alternative.

Everything comes to a head in New York where for the first time in three centuries, Addie senses change, senses a loophole in her deal with Luc, when a young man remembers her.

The way that Schwab builds up the fantasy of Addie's life is stunning, believable, full of pathos and horror and desperate desire. Driven to the margins of the world, she makes an existence for herself inspiring art and artists (a recurring theme here), exploring literature (she 'reads of strange lands, and monsters, and men who can't ever go home...')  She, literally, can't paint or draw or write herself (a cruel twist from Luc when child Addie was so invested in her sketching and drawing) but she can be a Muse. What a way to encapsulate the role of a woman in a male dominated society - just the thing she was running from when she made her bargain in the woods - to be erased, voiceless, seen only by the traces left across the years in men's works.

So we gradually learn about the events that have made Addie, her victories and defeats in that endless struggle, the moments of respite and the moments of horror, and we really, really, get to know the person she has become and to admire her for what she's achieved. It's powerful writing. The central idea - and its working out - could fill a book and it would be a good book.

But - ands this is really a glorious thing - Schwab DOESN'T STOP THERE. She has much more for us. Meet Henry, an uncertain young man in a world full of sharp teeth. I really can't tell you too much about him because spoilers but, yes, he comes into Addie's life and, yes, he can remember her and yes, the book turns out to be about what that means to each of them. This is effectively a whole new layer of story. It's a love story, told in the sweaty clubs and avant garde venues of Bohemian New York - a city Addie knows well. It's the story of a man who never feels, somehow, that he is quite enough, a man who fears the darkness in quite a different sense from Addie. If this book made me fall in love with Addie, it made me fall for Henry, too. His issues are quite different to hers but, like Addie, Schwab makes Henry real, human and most of all, she makes him matter. It's gorgeous writing, so sad at times, and really, that story - Henry's life - is another that could be a book in itself.

But it's not, and then we have what happens when the two come together... they're all one book and they are all the same story. Reaching the end, I read it more and more slowly, not wanting it to end. I wanted to stay immersed in the world of Addie and Henry and Luc, wanted to see the relationships flicker and dance, the pulls of desire and love and hate, to see Schwab whittling these three down to their essence.

Who, what is Luc? At one level I don't know, we're never exactly told.

Who, what is Luc? At another level, we all know. We've all met him. We've danced that dance, surrendered - or not - made our lives despite him, or with him. Luc cannot be defeated, cannot be pleaded with, placated, bribed or tricked. Only bargained with. And he drives a hard bargain...

The Invisible life of Addie LaRue is without a shadow of a doubt my favourite book read this year (that's 97 so far). V E Schwab was already an impressive writer but I think this is by far the best she's written yet (that I've read). Apart from the handling of the ominous, dark and romantic themes here, Schwab has a knack for getting to the heart of things in her writing: we hear of 'A Fall woman indulging in a second Spring', or how when Addie first makes love's is lightning through her limbs, it is fire through her core, it is longing between her legs' or of Henry's family sitting at table 'like an awkward Ashkenazi imitation of a Rockwell painting' or of a 'fundraising smile'. In places the prose adopts the pacing of a teary ballad ('A boy is sick of his broken heart. Tired of his storm-filled brain') or a dark folksong ('Am I the devil or the darkness?'). In others it revels in the wonder of moments of caught amidst the darkness - Addie's memory of the beauty of stars, something the modern world doesn't afford, of the gradual unfolding of New York in the springtime for a pair of lovers.

I think I'm gushing again. I want to keep quoting bits of this book, saying, look at this, look at that, read that bit. I should just say "read it!" and stop there.

The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue is simply leagues ahead. For me, reading it - and thinking about it after - was like that moment watching a great athlete running in an 800 or 1600m race when the winner simply opens up distance from the others and claims a victory which afterwards always seems preordained. Simply stunning.

For more information about this book see the publisher's website here. Or read this excellent review from Dave at espressococo.com

Review - Coming Up For Air by Sarah Leipciger

Coming Up For Air
Sarah Leipciger
Doubleday, 19 Mar 2020
Available as: HB, e, 320pp
Read as: e-copy via NetGalley
ISBN: 9780857526519

I'm grateful to the publisher and to NetGalley for a free advance e-copy of this book.

And now for something (for me) completely different.

Coming Up For Air tells three stories, taking place in late 19th century Paris, mid-20th century Norway and late20th/ early 21st century Canada.

We see a young woman - never named, she is literally referred to as L'Inconnue (the Unknown Woman) - travel to Paris and take up a post as companion to Madame Debord, a suspicious ('She may have been paranoid but she was still a Parisienne'), irascible older widow (older than L'Inconnue, that is, and by the judgement of the time, "old").

In Norway, Pieter Åkrehamn is a young child in the 1920s and later a grown man in the 40s and 50s. It becomes clear that he is narrating his life story - a story balanced between a love of the Northern seas and lakes, of swimming in the cold water until just before it begins to kill and between a constant, haunting grief.

And in Canada, Anouk grows up in the 80s, a girl with cystic fibrosis. Leipciger describes, not a tragedy bravely borne or any other cliche, but the day to day practical difficulties for her and for her parents. Again there is a fascination with the outdoors, with swimming now in the rivers and lakes, even the polluted Lake Toronto. (The chapters focussing on Anouk interleave with those on her mother, Nora, but these two sections are much closer to each other than the rest of the book).

Each story - and they are very different - is narrated with a crystal clear eye for detail ('the hard rainfall of a piano being played mezzo-forte', 'granite like the story of the Earth'), a studied appreciation of, and empathy for, the tiny events and incidents of everyday life. L'Inconnue's takes place over the shortest period but documents her growing up - coming to Paris as a "provincial", learning how to live there ('this was my first city, and it was Paris': there that sense here of Paris as more than a place, as a civilisation) becoming increasingly confident and self-assured, discovering love ('She had a beautiful potted belly, and if a hundred cakes would have given me a belly like that I would have eaten every one of them') but - not a spoiler as this is the first scene we encounter - throwing herself into the Seine in despair. Anouk's story parallels L'Inconnue's, we see her growing up, a happy child, through medical crises, finding her feet, weathering her parents' increasing distance, but, also, coming to a crisis point where her condition requires a lung transplant.

Bridging the two, Pieter's story spans the longest period and forms a critical bridge in the book though it also forms the shortest part of the book. Pieter's account is wrapped round a loss and is perhaps the most intense of the three, telling of a grief, almost while not addressing it. It was incredibly moving.

Three different stories yet they have some common themes. Both Pieter's and Anouk's stories touch on men - husbands, fathers - who seen self reliant and in control but who at critical moments are actually absent or absent-while-present: they don't know what to do, they freeze. It's Anouk's mother who deal with the dead deer, it's Pieter's wife who saves the house from fire (and who copes with the difficult child when he can't). These are significant moment but Leipciger doesn't make them simplistic turning points in the narrative or in relationships.

Similarly, the idea of water, of immersion, runs through all three narratives. For Anouk it's both a balm, helping her live with her condition and - if the warning signs are not heeded - a danger. The margin is slight, as we see also with Pieter when he swims out too far. And L'Inconnue too develops a fascination for the Seine before that final plunge.

And, of course, there is death. Actual deaths, as the loved are borne away, sometimes overtly marked - a joyous funeral in Canada - sometimes not, as when unclaimed corposes are exhibited in the Paris Morgue, visited by L'Inconnue and her lover - sometimes simply passed over, as with a boy who dies unseen. Deaths garnished with rumour and fancy. Deaths that afford life to others, as transplant donors or the inspiration for life saving innovations. Potential deaths, close escapes: the book explores that margin, that grey area, discussing the idea of resuscitation, the limited time when death can be averted, undone.

There's an idea behind this, I think, the symmetry of life and death - life as a brief interruption to death, rather than the other way round: 'Where we are, I think it's like a river and you're the flow. And every so often, out of the flow, you, me - all of us - we crawl up on to the bank and we do life... River is life and death both'.

At a time of uncertainty and indeed death, it's actually a rather uplifting thought to take from this very beautiful, absorbing book. I would strongly recommend.

For more information about Coming up for Air, including links to places where it can be bought, see the publisher's website here.

Review - The House of Binding Thorns by Aliette de Bodard

The House of Binding Thorns (Dominion of the Fallen, 2)
Aliette de Bodard
Gollancz, 2017
PB, audio, 351pp

I bought my paperback copy of this book from my local bookshop and received the audio version through my Audible subscription.

As I said in my review of The House of Shattered Wings, I've been catching up with de Bodard's Dominion of the Fallen trilogy in preparation for the third part, The House of Sundering Flames, which is just out (published 25 July). This book is the second part of the trilogy, so there are spoilers here for House of Shattered Wings and if you haven't read that, you might want to look away now.

I have listened to both on audio and I have to say they have been excellent in that medium; the characters have strong voices for the narrator to breathe life into and much of the story is in reported speech giving the narration immediacy and pace. Helpfully, the narrator of the Wings audiobook was the same as that of Thorns, so there was continuity of the voices in my head (and in my car).

So then. To the story. We are back in the Paris of the Fallen - angels cast down from Heaven who wield powerful magic and band together in "Houses" for their own protection, not to say glory and power.  Decades before, a magical war ruined Paris (and the wider world) leaving the Houses diminished, though still strong. The House of Binding Thorns picks up pretty much where The House of Shattered Wings left off, with Madeleine - Essence addict and former alchemist of House Silverspires - back unwillingly in House Hawthorn, under the sway of the dangerous Fallen, Asmodeus. Madeleine's life over the previous 20 years was devoted to her fear of Asmodeus, who murdered her friends and nearly killed her when he took power in Hawthorn, so as this book opens she really is at a nadir.

But life can be surprising, and Madeleine is about to be given a chance to improve her situation - if she'll undertake a dangerous mission for Asmodeus.

Like its predecessor, The House of Binding Thorns focusses on one house - here, Hawthorn - and the threats to it, but for me it had much more of a feeling of movement and freedom than Wings did. While The House of Binding Thorns seemed to take place mostly within the mouldering corridors of Silverspires, apart from an excursion to the dragon kingdom under the Seine and a couple of visits to other Houses, in Thorns we have a much more extended story. There is a longer visit to the Dragon Kingdom, exploring its politics, history, and plight, and there are other events across Paris, in particular in the home of two new characters, the Houseless Fallen Berith and her human lover Françoise. Their relation to Hawthorn and the Dragon Kingdom isn't clear at the start and I don't want to spoil the story, but they are well-drawn, distinct characters who bring a great deal to this story, representing the perspective of those who are not "House bound".

They are also friends of Phillipe, the young Annamite man we met in the last book, who is still seeking a way to resurrect Isabelle, who died in the earlier book. Despite Berith being Houseless, Phillipe does not wholly trust her - she is Fallen, after all, and he has reason to fear Fallen and to hate them for what they've done to him and his people. Trust and distrust feature strongly in this book: trust between rulers and ruled, even where there is hatred and fear in the relationship, trust based on understanding and alignment of motives, on power, and trust - or the lack of - within and between cultural groups (the dragon Kingdom, the Houses).

Despite his distrust, Phillipe is, it turns out, Houseless in a similar sort of way to Berith. She has rejected the House that might have sheltered her. Phillipe, as we know, rejected the Dragon Kingdom. Both must find a way to exist in a dangerous Paris with little help from others. The story develops this parallel to show how the Kingdom wields power in the same kinds of ways as the Houses, providing no real alternative to the Fallen and their magic.

And de Bodard continues to explore, using her Paris and her dragon kingdom, aspects of colonial history (such as the British opium trade) that are often passed quickly over and certainly, are rarely made the foundation of fantasy fiction. Again, the wider scope of this second novel and perhaps its faster pace gives much more room to do that. It is in many ways simply a "bigger" story. Rather than a central mystery, there are half a dozen subplots where characters get themselves caught up in the thorny branches and drawn into the main growth. There are unlikely alliances born of despair, and some unexpected betrayals too.

The star of this book is, though, Asmodeus. He appeared in The House of Shattered Wings as a convenient antagonist but here he is at the centre. Asmodeus - a bully and a sadist - is far from likeable, but he is still a bewitching character who simply comes over as more complex, more enthralling than Selene, the Head of House Silverspires on whole the first book was centred. Maybe the Devil really does have all the best tunes, or, Miltonically, evil is more interesting than good but I really felt this book crackle whenever Asmodeus appeared. Perhaps de Bodard let herself go a bit more with Asmodeus? Whatever, she has produced a compelling and even beguiling portrait of this damned angel, a figure who comes alive on the page (or in the audio) and commands every scene where he appears.

I think I actually enjoyed this book more than Shattered Wings, it's a stinking read in itself and carries the trilogy forward brilliantly, setting the stage, I hope, for a terrific ending in the third book.

Review - The House of Shattered Wings by Aliette de Bodard

The House of Shattered Wings (Dominion of the Fallen, 1)
Aliette de Bodard
Gollancz, 2015
PB, 402pp

I bought my (paper) copy of this book from my local independent bookshop. I also listened to it via Audible.

The House of Shattered Wings - for first in de Board's Domain of the Fallen series - was only published four years ago, but is already, I think, one of those SFF books you really should have read, an instant classic.  And I hadn't.

So, to catch up, in advance of the third book being published later this year, I have been listening to Wings as an audiobook while driving to and from the station. That gives me 50 or so minutes a day, enough time for a decent length book over several weeks. I'm therefore specifically reviewing the audiobook, though I must admit, as I came towards the end, I picked up my paper copy and finished it that way, I couldn't wait for my next drive.

The first thing to say about House of Shattered Wings it that it's a triumph of worldbuilding. De Bodard creates a haunting, ruined Paris, gutted in a magical war some decades before, with a 1920s vibe, although I think that chronologically it's set more or less "now". The history of France - Europe - has had grafted into it the presence of "Fallen", literally angels cast out of Heaven in what's alluded to as a Miltonic rebellion. They arrive in Paris (and elsewhere? That's not clear) actually falling - the opening of the first chapter gives a snippet of the background to this - and liable not only to be damaged by that fall but immediately at the mercy of rival "Houses", and of gangs who will gut them for their magical "essence".

Angel magic is all in this Paris. It's both a curse - having ruined and polluted the City - and a source of power to the magicians of the Houses, which are presided over by those Fallen. And it's also a drug, sought after by addicts to whom it provides comfort, warmth, an illusion of safety. That's something needed in this dangerous world, needed for example by Madeleine, alchemist of House Silverspires, where she took refuge twenty years before after House Hawthorn was the scene of slaughter, an event that has traumatised and haunted her ever since. Madeleine is therefore an addict, hooked on the dangerous Essence, flouting the rules of her adopted House.

If the book was only notable for worldbuilding, that would be great, but not make for a satisfying read. But there is much more here. Another brilliant feature of this book is that while nobody here is very likeable, or at least few of the main characters, they are fascinating and complex as characters. While one may feel sympathy for Madeleine, she's not - or wasn't to me - a very pleasant person.  Selene, Head of Silverspires, is grouchy and frequently interrupts people from whom she might otherwise get useful information. Isabelle, a new Fallen who arrives early on, quickly becomes enigmatic and moody. Asmodeus - Head of House Hawthorn - is a vicious bully, only partially disguised by his being charming and mannered. Yet they all compel attention.

Possibly the only exception, in that he is more pleasant, but still complex,is Philippe, a (seemingly) young man from the Far East, trafficked to Paris by the colonial power to serve as cannon fodder in the War. I'll say more about Philippe in a moment, but first I just want to say how much I enjoyed this bunch of grumpy, spiky characters. Through them de Bodard weaves a compelling story without ever allowing it to turn into a mere struggle between Good and Evil. They are all fascinating, flawed creatures, plausible even while annoying (or perhaps because of it). Everyone here is capable of doing - has done - monstrous things. The system of Houses ensnares them all, and they are knowingly complicit in it, all except Philippe who, as an outsider especially sees its rottenness.

Even Philippe, though, perhaps mainly sees the effect on him personally and his country. In a neat encapsulation of colonialism, the Fallen's power has enabled France - presumably Europe at large - to overturn indigenous belief systems (by which I mean, actually existing systems of divinity and divine power) and in particular that of the Jade Emperor, who Philippe previously served. And none of the Fallen who we meet here recognise or rate Philippe's, rather different, grasp of magic because it's "foreign" or "primitive" compared to their own. The power of the Fallen is therefore both the cause of, and in the service of, a colonial attitude. They are strong, but also ignorant.

And in keeping with that, throughout this story Fallen mistrust each other, misjudge the situation, decline to share information, and leap to conclusions (often wrong) about what is going on. There is a threat in play here, a curse whose effects unfold, at first in minor ways then more and more strongly. And there is someone behind that threat. But, as I've said above, it's not a traditional evil, there isn't some Dark Lord here seeking power, there is no band of good magicians getting together to save the day. Motives are characterised by muddle, partial understanding, and personal prejudices.

All of that, perhaps surprisingly, makes for a brilliant story, gripping, convincing, often sad, sometimes wryly funny. One may not like these characters but it's hard not to sympathise with them, to wish that, somehow, they could break the wheel, could escape from the circles they have to keep going round - no less confined for believing they are in control.

So - a blisteringly good story, great fun to listen to though I will admit there were many moments when (as I was alone I the car) I was shouting out for Philippe or Madeleine to share some key bit of info, to be a bit less rigid, for Selene to shut up and listen instead of pontificating. You know they won't do it, and that's what gives the story such a tragic direction, but you wish they would.

Deservedly, then, one of those books you just HAVE to read. On to The House of Binding Thorns for my next listen!

Review - The Mortal Word by Genevieve Cogman

The Mortal Word (Invisible Library, 5)
Genevieve Cogman
Pan, 29 November 2018
PB, e 418pp

I'm grateful to the publisher for an advance copy of The Mortal Word.

Who would kill for a book...?

Cogman's Invisible Library books have quickly become one of my favourite fantasy series, and she has covered so much, and created such a vivid world, that I'm slightly surprised to see that this is only the fifth of them.

The Mortal Word takes us to a Belle Epoque-ish Paris, complete with grand hotels, risque theatre, anarchists - and plenty of danger. A vital conference is being held, which could shape the future of the worlds - but someone wants it to fail, and is prepared to kill, if that's what it takes.

Questions abound. Irene Winters and her associates, Vale, the Great Detective and Kai, prince of Dragons, are summoned to investigate. But due to the dainty diplomacy in train they will also have to work with a representative of the Fae. With so many agendas and rivalries, can the team stay together long enough to outwit the unseen enemy - and is the Library itself as blameless as Irene would like to think?

What are the Fae up to?

What are the Dragons up to?

What is the Library up to?

This book is really fun. I'm noticing a tendency for Cogman to use her many-worlds device to accomplish something a bit more like time travel, taking Irene off to the Prohibition ere in the last book, and now to a romantic, gilded version of Paris where Marius and his revolutionary students cold be gathering round the corner and the Phantom of the Opera lurking in the building opposite. It's deeply atmospheric and enjoyable, but there is more here - a devious, fiendish plot and, for Irene, some real moral dilemmas.

Just what is she prepared to do to advance the aims of the library? As a trained thief, quite a lot - we know that already. But if the library asks too much, what can she do?

The whole situation is enmeshed with Dragon and Fae politics, which Irene needs to understand if she's to save the day, and Cogman only unpicks this slowly, creating a real sense of mystery as well as some heartstopping confrontations and combat. (These generally seem to come as Irene is about to get to sit down and eat - by the end of the book I was just desperate for her to get a square meal inside her).

As well as peril, there's romance too, as Irene tries to advance things with Kai - not easy when they are surrounded by sharp eyed diplomats from all factions - and I won't say how that turns out, you'll have to read the book! And that, really, is all I should say. READ THE BOOK. It is a wonderful confection of delights, a book that will have you sitting up into the small hours, holding your breath at times, guffawing at others and maybe shedding a few tears.

As I said, wonderful fun. Five books in, this series shows no sign of flagging - and I can't wait to see what's coming in the next one.

Previous reviews:

The Masked City
The Burning Page
The Lost Plot

Review - Dreadful Company by Vivian Shaw

Cover by Will Staehle and
Lisa Marie Pompilio

Dreadful Company (Greta Helsing, 2)
Vivian Shaw
Orbit, 26 July 2018
PB, 399pp

I'm grateful to Orbit for an advance copy of Dreadful Company.

The Palais Garnier.

The Catacombs.

An underground lake...

A follow-up to last year's Strange Practice, which introduced Greta Helsing, physician to London's population of monsters, Dreadful Company sees her off to Paris to present a paper at a medical conference - and to catch a little culture at the Opera.

But Paris, too, has its share of monsters - and one of them sees Helsing as the perfect way to settle a score with her friend, vampire Edmund Ruthven. For Greta, it won't be a quiet trip...

If you enjoyed Strange Practice you'll certainly go for this sequel. Shaw has a smart, acerbic style, well suited to Greta's level-headed, patient-first approach to life (and undeath). Greta does this work because it needs doing. She's not trying to save the world or to rid it of evil, simply to relieve suffering. It's not her fault that the masters sometimes have other ideas, but despite that, she still keeps her well developed moral sense, for example intervening here to help a young vampire who has been carelessly "turned" by a coven and left with no advice or guidance about her new life.

Shaw is also good at evoking the strange world and society of the monsters, together with the bureaucracy of Hell which, for reasons not yet given, is especially dedicated to preserving reality (we don't see much of the angels). With whip-sharp dialogue, coolly observed characters (I loved Grisaille, the guilt-ridden old vampire, and the "remedial psychopomps" Crepusculus Dammerung and Gervase Brightside) and no end of clever allusions, focussing, but not limited to, classic horror literature (I spotted Les Mis as well as Frankenstein, Phantom of the Opera and MR James) the author seems to be having great fun here and it can't help but rub off on the reader.

The story has, perhaps, slightly lower stakes than Strange Practice and is more focussed than that book on vampires in particular with fewer other monsters (though I adored the well monsters - I will never read MR James's The Treasure of Abbot Thomas in quite the same way again). This means we find out plenty more about the vampires, and their several ways of living among us, which Shaw has worked out very carefully, as well as seeing the relationship between Ruthven, Varney and Helsing develop (I have to say that while enjoying the book overall I found Ruthven's almost proprietoral attitude to Helsing a bit creepy - overall, I prefer Varney...)

We do though get a chance to see Greta coping with an extremely dangerous situation on her own, using those same medical and "people" (if I can use that word of the undead!) skills, perhaps a bit in contrast to the violence of Strange Practice (though this book does also have plenty of violence).  Overall i loved revisiting Greta'a world.

The book is, again, furnished with a wonderfully evocative woodcut design by Will Staehle and
Lisa Marie Pompilio. I hope they'll be back for Grave Importance, the third book in the series, due next year, which I'm already looking forward to.

For more about Dreadful Company, see the publisher's website here.