Review - The Scholar and the Last Fairy Door by HG Parry

The Scholar and the Last Faerie Door

HG Parry
Orbit, 24 October 2024
Available as: PB, 436pp audio, e   
Source: Advance copy
ISBN(PB): 9780356520322

I'm grateful to Orbit for sending me a copy of The Scholar and the Last Faerie Door  to consider for review.

I have been enjoying HG Parry's books, particularly how they address inequalities such as those of race, gender and colonialism, aspects of society that some strands of fantasy manage to sidestep (one might even say, some strands of fantasy seem to exist to do that).

In The Scholar and the Last Faerie Door, set mainly in post Great War England, that means largely class prejudice, colonialism and patriarchy. 

Clover is a young girl growing up on a farm in Lancashire. When her brother is seriously injured on the Western Front, Clover determines to learn magic in order to discover how to help him. The magic she studies is largely the preserve of the upper classes, taught on a magical campus called "Camford" (it can only be entered from either Oxford or Cambridge). Overcoming considerable barriers merely to earn a place at Camford, Clover comes up against the reality of life as a 'scholarship witch', distinctly second rate among the gilded young things of post war England's magical elite, very few of whom are women and even fewer of whom are poor - or Northern.

Fortunately (or perhaps not as events turn out) Clover is taken up by the circle that follows Alden Lennox-Fontaine. There's a question about why they allow her such access, but Clover pushes that to the back of her mind - until she's forced to confront reality and ask what her fine friends really want.

I absolutely loved The Scholar and the Last Faerie Door. Clover is a redoubtable and likeable personality, wrestling with real life dilemmas: different social circles, the pain of moving on from home to grander (maybe) things, class prejudice and guilt, and friendships. And, as then layers of truth are peeled back from England's magical world, there is the need to reckon with the crimes of the past and to admit that foundations of the glittering world - with which Clover is so enchanted - may conceal crimes and violence. As a metaphor for a colonial society it's compelling and rich.

But The Scholar and the Last Faerie Door isn't just a neat allegory for imperialism, it also features active, buzzing characters, a strong plot and an increasingly taut and thrilling denouement with Clover hunted by malign forces and forced to reckon up what she most values - and fight for it. And to recognise what may be lost.

All in all, an engaging and fun read with thought-provoking themes. I'd strongly recommend.

For more information about The Scholar and the Last Faerie Door, see the publisher's website here.

#Review - Hokey Pokey by Kate Mascarenhas

Hokey Pokey
Kate Mascarenhas
Head of Zeus (Apollo), 8 June 2023
Available as: HB, 322pp, audio, e
Source: Advance copy
ISBN(HB): 1789543851

I'm grateful to the publisher for an advance e-copy of Hokey Pokey via Neutrally to consider for review.

It's February 1929 and a snowstorm descends on Birmingham. All the railway lines are blocked and a disparate group of guests is stranded in the city centre Regent Hotel. Among them are psychoanalysts Nora Dickinson and renowned operatic diva Berenice "The Icon" Oxbow. Is their presence wholly random, or do the two women have some connection...?

I love novels with a strong location and well depicted setting - as here (the book even comes with plans of the hotel). They allow one to sink into the routines and conventions of the location, and watch the characters run, as it were, though the mazes of the author's invention. Having the protagonists isolated from their normal lives, caught briefly out of time, as it were, adds to the pleasure which here is enhanced by the jousting between Nora and Berenice, and by Nora's startling ability at mimicry - basically if she hears something once, she can repeat it exactly forever. That ability, and the idea of mimicry and of truth, are at the centre of this thought-provoking and satisfyingly complex story - as much as the series of gruesome killings that begins to occur...

An icon is, of course, a depiction of a saint or of God, but one that is held to be more than just an image. Beronice is named for Veronica, who mopped Jesus' tears, obtaining a true icon of the deity. Nora can reproduce life to a startling degree, and, as we find out when we learn the two women's stories, both have history that is entangled with deception, imitation and untruth (the cataclysmic event of Nora's childhood encapsulating this). And it's all taking place in the glittering, mirrored splendour of a hotel, an unreal place with its own contradictions: between the guests' accommodation and the back stairs (the map shows both the guest and staff sides), between the lives of the guests and those of the staff, between the guests' everyday life and their hotel existence.  There are of course many secrets to come out, but before they do, they shape events here like invisible plumbing behind ornate walls.

The sense of a charade taking place, of everything being one step away from tumbling down to reveal what is really going on, is intensified by the two womens' positions seeming so shaky. Berenice is accepted and acclaimed because of her voice, which may however fail at any time (it has before). Nora is a woman in a profession dominated by powerful, manipulative men and - as Mascarenhas makes clear - even her presence in the hotel, as a woman alone, is on sufferance (she isn't allowed in the cocktail lounge unaccompanied, for example).

It is a bewildering, intoxicating novel, just as much so, I'd guess, as one of those Hokey Pokey cocktails (recipe helpfully provided) which Nora so much enjoys. With a real taste for time and place and more than a twist of the gothic, this is a book to savour.

I normally direct readers to the publisher's website for further information about a book, I'm afraid I haven't found an up to date entry on the Head of Zeus site here so would suggest looking at online retailers or indeed Netgalley itself here.

#Review - Shrines of Gaiety by Kate Atkinson

Shrines of Gaiety
Kate Atkinson
Doubleday (Penguin Random House) 27 September 2022
Available as: HB, 448pp, e, audio
Source: Advance e-copy via Netgalley
ISBN(HB): 9780857526557

I'm grateful to the publisher for an advance e-copy of Shrines of Gaiety via Netgalley to consider for review.

In Kate Atkinson's latest novel, set in Jazz Age London on the eve of the General Strike, death comes frequently and often with little sense and little meaning. The Great War may be over but that sense of life being chancy and cheap lingers.

The bodies of young women, apparently drowned, are trawled form the Thames. They receive scant respect - a policeman trying to investigate has to hunt round several sites where a corpse may or not be kept before he finds what he is looking for.

Other young women (girls, really) are trafficked into the back rooms of nightclubs; some fall victim to drug overdoses.

The roads are dangerous, with no training needed before one can drive, and they claim their victim too. 

There is ever present street crime, sometimes spilling over into murder.

And, of course, poverty, hunger and disease consume so many that the victims - whether dead or on their way - are taken for granted, with those sleeping in churchyards or under bridges simply ignored.

I found this plethora of deaths a little reminiscent of Atkinson's Life After Life, largely set in the same period, in which the same character lived (and died) again and again, gradually outwitting Fate as though playing a game and able to respawn aware of future dangers and difficulties. The difference is of course that in Shrines of Gaiety there are no second chances though many would wish there were. The weight of the War hangs over everyone here, whether they took part (Gwendolen, the no-nonsense librarian from York, served as a nurse, Niven, eldest son of shady nightclub owner Nellie Coker, served in the ranks), avoided the war, were too young, or stood and waited, as fathers, husbands, sons, friends and brothers fell to the mud and the wire. (Yes, and lovers too).

That may be the reason for the frenzied pleasure-seeking taking place in the book as the Bright Young Things celebrate their survival, try to bury dark memories, or simply look forward not back - all accompanied by a great deal of moral tutting from the older, Victorian generation. If that gives the impression of the book as being rather loud, don't worry, it's not. The partying is mainly offstage, the story mostly taking place during hungover mornings and on dark nights after the clubs have closed. All the decadence does though make for a vibrant nightlife in Soho, with many lucrative opportunities for those who provide the pleasure, or at least, facilitate it: the book features hostesses in the clubs, sex workers, drug dealers, thieves, and police on the make. And of course young innocents who've come to London to make their fortune.

Gwendolen Kelling is not one of these. A former librarian who lost most of her family in the war, she may be seeking meaning, or she may be missing the emotional pitch of the war, or she may just be good-hearted, practical and eager to help. Or perhaps all of these things. In any case, she's trekked down to London in search of Freda Murgatroyd and Florence Ingram, two young women who ran away seeking careers dancing on the stage. We see (some of) what happens to them, their trials standing in somewhat for all the poor unfortunates dragged out of the river, reduced to selling themselves or dancing in the clubs for hours night after night, or ruined by drugs.

DCI Frobisher, on the other hand, may still be something of an innocent. Sent in to clean up the notoriously corrupt Bow Street station, despite his seniority and service in the police he's still upright and still seems to believe in the redemption of a corrupt Force. He also however believes in the threat posed to morality by such as Nellie Coker and he soon employs Gwendolen to infiltrate the shadier clubs, despite misgivings that he may be putting her in harm's way.

Others are less innocent. Nellie and her brood (not just Niven, but also Edith, Betty, Shirley, Ramsay, and Kitty) and their rivals (the profitable clubs are rich prizes) and a host of others are out to squeeze all they can (pleasure, money, power) from the good times, or are simply ready to do what they must to survive. Atkinson is very good at showing how narrow the margin is between survival and destruction, and how simple acts of care (like Gwendolen saving the life of a gangster in a club or Frobisher giving a half crown to a starving girl) can make a difference. As can little bits of meanness - the theft of a handbag or just looking the other way or not thinking about the plight a young woman may be in.

As she allows the paths of all these people to cross and re-cross in the West End and Soho, Atkinson's abilities to layer an intricate narrative and bring her characters alive really serves the reader here as meetings (chance, planned, and missed) and depictions of characters, places and events knit together to produce a tight and fascinating story. She both creates a powerful sense of a particular time and place and also happily accommodates flashbacks from that time to show earlier years in York, the days of the War or even further back when Nellie was founding her empire.  

Indeed, the book is so well-written and observed that events and plot taking place now are almost immaterial. There isn't a sense in this book of needing to get to the next thing that happens or of waiting to understand why the last thing that happened did. Rather, I wanted to see what these fascinating, alive people would do next, how they would react to things, what their next moves would be. And also, of course, to understand that marvellous picture of a place, a time and an atmosphere.

There is so much in Shrines of Gaiety. A glorious central character in the redoubtable (yet so nice) Gwendolen. A portrait of a place and time a hundred years back, close to ours (the same streets one can walk today, the thrill of seeing celebrities and prominent people behaving badly) but also so strange and different (the overhang of war, foreknowledge of a further war to come).  A matter of fact portrayal of human trafficking and abuse (there are some similar themes to Atkinson's Big Sky in that respect). A sense of... I don't quite know how to put this. Of possibility? Of indeterminacy? Some things that happen here may not happen, or may be open to question, as though - for all the gritty reality - what's being described is a time spent slightly aside from the real world, in which consequences may not follow. Some references to A Midsummer Night's Dream perhaps support that, those radiant, dazzling clubs perhaps a portal to a fairyland where nothing is quite real.

But at the same time, fairyland is a perilous place and "we pay a tithe to Hell". For many in Shrines of Gaiety, consequences do follow. We see the clubs, tawdry and harshly lit, the next morning, we see those bodies in the river and we see the hangovers and the desperate attempts by some to ride themselves of consequences. A shrine is a place for worship and sacrifice and there is plenty of blood in this book.

It's a book I adored, Atkinson at her very best, engaging with themes that, behind the tinsel and glitter, are weighty and important - and entertaining the reader at every turn. 

For more information about Shrines of Gaiety, see the publisher's website here.

#Blogtour #Review - The Assistant by Kjel Ola Dahl

The Assistant
Kjell Ola Dahl (tras Don Bartlett)
Orenda Books, 13 May 2021
Available as: PB, 293pp, e, audio
Source: Advance copy provided by the publisher
ISBN(PB): 9781913193652

I'm grateful to Orenda Books for an advance review copy of The Assistant and to Anne Cater of Random Things Tours for inviting me to take part in this blogtour.

The Assistant takes the reader to a fascinating epoch - Norway, on the brink of the Second World War, where former smuggler, Jack Rivers, and ex-cop, Ludvig Paaske, run a detective agency together. (Rivers is the "Assistant" of the title). In the best traditions of noir, a woman turns up one morning at their offices and inevitably, trouble follows...

Actually The Assistant goes to two fascinating periods - alongside the 1930s story, other chapters hark back to the 20s, a world of Prohibition, speedboats, hideaways in remote fiords and gangsters' molls. This was an aspect of Norway's history I was totally unfamiliar with but am now obsessed by! Hard drink, banned from sale, is being brought in under the noses of the authorities and distributed from flatbed lorries and via corner shops and village groceries. The police (led by Paaske) and Customs are relentless in their pursuit (at one point Jack's boat gets fired on by a naval vessel) and we're witness to daring escapes, stake-outs and betrayals. 

Jump forward again to 1938, and that young woman in the detectives' office dangles an apparently simple job - she thinks her husband in unfaithful, and wants him followed. But this will lead the pair into a fiendishly complex affair involving Nazi spies, Communist saboteurs intent on stopping arms exports to the Spanish insurgent forces - and some old scores. Of course we know, even if Jack, Ludvig, Amalie, Julie and Bjerke don't, that all this is taking place in a looming shadow of war, invasion and occupation. 

I loved the way that, in this book, Kjell Ola Dahl juggles the personal and the national, even the international. Everyone we follow here was involved in the chases and chicanery in the 20s which were deadly serious at the time but now, looking back, seem rather like games. However, things were done - promises made and broken, betrayals carried out and accepted - that left faultiness, faultiness which persist to the later 30s, reasons for suspicion, regret and revenge. In 1938 it's as though the wars and rumours of wars have brought all that back to the surface, injected a new sense of jeopardy, of higher stakes but also - for some - an open door to opportunity. 

The characterisation here is excellent. Paaske, a bit of a fusspot, a man with routines, obsessed with the state of his shoes (and judging others by theirs) but also a man missing his daughter, lost somewhere in the European maelstrom. Jack, still a bit Devil-may-care (though less so than we saw in his 20s escapades) but someone with regrets, especially about his mother's death which he missed, being in jail. Julie, a femme fatale if ever there was one. Amalie, distinctly ambiguous, a woman who has come far, clearly has secrets, and who moves in many different circles - but who nevertheless still cares for her brother, now committed to an asylum. There's a sense they have all been waiting fifteen years to begin the dance that starts now. Despite that, though, the moves are uncertain, intentions conflicted and - it seems at times - the outcomes all bad.

I really enjoyed The Assistant. (Can you tell?) There are some familiar themes and tropes but they are given new life and force and expressed in a totally different milieu from what you might expect. Yes, guns, girls, smoky clubs and spies. But also, political idealism and cold-eyed men (and women) with a lightning calculus of guilt, innocence and motivation. So much of the action is about who is second guessing who and where that will lead. Who is bluffing, and what they'll do if called. It's really, really intoxicating and often very visual: a couple of episodes take place in a villa with large, lit up windows so that key events are seen by other characters as though on a theatre stage or the silver screen itself, pointing up the theatricality, the film-like quality of the whole series of events that plays out - with the drama maintained at high pitch till the last moment of the last reel.

Don Bartlett's translation feels classic noir, falling into an easy, raconteur's style that yet points up the atmosphere of a foggy morning in Oslo or a dark night out on the fjord. 

An intoxicating read, best enjoyed, perhaps, late at night with a glass of the hard stuff to hand and rain pouring down outside...

For more about The Assistant, see any of the stops on the tour (listed on the poster below) or visit the Orenda website here. You can also follow links from there to buy the book, or else get it from your local hughstreet bookshop, or online from Bookshop dot org, from Hive Books, Blackwell's, Foyles, WH Smith, Waterstones or Amazon.

Review - The Quickening by Rhiannon Ward

The Quickening
Rhiannon Ward
Trapeze, 20 August 2020
Available as: HB, 336pp, e, audio
Source: advance e-copy
ISBN: 9781409192176

I'm grateful to the publisher for an advance e-copy of The Quickening via NetGalley.

The Quickening is a masterful Gothic novel that has it all - a woman arriving at a remote, decrepit, spooky old house; a family with Secrets; hints of the supernatural; surly servants who resent outsiders and mysteries galore.

The woman in question is Louisa Drew. In is 1925. Close to the birth of her third child, she's summoned from her somewhat chilly and, as becomes apparent, loveless Kentish Town, London home to carry out a commission - photographing the contents of a remote and decrepit country house, Clewer Hall, on the South Coast.

From the outset I admired Louisa's spirit and determination. She has no false modesty, she says at one point 'I come form a long line of capable women'. She is in her second marriage and it's obviously far from ideal. There are hints of her having lived a much more glamorous life in her days as a magazine photographer ('Aleister Crowley had told me about the tarot') She's also curiously alone in the world - having lost mother, uncle and husband, and more, as we gradually learn, Ward revealing it all bit by bit in dialogue with the story of loss and grief that Louisa uncovers at Clewer Hall. But despite her circumstances, she's tried to be a supportive wife to Edwin who frankly sounds like a bit of a creep ('Edwin was moving around downstairs, preparing his tea. If he was in a good mood, which was rare, he'd bring me up a cup... otherwise, he'd leave without saying goodbye...', 'Words froze in my throat when I received one of his withering glances.') Yes, Edwin suffered in the Great War, but one does get the feeling he's rather hiding behind that. Now, though, money is needed for the coming baby, and Louisa's prepared to do what she needs to to get it. So she's off on the train to Brighton, despite Edwin's mother's thin-lipped disapproval.

Arrived at Clewer Hall, a place much diminished and under-staffed, Louisa equally stands up for herself against the frankly weird Clewer family and the chilly house, which itself seems hostile. the Clewer don't care, they're off to India, presumably to live cheaply, and all they want till they go is to keep up the facade, forgetting whatever it was they all seem to fret over.

Apart from one thing.

The Hall is notorious for a séance held thirty years before and for reasons never clearly explained, it's to be repeated. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle himself was present on that occasion and has returned as have the other surviving participants. Who, we are led to wonder, wishes to hear the voices of the dead?

The answer, of course, in the 20s (those 20s) is, many, many people. After the loss and grief of the Great War there was a boom in Spiritualism, much of it possibly meeting a need for reassurance and comfort in a more strait-laced age. Louisa herself has, as I have said, suffered losses. Her interaction with the Hall and the Clewers - family and servants - rapidly becomes a cats cradle, a maze of sadnesses and absences, illustrated by the spooky Victorian marble children's limbs kept in a display case. Together with glimpses into the past - the time around that earlier seance - we are given tantalising hints of the full story, a mystery worthy of Mr Holmes himself which Louisa sets herself to solve despite the apparent increasing dangers to her and her baby and the growing hostility of the family.

Altogether this is an absorbing mystery story with a lot of heart. The central mystery eventually resolves to something deeply, deeply sad and provoking justifiable anger at the cruelties of the Edwardian class system and the stiff-necked Imperial Britishness of the Clewer family. It's a pattern that Louisa has, one feels, recognised in her own relationship and would do well to escape from - but what options does she have?

Ward writes arresting, vivid prose ('The space had the stillness of catastrophe delayed', 'The garden, in its icy frostiness, was a riot of red berries and yew leaves') and has a sharp eye for character and behaviour - the distance between Louisa and medium Ada and the 'gentry', the way 'we pregnant women lose ownership of our bodies the minute we begin to show', the Clearers being 'the epitome of the upper classes who I would never understand'. In a country poised ahead of the labour turmoil of the General Strike and with the Depression round the corner, The Quickening seems to look back at a time when, despite the disaster of the Great War, the dilettantism of the upper classes can still be indulged, and forward to a less innocent time.

I'd strongly recommend The Quickening, and if you're looking ahead to the end of the year I might suggest it as a perfect Christmas read so if you're searching for a present for the Gothic minded bibliophile in your life, here it is...

For more information about The Quickening see the publisher's website here.

Review - Gods of Jade and Shadow by Silvia Moreno-Garcia

Gods of Jade and Shadow
Silvia Moreno-Garcia
Jo Fletcher Books, 23 July 2019
HB, 352pp

I'm grateful to the publisher for an advance review copy of Gods of Jade and Shadow via Amazon Vine.

It begins with a woman...

It begins in the 1920s.

It begins in Mexico.

Casiopea Tun is a young woman, very much the poor and unwanted relation in a sprawling family living in a remote town. The Revolution has left Mexico avowedly secular, but little has changed in Uukumil; by command of the local priest, women are to cover their shoulders at all times.

Casiopea has a life of drudgery with few prospects of improvement. She years to dance to jazz music or to drive a car, but none of this seems likely. Reflecting on the books she's read, she strongly rejects the idea that she's a Cinderella - she isn't waiting for any Prince, but things will get better!

When change comes, Casiopea is proved right - it's not a prince who disrupts things but a Mayan death god, Hun-Kamé, with whom her family fortunes become tangled. So begins a sort of road-trip (more a rail-trip, actually) across Mexico, Casipea pursued by her indolent cousin Martín, Hun-Kamé by his murderous brother Vucub-Kamé. The fugitives encounter a series of natural and supernatural obstacles including villains, demons, magicians and killer plants as Moreno-Garcia weaves a story that is part fairytale, part heist, based on Mayan legends and myths but infused with the spirit of the Jazz Age: the spirit of an indomitable young woman who feels her time has come and who simply won't be dragged back to her grey town to wash floors for the rest of her life.

I really enjoyed the relationship the Moreno-Garcia sketches between Casiopea and Hun-Kamé - no, I know what you're thinking, but it isn't quite what you expect - as well as the matter-of-fact way she integrates the Mayan past with a very materialist present. There's no idealisation of a society that practised human sacrifice, but nor is there any patience for the discrimination she shows against Indigenous peoples. In the persons of Hun-Kamé and Vucub-Kamé we effectively hear an ongoing debate about the past and the future, and Casiopea herself contributes to that, effectively having the last word on many occasions.

I would perhaps have liked to hear more about Casiopea's mother who is an important character early on and, I felt, could have had more to say about the situation she and her daughter were in. And I definitely felt at the end that she should have had more recognition. That apart, the book is fun, often raucous fun, as a young women grows up, learns about herself and teaches some lessons in return to those who are older but not necessarily much more wise.

It is, in many respects, a fairytale, with Casiopea showing the best fairytale virtues of self-reliance, courage, quick thinking and kindness, despite living in a world which has treated her very harshly.

The last book I read by Moreno-Garcia was The Beautiful Ones, a romance of manners set in a magic-infused vaguely alternate Europe. Gods of Jade and Shadow is miles away from this in almost all respects, and overall I'd say it succeeds brilliantly, showcasing this author's versatility.

Strongly recommended.

For more information about the book, including links to buy the book, see the publisher's website here.

Review - Old Baggage by Lissa Evans

Old Baggage
Lisa Evans
Doubleday, 14 June 2018
HB, 320pp

I'm grateful to the publisher for an advance copy of Old Baggage.

It is 1928. Matilda Simpkin, rooting through a cupboard, comes across a small wooden club – an old possession of hers, unseen for more than a decade...

This book is a prequel, of sorts, to Crooked Heart, in which we follow the story of young Noel in the early days of the Second World War after the death of his eccentric (though rather wonderful sounding) godmother, Mattie.

Old Baggage tells us more about the fascinating Mattie. She has led a turbulent life, including activism as a Suffragette, but when this story opens, in 1928, she's living a quieter life near Hampstead Heath with her companion Florae ("The Flea"). There are glimpses of past glories: Mattie's house was a refuge for women playing the deadline game of "cat and mouse" with the authorities at the height of the campaign for the vote. There are also regrets: that women' suffrage is still not universal (Florrie has never been able to vote, because she fails the property qualification), that the militant campaign was halted in favour of the War Effort.

Lissa Evans evokes very well the sense of chaffing, of stasis, that affects one who has taken part in significant events but is now sidelined. (This calls forward to a theme explored in Crooked Heart where we meet another stalwart suffragette in reduced circumstances during the Blitz). Faced with this, and after meeting an old comrade whose activism has taken a sinister turn into fascism, Mattie sets out to educate the girls of the district by founding a wonderful, anarchic outdoor youth group. Telling the stories of the suffragettes and of great women from history, teaching use of the javelin and the slingshot, and encouraging the young women to further their education, gives Mattie the focus she needs. And if it results in a little healthy competition with the rival, and hated, Empire League (which believes in smartly polished boots and the expulsion of foreigners) then what can go wrong?

This is a sharply observed, often comic, but also deeply sad story. We see - in flashbacks - something of Mattie's early life and come to learn about her strengths and but also her weaknesses. (Ida, one of the young women swept up in her wake, points out that however much Mattie's heart is in the right place, she does;t understand the difference having money has made to her). In the end her greatest weakness is all bound up with family and with her lost, adored brother Angus, of whom she can believe no wrong - a belief that warps her judgment in the end and risks the purposeful life she's built.

Old Baggage - the name cleverly combining an insult that might be used of a woman like Mattie and the idea of clutter from the past dragging one down, both themes of this book - is a fairly short book, just over 300 pages, yet it ranges widely. Evans gives us vignettes, showing Ida bogged down by her passive-aggressive mother who doesn't want her bright daughter to progress any further than she did, or at her 'continuation school', or Florrie at her work as a health visitor, trying to ameliorate the desperate tide of poverty and ignorance of the inter-war years. There are also Mattie's reminiscences, especially when she encounters a childhood friend, and glimpses of at least one other character from Crooked Heart (which I think I need to go back and reread now that I know more about Mattie). It's a very effective technique, allowing the book to cover much more ground than you would expect.

Coming a century after that achievement of the first votes for women - but at a time when the struggle for equality and decent treatment is clearly still raging - it's a also a salutary read, highlighting many issues that are still current, such as the man who seems a staunch ally, even being arrested and sent to prison, but whose motivation is at least in part to get close to all those women, or the women who hold other women back, or the consequences of an untimely, unwanted pregnancy. Or a shout from a man in the street:

"'Give us a smile, girlie,' said the bus conductor.

She could have bitten him."

Yes, there have been improvements.  Mattie reflects how "Long ago, as a child in a pinched and stifled  century, she had seen her own mother gradually disappear." But despite these, Mattie and a friend can't, as "unaccompanied" women, be served in a bar. Florrie still cares for wives whose husbands won't have any truck with contraception. And one of her colleagues accepts that if she marries, she'll have to give up work. many obstacles remain and perhaps Mattie's frustration at the start of this novel is her sense of that - and of having ceased to push forward, instead recalling old glories and giving her magic-lantern lectures about the struggle. All that old baggage.

It is simply a great read, peopled by larger than life characters who almost jump of the page to hold your attention. Deeply engaging. I hope that Evans might return, again, to these characters, telling us more about Mattie's earlier life, or Ida or Inez's future, or perhaps more about Noel (who also features here though to say how would be a spoiler).

I'd strongly recommend this book.

For more information, see the publisher's website here.

Review - The Lost Plot by Genevieve Cogman

Cover by Neil Lang

The Lost Plot (Invisible Library, 4)
Genevieve Cogman
Pan, 14 December 2017
PB, 342pp

Many thanks to Pan for an advance copy of this book.

As the fourth instalment of her adventures opens, Irene Winters is in trouble. In quest of a book, she's stumbled into a nest of vampires and is about to have her veins opened.

And it only gets worse from then on...

I think I can safely say that these stories of Irene and her desperate, book-seeking journeys are - alongside anything by Emma Newman or Charles Stross - my favourite ongoing series.

It's something about Irene herself: the kick-ass librarian who drills like a laser through reams of alternate realities pursuing the precious books that will bind the universe together, once gathered in the multidimensional Library. Irene has a dream job and I envy her (despite the inevitable peril).

It's also something about that Library itself, the ultimate book pile, protruding into this street on one Earth, that quad on another, enormous, serene, self-contained, safe. (Or perhaps not so safe - as we saw in the previous three books that it could be menaced and Irene was only able to save it at some personal risk - and cost).

But most of all it's Cogman's writing. The pithy, sharp references, such as how, to befuddle pursuers, Librarians have adopted that pop culture phrase "These are not the [whatever] you're looking" in their ur-Language that can alter realities. The unbridled violence and chaos that follows in Irene's well-meaning wake. The perfectly realised alternate Earths (and other worlds).

Most of all, though, it's the joy that Cogman takes in her creation, like a genial deity who has made a world and seen that it is good.

If that whets your appetite, this book would be an excellent jumping-on point (is that a thing?)  It doesn't require any knowledge of the earlier plot and is basically a standalone adventure for Irene and her dragon apprentice Kai. Drawn into murky dragon politics (rather than the machinations of the Fae) Irene is co-opted by Security to track down a Librarian who may be endangering the hard-preserved neutrality of the Library. She has to face off with mobsters, the police, molls and, worst of all, rogue dragons, in a 1920s New York analogue. There are speakeasies, artefacts and museum stacks together with lashings of mayhem

Taken together, these give the book something of an Indiana Jones crossed with Doctor Who vibe. It's deliriously captivating reading, real cliff-hangery, page turning stuff. Behind this, it is, though, the dragon politics that and their ultimate impact on Irene that I sense are driving this story and setting up future events. Irene is anxious to demonstrate the Library's neutrality, but has to confront the fact that Kai's presence seems to suggest something else. And Irene's personal feelings are engaged as well so that she begins to feel doubly compromised. What is she to do?

Cogman stokes the tension and attraction between Irene and Kai as a counterpoint to the main adventure until you just wish they'd let neutrality go hang and just... well, this is a respectable blog so I'll go no further. Let's just say there are Feelings here and leave it at that.

If you're looking for a present for the (urban) fantasy geek in your life, this may just be the one. And if you find they don't love it, well, perhaps that's telling you something about them.

One final thing. Reading this book I found actual silver glitter on my fingers. I think the magic's rubbing off on me!