#Review - Treacle Walker by Alan Garner

Treacle Walker
Alan Garner
4th Estate, 28 October 2021
Available as: HB, 160pp, PB, e, audio
Source: Purchased HB 
ISBN(HB): 9780008477790

In Treacle Walker, Garner shows that an absorbing fantasy doesn't have to be wordy or indeed, lengthy. His short book contains such a concentrated essence of experience that reading it is like playing with one of Philip Pullman's alethiometers - every moment revealing deeper and yet deeper layers of meaning, all coexisting on the same pages.

At one level this is a simple story of a lonely boy, Joe, and his friendship with the rag-and-bone man, Treacle Walker. Joe seems to be alone - his parents never appear and nor do any other adults, except in one scene when he is having an eye examination. (Joe has a "lazy" eye which apparently requires his "good" one to be covered up so that the other will recover. This gives him different views on the world, which as the story develops, will become important). At another level there are mythic themes here, with a bog-body appearing (a bog-body with decided views about Walker). And Treacle Walker's "donkey stones", used to clean the doorstep, carry that image of the White Horse from the cover. Ideas of sacrifice, of recurring cycles through time and of a deep connection with the landscape are explored, as in much of Garner's fiction. And at another level altogether there are part humorous, part sinister threats as words and picture begin to come alive in the text of a child's comic, and in hints here and there of deeper symbolism (as in the bargain and exchange between the two main characters at the start of the book).

It would be wrong I think to try to pick out any one of these "levels" as "the" answer. In this, Treacle Walker feels to me like a distillation of Garner's many books - is like the book that would result if The Weirdstone of Brisingamen AND The Moon of Gomrath AND Boneland were all written down at the same time on the same pages. But it's more than that, it is Garner at his best, exploring some strange region between here and there and bringing it back to us as we sit in the firelight - perhaps beneath a massive fireplace, in an ancient house between a river and a meadow and railway line (triples matter here). 

It's a book that rewards a second and third read. There are little puzzles here which fall into place, circularities and co-occurences about the identities of Joe and of Treacle and about their roles - both outsiders, in a vaguely defined place and time which I think doesn't so much date to a particular year or decade as to the time of childhood, which seems here an incredibly precious time, seen through Joe's eyes without the distortions of adult relationships or concerns (apart from Walker's, and that's different).

All in all, a rare and enchanting book (in the truest sense). I'm sure I haven't completely understood it, but I will be back for more!

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

#Review - The Fall of Babel by Josiah Bancroft

The Fall of Babel (Books of Babel, 4)
Josiah Bancroft
Orbit, 11 November 2021
Available as: PB(638pp), audio, e
Source: Advance copy and audio subscription
ISBN(PB): 9780356510866

Another in my occasional series "David catches up with reviews he should have done last year, but didn't".

I'm grateful to Nazia at Orbit for an advance copy of The Fall of Babel to consider for review.

This is the fourth in Bancroft's series, The Books of Babel, set in a massive tower that stands over a desert. The tower contains, stacked one upon another, numerous polities ("kingdoms") some of which have been explored in previous books and which contrast wildly with each other. It also has its downtrodden serfs, the Hods, who are in rebellion; an enigmatic technologist, the Sphinx, who whole not exactly running the whole tower, influences events; and a host of characters, chief among whom is Thomas Senile, once an innocent schoolteacher who came to the tower on honeymoon with his wife Marya. Separated in the hustle outside the Tower, the two have been trying to find each other ever since, accumulating adventures on the way.

The Fall of Babel, though, doesn't begin with Senlin, it follows another character, Adam, who disappeared a couple of books ago attempting to reach the very peak of the Tower. Bancroft indulges the reader whose memory of precisely who is who and who is where by giving a summary of the position in the style of one of the Tower's periodicals, "The Daily Reverie" - ('A Refresher for the Devotees of the Senile Saga'). This reinforces the sense that Bancroft has been cultivating, in various ways, of the whole sequence as taking place before our eyes, perhaps on a stage, but it's also very useful to the reader who finished the previous book some time ago!

I won't try to summarise events here, but will just say that everyone we've come to know and love (or n to love) returns here: Maria and Senlin, of course, but also Edith, Voleta, Reddleman, Bryon and their enemies, principally Luc Marat, the leader of the rebellion. There's perhaps a more focussed, linear plot than in some of the earlier books, with Adam doing his best to understand the history and origin of the Tower from his study of the strange society that lives atop it, to Maria and co on the Sphinx's flag (air)ship, the State of Art, seeking to prevent a disaster in the Tower's workings by frustrating Marat's sabotage plans. Senile, and his friend John Tarou, are aboard The Hod King, Marat's vessel, which wreaks havoc as it burros through the masonry of the Tower. 

There's lots of satisfying combat, and lashings of the quotations, historical references and steampunk(ish) technology that makes these books stand out - they have their own peculiar, slightly sulphurous, tang, rooted I think in the degree to which the Tower has "gone wrong" and fails to live up to the intentions of its creator, the mysterious Bricklayer. His purposes becomes much clearer in the final section of the book which overturns one's whole understanding of the origins, and destination, of the Tower. Bancroft also manages - a minor miracle I think -  to draw together not only the threads of plot (hard enough) but the, how can I say this, moral threads that link the characters: primarily of course the complex relationship between Senlin and Maria, but also the various histories, animosities and misunderstandings between the other characters. 

Indeed, this book possibly pays more attention to the latter than the former. I hadn't expected this. In previous instalments the story felt very much as one of Our Heroes desperately seeking to defeat Marat's evil plans/ save the Tower from a catastrophic malfunction. While that aspect is still here and still very much the explicit driver of the story, once I got to the end I did wonder if the group had actually done much of this themselves or if other forces would have sorted it anyway. Nevertheless, at the same time, the story had explored much more than I expected of the relationships and histories of the main characters and in very different ways - Senlin, imprisoned by Marat, has lengthy and deep conversations with him, Adam finds his and his sister's life literally made into a spectacle by a ghoulish documentary producer, and so on. These histories and the way they play out on this final instalment of the series were often rather moving and always deeply interesting, rounding everything off in a much more satisfying way that mere action (also, much more satisfying than my poor description conveys).

So, a good ending to this series, I think - if a rather different one than I'd have expected given the first three books. I'd recommend, though of course of you've been reading these you'll want to read this one anyway and if you haven't, it's is obviously NOT the place to start.

For more information about the Fall of Babel, see the publisher's website here. 

#Review - Murder Under Her Skin by Stephen Spotswood

Murder Under Her Skin (Pentecost and Parker, 2)
Stephen Spotswood
Wildfire, 7 December 2021
Available as: HB, 352pp, e, audio
Source: Advance HB copy
ISBN(HB): 9781472291677

I'm grateful to Wildfire Books for an advance copy of Murder Under Her Skin to consider for review.

It was a joy to return to the 1940s New York of detective duo Willowjean (Will) Parker and Lilian Pentecost following their debut in Fortune Favours the Dead.

In the opening pages of the new story we see Ms Pentecost in court, turning the tables on a murderer despite the best efforts of his lawyer. We also see the toll that takes on her. Lilian suffers from MS, something that means courtroom jousting and long-distance travel will have consequences - the realistic portrayal of a long-term illness being one of the ways in which these books are, despite outward appearances, very far from being "cosy crime". 

Another is the focus on figures who are very much outsiders in their world, one where conformism and keeping up appearances is becoming more and more important. Will, for example, is bisexual. The story will also explore the position of war veterans as well as the showmen and -women with whom Will previously travelled. When word arrives that an old friend of Will's from the circus has been murdered, there's never any doubt that Lilian Pentecost will want to take matters in hand, whatever the cost to her health. The scene therefore shifts from the big city to the small country town where Ruby died and which - surely not a coincidence? - is also the place she originally came from as the two women, arriving after a marathon train journey, set to work to disentangle circus rivalries, small town bitternesses and jealousies, and darker hints about Ruby's earlier life. This young woman, who appeared in the sideshows showing off her prolific tattoos, seemingly rejected the morality of her birthplace, never returning even for her parents' funeral. Might that act of rebellion have led to her death?

I really loved the way that Spotswood gets under the skin (as it were) of both communities and characters here. The circus he describes is in some ways more exotic than the upper-class moneyed world of the last book, but actually it comes across as much more relatable, more of a family. Similarly the town has its own ways and in particular Spotswood doesn't swerve from the fact that it displays open racism yet he resists the temptation to create clichéd backwoods villains. Rather we get what feels like a convincing and real network of relationships, both for good and bad, in each community.

Which doesn't make this an easy crime to solve. Both circus and townspeople are suspicious; the circus is failing, with crowds no longer flocking to the Big Top. There are hints of money troubles and defections. In the town, we see war veterans who have returned with injuries, visible or invisible, which nobody wants to hear about. There is also a revivalist religious element who are picketing the circus, and a Sheriff who sees the place very much as HIS town and who would be glad to pin the blame for the murder on one of the showfolk.

The truth is hidden among all this, but there is (of course) little time to get to the bottom of things. 

Are Pentecost and Parker daunted? Of course not. But getting to the roots of it all will mean Will having to tread on uncomfortable ground, with Ruth's background and her own open to question.

A really fun, intriguing detective mystery with great depth, shrewd characterisation and convincing characters and locations. A strong follow-up to Fortune Favours the Dead.

For more information about Murder Under Her Skin, see the publisher's website here. 

#Review - The Free Bastards by Jonathan French

Design by Duncan Spilling

The Free Bastards (The Lot Lands, 3)
Jonathan French
Orbit, 30 September 2021
Available as: PB, 543pp, audio, e
Source: Advance e-copy
ISBN(PB): 9780356515533

I'm grateful to the publisher for an advance e-copy of The Free Bastards to consider for review.

The Free Bastards brings to a pause the sequence that began with The Grey Bastards and continued in The True Bastards. I say a pause, not a conclusion, because French states, in his Acknowledgements, that he would like to ride the Lots again some day. And clearly, there is much remaining to be worked out in story terms which would allow that.

Nevertheless, we have some closure here, seeing how the war turned out that began when the Bastards  rose up against the tyranny of Hispartha; understanding Crafty and his motivations (perhaps...?) and witnessing several well loved characters get some ease from their tribulations (and others die cruelly and unfairly: these are the Lots, after all).

I think I like this approach to a fantasy sequence. All too often an author, bent on tying up EVERYTHING, produces for their third volume an indigestible pottage of plot. We've also seen this with certain film franchises (mentioning no names but I know who I'm looking at). In contrast, the Free Bastards sets itself more modest goals, and meets them with aplomb.

The story is seen through the eye of Oats, closest friend of Jackal and Fetching, who the first and second books respectively followed. It some respects it's a more worm's eye view of the world than in them - both Jackal and Fetching have gained, or discovered they had, unnatural degrees of power or talent (though, as we see in this book, nothing that makes them invincible or always right). Oats, in contrast, is still rather ordinary - for values of ordinary that encompass a Thrice, a three-quarters Orc - and my, how he suffers here as a result. The Lot Lands trilogy has not previously, and The Free Bastards does not now, spare us the messy aftermath of conflict and both physical and mental wounds abound here. The downside of the raw, bloody conflict that's described in minute detail is the scars and suffering that follow. Oats becomes, bluntly, battle-sick and part of his struggle in this book is to keep on keeping on through it all, especially when the odds seem well-nigh impossible. That's a struggle that in the end is down to him, one which can't be helped by magic, artefacts or relics of old or even the loyalty of his mighty steed, Ugfuck. 

And the way that struggle plays out - its relationship to ideas of loyalty, friendship and rivalry as well as to wider plot threads involving the Lots, the elves, Orcs and Halflings - is at the heart of this book. It couldn't, in the end, be anyone else's story other than Oats', and the way it ends is magnificent. I think that French's decision to tell each of these books wholly from the perspective of a different character - rather than having one main viewpoint, or chopping up the three stories among different protagonists - really pays off here, allowing undiluted focus on the three individuals. It was perhaps a high risk device, but really succeeds by allowing each of the three the necessary emotional depth and space to tell their own stories. 

It also, of course, leaves a lot unspoken, unsaid, as we know that each of the three was having adventures in the background, as it were, of each others' books, adventures we only know the bare bones of. I feel knowing that will add even more depth and resonance if - when - French returns to Ul Wundulas.

I'll be waiting for that day, ready to saddle up again and 'Live in the saddle; Die on the hog'.

I read the paperback of The Free Bastards but I also enjoyed much of the book as audio, again I'd strongly recommend Will Damon's narration and mastery of a range of voices which together with the great narrative drive of this story and its intimate and personal moments, makes it a superb experience to listen to.

For more information about The Free Bastards, see the publisher's website here. 

#Review - Ghosts by GX Todd

Ghosts (The Voices, 4)
GX Todd
Headline, 9 December 2021
Available as: HB, 400pp, audio, e
Source: Advance e-copy
ISBN(HB): 9781472233202

I'm grateful to the publisher for an advance e-copy of Ghosts via Netgalley.

Ghosts is the fourth and final part of GX Todd's The Voices sequence, bringing the story so far to a satisfying yet at times desperately sad conclusion. 

I recently stumbled across an online discussion of the "cosy catastrophe"subgenre, post-apocalyptic literature in which, despite an apparently ruinous collapse of society, our heroes actually do rather well. They don't have to perform grinding work for somebody they don't like, they have the pick of abundant food and supplies helpfully left behind, the benefit of all human knowledge codified somewhere or other and above all, no longer have to suffer all those other irritating people.

Well, if had to choose one word to describe what The Voices ISN'T, it would be "cosy".

Spanning a period of seven years or so from the time "it" happened to the present, and ranging back and forth within that, these books describe a collapse that occurred when people began hearing "voices" in their heads, voices that drove them to do terrible things, torturing and murdering others and killing themselves. The series therefore deals with themes of extreme violence and suicide: approach with that in mind. While these destructive urges moderated in time, for those living in a ruined world with no order or safety, the few survivors focused to begin with on trying to identify and, yes, destroy anybody who still had a "voice" and could therefore be considered a threat. 

By the time of Ghosts, things have rather turned round and now we see instead those with voices combining to track down and kill the voiceless in revenge or self-defence. Daily life remains a desperate struggle to secure and protect basic necessities, with survival dependent on quick wits, strength, weapons and a healthy mistrust of others. Things can go wrong in an instant due to deliberate action (the Voices can hear and speak to one another, sometimes capriciously betraying their owners) or misunderstanding and over-quick trigger fingers. We see both in Ghosts.

Amongst all this, small groups still try to survive and find some hope. Messianic cults flourish, particularly that of the 'Flitting Man', gangs spring up to control different areas of cities and provide a simulacrum of order and a few people who still have apparently benign "voices" seek each other out and rescue what they can from the rubble.

The previous books have followed a number of such groups, seeing them form and scatter again, with some members killed, disappeared or departed on various quests and, in a landscape of jumbled chaos and betrayal, even the sequence of this can be hard to recover. Across the books we are shown the same incidents from different perspectives, or told how the consequences fall out for different characters. Sometimes effect is portrayed ahead of cause and the full story kept back until later. None of the groups we witness has anything like the full picture - I had thought at the start that one or other of the Voices we hear might have some wider insight which Todd would use to explain what is really happening, but she avoids allowing that to happen - so reading these books is, until the very end, like viewing the world through a mirror with many cracks. It might be frustrating if you like your apocalypses cut-and-dried, but as a way of modelling the dislocation and loss one might suffer when the world slides into chaos, it's simply brilliant, leaving the reader with a growing sense of dis-ease and looming disaster. As I said, there is nothing cosy here.

In keeping with that, while Ghosts does provide some closure, it's far from complete, for several reasons. First, if the physical setting is harsh, the moral landscape is even bleaker and dislocated. The "war of all against all" has its impacts. It's hard to point to anyone who doesn't have blood on their hands and even the groups we've been following who we might like to think as the "good" struggling against the "bad" do some terrible things, deliberately or not. Secondly, the motives, origins and nature of the "voices" are hinted at but never explained. We seem to be watching a struggle between certain of them - Piligrim's original "Voice" and its later offshoot, that of the Flitting Man, a few others - suggesting that the death and suffering visited on humanity is essentially in service of warring powers but I'm not 100% certain of that and if that is what was going on, it's far from clear whether it was actually resolved for not. Finally, however you try to fit the pieces together, the different perspectives and timelines mean that certain incidents just bear multiple interpretations, raising questions about whether this is really one story or several and about who is telling the truth and who may not be.

Throughout the sequence, there has been a current of - I'm not sure what to call it. Prophecy? Desire to find a cause, something to believe in? Whatever, it hasn't always had healthy outcomes for the protagonists, often sending them running into danger or aligning with the "wrong" faction. Rather they've tended to do better when guided by simple, human goals: searching for and protecting a friend, a sister. Saving others. Sharing. That's been the basis of many of the temporary groups trekking across the wasteland that was once America, but it has been hard, and gets much harder here, to ignore the bigger things going on and the push of events as the various currents come together. 

In Ghosts, the two themes finally become completely entwined, leading to a violent and seemingly hopeless confrontation which nicely joins the need to save and protect other loved ones and to somehow - some way - confront the darkness that slips through the wastelands, creating chaos and conflict. Everything, and everyone, is in the balance and while we've seen heartbreaking loss already, it seems as though it will get worse and worse now.

This sequence was like nothing else I've read, a truly heartrending story of love, loss, endurance and commitment in the face of chaos and wickedness. I'd strongly recommend it, but if you have managed to miss out on the previous books you really do need to go back and begin with Defender. 

For more information about Ghosts, see the publisher's webpage here.

#Review - Three Nightjars on the First: The Periphery by Cliff McNish, Static by Justine Bothwick and A Few Alterations by Jordan Harrison-Twist

Three more Nightjar Press chapbooks for your delectation. These are, again, books I received in December and as ever, I'd strongly recommend a Nightjar Press subscription which sends you books regularly and provides signed, numbered copies.

Cover for "The Periphery" by 
Cliff McNish. An abstract image
with a yellow background overlain 
by sworls, speckles and splurges of 
black, red and blue.
Photo by Nicholas Royle.

The Periphery
Cliff McNish
Nightjar Press, December 2021
Available as: PB, 15pp
Source: Subscription
ISBN: 9781907341663

I found Cliff McNish's The Periphery truly disturbing, but I had to think hard about why. Opening with the cryptic 'We began to prefer the periphery' the book describes how the unnamed narrator, their wife, children, pets - and the rest of the world - do just that: living on the edges, consuming dregs, looking away, interacting less, committing less. Beginning as a very close-up, very personal and small scale story, its bounds widen and widen until a sort of slow motion apocalypse is occurring. I was reminded of that Arthur C Clarke story with its ending 'overhead, without any fuss, the stars were going out...' except that here the effect seems to be internal, a kind of universal ennui in which humanity is one, but only one, participant. And I found that a really, really difficult idea.

Having considered why I reacted like that, I think it's partly a product of the past eighteen months on-off lockdown, premature opening up, new catastrophe, lockdown again, cycle. The passive life that our narrator finds has an attraction to it simply because it is, clearly, bounded: the common perception of everyone in this book is that this WILL be the end of all things, Sam, and like Frodo and his friend, all is done, all is finished, there is literally nothing to worry about any more. It's a very tempting attitude but at the same time, a very scary one, underlined by the fact nobody here steps out of line, nobody resists. A sort of vision of perfection perhaps but an aside, deal perception.

I think The Periphery will haunt me.

Cover for "Static" by
Justine Bothwick. Against a
background of grass rests a long
piece of wood or stone, a hole
resembling an eye. Photo by 
Nicholas Royle.

Static

Justine Bothwick

Nightjar Press, November 2021

Available as: PB, 12pp

Source: Subscription

ISBN: 9781907341502

Static plays some twisty games with its readers' expectations. On a beach in, I think, Greece, a young German man working as a paddle board instructor trespasses one one summer's day. Or does he? Work asserts his right to be there and the public nature of the beach but still, Efrosini manages to persuade him of some guilt, some kind of crossing the line, perhaps because he had picked up and was going to remove a chunk of fossilised wood. Still she is friendly and invites him in for lunch.

Unknown to Effie, Wolf is being urged on by voices in his head which wish to make the encounter something erotic. Maybe he wants that too? Maybe she does? The writing is I think doing several different things here and Wolf's relationship with that voice (which I suspect is a newish thing to him) is only one of them. We may be in fairytale country, the domain of horror, or witnessing some kind of breakdown. 

The uncertainty itself is delicious, the story perfectly balances between common sense and the fantastical. 

Cover for "A Few Alterations"
by Jordan Harrison-Twist.
Two full-face, passport style
photographs of a man in a 
jacket and sweater.

A Few Alterations

Jordan Harrison-Twist

Nightjar Press, November 2021

Available as: PB, 11pp

Source: Subscription

ISBN: 9781907341618

A Few Alterations is short but Jordan Harrison-Twist fills it with so much and sets up questions that meant I had to read it over several times. At one level, the sense of dis-ease points to something being off from the start - but at another, all the accumulating detail of the narrator's relationship with 'Zürn's tailor shop', their knowledge of dressing and style, the process - which is going on in the story - of obtaining something from the shop, all of that is so spot on that it simply seems like the kind of minutiae that makes up a life. 

I was reminded of the film Phantom Thread, one of my recent favourites. I think both pieces use to their advantage the fact that the worlds of respectively tailoring and dressmaking are present in the background of many of our lives but unknown to most in detail. So many metaphors, allusions and jokes ('So far, with this one, sew good') that add to the richness of the prose and the sense that a great deal is going on which we don't, quite, grasp.

I know that some readers will like to be in command of all the detail, know exactly what's happening and work a story out as though it was a series of puzzles. If that's you, A Few Alterations may not quite be your fit. But if you are comfortable in this style of story, I think it'll suit you very well.

For more information about The Periphery, Static and A Few Alterations and to buy the books or take out a subscription, see the Nightjar Press website at https://nightjarpress.weebly.com

#Review - Three Nightjars on the First: English Heritage by M John Harrison, Middleton Sands by Claire Dean and A Visit to the Bonesetter by Christopher Burns

Happy New Year and welcome back to Blue Book Balloon! 

I hope that the holiday period was all that you would have wished it to be, and that 2022 will be a good year for us all. 

I took an (unplanned) break from reviewing and blogging over most of December - not for any particular reason but just general stuff happening. So, no retrospective on 2021, and no looking forward to the coming year, which I'd like to start with something a little different - reviews of three Nightjar Press chapbooks. 

I received several of these in December as part of my yearly subscription. This is something I'd strongly recommend for anyone who likes a good supply of well-written short stories in beautifully presented editions (it would also make a great present for a reader, it's not too late for that - liturgically, we are still in the Christmas period until Epiphany on 6 January). You can buy them as one-offs, but as a bonus, the subscription editions are numbered and signed.

I have more Nightjars waiting to be read and reviewed, but to start the year off well, here are my thoughts on English Heritage by M John Harrison, Middleton Sands by Claire Dean and A Visit to the Bonesetter by Christopher Burns.

Cover for "English Heritage" by 
M John Harrison. A field of
wildflowers, seen in closeup
(photo by Nicholas Royle)

English Heritage

M John Harrison
Nightjar Press, December 2021
Available as: PB, 16pp

Source: Subscription
ISBN: 9781907341632

English Heritage is a story freighted with allusion and mystery. At some point during the Covid epidemic, Amory, Owen and Max visit her aunt's holiday home near Padstow for a few days away. While we're told that the aunt is ninety three years old ('and still going strong') and a barrister, we are told little about Amory, Owen's or Max's lives beyond that. Amory and Owen seem to be together - we are told what happened when they first visited Max in Shropshire, and they (not the three) have arguments. Amory is the most prominent on the three, although that might just be because it's her aunt's house they are in. 

The story is fearfully intense, often light on detail except for small incidents - flying a kite, making a visit to a nearby stately home. I came away from it thinking I knew a great deal more than was actually said, especially about Amory, but also considering what wasn't said. 

Who the nocturnal and troubling visitor was who opened the garage and used the loo (or didn't). Why Amory thought she lost her car. What was going on between Amory and Max - we get only hints of this but there's a sense of the whole stay being orchestrated around some problem in their relationship with Max there either to witness events or to prevent an explosion. Or just to wake at 3am as he seems to each night.

It's unclear what the 'English Heritage ' of the title refers to. Country houses such as the one the three visits? Their legacy of 'sugar and slavery'? A way of dealing with emotional crises off the page, as it were, as Amory and Owen seem to do here?

All in all, a tantalising story that feels much bigger inside than it looks from without.

Cover for "Middleton Sands"
by Claire Dean. A purple lilac 
tree in closeup (photo by
Nicholas Royle).

Middleton Sands

Claire Dean

Nightjar Press, November 2021
Available as: PB, 12pp

Source: Subscription
ISBN: 9781907341649

If English Heritage has notes of the weird but is placed firmly in our present, Middleton Sands steps a little further away into a near future with some differences. There have clearly been ecological losses to this world in which Ted and his band of enthusiasts set out every Thursday morning onto the sands. Dean is cryptic at first about what they are doing - metal detecting? Digging out lugworms? - and I won't say exactly what it is, but it is linked to that loss. (A clue about what has happened may, or may not, be the terror one of the group feels when the nearby power station sirens sound).

What is clear though is that there have been personal losses, and wider ones, and that the group are trying to recover something. Dean touches on the dynamics of the group and I wondered if that was part of it - one young man assumes he has inherited the 'leadership' of the group from his father, something Ted quietly disagrees with.

I really liked the understand nature of what's happening here, the way that a rather dark reality is hidden by masculine fuss around a hobby and the group and views over what equipment to carry and the best way to proceed, with the presence of a stranger - an unnamed woman - being the catalyst for progress that Ted seems never to have expected. Perhaps.

Cover for "A Visit to the Bonesetter"
by Christopher Burns. Two passport
style photographs of a woman with
shoulder length brown hair. Cover by
Nicholas Royle (found photographs).

A Visit to the Bonesetter

Christopher Burns

Nightjar Press, November 2021

Available as: PB, 16pp

Source: Subscription

ISBN: 9781907341625

A Visit to the Bonesetter is also set in an alternate future, or present, albeit one that is perhaps troublingly close. In what begins as a seemingly farcical, not to say Kafkaesque, bit of theatre, Martin's wife Lisa is served with an order (and he with a copy) to 'present yourself' to 'our official bonesetter'. This is an event that everybody dreads, but, like Lisa and Martin, is unclear about the detail of. 

At one level it is a highly staged event, the summons deliberately public and delivered by uniformed officials following a standard operating procedure and with a flavour of jobsworthism about it. All meant to support a hierarchy, to reinforce who is on top. At another it is very intimate, very private, something that must not be discussed outside the home, this mystique oddly serving to bolster that public. 

It is described as an 'examination', the participant as a 'patient' but when Lisa returns, it's clear that what went on was not medical and not consensual - and that a part of her has been broken and can never be fixed.

The book builds up a creeping tension, based around the contrast between the mundanity of the event, the bureaucracy, its routine nature, and the extreme impact. Also crushing is the sense that all are or were complicit - 'People voted for social control. It was in the manifesto'  - even though they may individually resent or object to what is taking place. The story is very clever in the way that it denies its protagonists a way out, even a way to dissent internally. I wondered if their surname - Smith - might be a deliberate nod to Nineteen Eighty Four, or whether the coincidence might simply be what you get when you make your protagonist as representative as can be. 

Either way, a simple incident sets up very uneasy resonances, portraying an authoritarian State in its very essence.

For more information about English Heritage, Middleton Sands and A Visit to the Bonesetter and to buy the books or take out a subscription, see the Nightjar Press website at https://nightjarpress.weebly.com

#Blogtour #Review - Fall by West Camel

Fall
West Camel
Orenda Books, 9 December 2021

Available as: PB/ independent bookseller HB edition, 323pp, e, audio

Source: Advance copy

ISBN(PB): 9781913193928

I'm grateful to Karen at Orenda Books for an advance copy of Fall and to Anne Cater of Random Things Tours for inviting me to take part in the tour.

Fall is set mainly on the fictitious Deptford Strand Estate in London. Designed by idealistic architect Zoë Goldsworthy in the 60s to permit - or require - a 'new way of living', by 2021 it's fallen on hard times and is being reworked, the Marlowe Tower in particular into premium, exclusive apartments.

The redevelopment has split the Goldsworthy family. Zoë's twin sons twins Clive and Aaron are intimately connected with the project, Clive as head of the development company, Aaron, a resident (the only resident) of Marlowe Tower, bitterly opposed to it and - when the book opens - holding up the project. Whether this is out of respect for his mother, spite at Clive or simply because he doesn't want to move out isn't clear.

The antipathy between the two men goes back more than forty years, to the scorching summer of 1976, when the estate sizzled and anger rose among the (white) residents because of the arrival of two young Black women, also twins. Not that anybody on the Deptford Strand is 'racialist', oh no - they just don't like outsiders...

In the quartet of Annette, Christine, Aaron and Clive, West creates a complex, simmering group among whom stresses arising from racial discrimination, coming-of-age, and the intricacies of twindom arc like lightning at the end of an overheated day. The double timeline particularly brings this out as Camel is able to examine the attitudes of the 70s from the point of view of the present day, casting additional light both where behaviour was unthinking (the language of the police, the prejudices of the estate residents) or where it was analysed and judged at the time.

Race isn't the only prejudice visible here. Once the estate was complete, Zoë moved her two boys from leafy Blackheath into a flat in the 24th floor of Marlowe Tower (where, four decades on, Aaron still lives). Outwardly an egalitarian gesture - Zoë argues that she should be willing to live anywhere that she designed - there does also seem an element of patronage and even control as, over subsequent years, she seems to see in herself the leading figure on the estate. And despite living alongside the working class residents, Zoë still sends her boys to distant schools rather than the one she designed, and mixes mainly with her own middle-class friends (who make visits akin to anthropological field trips).

One senses that the dislocation of that move, at the age of ten, still rankles with the boys, despite their outward devotion to their mother. As the events of the story unfold, they have just reached eighteen and are beginning to separate from one another, a painful process (though one Camel depicts very subtly) made more painful by some shocking discoveries and twists in this story. In some ways the wounds of that summer will never heal, with Aaron and Clive still estranged even before the redevelopment is proposed - and their relationship with Annette and Christine is part of that breach. Delicately exploring issues of intention, (mis) communication and the search for redemption, this is a fascinating study. There are some dark themes and incidents but none of them are gratuitous and West uses the eccentricity of Zoë's architectural practice to lighten the mood when needed. Apparently seeing the place as much a playground for her kids as a place for people to live, she designed it with a full complement of hidden doors and secret corridors, allowing access (for those who know) via shortcuts to most of the estate. A fun idea - but again one that seems to declare a sense of ownership, a right to dictate who goes where and how. 

Fall is, like West Camel's Attend (shortlisted for several major awards) something of a study in secrets, the private routes and spaces of the estate echoing concealed corners and bits of private history in the lives of the four protagonists. As the estate is torn down and reshaped, the hidden will inevitably be brought to light - as, it seems, will the true events of 1976. Will that be a traumatic revealing, with dust and rubble everywhere? Or will letting sunlight into those unlit places clean and heal?

Never less than grabbily readable, Fall is an exploration of the recent past and our relationship with it. It's a book I'd strongly recommend.

For more information about Fall, see the Orenda Books website here as well as the other reviews and stops on the blogtour listed on the poster below.

You can buy Fall from your local bookshop (a gorgeous independent bookseller edition is available!) or online from Bookshop dot org, Hive Books, Blackwell's, Foyles, Waterstones or Amazon.

 

#BlogTour #Review - The Wildest Hunt by

The Wildest Hunt
Jo Zebedee
Inspired Quill, December 2021
Available as: PB, 272pp, e
Source: Advance e-copy
ISBN(PB): 9781913117115

I'm grateful to Inspired Quill and to Anne Cater of Random Things Tours for an advance e-copy of The Wildest Hunt and for inviting me to take part in the book's blogtour.

Amelia, a struggling young artist, thinks she's struck lucky when a mysterious, wealthy client offers her £15,000 just for one painting. Enough money to sort Amelia and her boyfriend Joe's debts, maybe even replace their wreck of a car.

The only catch is - Jean wants the painting of remote Glenveagh Castle in Donegal to be done over Christmas. Tempted by the prospect of spending the alone time at Jean's remote cottage, and imagining a romantic, cosy time together, Amelia and Joe instead find themselves isolated in the worst winter anyone can remember with no power - and something has noticed them...

There's a time-honoured link between Christmas and the supernatural (as I write this, I'm preparing for a trip to see A Christmas Carol tomorrow) and it's one Zebedee draws on in The Wildest Hunt, blending the season of cold and darkness with powerful, mythic themes: not only the ancient entities that haunt the Glenveagh estate, but also a lost child, the propitiatory sacrifice of an innocent, and a greed for power and control. All of these play out in both of the couples about whom the story revolves - Amelia and Joe, and Jean and her husband Robert.

Amelia isn't exactly a stranger to the uncanny - she's had disturbing experiences before, and at the start of the book, we see another one. It's not something she actually wants to explore. However, she may not get to choose - the powers rising here are cunning and Amelia's weakness may be Joe, something of a reformed bad boy with whom she's very happy but who may be just a bit too enchanted by the atavistic threats awaiting here. The tension thrums as the story unfolds, Amelia perturbed by the reactions of her partner and unsure how far she can trust him.

There's a similar tension in the relationship between Jean and Robert, although for them, things have already been soured by Jean's suspicions about events forty years ago at Glenveagh. Zebedee's portrayal of the marriage here is stark - two people who seem to at best dislike, at worst hate each other, but who remain tied together as much by bitterness and suspicion as by circumstance. The darkness of Glenveagh will be eager to exploit this rift, posting the question, what does Robert really want?

I loved the way that Zebedee uses the relationships between these four people to sound the depths of the ancient darkness that confronts them. They face a struggle at two levels - understanding the supernatural forces that threaten, and keeping a hold on their humanity, their love, to resist those forces. With almost no other characters featuring for more than couple of pages, it's an intense, emotional read, the coldness without only endurable because of odd moments of inner warmth, alongside the short respites from that coldest of winters which Zebedee allows her characters.

A truly chilling read in every sense!) strongly recommended for the fireside on an iron-hard night, a book with both complex and intriguing characters and real sense of place - as well as an absorbing and knotty plot. But if you stay up late to finish it, don't blame me if you think you hear hoofbeats snd something snuffling outside... 

For more information about The Wildest Hunt and Jo Zebedee, see Jo's website here, the publisher's website here and the stops on the tour, listed on the poster below.

You can buy The Wildest Hunt from your local bookshop, or online from Hive Books, Blackwell's,  Waterstones or Amazon.

#Review - The Untold Story by Genevieve Cogman

The Untold Story (Invisible Library, 8)
Genevieve Cogman
Pan Macmillan, 9 December 2021
Available as: PB, 400pp, audio, e
Source: Advance e-copy
ISBN(PB): 9781529000634

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

So, after eight volumes, The Invisible Library sequence reaches an end. Or a pause. While I would gladly read a new instalment in this series every year until the last syllable of recorded time (I think I may have fallen just a teeny bit for Irene, Librarian, Thief, Spy, and Assassin) an author will understandably want to explore new characters and themes. All good things come to an end.

In the case of The Untold Story, though, they come to a good end. The books have always been balanced between Irene's derring-do retrieving (stealing) books for the Library - which, in traditional style, we see more of as this instalment  opens - and wider Libraryverse politics, which dominated more as the series grew longer. Cogman cheekily makes this shift the hinge of The Untold Story: haven't you noticed, various characters mutter darkly, that the Librarians have been more and more involved with treaties and talks, and doing less actual book stealing? Why might that be?

This sets the scene for what was always bound to happen - an adventure that doesn't deal with an external situation but instead delves into the ancient secrets of the Library itself, its origin and purpose and what the guiding hand is that keeps it on course. In a moment of crisis, there is dissent among the Librarians. Irene's mentor, Copelia, is dangerously ill and others - whom Irene likes much less - are giving the orders. Who is she to trust? In a real sense we see Irene growing up here, forced to make her own decisions not just about how to fulfil a duty assigned to her but about her values and her loyalty and how far she is prepared to go for them.

The book focuses, more than any adventure to date, on Irene's own past and her connections to Alberich, the greatest traitor in the history of the Library. Its tone is, I think, subtly different to the previous stories - less of a heist, less of a trail of chaos through the worlds (though, be assured, there is plenty of action) and more introspective, more tricksy, perhaps. The landscape is shifting, ancient truths coming under question, and the Library's justification for its existence is somewhat wanting.

Against this background, of course Cogman gives us lashings of what we've come to expect: here is Vale, the Great Detective, ingenious, methodical and deeply moral; here is Kai, dragon prince and Irene's lover, impulsive, and struggling as ever with the tension between personal life and family duty; and here is Catherine, Lord Silver's Fae niece, with her own mysteries (actually perhaps I thought she might have done a little bit more here, but she's still very young). And of course Silver, that archetypal seducer and all round cad, plays his part too, to my great satisfaction.

All in all, this book rounds off the series so far with great flair and it will delight everyone who has been following the series. If you haven't, this isn't the place to start, you need to go back to The Invisible Library and read them in order, but doing that will be a treat, not a chose. Maybe*, like me; you'll read the first book on the Eurostar to Brussels and get glitter all over your business suit and not care? Or maybe you'll read it at home after your family have decided your cryptic hints about what present you want? 

Either way, the important thing is to read it, and to read the other six books, and then to read The Untold Story.

For more information about The Untold Story, see the publisher's website here.

*Possibly not, as trips to Brussels are probably less likely now because of Your Know what and also the other You Know What? And for all I know the publishers have managed to make the covers less glitter shed-y? I hope not though.

#Blogtour #Review - A Marvellous Light by Freya Marske

A Marvellous Light
Freya Marske
Tor/ Pan Macmillan, 9 December 2021
Available as: HB, 384pp, e, audio
Source: Advance copy
ISBN(HB): 9781529080889

I'm grateful to the publisher for an advance copy of A Marvellous Light to consider for review and to Black Crow PR for inviting me to take part in the tour.

A rather magnificent queer romance with magic, A Marvellous Light takes us into an alternate Edwardian age where aristocrats weave spells at house parties, suffragettes chafe against the constraints of society, and dark forces seek powerful artefacts...

Sir Robin Blyth has recently inherited his father's baronetcy on the death of his parents. He's actually inherited little else, the family fortunes having been squandered in social climbing, and to make ends meet, he has taken a job in the Civil Service.

Unfortunately, this turns out far from the sinecure Robin might have hoped for. The Office of Special Domestic Affairs and Complaints is, it seems, the British Empire's own liaison with the world of magic and Robin's been placed there to replace the luckless Reggie Gatling, missing in suspicious circumstances. Before he knows what's hit him, he's under attack from faceless men - and strangely attracted by Edwin Courcey, his counterpart in the hidden world.

Courcey is a prickly, cold and reticent man, one who's been taught to bury his feelings deep, but something in him sparks at Edwin. 

These two awkward and shy men soon find that to survive they need to depend on each other. Edwin is all the help Robin will get with the magical forces now pursuing him, and Robin holds the only clues Edwin will get about what happened to his friend Reggie. So the two bicker along, introducing each other to their respective worlds as they race against time to understand a creeping curse.

I loved Edwin and Robin. Their reticence and defensiveness at first make this seem like Pride and Prejudice squared, but Marske soon shows how much of it proceeds from their being gay in a world that would persecute them for what they are. Yes, defensive instincts are all to the fore but it's because any moment of weakness - any confession of what they really feel - could be catastrophic. What follows is a measured and careful dance, interrupted by volcanic bursts of emotion - not just romantic passion, but fear, jealousy, despair. Edwin's awful family doesn't help: almost all better magicians than him, they're inclined to treat him with bored tolerance at best, scornful bullying more often.

You may, of course, guess how things will end up - I hope it's not too spoilery to say that there are, eventually, some very steamy scenes indeed. But that doesn't mean everything's done and settled. These are complicated men, thrown into an imbroglio of secrets, betrayal and lust for power. Much, much more is at stake than their personal happiness. If they make mistakes as they negotiate that tension, they risk death, ruin or, perhaps worst of all, being made to forget what they have found in one another. the stakes are certainly high.

Secrets are laid bare on many levels in A Marvellous Light. Most obviously, there's the process of "unbushelling", the revelation to a non-magical person of the hidden powers and abilities that exist in the world (the name coming form the Biblical reference to hiding one's light - the marvellous light of the title, perhaps - under a bushel, a container for grain). There's Robin and Edwin's sexuality, hidden from society and, at least initially, from each other. There's the revelation to each of them what the other is, or might be. And, more prosaically, there's the exposure of a fiendish plot that could endanger all magicians. And this is only the first in a series of books - who knows what secrets await?

This mannered and passionate book comes as something of a breath of fresh air in fantasy and introduces a pair of fascinating and deep characters who will I hope appear again soon in what is sure to be a successful and fun series.

For more information about A Marvellous Light, see the publisher's website here or the stops on the blogtour listed on the poster!

#Review - Jade Legacy by Fonda Lee

Cover design
by Lisa Marie Pomilio

Jade Legacy (The Green Bone Saga, 3)

Fonda Lee

Orbit, 2 December 2021

Available as; PB, 716pp, audio, e

Source: Advance copy kindly provided by the publisher

ISBN(PB): 9780356510590

I'm grateful to the publisher for an advance copy of Jade Legacy to consider for review.

I seem to be reading a lot of books this Autumn that end, or at least pause, series. I'm not sure which Jade Legacy does - it certainly rounds off The Green Bone Saga in a satisfying way (that is with conflict, reconciliation, drama, heartbreak and loss) but in doing that it brings onto the stage a whole new generation of the Kaul family. And it's a book that covers such a long period - twenty years or so - in which so much happens that it's conspicouosly more than "just" a conclusion to the series. This book left me asking so many questions about what might come next!

Taking the three books together - the others are Jade City and Jade War - I'm impressed by the sheer scale of Fonda Lee's storytelling. Through all those books, her fantasy world has just hummed with life. Their focus is on the island of Kekon, a place inspired by South East Asian cultures and set in a wider world with enough echoes overall of our own to seem achingly familiar. That familiarity means that the key fantasy idea - of "bioenergetic" jade which imbues its wearers with almost superhero level powers, if they can learn to control them - just seems, well, everyday, and the politics and culture and codes and jealousies that arise from this idea appear as natural consequences of it.

What particularly comes across in Jade Legacy though is that this world isn't static, it's not just a background for the protagonists, it is evolving, technologically, politically and culturally. 

In technology, we start to see changes as camcorders and videogames appear; as Green Bones who get in a spot of bother on nighttime Janloon streets no longer need a phone box to report back to base, but can use a cellphone; as computers and then flat screen TVs are mentioned. 

In politics, the dominant power in this world, the Republic of Espenia, has been in a state of "Slow War" with a rival nation but is now stepping back form that (while leaving a good few small but hot wars to be fought by private contractors).

And in culture, the Kekonese-Espenian community is finally winning a degree of acceptance for its traditions, such as the use of jade for healing. One of the things these books, and especially Jade Legacy, do so well is to explore the cultural challenges faced by this minority community - placed as they are between the cultural milieu of Kekon with its Green Bones clans such as the Kauls' No Peak, and that of the self-proclaimedly "modern" Espenia which still has its criminal gangs or "Crews", many of them rather highly connected, and its religious fanatics devoted to Truthtelling. The rich layering of detail allows many aspects of this to be explored, from the family whose daughter, ensconced in a powerful Government job, chillily disrespects the Kauls' envoy, to the Kekonese-Espenian gang boss who earns opprobrium from his own community and from the Espenians.

Technology, politics, and culture. But there is much more here. The heart of Jade Legacy is, I think family, and love. New characters come onto the scene - such as Niko, son of murdered clan leader Lan, adopted son of the current leader Hilo, Lan's brother - and old ones mature and develop - it was wonderful to see Shae again and to find some of her wounds healing, even as she suffered new ones. But they all have to face the same choices, none more so perhaps than Hilo. Hilo and his wife Wen saw their relationship severely tested in Jade War, and much of this book circles around whether they can rebuild it: the emotional hurt and physical wounds went very deep. 

There is so much here about finding the right way forward - whether by embracing tradition with a twist (as does Jaya with her force of Little Knives) or by challenging or doubting it (as Shae had done before the Saga even began, as Anden did in Jade City and Jade War, and as others do here). So many themes and currents. What about those (like the indigenous inhabitants of Kekon) who cannot wield jade? Clan members so born are referred to as 'stone-eyes' and considered unlucky, but will they continue to accept that status? Others chafe at the arrogance and dominance of Clan resting on the laurels of their role in freeing Kekon during the Many Nations War. New ways of thinking, new ways of living (Anden finally finds love with another man), new demands for inclusion and recognition.

And all through the story, like a chorus, unlucky Bero, who we saw in both the previous books, a clanless man trying to carve himself a niche from the outside. Through chance or effort, he's caused grave hurt to No Peak but done himself little good in the process. Yet here he is, still trying and in so doing, casting a light on the assumptions which uphold Clan power (as well as giving an in to lots of new mischief!)

What else can I say about Jade Legacy? There is just so much to praise, I could go on and on. Loved characters with real human dilemmas, fears, weaknesses and, many of them, willingness to do terrible things. Nobody here here is exactly a hero. It would be easy to see many of them as a pack of cutthroats, even others in Kekon point that out. This world can be - generally is - patriarchal, hierarchical and kind of corrupt. At the same time, the struggles we see here have their own moral context and more, a deeply human appeal - Hilo and Wen seeking to repair their marriage, Shae trying to reconcile her role in the clan with a love that may do the family harm, Niko's need for his own identity, Ru's need to find a new way to be a member of his family.

None of it is easily achieved. There are so many frictions between these characters, and others, often accentuated for the reader because Fonda Lee's writing makes it impossible to dismiss anyone's perspective or to hope for a simple, single correct answer. And all this is being worked out as No Peak struggles for its existence against the larger, even more ruthless Mountain clan so that actions are constrained, resources limited and options often poor. 

In all, this is a glorious read, a zinging, exciting, absorbing book stuffed with drama and sadness, love, fear and tragedy. It wrung my heart again and again, but also had me punching the air, laughing and crying for joy. Whether it is the end for the Kauls and their enemies, or a pause, it is a terrific end, or pause, cementing this series as a magnificent achievement in 21st century fantasy.

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

#Blogtour #Review - The Bone Shard Emperor by Andrea Stewart

The Bone Shard Emperor (The Drowning Empire, 2)
Andrea Stewart
Orbit, 25 November 2021
Available as: HB, 560pp, e, audio
Source: Advance e-copy
ISBN(HB): 9780356514994 

I'm grateful to the publisher for an advance e-copy of The Bone Shard Emperor via Netgalley to consider for review, and to Tracy Fenton of Compulsive Readers for inviting me to take part in the blogtour.

The Bone Shard Emperor picks things up almost where The Bone Shard Daughter left them and, yes, I really think that before reading this, you should read the earlier book, if you haven't already. Some series you can pick up the middle, but not this one, and the reason goes to the heart of why it's so compelling. Quite apart from simply understanding the plot detail - something I don't think is that important - you need the context to really appreciate the characters here. 

Lin, for example, is now Emperor, having killed her corrupt and abusive father, but she's struggling. She really wants to be a better Emperor than her father. In the previous book we saw what he made her and how he treated her, and that is central to her struggles to be herself but also to understand him (which itself risks her becoming more like him). In The Bone Shard Emperor we will see that tension play out, and the danger that Lin courts. Apart from the forces that shaped her as a person, she's inherited a volatile political situation. Her rule isn't absolute: the islands making up the Empire have their own Governors, who consult their own interests first. There is rebellion in the air, and in a series of catastrophes, islands have begin sinking for unknown reasons.

Similarly, notorious smuggler and folk hero Jovis is now Lin's Captain of the Imperial Guard, but his loyalties are conflicted. Stewart's writing here is deft and her characterisation subtle: Jovis is far from loyal to Lin, retaining affiliations both with the Ioph Carn crime syndicate and with the Shardless Few rebels. It would be easy to hate Jovis for what seems like betrayal (it IS betrayal) but if you travelled with him through the earlier book you will understand what he was trying to achieve and the hopes and fears which he still has, and will sympathise with, if not perhaps forgive, him. 

Again, the enigmatic exile Nisong, who spent most of the first book enslaved and befuddled by 'mind fog' has now woken and is visiting a terrible revenge on the Empire. In many ways a hateful character, Nisong has suffered greatly, and using her, Stewart shows how abuse and betrayal can feed on itself - just watch her justifying what she is doing, blaming the innocent who she destroys for the deaths of her friends in the bloody rampage. Again, Stewart's characterisation is chilling and convincing. 

The other main characters here, island governor Phalue and her wife Ranami, perhaps need less backstory - their loyalties were more conflicted in the earlier book and things are simpler in this one: Phalue is trying, in a similar way to Lin, to be better, to raise up her people, and she confronts many of the same problems as Lin in establishing her authority, introducing radical change and dealing with the horrors left by Lin's father, the wild 'constructs' which previously controlled and administered the Empire. Lin and Phalue contrast nicely, Lin having forsworn the bone magic that drives the constructs, thereby leaving herself vulnerable, Phalue resorting enthusiastically to her sword and armour in a most un Governor-like way and rather relishing her hands-on exercise of power.

This book was full of characters I wished would join up, get on, and work together. Lin and Phalue could complement each other so well. Phalue would make a much better Captain than spy/smuggler Jovis. Jovis and Lin, in turn, clearly fancy the pants off one another, but they are held apart by all sorts of formalities and conventions as well as what they don't know about each other. It's frustrating, but Stewart has written a story that captures the nuances and contradictions of these characters extremely well, so that although there are all sorts of catastrophes, rebellions and magical weirdnesses breaking out, it's the central relationships that really drive the plot, adding a sense of peril and risk - as though everyone was on a high wire and might fall of any time - that keeps the reader turning the pages.

A potent blend of politics, magic, warfare and romance, The Bone Shard Emperor fully lives up to the promise of The Bone Shard Daughter, giving us plenty of action and mystery and, best of all, more of the strange creatures Mephi and Thrana, whose nature is now a little clearer. There's also a new character, Ragan, a mysterious warrior-monk who confounds stereotypes (you'll have to wait, no spoilers) and makes Jovis VERY jealous when he gets close to Lin (great fun to observe).

In short, if you've read The Bone Shard Daughter you'll love this sequel, if you haven't read that book I hope I've inspired you to go and do so - before moving on to The Bone Shard Emperor next.

For more information about The Bone Shard Emperor, see the publisher's website here and also the other stops on the tour, listed on the poster below.

You can buy The Bone Shard Emperor from your local bookshop, or online from Bookshop dot org UK, Hive Books, Blackwell's, Foyles, WH Smith, Waterstones or Amazon.

#Review - Beyond the Hallowed Sky by Ken MacLeod

Design by Duncan Spilling

Beyond the Hallowed Sky (Lightspeed Trilogy, 1)
Ken MacLeod
Orbit, 25 November 2021
Available as: PB, 336pp, audio, e
Source: Advance PB copy
ISBN(PB): 9780356514796   

I'm grateful to the publisher for an advance copy of Beyond the Hallowed Sky to consider for review.

Ken MacLeod is an absolute master of near future SF thrillers that intelligently reflect politics and society as well as science. So Beyond the Hallowed Sky is securely rooted in a not so far off* Scotland, part of a multi-nation Union that has undergone revolutionary transformation but in a low key way (the 'Cold Revolution'). It's set against the Alliance, an array of anglo powers who have recently restored democracy, and Co-ord (China and Russia). 

There's a lot of stuff about defections from one to the other (which seem fairly easy) and a glimpsed history that involves some nuclear exchanges, though I don't think all out war. But many here, including one of the main protagonists, John Grant, aren't keen on recalling history too much, either what they did (Grant is a responsible, a key figure in the Revolution) or what happened more widely. Macleod rather brilliantly portrays this future society through small details and hints, not outright description, so making it more of a living and breathing thing that if there were lengthy passages setting out what had happened or how things are structured.

A central theme of the story is, I think, one of technological change and transformation: what becomes of this world when a crazy, impossible idea - faster-than-light travel - turns out to be attainable (and actually, rather easy to realise). Evoking such upheavals as the launch of Sputnik-1 and the fall of the Berlin Wall, MacLeod shows how such an event - despite not having a direct impact, or much impact at all, on the ordinary lives of many people, might still play with the psychic moorings of a society, its sense of worth and purpose. He has I think further shocks in store for the folk of the 2070s because in another thread of the narrative we see attempts to come to terms with a truly alien sort of alien, one which seems intimately linked to our planet and its history and to be capable of great harm.

The way that this book brings together great themes - Space exploration! Aliens! FTL! - with the little details of individual lives - a boy and a girl meeting while out hiking, a trip on a ferry that will change lives, an evening spent in a bar listening to traditional music, the rhythms of life in a workplace - was for me one of its strengths. I enjoyed that this isn't for the most part "zappy" SF, although MacLeod shows himself more than capable of that when the story calls for it, as it does in the final quarter, when some concepts arise that - if I could name them here which I can't because of spoilers - would seem absurd in cold pixels. In context, however, and arising from the very ordinariness of much of the earlier story, they just makes sense and work.

Another theme, which is worth looking out for because it's so well integrated and embedded that it almost seems a matter of course, concerns the place of AI in these future societies. In Beyond the Hallowed Sky, it shows up incarnated in a sort of super-Siri virtual assistant available always and everywhere and charged with meeting needs before they're stated (the kind of thing I think that visionaries might hope could replace the action of markets?)  It also figures embodied in robots, given a remarkable amount of latitude, you might think, and there are some intriguing conversations about consciousness, conscience and freedom here which perhaps aren't quite so integrated into the narrative but were thought-provoking.

All that may make Beyond the Hallowed Sky sound over-ideasy, perhaps, but that would completely wrong. I love ideas in a book but more I love believable, quirky characters, especially the bad guys, an active and twisty plot, and being kept guessing about where everything bis going. And Beyond the Hallowed Sky scores very well on all that, and more, as well as being an engaging and complex opening to a trilogy whose subsequent volumes I'm already looking forward to reading.

To read more about Beyond the Hallowed Sky, see the publisher's website here.

----

*If I live to be 100 I'll be contemporary with the events of this book.

#Review - The Midnight Lock by Jeffery Deaver

The Midnight Lock (Lincoln Rhyme, 15)
Jeffery Deaver
HarperCollins, 25 November 2021
Available as: HB, 448pp, audio, e
Source: Advance e-copy
ISBN(HB): 9780008303846

I'm grateful to the publisher for an advance e-copy of The Midnight Lock to consider for review.

I enjoy Deaver's novels so much, and especially his Lincoln Rhyme thrillers. It's something to do with the strong setting and the collegiality of Rhyme and his group of friends/ helpers, but it doesn't hurt that, as Deaver described at a recent online session to launch The Midnight Lock, the author knows he's competing for attention with social media, games, video  and countless other channels and he sets out to write books that grab the attention. 

And how. In this latest visit to Rhyme's New York townhouse forensics lab - we've been away for a couple of years following the doings of new Deaver protagonist Colter Shaw on the West Coast - there is, as always, plenty of action, but this time, behind it all, a distinct air of menace. Rhyme has learned he's being targeted by old adversary The Watchmaker; he's also fluffed a case, and a crime boss who's free as a result wants revenge for Rhyme's involvement (some people have no gratitude); 'Verum', an online purveyor of fake news and rabble-stirring conspiracy theory, highlights Rhyme's failure as the outworking of a vast conspiracy; and, perhaps most concerning of all, the Mayor and the City authorities have turned against Rhyme, forbidding any police officer to work with, or even speak to him (tricky as Rhyme's wife Amelia is a cop).

It's all getting very dark, and amidst this, in a first person narrative, we hear the mysterious stalker known as 'The Locksmith' lay plans and carry them out. This figure, who will be Rhyme's main opponent in The Midnight Lock, is a master of burglary, entering women's apartments at night and disarranging things just enough to alarm. In some truly tense scenes, we see the break-ins and observe the Locksmith move around as if at home, toying with thoughts of going further still, selecting knives, musing on even worse crimes. Deaver gives us the dry, technical background to all the lockpicking, with serves both to show the depth of the Locksmith's skill and knowledge and also to undermine any faith I had in the ability of locks to protect. 

Bolts, bolts are the thing, and don't trust electronics either.

As usual in these books, it's very much a game of cat and mouse - or several games, in fact; Rhyme can't of course let the fact that he's still looking into the case come out, and there are other forces at work too, with their own agendas, their own truths. The malleability of truth here is something of a theme, the story covering not only Verum's bizarre ravings but also the activities of a sleazy tabloid which monetises lies for the sake of sales, and a dubious streaming service one of whose content moderators seems rather casual to say the least.

Against this background, Rhyme's absolute faith in the truth as revealed by evidence (by which he means, scientific evidence, not testimony) is a rather helpful touchstone and pointed up something I should perhaps have spotted sooner, that Deaver is pitching Rhyme as a modern day Sherlock Holmes. Certainly the milieux of the two men are similar, solving crimes from their homes at the heart of the world-cities of their age, London and New York, but the focus in The Midnight Lock on samples of material from shoes to enable identification of movements put me in mind of Dr Joseph Bell, whose deductions Conan Doyle reflected in Holmes. More prosaically, I think, Rhyme has some of Holmes' crabbiness, his disdain for "unnecessary" information, even commonplace knowledge if it isn't related to crime or forensics (which gives a bit of comic relief here, akin to the judge who'd never heard of the Beatles). And the same sense of ennui when not actively engaged on a case.

I wouldn't take this parallel too far - Rhyme has married! - but the presence of The Watchmaker as a Nemesis does create another similarity. In this book, the first question to be determined is, of course, whether The Locksmith and The Watchmaker might be the same person, a possibility that adds to the sense of danger in the air, a sense that only builds as the unknown stalker becomes aware of Rhyme's interest and builds it into his plans...

As always with Deaver's books, The Midnight Lock is terrific, page-turning fun and I was pleased to re-acquaint myself with Rhymes after the break (although also glad to hear on that Zoom event that Shaw will also be back again).

Strongly recommended.

For more information about The Midnight Lock, see the publisher's website here.