Review - Why Q Needs U by Danny Bate

Why Q Needs U

Danny Bate
Bl!nk (Bonnier Publishing), 2 October 2025
Available as: HB, 376pp, audio, e
Source: Bought
ISBN(HB): 9781785307430

I enjoy listening to Dr Danny Bate's podcast, A Language I Love Is, so  was excited to hear that he had a book appearing, especially as it takes on a subject that sticks out as a problem with English - the spelling.

Compared with other languages, one can make a case that English spelling is irregular, confusing, and hard to learn. Indeed, there's an old joke that English spelling is so weird that you could spell there word "fish" as "ghoti".  This has always annoyed me. Yes, those letters are used in various places for sounds that could make "enough". But nobody who can read English would see them and hear that. You would pronounce those letters as something like "goatee". 

But that leaves the question, why? Danny Bate sets out to explain the facts. As part of that, he works his way through the modern English alphabet, explaining where the letters came from - tracing the story back into Latin, Greek and Phoenician, and ending up with the early Semitic language speakers who adapted many of the symbols from ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics.  (So the story goes back 3000+ years!)

As a non-linguist, it was a revelation to me just how much of what now seems to be so fixed - what could be more solid than the alphabet? - was in flux for centuries, in fact till very recently, with letters being repurposed for new sounds, dropped, reinstated, reused and spun off from one another (so, G started as C, with the little crosspiece added to form a new letter). Along the way a few were lost completely (please hold poor ð and þ in your thoughts). 

The history of the letters - one per chapter - naturally draws us into an explanation of what sounds they were used for, in Greek, Latin and English Old, Middle and ModernIt is a complex picture, depending on some understanding of how the sounds for which the letters stand are each made - what the tongue and throat are doing, and how changes in that can chance pronunciations, sometimes resulting in tectonic shifts which leave their traces in systematically wrong-seeming spellings. Bate is very good at giving the reader enough to understand his point, but without turning the book into an instruction manual. (It may help in though, if you can read the book in a place where you can say the sounds out loud.)

The story reminded me, somewhat, of archeology or geology, a process of unearthing layers of deposits giving clues to speech and spelling. For English, that means repeated outside influences from Norse, Norman French, Latin, the invention of printing and centuries of social and political change. These resulted in consistent patterns which can still be traced in modern spellings (though every rule has an exception, as do many of the exceptions). It's a fascinating story and the conclusions are often deeply satisfying as some apparent anomaly becomes clear.

If I've made all that sound terribly dry, it's not. This is a fun book with some amazing facts hidden away. After reading it you will, for example, know more about some of the hieroglyphs you may see on Only Connect.  Why Q Needs U would make an excellent Christmas present for any word nerds in the family, as well as potentially helping settle family arguments, if your family is prone to argue about things like "s" or "z" spellings or why "W" sounds like "double U".

Or, indeed, why Q needs U at all.

Strongly recommended.

For more information about Why Q Needs U, see the publisher's website here.

Review - The Ghosts of Blaubart Mansion by Ivy Grimes

The Ghosts of Blaubart Mansion

Ivy Grimes
Cemetery Gates Media, 21 April 2025
Available as: PB, 166pp, e   
Source: Advance copy
ISBN(PB): 9798310899803

I'm grateful to Cemetery Gates Media for sending me a copy of The Ghosts of Blaubart Mansion to consider for review.

Ivy Grime's debut novel, The Ghosts of Blaubart Mansion, is I think an updating the Bluebeard story. That is clear from the title alone but we also have a mysterious husband (one in a line of mysterious husbands, in fact) marrying a new bride (Ruby, the main protagonist) who is taken to the Scary Mansion. There is talk of previous wives (what became of them?) and Ruby is forbidden to go into a particular room.

As expected in fact. Only, Ruby's new husband, Glaucon, and his creepy house (castle?) are by no means the only weird elements of the plot. Or indeed, the weirdest. Ruby's, and her sister, Opal's, lives are strange even before her wedding changes everything. They live in a remote house in the woods where their mother, terrified of bears and strangers, keeps them a secret as much as she can. Walking in the woods, Ruby and Opal encounter the enigmatic Phew, so called because he is the Nephew of God, and a prophet. Also, a talking possum and a distracted Frenchman, seeking his daughter. 

Grimes's deadpan, real-but-dreamlike tone makes such odd developments seem real and obvious, albeit it's clear this isn't a fantasy world where such things are simply accepted, so the story hardly needs to change its affect when Blaubart Mansion itself comes to the centre of things with an array of enigmatic servants, ghosts, cast-off wives (they aren't executed anymore, just retired to a kind of rest home in the grounds) and mysterious architecture. However there is more going on here than just the gothic. Blaubart is, as much as a home, a grand machine dedicated to laundering and celebrating a certain sort of history... located in the US South you might expect this is a certain sort of White, moneyed, history, and so it proves. 

Putting me in mind of Gormenghast with its enigmatic rituals, isolation (though, unlike Gormenghast, Blaubart is located in a recognisably modern location), sprawling, generational construction and its celebration of a skewed history, Blaubart soon reveals itself as suffering from a certain dis-ease. The  wives are the least of it: maintaining the traditions seems to exact a price from all involved. How will Ruby free herself of this place (which she married into mainly to provide medical care for her sick mother, to be promptly forbidden from ever seeing her again) without becoming a murderer in turn?

The Ghosts of Blaubart Mansion is a complex and allusive story which works on many different levels, blending honest to goodness horror with a real sense of the past tainting and corrupting the present. Ruby's escape will require her own courage ind ingenuity, the forging of unlikely alliances - and facing the truth of her and Opal's family and its refuge in the woods. Though short, it packs a lot in. As I have said, it's part Bluebeard, part Gormenghast and there is also a sense of Cold Comfort Farm in the sensible heroine stranded amidst the grotesque. But it is its powerful own thing - a disturbing book that takes a scalpel to the decorous rituals of modern society and reveals the canker beneath.

Recommended.

For more information about The Ghosts of Blaubart Mansion, see the publisher's website here.

Review - Once Was Willem by MR Carey

Once Was Willem

MR Carey

Orbit,  4 March 2025
Available as: HB, 297pp, audio, e   
Source: Advance e-copy
ISBN(HB): 9780356519449

I'm grateful to Orbit for giving me access to an advance e-copy of Once Was Willem to consider for review.

One of the things I really enjoy about a New Year (yes, I know it's March now, bear with me) is the prospect of new books from favourite authors. Many authors publish a book a year, or every other year, and these are previewed a few months ahead, so it's easy to follow the rhythm of the calendar and accumulate a forward look of what's coming. This is laudable behaviour, what in a business context is called "horizon scanning". It's easy to convince yourself that you are being bold, a veritable explorer, searching the horizon with a telescope and alert to future trends.

The reality of course can be slightly different - a deluge of upcoming books you want to read but will never have time to. Perhaps this will change in coming years when there are no authors left, and AIs, or as George Orwell called them, the "novel-writing machines", churn out reworked slop to keep the readers happy and stop anyone thinking. Then I will throw away my catalogues, settle down in my corner, and spend the rest of my life catching up, as there will be nothing new to miss.

We are not there yet. But happily there is already a better way out of this dilemma because we have MR Carey, and other authors, whose coming books one obviously has to read and there's an end to it. I have been watching this one coming, and eagerly waiting to start it and can now report that it every bit as good as I had wished.

A historical fantasy set in the 12th century English Midlands, Once Was Willem takes us to a world of knights, barons, and kings in a time of civil war. Or actually, it doesn't, quite because most of the KB&Ks are kept offpage while the action focuses on villagers, children, outlaws and fugitive magicians. 

Oh, and monsters. 

I approve of this, on the basis that the KB&Ks get too much attention given they basically have their holdings by theft and murder, and deserve taking down a peg or three. History is much, much more interesting seen from "below" (or, as one may equally say, when seen clearly). So in Once Was Willem, the lawlessness of the times is due to the quarrels of the KB&Ks, but the people who have to deal are... the people. And they have no choice by to deal, and precious few resources to use for that yet they SUCCEED. How to we know they succeed? It's simple. You and me are here today, so our ancestors managed the difficult trick of staying alive and keeping things on the road (In the particular context and setting of this story, that is true for values of "you and me" that mainly includes European descended people because that's where the book is set, but I think the point is absolutely general - our ancestors survived, and kept things going. Perhaps in appalling circumstances, but still they did, or none of us would be here). 

Of course this book is fantasy, and the people in it didn't exist so didn't, literally, survive. And it being fantasy they had resources that don't exist "for real". But I don't think that diminishes the validity of a story that focusses, like this, on ordinary people.

Nor does the fact that, as is true in Once Was Willem, they ordinary people do many appalling things. The Willem of this story is a boy, outcast from his family for reasons I won't spoil, who has to take refuge in the woods alongside monsters. There he finds a more welcoming and accepting family than in his village of Cosham, which habitually chases out the weird kids and burns the witches. Nevertheless, it's those outcasts and weirdos who come to the village's rescue when a local upstart lordling (he was of late an outlaw and robber himself, see my point above) demands Cosham hand over all its children. Shades of "Seven Samurai/ The Magnificent Seven" here when the mysterious creatures from the woods come together to defend the kids (not, really, the village.

The story is cleverly told from Willem's point of view, with an appropriately limited (but gradually expanding) understanding of events and the wider context. That did slightly recall Koli's perspective in Carey's Rampart trilogy, (also excellent). There is a split perspective so that events are narrated both as they happen and in hindsight, Willem having come on pretty extensive knowledge  afterwards so he's able to report action and conversations in the right places without having to be there. While this, obviously, sends an enormous signal about the book (Willem survives!) that's hardly unexpected and Carey is masterful in pulling the rug from under our feet when we think we know how that happens, what it means and what Willem will have to go through to ensure victory. 

Willem, and his friends. All of them are very real characters, hurt in their various ways and needing to develop the ability to trust before they can move forward. None completely understand what is going on or what is at state and they need to find ways to see each other as allies and friends, not as the dangerous creatures they're rumoured to be.

Their opponent, Cair Caradoc, the magician, is as villainous and self-seeking as a storybook wizard should be, magic being something that can easily be accommodated to this slightly liminal, chaotic part of England. His power is great, his deeds vile and his ambition deadly. A magnificent creation.

All in all this is a terrific, absorbing fantasy with a story that simply romps along. Rooted in a recognisable time and place it's able to surprise because it's told from a genuinely distinctive point of view. It isn't, nor does it mean, to be, word for word historically accurate (the early mention of potatoes signals that) but at the same time it is accurate in that it speaks up for and focusses on the fate and actions of the common people, who are, after all, the people who actually did the history (because they had little choice if they, and their children, were to survive).

Strongly recommended.

For more information about Once Was Willem, see the publisher's website here. 

#Review - The Last Song of Penelope by Claire North

The Last Song of Penelope (The Songs of Penelope, 3)

Claire North
Orbit, 20 June 2024
Available as: HB, 388pp, audio, e   
Source: Advance copy
ISBN(HB): 9780356516110

I'm grateful to Orbit for sending me a copy of The Last Song of Penelope to consider for review.

The stories of Penelope and of Odysseus her husband, who was ten years away from Ithaca at the Trojan War and ten years returning, are part of the DNA of Western culture and I can remember when I first heard then, in a (necessarily bowdlerised!) version when I was about eight years old. 

Even then, I thought, this was rather odd. 

It wasn't so much the somewhat random escapades of Odysseus as he made his leisurely way home (though he could have hurried up a bit couldn't he?) but the way Penelope was treated as she waited for him. Why didn't someone just chase those suitors away? Why did Penelope have to stage an elaborate ruse, weaving her father-in-law's shroud just to delay them? Of course, nobody was going to teach the kids in an English rural primary school in the 70s about sexism and the patriarchy - and I'd never really gone back and revisited the stories until Claire North's trilogy began to appear - so long-buried questions and puzzlement bubbled up as soon as I began reading these books. I have been intrigued and captivated by the way that North deals with them. By the cool affect of her narration, the way she integrates human affairs with the Greek pantheon, the puzzled outsider's view of Egyptian Kenamon. But most of all, by the often-exasperated Penelope - a woman on the edge in more ways than one - as she deals with indignity after indignity and triumphs every time.

Last Song is the third (and last) book, and if you haven't read the others (Ithaca and House of Odysseus) you simply must go back and do so before you start this one. Not because spoilers (this is a three thousand year old story!) but because you have such a reading treat in store. You mustn't miss out. So promise me you'll do that, please?

Assuming you have, you'll be a bit more clued up with the setting. In her husband's prolonged absence, Penelope is Queen of Ithaca, a remote and much-maligned corner of the Ancient Greek world, a modest place and one which tends, shrewdly, to exaggerate its modesty. With so many ravening kings, pirates, psychotic gods and such loose on the wine-dark sea, the less tempting a kingdom appears, the safer it will be.

The general set-up is that Penelope, a wise and determined woman, mustn't be seen to exercise ;power, so this is left to her somewhat bumbling counsellors. In reality she is, though, firmly in control and is playing a long game, keeping the suitors, who wish to marry her (and inherit the kingdom) at arm's length while also preserving Ithaca's independence from its stronger neighbours. 

In the earlier books we saw Penelope skilfully navigate various crises, cultivating allies and bamboozling various would-be enemies. In The Last Song, though, she faces her stiffest challenge when Odysseus, finally, returns, upsetting careful calculations and overturning the delicate balance that Penelope has maintained. Soon Ithaca will be at war with itself for reasons utterly predictable to anyone who's been watching the absurd, strutting men who inhabit these tales. 

All of that is complicated by our narrator, the goddess Athena, who, as she informs us, is far from reliable. Indeed, she admits that she has a certain purpose in shaping events, and she will, obviously, adhere to a certain view of how things develop. While it might be nice if this involved female solidarity with Penelope and her lieutenants and maids, that will only go so far. Athena is in the business of writing her story, and she will have an eye to the audience down the ages who will receive it. 

So, as events unfold, we're getting two narratives (at least). There is what - we may imagine - "really" went on (but which we're not told all of) and what the "poets" will sing of in future days. Sometimes these align, more often not. I would venture to say though that the former is what eight year old me would like to have been told. By giving us this, North therefore corrects the record, though, as Athena warns us, there can be no reliability when one goes beyond the words of poets...

But what a story this is. There is war here, both force of arms and force of cunning. There is pride, rage, revenge. There is greed. Above all - or at the centre of all - there is love, or loves. Love that might have been, love that has been worn down and lost but might be regrown. The relationship between Penelope and the returned Odysseus is knotted and complex, he revealed to be, perhaps, less the pig headed patriarch than some of his peers. But equally complex is Penelope's relationship with her son Telemachus - though it is rather one to which she has lost, and can't seem to find, the key.

There is also bitterness and cruelty here with some moments of real horror - The Last Song of Penelope is not a book for the faint of heart. Long-suffering as she is, Penelope is not spotless herself - for example, even she does not really, I think, see her maids, who are slaves, as people, however much she clearly loves them. So we are trapped by layers of assumptions and social norms.

The Last Song of Penelope is a brilliant, satisfying, heart-wrenching and absorbing conclusion to North's trilogy. The writing shows North at her formidable best, but more, it takes these ancient stories and imbues them with a sense of heart, a deep empathy for people of long ago, who are living half in myth, half in history. I think it's that heart, that empathy which is perhaps what is missing from so many modern retellings, eroded by the act of translation and the familiarity of the story. North gifts her version with both. 

I would STRONGLY RECOMMEND this book!

For more information about The Last Song of Penelope, see the publisher's website here.

#Blogtour #Review - Elusive by Genevieve Cogman

Elusive
Genevieve Cogman
Pan Macmillan/ Tor, 23 May 2024
Available as: HB, 400pp,  audio, e   
Source: Advance e copy
ISBN(HB): 9781529083774

I'm grateful to the publisher for an advance copy of Elusive to consider for review, and for inviting me to join the book's blogtour.

The sequel to Cogman's Scarlet, Elusive features the characters, and setting, of Baroness Orczy's Scarlet Pimpernel series in which an English nobleman and his friends, acting anonymously, rescue French aristocrats from the Terror during the Revolution.

In Scarlet, the premise was established, with our reluctant hero, housemaid Eleanor, being "lent" by her vampire (I'll come to that in a moment) employer, Lady Sophie, to Sir Percy Blakeney (the Pimpernel) and his crew to that she can impersonate Marie Antoinette to facilitate a rescue. (Yes, Eleanor closely resembles the French Queen, something which I speculate may be a future plot point). All Eleanor wants is the opportunity to set up as a modiste, earning an honest living through her needleworks skills, but it is not to be.  Cogman draws Eleanor as a convincing protagonist who's not afraid to think for herself, albeit the position she's in is precarious due to the vagaries of the English class system and, of course, patriarchy. Any fear I had that that exploring Orczy's "rescue the aristos" angle might seem dated or crass was rapidly dispelled by the intelligent and engaged way in which Cogman presents the realities of Revolutionary France and the crimes of the ancien regime. She also overcomes that fact that she's probably the only person living now who's read the Pimpernel books and that for many, knowledge of them will be limited to the "They seek him here, they seek him there" verses and the Carry On parody. (Is there a proper literary term for works better known from derivatives and parodies than from the original text?) 

With Elusive, Eleanor pretty much gets her own adventure, driving much of the action (albeit she has to be somewhat underhand about this) and getting back to France, in the absence of Sir Percy (hence the book's title) to stage a diversionary raid on Mont Saint Michel, where a large number of prisoners are held hostage. 

As we learned in Scarlet, vampires are a thing in this world, indeed they're one of the evils against which the people of France rose. The vampires formerly had enemies in the order of magicians/ sorcerers who they defeated and had expunged from history. Eleanor just happens though to have the should have the last remaining sorcerer, Anima, hitching a ride with her. And Anima has her own plans, which also involve Mont Saint Michel...

I loved Scarlet, but now I find I actually enjoyed Elusive even more. Eleanor has much more licence here and is less subject to others' machinations and orders. The relationship with Anima, her unexpected passenger, grows and develops, the two very different women struggling with, but learning to understand and trust, one another. Eleanor has grown, and deepens further here in her understanding of the world, and wherever her story is going, it isn't leading to her becoming an enthusiastic lackey of the British Establishment: she can see the reasons for the Revolution, and enthusiastically urges another young woman, freed from captivity, to strive to make it a better Revolution. There's a questioning side to Eleanor's nature which contrasts with the other members of the League of the Scarlet Pimpernel. They may be perfectly affable, honourable young men by their own lights, they are brave and by no means stupid, but nor have been servants and so they are comfortable with a level of privilege and wealth which is only maintained by repression. 

Eleanor sees more clearly.

This story is both more straightforward and more layered than its predecessor. More straightforward, in that it's clearer from the start what Eleanor faces, and what she is doing. We don't have to wait for it to be revealed where the story is going. More layered, because with different factions in play - several different groups of vampires, including the late Marie Antoinette, now one of the undead, the French authorities, personified by Citizen Chauvelin, who has his own difficulties, the sorcerers, whose motivations and fate become clearer and who have some remaining power via Anima, and lots more besides (spoilers!) - Eleanor has to dig deep into her store of knowledge, talent, and courage, and also broaden it with new abilities. She has power, up to a point, but much of her success in this adventure comes rather from persuasion, empathy and quick thinking, in circumstances where a false step could see her and all her friends sent to the guillotine.

As ever in Cogman's books, there is some sharp writing here, both to convey to us the reality of things from Eleanor's viewpoint and to keep the story moving. I especially enjoyed the way that Cogman will have her characters describe a plan, and then jump to the aftermath of its execution, giving the essence of the story without needing to repeat herself. She also often visualises opportunities, situations and schemes as fabrics to be worked rather than timelines, using needlework metaphors to show Eleanor grappling with the difficulties she's in. That's not something I'd come across before and it is a very effective and economical way to portray things.

So - if you loved Scarlet I think you'll love this even more, if you haven't read Scarlet, go and do that!

For more information about Elusive, see the publisher's website here, and of course the other stops on the blogtour, listed on the poster below.

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

#Review - Maror by Lavie Tidhar

Maror
Lavie Tidhar
Head of Zeus, 4 August 2022
Available as: HB, 554pp, e
Source: Advance e-copy, purchased HB
ISBN: 9781838931353

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

Maror is kind of hard to describe - it contains so much, covers so much ground and introduces so many characters, that a review risks missing the wood for the trees.

A lengthy book, in which Tidhar seems to enjoy the opportunity to swoop and circle his themes, it's a study of modern Israel, dramatised and explored using the lives of a varied bunch of characters. If you've read Tidhar's By Force Alone and The Hood, described as the "anti-Matter of Britain", which deconstruct the heroic myths of, especially, England, you might see some similarities in Maror although the latter is strictly realist - no magic, and cops rather than warriors (though drugs do feature here as in those books. There are also some allusions to Tidhar's SF - for example, I spotted a reference to the cover of his Central Station short story collection).

What we have is a book written in eighteen (shortish) parts which jump around different locations in Isreal, Lebanon, and further afield, mostly moving forward in time but occasionally jumping back to show earlier events. The almost-common theme is Cohen, policeman, crime boss, spy, husband, father, grandfather and so much more. It becomes clear early on that he is corrupt, indeed we see how this comes about, but Tidhar is quite shifty about what this amounts to. Is it a necessary corruption, Cohen doing the things that can't be seen to have official sanction? Or is he just on the make? 

I suspect the truth is somewhere in between, with the consequences you'd expect: we see a murder enquiry deliberately botched to pin the blame on an innocent man, a journalist pressured to suppress inconvenient truths about dodgy land deals in the West Bank, and, as I have said, drug dealing and gangsterism on a grand scale, exploiting (or even driving) Israel's conflict in Lebanon. That trade also takes us to South America where drugs, mercenaries and crime bosses occupy a shifty, overlapping space. (There are many deaths in this book).

Alongside the cynical counter-history, Tidhar also gives a vivid portrayal of Israel - weaving in three decades of music with a sensual portrayal of young people living their lives (a fascinating tapestry, that, of kibbutzniks, youth workers, journalists, rookie cops and many others), of the food, the bewildering contrasts between different corners of what is a very small country. Political events make an impression,  with hopes for peace undercut by repeated incursions into Lebanon and, eventually, by assassination and by a shift in the mood of the politics. There is a sense of decaying idealism, but also a recognition of wrongs buried in the founding history of the land: Arab villages that are no more, bodies buried on the beach. Cohen knows where the bodies are buried,  he may have just some of them there himself, but best not talk about that...

Maror is a terrific read, well-observed, absorbing, deploying a vast number of characters and allowing them to come to life across years of time and miles of distance, some patterns recurring and others broken. It is a book with great humanity, showing people living their lives around great - and sometimes terrible - events. 

Strongly recommended.

For more information about Maror, see the author's blog here.

#Review - Ithaca by Claire North

Ithaca

Claire North

Orbit, 8 September 2022

Available as: HB, 400pp, e, audio

Source: Advance e copy

ISBN(HB): 9780356516042

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

Ithaca is a story of Queen Penelope, waiting at home while her husband Odysseus gallivants his slow way home after the Trojan War. 

I have tended to be wary of Greek myth retellings, and I'm not sure why. Something about having read these stories in school perhaps, but also about Greek mythology being almost too rich a serving of the incredible, just one bizarre thing after another, coupled with petulant deities? 

But Claire North is one of my absolute top favourite authors. Across novel after novel, she's served up the bizarre in the normal, making astonishing themes seem part of everyday life, and making ordinary people, extraordinary. So if anyone can be trusted to do something magical with this material, it's North - and I just had to look at what she'd do.

In outline, this is a fairly well-known story. Seventeen years ago, Odysseus took all the fighting men of the island with him, and of course the gold, so Penelope, and Ithaca, are unprotected and - with doubts spreading about whether he will ever return - she is subject to the attentions of a pack of suitors. With some help from the gods, Penelope outwits them. So much, I vaguely remembered. Bands of ravening pirates however also threaten Ithaca (an addition by North I think) and the old men and boys left behind by Odysseus are wholly incapable of seeing them off. What's a queen to do?

Which is where North makes this story her own. She fills this world - poised uneasily between myth and history - with real people (even when some of them are gods). And she intelligently and compellingly supplies a rationale, a world, a motivation for what happens here. For Penelope's plight. For the whole, appalling enterprise of the Trojan War. For the business with the suitors.

That motivation is, of course, the patriarchal system that underpins everything, a system reflected in the lives both of mortals like Penelope and of the gods themselves. The story is narrated by Hera, Queen of the Gods and also wife of Zeus - and she is VERY careful not to draw his attention to what she's encouraging on distant little Ithaca, because it would be seen as rebellion against the male power that's dethroned her as the primordial goddess of fire. 

Similarly, Penelope, left a very tricky hand to play while Odysseus is off strutting his heroic stuff, has to weave together an ever shifting web of alliances, expedients, trusted allies, manipulated guests, commerce and - as we eventually see - clandestine military operations to keep herself and her son alive, her island at peace and a place ready for returning Odysseus. And she has to do it all without seeming to claim a place in the Royal council, without actually giving advice to any man, and indeed, in spite of the very clumsy attempts by the men - who think they're in charge - to direct things.

The world in which this all takes place is gradually revealed to be a nasty and brutish place, especially for women, seen here being sold into slavery, casually disposed of by their master or mistress, taken as prizes in war (the whole focus of the Trojan war, of course) and casually assaulted by the men around them. Again, the behaviour of men and gods is not so different. 

This side of things was not, of course, included in the version of these stories I was told as a child at school - which possibly did make them even harder to understand, with motivations and consequences cloaked. In North's retelling, Hera's rather wearied, very arch and thoroughly modern commentary and narrative ably fill these gaps, restoring the story to a wholeness and putting the deeds of women (which, we are assured, the Poets will never sing) back in their rightful place. We see Penelope's dealings with her household, her maids, assorted priestesses (and the frankly bonkers royal couple Elektra and Orestes who arrive from Mycenae mid-book on a mission of revenge, upsetting all her careful calculations).

The story is a delight throughout, very much reflecting North's witty, cool authorial style, but dialled up to eleven and served with an extra relish that completely suits the perspective of the REAL GODDESS that Hera would have us remember she is. 

In short, Ithaca is a twisty, complex story fraught with the possibility of lines being crossed - of attracting the unwanted attention of Zeus, or the piracy getting out of hand, or the suitors finally demanding a response - and one carefully located in a world of almost-history, almost myth. This is Greece, but before it put on all its airs and graces.  Half the characters are apparently descended from demigods, under curses or being protected by deities (sometimes all three). No-one yet has any use for writing or for accounting - those strange, near-Eastern technologies - and there is a palpable sense that Greece is not yet the equal of, say, Egypt in the civilisation stakes. Nevertheless, there is also a sense of nascent history, with the seeds of the Greece-that-is-to-be visible in city rivalries, trade routes and an emerging politics. Possibilities seem to fill the air, Penelope's very human sense of guile and skill at managing the rather lumbering gods-in-a-machine pointing the way to the future. 

It's a powerful, bewitching and above all, fun story, one I'd strongly recommend.

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

#Blogtour #Review - Sistersong by Lucy Holland

Sistersong
Lucy Holland
Macmillan, 28 April 2022
Available as: PB, 416pp, e, audio
Source: Advance copy provided by the publisher
ISBN(PB): 9781529039054

I'm grateful to the publisher for an advance copy of Sistersong and to Jamie and Stephen at Black Crow for inviting me to take part in the book's blogtour.

Sistersong is a generously imagined and well told story rooted in the sub-Roman period, when Britain was no longer defended by the Empire but "England" had not yet formed. It's a story of family, love, revenge and treachery but above all I think a story of becoming what one is - and the costs doing that can accrue. 

This period of this book is sometime described as the "dark ages" -  a term originally used because of the lack of contemporary written records, but which is now avoided because to many it suggests that it was barbarism and decay, which (as this book shows) it was not. It's also sometimes seen the "age of Arthur", a British leader defending his people against the invading Saxons. Again, though, the historical records are scant. This gives an author a great deal of room and Holland takes full advantage, placing this story in a definable place - the kingdom of Dumnonia, in what is now South West England - and associating it with real people (her King, Cador, his successor Constantine, and their Saxon opponents). To these she adds a conflict between the old religion of Celtic paganism and the new Christianity represented by the priest Gildas - also a real person, who wrote one of the few contemporary histories of Britain. (I loved the way that Gildas's actual habit of denouncing pretty much everybody in his writings carries through to acrimonious relationships with nearly everyone here.) 

The main focus of Sistersong is though not on the historical characters but on the fictional Riva, Keyne and Sinne. Cador's three children are vividly portrayed and only too plausible. The story is told from their viewpoints, Holland switching between them - shifts which sometimes preserve the flow of events, sometimes deliberately jar them, but which always illuminate, showing an event from two or even three perspectives as well as giving the reader a fuller picture than any of the characters have.

Of the three, Riva and Sinne are the "twa sisters" of the traditional murder ballad which, as as Holland has explained, was the inspiration for the book: Keyne is the one the ballad left out, for reasons which become clear. It's the relationships between them which really drive the story, each wanting something different. 

One seeks love and adventure. 

Another, injured and (as she sees it) disfigured in a fire as a child, retreats into books and her magical talent for healing, but deep inside, may yearn for other things. 

The third would lead, but is in a society where that seems unlikely, and fears that society seems likely to impose.

The ups and downs of their relationships both affect and illuminate the wider political events - war, invasion, religious conflict and the loss of magic - which will determine the future of Dumnonia and, later, of the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms which will become England. 

I loved the way that in this book, Holland foregrounds the struggles of the three relatable (if at times frustrating) young people who are doing their "growing ups" just as the tides of history lap the walls of their hill-fort.  Both sides of the story are urgent, and nobody really understands what is going on. It may be tempting to assume that we, privileged 21st century readers, know how things turned out eventually and so understand everything. But no. This is such an unknown period, and Holland so cleverly brings in different factors (I don't want to do spoilers!) that nothing is certain - except love, change, and loss. Family love and romantic love. Personal loss as childhood familiarity gives way to new battle lines: wider loss as the old ways are challenged and change. (But not without a fight!)

I just loved Sistersong, which portrays a complex historical situation without painting heroes and villains (if there were a villain in this book, it might be Gildas who perhaps appears at times as slightly monomaniacal - though once the full truth about him is made known, the reader may revise this point of view). There are nods to what people will recall of the Arthurian stories (especially with one character) but this isn't an attempt to "retell" those - Holland instead creates a world here with echoes in history and in other sources, but which is fully her own.

Overall, a compelling story filled with magic, romance,  and adventure and with many contemporary resonances.

For more information about Sistersong, see the publisher's website here. You can buy Sistersong from your local bookshop, or online from Bookshop, from Hive Books, Blackwell's, Foyles, WH Smith, Waterstones or Amazon.

Review - Divine Heretic by Jaime Lee Moyer

Design by Patrick Knowles

Divine Heretic
Jaime Lee Moyer
Jo Fletcher Books, 20 August 2020
Available as: PB, 390pp, e
Source: Advance PB copy
ISBN: 9781787479265

I'm grateful to Jo Fletcher Books for an advance copy of Divine Heretic to consider for review.

Following from last year's Brightfall, which gave us a fantasy focussed on Maid Marian, Moyer moves into more historical territory with a story inspired by the life of Jeanne d'Arc, Joan of Arc to the English although as they (we) were her enemies I will stick to Jeanne.

When I heard about this book I was really intrigued and keen to see how, exactly, Moyer would treat the subject. It was clear that there would be fantasy elements. It's equally clear, if you think for a moment, that the religious and social atmosphere of the medieval wars between England and France - let alone the specific subject matter of Jeanne's life and terrible death - makes for quite difficult subject matter. It would be easy, on the one hand, to avoid this and completely fantasy this story up - but also easy to write something very, very grim indeed (grimdark doesn't have to be made up!)

Moyer manages, I think, to tread a middle course here. She resists making the book too genre-y. Her Jeanne's world is one with definite magical and fantasy elements. In an early scene we see tree-spirits in a grove, and the rural people make offerings in remote shrines to vaguely described spirits or saints (with one eye out for the baleful local priest, Father Jakob). But Jeanne is no kick-ass fantasy heroine, there's no route for her to learn magic or turn all this to her advantage (other than making those hopeful offerings, alongside her prayers to the Blessed Virgin). And when three spirits turn up, claiming to be Saints Michael, Margaret and Catherine, though Jeanne immediately sees through them and henceforth refers to them as "monsters" she has no special powers or knowledge to resist them.

Nor, though, is the grimness celebrated. It's there - the heart of this book is the extent to which Jeanne is constrained, compelled, abused both by the society around her - most dramatically in an attempted forced marriage and rape - and by the monsters. (They wish to use her for their own strange ends, influencing history and the war but for reasons that are never really explained.) But it doesn't, in the end, predominate.

Jeanne's trials are many. The foretold martial role of Maid of Lorraine which the three spirits want to force her into (almost like an inversion of Macbeth) is not one that suits her nature or upbringing and the deceptions it entails strain her conscience. She is the subject of vicious, misogynistic rumour and of jealousy and she feels guilt over joining in the war and particularly leading men to her death. (I think this latter aspect is something that we could have been shown more of - while the stunning cover art shows Jeanne holding a bloodied sword, and there are scenes of her trying to use it, much of the battle is skipped. I'm not saying I want to see lots of bloodshed but it seems a central aspect of the story and key to creating the wearied, jaded Jeanne we see in the later sections of the book).

Through all this though she struggles to own herself, to be more than the puppet that the three spirits or the Dauphin want. The story is nicely calibrated here, demonstrating just how little agency Jeanne has, her life and future in the hands of men - the priest, the village council, various nobles, ultimately the Dauphin Charles himself - as well as those manipulating spirits. Her achievement  is to endure, to love even when it is forbidden, to remain loyal to those who are loyal to her, above all to retain some sense of herself, some control over herself and her actions. It is a constant fight and one that can never be fully successful involving sacrifice both physical and spiritual - this isn't just a matter of Jeanne and her fate, the wicked spirits bind up others, too, people she cares for, and they are ruthless in leveraging this.

As I grew more and more absorbed in Divine Heretic, I came to love the way it isn't conventional fantasy. There aren't, as I have said, tools and techniques to be sought to achieve a neat solution. Many questions are left unanswered (the three spirits operate to a strangely specific schedule - why?) But that leaves the story space to grow, to breathe, to show us Jeanne's courage and to show her growing and becoming more assured and understanding. It's that portrait that is at the centre of the book, really, and it is a masterpiece of storytelling. Moyer gives us a fully rounded and complex portrayal of a figure who tends to be viewed, in a very one dimensional sense, as merely a tragic victim.

In short Divine Heretic fully lived up to my expectations and I'd strongly recommend it.

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

Sunday Special No 4 - Change and decay...

Warning: I'm not a historian, a linguist or a proper archaeologist and anyone who is may be irritated by my ramblings below. You have been warned.

I am interested in how changes happen, how the world goes from one thing to another and at what point you can suddenly say "Ah, the X era has ended and the Y era has begun!"

Except that I think often, you can't say that.

As both my dedicated readers will know, I spent a week recently helping on an archaeological dig. The site in question - Roman Dorchester on Thames - is especially interesting because it seems to have been in use relatively late in the Roman period, and soon after.

I find this transition fascinating. In the decades before 410CE you have most of Britain as part of the Roman Empire, as part of a wider political unit with long distance trade, cultural diversity (there was!) and industry (large scale pottery manufacture, mining and agriculture). Some decades after, what became England is divided in the nascent Anglo Saxon kingdoms and all of the above has gone.

In between we have the Groans of the Britains pleading for intervention to help repel the fearsome invading Picts and Scots. (On this occasion, Britain didn't choose to leave the Empire, rather the Empire could no longer afford to support it).

Dating things in that period is difficult as much of the cultural evidence - things like pottery and coins - used for this becomes rare. Despite this, the older label for the period - Dark Ages - is very unfair, there are beautiful artefacts from the period and people certainly didn't just sit around in the mud all day. Nor does the 1066 And All That version that all the Romano Britains were replaced by Angles, Saxons and Jutes seem to be completely accurate, rather it seems that much of the population stayed where they were, just getting new rulers and, in time, a new language (there's evidence that English picked up bits of structure from Welsh, presumably as people learned the speech of their rulers).

So probably, little suddenly changed for the people living in Roman Dorchester on Thames. Perhaps, year on year, there were fewer orders for pottery. Coinage became rarer. There were troubling stories of raiding parties and wars. There certainly Germanic Feoderati around, perhaps employed by the local magnates to keep the peace and replace the troops who had vanishing over the past few decades.. But the harvest had to be got in and the fields ploughed. Then perhaps one day a traveller appeared and announced that the territory was now ruled by a new King. And a century or so later, one of those English Kings was baptised in the town.

My point is that nobody at the time noticed anything big changing overnight.

My wife is a vicar in a group of rural parishes in Oxfordshire. We have been in a couple of parish groups, each composed of a cluster of churches. Often these churches are the last public building in the village, kept going by the dedicated effort of a small group of parishioners, with small congregations except at Christmas, Easter and Harvest. Such is the rural church in the early 21st century - I'm not complaining about it - but you can see in those churches that they were once busy places with choir stalls, bellringers, Sunday Schools, newsletters, Banns (announcements of weddings) being read out. Often, now, there simply aren't enough people to keep all this going. Like Roman Britain, things have shifted, but not overnight.

In 2016, the two leading English speaking countries, the UK and the USA, took political decisions that nobody expected. For me, the decision by the UK to leave the EU has strange echoes of 410CE and the the new US President (whose name I'm not even going to mention) has strange echoes of one of those reviled Roman Emperors who Edward Gibbon excoriates and blames for the corruption and eventual fall of the Empire.

I gather that, again, the idea of a simple fall isn't actually right, we tend to like discussing things as though you can make clear distinctions between periods of time and I wonder if in 2117 or 2500 or even 4000, historians will pinpoint 2016 as when that global Anglo-Saxon/ English civilization which (presumably) got going in the years following 410 stopped being a world force? (Way past time, you might think, given much of our dubious record).

You don't notice things like that until later, everyone carries on doing what they always did, but still... I do think there's something in the air.