The Chimes
Anna Smaill
Sceptre, 12 February 2015
Hardback, 304 pages
I was sent a copy of this to review by Amazon Vine.
There is a lot of debate on reviewer websites, book blogs and book podcasts about whether to persist with a book which is difficult to get into. There are so many books, and so little time, after all, that it's tempting to give up and move on.
But every so often a book comes along which rewards perseverance.
This is such a book, and while it may not be to everyone's taste, I want to persuade you to give it a chance, because, once you "get" it, it is beautiful, moving and - yes - exciting and dramatic.
We are introduced to a London not unlike our own, but distinctly pre-modern: there no machines and no electricity.
Following his mother's death, a boy travels from the bulbfields of Essex to find one of her friends in the city. What he is to do then we don't know. The atmosphere is very constrained: facts are few and hard to interpret. Smaill is, I think, leading us into the mindset of her characters, showing what the world they live in like, through that atmosphere. So, memory is important. Somehow it keeps being lost: everyone forgets pretty much everything each day and has to continually relearn who they are and how to live. The only solid memories are those anchored in items which you carry round with you ("objectmemory") and in learned skills ("muscle memory"). There is always the risk - if one sets foot outside the familiar - of going adrift, becoming "memoryless", a hopeless, pitiable state. A story told about people like this is necessarily allusive, missing out facts and connections that have simply been lost by the characters, dwelling on the little knowledge and few incidents that they recall, celebrating and turning on minor - to us - triumphs of recall, before lapsing again into darkness and chaos.
That makes it hard, at first, to enter the world of this book, as did - at least for me - the musical metaphors used in the story. This is a world where writing is banned, memories full of holes: but music is everywhere. Music supplies the place of maps, of print and television (instead of which, the citizens come together every morning and evening to hear the "Chimes" of the title, a musical creation broadcast on some remote instrument of unimaginable power which both binds them together and splinters away those precious memories).
Music soaks this book. Common words are replaced by their Italianate, musical equivalents - lente, subito - giving the writing a lush, alien tone. Distances are turned into "beats". Events "resolve". Music almost becomes an extra sense: things, people, ways are found and described through their tunes - a stall in a crowded market, rare treasure in the abandoned tunnels under London, the way back home after Chimes has struck. Here was a real barrier for me: I hear music, I enjoy music, but I don't understand the technical language.
It was, then, an absolute pleasure as - in my mind - the book slowly came together, with the background of the boy Simon gradually filled in and the nature of his quest becoming clear. Quite simply, he needs to learn who he is, what he has lost - and what he might become. And that learning is accompanied by the reader's growing sense of what is going on, almost as if one is sharing in the recovery of memory, the gathering sense of purpose of the character. It's simply brilliant.
Simon's discovery of himself is catalysed by his relationship with, his discovery of, a friend who also comes out of mystery. That developing friendship is at the heart of the book and it is a joy to read.
I don't want to gush. The book has flaws. Following the mysterious, allusive opening there is a large infodump somewhere around the middle, almost as though Smaill lost her nerve slightly and worried about the reader getting into the book. Yes, as I've said, some may find it difficult but once - as it were - you begin to hum along with the main theme, then you won't need a great deal of extra prompting. It is also quite a short book. The ending is, perhaps, a bit rushed: but then, it's also refreshing to see a story like this not padded out to the traditional trilogy.
So - not perfect, but a beguiling and immersive world, real characters trapped by a horrid religion/ philosophy and a wonderful, inventive way of telling a story that is perhaps the book's greatest strength, something different and breathtaking to read.
7 February 2015
28 January 2015
Review: Near Enemy by Adam Sternbergh
Near Enemy
Adam Sternbergh
Headline, 2015
Paperback, 306pp
I was sent a copy of this book through bookbridgr
I also bought a copy because I got a bit impatient. Such is life...
Following Shovel Ready, published last year, Sternbergh has returned to a wrecked near-future New York and his antihero Spademan.
Spademan is - and there's no evading this - a murderer. He makes his living carrying out contract killings - no questions asked. Disposal of the bodies is easy: Spademan's an ex garbage collector for the city.
When did it all go wrong for him? Probably the same day it went very wrong for New York - when the dirty bomb took out Times Square, and Spademan's wife died. Now the city is bankrupt and those who remain and who have any money use it renting the equipment they need to live in "the Limn" - a virtual reality which leaves their physical bodies decaying slowly in real life, tended only by nurses. Like the Nurse who features in this book, and whose clients seem to attract trouble in the Limn...
Add a subplot involving Persephone, the woman Spademan rescued in Shovel Ready but who's now being hunted by members of her father's corrupt church; a Mayoral election (even the corpse of New York provides rich pickings); the possibility that a terrorist attack in the Limn may be imminent, and you get a heady, if slightly bitter, mix, told in a laconic, noirish style - and we see here that Spademan may be consciously adopting that style, and why:
"Next morning. Sun comes knocking.
Check the clock again. 6 a.m.
I sit up. Bed's empty. Nurse is dressing in the doorway. Tugs her crepe-soled shoes on, over white stockings.
Morning, Spademan. You hungry?
I find my shirt. Tell Nurse.
I am. I know a place. You like waffles?
Who doesn't like waffles?
I have to admit. I'm really starting to warm up to this Nurse."
There's no shortage of graphic violence. Spademan's New York is a dog-eat-dog place, and he's no saint. But I think we do see a softer side here. Not only has he a sort-of family to fight for, in place of seeking revenge for his wife's death, but we get some clues about his early life and the chances he missed - which now make him seek redemption by saving another.
An excellent sequel, easily as good as the original, and I think setting up the possibility of a further sequel.
Well worth a read, if you like alt-noir.
Adam Sternbergh
Headline, 2015
Paperback, 306pp
I was sent a copy of this book through bookbridgr
I also bought a copy because I got a bit impatient. Such is life...
Following Shovel Ready, published last year, Sternbergh has returned to a wrecked near-future New York and his antihero Spademan.
Spademan is - and there's no evading this - a murderer. He makes his living carrying out contract killings - no questions asked. Disposal of the bodies is easy: Spademan's an ex garbage collector for the city.
When did it all go wrong for him? Probably the same day it went very wrong for New York - when the dirty bomb took out Times Square, and Spademan's wife died. Now the city is bankrupt and those who remain and who have any money use it renting the equipment they need to live in "the Limn" - a virtual reality which leaves their physical bodies decaying slowly in real life, tended only by nurses. Like the Nurse who features in this book, and whose clients seem to attract trouble in the Limn...
Add a subplot involving Persephone, the woman Spademan rescued in Shovel Ready but who's now being hunted by members of her father's corrupt church; a Mayoral election (even the corpse of New York provides rich pickings); the possibility that a terrorist attack in the Limn may be imminent, and you get a heady, if slightly bitter, mix, told in a laconic, noirish style - and we see here that Spademan may be consciously adopting that style, and why:
"Next morning. Sun comes knocking.
Check the clock again. 6 a.m.
I sit up. Bed's empty. Nurse is dressing in the doorway. Tugs her crepe-soled shoes on, over white stockings.
Morning, Spademan. You hungry?
I find my shirt. Tell Nurse.
I am. I know a place. You like waffles?
Who doesn't like waffles?
I have to admit. I'm really starting to warm up to this Nurse."
There's no shortage of graphic violence. Spademan's New York is a dog-eat-dog place, and he's no saint. But I think we do see a softer side here. Not only has he a sort-of family to fight for, in place of seeking revenge for his wife's death, but we get some clues about his early life and the chances he missed - which now make him seek redemption by saving another.
An excellent sequel, easily as good as the original, and I think setting up the possibility of a further sequel.
Well worth a read, if you like alt-noir.
25 January 2015
Review: Golden Son by Pierce Brown
Golden Son
Pierce Brown
Hodder & Stoughton, 2015
Hardback, 464 pages
I bought this book from Wallingford Bookshop and I absolutely loved it to bits. I enjoyed every word, and read more and more slowly as I approached the end, because I didn't want it to finish. ('Morning Star', the third and final part of the series, is due next year).
But that doesn't make for an easy review. Not only is 300 word of gush offputting, but this is a big, meaty, complex book which deserves a decent discussion - I hope I can do it credit.
'Golden Son' picks up several years after 'Red Rising ends. Darrow, the lowly born Red who, in the previous book, infiltrated the ranks of the privileged Golds and stormed to victory in the Institute, has signed up to serve Nero, tyrannical governor of Mars - and father to the Jackal, who attempted to cheat his way to success at the Institute. Nero seems to bear no ill will to Darrow for beating. In the Society of the Golds, power and victory are their own justification. But woe betide Darrow if he stumbles for even a moment...
Alongside Darrow's need to demonstrate assurance and military prowess as a Gold, he is also part of a rebellion led by the enigmatic Ares, aiming at the overthrow of the Golds. But Darrow has heard nothing from Ares for years, and is left to do the best he can, unsure of what, if any, role he is meant to serve in the rebellion.
And as if that isn't complicated enough, there's Darrow's ambiguous relationship with Mustang, Nero's daughter, who helped him defeat her brother in Red Rising - who he won't let himself get close to because of the memory of his wife Eo, executed by order of Nero.
While the obvious comparator for Red Rising would be The Hunger Games, this book reminded me in many ways of Frank Herbert's Dune, which used a similar background of warring noble families under a Sovereign, of space, treachery and power plays and also a universe where pity, kindness, fellowship and liberty are frowned on. But, just as Red Rising is a better, more complex book than Hunger Games, so I actually think that Golden Son is better than Dune*, because in the character of Darrow, Brown gives it such heart.
Darrow is an outsider, not a noble: if his secret became known his 'friends' would turn on him at once. He is driven by hate - for those who killed his wife - and love - of her, and of what she taught him. In the course of the book he learns of things that will make him both hate more, and love more and that puts pressure on him, as if his dual life wasn't enough. The book makes no bones about the fact that part of Darrow enjoys the strength he's got, the power and the glory that he earns. Part of him would make a good Gold. At the same time, he only has this power and glory because of Ares and the wars he fights for Nero, against other Golds, the sacrifices he demands of both Gold friends (there is a high body count) and of lower born Blues, Greys and Obsidians are really a sham, directed at a cause he doesn't believe in and intends to betray. Out of such crooked timber, how can anything true be made?
Not only is this situation fascinating and Darrow a compelling protagonist, but the book is also very well written, Brown using language easily and naturally but to great effect - for example, describing an individual Gold in words that seem to echo the heroic cadences of Beowulf:
'With them, shorter than the rest but more glorious, is the Protean Knight in her golden gear'
or evoking the chaos and destruction of a space battle:
Fire and lightning rule space. Behemoths of metal belch missiles back and forth, silently pounding one another with all the weapons of man. The silence of it, so eerie, so strange. Great veils of flak explode around the ships, cloaking them in fury, almost like raw cotton tossed into the wind...'
Here he is making sly references to contemporary SF, thereby heightening the sense of reality of his universe:
'"He's hiding. Unless he teleported." He spits that bit of science fiction.'
'Railgun ordnance smashes into our hull, though we do not feel the reverberations here on the bridge. Our equipment does not spark. Wiring does not fall from overhead compartments...'
It isn't perfect. At times I found myself wondering just how Darrow, raised at the bottom of the heap as a miner, would have been able to learn so much, so quickly. (At one point he recognises, tattooed on the arms of a starship captain 'the Larmor formula. Maxwell's equations in curved space-time. Wheeler-Feynman absorber theory...') More fundamentally, I still don't understand why all those Red miners are need to extract 'Helium 3' from under Mars - one would have thought that surface drill-rigs could do the job...?
But that's to quibble, and possibly to miss something deeper about the universe that Brown has created. This future isn't a necessary or likely evolution of the society we live in. The books make very clear - Golden Son gives more details - that this is a very deliberately constructed Society, designed to afford its rulers particular advantages but at the same time trapping them in a cycle of rivalry and conflict. All of the lesser roles in that world are as deliberately planned, with Red society, for example, designed to be very patriarchal and the soldier Obsidians manipulated via their shamans. It is this that Darrow sets himself against - and one fears that the designers have foreseen and even require rebellion, as an essential part of the whole. What Darrow is heading into with the third book, I can't even imagine, but I'm waiting eagerly for it...
----
*Publicists - there's your headline: "Better than Dune" - David, @bluebookballoon
Pierce Brown
Hodder & Stoughton, 2015
Hardback, 464 pages
I bought this book from Wallingford Bookshop and I absolutely loved it to bits. I enjoyed every word, and read more and more slowly as I approached the end, because I didn't want it to finish. ('Morning Star', the third and final part of the series, is due next year).
But that doesn't make for an easy review. Not only is 300 word of gush offputting, but this is a big, meaty, complex book which deserves a decent discussion - I hope I can do it credit.
'Golden Son' picks up several years after 'Red Rising ends. Darrow, the lowly born Red who, in the previous book, infiltrated the ranks of the privileged Golds and stormed to victory in the Institute, has signed up to serve Nero, tyrannical governor of Mars - and father to the Jackal, who attempted to cheat his way to success at the Institute. Nero seems to bear no ill will to Darrow for beating. In the Society of the Golds, power and victory are their own justification. But woe betide Darrow if he stumbles for even a moment...
Alongside Darrow's need to demonstrate assurance and military prowess as a Gold, he is also part of a rebellion led by the enigmatic Ares, aiming at the overthrow of the Golds. But Darrow has heard nothing from Ares for years, and is left to do the best he can, unsure of what, if any, role he is meant to serve in the rebellion.
And as if that isn't complicated enough, there's Darrow's ambiguous relationship with Mustang, Nero's daughter, who helped him defeat her brother in Red Rising - who he won't let himself get close to because of the memory of his wife Eo, executed by order of Nero.
While the obvious comparator for Red Rising would be The Hunger Games, this book reminded me in many ways of Frank Herbert's Dune, which used a similar background of warring noble families under a Sovereign, of space, treachery and power plays and also a universe where pity, kindness, fellowship and liberty are frowned on. But, just as Red Rising is a better, more complex book than Hunger Games, so I actually think that Golden Son is better than Dune*, because in the character of Darrow, Brown gives it such heart.
Darrow is an outsider, not a noble: if his secret became known his 'friends' would turn on him at once. He is driven by hate - for those who killed his wife - and love - of her, and of what she taught him. In the course of the book he learns of things that will make him both hate more, and love more and that puts pressure on him, as if his dual life wasn't enough. The book makes no bones about the fact that part of Darrow enjoys the strength he's got, the power and the glory that he earns. Part of him would make a good Gold. At the same time, he only has this power and glory because of Ares and the wars he fights for Nero, against other Golds, the sacrifices he demands of both Gold friends (there is a high body count) and of lower born Blues, Greys and Obsidians are really a sham, directed at a cause he doesn't believe in and intends to betray. Out of such crooked timber, how can anything true be made?
Not only is this situation fascinating and Darrow a compelling protagonist, but the book is also very well written, Brown using language easily and naturally but to great effect - for example, describing an individual Gold in words that seem to echo the heroic cadences of Beowulf:
'With them, shorter than the rest but more glorious, is the Protean Knight in her golden gear'
or evoking the chaos and destruction of a space battle:
Fire and lightning rule space. Behemoths of metal belch missiles back and forth, silently pounding one another with all the weapons of man. The silence of it, so eerie, so strange. Great veils of flak explode around the ships, cloaking them in fury, almost like raw cotton tossed into the wind...'
Here he is making sly references to contemporary SF, thereby heightening the sense of reality of his universe:
'"He's hiding. Unless he teleported." He spits that bit of science fiction.'
'Railgun ordnance smashes into our hull, though we do not feel the reverberations here on the bridge. Our equipment does not spark. Wiring does not fall from overhead compartments...'
It isn't perfect. At times I found myself wondering just how Darrow, raised at the bottom of the heap as a miner, would have been able to learn so much, so quickly. (At one point he recognises, tattooed on the arms of a starship captain 'the Larmor formula. Maxwell's equations in curved space-time. Wheeler-Feynman absorber theory...') More fundamentally, I still don't understand why all those Red miners are need to extract 'Helium 3' from under Mars - one would have thought that surface drill-rigs could do the job...?
But that's to quibble, and possibly to miss something deeper about the universe that Brown has created. This future isn't a necessary or likely evolution of the society we live in. The books make very clear - Golden Son gives more details - that this is a very deliberately constructed Society, designed to afford its rulers particular advantages but at the same time trapping them in a cycle of rivalry and conflict. All of the lesser roles in that world are as deliberately planned, with Red society, for example, designed to be very patriarchal and the soldier Obsidians manipulated via their shamans. It is this that Darrow sets himself against - and one fears that the designers have foreseen and even require rebellion, as an essential part of the whole. What Darrow is heading into with the third book, I can't even imagine, but I'm waiting eagerly for it...
----
*Publicists - there's your headline: "Better than Dune" - David, @bluebookballoon
11 January 2015
Review: The Liar's Chair by Rebecca Whitney
The Liar's Chair
Rebecca Whitney
Mantle, 2015
Hardback, 224 pages
I was sent this book by Amazon as part of their Vine programme.
The chair belonged to teenage Rachel. When things got too bad, she'd hide in the airing cupboard in the corner of her bedroom, padlock the door form the inside, and sit on her chair.
Years later, as an adult, Rachel has her fears under control. She's married to David. They have worked hard, their TV production company is successful, and they have all they could want. Yet all of this is fragile.
Driving home one morning, Rachel does something terrible, something she tries to cover up. The stress of this, however, undermines her hard won self assurance and she begins to fall apart... or at least, that's how David might put it.
This book is in many ways a painful one to read. We're firmly with Rachel all the way, despite what she's done, and it's harrowing to see her begin to lose herself to guilt, fear and bullying. Whitney includes just enough backstory to help the reader understand how Rachel came to be as she is - it's less about specific events than about the atmosphere, the situation that surrounded her childhood.
The reader - any decent reader anyway - will want Rachel to turn around and defy her tormentors (whether in the 1970s flashbacks or the "now" parts of the story) - but that would be untrue to the reality of the mess she's in, I think.
Not that Rachel is a mere passive victim. She knows what's going on, and does what she can to protect herself, but she's under attack not only from her own past and actions but from her husband, whose behaviour in the present is pretty monstrous.
This was the only point where I felt that Whitney lost her touch slightly - we understand why Rachel is like she is, but David appears as something of a caricature of an abusive husband, with very little insight given about his past. And his rapid development from tyrannical husband and TV producer to local crime boss was a bit hard to swallow.
Setting that aside, this is an extremely readable and tension- laced psychological study with a real and developing sense of menace. Not a happy book, but a thrilling one.
Rebecca Whitney
Mantle, 2015
Hardback, 224 pages
I was sent this book by Amazon as part of their Vine programme.
The chair belonged to teenage Rachel. When things got too bad, she'd hide in the airing cupboard in the corner of her bedroom, padlock the door form the inside, and sit on her chair.
Years later, as an adult, Rachel has her fears under control. She's married to David. They have worked hard, their TV production company is successful, and they have all they could want. Yet all of this is fragile.
Driving home one morning, Rachel does something terrible, something she tries to cover up. The stress of this, however, undermines her hard won self assurance and she begins to fall apart... or at least, that's how David might put it.
This book is in many ways a painful one to read. We're firmly with Rachel all the way, despite what she's done, and it's harrowing to see her begin to lose herself to guilt, fear and bullying. Whitney includes just enough backstory to help the reader understand how Rachel came to be as she is - it's less about specific events than about the atmosphere, the situation that surrounded her childhood.
The reader - any decent reader anyway - will want Rachel to turn around and defy her tormentors (whether in the 1970s flashbacks or the "now" parts of the story) - but that would be untrue to the reality of the mess she's in, I think.
Not that Rachel is a mere passive victim. She knows what's going on, and does what she can to protect herself, but she's under attack not only from her own past and actions but from her husband, whose behaviour in the present is pretty monstrous.
This was the only point where I felt that Whitney lost her touch slightly - we understand why Rachel is like she is, but David appears as something of a caricature of an abusive husband, with very little insight given about his past. And his rapid development from tyrannical husband and TV producer to local crime boss was a bit hard to swallow.
Setting that aside, this is an extremely readable and tension- laced psychological study with a real and developing sense of menace. Not a happy book, but a thrilling one.
31 December 2014
Post Christmas tidy
My son's LEGO collection grew last week, demanding extra space for display. One set in particular - a glorious '20s style cinema - is rather ominous as it is part of an interlocking streetscape... the first part we have, but I suspect not the last: Lego helpfully provide a range of other compatible models, and I suspect some of these will be arriving in due course. (Son's birthday is a couple of months away). It is an "expert" level set and suggests that he has arrived at a level of Lego mastery - and expense - that will consume shelf space even faster than books do
I share a spare bedroom with Son which we use as an office/ sitting room. When we moved in two years ago, I arranged my older files on top of an IKEA unit... which it turns out is an ideal site for a LEGO street. So I've been clearing some space: most of the files and papers weren't needed, really. (To think that in 2004 I would carefully print out online instructions for networking a Mac and a PC, or the online help for "My Mac runs slow" or whatever...)
Anyway, these clearing exercises are never containable and of course I didn't stop till I'd rearranged everything on my desk, everything under my desk, the piles of papers and books hidden under the bookcase and a lot else. Which brought to light something I thought I'd lost, this little book.
I share a spare bedroom with Son which we use as an office/ sitting room. When we moved in two years ago, I arranged my older files on top of an IKEA unit... which it turns out is an ideal site for a LEGO street. So I've been clearing some space: most of the files and papers weren't needed, really. (To think that in 2004 I would carefully print out online instructions for networking a Mac and a PC, or the online help for "My Mac runs slow" or whatever...)
Anyway, these clearing exercises are never containable and of course I didn't stop till I'd rearranged everything on my desk, everything under my desk, the piles of papers and books hidden under the bookcase and a lot else. Which brought to light something I thought I'd lost, this little book.
It's an edition of AE Housman's A Shropshire Lad which belonged to my father - although looking at the publication date (1922, Grant Richards, London) I now suspect it was handed down to him, as my father was only born a couple of years before. My guess is it belonged to his father, who dies in the early 50s. My father's parents separated when he was small - he used to tell a story of his mother taking the children away to Wales, where they were supported by her in-laws, and him (my father) riding his tricycle round on the platform at Paddington Station while his parents argued. (Just try that today!)
I don't know what led to this split. It would presumably have been a great scandal in the 1920s, especially given that the family (both sides) were strict Methodists - but the family were clearly taking his mother's side. All old history now - I never knew my grandfather (I was born in the 60s) and I have a faint memory of my grandmother as an old lady sitting up in bed.
Whatever, I'm glad that I found the book. Apart from the family connection, it is a beautiful object (with, I think, cut pages) and I find these verses - tales of doomed youths awaiting the gallows in Ludlow town or going away to war - very moving, if somewhat sentimental. It may not be the greatest poetry ever, but is very readable, quotable - and of course has a deep resonance today.
Which may seem a gloomy note on which to end 2014, but I do find New Year's Eve a gloomy (if somewhat sentimental) time.
Best wishes to anyone reading this for 2015 (if it is 2015 for you)!
Books I'm looking forward to in 2015
I keep a spreadsheet to track books that are coming out, and I've been reviewing 2015 (need to get those orders in early if I'm not to miss anything!) I search online (You Know Where) for new books by authors I've already read, and trawl blogs, podcasts and Twitter for advance news.
I find You Know Where is useful as a database for this - it will often tell you whether an author has something new up to two years ahead. It's also a good way to cross check information from other sources (publication dates can change!) And you don't actually have to buy from it if you don't want to.
So, based on all that, here are some books coming up that I hope to be reading and reviewing next year...
January (6)
Jo Walton's The Just City (8 Jan) comes highly recommended by various SFF podcasts I follow. I haven't read any of Jo's books before but it sounds intriguing - a marriage of Greek philosophy and fantasy. Out on 13th is Adam Sternbergh's Near Enemy, a sequel to his Shovel Ready, a lovely cross between fantasy and noir set in a decaying New York of the future.
Weathering by Lucy Wood (due on 15 Jan) is - I think - her first novel. I absolutely loved her recent short story collection Diving Belles so am keen to read more by her.
Dead Girl Walking by Chris Brookmyre (22 Jan) is... by Chris(topher) Brookmyre!
The Boy Who Wept Blood by Den Patrick (29th) is a sequel to the Boy With the Porcelain Blade, set in excellently imagined, Italianate fantasy that has, I think, dark secrets at its heart.
February (5)
Neil Gaiman has Trigger Warning: Short Fictions and Disturbances coming out on 3 Feb. My son and I got terribly excited when Gaiman visited Oxford a couple of years ago promoting The Ocean at the End of the Lane, and signed at our local bookshop. This is a must, though I have no idea what's in it. Rook Song by Naomi Foyle is due on 5 February, a sequel to Astra, one of the books I enjoyed most in 2014: a political, ecological saga set in the near future.
Then there's The Death House by Sarah Pinborough - more Sarah Pinborough! Yes! - and Touch, both on 26th, by Claire North. I found North's earlier urban fantasy, written as Kate Griffin, hard to get into - but then last year she wrote The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August which I enjoyed immensely (with Kate Atkinson's Life After Life, multiply iterated parallel lives seem to be having a moment...) and I want to see what she does next.
To round off February, we have A Darker Shade of Magic on 27th by VE Schwab.
March (3)
Company Town by Madeline Ashby is out on 3rd March. Another one recommended on the podcasts, I'm also intrigued by the description.
"They call it Company Town – a Family-owned city-sized oil rig off the coast of the Canadian Maritimes. Meet Hwa. One of the few in her community to forego bio-engineered enhancements, she’s the last truly organic person left on the rig. But she’s an expert in the arts of self-defence, and she’s been charged with training the Family’s youngest, who has been receiving death threats – seemingly from another timeline. Meanwhile, a series of interconnected murders threatens the city’s stability – serial killer? Or something much, much worse..?"
There's a new book by Ian Tregillis, The Mechanical, on 10th March. His Lovecraftian alt WWII/ Cold War trilogy was entrancing, and then followed up by Something more than Night, which read as though Milton had turned to writing pulp fiction, so I WANT this.
Finally, on 19 March, there's Glorious Angels by Justina Robson, whose Quantum Gravity trilogy I loved. Description runs "On a world where science and magic are hard to tell apart a stranger arrives in a remote town with news of political turmoil to come. And a young woman learns that she must free herself from the role she has accepted."
April (3)
Blood, Salt, Water by Denise Mina on 9 April is the latest DI Alex Morrow book, a series which I'm enjoying a lot.
Then there's a new book by Magnus Mills, The Field of the Cloth of Gold, on 23 April (23/4) Mills, Magnus. Like A Cruel Bird Came to the Nest and Looked In, this seems to be a book with historical parallels but not set in actual history, as it were.
Then the next day, 24 April, there's The Machine Awakes, the second in Adam Christopher's SF Spider Wars. The first book, The Burning Dark, was a wonderfully atmospheric ghost story in space.
May (4)
My most anticipated book of 2015 is A God in Ruins (5 May) by Kate Atkinson. Based in the same world as Life After Life this is apparently focussed on a different character from the earlier book - I'm intrigued how that will be managed amongst the multiple timelines!
May also has Collected Fiction by Hannu Rajaniemi on 12th, and The Last Post by MR Hall on 21st, the next of the Jenny Cooper series. Cooper is a coroner with a troubled past and a knack for exposing awkward truths, a wonderful character who just gets more and more interesting.
Finally, for the first half of next year, I know nothing at all about Seveneves (19 May) by Neal Stephenson but - Neal Stephenson!
In the second half of the year there is a new Laundry novel by Charles Stross, and The Seed Collectors by Scarlett Thomas, short stories by China Mieville and another book(!) by Adam Christopher.
I don't have so many books on my list as I did this time last year, and more of them are (I think) short story collections, or first sequels to brilliant books published last year - so perhaps 2015 will be more of a year of consolidation than 2014? Of course there will be lots of stuff that I don't know about yet, so as ever, it will be an exciting year.
Enjoy your reading in 2015.
David
I find You Know Where is useful as a database for this - it will often tell you whether an author has something new up to two years ahead. It's also a good way to cross check information from other sources (publication dates can change!) And you don't actually have to buy from it if you don't want to.
So, based on all that, here are some books coming up that I hope to be reading and reviewing next year...
January (6)
Jo Walton's The Just City (8 Jan) comes highly recommended by various SFF podcasts I follow. I haven't read any of Jo's books before but it sounds intriguing - a marriage of Greek philosophy and fantasy. Out on 13th is Adam Sternbergh's Near Enemy, a sequel to his Shovel Ready, a lovely cross between fantasy and noir set in a decaying New York of the future.
Weathering by Lucy Wood (due on 15 Jan) is - I think - her first novel. I absolutely loved her recent short story collection Diving Belles so am keen to read more by her.
Dead Girl Walking by Chris Brookmyre (22 Jan) is... by Chris(topher) Brookmyre!
The Boy Who Wept Blood by Den Patrick (29th) is a sequel to the Boy With the Porcelain Blade, set in excellently imagined, Italianate fantasy that has, I think, dark secrets at its heart.
February (5)
Neil Gaiman has Trigger Warning: Short Fictions and Disturbances coming out on 3 Feb. My son and I got terribly excited when Gaiman visited Oxford a couple of years ago promoting The Ocean at the End of the Lane, and signed at our local bookshop. This is a must, though I have no idea what's in it. Rook Song by Naomi Foyle is due on 5 February, a sequel to Astra, one of the books I enjoyed most in 2014: a political, ecological saga set in the near future.
Then there's The Death House by Sarah Pinborough - more Sarah Pinborough! Yes! - and Touch, both on 26th, by Claire North. I found North's earlier urban fantasy, written as Kate Griffin, hard to get into - but then last year she wrote The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August which I enjoyed immensely (with Kate Atkinson's Life After Life, multiply iterated parallel lives seem to be having a moment...) and I want to see what she does next.
To round off February, we have A Darker Shade of Magic on 27th by VE Schwab.
March (3)
Company Town by Madeline Ashby is out on 3rd March. Another one recommended on the podcasts, I'm also intrigued by the description.
"They call it Company Town – a Family-owned city-sized oil rig off the coast of the Canadian Maritimes. Meet Hwa. One of the few in her community to forego bio-engineered enhancements, she’s the last truly organic person left on the rig. But she’s an expert in the arts of self-defence, and she’s been charged with training the Family’s youngest, who has been receiving death threats – seemingly from another timeline. Meanwhile, a series of interconnected murders threatens the city’s stability – serial killer? Or something much, much worse..?"
There's a new book by Ian Tregillis, The Mechanical, on 10th March. His Lovecraftian alt WWII/ Cold War trilogy was entrancing, and then followed up by Something more than Night, which read as though Milton had turned to writing pulp fiction, so I WANT this.
Finally, on 19 March, there's Glorious Angels by Justina Robson, whose Quantum Gravity trilogy I loved. Description runs "On a world where science and magic are hard to tell apart a stranger arrives in a remote town with news of political turmoil to come. And a young woman learns that she must free herself from the role she has accepted."
April (3)
Blood, Salt, Water by Denise Mina on 9 April is the latest DI Alex Morrow book, a series which I'm enjoying a lot.
Then there's a new book by Magnus Mills, The Field of the Cloth of Gold, on 23 April (23/4) Mills, Magnus. Like A Cruel Bird Came to the Nest and Looked In, this seems to be a book with historical parallels but not set in actual history, as it were.
Then the next day, 24 April, there's The Machine Awakes, the second in Adam Christopher's SF Spider Wars. The first book, The Burning Dark, was a wonderfully atmospheric ghost story in space.
May (4)
My most anticipated book of 2015 is A God in Ruins (5 May) by Kate Atkinson. Based in the same world as Life After Life this is apparently focussed on a different character from the earlier book - I'm intrigued how that will be managed amongst the multiple timelines!
May also has Collected Fiction by Hannu Rajaniemi on 12th, and The Last Post by MR Hall on 21st, the next of the Jenny Cooper series. Cooper is a coroner with a troubled past and a knack for exposing awkward truths, a wonderful character who just gets more and more interesting.
Finally, for the first half of next year, I know nothing at all about Seveneves (19 May) by Neal Stephenson but - Neal Stephenson!
In the second half of the year there is a new Laundry novel by Charles Stross, and The Seed Collectors by Scarlett Thomas, short stories by China Mieville and another book(!) by Adam Christopher.
I don't have so many books on my list as I did this time last year, and more of them are (I think) short story collections, or first sequels to brilliant books published last year - so perhaps 2015 will be more of a year of consolidation than 2014? Of course there will be lots of stuff that I don't know about yet, so as ever, it will be an exciting year.
Enjoy your reading in 2015.
David
23 December 2014
Books I Liked in 2014
Looking back at 2014, I see that I read 70 books (using my Amazon/ Goodreads reviews to keep track: I haven't posted everything to this blog). Which was the best? I'm undertaken an unscientific enquiry. First I've arbitrarily divided these according to genre/ sub genre (based on my own judgement - not necessarily how they were marketed) purely to help with this assessment. That gives the following.
Then, I have chosen the best/ my favourite in each category, and finally, picked an overall winner.
The categories are
SF
The Book of Strange New Things (Michel Faber), Firefall (Peter Watts), Bete and Twenty Trillion Leagues Under the Sea (Adam Roberts), Extinction Game (Gary Gibson), The Long Mars (Pratchett/ Baxter), The Burning Dark, Hang Wire and Brisk Money (Adam Christopher), Southern Reach Trilogy (Annihilation/ Authority/ Acceptance) (Jeff VanderMeer), Unlocked: An Oral History of Haden's Syndrome (John Scalzi), Descent (Ken Macleod), Resonance (John Meaney), Then Will The Great Ocean Wash Deep Above (Apollo Quartet 3) (Ian Sales), A Highly Unlikely Scenario: Or, a Neetsa Pizza Employee's Guide to Saving the World (Rachel Cantor)
The largest category. I'd been waiting for something new from Faber for years, and Strange New Things didn't disappoint. Similarly, Firefall followed and completed (or did it?) Watts' earlier Blindsight (strictly, Firefall contains two books, Blindsight and its sequel, Echopraxia but I've treated as if it was just the latter). Adam Roberts books are always readable and challenging and I enjoy seeing him find new ways to trash the Thames valley. Extinction Game was immense fun. Long Mars was slightly disappointing. Adam Christopher had clearly been very busy and I found his books engaging and fun. Descent was challenging and satisfyingly labyrinthine. The third part of Sales' Apollo Quartet was a slight change in tack from the previous ones, and I didn't enjoy it quite as much, but it was still excellent and I'm looking forward to the final part. Rachel Cantor's book was manic, exciting and fast-paced.
My favourite? Taking them together, the VanderMeer Southern Reach trilogy which combined beautiful writing with a creepy vision of an alien incursion which was nevertheless so "thisworldly" that I half believe it's true. Favourite individual book would be Ken Macleod's Descent which does something similar for a new-future Scotland - and that book has my very favourite scene of the year, where the combined armed forces of the civilized world invade and suppress every tax haven. I can dream.
Fantasy
City of Stairs ((Robert Jackson Bennett), Europe in Autumn (Dave Hutchinson), Smiler's Fair (Rebecca Levene), Broken Monsters (Lauren Beukes), The Boy with the Porcelain Blade (Den Patrick), Plastic Jesus (Wayne Simmonds), A Different Kingdom (Paul Kearney), Bone Song (John Meaney), Liminal States (Zack Parsons), A Man Lies Dreaming (Lavie Tidhar), The Islands of Chaldea (Diane Wynne Jones), The Murdstone Trilogy (Mal Peet).
City of Stairs for the way it tackles a post-colonial world (involving dead gods, of course) in a truly original and yet believable way. Also for one of the best fantasy hero(ine)s I've ever read. (But Liminal States pushes it close for sheer verve and use of multiple genres in one book and A Man Lies Dreaming for audacity. And Europe in Autumn has taught me to persist longer when I'm not getting engaged - it blossomed so much in the final two thirds that I nearly missed something very, very special indeed.)
Urban Fantasy
The Ghost Train to New Orleans (Mur Lafferty), Vicious (VE Schwab), Banished (Liz de Jeger),
Something More Than Night (Ian Tregillis).
Vicious, which was violent, refreshing and original. (Actually, they we all violent, refreshing and original, it's just that Vicious was slightly more so...)
Apocalyptic/ Dystopian
Red Rising (Pierce Brown), The Chimes (Anna Smaill), Station Eleven (Emily St John Mandel), Astra (Naomi Foyle), Bird Box (Josh Malerman)
I give up on this one. They were all so good I can't decide. Perhaps Station Eleven for sheer humanity and a new angle on post-apocalypse. Or Astra for politics. Or...
Horror/ Ghost stories
Revival (Stephen King), No-one Gets Out Alive (Adam Nevill), Touched (Joanna Briscoe), The Unquiet House (Alison Littlewood), Murder (Sarah Pinborough), The Voices (F R Tallis), Rooms (Lauren Oliver), The Supernatural Enhancements (Edgar Cantero), Blood Kin (Steve Rasnic Tem).
No-one Gets Out Alive. Left me feeling grubby, and listening for creaking sounds in the night.
Supernatural crime/ espionage
Foxglove Summer (Ben Aaronovitch), The Rain-Soaked Bride (Guy Adams), The Rhesus Chart (Charles Stross), The Severed Streets (Paul Cornell).
The Severed Streets, not only for audacity in use of a real person as a character but also for a well realised and menacing alt-London. Looking forward, though, to the next Laundry book, which is apparently told form the point of view of a different character...
Crime
The Informant (Susan Wilkins), Dark Tides (Chris Ewan), Twist (Tom Grass), The Silkworm (Robert Galbraith), Mr Mercedes (Stephen King), The Girl in 6E (A R Torre), The Axeman's Jazz (Ray Celestin), Glow (Ned Beauman), The Burning (MR Hall).
The Axeman's Jazz was simply in a class of its own, not only in its language and the portrayal of the characters but also in its humanity.
Anthologies/ Short Stories
Dead Funny (ed Robin Ince and Johnny Mains), Dark Entries (Robert Aickman), Rags and Bones (ed Melissa Marr and Tim Pratt)
Dead Funny - horror stories by practising comedians sounds like it ought not to work, but most are brilliant, subtle and some deelpy human and touching.
Historical:
The Table of Less-Valued Knights (Marie Phillips), Crooked Heart (Lissa Evans), Everland (Rebecca Hunt), Nunslinger (Stark Holborn).
Crooked Heart, for its different take on the myth of the Blitz and the deeply human portrayal of two characters on the edge.
Other
Retreat (Liza Costello), Ajax Penumbra: 1969 (Robin Sloan), Tigerman (Nick Harkaway).
Hardly fair, this one, as the first two are both shorts, and the Harkaway really outguns them, but it's my catch-all for realist, non crime, you know, what might be called "literary", perhaps. Arguably Book of Strange New Things might go in here as it's not actually very SFnal in feel?)
And my overall winner?
As my favourite over the year, City of Stairs. As the best done, probably No One Gets Out Alive, but it's hard to say a book that creepy is the one you loved most!
Then, I have chosen the best/ my favourite in each category, and finally, picked an overall winner.
The categories are
SF
The Book of Strange New Things (Michel Faber), Firefall (Peter Watts), Bete and Twenty Trillion Leagues Under the Sea (Adam Roberts), Extinction Game (Gary Gibson), The Long Mars (Pratchett/ Baxter), The Burning Dark, Hang Wire and Brisk Money (Adam Christopher), Southern Reach Trilogy (Annihilation/ Authority/ Acceptance) (Jeff VanderMeer), Unlocked: An Oral History of Haden's Syndrome (John Scalzi), Descent (Ken Macleod), Resonance (John Meaney), Then Will The Great Ocean Wash Deep Above (Apollo Quartet 3) (Ian Sales), A Highly Unlikely Scenario: Or, a Neetsa Pizza Employee's Guide to Saving the World (Rachel Cantor)
The largest category. I'd been waiting for something new from Faber for years, and Strange New Things didn't disappoint. Similarly, Firefall followed and completed (or did it?) Watts' earlier Blindsight (strictly, Firefall contains two books, Blindsight and its sequel, Echopraxia but I've treated as if it was just the latter). Adam Roberts books are always readable and challenging and I enjoy seeing him find new ways to trash the Thames valley. Extinction Game was immense fun. Long Mars was slightly disappointing. Adam Christopher had clearly been very busy and I found his books engaging and fun. Descent was challenging and satisfyingly labyrinthine. The third part of Sales' Apollo Quartet was a slight change in tack from the previous ones, and I didn't enjoy it quite as much, but it was still excellent and I'm looking forward to the final part. Rachel Cantor's book was manic, exciting and fast-paced.
My favourite? Taking them together, the VanderMeer Southern Reach trilogy which combined beautiful writing with a creepy vision of an alien incursion which was nevertheless so "thisworldly" that I half believe it's true. Favourite individual book would be Ken Macleod's Descent which does something similar for a new-future Scotland - and that book has my very favourite scene of the year, where the combined armed forces of the civilized world invade and suppress every tax haven. I can dream.
Fantasy
City of Stairs ((Robert Jackson Bennett), Europe in Autumn (Dave Hutchinson), Smiler's Fair (Rebecca Levene), Broken Monsters (Lauren Beukes), The Boy with the Porcelain Blade (Den Patrick), Plastic Jesus (Wayne Simmonds), A Different Kingdom (Paul Kearney), Bone Song (John Meaney), Liminal States (Zack Parsons), A Man Lies Dreaming (Lavie Tidhar), The Islands of Chaldea (Diane Wynne Jones), The Murdstone Trilogy (Mal Peet).
City of Stairs for the way it tackles a post-colonial world (involving dead gods, of course) in a truly original and yet believable way. Also for one of the best fantasy hero(ine)s I've ever read. (But Liminal States pushes it close for sheer verve and use of multiple genres in one book and A Man Lies Dreaming for audacity. And Europe in Autumn has taught me to persist longer when I'm not getting engaged - it blossomed so much in the final two thirds that I nearly missed something very, very special indeed.)
Urban Fantasy
The Ghost Train to New Orleans (Mur Lafferty), Vicious (VE Schwab), Banished (Liz de Jeger),
Something More Than Night (Ian Tregillis).
Vicious, which was violent, refreshing and original. (Actually, they we all violent, refreshing and original, it's just that Vicious was slightly more so...)
Apocalyptic/ Dystopian
Red Rising (Pierce Brown), The Chimes (Anna Smaill), Station Eleven (Emily St John Mandel), Astra (Naomi Foyle), Bird Box (Josh Malerman)
I give up on this one. They were all so good I can't decide. Perhaps Station Eleven for sheer humanity and a new angle on post-apocalypse. Or Astra for politics. Or...
Horror/ Ghost stories
Revival (Stephen King), No-one Gets Out Alive (Adam Nevill), Touched (Joanna Briscoe), The Unquiet House (Alison Littlewood), Murder (Sarah Pinborough), The Voices (F R Tallis), Rooms (Lauren Oliver), The Supernatural Enhancements (Edgar Cantero), Blood Kin (Steve Rasnic Tem).
No-one Gets Out Alive. Left me feeling grubby, and listening for creaking sounds in the night.
Supernatural crime/ espionage
Foxglove Summer (Ben Aaronovitch), The Rain-Soaked Bride (Guy Adams), The Rhesus Chart (Charles Stross), The Severed Streets (Paul Cornell).
The Severed Streets, not only for audacity in use of a real person as a character but also for a well realised and menacing alt-London. Looking forward, though, to the next Laundry book, which is apparently told form the point of view of a different character...
Crime
The Informant (Susan Wilkins), Dark Tides (Chris Ewan), Twist (Tom Grass), The Silkworm (Robert Galbraith), Mr Mercedes (Stephen King), The Girl in 6E (A R Torre), The Axeman's Jazz (Ray Celestin), Glow (Ned Beauman), The Burning (MR Hall).
The Axeman's Jazz was simply in a class of its own, not only in its language and the portrayal of the characters but also in its humanity.
Dead Funny (ed Robin Ince and Johnny Mains), Dark Entries (Robert Aickman), Rags and Bones (ed Melissa Marr and Tim Pratt)
Dead Funny - horror stories by practising comedians sounds like it ought not to work, but most are brilliant, subtle and some deelpy human and touching.
Historical:
The Table of Less-Valued Knights (Marie Phillips), Crooked Heart (Lissa Evans), Everland (Rebecca Hunt), Nunslinger (Stark Holborn).
Crooked Heart, for its different take on the myth of the Blitz and the deeply human portrayal of two characters on the edge.
Other
Retreat (Liza Costello), Ajax Penumbra: 1969 (Robin Sloan), Tigerman (Nick Harkaway).
Hardly fair, this one, as the first two are both shorts, and the Harkaway really outguns them, but it's my catch-all for realist, non crime, you know, what might be called "literary", perhaps. Arguably Book of Strange New Things might go in here as it's not actually very SFnal in feel?)
And my overall winner?
As my favourite over the year, City of Stairs. As the best done, probably No One Gets Out Alive, but it's hard to say a book that creepy is the one you loved most!
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