#Review - Thornhedge by T Kingfisher

Thornhedge
T Kingfisher
Titan Books, 15 August 2023 
Available as: PB, 128pp, audio, e  
Source: Advance copy
ISBN(PB): 9781803364230

I'm grateful to Titan Books for providing me with a digital copy of Thornhedge to consider for review.

In a retelling of Sleeping Beauty, or perhaps, an anti-Sleeping Beauty, T Kingfisher gives us, yes, a beautiful princess sleeping in a tower around which thorns and briars have grown up - but the princess is not the centre of the story. Rather, the author asks, exactly why might a princess be cursed to sleep, and what are the thorns really all about?

Are they, as often assumed, to keep others out?

Or are they to keep her in...?

In a short novel, Kingfisher provides answers but more interestingly she gives us Toadling, the fairy who wrought the magic and who now guards the castle through endless centuries. Generally successful, she is thought about to encounter a particularly resourceful and determined knight. Salim, is driven neither by desire for a bride nor lust for treasure, but by simple curiosity. 

In other words the very worst, most difficult challenge an overworked fairy could face.

The blooming relationship between knight and fairy, people from unimaginably different backgrounds, casts light on the sort-of history to which Kingfisher assigns the story. It's sometime after the breakup of the Roman Empire, in a region populated by Muslins, Christians and Jews, where a knight might be of any faith or none. Fairies are respected and feared, but not hated, and people get along in general. 

The sleeping princess is, though, a problem, for reasons I won't go into as they would spoil the story. Finding a solution to that problem will require Toadling to explore her own past, confront loss and consider her place in the world. Above all, after being alone for hundreds of years, she will have to learn how to actually be with others - whether these are the fairies that raised her (the Greenteeth of I think Northen English legend) or the humans from whom she was snatched as a baby.

A sweet, engaging story with a core of steel (or perhaps, thorns) at its heart. 

Recommended.

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

#Review - Maeve Fly by C J Leede

Maeve Fly
C J Leede
Titan Books, 19 September 2023
Available as: PB, 304pp, audio, e   
Source: Advance copy
ISBN(PB): 9781803367149

I'm grateful to the publisher for an advance e-copy of Maeve Fly to consider for review.

Well.

This one was A Read. I will say at the start that it won't suit all tastes. Be warned that there are explicit themes of sex, drugs, violence and torture here. It may not be for you. I'm not sure it was for me.

The story is told through the eyes - indeed the gaze - of Maeve Fly, a young woman (twentysomething, I think) working at a Los Angeles studio-owned theme park where she performs daily as one of the studio's popular princess characters, a Nordic ice princess known worldwide for her iconic song. She and her colleague Kate are very popular with the children, more so than the "classic" characters associated with the studio. (You may think you know Maeve's film and the studio, but I can't possibly comment, nor does Leede even once mention them, even among the references to mouse ears and to some, presumably public domain, characters like Snow White, Pocahontas and Cinderella.)

Maeve has three loves. 

First, the connection she has with her grandmother, Talullah, an actress (and Playboy model) from the Golden Age who has taken her in. Maeve feels an affinity with Talullah, very possibly the first time this has ever happened. 

Secondly, her friend Kate, who plays her character's sister. Kate is an aspiring actress who wants to make it and is prepared to do whatever it takes for that (again, it's pretty clear what that is). 

Finally, Maeve just loves her job, despite the long hours, the oppressive working conditions and the corporate nonsense.

She is though at risk of losing the first two, as her grandmother is in a coma and seemingly only with months to live and Kate has - finally, finally - got the prospect of a big part, albeit she has had to humiliate and abase herself to achieve that.

Faced with the prospect of her life changing, Maeve engages in denial, haunting LA's bars, brothels and strip clubs (a fourth love of Maeve's is Hollywood/ LA) where she certainly doesn't present as an ice princess. However it's not till she encounters Kate's brother Gideon (who, ironically, is an ice hockey star) that things start to change in Maeve's world - and to get dangerous.

I found this a compelling book: the sort you have to keep reading, but also, that you are desperate to look away from. Did he really say that? Did she really do that? Maeve's outlook-as-narrator is all bound up with the idea of the woman who can be a villain without the need for a justification from her circumstances - she analyses her theme park character's iced over film and its dynamics from that point of view. But it's far from clear whether this is theoretical, or whether she would cross that line herself.

Until one particular scene involving Maeve, Gideon and unfortunate bartender, Claire... 

For all the horror and gore, I found this in some ways very much a book of ideas. Behind the relationship between Maeve and Gideon - which is drawn very subtly and which is continually changing and evolving - there are ideas about how people ought to be, what they should do, and how far they might go. It's not a story where one can see a neat or happy end, and indeed, I soon stopped trying to work out where things were going at all, as that seemed to be missing the point. A degree of mystery is I think needed and I don't want to comment in too much further detail. I'll just say, I strongly recommend this book as a wildly different take on horror, but if my warnings above suggest it may disturb you, leave it alone.

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

#Review - A Stroke of the Pen by Terry Pratchett

A Stroke of the Pen (The Lost Stories)
Terry Pratchett
Doubleday, 10 October 2023
Available as: HB, 220pp, audio, e   
Source: Advance copy
ISBN(HB): 9780857529633

I'm grateful to Milly at Doubleday for sending me an advance copy of A Stroke of the Pen to consider for review. I've been so eager to share this review, but barred by solemn and strict prohibitions form doing so before now.

As you can imagine I was delighted to see these stories had been discovered - the background to that, set out here, is truly intriguing: nobody knew about most of them as they were written and published, under different names, in newspapers before Sir Terry was widely known. The stories only came to light when Pat and Jan Harkin were asked to track down a potential serial, The Quest for the Keys, which is also given in full here. As well as finding all of Quest, Pat and Jan located another 18 stories besides.

The resulting collection is a glorious, if bittersweet, read - surely this must be the last posthumous Pratchett collection, even if one or two more pieces may emerge? Being home alone for an evening, I sat down and read them all without pause, savouring not just the Pratchettness of them all but also the overall effect of the collection. Yes, there is the occasional foreshadowing of something Sir Terry would return to later. As a child of the 70s, though, I also spotted a certain taste of that decade, for example the thinly disguised celebrities referenced in "How Scrooge Saw the Spectral Light..." or the industrial relations problems described in "The New Father Christmas".

If you can sense a theme here, yes, given their origin in newspapers, it's perhaps not surprising that a number of these stories have a Christmas theme, affectionately playing with the absurdities of the season. I did think that at the back of them one might see the ghost of Hogfather or perhaps even of Death, as an anthropomorphic projection finds itself needled out of its accustomed role. Maybe. I wouldn't insist on it - though I'd also point at "Mr Brown's Holiday Accident" which plays games with the nature of reality - creating a well developed and twisty example of SF as well as a very funny story.

Being funny is not unusual in this collection. While Neil Gaiman writes in the Introduction that Pratchett here "is not a humorist, not yet" there is certainly a sense of fun here, a willingness to send things up, with "The Quest for the Key", the longest and most developed story, already taking on the satirising of fantasy that later developed in Discworld. There is also a bit of a shared world going on, with the town of Blackburn recurring as a location for the bizarre. Not everything takes place there, though, these stories are varied, from a parody of a Gold Rush Western ("The Real Wild West") to a sort of Close Encounters spin-off ("The Blackberry Thing") to time-travel, dragons and ghosts.

Overall, the impression is of a writer whose mind is seething with ideas, busily selecting from them to fill the (scanty) room allowed for a newspaper story, salting them with puns and allusions, hinting at a complex world behind the whole, and having a great deal of fun in the process.

Much, in fact, like the later writer, apart, perhaps, from that need to get the whole thing down in 500 words...

In short, read this, it'll make you happy. (It might also make a good Christmas present...)

For more information about A Stroke of the Pen, see the publisher's website here.

#Blogtour #Review - The Beaver Theory by Antti Tuomainen

The Beaver Theory (The Rabbit Factor, 3)

Antti Tuomainen, translated by David Hackston
Orenda Books, 12 October 2023
Available as: HB, 300pp, audio, e   
Source: Advance copy
ISBN(PB): 9781803367149

I'm grateful to Karen at Orenda for sending me a copy of The Beaver Theory to consider for review, and to Anne for inviting me to join the book's blogtour.

It was wonderful to return to the world of Henri Koskinen, actuary and accidental owner of a Helsinki adventure-park.

Since taking the reigns at YouMeFun after his brother's death, Henri has confronted various challenges - financial, managerial and criminal - and to do this he's developed a methodology that, while seeing the world very much in mathematical terms, is flexible enough to take account of a range of other factors too. In the course of the books he has developed and become more confident and The Beaver Theory very much shows him at the top of his game, as a rival adventure-park tries to undercut YouMeFun. Drastically undercut, as in, offer free admission and food. It's hard to see how YouMeFun can go on, even though Henri isn't above a little gentle burglary to resolve the issue - especially as things spiral into murder and he's faced with the need to prove his innocence as well as develop a business plan.

I loved that in this book Tuomainen raises the stakes not only by piling on the threats but also by giving Henri a deeper personal life. At the start of The Beaver Theory, Henri moves in with his girlfriend, artist Laura Helanto, and her young daughter. Not only does this give him new challenges to overcome - the dads at Tuuli's school, who induct Henri into their fundraising team, are truly terrifying and he spends most of this book coping with that - but it adds a resonance by giving him more to lose as well as more to love. One of the joys of these books is the depiction of Henri's internal life. Tuomainen has created a character who could have been pigeonholed as merely a depiction of someone on the spectrum or otherwise neurodiverse. Perhaps he is - but Tuomainen makes sure that's not all we see. Henri's a rounded, warm and complex man, a character it's truly fun spending time with, Tuomainen's writing really bringing him alive (helped in no small part I'm sure by David Hackston's lucid and compelling English translation).

And Henri's a person one can't help but fear for, surrounded as he is by rogues who may have a comic aspect but are nevertheless deadly (we witness several killings in the course of the book). And Henri's nemesis in the Helsinki police, Osmala, is also back, with a couple of rather sinister young colleagues who feel free to try and shake done YouMeFun.

All this, and a twisty, complex plot as well, makes The Beaver Theory very readable from the first page to the last and left me wanting more - though given what Henri goes through here I have to concede he deserves a bit of peace and quiet and the chance to spend time with his new family (not to mention his cat, Schopenhauer).

Overall a fun and satisfying read.

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

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

#Review - Case Sensitive by AK Turner

Case Sensitive (Cassie Raven book 3)
AK Turner
Bonnier (Zaffre), 20 July 2023 
Available as: PB, 352pp audio, e  
Source: Advance copy
ISBN(PB): 978-1804180594

I'm grateful to the publisher for providing me with a copy of Case Sensitive via Netgalley to consider for review.

Coming a bit late to this series I can already see I'll have fun catching up with books 1 and 2.

Cassie Raven is a mortuary technician with a very special talent - she can hear whispers from the dead. Or she used to be able to - at the start of this book her ability has apparently dried up, leaving her struggling rather with her profession, as well as with personal issues (her relationship with her father, and whether or not she should be dating one of the pathologists from the morgue). 

Set in Camden Town, where Cassie lives in a boat on the canal, the story is high on atmosphere. This is a slightly rowdy part of London, the centre for a thriving alternative scene but also with pockets of deep poverty, and, in contrast, ongoing gentrification. Turner makes good use of this, really getting inside the different settings as well as peopling the story with intriguing characters for what is basically the eruption of a decade-old murder mystery into the present day.

And it's a solidly based detective mystery - while there is a hint of the supernatural, this isn't allowed to overshadow the story: Cassie spends much of the book doubting that her ability ever was real, and even when it does work, it only gives her the barest of clues about what happened. The detective work here is at the centre of things and the truth will only be revealed through rigorous sleuthing. While that is not all by the police, Cassie does have a partner there in unravelling things - DS Phyllida Flyte, also I think a returning character to this series. The chapters are alternately written form Flyte's and Cassie's point of view, allowing us to see what each woman is thinking about the other - useful because while they spar pretty dramatically there is a definite will-they, won't-they element between the contrasting pair.

Flyte herself is an interesting and well-drawn character, an incomer from leafy Winchester to North London and to the Met and - because of this and because she's a woman - something of an outsider in the cliquey Major Crime team. Many of the undercurrents of this book are about how she deals with that and the threats and problems to be suffered in a far from reconstructed section of the Met Police - something numerous recent real events support. Flyte also has her own problems; she's mourning a stillborn child and has a frosty relationship with her mum and with her ex. Like Cassie, she, too, faces romantic dilemmas and there's a definite sense that both women are trying to find a way forward.

The crime plot at the heart of the book is twisty and well done, with surprises to the very end. There are, of course, Secrets to be revealed - but they aren't always what you'd expect. I enjoyed the balance between the two sides - professional and personal - here and, like real life, loose ends are left on both fronts. I look forward to seeing where they will lead Cassie and Phyllida in future books.

For more information about Case Sensitive, see the author's website here.

#Review - Starter Villain by John Scalzi

Starter Villain
John Scalzi
Pan Macmillan, 21 September 2023
Available as: HB, 262pp, audio, e   
Source: Advance copy
ISBN(HB): 9781529082951

I'm grateful to Jamie at Black Crow PR for sending me a copy of Starter Villain to consider for review.

With Starter Villain, John Scalzi delivers a novel that does three very different things at the same time. First, it keeps its feet on the ground. Protagonist Charlie Fitzer is processing bereavement, his father having recently died, and is struggling in an economy that no longer wants his journalistic skills. Secondly, it takes a step into the fantastic, portraying a world of supervillain corporations in uneasy alliance or sporadic conflict - think of that organised crime ecology in the John Wick films, but with a bit more of a James Bond volcano lair twist. (It's always great to have a new and distinct world to explore). Finally - and most importantly - it is deeply readable, fiendishly plotted and genuinely engaging.

I know I should have expected the third, It's a hallmark of Scalzi's, his writing is never less than engaging, but I don't think it can be easy to have delivered all of these. Charlie is a truly complex character, first introduced here after his billionaire uncle - from whom he was estranged - dies, and he is asked to represent the family at the funeral. VERY strange things start to happen to Charlie after that. And to his cats (yes, there are cats in this book). As a consequence Charlie enters a world he had never suspected existed, a world of genetically modified dolphins, wonder weapons and secret bases. He's our gateway into all this, our guide, as it were, but has little to rely on except a strain of common sense and, as it turns out, of decency. (I enjoyed the bit where Charlie supports the dolphins in their attempt to  to unionise). This level-headedness and decency, contrasted with the outlandish schemes and entitled arrogance of the billionaires who inhabit his new milieu, makes Charlie very sympathetic - more relatable than if, say, he'd shown an unlikely talent at combat.

In the circles Charlie is entering, his sense of decency is taken as a weakness and his lack of knowledge of those circles as another, but this Everyman is still able to hold his own in negotiation with the super rich and the reader will be cheering him on and hoping for a positive outcome without Charlie having to compromise his principles (there's an awkward scene where he's invited to choose the method of execution for a captured agent, but I'll say no more about that because spoilers.

I have to say that Charlie doesn't completely lack back-up of other sorts, backup provided by the redoubtable Mathilda ('Til') who's deeply embroiled in Uncle Jake's shady organisation. But generally, he's able to keep far enough ahead of things that she doesn't have to show what she can do. But it's a complex story and as I've said, spoilers. I'm happy to report though that there are double, triple and (I think) even quadruple, crosses going on here, twists on twists and plenty of action. I think Scalzi must have had evil fun simply plotting this - for a fairly short book there is a LOT going on.

I particularly enjoyed this book as being a standalone. While series and trilogies are nice, sometimes as a reader it's great to not be investing in an ongoing narrative. (Although, I'm sure more could be done with the world portrayed here...)

In short, do read Starter Villain. 

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

#Review - Noir Burlesque by Enrico Marini

Noir Burlesque
Enrico Marini
Titan Comics, 26 September 2023
Available as: HB, 228pp, e  
Source: Advance copy
ISBN(HB/ PB):

I'm grateful to the publisher for providing me with an advance e-copy of Noir Burlesque to consider for review.

As one would expect from a Hard Case Crime graphic novel, Noir Burlesque is a very visual, very cinematic story that carries the reader along, scene dissolving into scene, its characters performing for the reader at various levels - providing an entertainment, but also engaging in what seems to be a dance of death - of which there is plenty here.

Some of that performance is of a decidedly adult nature and both for the explicit content and more particularly the violence, the publisher's site gives it a 17+ rating and I'd agree with that. One effect throughout the book - that it's all in monotone, except for the red - accentuates the impact: red is the colour of burlesque dancer Caprice's hair, and of her car, but also, of course, the colour of the blood that's liberally spilled here.

The dance here is mainly between Caprice, now performing nightly at the club belonging to her mobster boyfriend, Rex, and Slick, the ex-lover who left her to fight in the war (the book is set in the 50s New York). Slick is back now, and there is a question about whether the two will pick up where they left off and if so, what Rex will make of that (well we sort of know don't we!)

That central question runs through the story, alongside various killings, couplings and double crosses. Complications abound. There is a rival, Italian gang on the scene, Rex's boys being Irish (I would add to the CW above some very frank slurs addressed at the Italian mobsters by Rex's crew). There is a McGuffin in the form of a stolen Picasso. Besides Caprice, there is also another sultry femme fatale - and there are even some innocents who may be in danger (the principals here are though mainly far from innocent).

Wreathed in cigarette smoke, noir atmosphere and amorality, Noir Burlesque has a satisfactorily twisty plot, a vein of grim humour, a tarnished hero in Slick (while he's often hunted and is a criminal, he of all those who appear actually went off to fight Nazis) and even some comic goons to lighten the mood at times.

Entertaining and fast moving, this is a story that needs to be read at a single sitting.

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