Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in marcusgipps' LiveJournal:

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Thursday, November 5th, 2009
11:00 pm	The Passage, by Justin Cronin The second book proof printed on our magic new book-printing machine (sorry if I keep on saying that, but it’s been a large part of my life for the last few months…), and although this is a post-apocalyptic vampire story, it doesn’t come from Gollancz, but rather from their parent company, Orion. It’s quite unusual for them to publish such an overtly ‘genre’ book, and I’m told they have high expectations for it, which surprised me a little. It’s a whopper – 800 odd pages in the edition we did, squeezed down from 1,000 in the original typesetting – and the whole things is fairly uncompromising in its sf-ness (horrible word, can’t think of a better right now). Perhaps The Road or Atwood’s brand of speculative fiction (mustn’t call it sci-fi) has leant a certain cachet to the specific genre of post-apocalypse, but still, impressive though this novel is, I think it may be a hard sell. It is, however, very very good indeed. I didn’t think I’d enjoy it as much as I did, but I really didn’t think I would admire it as well. Oh, there are flaws – far too long, for one – but it actually is well written, which can seem like quite a novelty. I shouldn’t be so surprised (or perhaps I should start demanding more from my genre fiction!), but it was nice to see someone trying to avoid the easy tricks and pitfalls of writing about the end of the world. The first quarter of the book, especially, before the incident that changes everything, is quite astonishingly good for what is, essentially, the preface. Multiple viewpoints, clever plotting, some brilliant characterisation, a sense of things being slightly but increasingly wrong – the book doesn’t put a foot wrong, and a lot of casual readers will be sucked in by the opening page. The outline of what’s going to happen is quite obvious, but Cronin manages our expectations and our predictions right up to the moment of crisis, and nothing feels tired or stale. Sadly, there’s a point where the plot jumps forward, and everything begins to become a bit more difficult to love. It isn’t that we suddenly have to learn a whole new set of characters, although it doesn’t help, but more that the gap needs filling. I’m not really suggesting that the book needs to be longer – god no – but the lacuna does break the momentum, and, in my case at least, the enjoyment. It didn’t take very long for me to get caught up in things again, and it isn’t as if Cronin doesn’t make an effort to bridge the gap, but it just didn’t quite strike me as successful. To be fair, though, once things settle down and we get in to the main meat of the book things do pick up again (not until page 300 or so, though…). There are elements of the setting and plot that we’ve seen before, of course – when aren’t there? – but Cronin does it well, and does a good job of keeping the reader interested and thinking. He prefers not to give everything away at once, and there are some revelations in the last few pages of the book that make sense of things that happened 400 pages previously. I found it very hard to put the book down, which is a good sign, but still, I can’t help but feel that it sometimes gets a little self-absorbed. It is important for the book to show us how people now live, but it does take a while for the plot to start moving again. I’m not being entirely fair, because I’m not sure what I’d cut out, but so much effort seems to have gone in to creating the situations needed for conflict that the conflict itself ends up feeling like an afterthought. Again, the last third of the book picks itself up out of the lull and reads very pacily, and much happens that was set up in the middle section, but it does feel as if Cronin was so in love with his ideas that the book suffers a bit. My only other quibbles are fairly minor (and might be considered a bit spoilery, sorry). The book is relentlessly US-focused, and the occasional mention of ‘not knowing what’s going on in Europe’ only serves to highlight that fact. It also ends in way which leaves a sequel (or sequels) open, which isn’t the end of the world but did leave me a little exhausted at the thought of reading another 800 pages of this stuff. I can’t imagine what it must feel like to have to write it! That said, the actual ending – as in the last couple of pages – is incredibly moving, dark and brave, which is always a good thing. I do suspect that some people will be annoyed by it – after the journey we’ve gone on with the characters, it could be argued that the final lines are a little cheap – but I liked it, and it gave me a feeling of finality that might otherwise have been missing. None of that should suggest that I didn’t like the book, or that I think it isn’t a great achievement. I’d happily suggest it to people who wouldn’t normally be interested – in fact my girlfriend picked it up while I was halfway through, started reading and couldn’t put it down either – and I think it’ll do well. It will probably be swarmed over by the collectors and dealers and genre types, but it has a decent chance of breaking out into the mainstream, which has got to be a good thing. I read a proof, printed by our machine, back at the end of August while on holiday. 'Proper' proofs have just gone out in the post, and I think the book itself is published in February. (Comment on this)
Sunday, September 6th, 2009
7:58 pm	The Cardinal's Blades, by Pierre Pevel I don’t know why, but I don’t often read fantasy in translation. I don’t read a lot of stuff in translation, to be honest, but I always seem to get turned off by fantasy. Perhaps it’s because I’ve read a couple where the translation was, shall we say, a little suspect, and perhaps it’s because there’s been such a wealth of good stuff written in English that I haven’t felt the need, but this book sounded too fun to resist. A version of Dumas’ musketeers, but with dragons and magic, written by an author who sells well in France and (I believe, although I may be wrong) has turned his hand to fantasy for the first time. Gollancz are rather keen on this as well, which always helps – I trust their judgement, generally. I’m told there’s a whole series of these to come, which makes a lot of sense, given that this is essentially an introduction to Pevel’s world. That isn’t to say that the plot is left to one side, but the novel takes a lot of care to introduce us to the cast of characters, and it can all be a little overwhelming at times. There’s a lot to take in, and part of me hopes that future books take a little more time to focus on individuals, rather than get lost in a morass of conspiracies, backstabbings and politics. It isn’t entirely fair to suggest that nothing else happens in this book – the political side of things mostly chunters away in the background, and will obviously build to a head in future volumes – but there is the occasional danger of the author becoming so wrapped up in his creation that the reader gets lost. Having said that, as long as one is prepared to let the book carry you along, there’s an awful lot to enjoy here. Our eponymous heroes are a fun lot, old soldiers bought back together under mysterious circumstances and surrounded by enemies, both open and hidden. If there’s an element of cliché – grizzled teacher, arrogant drunk, feisty woman – it’s generally forgivable, mostly because of the obvious fun Pevel is having. Richelieu is scheming, the European powers are squabbling amongst themselves, an important visitor to Paris has gone missing, and, of course, there are dragons… To be fair, the dragon thing is hardly the focus of the book, and I worry that people may be put off just by their presence. Pevel has thought things through, and the descendants of dragons are living amongst us, which makes the whole scheming/hiding thing much easier. There is a lot of fun to be had in guessing who is secretly scaly, and there’s one reveal right at the end which promises future trouble for the Blade’s, and made me impatient to read on (I’ll have to wait though…). I’ve always enjoyed Dumas’ books, and the brief cameo from Athos here was a nice touch. There’s a feel of the pulpiness of the Musketeer books, and although the prose isn’t on that level, it works perfectly well – a good writer, and a good translator, which is a good combination. I’m looking forward to more, and hope this does as well as it deserves. I read a proof while on holiday in Wales (again), and the hardback is out in November, ISBN: 9780575084377. (Comment on this)
7:54 pm	Dangerous Alphabet, Blueberry Girl & Crazy Hair, by Neil Gaiman Three children’s picture books from Neil Gaiman, each with a different artist. I love Gaiman’s books, but for some reason the first two of these didn’t really register with me when they first came out. I knew they existed, I even had a signed copy of Dangerous Alphabet on my self, but for some reason I didn’t feel a great urge to read them. Tha may have been because they didn’t look like narrative works – Dangerous Alphabet, as the name suggests, is a Gaiman-esque “A is for Apple” primer, and Blueberry Girl is a poem to a young child celebrating womanhood and growing up. Knowing, as I do, my alphabet pretty well, and not being a young girl, I wasn’t hugely intrigued. Crazy Hair, on the other hand, is a Gaiman/Dave McKean collaboration, so when it came out I was finally prompted to go back and read all three together. To be honest, none of them feels to me like a first-rate Gaiman book. Crazy Hair is far and away the best of the three, although to be fair, all have their moments. I liked Dangerous Alphabet’s illustrations, by Chris Gormley, but wasn’t entirely clear if there was much of a point. The COUPLETS CHECK THIS are often quite fun, and there is a sort-of story being told through the combination of the art and the text, but it was a little obscure in places. Fun, but not essential. Blueberry Girl clearly isn’t aimed at me, and although Charles Vess’s paintings are beautiful, the whole thing feels a little twee for my taste. Crazy Hair is much more surreal, and McKean’s art is, as usual, perfectly suited to Gaiman’s imagination, but it just didn’t feel as fresh and original as their previous works together, especially the utterly wonderful Wolves in the Walls. There are elements of old favourite picture books here, including Quentin Blake’s Mr. Magnolia, but it is undeniably attractive, and well worth a read. I read hardbacks of these all together in about ten minutes on a day off, and they're all out there in various editions (Comment on this)
7:53 pm	Blood-Dark Track, by Joseph O'Neill I’m not entirely clear why I picked this book. I was given a free copy a while ago, which always helps, but memoir/narrative non-fiction isn’t really my thing, and anyway, Netherland is the one that everybody says I should read. Still, this was there when I needed a book, and felt like something a little out of my comfort zone, so into the rucksack it went. It wasn’t exactly the obvious choice for my destination, which was a festival, but it never hurts to look more intellectual than you actually are… Anyway, the book concerns O’Neill’s excavation of the lives of his two grandfathers, one an Irish nationalist and the other a Turkish hotelier who was arrested for spying. Both stories were obviously largely unknown to O’Neill, and his attempts to straighten out his family history were clearly a labour of love. There are certainly some fascinating anecdotes and bits of history, and O’Neill is very good at drawing out the parallels between the two men, who on the surface were worlds apart. The narrative jumps between the two strands can be a little disconcerting, as can the authors frequent interventions and appearances, but the whole thing holds together very well. There are some very well-written passages, and O’Neill frames the two lives around major mysteries, which we uncover alongside him Having said that, I’m still not entirely clear why I should be interested, which is often my problem with biography (and I’m very much aware it is my problem, not the genre’s). I didn’t dislike the book, and I’m not sorry I read it, but I genuinely don’t really care about O’Neill’s family. Bits of the history were very interesting, which is why I’m quite forgiving of the book, but overall it wasn’t really for me. (Comment on this)
7:39 pm	Mars Books 1-7, by Edgar Rice Burroughs For some reason I can't make the covers to books 4-7 come up, but ho hum... I was tempted to re-read these, after a gap of about fifteen years, purely because of the simple fact that a customer came in and asked for one from our book-printing machine, and a little spark went off in my head. I have some very tatty paperbacks from my time in Canada, which I had shipped back to the UK at great expense despite the fact that it would probably have been cheaper just to buy everything again. I have fond memories of them, though, and they seemed like a good alternative to my endless Wodehouse ‘light’ reading. There’s no doubt that the first two of these books are the most impactful, partly because they still stand up as a good adventure story and still feel original, but partly due to the fact that many of the later volumes feel like they’re retreading the same ground. There may be a variety of heroes, but they are all cut from the same cloth, and the different parts of Mars, while distinct from each other, are always just there for our protagonist to traverse in search of his missing love. The books never feel tired – at least not in these first seven volumes, there are eleven in total and I’ve never read them all – largely thanks to the prose, which is fast-paced and very readable, if not exactly complex. I do have issues with some elements of the books – most notably, the rampant sexism and hints of racism. To be expected given when they were written, of course, but still occasionally uncomfortable to read. To be fair to Burroughs, he does make some effort to avoid both issues – he generally depicts his women as able to fight, and strong-willed and so on, but they always need saving. There are occasional “noble blacks”, but the overall level of cynicism and lack of characterisation makes it hard for many personalities to stand apart from the stereotyping. However, lots of books have elements that are less than acceptable to modern readers, and the quality of these books is normally high enough for me to skip over the less attractive bits. I’ll have to see if I can find my copies of the rest of the series. I read tatty old paperbacks of these over a month or two, and there are loads of editions out there, so I'm sure nobody needs ISBNs. It's not as if anybody ever reads this, anyway. (2 Comments |Comment on this)
7:35 pm	Generation A, by Douglas Coupland I always get quite excited by a new Douglas Coupland novel, which is odd, because I almost always think they’re flawed. In fairness, his last one (The Gum Thief, http://marcusgipps.livejournal.com/44657.html) was brilliant – the best thing he’s done, as far as I’m concerned, and deeply touching – but generally they start strongly, are well written and then the plot falls apart two thirds of the way through. Sadly, this book was a return to form, which isn’t a great thing if the general form is disappointing. Set in the near future, after bees have disappeared and the cycle of pollination has failed, the story is told by five very different people, all of whom have one thing in common – they’ve been stung by a bee, the first indication of their survival in years. Slowly bought together by (probably) the government, locked away and then freed, they (and we) slowly piece together the reason why they were chosen, and why the bees vanished in the first place. It’s a nice concept, and Coupland does it very well – the five voices are impressively distinct and consistently maintained – and the central mystery is pretty intriguing. I ploughed through the early chapters, slowly working out what was going on (if I have one criticism, it’s that the action jumps around a lot, but that’s hardly surprising when you have five narrators), and was greatly enjoying myself. Sadly, though, about two thirds of the way through everyone decamps to a little island, where they start to tell each other stories. The stories themselves are fine – some funny, some weird, all well-tailored to the character telling them – but they break the momentum of the novel. Some of them do have a purpose, and they all teach us something about their narrator, but it just feels flabby. After the thrust and fizz of the early sections, which are vintage Coupland, the tales just feel flat. The book limps on to the final revelation, such as it is, and there’s a subplot about drug addiction and modern culture that is good, if a little heavy handed, but I didn’t really care any more. I’d grown fond of the characters, and was enjoying their interaction, but ended up being put off by their tales. Shame, really. The book is worth reading – Coupland almost always is – but it just doesn’t wholly work for me. He is a great prose writer, and he has good ideas, but I just wish he didn’t run out of steam so often. Nice to see him try something a little different, and I don’t think his attempt to do so is the cause of the failure, but there you go. I read a proof, but the book has just come out in hardback, ISBN: 9780434019830 (Comment on this)
7:33 pm	Oath Breaker, by Michelle Paver Fifth of a run of six books from Paver, all of which I’ve enjoyed to some extent. I felt the quality dipped a little around book three, but not enough to make me drop the series. There aren’t many authors I stick with through a six book series, so Paver is obviously doing something right, as far as I’m concerned. These are definitely Young Adult books, and I’m not sure I’d recommend them to anyone who didn’t have some sort of interest in that area of modern fiction, but within the genre these are among the best. Far more interesting than Harry Potter, for a start, although the two series do share a certain feel – following a young boy as he grows, learns about his powers and discovers that friends and family are what makes life worth living. That may sound a little formulaic, but Paver’s real strength lies in her ability to create a convincing sense of location. Her setting – prehistoric forests, ice floes and mountains – is portrayed perfectly, and her central conceit, the various tribes of people each allied with an animal, remains fascinating. We learn a little bit more about the different factions this time around, and the link between the people’s culture and their animal totems is brilliantly done. There’s far more focus, however, on Torak and Renn’s quest to defeat the evil mage who is threatening the forest. The novel starts with a really quite shocking murder, and stays dark – there’s a definite sense that things are building up for the final volume. That does give the book a slightly holding-pattern feel, but I can forgive it, given how well everything is done. I’m quite glad that I held off reading this for a while – the proof of the final volume should appear quite soon (I hope!), and I’m anxious to get to the final denouement. Spending time with the two main characters and, of course, Wolf (Torak’s best friend) is always enjoyable, and I’ll be sorry to reach the end of their story, but I’m glad I stuck with it. I read a proof which I'd had for a while, mooching about on trains etc. The hardback came out before Christmas last year and the paperback - ISBN: 1842551165 - came out in June. (Comment on this)
7:14 pm	The Rats & the Ruling Sea, by Robert V. S. Redick This is the sequel to The Red Wolf Conspiracy, which I read in proof in February last year, (http://marcusgipps.livejournal.com/48036.html) and was rather luke-warm about. There were some good ideas, and it was obvious that Redick had spent a lot of time creating and populating the story-world, but the whole thing felt a little unchallenging and pedestrian – very much like an above-average YA book, rather than anything else. Nothing wrong with that, of course – I’ve enjoyed a lot of mid-level YA work immensely – but not as interesting as I has hoped. I wasn’t entirely sure that I would bother to read the sequel (part two of a trilogy), but the fact that it was the first publisher proof that we were asked to produce on our new book printing/binding machine meant that I felt I ought to. So I took a mis-bound copy (there weren’t that many, honest!) on holiday with me, and was rather glad that I did. There’s been a significant improvement between books in this series, which happens more often than I would like to admit. I’ve given up on a fair few series after the first volume felt disappointing, and I worry that I’m missing out on a lot of good books as a result. On the other hand, there are too many things out there that I want to read to allow me to follow every trilogy, series or sequence, so there’s not much to do about it, I guess. Anyway, although I had a few issues working out exactly who everybody was, and some of the plots relied a little too heavily on minor events from book one, once I had everything straight I ploughed through the book. Bits of the prose still veer towards the simplistic, but overall Rats feels like it is aimed at an older audience. There’s no doubt that Redick has some very nice ideas about where the plot is going, and has put a lot of effort into keeping the reader interested. Sometimes this can lead to a slight kitchen-sink feeling, as the author shows off the world they’ve created, but generally things stay on an even keel. It helps that a lot of the ideas are pretty good, and even show some signs of originality, which isn’t that usual in the fantasy genre, to be honest. The characters are generally well defined, although there are a couple of moments where I wanted to slap the main hero and heroine for their behaviour to each other. It isn’t fair to assume that they’ll get together at the end of book three, but if they do, you won’t be able to say that it hadn’t been pretty comprehensively flagged. There’s a nice sense of uncertainty as to who exactly the enemy is, which I enjoyed, as well as threats and allegiances that ebb and flow, and there are a couple of good twists (or, if not twists, surprises) that kept me on my toes. It probably helped that this time around there seems to be a clearer vision of exactly where the various strands are heading. Part of my problem with the first book was the looseness of the plot. Essentially, it ended up being a fairly straight-forward quest narrative, albeit with a few disturbing sequences where large parts of writing seemed to have been left out. I don’t mind having to work for my tale, but it was taken a bit too far. This time the gaps were much more carefully distributed, and there was more of an effort to make sure the overall arc kept going. The focus of the narrative shifted around a fair bit, which I always enjoy, and there was a good variety of voice and tone in the writing. Things came to a satisfactory conclusion as well, given the fact that there’s a third volume to come, and I find myself looking forward to it more than I expected. The book is out in hardback at the end of October, ISBN: 0575081791, and I read a proof while on holiday during June, and when I got back to work. (Comment on this)
Tuesday, June 23rd, 2009
8:25 pm	Some lovely free comics... I do like my free graphic novels. Of this lot, I remember the Dredd ones from when I was a kid, and they're kind of cool, if a lot more gory than I remembered. Ace Trucking is still great fun, and the other three are more recent additions to 2000AD. XTNCT was probably my favourite of the new ones, but both the others were kind of alright. Caballistics Inc was great, but not enough seemed to actually happen - this was more of a setting up volume, which is fine if you haven't paid for it, but would have annoyed me if I had. For the first time I also got some free Marvel comics, which are something I don't normally read. Of these two I preferred the Wolverine, if only because I know some of his backstory from the X-Men films. Ghost Rider had very pretty art, though. (1 Comment |Comment on this)
8:19 pm	Me Talk Pretty One Day, by David Sedaris I asked a colleague for a recommendation to take away on holiday; something I wouldn’t normally read, but something not too heavy. Something to read on a long train journey, effectively, and probably something non-fiction. She suggested I take a Sedaris, possibly motivated by her recent evening selling books at one of his readings, and I decided it was worth a go. He’s always been one of those authors that I know is popular, that people tell me I ought to read, and that I’ve recommended to customers based on my colleagues’ views, but have never quite got around to reading myself. I don’t really know why – perhaps something to do with the fact that I’m not much of a biography reader, or just because nobody thrust him on me, but I was pleased to give him a go. To be honest I didn’t read him on a train, but rather sitting in the glorious sunshine, half dozing, half reading, with a couple of beers and a packet of fags. These may be the perfect conditions under which to read Sedaris. The bite size chapters/essays/articles lend themselves to dipping, and the lack of a book-length narrative meant I could drift away for a bit. At the same time there are some very funny moments in this book which, coupled with the vague progression from childhood through to the author’s current life in Paris, kept my attention focused (to a slightly sleepy, beery extent, anyway). The reader has to be prepared to allow Sedaris to be himself, and to accept that he won’t always behave in the way that we might expect. Obviously, Sedaris is a humourist, and one who searches for absurdities in his own life. However he does so in very casual, open way, and it was only after finishing the book that I realised how much I felt I had got to know the author. References to his drug taking, problems with his family, details of his relationships – these all provide us with an indication of his personality, but it is his willingness to examine himself, his motives and thoughts and dreams, that really connect the author to the reader. This book certainly contains a collection of very funny vignettes, but to allow that to be the only description would be a great disservice to the depths of the book. I’m rather looking forward to reading some more, and I’m very sorry that I didn’t go and see him talk a couple of weeks ago when I had the chance. I read this on holiday, 13th June, and you should be able to find it anywhere, ISBN: 0349113912. (Comment on this)
8:16 pm	The Stranger, by Max Frei The last piece of Russian fantasy fiction I read was Night Watch, which I thought was a half decent idea let down by either a clunky writer or a clunky translator, not to mention a choppy narrative that seemed a bit too willing to skirt around actual coherent plot in favour of exciting ideas and set pieces. In fairness, lots of non-Russian fantasy does exactly the same thing (actually, lots of books do it, not just fantasy) but I have to be honest, having read this book, I begin to wonder if this lack of narrative focus is a typically Russian problem. I know, I know, two books aren’t exactly enough of a sample to make that a fair comment, but no matter how much I enjoyed certain parts of this book, I couldn’t help feeling that I was missing large chunks of exposition. That feeling adds to the occasional dream-like quality of the writing, but I’m not sure it was enough to make me feel that the book worked. Although presented as a novel, there was a definite feeling of short story to the various chapters of the book. There are a few continuing themes and the occasional subplot, but generally each section felt very discrete. I suspect part of my Night Watch feeling came from the similarity in concept – ordinary man finds himself in a world of which he knows nothing, magic and scary and exciting – although Frei’s city of Echo is a far more attractive place than the sub-city of Lukyanenko. In fact, despite the occasional attempt at horror, there isn’t much to be frightened of here. Our hero, Max, is so lucky that nothing ever seems like a real threat to him. Even the other characters in the book comment on his good fortune, and the author’s stabs at tension tend to be a bit undermined by the way in which the villains are defeated within the space of a sentence or two, often without anybody really knowing why they’ve been overcome. The book isn’t entirely without merit, by any means. Frei has some lovely ideas to play with, and the lead character, despite his ability to succeed at everything, often unconsciously, is surprisingly endearing. I would have liked a bit more tension, but when a book starts with the protagonist effectively being acclaimed as the second coming, there isn’t much to play with (I exaggerate a little, but not much). The one element which is left open is Max’s love life, and Frei does wring some mileage out of that, but the book’s sidelining of female characters made it hard for me to really care. There are a few other mysteries – Max’s constantly changing eye-colour, for one, and the backstory of his mentor, for another – but nothing really seems to stick from one chapter to another. The translation is generally quite good, although there are a few sentences and idioms which don’t really work, and some of the supposedly ‘quick-fire’ dialogue seems depressingly stilted. However, it seems churlish to complain about that when the overall effect is so much better than many translations. The whole thing is pacey enough, and some of the situations Max and his colleagues get into are enjoyable to read, but overall I couldn’t shake the feeling that something was missing. I would have liked a bit more tension, a bit more of Max’s life before being magically transported into another world, and a lot more of a reason to care about what might happen to the denizens of another world. Actually, I would have liked a reason to worry about the protagonist as well. The third time he got into some sort of apparent danger by falling asleep and having his dreams taken over/invaded/made real, I was beginning to feel like I was trapped in a loop. Each time he was saved by a power of his own which he knew nothing about, or by the intervention of one of his colleagues, with a power that had never been mentioned before. There’s only so long an author can get away with that in a 600 page novel. Perhaps these would have worked if read as occasional short stories, but for me it was all a bit too much, too repetitive and too unexciting. I can see how the stories might be admired, and there were time when I admired some of the writing, some of the ideas, myself, but it was all a bit too much to put up with in one go. I read this on holiday, 12th June, and the hardback is out now, ISBN: 0575089741. (Comment on this)
8:10 pm	Becoming Queen, by Kate Williams A bit of a departure from my normal reading habits – looking back, I think I’ve only really read one history book in the time I’ve been writing these mini-reviews. But we put on an event with Williams at the shop, and she’s a very interesting talker, plus I saw her Timewatch programme covering some of the same ground as this book, so I decided to give it a go. And I’d be in trouble if I didn’t. We sold a lot of these in the shop before Christmas, and the recent release of the Young Victoria film had sparked a fair amount of interest in the paperback, so everywhere I turned I was reminded that I’d decided to try some academic popular history. The book recounts the life of Charlotte, heir to the English throne a generation before Victoria, and then covers the childhood of Victoria herself, and draws some fascinating parallels between the two women’s lives. Obviously, one went on to become monarch and one didn’t, but the links between the two – both familial and biographical – mean that Williams can stitch together a coherent book from two different sources. In general, though, the narrative is fairly linear. There isn’t much attempt to compare the two women side by side, and the writing rarely jumps around chronologically. At first I thought that was a bit of a cheat, as the first third or so of the book was telling me about a woman who I’d never heard of. I’m fairly ignorant about that part of history, obviously. Well, most history, if I’m honest. It didn’t take long for me to get caught up in Charlotte’s short life, however, and Williams pleasingly manages to mix historical detail with a compelling narrative. She’s helped by her subject’s fascinating life, of course, but I had worried that the book would feel very dry, used as I am to fiction. There were a few times when the surfeit of names began to weigh me down a bit – far too many Princes, Ladies and so on for my poor mind to keep track of – but largely I managed to keep everything straight. There is a slight disconnect between the two sides of the book. Williams provides us with a bridging section that skims over the few intervening years, including the birth of Victoria, but the sudden lack of detail felt slightly odd after the well-researched and quote-heavy precedings. Having said that, it doesn’t take long for the book to kick back into gear again. Victoria’s childhood is something I knew nothing about (that’d be the historical ignorance again, then), and it really is a fascinating story. Her mother was hugely domineering, and had a cunning plan to set herself up with power, money and influence. In order for the plan to work, Victoria had to be trained to be utterly subservient to her mother and her mother’s confidantes. Never allowed to be on her own, and dissuaded from making her own decisions, ideally she would have happily given up all of her independence. The society and culture of the time is painstakingly recreated, and I can only assume accurately, but it all seems very very odd to modern eyes, and the way in which children could be treated is jaw-dropping. Again, I had a few moments of confusion over the ever rotating cast, but the narrative thread generally holds together well. Williams relies quite heavily on Victoria’s own personal journals – I was amazed that they largely still exist, and even more amazed that they don’t seem to be available in book form (not even some edited highlights!) – but there’s a fair selection of other sources used. The forty pages of notes and ten pages of bibliography underline the historical chops of the book, and Williams’ success lies in being able to take her serious research and portray it in a well-written, very readable narrative. I now know far much more about Victoria’s childhood than I really need to, not to mention my discovery of an entirely new historical character… I did feel that the ending was a little rushed, which shows how much I was enjoying the book, and a three page epilogue covering the Queen’s later years only serves to highlight the fact that her story was only just beginning. I read this on trains and holiday, 10th or 11th of June, and it's widely available, ISBN: 0099451824. (Comment on this)
8:09 pm	Tales of the Dying Earth, by Jack Vance I was prompted to read this by Subterranean Press’s announcement of a collection of short stories set in the same world, a project which has some great writers contributing. I’d never heard much about the book (or series of books), although I have a vague recollection of reading a Jack Vance or two from the local library when I was a kid (something abut dragons which were a lot like dinosaurs?), and it seemed intruiging, so I begged a copy and took it away on holiday. Also, I didn’t want to spend large amounts of money on a SubPress book about which I knew very little, so it seemed to be a good idea to do some research first… I’m fairly undecided as to whether I’ll order the new collection. I can see why everyone would have been very excited about these books when they were first published – the first volume is clearly doing something interesting and new, and I can see how it influenced lots of later fantasy (and Dungeons & Dragons, and so on). The structure of interlinking short stories felt a little clunky to this modern reader, although it works pretty well, and Vance’s depiction of his setting – the dying husk of Earth, millions of years in the future – is well depicted, albeit largely by allusion and sleight of hand. Overall, though, I was favourably impressed. The second and third volumes were a bit more to my liking – they had a very entertaining central character, and a dry wit and cynicism that I rather enjoyed. It doesn’t hurt that their structure is more polished, although they still betray their origins as indivual stories, and although the various incidents in Cugel’s tale may be a little repetitive, the overall effect breezes along quite happily. I was slightly disappointed that the second of this pair has a nominally happy ending for the roguish main character, but the overwhelming level of disappointment that he had so far suffered perhaps needed a final balancing. The last book was, sadly, the weakest. Three short stories/novellas all concerning the same magician, but with no real feel of connection between them – indeed they make no reference to each other, and occasionally seem to contradict each other (only in minor ways, but still…). The central tale was the strongest, but I’d been left with a bad taste in my mouth from the sheer sexism of the first. Vance doesn’t exactly provide us with many strong female characters in these books, to be honest, but a certain amount of casual treatment of women is somewhat to be expected in books of this age, if not enjoyed. It reaches new levels here, though, and it felt unworthy of the rest of the works. Then again, maybe I’m being unfair, and a powerful woman ruling the world, and turning all the powerful wizards into women, really would have been an utterly dreadful thing. I somehow doubt it, though. Either way, this last set of tales jarred with the rest, and was a disappointing end. If it wasn’t for that, I think I would buy the new short stories – perhaps I’ll have to go back and look at the list of authors again, and see if that convinces me. I read this on holiday, on the 8th of June, and it's been out forever, of course, ISBN: 1857989945. (Comment on this)
8:06 pm	The Year of the Flood, by Margaret Atwood A new Atwood novel is always an exciting moment, and I was surprised to realise how long it had been since the last one, which was Oryx and Crake in 2003. Oh, she’s published a lot of books since then, but none of them were what you would call a ‘full’ novel. Retellings of ancient myths, poetry, short stories, non-fiction – all fine, but not long-form fiction, which is what I enjoy. I have fond memories of Oryx and Crake, which turn out not to be as precise as I had hoped, so I jumped on this as soon as it arrived. It didn’t hurt that The Year of the Flood is post-apocalyptic fiction, which I enjoy anyway, and which Atwood is very good at. It turns out that this is a sort-of sequel to Oryx, although it took me an awfully long time to work that out. I had thought that my feelings of familiarity were just caused by awareness of Atwood’s other work, her writing style and so on, but it turned out that some characters are shared between the two books. I’d have to go back to the previous novel to really put my finger on the connections, and I would suggest that – unless you have a fantastic memory – it might be worth going back and rereading that novel, if only because I’m sure that I missed some subtleties that may have enhanced the reading experience. So with that caveat in place, and with an attempt not to give away too much of the plot, how does Flood stand up? I have no doubt that Atwood fans will enjoy it – she is on form here – but I suspect the wider reading populace may be left a little cold. In many ways it feels like a (very well done) pastiche of an Atwood novel. That could sound like an insult, but it isn’t meant to be – I’m just trying to get across the fact that this didn’t feel overly new or fresh. Of course, with hindsight that feeling came, at least in part, from the fact that I had encountered this world before, and some of its inhabitants. Setting isn’t everything, naturally, and neither is constant evolution of style – and Atwood has more than proved her ability to flit between genres – but I couldn’t initially shake my slight disappointment. It probably didn’t help that it takes the plot a while to get going, and Atwood has decided on a flashback structure that takes away some of the tension of her situations. We know that two women are going to survive the coming catastrophe, and end up isolated in separate locations. The novel relies on our interest being held by the description of how they end up there, with a vague promise of continuing the narrative once the flashbacks have caught up with the opening chapters. Thankfully (and unsurprisingly) Atwood’s writing is up to the task, and her habit of jumping back and forth between characters and timeframes serves the plot well. It takes a while to fit all of the jigsaw pieces together, to begin to build up an image of the society and culture she has created, but even the blurry picture intrigues. There’s a bit of a mystery rumbling along in the background – what caused the catastrophe? – and even the minor characters are defined with a casual simplicity. Some of the set-pieces are truly exciting or scary, and the sense of a persecuted minority struggling to survive, let alone stay within their self-imposed ecological lifestyles, is well conveyed. So it was enjoyable, but I did find it hard to get truly involved. As the strands of the novel began to come together, however, my attention began to be properly caught. We knew that our two narrators were going to survive the end of the world, holed up in their separate structures, and Atwood’s smattering of chapters set in the aftermath promised some kind of resolution to their stories. Once the flashbacks had been dispensed with (which, to be fair, wasn’t for quite a while) I began to be more excited about the plot of the book, rather than just admiring of the skill with which Atwood was telling her story. There was more of a sense of danger for the main characters – we knew they’d survive the apocalypse, but had no such guarantees now – and more of a feel of narrative possibility. Despite that, I did feel that the ending fizzled out a bit. Hard to put a finger on why, exactly, but perhaps it was the inevitability of things. Once you’ve wiped out most of the human population, there isn’t a lot left to be done. Overall, then, I had mixed feelings about the whole thing (as if I hadn’t made that obvious!). It’s classic Atwood, which can only be a good thing, but there was just a little too much familiarity and security for me to be truly happy with the book. I enjoyed the time I spent with the characters, and there’s no doubt that Atwood has as fertile imagination as ever. Her prose is always good, and there were moments that stood out as funny, scary or clever. The latter sections of the book provide some real suspense, and her ecological warnings are even more relevant than they were with the previous book. The book is well worth reading, but it isn’t her best. I started this early in June, and finished it on holiday, on the 6th June. It comes out in September, ISBN: 0747585164. (Comment on this)
8:03 pm	The Forest of Hands and Teeth, by Carrie Ryan Another of Gollancz’s American-originating Young Adult-ish books – the most recent I read was Graceling - which they’re aiming a bit more at the adult SF market. I like YA fiction, generally, although I read a lot less of it than I used too, but I do get a little annoyed when I read one without being warned. I suspect it’s something to do with expectations, which may not be fair – a book should be judged on what it is, not what the reader thinks it will be – but still, I was hoping for something with a bit more bite (hah!) than this. The set-up is better than average, if not exactly entirely new, amalgamating as it does a post-apocalypse setting with zombies. That may sound a little straight-forward, but there are some nice touches, and Ryan is very good at creating the sense of normality that her characters have settled into. Yes, there are the zombie-esque remains of their friends and family clustered around their little village, battering on the fence, but that’s just the way things are, and have been for some time. Something to be scared of, but nothing more than a background to life. Of course, it shouldn’t come as much of a surprise to learn that things don’t remain calm for long. After a lovely beginning, in which our main character’s mother is dragged off to become a zombie, the book loses the path a little. There’s a little too much time spent with the minutiae of orphan life and religious training, and far too much time spent on the unfairness of life and, overwhelmingly, love. A few bits of mystery are scattered over this section, which are welcome, but the endless worry about which of the two local boys our heroine is in love with - and which will ask her to marry them, and which will end up with her best friend – are a little wearying. I can see what the author’s trying to do, and perhaps I’m just not the right reader (I don’t think I’ll like Twilight, either, although I shouldn’t prejudge…), but it just didn’t work for me. Things pick up a bit when the expected catastrophe occurs, and the hormonal youths must flee the village where they’ve spent all of their lives, and head off into the titular forest. Are there other survivors out there, even though the local authorities have always said there can’t be? Will the strange numbers on the path lead to some form of salvation? Will Mary ever stop dreaming about the sea? Will she ever get to have sex with the boy she loves, even if she isn’t sure which of the two brothers that is? Do we care, or should the author just get on with what she’s good at, which is the creepy atmospherics and willingness to do horrible things to main characters? These are, in case you hadn’t guessed, rhetorical questions. There’s much to admire here, and I suspect that if I was a lot younger, I’d have enjoyed it a lot more (especially, I suspect, if I was a young teenage girl, which I’m not). The setting is well depicted, the prose is generally solid, the characters mostly convincing (if whiny), and the horror elements are nicely underplayed, and occasionally gruesome to good effect. I just can’t help but feel that there should have been a bit more to it, and the open-ended conclusion didn’t exactly inspire me to wait with bated breath for the next instalment. Solid, and not a bad read, but not my cup of tea. I suspect it’ll be embraced by the target audience with more enthusiasm than I can muster. I read this in a couple of days at the beginning of June, and it should be out in the first week of July, ISBN: 0575090847. (Comment on this)
8:00 pm	The Gay Divorcee, by Paul Burston Not my normal reading material, but I was selling books at a party where the author was speaking, and it seemed rude to read my own book, so I started on this. I was there for about two hours and finished the book with about half an hour to go, so it isn’t exactly a challenging read. Best described as gay chick lit, I guess, which is not a genre I know much about, so I have no idea if this is groundbreaking, or derivative, or what. I rather enjoyed it as a light read – the beer I was drinking may have helped – but it didn’t exactly feel deep, and I don’t know if it was accurate in its depiction of gay Soho life. It felt realistic enough, and the lead character was appealing, but some of the supporting cast were such bastards that it felt a little overblown. There’s a fairly pointless subplot about the identity of a bitchy blogger, which didn’t do much for me, but the main thrust of the book was enjoyable, which is all you can ask for, really. I’m not a big fan of modern settings in a beach read, which effectively is what this felt like, but overall I enjoyed it much more than I thought I was going to. The fact that I was cheering on the protagonist as he sorted out his life and ended up with the right man is a good sign, and I was surprised that I got as involved as I did. Not sure I’d be too bothered about reading more of this nature – fluffy chick lit, gay or otherwise, really isn’t too my taste – but a nice diversion. I read this at the launch party, sitting on an uncomfortable shelf, at the end of May. Out now in paperback, ISBN: 1847442080. (Comment on this)
7:59 pm	Starman Omnibus volume 1, by James Robinson I’d heard good things about this series (from the early 90’s, which was when I’d stopped reading comics) and the decision to put it out in lavish hardback volumes suggested to me that it might be worth a go. Plus, I’m a sucker for nice editions of books and comics. This collection – containing the first 17 issues - worked quite well as an introductory volume, I felt, but the story perhaps didn’t quite get up to full steam within these pages. There was definitely something worthwhile here, though, so I’ll have a punt on the second book, and see if it fulfils its promise. Given how many people rate this run of comics, I hope not to be disappointed. I read this on a day off at the beginning of June, ISBN: 1401216994. (Comment on this)
7:57 pm	Showcase Presents: Legion of Super-Heroes volume three, by various Another in the very cheap and very thick, and therefore very good value, collection of classic DC Comics. I don’t have the shelf space to buy as many of these as I’d like, so I have to pick and choose, but the Legion volumes are essential. They were some of the first comics I really got into, back when I was ten or eleven, and they’ve always been one of my favourites. This volume fills in a bunch of the complex backstory that intrigued and attracted me as a kid, and although the individual stories can be really quite rubbish, not to mention sexist – a perennial problem with early comics – they’re generally a lot of fun. Not for everybody, but £8 well spent for me. I read this on a day off, sometime at the end of May. ISBN: 1401221858. (Comment on this)
7:55 pm	The Red Dwarf Omnibus, by Grant Naylor Inspired by the recent new episodes, I ordered up the Red Dwarf books for the shop and then found myself drawn to this bind-up of the first two. I have a copy of my own stuck in a box or at the bottom of a book pile somewhere, but haven’t read them since I was thirteen or so. I remembered them as being very enjoyable, but the TV series and the books had, I think, merged together in my memory, so I had no idea if I was going to enjoy these or not. In the end, I was pleasantly surprised. There’s a real sense of an attempt to make the various unconnected TV episodes string together into a novelistic plot, and the backstory had obviously been well developed, even if it was done in retrospect. The first book is the weaker of the two, although it starts very strongly, with a long sequence set before the first TV episode that is genuinely funny. Then we get a long selection of quotes and incidents lifted (often verbatim) from the scripts, although this isn’t badly done, and then the book goes off on its own tangent again towards a properly disturbing ending. The second book picks up from there, and although it does have the odd jarring moment as a piece of TV is used, feels much more like an original piece of fiction. Again, some very funny sequences, but the most striking thing is the emotional strength of some of the writing here. That may seem an unlikely claim to make for the novelisation of a sci-fi comedy show, but Red Dwarf was often subtler than it was given credit for, and the best bits of these books stand up very well, even after this long. I read this in tea breaks at work, throughout May. Been out for years, obviously, ISBN: 0140174664. (Comment on this)
7:44 pm	Thicker Than Water, by Mike Carey Finally, the fourth of Carey’s supernatural detective stories. I didn’t know much about Carey, but someone convinced me to read the first of these books, and I enjoyed it far more than I’d expected. I felt there was a slight dip in quality in the third volume – it just felt a little too repetitive – but I was still looking forward to this one, and I’m very glad that Carey seems to have struck off in a direction that negates my concerns. Or, of course, it may be that the long delay between books three and four has whetted my appetite. Either way, this was great fun, and I’m now very much looking forward to the next one A subplot that had been bubbling under in the previous books comes to the fore here – Carey tries to make new readers welcome, but I suspect you really need to have read at least the first book for everything to make sense – and ends on a cliffhanger that is properly shocking, a rare enough thing in series fiction. There’s a pretty good plot here, as well as the metastory stuff, although Carey keeps the reader as much in the dark as Felix Castor, his hero. Castor has a nasty time of it this time around, getting beaten up, framed for murder and so on. His much-vaunted exorcist skills aren’t a lot of use, and instead he must rely on his wits, friends and contacts. It isn’t very surprising that he finds this quite hard. Carey is also very good at place – his London is very recognisable, and his grim estates and neon-lit hospitals are very evocative of the underworld in which Castor plys his trade. My only real criticism is a slight tendency for the other characters to be pushed into the background – perhaps unsurprising given the first person narrative – but there are a couple of welcome new additions to the cast here, and the interplay is generally well done. There are still some elements of similarity to Hellblazer (which Carey used to write) that can’t quite be shaken off, but as the series progresses and starts to create its own mythology, the echoes grow fainter. This is a really fun series, well-written and a joy to read, but it really should be started at the beginning. Crime fans shouldn’t let the horror trappings put them off, and horror/fantasy/s-f people shouldn’t worry about the attempts to locate the book in the mainstream. They’re well worth a try, and I’m very pleased that this book brings the series back up to the heights we know it can achieve. I had to wait for the book to actually come out, boo, and for me to finish the Nick Cave book, so I didn't get around to this until the last week of May. Out now, ISBN: 1841496561. (Comment on this)