Once I’d decided to run a festival, I started searching out new books, from authors I didn’t know, often picking up two or three in Waterstones or cheap on Amazon. Like a lot of readers, I had a good stable of authors I loved, most of whom were very prolific, so just keeping up with their output was pretty hard going. Away for work in Glasgow, I took advantage of a big Waterstones to buy three books I knew nothing about. I didn’t Google them in the shop, I didn’t make a note for later. Just read the backs and made a purchase. And I’m so glad I did, because in Feb/March of 2019 I read Rosewater. If you’re read my Ancillary Justice review you’ll know that I can be very late to the party so it was so pleasing to see this book win the Clarke Award this year. Rosewater is a dystopic novel, set in a future Nigeria, occupied by an alien. That might sound a bit like Caves of Steel but the tone, the feeling and the grittiness of the book is all it’s own. Tade Thompson creates a totally believable universe, where bad interests gather around exceptional events. If you've not read it, go and do so immediately, and then pick up the sequels. You're in for a treat!
Lovecraft Country I’m not sure how to begin to talk about this book. It wasn’t anything like what I expected. Whilst I’ve not read any Lovecraft stories, I’ve played a lot of Fantasy Flight’s Arkham Files games. So, I’ve got a good handle on Elder Gods, portals to hellish dimensions, and 1920s archetypes. Turns out, a lot less so on Lovecraft's racism... Turns out, LC is not that book. Instead, it’s an affecting, disturbing, and powerful take on racism and society in 1950s America. The paperback proudly proclaims the upcoming Jordan Peele/J.J. HBO adaptation, and you know what? That totally makes sense. It feels relevant, important and very current - like all good genre writing. And the tale it tells is pretty great too. There's an undercurrent of otherworldly mysticism but to me, the book stays with me as a fierce reposte to that aforementioned H.P. racism. The truly chilling moments, for this reader at least, were the ones which featured the irrational hatred that the main characters have to live with, from other people. In the world around us, these terrible ideas of 'othering' seem to be making a comeback into mainstream dialogues which makes stories like these even more essential. I don't want to say too much about this one - the joy in discovering these rich and surprising characters, the way the book subverts tired tropes and assumptions about genre culture and who it's for - just go and discover it for yourselves. Then come back and tell me what you think DS
The Last Hanna Jameson First things first - I loved The Last. It feels like the birth of a subgenre I didn't know I needed - post-apocalyptic murder mystery. In a week when Coleen Rooney has reinvented the whodunit for the digital age, it feels oddly appropriate to be writing this. If they got Ann Cleeves to guest write an episode of the Walking Dead - I reckon that might have this kind of thing. It isn't necessarily a book I'm worried about "spoiling". The general plot/mis-en-scene is either on the blurb or in the first few pages. But I won't get into specifics, and luckily I'm not sure the book is quite about plot points (for me) anyway. A last point, I listened to the audiobook of this, narrated by Anthony Starke. He generally did a great job, more on that below. So, in The Last, we experience the end of the world through the eyes of an academic stuck in a hotel in Switzerland, as the major cities around the world are destroyed in a nuclear war. Trump is never named, but its a clear and troubling spec. fiction piece about what might happen if the current US President pushed it far to far. There's a pleasingly Cold War aesthetic about this (not sure if pleasing is the word but...). Whilst the concerns, technologies and socio-dynamics are very modern, it has that *the world is on a knife edge*, feeling that I'm too young to actually remember. Most of the novel takes place in a creepy hotel (like in the Shining, it's basically an extra character) as the various survivors reel from their world falling apart. And then, a girl's body is discovered, murdered. Luckily for us, our narrator becomes obsessed by finding out who did it, even if noone else thinks it matters. He's an academic, a historian I think, and thus decides to chronicle everything for us as it happens. One of the things I loved is that this feels so authentic - he's upfront about being unreliable, holding his personal life back - and he doesn't go back and edit when new facts come to light. It feels like a proper diary, not a story. Good work Hanna Jameson! I don't think enough is written about the difference between audiobooks and reading a book. Books on tape aren't new, but the ease, and mass appeal that Audible has brought has changed the game I think. I know that one of the reasons I love Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell so much, is the pleasure that I got from walking round listening to Jonathan Keeble tell me the story. The Last was a slightly different experience. Jonathan Keeble, as an example, narrates a book, he's a storyteller. Anthony Starke felt much more to me like he was acting the role. The diary-style really lends itself to this. It made the story so immediate for me - you could pretty much keep this narration and animate it and it would work as a TV series or film. Some of the accents were...not quite authentic...but in someways that was in keeping with the "acting" of the story, it was from one person's voice. (BTW if you want stellar audiobook acting, check out the Sophie Hannah Poirot adaptations...) My final observation is that this book reminded me a little of the the Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle - in many ways completely different, but some of the vibe, and the setting put them next to each other in my head. It's also a book that I really enjoyed so if you know of anything else that fits, recommend away. And that's it. A really interesting and engaging "read". It seems to have done blockbusters, and deservedly so. Can't wait to see what the author comes up with next. DS
I’m super aware that I’m VERY late to the party on AJ, and the work of Ann Leckie. It’s not for lack of interest. I even bought a copy of it for a friend (sight-unseen). I don’t know why I waited so long. It’s the first in a trilogy (I love trilogies), and it’s solid space opera (ditto). I just never got around to it somehow, until now. And the unsurprising TLDR? I was missing out. It’s great. Really good. One of my favourite things is that the world that Leckie describes, with its takes on gender, manners and power, is so unlike either the liberal, Utopian, narratives of progress, or the dystopic, male-centric takes of other writers I’ve read. It has subtlety in its world building that I like, a sense that things have been thought out. It’s somehow of the future, and old fashioned, which for a sci-fi fan and history graduate is catnip. Some reviews have noted the Roman Empire vibes AJ gives off, but I was much more reminded of stories of Victorian England/Empire, the delicacies of costume and manners (TBH the links with Imperial India are well noted elsewhere too). I wouldn’t doubt for a second that Victoria would have like 1,000 of her to rule her enormous empire and there’s a lot in there which could be compared with the British Raj. Those kinds of historical allusions, of course, mean that readers can play the game of trying to predict the plot against historical examples. I get the feeling though, that the next two books are going to be pleasingly unpredictable. The central character is also an intriguing one. As we approach the centenary of the first robots in RUR, it was great to be reminded of how far we’ve come that a “computer” can be part person, part machine, and somehow an uneasy hybrid of the two, not an android, something else. It’s a great character, and the twisted sense of self weaves well with the plot. The paperback book cover doesn’t shy away from the most striking literary comparison: Iain M. Banks. For me, Banks was my gateway into British SciFi of the 1980s and 1990s, with its swearing, sex, action and grittiness (and love of space opera). It’s a mark of my esteem of this book that Banks’ writing was my first comparison. Best thing about it? That world building, and that I know there are two more to read Who is this for? I assume I’m the last scifi fan to read it but if I’m not, this is a self-selecting one. If you’ve not read it yet and you’ve got this far…what are you waiting for? Further Reading https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/an-empire-divided/
