'American Gods' by Neil Gaiman
I saw that they were televising a series of this book so I thought it might be an idea to read it. Despite being a long book not much happens. The story involves Shadow, an ex-convict who is employed by Odin to aid him in rallying other gods brought to the USA by settlers down the millennia. For much of the time Shadow lives in a small village by a lake when not being employed by Odin and encounters a range of interesting people as well as being bothered by his late wife who he inadvertently raised from the dead and who kills people who threaten him. There is an interesting concept that places and activities are imbued with belief and Gaiman features local attractions which become filled with power because people come to them. The basic concept overlaps with 'The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul' (1988) by Douglas Adams which was published 13 years earlier but relocating to dreary backwater towns in the USA gives Gaiman a chance to add the new twist of old gods against new gods of technology and other facets of contemporary society. While the plot drifts for far too long, there is a decent twist and above all, Gaiman writes interesting characters and portrays unexciting US settings well. Thus, despite the fantastical element there is a real lack of urgency about this book and it is, ironically, best read as a 'slice of life' novel. I cannot imagine this would make exciting watching unless you are a fan of Mike Leigh movies, but I see they are on to the third season of the TV series so I can only imagine they have long ago diverged from the novel.
'Now is the Time' by Melvyn Bragg
I once read an interview with Bragg in which he wished his novels were just a little more successful. He seems to get long listed for awards but very rarely wins. Having read this novel I can understand why. The novel is around the English Peasants' Revolt of 1381. Bragg shows it from various perspectives on both sides of the conflict and certainly you can learn a lot about what went on and who was involved. I particularly found the descriptions of London at the time very interesting. However, it is all written in an unsophisticated way with lots of telling rather than showing and somehow detached from the characters. Even when Wat Tyler's daughter is raped by London criminals released during the revolt, you do not feel the way you should about this. In many ways the book reminded me of novels by Henry Treece (1911-66) who wrote numerous historical novels for children. Thus, though there are points of interest, there is a lack of genuine drama in the novel and at the end you feel like you have read a lesson rather than a novel. Bragg should look to the work of Bernard Cornwell in how to add that dramatic element to scrupulously researched fiction.
'Aqua Alta' by Donna Leon
In this fifth book in the Guido Brunetti series, Leon returns to two characters from the first novel, 'Death at La Fenice' (1992), opera singer Flavia Petrelli and her female partner, archaeologist Brett Lynch. When Lynch is beaten up, Brunetti involves himself in the case which soon turns into one involving murder and faked archaeological artefacts. It is set against the backdrop of both the 'aqua alta', the flooding of Venice caused by high tides and heavy rain and the sense that those in privileged positions continue to get away with their crimes. This applies to Lynch as much as the antique collector. As noted with the previous novel, Leon appears to have got into her stride with these novels and they rise far about the first couple. The book is brisk, provides interesting details about both Venice and archaeology in China as well as setting the story in the amoral context of contemporary Italy that appears so attractive for crime novelists even those writing in English. I have five more of these novels to read. Leon continues churning them out and the 29th comes out in 2020.
'Counting Up, Counting Down' by Harry Turtledove
Around the time this book came out in 2002, I had been thinking of writing a short story about a man who travels back in time to try to improve his own life. Then I heard of the two stories at the start and end of this book, which in fact are the same story seen from the older and younger versions of the same man, Justin Kloster travelling from 2018 to 1999. The ending of these stories turns out was far more positive than the one I planned which would have ended up rather like 'The Butterfly Effect' (2004) movie. It brought home to me that especially if writing in a particular genre it is easy for authors to come up with similar stories of their own accord. The two stories are reasonable if a little frustrating. One interesting things are what Turtledove (originally writing this as a magazine story in the 1990s) got wrong about 2018, i.e. The Rolling Stones are still touring, 'South Park' is still very well known even by teenagers and the fad for body piercing has not waned in the slightest, in fact it has increased.
The rest of the stories in this collection are quite a mixed bag. Despite what I have been told about my alternate history short story anthologies, there is demand for such collections. Not all of the stories are alternate history, there is some science fiction and fantasy too. There is far more sex than I had expected from reading other books by Turtledove and with religion this is a key theme through the collection. 'Vermin' about a Christian community struggling as settlers on an alien planet is well done and highlights the grave consequences of seeking comfort just for yourself or your community. Other science fiction ones are oddities, 'The Deconstruction Gang' about philosophers discussing breaking up a road, 'The Green Buffalo' about cowboys slipping through a rift in time to kill a triceratops for food and 'The Maltese Elephant', a pastiche of 'The Maltese Falcon' (novel 1930; movie 1941) are alright but not hugely engaging.
'Ils Ne Passeront Pas' conjures up the Verdun front in 1916 very well, but then, for no clear reason, throws creatures from the Biblical apocalypse at French and German soldiers, ultimately without much changing. This like 'In This Season' a magical realist story about a small number of Jews escaping Poland following the German occupation in 1939 with the aid of a golem, again has religious elements that I probably miss out on. 'After the Last Elf is Dead' is more fantastical, but equally grim, seeing a world where the evil Dark Brother has been victorious and showing the challenges even for his loyal staff which reminded me of Stalin's regime and has a very unsettling conclusion which, though, does show the likely outcome if evil does win in a fantasy setting.
Seemingly more light-hearted than those grim stories is 'Honeymouth', a fantasy story about a disreputable rider of a unicorn and while sex features in the other stories it is right at the front in this fantasy one as the title might suggest. 'Miss Manner's Guide to Greek Missology #1: Andromeda and Perseus' is interesting in reversing the roles in the stories, but I always find attempts at humour in these situations is laboured and dates poorly. 'Goddess for a Day' despite sounding like a story title set to primary school children is the best of the fantasy stories, showing the challenges of a woman employed to act as Athena, in an actual event which occurred in the 6th Century CE.
Two reasonable stories focused on religion are set in Turtledove's Videssos fantasy setting, similar to the Byzantine Empire on which he was a scholar. The first, 'The Decoy Duck' about a missionary to a nordic style land will remind readers of a very similar sub-plot in the TV series, 'Vikings' (2013-20) and given it was written long before that may have been an inspiration for it. The second, 'The Seventh Chapter' is unexciting, largely a procedural that primarily tells us more about the world Turtledove has created and religion within it.
Of the alternate histories, 'Must and Shall' set in 1942 but one in which the Union was far harsher on the Confederate States following the shooting of Abraham Lincoln in 1864, is well done as detectives seek the German weapons being sent to southern states to trigger an uprising. 'Ready for the Fatherland' is set in 1979 in Croatia in a world where Field Marshal Manstein assassinated Hitler in 1943, held back the Soviet counter-attacks and crushed the Anglo-American landing in France so a stalemate developed across Europe with the Germans and their puppet states persisting. There is a nice reference to a scene from 'The Guns of Navarone' (1961) movie and a passing one to 'Force 10 from Navarone' (1978). 'The Phantom Tolbutkin' features another similar scenario but with Ukrainian resistance fighters in the occupied USSR and turns a good twist.
Non-Fiction
'Unreliable Witness: Espionage Myths of the Second World War' by Nigel West [Rupert Allason]
This book is probably unnecessary now, but when it came out in 1984 it proved a good corrective to the numerous books that had been appearing in the 1970s and early 1980s about spying during the Second World War. It showed me that 'Bodyguard of Lies' (1975) which I have on my shelf is riddled with errors. It also shows how without care historians can perpetuate mistakes through successive books. West looks at a number of claims in books of the time, among others, that a German spy in Orkney Islands allowed the sinking of HMS 'Royal Oak' when berthed there, that Admiral Canaris, head of German military intelligence provided material to the Allies but had also met Mata Hari, who was behind the Soviet spy ring in Switzerland during the war and whether Churchill had foreknowledge of the bombing of Coventry in November 1940. Most of the cases prove to be less dramatic than historians have made out and often came down to a combination of human, signals and codebreaking intelligence. As time had passed since the war, more identities of spies came out, also allowing corrections of misapprehensions.
This is another book which would have been better for me to have read when I bought it 30+ years ago. M.R.D. Foot, the historian of S.O.E. (who I met once) was rather sniffy about this book, in part I think because West highlights some mistakes Foot made. Thus, you rather feel this book is a bit of revenge by West against authors who have too easily accepted certain stories without doing the necessary cross-checking. Allason himself is now 68 and Foot died in 2012 at the age of 92, so that element is largely irrelevant now. What I would suggest is that this short book (166 pages) should be given to people starting History degrees to alert them to how easily it is not simply to make errors, especially when based on assumptions, but to perpetuate them. If like me you are working your way through old books on the Second World War, it is also useful to have this as an accompanying corrective especially to the more exciting claims made in those books.
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