Books I Read In December

Just to say that while I slowed up towards the end of the year, actually having a bedroom of my own rather than having to sleep in the living room has boosted my reading and despite having some very poorly written, heavy going and long books, I have managed to get through 48 this year, 21 of which have been over 400 pages long and 2 have been more than 900 pages. Driving very little during the Covid period has meant audio books falling away for me.

Fiction

'Gridlinked' by Neal Asher

I was not surprised to find that this book had been published in 2000 (though Wikipedia says 2001). Where it had been sitting unread before it was taken to my local charity shop, I do not know. What betrayed its age was that from the outset it has a real 1980s/90s cyberpunk feel to it. It features a 'hero', Ian Cormac, so emotionless that he is mistaken for an android at the start of the novel. He is a government counter-terrorist officer. Ironically, having been gridlinked, i.e. connected to the Polity, the controlling computer system of the regime controlling multiple solar systems for thirty years, he soon disconnects and has to find his way using more traditional approaches. In theory his antagonist is Arian Pelter a terrorist whose sister Cormac kills brutally early in the book. Pelter keeps loading himself up with more cyberpunk augmentations and makes use of a heavy duty android. So far, so cyberpunk as Cormac pursues Pelter rather half-heartedly, guided by a perhaps immortal Oriental guru. However, Asher is not satisfied with simply a cyberpunk revenge plot filled with so much violence that at times it is difficult to see the characters as much more than psychopaths both on a rampage across the galaxy.

There is a second strand to this book which feels like a different novel has been levered into the first one. It is more classically science fiction and might have been written by Iain M. Banks and is around Cormac's relationship with a super-powerful being known as Dragon and its own attempts to explore mysterious artefacts on a planet that belong to an ultra-powerful being, Maker. Either of these storylines would have been sufficient in itself. There is sufficient drama in either the hunt/revenge or the handling the super-beings to fill a novel. By having both in the same book draws tension out of each.

A further challenge is that having two main characters who are both very cold and ruthless means that the reader feels very much like they are looking in, perhaps watching two predators killing other creatures until they come face-to-face to inflict violence on the other and his small army. Asher seems to realise this and towards the end the fixer Stanton and the pilot/smuggler Jarvellis are raised from being minor characters to being much more of a secondary storyline and their interactions 'softened' to give the reader something they might feel affinity with.

Though this book is very flawed, it clearly did nothing to harm Asher's career and he has gone on to have 18 more books published, including 4 more featuring Cormac. I do not know if he improved or if he was better advised/edited. I was a fan of cyberpunk, especially the work of Bruce Sterling, Walter Jon Williams and George Alec Effinger. However, Asher's book lacks something. It is almost as if he had a list of tropes not simply from cyberpunk but many from classic science fiction too, and felt he had not succeeded until he had squeezed every one of them in. I think even he realised that having too many characters lacking humanity makes it hard to human readers to engage with them. I know many people like action, I do myself, but it can become numbing when it is incessant and especially when scenes seemed to be set up just to allow Pelter and his current team to slaughter them as happens when they find they are being followed on Huma. As you can imagine I am not in a rush to seek out Asher's other novels and feel I could find much of the same, executed more skilfully, by others.

'Empire of Dragons' by Valerio Massimo Manfredi; translated by Christine Feddersen-Manfredi

Though he has written 24 novels, some of which are available in English, Manfredi was an archaeology academic. Much of what he researched about the ancient world has formed a basis for his fiction. Perhaps in the UK his fictional work is best known as the basis of the 2007 movie, 'The Last Legion'. Like that movie and the novel it was based on, Manfredi is willing to mix in the fantastical with the historical. This novel features a group of 11 Roman legionaries, led by Legate Marcus Metellus Aquila of the II Legion are captured by Persian troops while trying to defend the Emperor Valerian during the siege of Edessa (in what is now Syria) in 260 CE. Sent to a mine, they manage to escape and in league with a Chinese prince and a merchant end up travelling to China at the time of the Three Kingdoms. Ironically, as Manfredi outlines at the end of the book not only such contact was possible, some was actually likely.

Despite Manfredi's background this is very similar in style to the epic Roman military style to many books out there, I would just pick on Simon Scarrow, Ben Kane and J. Clifton Slater as three among very many. There is a load of machismo throughout with the required quantity of brotherly bonding between the soldiers and tragic deaths. Manfredi also has room for some romance along the way and unlike some authors of historical military fiction does feature the occasional woman.

I think I have probably now read too many books of this kind and so my palate was jaded for any more. The other thing, is despite all the grounding in historical fact, Manfredi cannot let go of the fantastical. Thus, the Chinese the Romans meet often have very mystical powers enabling them to achieve phenomenal acrobatic feats and sustain themselves with minimal sustenance. This portrayal of Chinese monks and their philosophy as providing magical abilities is very tired and probably was even when this book was published in 2006.

Manfredi had published 14 books by the time this one came out. However, the text in the early parts of the novel is very lifeless despite the dramatic scenes being portrayed. It improves in the latter half of the book. I am not sure, not reading Italian, if this reflects the original text or was a result of the translation. However, it adds to that sense that this is all rather a tired premise that has been done so many times before and since. Perhaps if Manfredi is the first author of Roman military epics you come to, this would seem fine. For me, though, despite the author's credentials and an interesting premise, the book is weighed down by too many tropes to really sparkle for me.

Non-Fiction

'Europe in the Eighteenth Century 1713/1783' by M.S. [Matthew Smith] Anderson

This another of those general survey history books of the A General History of Europe series overseen by Professor Denis Hay in the 1960s-80s, that at some time, probably in the late 1980s, I bought quite a lot of second hand and they have sat in storage ever since. Sometimes such books can be laboured. Sometimes, as in the similar series I read in September: http://rooksmoor.blogspot.com/2021/09/books-i-read-in-september.html you find an author like J.R. Hale who really makes the text lively and engaging. Anderson proves to be somewhere in the middle. The period is a complex one, and explaining the end of the War of the Spanish Succession, let alone the Seven Years' War, the first global conflict and colonial rivalries of the various powers is not an easy task in a survey history book. Where Anderson does best is in looking at specific countries and their development in this period.

Probably aware that France in the lead-up to the revolution which broke out six years after this book ends, gets a lot of coverage, he focuses a good deal on Russia, Poland, Prussia and the Habsburg lands. I found his explanation of the development of these countries and how they impacted on the rest of the continent well handled. He also includes Sweden, the Ottoman Empire and Spain, which again can get lost on the periphery, even when looking at a period such as this when they were important in the balance of power in Europe.

While I have launched into the geo-political aspects, it is right to note that in fact these come after he h as explored the societies of Europe and shown how this period was one of developing but incomplete steps forward in terms of administering societies and beginning to shape them in a way which we would see as modern. He also does not neglect the cultural aspects and draws out distinctions in what we might see very broadly as culture of the time especially in terms of architecture and music. Indeed, much of this book whether political, administrative or cultural, emphasises just how complexly diverse Europe was at the time. To do that while largely not drowning the reader in masses of detail is quite an achievement. This might not be an impressive book, but for the large part, it is an effective book and I came away from it with a far greater sense of being an era of substantial transition these seventy years were.

Books I Read In November

 Fiction

'Assassin's Apprentice' by Robin Hobb [Margaret Astrid Lindholm Ogden]

I am not sure why I have not come across Hobb before. She is quite a prolific fantasy author and while I was reading a 2014 reissue this book, the first in the Farseer Trilogy, it had come out in 1995 when I was living in London. I do not know if this book counts as a Young Adult novel. I know a lot of fantasy written by women gets dumped in that category by default even if not written intentionally for that audience. Also in my day there were simply children's books and then books read by adults, rather than this division and sub-division. I do not see what is gained by these categories - New Adult, i.e. 18-30s, is one of the latest and why they cannot simply read books for adults I do not know. A lot of this, I am sure stems from algorithms wanting to push certain books to individual customers. However, I think it can put up barriers to readers seeking new things to read because they are not in the 'right' category. I started reading books both by Terry Pratchett and Michael Moorcock when I was 12 when Moorcock's work in particular might have been seen as too 'old' for me, but was still reading them 40 years later, in part because they produced so many. By then Pratchett books could be seen as far too 'young' for me.

Anyway, with that off my chest, I think this book may feel a bit like a YA story as it follows a character from about age 6 to 16. Fitz (he is allocated various names) is the bastard son of the crown prince in the fantasy realm of the Kingdom of the Six Duchies. The novel follows his training as a tender of dogs (which he can reach out to telepathically), as a courtier and as an assassin. He is also poorly trained in how to use the Skill, telepathic communication between selected people. A lot of it is a coming of age story though with some horribly cruel elements in it that almost made me abandon the book at the time. The Kingdom is facing attack by pirates who strip hostages of their humanity and turn them loose in their old towns to wreak havoc and there is a lot of court intrigue plus politics of marriage and assassination with a neighbouring kingdom as the assault of the pirates seems unstoppable.

Though there are some elements which seem typical of fantasy writing, a kind of default Western or at least (North-West) European medieval setting, I can see why the book was popular at the time because the 'magic' is largely mental and above all, there is a well-developed political system, which actually is often a good foundation for successful fantasy and science fiction series. One thing Hobb does well is have believable characters. Some are so flawed or nasty to almost be intolerable. However, you have faith that they could be real people despite the fantasy setting and yet their behaviour meshes well the society and culture they are shown in. Thus, overall, despite wanting to abandon the book at times due to the cruelty portrayed, I think this is a well written fantasy novel and if I saw any more in this series or the others Hobb produced, I would pick them up.

'A Scandalous Man' by Gavin Esler

I was interested to compare this book to 'Head of State' (2014) by Andrew Marr, another British politics TV presented which I read back in 2018: https://rooksmoor.blogspot.com/2018/11/books-i-listened-toread-in-november.html  I must say that this book, published in 2008, is far better written than that one. It features a fictional Conservative Minister from the Thatcher days who fell from grace after an affair, some that was quite common in the 1980s, though these days even the prime minister can ride out such behaviour when it comes to light. Burnett is largely well drawn. He becomes entangled with the CIA and is involved in supplying chemical weapons to Saddam Hussein's regime in Iraq. The novel jumps between his political activities of the past and 2005 when his estranged son, Harry, is trying to find out why his father attempted to commit suicide and also what he had really got up to in the 1980s; there is also a narrative around the family coming back together.

Some bits are levered in stretching credulity. Harry happens to be studying Arabic in a class with a MI5 officer and two men who will be involved in the 7th July 2005 terrorist outrages and happens to meet a Turkish woman who becomes the love of his life, just as his father had a relationship with an Iraqi-American broadcaster. The ending also seems rather contorted though still in some ways authentic. In contrast, Robin Burnett's guilt at what he has done in office seems forced, indeed false. I am unaware of any of Thatcher's ministers who regretted their behaviour during their time in office and who went to work for a refugee charity rather than taking up a high-paid job for some company, typically with ongoing dubious connections.

The one thing that saves the book is Esler's writing. Reviewing the book when it came out in 2008, Melissa Benn, hardly a fan of Conservatism, noted this deftness: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2008/jun/07/fiction3  Esler succeeds in even making people like Benn and myself feel engaged with Robin Burnett, let alone his son, people we would probably go a long way to avoid in real life. You are swept on by the lightness of touch and it carries you over the bits that in another book, like one written by Marr would have you drawing up short and complaining. It is a shame that Esler has not written more books because he has a skill in writing that means he stands out from among those TV presenters who have turned to fiction, notably in the thriller genre. Despite some flaws which you feel with some more experience, Esler could have corrected, I was surprised to zip through this book. While I might not have liked most of the characters, I was certainly interested in what was going to happen to them.

'The Witch Hunter' by Bernard Knight

While this is the eighth book in the Crowner John series set in late 12th Century Exeter, it is different to the preceding ones. There are murders but these are carried out through mob violence. There is no mystery as at each stage it is known, at least to the reader, who is driving on the killings and who carried them out. What the book is more about are concerns which have often featured in the series, primarily the power of influential individuals to have the law run in their favour. A widow feeling that her husband who died of a heart attack, was murdered by witchcraft is able to use connections with the church to produce a literal witch hunt and the rapid execution or murder of a number of 'cunning' women, effectively 'barefoot' doctors working in Exeter or the neighbouring villages. Sir John De Wolfe's antagonist, his brother-in-law, the Sheriff of Devon, Sir Richard de Revelle tries to turn the campaign against John's mistress and her inn, in which John had invested, is burnt to the ground. However, finally after seven books De Revelle - a real man who served as sheriff - perhaps has gone too far in his greed and his arrogance. This book feels like a turning point in the series with the fate of the sheriff in the balance and even John's clerk Thomas de Peyne looking to have a reprieve in being barred from the clergy.

Knight does well in bringing a fresh approach to the series. While the story eschews the mystery element it remains well engaging as John seeks to quell mob violence and make safe his friend and his lover. The fact that even though you know the killers, you are uncertain how everything will unfold and who will prevail, continues to make the novel engaging even without a mystery to it.

Non-fiction

'The Occupation of the Rhineland, 1918-1929' by Brigadier General Sir James E. Edmonds

This book was one of the British government's official histories of what became known as the First World War. Almost all the volumes bar this one and the one on British action in Persia were published 1922-49. Though work on this volume began in 1930 it was only due to persistence by Edmonds that it was completed in 1944, after substantial revisions. Only a couple of hundred copies were produced and kept within the government. It was only published to the public in 1987. It is a dry and at times very technical account of the British forces and administration that took not just part in the occupation of the Rhineland but was also involved in providing security to the plebiscites in East Prussia and Silesia. Some of the detail will only appeal to military history fans who like to know precisely where specific battalions were at particular times. For those with a more general interest, it does provide an interesting perspective on the enforcement of the armistice and then the Treaty of Versailles, largely from the British angle, but naturally bringing in elements of their co-occupiers, especially the French, but also the Belgians, Italians and Americans.

Edmonds had to be driven to reduce some of the negative commentary on the Germans in revisions of the books, especially in the inter-war, post-Locarno Pact era. However, even the clinical accounts of what went on show how much the German military and authorities evaded the requirements placed on them almost from the moment that the armistice was signed. The mistreatment and then abandonment of Entente prisoners-of-war is not an aspect which gets mentioned. The German evasions such as in provision of resources and complaints about the terms of the armistice and the following treaty; the lying about how many trained, armed men there were, seem incessant and done in a very arrogant way. It is clear that almost everyone the British had to deal with subscribed to the myth of the 'stab in the back' and so blamed revolutionaries and the politicians rather than perceiving Germany as having been truly defeated.

The book does provide a useful counter-balance to the GCSE-level view that the Treaty of Versailles was too 'harsh', through showing how much of it was evaded, both in financial and military terms. It shows how the Germans exploited willingness by the British to make adjustments, e.g. with the Locarno Pact, to press for more and more as if this is what they deserved. The British, in contrast to the French, played right into the hands of German nationalists, largely because of the constant desire to reduce the cost of the occupation. Time after time, British forces were shaved and shaved again to save money until the time when their presence was effectively cosmetic. While standard histories point to Hitler reintroducing conscription in 1935, it is clear from this book that the German military in all the preceding years since the armistice had been working hard to maintain a 'shadow' army of trained and indeed armed men in a string of disguises. This helps explain how the Nazis were so quickly able to mobilise, because the 100,000-strong army of the Weimar years had been a myth.

One can certainly understand from this account why in 1943-45 there was an insistence on going right to Berlin and showing the Germans that they had truly been defeated. However, the lesson of the extent of the cost of occupation for the British had been lost and history largely repeated itself with the formation of Bizonia in just over two years after the end of the Second World War, as again, exhausted just as in 1918, Britain had to scale down and then abandon a thorough occupation. Of course, truly committing to a genuine occupation in 1919 and enforcing it throughout, may have at least hampered the rapid German return to being a threat post-1933. Given how extensively the Germans complained about even the benign British occupation, it would have been no worse if they had enforced it thoroughly. The abandonment of German passive resistance to the French and Belgian occupation of the Ruhr in 1923-25 shows that while they complained, practically they could do little when the Allies reacted for real. Neglecting enforcement out of some misguided acceptance of German propaganda simply made it easier for the Second World War to occur in Europe. In this context, appeasement can be seen as simply the continuation of a policy adopted right in 1918, at least by the British.

Overall, while a rather dry book, it does bring useful perspectives on the relationship between Britain and Germany in the inter-war period and how the British, desperate to save money above all else, bent so far in pandering to the Germans, a policy which continued even once the nationalist coalitions had been replaced by the Nazi dictatorship.

Books I Read In October

 Fiction

'Fear in the Forest' by Bernard Knight

This is the seventh Crowner John novel and like the fifth, 'The Tinner's Corpse' (2001), Knight takes the opportunity to look at another specific aspect of English law in the late 12th Century. In this novel it is how the 'forests' were regulated. While the legal forests did contain woodland they also encompassed heathland and other landscapes. As the novel shows there was stringent but sometimes unrelated regulation of the forests which were deemed to belong to the King. Taking wood, let alone killing wildlife in them could lead to stringent penalties. This novel is really one about corruption by those who policed the forests and them working with criminals to enforce protection rackets and promote their businesses, e.g. in brewing or woodworking over those of locals. Coroner Sir John De Wolfe's antagonist through the novels, the Sheriff of Devon, his brother-in-law, also seems involved. De Wolfe's mistress, Nesta the landlady is pregnant and his wife goes off to a nunnery.

Overall, because there are a series of crimes, including murder, but also extortion and corruption, this is quite a messy novel. Even De Wolfe's relationship with the two women in his life seems scrappy. I guess clear motives should not be expected from people in such a situation, especially for women without societal agency to do all that they might want to. However, the novel does highlight the complexity of the legal situation that Knight wished to highlight and shows very well the difficulties even for nobles of navigating around laws which largely were about making money for the monarch rather than providing a rational legal system for day-to-day life. There are points of action and these come to a climax of violent action, a little as in some of the previous novels, notably 'Crowner's Quest' (1999) and 'The Awful Secret' (2000), melodramatically. However, I guess that it brings it to conclusion after all the various strands he has sent up during the novel and the inability of De Wolfe to challenge corruption in the church, which reminds me of books by Michael Dibdin and Leonardo Sciascia set in contemporary Italy.

'Sixteen Ways to Defend a Walled City' by K.J. Parker [Tom Holt]

A novel focused on the siege of a city seems a refreshing way to go in a fantasy context. The location is a Roman/Byzantine city and at times the almost explicit references to Roman culture jar in this fantasy context, even though the main race of the city are blue-skinned. The arena, the colours for different factions in the city, the names, the bronze chain at the harbour, even the use of engineering units, that the protagonist Orhan commands, seem to be lifted without much modification from the Roman setting. Parker does seem obsessed with engineers in his fantasy writing. I guess it makes a change from knights or sorcerers especially in this set-up of him defending a city, 'The City' from foreign invaders who have proven to be very clever strategically and well equipped.

It is an interesting book, as much about dealing with various types of people in society as about the technical issues of feed and arming people; of operation siege weapons, etc. The greatest problem I had was the 'cheeky chappy' style of the language for much of the book. It is written in the first person and quickly the kind of 'Cockney barrow boy' language becomes tiring. The book improves towards the end as this declines. The characters, aside from Orhan, are quite believable. The coincidences, especially who is leading the opponents are a further weakness. The ending is very poor, a complete anti-climax and it seems as if after all the hard work Parker put into the different developments and characters he simply ran out of steam and had no idea how to bring it properly to an end. Consequently the rushed conclusion undermines what had gone before. It is not a bad book and as I said at the start it has some refreshing elements. It certainly would have benefited from a map of the world it features as so much is dependent on people marching through particular terrain or not being able to get through a certain straits; a map of the city would also have helped as Orhan hares around different parts and where he and his helpers are and when is important for the story, but never really being clear about them makes it harder to enjoy.

'Burning Bright' by Tracy Chevalier

This is a 'slice of life' novel. It is set in 1792 and is about the family of a chair maker from an area of Dorset I know reasonably well relocating to south London. The family become connected to a circus located in Lambeth. The children in particular also interact with the neighbours, one of whom includes William Blake, the poet, songwriter, painter, engraver and printer. The family become embroiled in scandals at the circus and the attacks on Blake as a result of his support for the French Revolution. The novel simply documents what they see and do in London and the travails of the family. Women getting pregnant, which happens to three of the characters, one of them a major one, seems to be an important focus for Chevalier. You do wonder at the behaviour of some characters, though I think one point is that motherhood, despite its high risks, was seen as a path that many young women could not avoid and might even welcome. At the end of the novel, the family return to their village in Dorset and that is it. Nothing astounding happens, but I guess that is Chevalier's way.

One does have to admire the research Chevalier did and to get the location and the ordinary people of Georgian London so well observed. Much of the pleasure of the book is simply seeing it through the eyes of her protagonists. Even then, it is not perfect. She refers to 'Queen Elizabeth I', at a time when she would only have been 'Queen Elizabeth' the way that Queen Victoria and Queen Anne remain to us today. Given the suffix 'the First' would suggest the characters could see into the future and know that a second would come. The other thing is she refers to mauve some 65 years before it was famously invented as a colour; 'violet' would have done perfectly well instead.

'Angels Flight' by Michael Connelly

This is the sixth book in the Harry Bosch series by Connelly and is set a year after the previous one, 'Trunk Music' (1997). Bosch's precipitate marriage to Eleanor Wish at the end of that novel has already unravelled. Themes about racial tension in Los Angeles which have come in around the edges throughout the series are ramped up in this novel. It sees the murder of a leading black lawyer who has specialised in prosecuting police misconduct cases, on the Angels Flight funicular railway. This again allows Connelly to bring in the tensions he clearly felt writing at the time and to include more parts of the city in his writing. 

As is common with the Bosch novels, the first possible solutions turn out to not necessarily be false but certainly flawed. Working against the context of rioting adds to the dynamism of the story. We are also very much in that time. Cell phones have appeared as the novels have progressed and in this one we see the internet featuring, including, already, a paedophile dark website.

The story combines a nicely twisty case which highlights how people are judged differently both in terms of race but also wealth and influence. On that basis it works well as a mystery. What works less well is how Bosch relates to female characters, especially those closest to him. The best are those at a distance such as the public lawyer set to make sure when the police are investigating there are no conflicts of interest, but as the characters are closer to Bosch, his commanding lieutenant and a member of his team, they are handled less well. 

Eleanor Wish herself feels very much like a device that is dropped in and pulled out in now three of the novels, without really developing her as a full character. His previous 'love interests', Sylvia Moore and Jasmine Corian in 'The Black Ice' (1993), 'The Concrete Blonde' (1994) and 'The Last Coyote' (1995) were similarly under-developed and similarly whisked out of the story. 

I know Connelly was trying to produce a modern version of the 'hard-boiled' crime novel, but as his engagement with racial and technological issues shows, he has been compelled to recognise the changed times and yet the women close to Bosch are portrayed/treated in a way which may have been acceptable to readers in the 1940s but jarred even in the 1990s, let alone now. Eleanor Wish functioned very well as a de-facto femme fatale in 'The Black Echo' (1992) but when cast into a different role, Connelly seems to be at a loss with what to do with her.

This is the last of the Harry Bosch books I own. However, I have a couple more books from two of Connelly's other two series to read.

Non-Fiction

'War and Society in Renaissance Europe, 1450-1620' by J.R. Hale

Perhaps reflecting its theme, this book lacks the sprightly tone of Hale's 'Renaissance Europe 1480-1520' that I read last month: http://rooksmoor.blogspot.com/2021/09/books-i-read-in-september.html  It also takes a different chronological view of the Renaissance and as Hale makes clear is in fact concerned with the period between the end of the Hundred Years' War in 1453 and the start of the Thirty Years' War in 1618, both conflicts which really defined the nature of warfare, at least in Western Europe. It is important to note that there is this geographical limit and despite some passing references to the Balkans, the focus is no farther East than 'Germany' and 'Italy' as they existed at the time.

Hale is keen as with the other book, however, to adopt a different approach to viewing the history than the ones which were prevalent when the book was published in 1985. He shows how accounts of various campaigns or focused on arms and armour effectively lift warfare out of the context in which it sat. There might be passing references to the politics that provoked, prolonged or ended the wars, but minimal in such histories about the connection to the societies either supplying the soldiers or suffering the consequences of the war, certainly in the pre-20th Century eras. Thus, Hale makes effective use of various examples across the period rather than progressing chronologically. It allows him to view who became soldiers of different kinds and why. It looks at the society of soldiers as being separate but also inter-connected with civilian society. He also looks at the economic and social impact not just of the war but the industries associated with war, especially as gunpowder and artillery played an increasing role through the period the book covers.

While it does lack the particularly engaging tone of the previous book of Hale's I read, it was no less interesting. It is analytical without being dry. The thematic sections are sensible and while covering the same period throughout, avoid repetition. I feel that this book is a very useful one to have alongside any you might read on campaigns and wars of the period to give them depth. It is also, as the other book was, a great resource for authors wanting to set stories in this period. There is a lot of detail here and even stories of different experiences of soldiers and civilians that people can draw from easily if seeking to write something set during the period, even if not explicitly focused on war.

Books I Read In September

Fiction

'Classic Tales of Vampires and Shapeshifters' ed. by Tig Thomas

This is a highly illustrated collection of short stories and novel extracts, primarily of vampire and werewolf stories. It features a range of 19th and 20th Century authors, with the oldest being Frederick Marryat (1792-1848) and the newest being E.F. Benson (1867-1940). Some of the stories are well known. There is the first part of 'Varney the Vampyre' (1847) by James Malcolm Rymer and Thomas Peckett Prest which began as a series of penny dreadful weekly episodes published 1845-47 before being novelised at 500,000 words. It established a lot of the 'lore' we tend to associate with vampires.

There are two extracts from Bram Stoker's 'Dracula' (1897) around the vampirisation of Lucy Westenra. there is also a short story, 'Dracula's Guest' which Stoker had intended to be the first chapter of the novel. Set in Munich it shows how Stoker originally envisaged Dracula coming from Styria, part of Austria, rather than Transylvania, at the time part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire but now in Romania. This short story has been recorded as a radio play by the BBC. Another well-known story is an abridged version of 'Carmilla' (1872) by (Joseph) Sheridan Le Fanu, which is set in Austria. To a modern reader the same-sex undertones are very clear and one can imagine at the time it was striking for that as for the vampirism portrayed.

The inclusion of these stories/extracts does highlight why they were successful. However, there are a lot of stories in this book which I certainly have never encountered but are of real interest. There are many of the Gothic tropes such as thunderstorms and dark castles that we associate with vampires and werewolves. However, Thomas has done well in selecting stories with different, perhaps unexpected elements. 'The Horror from the Mound' by Robert E. Howard, for example is set in West Texas; 'The Mark of the Beast', a werewolf story by Rudyard Kipling is set in northern India; 'The Cat of Nabéshima' is a Japanese story featuring a cat version of the kitsune fox and mujina badger shapeshifters and 'The Other Side: A Breton Legend' by Count Eric Stenbock, as the title suggests is set in Brittany and features an alien realm bordering ours where werewolves, wolfmen and even flame-eyed owls inhabit. The eponymous 'The Horla' seems to be a Brazilian homunculus creature with an ability to drain energy.

While Count Dracula and Sir France Varney are male vampires and werewolves, female ones probably outnumber them in the book. One that struck me was the 20th Century Mrs. Amsworth who features in E.J. Benson's eponymous story. She is a buxom, middle aged woman who plays piquet and uses the telephone but at night flies around an English village long plagued by vampires but is ultimately struck down by a motor car. Perhaps more classic are 'The Vampire Maid' from Westmorland who entraps a hiker and 'Clarimonde' who successfully seduces a French priest; she drains blood from the arm rather than neck; Carmilla takes it from the chest. The vampire of 'Aylmer Valance and the Vampire' by Alice and Claude Askew, is much less happy with her state. Aylmer Valance is a psychic detective, a early 20th Century precursor of the numerous ghost hunter television programmes of today and not a little influenced by Sherlock Holmes. There are a couple of more standard ghost stories, with E.J. Benson's 'The Room in the Tower' though effectively the ghost may be living dead and is found in a coffin full of blood (that features in a couple of stories and not a trait we tend to see now) and 'The Cold Embrace' by Mary E. Braddon.

The writing does at times strike the modern reader with the earnestness of 19th and early 20th Century authors. Some tropes seem over-used too. The endings of many of the stories, often the destruction of the vampire, is typically rushed; done in a paragraph. This may explain why some such as those written by Stoker, but also authors renowned in other genres, such as Kipling and Saki [Hector Hugh Munro] who writes quite an elegant werewolf story, with tiny glints of his usual humour as in the title of 'Gabriel-Ernest' stand out as delivering similar chills and curiosity but with greater deftness than some of the other authors. Overall I found this an interesting collection with unfamiliar stories, and themes and situations that you wonder why contemporary authors in vampire, werewolf and other supernatural stories do not revive for a fresh look at them.

'Fen' by Daisy Johnson

Though this is a short story collection, there is quite a lot of references in the stories to things that happen in others in the collection, so it is best to read them as a whole rather than, for example, dipping in and out. They are all roughly set in the same context: a very dreary part of rural East Anglia and the coastline a short journey away. Much of the focus is on young women, them having sex and becoming pregnant at a young age. Against these aspects many of the stories are magic realism. The best known sees an anorexic woman turn into an eel. However, there is a woman created of earth; a man raised from the dead whose words cause injuries; birds and foxes that can carry souls; three cannibal women house sharing. This is a modern Gothic and reminded me of novels set in the bleak parts of the southern USA where not only the landscape but the desultory aspects of the modern world add to the chill. It does not really go fully into horror, but certainly reminds you that some of the most cutting aspects of horror come from the sense of being trapped; unable to escape what is happening. I would not say I enjoyed this collection but I was impressed by it.

Non-Fiction

'Renaissance Europe 1480-1520' by J.R. Hale

Having been allocated simply a 40-year slice of the series Fontana History of Europe, Hale made a wonderful decision not to slog through these years outlining the events chronologically. He does have some chronology, especially in Chapter II looking at the politics of Florence, France, Spain, England and Germany. However, for the most part, he studies the history thematically. He apologises for what he feels some readers might see as pretentious. However, in fact he delivers a really lively book that is an excellent source book for anyone interested in or writing about the era, especially how people of the time saw themselves and others.

There are practical aspects about how time was seen and how mobile the populations were; what people ate then moving on to social class, gender, religion, health and death. This book is a real antidote to lazy assumptions about people's behaviour which puts a blanket generalisation over many decades, even centuries. He is excellent on showing how in this crucial period attitudes were changing, importantly influenced by a connection to the Classical world and the wider dissemination of ideas through printing. He also has great sections on the importance of music and drama and how these impacted right across social levels, things often neglected for this era. This is a vibrant, enjoyable and informative book which I recommend for students of this period or simply readers who might be interested in seeing what was happening at this turning point in European (and he does cover from Portugal to Russia in his survey). I would also recommend this book to anyone about to embark on writing a non-fiction book, especially a historical one, to see a style which is both accurate but reaches out to readers whether they are specific or general.

Books I Listened To/Read In August

 Fiction

'The Grim Reaper' by Bernard Knight

This is the sixth Crowner John book in the series. As with the others, the action picks up soon after the previous book ended. However, Knight does recap a great deal, so even if you have not read any of the other books you can pick up the story very easily. Indeed this might be a good one if you want to read as a stand-alone volume. Knight certainly communicates the nature of society and the law in late 12th Century England very well without it seeming to be a lecture.

This book is focused on Exeter and is actually a serial killer investigation. On those grounds it is probably one of the best of the series. John also gets back with Nesta his Welsh mistress and inn keeper, one of the favourite characters of the books. The suspects are limited by the fact that though the murders are diverse in nature, the corpses are accompanied by written extracts from the Bible.

Given the low level of literacy, even among clergymen, this restricts the likely killer to certain priests in the city. We are shown each of the various men and rather different to the previous books, the reader is effectively encouraged to decide between them. However, the investigation is not straightforward. John's own secretary, Thomas De Peyne is even arrested as a suspect, given his knowledge. As is common there is a lot of friction between John and his brother-in-law the Sheriff of Devon, but there is additional issues with the arrival of the judges of the periodic courts in Exeter. Knight balances the politics of the time very well and this adds an extra dimension to the investigations.

Overall, I enjoyed the book and felt it was one of the strongest so far. However, as you can see from my reviews of the previous ones, you can never tell the quality of the next book in the series. Despite, that I am persisting with working my way through them.

'The Twilight Man' by Michael Moorcock

I bought this book at the same time as 'The Rituals of Infinity' (1971) which I read in July: http://rooksmoor.blogspot.com/2021/05/books-i-listened-toread-in-may.html Like that book it had started life as an episodic story in 'New Worlds' and this combined, revised version was published in 1966. I have read a review which suggests 'The Twilight Man' is atypical of Moorcock's work. However, in contrast I see a lot of seeds of novels and stories which followed. For example a decadent world in which the population had technology to do what they wish and a very 1960s attitude to sex, seems very characteristic of the Dancers at the End of Time novels. The Faustian pact with a flawed, powerful person which has a high cost to the one making the deal, runs right through the Elric books. Even the rotation of Earth having ceased and the Moon or some equivalent welded to the planet, appears again in Moorcock's writing. Thus, I see this novel as laying out many of the themes Moorcock would return over the following two decades and beyond.

As a novel in itself, it is crisp and tight, perhaps unsurprising for something originally produce for a magazine. Moorcock manages to produce a range of different characters quickly but effectively. This enables to see a range of approaches to humanity dealing with the end of the ability to reproduce its species. At times, in this regard, it reminds me a little of  'On the Beach' (1957) by Nevil Shute. However, Moorcock wraps it in his characteristic baroque styling which combines science fiction with fantasy in his unique way. As with the best science fiction, while there is action, the reader is provoked into considering how they would react and behave themselves in this context. Overall if you are looking for a deft, brisk piece of science fiction which delivers a lot for being slender, and, despite the dated sexual politics, asks relevant questions in an age when we have powerful billionaires, our environment is damaged and many societies are facing declining birth rates, then I recommend this book. It is also refreshing to have something that can be read in one sitting, rather than the 800+ page books which are so dominant in science fiction and especially fantasy.

'Altar of Bones' by Philip Carter

Bizarrely 'Philip Carter' (now has added an 'L.' in the middle presumably to avoid confusion with the dietician; cycling and IQ test authors of the same name), it is stated openly, is a pseudonym for an internationally acclaimed author. Who this is in reality I have not been able to find out. A rather ambivalent review quoted on the cover of the edition I read, suggests it might be Harlan Coben and goes on to say, though, that it is better than his other novels, despite their success. I did wonder if it was produced by a female author in the way that J.K. Rowling published books as Robert Galbraith when she moved into producing thrillers; knowing that male readers, especially of action books, too often baulk if they see a female name on the cover. Certainly there are strong female characters in this novel, though ultimately the outcomes for the heroine Zoe Dmitroff ends up with a painfully conventional conclusion; one that I felt was included to please mainstream US readers. At times I do wonder if it was written by the couple, especially given how many characters turn up and the two story threads orbiting the same protagonists.

Whoever wrote this book, published in 2011, it looks as if they were aiming to produce their equivalent of 'The Da Vinci Code' (2003; movie 2006). The sense of a special bloodline passed through women; visits to art galleries and chases around Paris and consulting eccentric specialists certainly parallel incidents in that book. It also had minor parallels with 'Labyrinth' (2005) by Kate Mosse. People are seeking a shrine, the eponymous Altar of Bones, located in Siberia, that while not granting immortality can cure incurable diseases and slow up the ageing process. If that is not enough, there is a spy story about KGB operatives in the USA both assassinating President Kennedy (with a film to prove it) and Marilyn Monroe. The fact that one of the antagonists seeking the film effectively exits the novel shows the extent to which the author had bitten off more than they could chew.

The book is fast moving and if you enjoy Dan Brown's books this will go down well. It is rather bewildering at the start when we are introduced to a string of characters in quite a bit of detail and then they are bumped off; though one reappears alive later. Zoe's mother being a Russian mafia boss does seem to jar with the novel and at least one of the assassins seems like the Terminator and able to cause a string of shootings without provoking any genuine official resistance, no matter which country she is in. The book is not a bad thriller and probably would work for you if seeking an action-mystery book with fewer religious overtones. However, you have to accept stretching of credibility and, conversely, some very conventional outcomes, especially for female characters.

Non-Fiction

'The New Pelican Guide to English Literature 7. From James to Eliot' ed. by Boris Ford

This is the 1988 edition of the 1983 revision of this volume, though some chapters look to have had minimal updating since 1960. I was given it as a gift when I finished a job in the civil service in 1991, largely on the basis that I read a lot of books by Aldous Huxley. While the book covers the period when he was active, he barely gets a mention. After two introductory chapters on Britain at the time and on its literary scene, the book is a series of essays predominantly about one author or a set of authors and on occasion, a theme. The time frame is rather vague but sort of covers the 1890s to the 1950s, though some chapters, especially the one on Irish writing, stretches far beyond that. The writing is at times intense with critiques, especially of poetry, going down to considering individual words used in specific poems.

Despite the use of 23 writers, predominantly literature academics, there is a connecting theme and that is how negatively they view their subjects. D.H. Lawrence is permitted a couple of books deemed worthy but a lot of his stuff is dismissed as too fantastical. Virginia Woolf is entirely condemned as being 'minor'; Bernard Shaw, Graham Greene, C.P. Snow and W.H. Auden are seen as writing, respectively, nothing of quality and/or nothing substantial. I do not know if this was agreed by the various contributors, but in chapter after chapter they seem to be comparing their subject to some unrevealed 'golden' example that all these authors and poets fall short in meeting. Who the authors or the time period that they are thinking of, is not clear.

There is reference to French and Russian writing which generally seems to come off better than anything they read from those writing in English. You can tell the age of many of the essays, presumably brought over from the Pelican Guide version as even complex French text is not translated; it assumed that the reader is highly fluent in the language so can comprehend the very specialised points being made by those quotations.

There are some interesting points made, such as the role of sailors and the sea in Joseph Conrad's work and Ezra Pound effectively contrasting different versions of himself in his work. The chapters on the rural tradition, First World War writing and Irish English-language literature are interesting. I was introduced to the work of Edward Thomas and L.H. Myers with which I was not familiar. However, fitting with the consistent tone of this book, both are presented as, at best, mediocre; hardly encouraging me to read them. The poet Hugh MacDiarmid was also unfamiliar to me but given his extensive use of Scottish dialect which requires a multitude of footnotes to explain, I would hardly count him as being an English-language poet.

Some of the chapters, notably on the 'language of thought', and criticism and the reading public are so wrapped up in themselves and so dismissive that they are a waste of time; in the latter case, it seems the essayist seems to think that since the death of his journal, no effective criticism has been produced. These are irritating expoundings on topics of minimal interest and are more about the essayists wanting to get irritated about something rather than contribute to scholarship.

I can certainly see why this book gets bad reviews online. If you are to be a student on 20th Century English Literature then this book can be guaranteed to quell and interest, let alone passion, you might have in the authors of that time. This book recommends none of them and portrays them instead as failing and rather pathetic inadequate people not in control of their writing and unable to attain, in most cases any baseline standards; the best only achieve it once or twice, no matter how long their careers.

I came away from this book really questioning why it had been produced and continued to be put out in multiple editions. Yes, it might help with being critical of writing of these times, but in most cases a student writing this way, shackled to personal hobbyhorses and dismissing what many would feel were 'major' if not 'great' authors and poets, would be unlikely to score highly for their essay.

Streseland: 1930s Germany with the Nazis Marginalised

 

This is my fourth novel published by Sea Lion Press: www.sealionpress.co.uk and is also available for sale via: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B093QHCXNH/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_bibl_vppi_i0 

There have been a lot of alternate history novels and analysis books about the Nazi Regime in Germany being more successful than it proved to be. As early as 1937, Katharine Burdekin published 'Swastika Night' a science fiction novel envisaging a future in which the Nazis dominated the world. Other books followed while the war was on and then alternate history books appeared on this theme once the regime had fallen. What is far less common are books that look at what would have happened if Adolf Hitler had not been appointed Chancellor of Germany on 30th January 1933. While he headed the largest party in the Reichstag, the NSDAP, the Nazis had lost 35 seats at the November 1932 election and there was a sense that they had passed their peak.

We have to bear in mind that while they were elections in Germany, effectively democracy had been suspended in July 1930 with President Hindenburg effectively ruling through emergency decrees. He appointed the Chancellors which made it easy for him to simply put Hitler into the role. Hitler made great use of it, making use of the Reichstag Fire to pass the Enabling Act in March 1933 which began to dismantle the Weimar Republic as a political system. Even then, he required the support of the Z and DNVP parties in the Reichstag to get this legislation through. While he moved quickly to consolidate his position it was not until the death of the President in August 1934 that he could become a true dictator. An uprising let alone resistance by the military could have headed off that step even at this late stage.

As with so much in history, Hitler coming to power was never 'inevitable' in the way that popular accounts of the period often seem to portray it. Yes, Hitler and his party were popular. However, as the period July 1930 - January 1933 had shown, there were other options and in fact the installation of a military dictatorship might have been the more probable outcome.

My novel turns things back a few more steps to see what Germany would have needed not simply for Hitler to be left out of office in January 1933, but to dent support for the Nazi Party at an earlier stage. The party tapped into enduring complaints among the German population, especially around the Treaty of Versailles of 1919, but also the sustained support for anti-Semitism which was present right across Europe to a greater or lesser extent. However, the prime factor which had triggered rising support for the Nazis was mass unemployment. This had come about as a result of the global Depression which had begun as early as 1927 but was heightened by the Wall Street Crash of October 1929. By 1930 German unemployment was 2.8-3.2 million with figures being higher in the winter than the summer. It peaked in the winter of 1931/32 at over 6 million and was still at 5.4 million that summer. The figures for 1933 were a little better. Nazi policies such as expelling Jews and left-wingers from posts reduced the official figures for unemployment though it does appear that by 1934 there was also an improvement in the economy, one matched across Europe and elsewhere.

One example of a democratic country combating mass unemployment was the USA. Here President Roosevelt who came to power in March 1933, pursued what was termed the New Deal, a policy of state investment in numerous sectors of the economy in order to stimulate demand and increase employment. The USA had minimal official unemployment in 1929 but this rose to around 15 million by 1931, about 25% of the working age population and does not include those underemployed, e.g. put on short hours. As in Germany it began to decline by 1934, though there was a summer peak once more before continuing to decline to 9.9% by 1941. It is now argued that the New Deal did more to reduce wage inequality. However, it is clear that public works projects did create jobs and it is disingenuous now to argue that Hitler's policies such as building the autobahns reduced unemployment and yet Roosevelt's schemes run by WPA and especially the TVA dam projects somehow provided no benefit. What is clear is that not simply in the dictatorships but in democracies including the USA, UK and France there was an increasing acceptance that greater industrial planning and stimulus put into the economy by governments were an approach which can be used, though often in the face of opposition from bankers and civil servants.

So, what does this have to do with German history. Well, my novel starts from the basis of asking, what if Germany had seen New Deal and/or Keynesian style policies to reduce unemployment before the Nazis came to power? Would reducing German unemployment to 4 million in 1931/32, have taken the sting out of the Nazis' popularity? Of course, the policies would neither have eliminated unemployment, nor the Nazi Party, but it seems feasible using the policies of the style soon to be adopted in the USA, that they could have reduced both. In this situation one can envisage that while Germany would not have suddenly seen democracy reinvigorated, conversely there would not be the fall into the harshest dictatorship seen in the era outside of the USSR ultimately leading to the persecution and extermination of millions of Germans, let alone other nationalities across Europe and North Africa.

To oversee this stimulus policy, there seems to be only one man who could have successfully pulled this off, former Chancellor, Nobel Peace Prize recipient and Foreign Minister, Gustav Stresemann. Unfortunately for our world he died in October 1929, aged only 51, three weeks to the day before the Wall Street Crash. Why was Stresemann so important? His prime claim to fame was reorganising German banking in 1923/24 to counter the hyperinflation in the wake of the Franco-Belgian occupation of the Ruhr which had wrecked the economy. Stresemann pulled the country back from the scenes of worthless money with many transactions being carried out by bartering. He used innovative methods such as the Rentenmark to move to a stable position.

Stresemann was part of all the governments from August 1923 until his death so was well known and trusted in Germany and indeed in Europe and North America. Stresemann importantly was a patriotic, even nationalist liberal, so did pursue policies that were supported by the nationalist DNVP and formed part of the NSDAP's demands and was certainly anti-Communist. However, he formed a 'hard centre' around which democratic parties could coalesce. One can easily envisage that, if he had lived, he would have seen the new economic challenge triggered by the Wall Street Crash that he would have to address to save Germany.

Thus, the point of divergence in my novel is that Gustav Stresemann did not die in 1929 but lived on another 7 years. Following the Wall Street Crash he has been appointed emergency Chancellor as in 1923 and has adopted public works and stimulus schemes, notably the building of the Autostraßen motorways to create jobs and demand. This is not a radical departure as there had already been plans, stimulated by the Italian projects, to build the German motorways which feature in the book. Stresemann's schemes do not 'cure' German unemployment but reduce it notably and this adds to the decline in the Nazis' fortunes anyway. Slowly a greater degree of democracy can be established once more and naturally, on the death of President Paul Hindenburg, Stresemann, the 'saviour' of Germany once more, would be elected.

In this alternative, Stresemann is still not as enduring as the old field marshal he replaced (who had lived until aged 86) and so soon after the book opens, the stroke which killed Stresemann in our world in 1929, hits seven years later. Still, the stability he has provided for Germany and the projects he has initiated have tided the country over into a period when across the World things were improving, yet without Germany fixed on a course to war. As noted above Stresemann was patriotic and disapproved of the Treaty of Versailles and so these trends continue in his Germany, this 'Streseland', but he had learnt in the early 1920s that steady negotiation achieved much more in terms of revision than precipitate threats.

So with Germany having stepped back from the brink and still facing challenges but not falling to dictatorship, what of the Nazis? Hitler and his followers believed they were destined to come to power. Hitler had moved from his 1923 assumption that he could seize control to seeing it coming through the ballot box. In our world while he did not fully achieve this, he did enough to get him simply appointed Chancellor. With Chancellor and then President Stresemann, instead, this step would have been denied to him and indeed the Nazis' popularity may have continued to decline. Still they were a dogged political movement with a strong paramilitary wing, the SA. This enduring threat to the peace of Germany forms the core of my novel.

We follow the adventures of Gotthard Nachtigall an undercover agent employed by the RfV an internal security body, modelled on the British MI5, established by Stresemann in 1930 to combat those seeking those trying to overthrow his government. Nachtigall is sent to infiltrate the Nazis and especially their front organisation which conceals their enduring paramilitaries. While it is increasingly clear that Hitler is planning something big, it remains unclear what it is and what the authorities can do to combat it. In such a risky deception, Nachtigall has to think fast and act ruthlessly to survive in order to remain best placed to see off Hitler's threat.

Books I Read In July

 Fiction

'The Demon Within' by Byron Nadgie

As anyone who reads my blog knows, I often do not enjoy the books I read. However, this must be the worst book I have read in many years. One major problem is that it reads like a first draft of someone who has not written fiction before. Even online reviews note there are 'editing issues' with the book. I have noted how even published books these days seem to let errors through and picked up a number with 'Four Days in June' (2006): http://rooksmoor.blogspot.com/2020/10/books-i-readlistened-to-in-october.html?m=0  However, this book is riddled with errors that should have been addressed at some stage by the author or the publishing house.

There are numerous, very long sentences sometimes lasting an entire paragraph. They are strung together with commas where in fact there should be a new sentence. Reading the book aloud shows you just how chaotic such writing becomes. There is also the beginners' error of jumping point of view in the narrative very abruptly. From one paragraph to the next you can be switched from seeing through one character's eyes to seeing in an instant through those of the person they are talking to. We see a lot of the characters' thoughts, that is fine. However, Nadgie seems uncertain how to handle these. He puts them in italics but then often mixes long sentences in among the narrative, jumping back and forth between the forms.

Another problem is he often ends a scene outlining what the characters have put in place or triggered for days, sometimes even years into the future. This seems a bit foolish given this is supposed to be the first book in a series. It seems as if Nadgie is so desperate to reveal what he has planned that he cannot hold back. His narrator is not simply omniscient but out of time. Nadgie seems to have missed that this reduces the dynamic of the narrative and may also cause him problems in writing subsequent books in the series.

One jarring problem is simply the number of grammar errors and sound-alike mix ups. There are repeated areas of "impenetrable fog" that characters actually walk through and one character actually is said to have "silently thought" presumably as opposed to the usual loud form of thinking. I did wonder if  Nadgie had dictated the book to someone and had not checked the actual spelling their transcriber used. I know it is common in life these days to see an apostrophe used for a plain plural and yet no apostrophe used where it should be for a possessive. However, Nadgie does this repeatedly (though not even consistently) throughout the books. We get "uncle's", "ninja's", "magician's", "brother's", "pagoda's", "katana's" and "captains'" as plurals, yet also get "wolfs", "skins surface", "the lands life", "the Kings ear", "cities", "ambassadors" and "families" masquerading as possessives. Is it the case that our language has mutated so far in this contrary direction that these things are now not actually considered to be mistakes but the the correct versions?

In terms of sound-alike errors we see "tenants" when "tenets" is meant; many characters have "spurned" on their horses rather than "spurred". There is the mix-up of accept/except, bought/brought, hyperthermia/hypothermia - so actually reversing what is intended; never/nether: insure/ensure; patients/patience; captor/captive - again the wrong word used reverses the meaning; stagnate/stagnant; blazoned/blazed; cast/caste; corp/corps; puss/pus; anti-chambers/antechambers and tare/tear. Often he makes the wrong choice between two legitimate words: sessions/seasons; exerts/excerpts; sort/sought; gunnels/gunwales - gunnels are a fish, not a part of a boat; aligned/lined; lopped/loped; fair/fare; preying/prying; choose/chose; chaff/chafe, poised/posed; gleam/glean and "ultraviolent" rather than "ultraviolet" and so on. There is a mix-up of dammed/damned leading to even a Legion of the Dammed. This all suggests a real lack of care; not even running a grammar checker over the text, let alone having it edited. These are just some of the examples, I could spend a lot longer listing all such mistakes.

This is a fantasy novel with the typical kind of medieval technology even if much of it is Japanese rather than Western European. It is not a post-apocalyptic model, yet Nadgie seems unable to sift out terms that none of the characters could even conceive. They speak of "intel", they "fire" arrows from "firing positions". "Picket fences" are set up rather than pickets or piquets, giving a comic impression of lots of American white-painted garden fences everywhere. There is reference to "corrugated iron", a "minefield", an "atomic cloud", a "net of lasers", something being "bomb proof" and something else "at critical mass". These are not only anachronistic aspects, in a world without such technology how can a character even have a concept of what an atomic cloud would be let alone a net of lasers? 

There are typical GCSE English level errors like a character who "might of" done something rather than "might have" and there are simply passages that have not been read over so characters put a candle in "a carved niche that the shepherds had carved" and "find somewhere to find food"; others "had set false positions, fires had been set". As for "excite their will" I could not work out what was intended, perhaps "exercise". Do not let anyone tell you that published books are better quality than self-published ones, certainly by 2017 when this book was published (costing £10.99 new), it was not the case.

Right, as to the story, in some ways it is a real shame that the book is weighed down with so many teenaged grammar and creative writing errors. The concept of a fantasy world in which magic is a 'river' which individuals can tap into but has immense mental and physical side effects is fresh. The character of Mauread who is one of the main ones in the book, having to flee when her magician father is caught up with, and trying to save her son who may, like her be tainted with magic, is dramatic and engaging. There are epic scenes of battling both the elements and an assortment of demons as well as the magic itself.

The other thread of intrigues in a very Japanese culture, is confused and far less engaging. We see too much of all sides of the different conspiracies and too many of the characters spend ages giving us 'info dumps' in their thoughts. One thing that fantasy writers (and indeed those creating role-playing game scenarios) are advised from the start is never to say 'oh, that's Japanese/Indian/Russian/English culture' in a fantasy setting. In another world it cannot be those things as they are unique to Earth. You can have cultures which have similar traits but to shift things wholesale into what is supposed to be a different world just looks weak. While Nadgie names different people and places, he makes use of ninjas, called "ninjas"; he does admittedly have more than one Shogun but they are all termed "Shoguns";  the samurai are called "samurai" and they wield "katanas" and "wakizashis" (in fact "katana's" and "wakizashi's"), there are ninja throwing shuriken ("ninja's" throwing "shuriken's"), just as they would in our medieval Japan. There is even the Shinto religion in this world. I could accept if somehow there was a portal to Earth and people had brought across these things to this other world, but there is no sign of that. The author seems to have wanted to write a samurai drama and rather than write that novel too, simply plonked it into this one.

Nadgie's strength is in describing places and conditions. There are good scenes in a flooded mountain river and when soldiers go through cursed graveyards. However, these stand out among text which you often feel the author is not in control of. I know some advisors on writing fantasy tell beginning authors to read as much fantasy fiction as they can. I do think that is unnecessary, but in Nadgie's case it does seem as if he needs to read some; or in fact just read decent books written in English and think about how they are written, how things are spelt, grammar, etc. What is galling is that I know a lot of excellent fantasy authors producing top quality books and yet they struggle to get agents, let alone publishers and yet this book which a GCSE teacher marking it would not pass, somehow is published and on sale at £10.99. I do see that the publishers are one that offer a partnership deal which means that some authors cover costs themselves. However, it does say they employ proofreaders and editors, so it is rather surprising that they let this book through without serious amendment. There is a decent novel in here but it is lost among all the writing flaws and a firm editor could have really brought it out.

'XPD' by Len Deighton

This was the first fiction book by Len Deighton, aside from 'SS-GB' (1978), that I have read. It was published in 1981 and is set in 1979 with the Thatcher government coming to power. I know Deighton is renowned for his lean, taut spy thrillers but I am not surprised that this one is not included among his best. Far too much is going on. Deighton seemed keen to have a story involving Hollywood so has film makers producing a movie about an incident in the closing days of the Second World War about various valuables sent to a Thuringian salt mine. These were looted by US servicemen who used the funds to set up a bank. Among the documents in the haul is one detailing a meeting in May 1940 between Churchill and Hitler in which the former tried to bribe the German leader not to continue his advance into France.

It is a typical set-up of action novels of the period. Not only is there Nazi gold, but there is a group trying to establish the Fourth Reich. Deighton's 'hero' is a British agent concerned to get the documents about the Churchill-Hitler meeting. However, there are also Soviet agents involved too. There is simply so much deception and various groups involved that you get very bored. There are quick jaunts between the USA and Switzerland even when one of the characters has been harmed in a serious car crash. The whole book is very laboured. It feels that Deighton felt compelled/was compelled to write a trendy thriller for the era. Saying that the clothing which many of the characters wear is incredibly ostentatious and seems more suited to what characters in a 'blaxploitation' movie of the early 1970s would wear. I can understand why this is not a well known one of Deighton's book. It is over-egged with far too many aspects and ultimately comes over as not taut, but laboured.

Non-Fiction

'Harold Wilson' by Ben Pimlott

I met Pimlott in the late 1990s a few years after this book was published in 1992. It is immensely detailed, covering 811 pages including endnotes and references. At times you feel he digs too deep into not only Wilson himself but associated people. We read all about his ancestors and those of his wife Gladys/Mary. As Mary she became a successful poet, but really this is not a biography of her, so I do not know why her poems are featured. At times, Pimlott gives a blow-by-blow account of rows within the Labour Party, making sure to include as many different viewpoints as possible. This does highlight the benefit of writing a biography when not only is the person themselves alive, Wilson did not die until 1995, but a lot of those they interacted with are and in a fit state to be interviewed. A lot of them have also produced memoirs, autobiographies or have biographies too. However, such detail does not really add much to our understanding of Wilson the man.

I think Pimlott could have reduced the toing and froing of these incidents and dug more into why Wilson was seen in such contradictory ways depending on the people viewing him. Throughout the book you get these conflicting views of him as a loner and distant but a man with a lot of friends and amiable too. He is portrayed as being highly efficient and diplomatic but also as incompetent and divisive. He is shown as loyal but also as opportunistic; as idealistic but also highly pragmatic. It is clear that Wilson suffered from people imprinting on him rather than them often actually seeing the real man. Consistently because he was 'ordinary', though very capable and well educated, people seem to have insisted that there could not be the complexity to him that was actually the case.

Perhaps Wilson's greatest achievement was in keeping the Labour Party together despite the vicious internecine conflicts down the decades. In part you do come away wondering what the party could have achieved, especially when in government if he spent some less energy on fighting with itself, let alone with the unions. Wilson is shown as being very stubborn in not removing those who were doing harm. This could be of great detriment. Why George Brown was allowed to remain in significant posts for as long as he was, with all the harm he caused, is a mystery unless seen in the light of Wilson's dogmatic 'loyalty' to colleagues and the fact that his prime concern too often was balancing the various elements of the Labour Party rather than necessarily doing what was right for it or the country.

Still, Pimlott makes clear that even a united Labour government at any stage, could have achieved very little. Wilson had matured as a politician in the wartime and immediate post-war period when for a short time governments could actually get things done. However, by 1964, let alone by 1966 and 1974, they were largely powerless in the face especially of big business, increasingly in the form of multi-nationals and big finance. Very little of the Wilson governments' objectives were ever achieved, much to the detriment of the British economy. Pimlott shows that only areas in which big business was largely disinterested, such as personal behaviour, e.g. divorce and homosexuality and the expansion of higher education, including the Open University, were Wilson and his ministers able to make any headway.

Internationally, Wilson was like all the post-war prime ministers, perhaps even into the 1980s, in not really truly accepting the lessons of 1947, let alone 1956. Thus, while Wilson sought an international role and, as with most other things, did so assiduously, Pimlott shows how little power Britain actually had. One prime example over Rhodesia, a situation in which despite all his efforts, Wilson was able to achieve nothing. Similarly though he worked hard to develop channels of communication with the USSR and with Israel he was unable to alter the Cold War or Middle East situations and in fact such contacts aroused suspicions of him among the UK and US security services. Despite the highly restricted environment in which he was operating, both domestically and internationally, Pimlott never seems to criticise strongly Wilson's attempts to achieve something. Perhaps only in 1975/76 did he realise how he could make no headway that ran contrary to the wishes of the general right-wing context in which British governments are compelled to work.

Pimlott does a very good, sober analysis of all the conspiracies around Wilson, evidence for which has only grown as the years have passed. While dampening down outrageous claims, he shows that Wilson, despite his personal interest in the 'secret world' and his use of MI5 briefings was the victim of at least a faction within that body which sought to undermine him or even bring him down. The repeated burglaries of his and colleagues' homes and offices alone should be convincing. Wilson did not help matters by remaining loyal to 'dodgy' friends though their dubious standing was usually of a financial rather than traitorous nature. The fact that Wilson was able to endure and achieve something, despite not only the almost constant fighting in his own party but also efforts by some British and American intelligence officers to discredit him, re-emphasises the strength of the man. You certainly come away from this book feeling that while he did make mistakes and certainly over-estimated the ability of any non-right-wing UK government to achieve anything, that he was a 'battler' and that Britain would have been in far more grave situations than even it faced during his period if he had not been.

Books I Listened To/Read In June

 Fiction

'Wastelands. Stories of the Apocalypse' edited by John Joseph Adams

This is an anthology of short stories written by US science fiction authors, 1973-2008 covering post-apocalyptic settings, it seems just set in the current borders of the USA. The quality varies considerably. 'Salvage' by Orson Scott Card is a dull piece of Mormon propaganda. Better ones include 'The End of the Whole Mess' by Stephen King, one of a number of stories which looks at ways to reduce violence by humans but that go wrong triggering an apocalypse. In contrast, 'Episode Seven: Last Stand Against the Pack in the Kingdom of the Purple Flowers' by John Langan is better than the title suggests and is far more action-filled than King's story. Others with that kind of drive include  'How We Got into Town and Out Again' by Jonathan Lethem which is a well realised post-apocalyptic setting of the standard kind but with a nice cyberpunk element added. Neal Barrett Jr.'s 'Ginny Sweethips' Flying Circus' has a similar vibe, but works well and shows how when so many characters are focused on the big themes of apocalypse, personal revenge remains. Among stories which seek to have that effect, 'The Last of the O Forms' by James Van Pelt is actually chilling, because the apocalypse is biological rather than say, a nuclear war. It also hooks back into traditional US behaviour in seeing a freak show of mutants travelling around the country and unlike a number of the short stories in this collection, rather than peter out, it has a sensible conclusion.

'Artie's Angels' by Catherine Wells, has a dieselpunk feel to it, though emphasises the use of bicycles. It works well as a story of how people could work post-apocalypse without entirely descending into a neo-feudal society. 'A Song Before Sunset' by David Grigg is a traditional one of someone seeking to sustain or revive culture when society has crumbled. It does not really say anything new, but back in 1976 when it was published it was probably fresh enough.

'Killers' by Carol Emshwiller could almost be contemporary rather than post-apocalyptic. It sees US fighting in the Middle East having an impact in terms of terrorism, but also returning veterans, and could have been about a man returning from Vietnam as much as from any future war. For all that, though, it works reasonably well. 'Inertia' by Nancy Kress is less disrupted society, focused on a ghetto for people with a particular disfiguring disease, though it is the violent society outside which seems to face the greater challenge. This is well handled. Similar is 'Speech Sounds' by Octavia E. Butler, about the loss of various human abilities such as speech, as a result of some biological catastrophe and people picking their way through while concealing the abilities they have retained as these are no longer the norm. It reminds me of a short story, I think by Ursula Le Guin in which most people are deaf and they see a boy who can hear as having unnatural abilities that need to be ceased. 

'Also-rans' include 'Never Despair' by Jack McDevitt which goes nowhere and seems to expect us to be excited by the appearance of a hologram of Winston Churchill. Maybe that excites US readers more than British ones. 'When Sysadmins Ruled the Earth' by Cory Doctorow is as thrilling as the title suggests. Americans seem to love stories of clerical staff somehow battling tirelessly to prop up the capitalist status quo and this one reminded me very much of accounts of those men dealing with the Wall Street Crash with about the same level of success. 'Mute' by Gene Wolfe and 'Bread and Bombs' by M. Rickert, are almost like fables and have a mid-20th Century feel that could be associated with the Second World War rather than the future.

I was disappointed that in 'The People of Sand and Slag', Paolo Bacigalupi did not range further in his location, but at least he got off mainland USA; his is a more standard science fiction story. 'Dark, Dark were the Tunnels' by George R.R. Martin now better known for fantasy is also in this kind of category and reminded me of  'When the New Zealander Comes' (2011). Another more straight science fiction story, though with typical American obsession with the spiritual is 'Judgment [sic] Passed' by Jerry Oliton in which people returning from a space mission find everyone else on Earth has been taken off to the afterlife. Fortunately it deals more with how these remainers cope in the deserted world.

'And the Deep Blue Sea' by Elizabeth Bear starts off as a decent story of a courier in a post-apocalyptic California/Nevada, but is spoilt when it introduces the Devil who can teleport the protagonist to a range of times and places. I get the idea that there have been a lot of local apocalypses, but it wrecks the dynamic of the story about dealing with a specific one and whether the heroine can actually win through. 'The End of the World as We Know It' is a rather weak satire on the whole post-apocalyptic genre. It is interesting enough but would have been better as an essay than attempting to be a story.

Overall I came away from this book feeling rather riled given the inability of some many of the authors to look beyond very narrow assumptions. Some I expected better from. I know to steer clear of Card's work. However, a number of the authors who produced good stuff, despite its restrictions, are ones I would now pick up if I see them, which I would not have done if I had not read this collection. I do think Americans would find this collection far more palatable than English-language readers from other countries.

'Let the Old Dreams Die' by John Ajvide Lindqvist

I often see people asking on social media whether anyone buys short stories these days. Then ironically I find that in a single month I am reading two short story collections simply edited/written by men named 'John', so I do think that short stories have a place and are doing pretty well in these times. While I had seen the Swedish version of 'Låt den rätte komma in' (2008; from the 2004 novel of the same name) ['Let the Right One In'] though not the 2010 English language remake, I had not realised Lindqvist was primarily about horror, so had come to this collection as I might to one by Julian Barnes, expecting a range of quirky, contemporary-set stories. 

There is some Swedish normality in the stories, such a urban blocks of flats and summer holiday homes by the water, and they are magic realism rather than full-on 'horror'.  Various creatures turn up, that are not really traditional ones. The type of vampires seen in  'Låt den rätte komma in' reappear, but there is tentacled monster penetrating the sewers; another that lures people to their death by showing them what they desire; an irate zombie; otherworldly people who sort of fill in the gaps in our world; the embodiment of death by drowning and the creatures of the movie 'Gräns' (2018) ['Border'] which features in the short story of the same name in this collection. The longest story, 'The Final Processing' about a young couple dealing with people who have been re-lifed could easily be a movie.

What is interesting though is the responses of the characters to their unnatural threats is down-to-Earth, almost mundane rather than high-powered action. There is a quietness in them that I guess helps the reader feel a greater affinity with them than they might with action heroes. In addition, the approach works well in making you think what you or people you know would do in such a situation. Even if you do not live in a Swedish context, there is sufficient overlap with other examples of Western society to allow such consideration without difficulty. Not all of the characters are able to cope and some end up with horrendous fates, so this affinity means those outcomes hit home harder. While this was certainly not the book I had expected when I bought it, I would not say I enjoyed it, but I certainly felt interested by it and engaged with it.

'The Last Coyote' by Michael Connelly

This is the fourth book in the Harry Bosch sequence and for the entirety of it, Bosch is suspended from the police for assaulting his boss. He decides to investigate the murder of his mother, a prostitute, in 1961, some 34 years before the novel is set. The novel reminded me very much of the movie 'Slam Dance' (1987) not simply for the Hollywood setting but because of the bisection between 'call girls' and influential people, and though I did not realise it to the end, genuine affection creeping into sexual transactions. Bosch's hard boiled manner at times can get tiring, but genuinely this flows along pretty well, with the protagonist compelled to scam his way into getting the information he needs and struggling to oppose men who while old remain powerful. There is a lot of introspection not simply because of Bosch's personal connection to the case and his reassessment of his mother's life and motives but because of the counselling he is receiving for his violence towards his superior. However, when Bosch's actions result in the death of people, I did not feel convinced by his guilt over his actions. Perhaps his world weariness sustained across the novels, makes that hard to now sell to the readers. Overall, this works well as a standalone novel. The gathering together of the various elements of evidence not just in Los Angeles but also Florida and Nevada works well. The twist at the end might now seem almost a hackneyed one but works in the context and probably when this was written 26 years ago seemed fresher. However, the abrupt departure of Bosch's girlfriend of the previous two books before this one begins and the appearance so quickly of a replacement, though she is very important to the plot, do feel like that, i.e. plot devices, rather than genuine developments.

Non-Fiction

'Chronicles of Dissent' by Noam Chomsky and David Barsamian

This is a collection of interviews of US linguist and political commentator Noam Chomsky conducted by David Barsamian, 1984-91. He speaks a lot about US politics and especially foreign policy. His commentary on control of the media and how atrocities committed by the USA's friends are passed over while nationalist behaviour by those deemed as 'other' are portrayed as horrific. He shows how attitudes, e.g. to the Hussein regime in Iraq and the Noriega regime in Panama can change in a matter of days and countries that were receiving military aid are abruptly attacked. Much of his commentary on these things feels as if it could have been written during the Trump administration, especially in terms of US use of Israel and the portrayal of existential threats, rather than 30 years earlier, which highlights how little things have changed in the USA. While Chomsky nails these aspects he keeps on saying the same things again and again. Presented this way with the transcripts of interviews, you soon get tired. Yes, he highlights important things such as how the USA effectively primarily attacked the people of South Vietnam in US-Vietnam War and the lack of attention that has been paid to massacres in East Timor by Indonesia. However, when you read these things for the third or fourth time, you begin to get riled.

Chomsky is very US focused. He says nothing about China and little about Russia. His views of Europe are scant, Britain and France only get touched on at the time of the First Gulf War. He also seems to subscribe to the view that all terrorism is state-directed. He gives good examples of this, but he is dismissive of 'retail' terrorism which the USA had not experienced at the time, so neglects the terrorism of the IRA, ETA, RAF, Red Brigades, etc. as if it never existed. It does seem common even among US commentators who are that bit more alert to developments in the world to think terrorism was not really 'discovered' until the September 2001 attacks in the USA and unfortunately Chomsky falls into this trap.

Overall Chomsky says interesting things about US behaviour in the world and the problems it causes. His views remain relevant today as the methods he outlines have been applied again and again and reached a height during the Trump years. However, the nature of this book makes it really repetitive and once you have read the first few interviews, you have largely got his message and those that follow just say it again and again.

Audio Books - Fiction

'Dissolution' by C.J. Sansom; radio play

I was so annoyed by Sansom's novel, Dominion (2012): http://rooksmoor.blogspot.com/2014/09/the-books-i-read-in-september.html that I had stayed away from all of his books until I came across both audio books and radio plays on CD of his Shardlake books, detective stories set in the reign of King Henry VIII. These are much better than his alternate history. This is the first in the series, though the character Matthew Shardlake, a commissioner for Thomas Cromwell and his assistant come fully formed with back stories which are revealed as the tale continues. Most of the story takes place at the fictional Scarnsea Abbey on the southern coast of England which is on the verge of being dissolved along with all monasteries across the country, when a King's commissioner is murdered there. Shardlake is sent to investigate. There are more than a few parallels to 'The Name of the Rose' (1980) not least with the range of eccentric monks and their various moral failings. However, it is well handled and provides good details on the developments in the country at the time without providing a series of history lectures. He really communicates how Henrician rule at this time was like being under a one-party state of the 20th Century.  Some readers complain about the absence of female characters, but it is a monastery and Sansom actually works to bring more women in to the story than some might have done. There are some unexpected twists most notably with the fate of Shardlake's assistant.

With the very busy Jason Watkins as Shardlake in the lead and a string of familiar voices, this production is of the high quality you would expect from a BBC radio drama with all the various sound effects to give a real feel to the time and place. I thoroughly enjoyed it and have another lined up to listen to.

'Octopussy and The Living Daylights (and Other Stories)' by Ian Fleming; read by Tom Hiddleston and Lucy Fleming

This is the final James Bond book by Ian Fleming, well, in fact an anthology of various short stories. In many ways as seen with 'For Your Eyes Only' (1960), Fleming is better at short stories than sometimes the longer novels. This collection holds four. 'Octopussy' is seen from the perspective of a retired British army major who looted Nazi gold bars at the end of the Second World War and is now living in Jamaica. It allows Fleming to indulge in his knowledge of Jamaica, sea life and central Europe during and just after the Second World War. Bond only appears as the man sent to arrest the protagonist and carry out personal revenge. 'The Living Daylights' is also well handled. It is set at a very precise time and place, i.e. Berlin in 1960 before the Berlin Wall went up the following year. A British agent has to get from the Soviet Zone of the city into the British Zone and Bond is sent to take out the assassin who has been assigned to kill the escaping man. Again, though a very different setting, Fleming is great at the context not just of this frontier area but West Berlin at the time and the people in it. 'Property of a Lady' is a simple short story about using auctioning of a Faberge egg to trace a KGB operative, but it is interesting to see the workings of an auction house in the early 1960s. The final story, read by Lucy Fleming, Ian Fleming's niece, '007 in New York' only references the actual story at the end. Instead it is a usual list of complaints about all the failings in the USA at the time, a country Fleming clearly disapproved of in so many ways.

Hiddleston and Fleming both do the voices pretty well for the various characters and communicate the intensity which can be found in what are generally straight forward stories. Aside from '007 in New York' they show Ian Fleming's writing at its best. Given the cultural impact of the James Bond stories, even today, I am glad I have now listened to them all, and aside perhaps from 'On Her Majesty's Secret Service' (1963) which the movie kept very close to, to see how much more jaded and at times bitter the writing is. Bond is often far from being a superhero and his decay across the novels makes them somehow more human and closer to the spy novels of Len Deighton than is popularly recognised. It is also clear that the movies thoroughly reduced the roles of important female characters from the novels, probably most, Gala Brand from 'Moonraker' (1955) to accessories for so long. Bond might be a man of his time in terms of misogyny but Fleming seems to diverge from that character in how he portrays the women.

Books I Listened To/Read in May

 Fiction

'The Rituals of Infinity' by Michael Moorcock

This was a Moorcock novel that I had not encountered before. It was first serialised in the 'New Worlds' magazine, 1965-6 before being released as a novel in 1971. I do miss the days of the slim science fiction novels. My edition of this book is only 192 pages long. There is something crisp and to the point of this kind of novel which seems absent these days. The central concept of the novel is that the hero Professor Faustaff is part of a team travelling between a number of alternative Earths that have been created and discovered but are being rather erratically destroyed. Yet another Earth appears and people from other versions are drawn there to re-enact various scenes from Earth's history, the rituals of the title. Fighting back against the demolitions mutates the planets further. For a short novel it covers the idea quickly and yet manages to get in ambivalent characters and complex twists before the true antagonists are revealed. Faustaff is a robust character, unlike many of those Moorcock subsequently wrote. The 1960s background is apparent in that sex is never far from anyone's minds and a young woman simply drops into having sex with Faustaff and waits around while he adventures so they can have more. Though very much of its time, it does show the inventiveness of Moorcock at a time before some of his writing became so esoteric as to easily lose readers.

'Rome. The Emperor's Spy' by M.C. [Manda] Scott

Manda Scott is a very accessible author and she wrote a nice email in response to one I sent her via her website. I was particularly interested in the short story which is included at the end of this novel, 'The Roman in Britain' which is a 'what if?' story about Boudica being victorious and driving the Romans out of Britain, a topic which featured in my chapter, 'From these Shores' in my 'what if?' anthology 'Route Diverted: What If? Stories of the British' (2015). It was great to see someone who has written a lot on the Roman period tackle this topic.

This is the first book in the second tetralogy from Scott, bringing over characters from her successful Boudica tetralogy, 2003-2006. She has also written spy fiction and this book combines the two genres. It is around a team of chariot racers and their support staff in the reign of Emperor Nero leading up to the Great Fire of Rome in 64. This provides the context for seeking out a prophesy which says that if Rome and Jerusalem are burnt then there will be the Second Coming. A heavily scarred and crippled spy, Sebastos Pantera accompanies the team from their starting point near what is modern-day Cherbourg in northern France to a training camp in Alexandria, Egypt and on to Rome itself. This is a novel which is unafraid to feature a number of LGB characters, in line with the cultures of the time.

One challenge of the book is the multiple viewpoints as Scott has brought in Math, a male prostitute and trainee charioteer, son of a British warrior, 'Ajax' the prime charioteer of the team concealing a past in the Middle East and his sometime lover, healer, Hannah alert not just to the Sibylline Oracles but also the factions forming early Christianity. This can make it complex for the reader and there are some scenes such as a fire at the town in France and later during the torture by the prime antagonist when Scott goes through what is happening a number of times from different perspectives. The fragmentation between the three sites, though adding background interest, also complicates and lengthens the novel, reducing some of its dynamism.

I did find the discussion of just two of the different factions that followed in the wake of Jesus (or indeed Judas as he may have been named) interesting. It seems ironic this was the third book in two months I had read/listened to which looked at how people did not believe Jesus was divine until much later, centuries after his death. The portrayal by modern-day Christians of the Bible being written during or immediately after Jesus's lifetime and that there is a simple path from the early churches to the modern one, is mistaken. In an essay at the end, Scott highlights that there were perhaps 30 factions that might have become the Christian Church and the one led by St. Peter easily might not have won out.

The conspiracy, the spying elements, the races and fighting against the final fire, are the highlights of the book and where Scott shows her ability with the tension and action. She certainly grounds her novel in detailed research but sensibly uses that as rich colouring while saving the historical debate to the essay at the end. Overall this is not a bad book. If the multiple viewpoints on particular incidents is reduced in subsequent books then I would be happy to read more in the series. I certainly welcome that someone has brought the spy novel to a very different era to the Cold War.

'The Tinner's Corpse' by Bernard Knight

I welcomed the fact that this novel eschewed the action-adventure stuff of the previous two. Instead it focuses on one and then a second quite mundane murders among the tin panning industry of Dartmoor. Knight has done a lot of research and shows how the industry at the time outstripped that of Cornwall and was the second most profitable export from England. Consequently, tinners were permitted their own kind of parliament and bar for crimes of physical harm, had their own laws and prison. Knight also moves on with his protagonist, Sir John De Wolfe's life. A second coroner is appointed to North Devon and De Wolfe's relationship with his tavern landlady mistress comes to an end. There is a lot of trekking around Dartmoor but this is handled without it being tedious and giving a real feel for the locales which differ so much from Exeter where De Wolfe is based and its surrounding countryside.

The book lines up a number of suspects and has the classic situation of a contested will with various precepts. However, just as you feel you are building to a satisfying conclusion, the book stops. I have always been supportive of crime stories in which the criminal is not brought to justice and it is to be expected with stories set in the 12th Century when power and status meant much more than actual guilt and torture was habitually used in investigations. However, it seems in this case that Knight reached a certain page (330 in my edition) and was told to stop. There are no arrests, no resolution, not even De Wolfe being certain who the guilty individual(s) was/were. It just crashes to an end. I do not know if Knight finishes off the story in a subsequent novel or we simply have to put up with this. After his need for action to round off the previous two novels, it seems he was at a loss as to how to end this one. However, whatever the cause, whether he had no idea how to end it or publishers told him to cease, this makes it probably the most disappointing of the series. As I have a number of the subsequent books, I can only hope he handled them better or I will have to abandon reading them.

Non-Fiction

'A History of Latin America' by George Pendle

This book was first published in 1963 but was updated to 1976, the year before Pendle's death. It continued to be reprinted and my edition is from 1987. Thus, you should not expect to find any recent history of the countries covered. However, this is a good introduction to the region and Pendle is excellent in showing how long-term factors such as the geography, the various ethnicities, the relationship with Europe, the beliefs and the economic factors have shaped the diverse countries in the region throughout the centuries right into the 20th Century. He manages to summarise events from the civilisations in place before Europeans arrived, the conquistadors, the break away from the colonial countries, the various wars and revolutions then caudillo regimes very well. This is a quick way to get an engaging description of the various countries set in context, perhaps as a basis for reading newer works. I found it easy to read and full of details of which I had been ignorant before, despite having even studied Latin American history for a period in the 1980s when I bought this book.

Audio Books - Fiction

'The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes I' by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle; read by David Timson

This is one of the Naxos audio book versions of the stories. This volume contains 'The Speckled Band', 'The Adventure of the Copper Beeches', 'The Stock-Broker’s Clerk' and 'The Red-Headed League'. These stories effectively break into two pairs with the first two about young women put under pressure by nefarious men and the second two about honest urban workers tricked for the purposes of a crime. Hearing them in this collection really highlighted to me what Conan Doyle did well in detailing late Victorian society. Here we see women mixed up in legal and inheritance situations as the result of deaths and remarriage. The step-family is far from being a late 20th Century invention too many people pretend.

In addition, there is a sense of vulnerability, that many in an age without social welfare were at the mercy of relatives and employers. Conan Doyle does seem to chide, in turn the stock-broker's clerk and the pawn broker, for not being more suspicious of overly well-paid positions they are offered; double pay for a job is a trait in a number of the Holmes stories. However, he also shows that at a time without even labour exchanges, let alone Jobseeker's Allowance, how people had to accept what was offered, no matter how dubious, or face penury. Thus, though I was familiar with the stories, having them this way, I found something more in them. Timson is excellent with the range of voices covered, both male and female, but especially Holmes and really brings to life the details of the text. Particularly memorable was a line from 'The Red-Headed League': 'He is as brave as bulldog and as tenacious as a lobster'!