Books I Read/Listened To In November

 Fiction

'A Study in Murder' by Robert Ryan

This is the third book in Ryan's Dr. Watson (and indeed Sherlock Holmes) series, following on from  'Dead Man's Land' (2012/13) https://rooksmoor.blogspot.com/2020/07/books-i-read-in-july.html and 'The Dead Can Wait' (2014) https://rooksmoor.blogspot.com/2020/09/books-i-read-in-september.html which I read earlier this year. At the end of 'The Dead Can Wait', Dr. Watson, serving as a major, was hauled from the wreck of a British tank and ended up in a German prisoner-of-war camp. This story continues through the latter part of 1916 and into early 1917. It features a number of characters from the previous books including Ernst Bloch, the leading German sniper from the first book and ruthless assassin Ilse Brandt, from the second and Georgina Gregson from both of them. Von Bork, a German agent from Conan Doyle's own story, 'His Last Bow' (1917) also makes an appearance. However, this is not the last book in the series, there is 'The Sign of Fear' (2016) though I have not been given a copy of that one.

On the instigation of Von Bork, not only is Watson refused leave to be exchanged into neutral Netherlands, despite his age, but he is sent to a far harsher camp, rather than close to the Dutch border, up in the Harz Mountains. It is called Harzgrund and is somewhat based on the real camp of Holzminden run to make a profit out of the prisoners. As with the previous two books, different threads run in parallel. In the camp Watson tries to find out why three prisoners killed themselves at a séance and then what is going on with supposedly escaped prisoners. Meanwhile back in Britain there are two schemes to exchange him, one involving for Sherlock Holmes and one for Ilse Brandt. There are some improvements on the previous two books. Sudden jumps in the character the story is being seen through, are generally avoided. There is one revelation that someone is not who they are pretend to be, but handled far better than in the previous book in particular in which three characters are revealed to be different people even though we have seen their thoughts.

As with the previous books, this is more a spy thriller than a detective novel, though Watson does unravel what is happening to "escaped" prisoners from Harzgrund. The story suggests that he comes to believe contact with the spirit world is possible, something Conan Doyle believed in very strongly. The main problem with the book is the build up to a preposterous climax at the fictional Knok bridge. This involves two sets of Britons, one bringing a German agent (freed using not only a hot air balloon, but a screen suspended in the air on to which a projection of an escaping woman is made and from the balloon a corpse of another is dropped!), one a German sniper and Sherlock Holmes, on one side and Watson, Von Bork and an UFA film crew on the other. The exchange at the bridge is far more suited to a Cold War spy novel than a First World War one. To add to the ridiculous nature of this stage of the novel, a British submarine - one designed but never built - emerges from the river.

I have no idea why Ryan felt obliged to pile on so many unbelievable elements. The book is not intended as a spoof as the brutal killings throughout make clear. Yes, authors do play around with time, but Ryan seems to do it far more than is necessary. He could have easily used a different Dutch bridge. There was no need for such extravagant, probably impossible, escapes in London and Venlo. He seems to be scrabbling around for details and is compelled to alter the naming of the Connaught Hotel to fit his story rather than finding some equivalent detail at that time.

I have a sense that Ryan is a better writer than he has shown in these three books. The short story Watson writes while in the prison camp, 'The Girl and the Gold Watches' and that maybe because he has distorted 'The Man with the Watches' (1922) and sent it back in time a bit. Ryan seems to get some pleasure in what he calls 'remixing' Conan Doyle stories, but unfortunately seems to learn little from that author's work, in terms of quality of story-telling as opposed to atmosphere. I wonder if he is blinded by his fandom. I certainly had far less difficulty with his 'Empire of Sand' (2008) which I read in December 2018: https://rooksmoor.blogspot.com/2018/12/books-i-listened-toread-in-december.html  It looks like, as is increasingly common these days, that Ryan's success has bought him exemption from his work being properly edited as I am sure that any developmental editor would have questioned a number of Ryan's decisions. Perhaps one or two in isolation would have been fine, but in this book they accrete to make it seem silly really undermining what could have been a gripping book if only he had made more feasible choices in how it would run. Overall, a missed opportunity.

'The Long Cosmos' by Terry Pratchett and Stephen Baxter

This is the final book in the 'Long Earth' pentalogy. Baxter finished it off alone after Pratchett died in March 2015. I do not know whether that explains why there is a bit more control over this book than the preceding ones. The death of a few major characters at the end of the fourth book, 'The Long Utopia' (2015) probably also helped. There is a little less jumping abruptly between perspectives. We mainly follow one strand developing a continental-wide computer 'The Thinker' and a sabbatical by Joshua Valienté, a character now 68, who we have followed since being a boy in the first book. There is a sub-plot of Nelson Azikiwe tracking down his grandson. However, all these threads come together, ironically given the chaos of so much of the series, in a very pat way.

The series has always struggled with plot. The main focus of the two authors has been the immense amount of ideas they had for their infinite variants on Earth, Mars and indeed the wider universes. Even in this book, you feel the disappearance of a couple of characters including Dan-Rod, Joshua's son are largely to take the characters to some interesting places, indeed in this novel, to see giant trees running on hydrogen. The exploration to the 'north' of the chain of Earths takes characters nearer to the core of the Milky Way galaxy. However, it is very under-developed. There is no great revelation of who has been contacting humans and other species along the long Earth to join them. They go and come back again. As with the previous books, it seems as if Pratchett and Baxter have dodged writing the climax that they have spent so long building up to.

Some of the most annoying characters were fortunately killed off in 'The Long Utopia' but there are still too many who spend a lot of patronising other people. I know it is a tendency of books in the 2010s to fill their pages with smug characters, lecturing others about how naive they are. I guess this reflects our society as you daily find such behaviour especially in social media but also in the news. It seems these days you cannot feel right in something unless you are telling someone else very vigorously how wrong they are - or often simply how wrong you assume they are. Yes, one or two characters like this is fine, but especially with science fiction in which the danger of simply slipping into a lecture is high, this becomes tedious. These are not only characters you feel no affinity for, but they are characters you do not want to be around. The reference of the elderly 'troll' Sancho, being a librarian and resembling an orang-utang is a nice reference to the librarian in Pratchett's Discworld novels, is a rare example of a character you feel you can engage with, even though he has limited dialogue.

While I was surprisingly underwhelmed by David Downing's 'Station' series, I have never felt so disappointed by a series of books as with the 'Long Earth' pentalogy. I know Pratchett's solo books got 'flabby' in the 21st Century, but teaming up with Baxter, who often overwrites anyway, made this tendency far worse. There were enough ideas in these books for the authors to have produced twenty or thirty well developed novels. However, they clearly felt obliged to pack in every last idea they had, not simply in terms of numerous versions of Earth, but species and political developments. As a result, rather than a coherent, engaging series of books, you end up with a scrapbook containing a morass of material which while interesting of itself, does not make successful novels. I certainly regret buying these books new, something I rarely do. I have stopped reading work by Pratchett and certainly will steer clear of anything by Baxter. This was really an expensive disappointment.

'The Witch of Portobello' by Paulo Coelho

Coelho is one of those authors like Thomas Pynchon or Gabriel García Márquez who you will have on the edge of your consciousness without really knowing what they have written. I bought this book, published in 2007 unread at a car boot sale last year, in part curious what kind of book it was. There are a lot of 'extras' at the back of this book as if it was a DVD, so you can find out quite a lot about Coelho, his career and beliefs. I had no problem with the first half of the book and in fact found it quite engaging. It is about a Roma woman who was put up for adoption in Romania the 1970s and was adopted by a Lebanese couple and given the name Sherine. The couple were later refugees to Britain where Sherine grew to adulthood and used the name 'Athena'. She had a short marriage resulting in a son, but there was divorced. She worked in a bank and then as an estate agent in the Middle East. Rather than a straight narrative, the book is written as a series of interviews with people who knew Sherine, including her adopted and birth mothers, neighbours and teachers. This bit is fine and engaging. Sherine returns to Romania and finds her birth mother.

Where I lost patience with the novel is when Sherine increasingly develops an engagement with New Age practices. Initially this is through dancing and calligraphy taught to her by amateurs. Then, however, she meets a Scottish woman, Deidre, who pretends to be some kind of spiritual guru. In fact she shows Sherine how she can take up a similar role as a charlatan through teaching things she actually has no idea about and wrapping them up in various jargon about the feminine side of God. Sherine ends up training actors and they form the hub of a growing cult around her until she faces opposition from church leaders and is murdered. I was bored by all the droning on about the spiritual aspects when we know Deidre and Sherine are in fact engaged in a confidence trick, largely for their own sense of self-worth. What I found worse at the end is that Coelho actually believes in much of the stuff he shows Sherine proselytising with a lack of any genuine knowledge and increasingly deluded. You really lose faith in the story. What is perhaps worse is the epilogue, suddenly a character mentioned in passing and constantly dismissed turns out to be a prime mover of the story, kept from the reader throughout.

Having worked through this book, I can understand why people stay away from literary fiction. The author does not play fair with the reader. Though he has skill in terms of characterisation and the structure of the plot is refreshing, half the book is basically a New Age sermon through the voices of two characters even though we have been shown they are charlatans. Reading more about the author it is clear these pseudo-religious texts are at the heart of his writing and I can understand why the original buyer/receiver of the book sold it on unread. Somewhere in this there is some skilled writing, but certainly the second half of the book is as exciting as listening to a sermon by a deluded fanatic. I will not be looking out any more books by Coelho and struggle to find what attracts readers to him. Ironically he seems to have become very much like the charlatan guru characters he portrays in this book.

Audio Book - Fiction

'Dying Light' by Stuart MacBride; read by John Sessions

It was ironic that I chose to listen to this book when I did, just before John Sessions's death. He was born in Scotland but was moved to England when only 3. However, he proves very capable in his narration of providing a range of Aberdeen and some Edinburgh voices, both male and female and really making them distinctive from each other.

This book is only the second of those written by MacBride featuring Detective Sergeant Logan McRae. That surprised me as there is a lot of back story. McRae has a pathologist as an ex, is dating a fellow police officer who has had her arm broken in a previous case, is under investigation as a result of the death of another officer during a raid he led and so on. It felt as if the character had been running for a number of books already. I guess that sums up MacBride's style. This book packs in four cases in parallel with McRae working to two inspectors as well as dealing with all the issues raised above. There is a murder of prostitutes, turf battles over drugs dealing, a missing husband, mutilated dog's bodies and corruption over a housing development. Some of these do begin to interlock, but you do really need to pay close attentions as McRae and his colleagues flit between the different cases. There is also a lot of jealousy and claiming the credit, especially in the media, is a big motivator for many of the various detectives' actions.

The book is very gritty with brutal murders, dismemberment and a range of torture. MacBride was clearly seeking to bring a 'hard-boiled' approach to Scottish crime writing and goes at it to an extent far harder than, say, Ian Rankin or Val McDermid - though her stories are often set in England. Overall it is not a bad story and while scenes will make you wince and feel frustrated, you have to admire the author for balancing a whole host of strands reasonably well. However, I think it is probably best to read rather than listen to this book, unless you can listen to the 6 hours in one stretch as there are occasions when you want to flick back to see who was doing what to whom, when a strand is picked up again. With that caveat I might be tempted to pick up more in this series if I see them in my local charity shop, preferring book form over more audio.

Non-Fiction

'The Nazi Dictatorship. Problems and Perspectives of Interpretation' by Ian Kershaw

There are probably few eras/events in history which have been so written about at an academic level as the Nazi regime, perhaps the French Revolution or the Russian Revolution, could come in for the kind of scrutiny that Kershaw gives the Third Reich. As he makes clear at the start this is neither a history book, though he does mention some occurrences in the Nazi period, and though it references some hundreds of books and articles on the regime, it is not a historiographical book either, it is somewhere between the two. As the title suggests, Kershaw looks at how historians, some social scientists and political commentators, have interpreted what is known about all that occurred under Nazism. I read the second edition of the book which came out in 1990, five years after the book was published. However, from 1986 onwards there had been the so-called Historikerstreit - a row between various West German historians on how far the regime could be 'historicised', i.e. seen as part of ongoing, 'normal' history and how far those 12 years had to always remain treated as something almost outside history, disconnected from what went before and what followed after. This edition was expanded to encompass that row, which unlike most historical disputes, spilled out from academia into the media.

Throughout the book, drawing on extensive resources, Kershaw looks at the big questions around the Nazi regime, such as whether it was a form of fascism or something unique; whether the term 'totalitarian' is applicable to it; whether it was a centrally-driven regime or more a cluster of competing power blocs in Germany; how far Hitler drove or simply permitted radicalisation notably in persecution of the Jews; whether Nazi foreign policy fitted a plan perhaps developed a decade earlier or was primarily opportunistic; whether political or economic concerns drove the actions of the regime; whether the Nazis were a reactionary or a revolutionary force, holding up or advancing modernisation tendencies in Germany and whether the Holocaust must always been seen as something somehow apart from history or can be connected into trends beforehand and afterwards. Kershaw thoroughly analyses these lines and shows his own view on them, though also notes that the gaps between different 'sides' are not as extreme as the different viewpoints made out, even before 1986. He provides a refreshing hybrid approach, for example, arguing that while Hitler did not give direct orders for the extermination of the Jews, his rhetoric of racial hatred, his willingness to tolerate and even foster activities by the various blocs in his regime, created an environment where a steady progress to the death camps could occur, even if this had not been planned at the outset, and certainly not before 1941.

The book, now 30 years old, could seem rather dated. At the end, Kershaw notes the appearance of the ultra-nationalist Front National in France, but he did not foresee the populist leaders willing to bend democracy that have become such a feature of the world of the 2010s. Though these regimes today are not fascist, reading the book today, throughout you spot many small elements that seem to be echoed in contemporary political life such as creating and demonising the 'other' and bombastic claims for creating something so superior to what has ever come before. While still relevant in these times, the book has become a useful historical resource in itself. Kershaw was writing at a time when there were still two Germanies and he takes care to include the East German perspective and the views of marxist (he uses lower case for leninist too) of the time, which have largely now been lost from view in current discussions of the Nazi regime. Germany has moved on since then, not simply in terms of reunification, but in terms of the long shadow cast by the Nazis and almost characterising the Germanies simply as not-Nazi, rather than having intrinsic worth of their own. Thus, though dated, this remains a thorough, stimulating book asking questions that anyone, especially English-speakers studying the regime, can get a lot from.

As an aside, I met Ian Kershaw only once (he still lives, but is long retired) and that was in 1988. Funnily enough I cannot remember anything of what he said, instead all I can remember was that he wore a knitted tie, something I was unfamiliar with; it also ended in a straight line rather than a pointed one as is always the case in the UK and from the end hung a small metal button on a chain. To me he looked to be the archetypal West German scholar of the time, rather than British. My mind was obviously wandering if I paid so much attention to minute details and I imagine I missed out on stimulating input given he was updating this book at the time.

'A History of the Vikings' by Gwyn Jones

This book was published in 1968, though I have a 1973 edition. It approaches the history of the Vikings, effectively the peoples of Norway, Denmark and Sweden, 780-1070 though he connects into the history of Europe and indeed North America, before and after that period. What characterises a book of the time, is that whilst there is a lot of academic detail from sources in a wide range of languages, often listed in footnotes dominating the page, it is presented very much as a story. The text flows along briskly, sometimes, especially in the confusing wars of the 11th Century in Scandinavia and Britain, too fast. The narrative style, especially at the beginning with long lists, perhaps makes this book, despite its academic weight, more accessible to the general reader. Perhaps he makes more character judgements on the leading individuals than would be the case even with a popular historian writing nowadays let alone a semi-academic one. It is illustrated with those line drawn illustrations and maps, plus black-and-white photos, throughout and they often give flavour as much as information.

While broken up into three largely chronological blocks, sensibly Jones separates the social and artistic history from sections focused on developments in particular regions. This is sensible as especially the progress of the Scandinavians in Russia and the Middle East is far removed from developments in Iceland, Greenland and North America. At the time, the authenticity of the Vinland Map, found in 1965, was still under discussion. However, as Jones makes clear, it did not really matter as the archaeological record shows without doubt that Vikings visited and stayed some time in North America. One of the strengths is this linkage between what archaeology has shown and the history of these people and Jones keeps make useful connections between them, notably in terms of coins but also burials, uncovered towns and houses and especially carved stones.

Overall, though dated, this is a good introductory text to the full scope of Viking history and is particularly useful if you are interested in the history of Britain before the Norman Invasion. Though at times frenetic it helps sort out that period between King Alfred the Great's rule and 1066. Importantly the social history sections, including an additional one on the Danelaw region of England, not only goes beyond cosmetic portrayals of Nordic life, but shows how it was different in various regions and altered over time rather than being stuck in one model. The ebbing and flowing of Christianity impacts on this but also enters into the political history sections, reminding us not to fall into the trap of seeing Vikings as monolithic or unchanging, but in fact, in part due to how much of the western world they interacted with, a gauge of developments across many societies beyond Scandinavia itself.

Books I Read In September

Fiction

'Vagabond' by Bernard Cornwell

This is the second book after 'Harlequin' (2000) which I read in July: http://rooksmoor.blogspot.com/2020/07/books-i-read-in-july.html in the Holy Grail series. That book built up nicely seeing the hero, archer, Thomas of Hookton drawn into English campaigns in France and Brittany in the opening stages of the Hundred Years' War climaxing with the Battle of Crécy in August 1346. This book is much messier. Moved on by the very nebulous quest for the Holy Grail seems to really be simply a tool to get Thomas as part of two battles, many hundreds of miles apart, the Battle of Neville's Cross outside Durham and the defence of La Roche Derrien in Brittany. Unlike in many of Cornwell's stories, the women that Thomas encounters seem pretty disposable. So far he has got two women pregnant who have either been killed or abducted. He has returned to the third, Jeanette Dowager Countess of Amorica, who had previously abandoned him but now is back in La Roche Derrien. Thomas encounters various English and French lords who want to eliminate him or torture him to find out where the Grail is. There is a horrendous torture scene in this book. However, they are so pretty similar in nature that it is often difficult to tell them from their equivalents in the first book.

Cornwell is always good on the battle scenes, no matter the era. He manages to make use of the actual history and weave in his fictional characters among the historical ones. The two battles in the book went the opposite way to what would have been predicted so do make gripping scenes. The trouble with this book, though, is the 'workings' are rather to visible; what motivates Thomas to be in various locations at particular times seems much  more forced than, say, in the Sharpe novels. The women and Thomas's opponents, similarly are more obviously part of the story telling mechanism than they were in the first book and in most of Cornwell's other novels. The Grail quest is thin and while I accept that in the mid-14th Century it did drive people on irrationally, the main characters seem able to take it or leave it as their mood takes them, so it seems more of a device than it otherwise might have been. I do have the third book, 'Heretic' (2003) but not the fourth, '1356' (2012) to read and only hope it at least gets back to the quality of  'Harlequin', if not to the level of Cornwell's best books.

'The Dead Can Wait' by Robert Ryan

This is the second book in Ryan's Dr. Watson series set during the First World War. I read the first, 'Dead Man's Land' (2012) back in July: http://rooksmoor.blogspot.com/2020/07/books-i-read-in-july.html This one is set in 1916 and sees Watson back in Britain having recovered from the damage he sustained especially in no man's land during the first novel. He is once again employed by Winston Churchill. Georgina Gregson, former suffragette and VAD and finally Sherlock Holmes are also involved. Having promoted blood transfusions in the previous book, Watson is now working on the 'talking cure' what we would now term counselling, to help soldiers recover from shell shock. From May 1916, Churchill was back in Britain after the merging of his unit and was simply a backbench MP. However, his earlier involvement with 'landships', i.e. tanks, when First Lord of the Admiralty means he continues and interest in their development and he sends Watson to dig into deaths at Elveden in Suffolk where they are being hurriedly tested.

The book is far less a murder mystery than spy novel. Ryan is a bit better in control of what he is covering than in the first book. However, he does leap point of view very regularly, sometimes in the middle of a piece of action only to return to it later. A new author would certainly be chastised for doing that. In addition, as a reader we are constantly lied to about the identity of characters, even those whose eyes we are seeing through. Yes, the revelations are a climax, but Ryan uses this technique three times in the book which is over-working it. Added to that there seem to be German spies all over Britain, far more successful than was the case in reality.

Ryan is a little better than in the previous book in jamming in all the history he wants to include, but his frustration, shared by specialists at the time, that tanks were not used more effectively, comes through rather as preaching. I have seen one review that likens this book to a Bulldog Drummond novels by H.C. McNeile ('Sapper') or indeed the Chandos books of Cecil William Mercer ('Dornford Yates'). I know some of the Sherlock Holmes stories were spy orientated, but this one especially the action scenes, despite the age of the protagonists, owes more to those thrillers of the 1920s and 1930s. If that is what you are looking for, then that is fine. However, Ryan needs to refine his art in writing this style of books. Unlike his unwieldy novels, those were tight and brisk. You have to admire his research, but it does tend to weigh down the books when he could leave much more to reader. I know however, that modern readers welcome, even insist on 'info dumps' than those of the past. It is not a bad book, but with serious editing and improved structuring it could have been a lot better.

'The Long Utopia' by Terry Pratchett and Stephen Baxter

Given that this book, published in 2015, fourth in the 'Long' series, suffers from many of the same problems as 'The Dead Can Wait' (2014), I am wondering if unwieldy books, dumping loads of ideas and information without properly digging into them and hurtling around between lots of character points of view is not the style that publishers are looking for. Perhaps I am too old to deal with this approach but to me it seems unfinished as if readers are being given perhaps the second draft and not a book that has been edited to the final point. All the 'Long' books are bursting with ideas, all most too many for even two authors to control.

The reader is bombarded by these, flitting from one view to another and then having the characters jumping across almost infinite worlds. In amongst all of this are some interesting stories, but this novel is like two books put into one with a lot of extras around the outside. We see many of the characters from the previous books like Joshua and Sally, natural 'steppers' between worlds and Lobsang and Agnes, now consciousnesses in robotic bodies. There is reference to the Next, the arrogant super-intelligent people who left our Earth and the nearby ones, in the previous book.

The most interesting part was the stories of the natural steppers in the mid to late 19th Century and while this provides background to the characters we see in the mid-21st Century settings. The other main story is about sinister aliens who have interceded in one of the idyllic forested versions of Earth to essentially rip it apart in order to power their expanding empire which is at war with another species. The problems with this book as with the others, is that Pratchett and Baxter take a lot of time to build up the potential jeopardy only to veer away or report the outcome from a distance. You almost feel that there are actually alternate versions of these books in which the characters deal with the various crises that we miss out on. The constant jolting may be to instil pace but spread over 400+ page books any momentum is lost. At least in this book we see the cataclysmic climax, but the decisions of certain individuals to sacrifice themselves there to save the rest of the Long Earth is really skimped over rather than providing tension.

Added to these issues, there is the ongoing problem that you struggle to find any sympathetic characters. There are a couple like Rocky, the friend of Stan a Next who is effectively setting himself up as a messiah and Nelson Azikiwe, a priest from South Africa who is employed by Lobsang, and these are minor characters. Everyone else is terse, arrogant and patronises everyone else as much as possible. There are still lingering elements of the US frontier self-righteousness of the earlier books and this time we see nothing outside the American perspective, bar references to parts of Europe where the climate has changed by the volcanic winter brought about by the Yellowstone eruption on our version of Earth. Maybe in the age of social media when everyone insists that they are right and all must acknowledge how right they are and commend them for enlightening us, these are the sort of characters young readers want. However, as a mature reader, it is a slog wading through yet another character that treats everyone else as if they are scum that need to be lectured at length about how wrong they are in everything.

I am beginning to think, maybe I need to only read books written before the 2010s when authors were unafraid to write characters we could feel some affinity with and while flawed were willing to acknowledge that rather than blame someone else. Fiction does reflect the society we live in and unfortunately, while looking at lots of alternate Earths, Pratchett and Baxter show very painfully how twisted our society is with unlikeable people to the fore.

Non-Fiction

'The History and Practice of the Political Police in Britain' by Tony Bunyan

This is an edition of the book produced in 1976 and it is another of those I should have got around to reading some decades ago. My untouched new copy had sat in storage for many years. The book does pretty much what it says on the label. It outlines the background and development of all those British agencies that could be considered the political police of Britain, primarily Special Branch and MI5. At times it is tedious in going on about all the structure and the numbers of different departments; it is quite repetitive too. The book also looks at how law across the UK, especially conspiracy law, has developed to counter domestic unrest and to monitor and detain those seen as a threat to the capitalist status quo of the country. For a modern reader, the explicitly Marxist angle that Bunyan brings to what he is writing would probably seem quite unusual. I attended university at a time when some lecturers would identify themselves as Marxists but even then, I find Bunyan's dogmatism distorts what he writes. Of course, it is easy for people now to look back with hindsight, but even in 1976, I feel he could have been challenged in some of his assumptions, even by those on the Left.

Though Bunyan was writing at a time when industrial unrest had come out of a period of great turbulence of the early to mid-1970s, he keeps on insisting that British capitalism has been in crisis for almost the entirety of the post-war period. This is despite the prosperity especially during the 1950s and 1960s, which despite the industrial unrest and the oil price 'shocks' actually continued into the 1970s, with, for example, 1975 marking a new peak in car sales. Ignoring this means that he can only see Conservative governments as a result of them holding on to power through nefarious means, especially through control of the police and military. He makes passing reference to consumerism and to how a few working class people felt benefit from policing, but is unwilling to shake his view that the police are primarily there to protect property and suppress the working class, ethnic minorities and drug users, especially in terms of political activity. However, he makes the crude assumption that all workers have a left-wing class consciousness without seeing that many were instead ardent supporters of consumerism and anything that would be done to protect that.

In Bunyan's world, there are no working class Conservatives at all, when in fact they were to sweep Margaret Thatcher to power in 1979 and keep her the Conservatives there for 18 years. He makes lazy assumptions on the numbers who would volunteer to aid the state in the case of a crisis, somehow assuming 300,000 would volunteer simply from the property-owning classes without seeing that there would be ardent working class volunteers too, though in smaller numbers than he expected. Political apathy is absent from Bunyan's thinking too, despite its prevalence in Britain at the time even if simply showing by turn-out at elections, when, say, compared to France, Italy and West Germany. Despite his faith in the strength of the left-wing working class and their uniform consciousness, in fact the trade unions had unleashed their power most against a Labour government in the winter of 1978/79, though I guess Bunyan would have argued that Callaghan who replaced Wilson as prime minister in 1976, was hardly a real Labourite, given his personal closeness to the police and his willingness to move towards monetarist polices.

There are some things on which Bunyan did make accurate predictions. He saw the importance of computerisation which was beginning to develop in the mid-1970s. He also foresaw how the police would monitor and control political protest as they did in the 1980s, especially during the Miners' Strike of 1984-85, for example stopping people suspected of travelling to demonstrations when even hundreds of miles away. However, the cause of these things was less his anticipated crisis in capitalism and more the New Right economics which while begun in 1976 were adopted in full force in the 1979-83 period.

The greatest use for this book now is that it is good if you are setting a drama in the 1960s or 1970s featuring Special Branch or MI5. It is also a reminder of various trials and political campaigns, such as the Stop The 70 Tour and against the visit of Portuguese Prime Minister, Marcello Caetano, which had generally been forgotten from the popular consciousness. The recent focus back on the Mangrove 9 of 1970, shows, though that there is something to learned still from the incidents of that era. This could have been a better book if Bunyan had been able to write it without feeling he had to squeeze everything into his very dogmatic view of British society, which objectively did not fit his story of it. As a result he leaves out things that would have explained situations he was surprised by and would have helped better contextualise the developments he highlights. Instead the reader has to add in that context themselves and see that Bunyan is blind to many trends and indeed types of people, that did not fit his world view.

Books I Read In July

Fiction

'Friends in High Places' by Donna Leon

Perhaps it is because she is an American that Leon has an interest in issues around social class. Her protagonist, Guido Brunetti is the son-in-law of a Venetian count. Social standing and protecting it is an element of a number of her books, but becomes very apparent here. By this stage in the series, this is the ninth book, Leon had become very adept at starting with disparate threads, in this case informing us of the rules around construction in the restricted space of Venice and the associated corruption. However, with a bit of a jolt we then find how Brunetti's problems with his own apartment connect into murder. It comes together well and it is a little refreshing to have a different kind of motive which while it appears initially to be more Italian corruption, is one we can believe motivates people even more now twenty years after this book was published. I have the tenth book to read and then some other random ones from the series I have picked up from charity shops. However, I must say, despite sometimes the narrative seeming to jump a little or spend too long on unimportant aspects, these are easy to read crime dramas which come up with often refreshing solutions.

'Kaleidoscope' by Harry Turtledove

This is another collection of Turtledove's short stories, published in 1990 with stories dating back to 1984, it is older than 'Counting Up, Counting Down' which I read in December: http://rooksmoor.blogspot.com/2019/12/books-i-read-in-december.html  'And So to Bed' features an alternate world where earlier versions of humans co-exist with homo sapiens and have found refuge on North America which, as the story is set in 1661, is being opened up by Europeans. The story is told from the perspective of Samuel Pepys and shows how the existence of these other versions of humans allow him to propose evolution some three hundred years earlier. 'Bluff' is an interesting science fiction story set on a planet where humans arrive to find a humanoid species which sees their inner thoughts as being the voice of their gods. This is a fascinating premise and is handled well. It is a good reminder to those writing science fiction that alienness is not simply physical. 'A Difficult Undertaking' is a straightforward story of a siege in Turtledove's Videssos setting, a kind of Byzantine Empire and is pretty entertaining. '

The Weather's Fine' takes an interesting premise that time is like weather and so different parts of North America on different days can be in different 20th Century decades. The protagonist had a good relationship with his girlfriend in the 1960s but not in the 1970s so it is about how they work around this. Time conditioning can keep a building at a certain decade. I think more could have been done with this story and it was a bit depressing that the couple could not work through their issues or separate properly but were condemned to live in fixed behaviours dependent on the decade they were in. 'Crybaby' is a horrible story, a typical demonic child one which really would fit better in a 'Tales of the Unexpected' setting than here. Apparently, Turtledove's wife will not read this story and I can understand why.

'Hindsight' set in the 1950s about a science fiction author who is writing stories before the authors have managed to complete them and is revealed to be a time traveller who is trying to steer the USA down better paths than it followed in our 1960s and 1970s. The story is well handled, not just in terms of the technology, but the different behaviour of someone from the 1980s to those from thirty years' earlier. The blurred line between science fiction and science writing is well done too. A nice story all round. 'Gentlemen of the Shade' is another good one. Turtledove is always sharp when he brings a new spin on vampires as can be seen in his 'Under St. Peters' which is available to read free online now. In this story a club of vampires in late Victorian London hunt down Jack the Ripper who is one of their kind. It is well handled in terms of practicalities and in terms of the atmosphere of the time and place.

'The Boring Beast' is a silly spoof fantasy story which annoyed me. 'The Road Not Taken' is an interesting exercise in looking at how a species might acquire some technology that we see as hyper-advanced but lack technologies that we see as mundane. The encounter with alien invaders equipped for war as if it was the 17th Century is interesting and again reminds writers not to go down easy or lazy paths when portraying alien civilisations. 'The Castle of the Sparrowhawk' is a kind of fairy tale/parable about a challenge in a Middle Eastern land, which did not appeal to me; 'The Summer Garden' is very similar with the protagonist paying a bitter price for their 'victory'. There is a lot less sex in this book than in 'Counting Up, Counting Down' but 'The Girl Who Took Lessons' - it is actually a woman not a girl - is sordid and feels more like a 'joke' a man would tell in a bar. It is a pity it was included in this collection.

'The Last Article' is the other main alternate history story, featuring the German invasion of India in the 1940s, having defeated the British, and coming up against the passive resistance of Gandhi and Nehru. It might be controversial these days to paint British colonial rule as any better than Nazi hegemony, but Turtledove cleverly does highlight the differences and why that would enable the Nazis to defeat Gandhi when the British authorities failed to do so.

Overall an interesting collection with some great highlights. Importantly I would recommend it to science fiction writers to remind them where you can go when portraying aliens similar but different to us.

'Harlequin' by Bernard Cornwell

This is the first in a trilogy set during the early phases of the Hundred Years' War in the 14th Century. It follows an English archer, Thomas of Hookton from fighting a raid by the French on his home village on the south coast of England through battles in Brittany and Normandy coming to a climax at the Battle of Crécy in 1346. As you would expect with Cornwell the portrayal of life at the time and the battles are rendered very well. Unlike some historical authors who cover wars, Cornwell is also good at including a range of interesting female characters with distinct motives. I am concerned though that one who becomes Thomas's 'wife' towards the end of the book is clearly stated to be 15. He might argue it was seen as appropriate at the time but it is uncomfortable to see as a modern reader.

There is a lot of intrigue with lots of people out to kill Thomas, though he also makes friends among the opposite side. This is a strength of Cornwell's writing in that while combat plays an important part he does not skimp on characterisations which make his books that much richer. The sub-plot about seeking the Lance of St. George, let alone the Holy Grail, seems unnecessary and I can only think he included this either as a McGuffin or because publishers asked for it. I have the other two books in the trilogy and am looking forward to seeing what the characters do next.

'Dead Man's Land' by Robert Ryan

This novel features Conan Doyle's Dr. Watson solving a series of murders on and behind the frontline of British forces in Belgium during the First World War. Ryan has done meticulous research but unfortunately at times, especially in the early parts of the book, he tends to 'info dump', given immense detail about the hierarchy of treatment of the wounded rather than revealing it to us. The date when the novel is set is difficult to pin down. The book starts with Watson being commissioned as a major in October 1914, but as the book progresses, with reference to the Gallipoli Campaign (February 1915 - January 1916) and Winston Churchill serving as a lieutenant colonel on the Western Front (November 1915 - May 1916) as well as references to particular gases and aircraft, it is not clear when the action is happening. Given the involvement of Churchill and particular weaponry, notably poison gas, this is important and this uncertainty was an irritant as I was reading.

At times the book feels fragmented, in part because of the serial killing in different parts of the front. Added to that Sherlock Holmes makes odd appearances back in England and these elements are not integrated well into the story. They make him appear even more of a deus ex machina that would be the case anyway. The same can be said for the German sniper. We read about his attempts to assassinate Churchill and his various roles. However, he is not really a full part of the story and his role in the denouement could easily have been filled by an unknown character. The sections covering these two characters feel bolted on. Overall, however, the book improves as it goes on and Ryan provides a good motive for the killings fitting with the time. It could have been a much stronger book if the structure was streamlined and in other places what was happening, when, was made more explicit. The detail of the medical provision, especially the conveyor belt for the wounded, was fascinating especially at times when Ryan shows these things rather than lectures us on them.

'The Long Mars' by Terry Pratchett and Stephen Baxter

There is a comment on the cover of this book from a reviewer at 'SFX' magazine saying '"Pratchett and Baxter ... skipping along their quantum string like giddy schoolboys ...'" That sums up the problem with not just this book but its predecessors http://rooksmoor.blogspot.com/2020/05/books-i-read-in-may.html and http://rooksmoor.blogspot.com/2020/06/books-i-read-in-june.html  Pratchett and Baxter seem to have a thousand ideas for alternate versions of worlds and as more of the characters travel into many tens of millions of variants away from our Earth, they get to look at many of them. However, in large part it is like flicking through a catalogue and we only see them briefly. The action when it happens is like a number of vignettes which are only distantly connected to each other. In fact with three characters exploring alternate versions of Mars, even less exciting as most versions are desolate deserts, there is a real detachment between the returning characters. 

As in The Long War when we seem to be building to an important climax, the authors turn away. We just hear reports of them not finding the team they left on an Earth which is a moon of a larger planet; we see nothing of them deciding to bring The Next - a group of arrogant super-humans back to our Earth and minimal detail of how imprisoned Next are got out and get away to some unknown version of Earth. It is as if the most gripping elements of the story have been cut out so as not to distract from the beauty of all the geological, even astronomical variants, the authors could think up. I think they would have done better to have anthologies of short stories in different contexts rather than piling them all into what is supposed to be a single novel.

The other problem that continues from the previous books is how unsympathetic so many of the characters are. In this book smug Russians are added to smug Americans and smug Chinese. Then the Next come along and they are very smug humans who feel it is their right to enslave the 'dim-bulb' population which encompasses the rest of humanity. While it is good to have irritants and antagonists, when even the supposed 'heroes' are not people you could tolerate spending five minutes with because they would constantly patronise you, it is difficult for the reader to get a handle on the story. Again it is like flicking through the brochure or, even, someone else simply flicking through in your sight, expecting you to be invested in something that does nothing really to engage with you.

Non-Fiction

'A History of Modern France. Volume 2: 1799-1871' by Alfred Cobban

As I noted when reviewing Volume 1, for Cobban it seems that Louis XIV was the perfect leader of France and anyone else will struggle to come close to him in ability. I suppose that it is no surprise that a history written in the mid-20th Century focuses has a 'great man' history perspective. However, as Cobban judges so many of the country's leaders harshly, even ridiculing them at times, it really distorts what he is trying to cover. He views Napoleon Bonaparte as a Corsican bandit who could do nothing good for France. He sees Louis XVIII and Louis-Philippe as ineffectual, muddle-headed rulers. He gives a little to Napoleon III but then sees him as ineffective from quite an early period in his reign and as in fact utterly marginalised in the closing years of his rule. Cobban outlines all the political manoeuvring but seems impatient with it as if frustrated that no-one in France could appoint an effective king. 

This level of subjectivity and the repeated derogatory comments on the various rulers and politicians not only makes reading the book irritating, it weakens his accounts of the complex situations of what was happening in this period. The best parts of the book are when he (occasionally) steps away from the peak of the political system and looks at societal and economic aspects. With these he does reasonably well in showing the exceptionalism of France, why it did not modernise the way some neighbouring states did and its population stagnated through the 19th Century when others were growing sharply. Completing the book, I felt I had learnt little especially on the post-1815 period which tends to be neglected in general histories of Europe. Allowing Cobban to judge so much on the basis of his particular animosity to certain men, really undermined this book.

Books I Listened To/Read In December

Fiction
'Waiting for Sunrise' by William Boyd
It was only after I finished reading this book that I realised I had read two earlier ones by Boyd: 'An Ice Cream War' (1982) which I had expected a lot more of and 'Armadillo' (1998) which I was given and did not see the point of.  I acknowledge that I have not read his books that have been award winning notably, 'The Blue Afternoon' (1993), 'Any Human Heart' (2002) or 'Restless' (2006) but I have to say that I am not really impressed with his work.  The three novels I have read seem to consist on disconnected slices of life which pass rather than building a satisfactory whole.  'Waiting for Sunrise' very much fits that pattern and is almost like a number of books.  It features British actor Lysander Rief who visits Vienna in the months before the First World War to receive psychiatric treatment for his inability to orgasm.  Much of the book has far too much unnecessary sex in it which seems really at odds with the time period it is portraying and so undermines the credibility of the book.  Rief's tolerance of his uncle's homosexual relations with Africans is highly anachronistic at a time when being gay was a criminal offence.

The book then morphs into being a spy novel.  There are far too many coincidences and utterly ridiculous errors.  Rief is sent on a mission very like one of those in 'Ashenden: Or the British Agent'  (1928) by Somerset Maugham and it is unsurprising that Boyd was trying to produce a pastiche of a Maugham novel, though levering in 21st century attitudes to sex along the way.  The wartime spy adventure bit is reasonable with Rief uncovering who is leaking detailed information to the Germans and then travelling to Switzerland to carry out an assassination.  The rather cack-handed espionage of the time, which is responsible for Rief almost being assassinated by his own side, is pretty well shown and the problems with class discrimination and an unwillingness to believe who might be a traitor which plagued Britain through much of the 20th century.  Overall, there are some decent bits of this book, but there are too many free-floating chunks and it seems that Boyd felt compelled to drape a spy story over his primary focus on just recounting someone's life and introspection at a particular time with anachronistic sex piled on top.  I will be more careful in future not to slip into buying another Boyd book by accident.

'Strip Jack' by Ian Rankin
While I continue to be riled by Rankin's accounts of his highly diffident approach to novel writing, which he outlines at the start of each of these novels in this mid-2000s edition, I do admire his approach to the crime novel.  He does not open with a murder, but other incidents and the focus at first in this book are steps being taken to discredit a popular independent Scottish MP, Gregor Jack.  It is only later that the murder is revealed and this means it takes time to establish the possible story.  However, we already know all the suspects.  To some degree I liked the two groups of friends orbiting around Jack and his wife Elizabeth.  However, as the book proceeds and the murder is revealed, they become too similar in nature and to intertwined that by the end it is difficult to tell who was connected to whom and what motives they might have.  I feel that Rankin started with a decent basis but it ran away with him and he should have pared down the two circles of suspects more sharply before he reached the end as weariness creeps in for the reader.

Rankin does say, that with this book he felt he had 'grown up' in his writing by the time of this novel, the fourth in the Rebus series, and the last of three published in 1992.  He moves his characters away from fictional locations to real ones.  If you live in Edinburgh, perhaps that has an impact.  However, to someone who has only visited the city on a few occasions it made absolutely no difference.  I felt it undermined what Rankin had done in the first three books as if they were somehow illegitimate which is rather a betrayal of the reader who buys into the settings an author writes whether they are real or fictional.

Though there were many elements of this book I enjoyed especially in the first two-thirds of it, one jarred.  This was the sudden appearance of Patience Aitkin.  The book opens with Rebus having an established relationship with this woman and spending a lot of time at her flat; even considering moving in with her.  Yet, we have heard nothing of this woman before.  At the end of the previous book 'Tooth and Nail' (1992) it appeared that he was about to embark on a long-distance relationship with research psychology student Lisa Frazer.  In this book she has utterly disappeared and Rebus has been having a relationship running over some months.  It is as if there is a book missing that would have preceded this one.  I accept that Rankin felt he had to draw a line under the first three books, but this abrupt jump, in my mind, really weakens the credibility of this fourth book; it could have been handled so much better with just a little effort.

'Fated' by Benedict Jacka
Shopping for fantasy novels, even first hand, let alone second hand, it can be difficult to find the first book in a series.  Consequently I felt fortunate to find this one, the first in the Alex Verus series; Jacka published the first three of them all in 2012 and six others have followed.  While the characters are in their twenties with Verus running a magic shop in Camden, you feel Jacka's roots in young adult writing.  I do not know if the 'feel' of the characters improves in later books.  The story is quite a common one these days, i.e. that parallel to the cities we know are groups of people with exceptional powers.  In Jacka's book they are divided into Dark and Light, and though these are defined in a particular way in this series this is a very common trope for urban fantasy; there is also a giant spider.  I must say though, that the Dark mages are genuinely manipulative and nasty; they keep slaves and torture them for any failure.  The abuse of novice mages is well handled.

One challenge for this book is that Jacka felt the need to do a data dump on the reader.  Thus while there are some well thought out and portrayed scenes, making use of iconic London locations, the flow is often disrupted as Jacka tells us about the world he has created, with Verus speaking to us in the first person.  The magic involves a range of psychic and elemental powers.  Verus is a seer which makes a change from magic users with strong physical powers and there are true elementals with different natures, again the way one kills has a good sharp edge to it.  Aside from the jolts to stop for an info break, and the characters seeming younger than their true ages, I found myself enjoying the end especially the extended climax in which different groups are jostling for supremacy in the space contained within a statue held at the British Museum.  While I would not rush out to buy the next book 'Cursed' (2012), if I saw it second hand I would buy it, in the hope that with all the background established Jacka could give free rein to his story-telling which, aside from the YA caution, is not bad.

'Empire of Sand' by Robert Ryan
This book, published in 2008, should not be confused with 'Empire of Sand' (2018) by Tasha Suri.  While drawing on what is known of the life of T.E. Lawrence, this is a fictional adventure which speculates on his activities in Persia (now Iran) in 1915 before he became involved in the Arab Revolt, though it does include interludes focused on that later period.  Having listened to 'The Seven Pillars of Wisdom' (1926) earlier this year, I know Lawrence tended to skim over his actions that were less than successful.  This book is better balanced than his own descriptions of what he did.  It shows his sexual ambiguity, that in many ways he was asexual but liked the companionship of Arab boys which naturally has led to questions about him.  It is certain that he 'enjoyed' physical hardship which the desert was able to provide in great quantities and that he thoroughly admired the Arabs as a chivalric people.

The adventure is pretty straight forward with Lawrence working in intelligence in Cairo seeking to stop the shipment of Arabs and Farsis opposed to British rule in the region, masterminded by a German agent, Wilhelm Wassmass.  When a British officer is captured and offered in exchange for the agent's luggage, Lawrence keen for adventure in the desert sets off with an assorted band, including one British charged with assassinating Wassmass.  The venture does not go as planned, but Lawrence's ability to live like a local, endure all that the desert throws at him and to improvise gives the small band a chance.  Aside from not shying away from referencing Lawrence's atypical way of thinking and having an active role for female agents, this could have been a book from the 1930s.  Despite that, it moves along briskly and the outcomes, bar the survival of Lawrence are not known.  The portrayal of the locations in Egypt and Persia are handled very well and you really get a feel for the places the characters are travelling through.

Non-Fiction
'The First Crusade' by Steven Runciman
This is effectively the first of the three-volume 'A History of the Crusades' by Steven Runciman published in 1951 with the other two volumes following up to 1954. This is an illustrated version produced in 1980. However, aside from some useful photographs of the locations mentioned to show the landscape, many of the illustrations are just generic medieval images of warfare and the one of supposed trebuchets is entirely spurious. It feels as if the editor in 1980 simply chucked in anything that fitted and looked vaguely appropriate.

Runciman has been criticised for simply narrating what happened in the crusades without analysing what happened. I feel this judgement is unfair. He drew on a wide range of sources in different languages. Especially for a book written in the early 1950s it shows surprising awareness of the divisions among those that the crusaders faced and how the Islamic forces were weakened by local rivalry. The book also articulates well, the difficulty the Byzantines had in wanting crusaders to fight for them but not wishing to have their towns wrecked as the caravan of soldiers and camp followers, often ill-disciplined, past through their territory. He also captures in an accessible way the tensions between the different European lords, many bent more on creating a state for themselves than on 'liberating' Jerusalem. Runciman is not simply interested in the military but looks at why civilians travelled often at great harm to themselves.

The book is mainly a history but it does try to show a rounded picture of the First Crusade in all its complexity, accessibly. It probably sounds old fashioned now, despite its references to women and non-Christians, but is no painfully so. The aspect most wasted was the images included and a lot more useful information could have been included with a better selection rather than having them as a decoration.

'End of Empires: European Decolonisation 1919-80' by Gary Thorn
This is another historian I met back at the end of the 20th century when this book was just coming out.  Like 'The Spanish Civil War' by Andrew Forrest, also published in 2000, which I read back in October 2016: http://rooksmoor.blogspot.com/2016/10/the-books-i-read-in-october.html this book by Thorn is aimed at assisting students, in this case taking A Levels in addressing questions about the theme.  For all of that and the structure it imposes, it is still a good read for someone wanting to look at an important part of what was going on in the world, especially post-1945.  In particular, Thorn does not simply look at the British and French empires, but does very good comparative analysis of the demise of the Belgian, Dutch and Portuguese empires, which are often overlooked, at least in English-language texts.  The book has a very brisk, at times chatty style, which can contrast with the violence it highlights.  At times it feels rather breathless, but I guess this is to keep the interest of students.  I do not know if I received an early version but in the copy I had there were some errors: misplaced footnote numbers and a typo on a map, showing an 'Austrian mandate' in the Pacific rather than the correct, 'Australian mandate' which makes a huge difference.  Overall, I found it very informative and in a good analytical structure, which for some may seem plastered on, but you can forgive that for the target audience.  Despite its brisk manner it references a good range of sources and points to interesting cultural perspectives, which I would have liked to have seen more of.

Fiction - Audio Books
'Crooked House' by Agatha Christie; Radio Play
I do not list all the radio plays I listen to on CD, but some seem worthwhile mentioning especially if based on novels.  This is one of Christie's books that I have never read or seen dramatised.  In part I guess it is because it features neither Poirot or Marple and it is a rather claustrophobic being set primarily in one house soon after the Second World War.  The nature of the murderer is also unlike in any other of Christie's books and for that reason I think dramatisers have tended to shy away from it.  However, I have just found out a version came out in Italy in 2017 and was shown on UK television last year; it passed me by entirely.  Anyway, it is set in the house of a wealthy British businessman of Greek extraction, Aristide Leonides.  The nephew, Charles Hayward, of the main detective, Chief Inspector Taverner, is engaged to one of the dead man's grandchildren, Sophia, and is sent in undercover to find out what is happening.  The family in which all members are nasty and/or suspicious is quite a common setting for Christie, but in this one there seems to be no-one who is pleasant; even Sophia is a highly credible suspect.  In particular they seek to put the blame on Leonides second wife and the tutor employed by the family.  It is harder in tone than many of Christie's other books, perhaps reflecting the nature of the time when it was written, being published in 1949.  I found this story pretty gripping as it was one with which I was unfamiliar with so could appreciate the skill in it and certainly did not foresee the final outcome.

'Star Trek: Generations' by J.M. Dillard; read by John de Lance
This was very similar in nature to 'First Contact' also by Dillard that I listened to back in October: http://rooksmoor.blogspot.com/2018/10/the-books-i-listened-toread-in-october.html  Despite all the voice manipulation and the sound effects, I found it pretty tedious all round.  It links the 'Star Trek' stories of the Captain Kirk era with that of the Captain Picard era by having Kirk sucked into the Nexus after he has retired, a kind of timeless heaven.  Picard is drawn in through trying to stop a scientist blowing up a star so that he can be swept into the Nexus in order to be reunited with his late wife.  There are some renegade female Klingons who are the most interesting characters but are soon despatched.  Picard gets to use the Nexus to travel back in time and correct his error; the paradox he creates are completely ignored.  Despite all the bells and whistles, the story lacks tension.  In part this stems from the worthiness of the 'Star Trek' approach, but I think it is worsened with the Next Generation crew as they often seem highly childish.  An early scene in which they are on the holodeck enacting a scene from 18th Century sailing, seems both juvenile and patronising to the non-humans.  Overall I was rather exasperated by this book.

Non-Fiction - Audio Book
'A Short History of Nearly Everything' by Bill Bryson: read by the author
I have sometimes been exasperated by Bryson's work, though I do feel he has improved as the years have passed.  I thoroughly enjoyed this book and with him reading it himself, he has really caught the spirit of what he wrote.  It is a popular science book looking at the creation of the universe and the earth, then life on it, especially humans, with lots of detours into various sciences.  At times too many of the examples are drawn from the USA and much of the developments across the world, outside the West are neglected.  However, it is told in a brisk, engaging way and puts a lot of the wonders of our planet and the universe it sits in across clearly.  I was surprised to enjoy this book but I certainly did and can recommend it if you want a crash course in these issues or are just curious about our world.  There are loads to fascinating facts from it to quote at family and friends.