The Books I Read In May

 Fiction

'The Nonborn King' by Julian May

As this was a 2013 re-release I had not realised it was the third book in The Saga of Exiles tetralogy. I had also not realised that like Robin, in the USA, Julian is a woman's name, so had assumed, being British, that the author was a man. I had often come the first book in the series, 'The Many-Colored Land' (1981) but was not tempted to read it at the time. I am glad I did not. This book is almost a stereotype of overblown 1980s fantasy, that I had assumed, due to the portrayal of women, was written by a middle-aged man; May was 52 when it was published in 1983.

It is not really fantasy as it starts as science fiction, with the development of psionic abilities and Earth joining an inter-galactic confederation of species with psionic abilities. However, through a wormhole various people are sent into exile in the Pliocene era 5.3-2.6 million years ago, probably at the start of that era as in this volume we see the Mediterranean basin being reflooded. Travelling back in time, humans from the future meet two branches of the same species of humanoid aliens, the Tanu and the Firvulag that they alternatively combine with or fight

This book is filled with lots of factional battles over 'France', Spain', south-western Germany and parts of the Western Mediterranean and Atlantic seaboard of North America. The reflooding of the Mediterranean is caused by a powerful psionic woman. A powerful human psionic ridiculously called Aiken Drum (as in the song) sets himself up as ruler of 'Brittany' and the book is a rather laboured coming to war of various factions. The psionics like magic and the principalities make it feel like fantasy, though occasional high-tech vehicles and weapons turn up periodically.

Despite being republished in 2013, this book as racist epithets and a generally negative view of women, even down to the myth of the vagina dentata. If I had not known better I would have assumed the book was written by a socially isolated man living in the Mid West living out his pubescent fantasies of time travel and superpowers to secure him women as partners even against their will. I can understand why these books were successful but there was a lot better fantasy around even back in the 1980s, let alone now.

'The Songlines' by Bruce Chatwin

I do not really know if this counts as fiction. Chatwin was a travel writer and it is hard to know if the incidents (there is no plot) that he describes were fictional or real. I guess it counts as 'semi-autobiographical'. Anyway, the book is about an author travelling around central Australia finding out about how Aborigines map the country through songs that allow them to pass on the history and geography of places they move through, the different creatures they identify with, the boundaries between different tribes but also as a shared way of communicating across dialects and languages of the people of the sub-continent. That in itself is interesting. However, the portrayal of the author travelling to various locations to discuss this approach with various people is incredibly seedy. You feel that everything he encounters is worn out and on the verge of collapse, many of the people completely lost in the world, prey to alcoholism or simply the break-down of human impact on such a harsh environment. In the last quarter of the book, Chatwin even gives up on this for a while and simply lists short snippets from various sources trying to portray humans as naturally nomadic rather than settled.

Overall, a very dissatisfying book. I would have preferred to read his analysis of the song lines referring to the people he met and spoke to about them, rather than levering it all in what proves to be a dreary, depressing 'story'.

'Set in Darkness' by Ian Rankin

This is the eleventh book in the Rebus series and I realise I have read so many now, that I no longer look for any of them to be better or worse than the one before, they just are. It is like we periodically drop into John Rebus's life to see how he is getting along. These are increasingly more 'slice of life' novels that happen to be about an unhealthy dysfunctional police officer going about his business in Edinburgh. These sense of the drive of the mystery in these books has entirely faded for me. Three disparate threads and the uncovering of murders involving property developers from the 1970s as a result of the building of the Scottish Parliament (the book was published in 2000), is deftly handled rather than thrilling. There are tropes such as the long-established gangsters and the wealthy family with secrets, so at times, if it were not for the interaction between Rebus and his colleagues, whether friends or opponents, it would feel rather like an episode of a soap opera like 'Dallas'. It is reasonably well woven together and the descriptions of various parts of Edinburgh remain interesting. I still have four more in the series to read of 13 more Rebus novels published since then - there are various short story collections/novellas too. I am content to work through the ones I have but despite copies turning up regularly in charity shops (I now live in Scotland), I am not rushing out to collect them.

'The Ocean at the End of the Lane' by Neil Gaiman

As it explains in an interview in the back of the edition I had, while this superficially seems to be a children's book, featuring a man remembering the fantastical situations that developed when he was living in rural Sussex as a boy. I suppose it counts as magic realism. As noted in the interview some of the horrors have are from an adult perspective which is why I probably found this story far more unsettling than say the Harry Potter stories, even though the protagonist is a 7-year old boy. He falls in with the grandmother, mother and daughter of  a neighbouring house who are a kind of immortal guardians trying to stop misguided rather than evil creatures coming through to cause harm on Earth. It moves along at a pace and for all the fantasy, has a kind of realistic edge. It is set in the late 1960s and I was 7 in 1974, so I can envisage much of 'ordinary' setting and especially the attitudes of adults that are portrayed. It moves along briskly and like all of Gaiman's work is well crafted. I did feel some parallels with 'Good Omens' that Gaiman wrote with Terry Pratchett published in 1990 and 'A Wrinkle in Time' (1962) by Madeleine L'Engle and unsurprisingly it has proven as popular as those two. It has a similar appeal, encompassing the fantastical but rooted in some kind of reality.

Non-Fiction

'The Thirty Years War' by Peter Limm

This is a slim volume which draws on translations of documents of the time to illustrate the points Limm is making. He is no better than anyone else at disentangling the to and fro fighting that raged over western and central Europe in the mid-17th Century. The strength lies in the analysis which follows. There is crisp insight into the impacts of the war, showing how, contrary to many portrayals of it as a real divide in history, it saw many continuities. The war did cause economic harm, but this was actually part of longer trends as were the military developments which it highlighted rather than provoked. Overall this is a perceptive book which certainly, I felt, increased my knowledge of the politics, economy and society of the countries impacted and challenged simplistic assumptions very often seen.

The Books I Read In April

 Fiction

'A Long Night in Paris' by Dov Alfon

This is a contemporary thriller which is split between Israel and Paris. Given the range of perspectives of the various people involved included various members of the Israeli intelligence agencies, French police and assorted Chinese agents it is very choppy. Alfon seems particularly interested in the rivalries between different Israeli agencies, but in contrast to trying to track down the murderers of an Israeli IT specialist and then a former Israeli agent in Paris, lots of details of people posturing in meetings becomes tedious. In addition, the tension is further slackened by how long the processes go on. The killing of the IT specialist is proven to be a case of mistaken identity, but this takes time. There is a lot of posturing between the Israelis and the French too, which is not really engaging. Thus the book falls between two stools. It lacks the intrigue of a murder mystery and yet also lacks the pace of a contemporary political thriller, say something by James Patterson. 

Overall there are some good elements and the explanation for the defection of the agent ends up being feasible. However, too much is jammed in to the book leading to longueurs. In addition the internal inter-agency rivalry is not engaging and is too full of insufferable people. This is a weakness we see in thrillers, e.g. the Bourne novels. People who are interested in/have been involved with such agencies seem to think the average reader will find them fascinating. These days, though, most are familiar with how they work so these scenes just resemble meetings the average office worker attends. A shorter, much tauter book could have brought out the highlights without weighing them down with uninteresting extras.

'Murder in the Museum' by Simon Brett

This is the fourth book in the Fethering series of 'cosy crime' novels by Brett which have now reached 21 books. I read the first back in 2016: https://rooksmoor.blogspot.com/2016/10/the-books-i-read-in-october.html Maybe my age and my relocation within the UK has made me more tolerant of the setting. The novel features two middle-aged women, Carole a former civil servant and her next door neighbour, Jude who is a new age health practitioner. A lot has happened in the two books I have not read. However, as amateurs they still get themselves mixed up in murders. In this case through Carole being a trustee of a local house where (fictional) author and poet Esmond Chadleigh lived and there is discussion about how to raise funds to develop a museum. A skeleton found in a walled garden and later the shooting of a former trustee link past and current deaths.

It is well realised. Brett is excellent at capturing a slice of Home Counties England and the people within it. At times he shades into stereotype, but occasionally surprises the reader. He seems better at showing the novel is genuinely set in the 2000s than was the case with the previous one I read. In addition, Jude's support of an old lover who is gravely ill leavens the cosiness effectively and makes what otherwise could be seen as too whimsical. It is a fine line to walk, but it is done reasonably well here. The conjuring up of fictional poetry and an imagined author's career is done credibly. While I would not rush out to buy more of this series, I enjoyed this one more than 'The Body on the Beach' (2000) when I read it seven years ago. However, I acknowledge that that may be due to changes in my own life rather than in Brett's books.

Non-Fiction

'Age of Extremes. The Short Twentieth Century 1914-1991' by Eric Hobsbawm

While Hobsbawm comments himself on the challenges of producing a history book on times through which you have lived, (his life was 1917-2012) he does at times fall victim to that, seeing the groundwork to subsequent developments that he cannot help but identify even if it falls outside the scope of the particular book. Hobsbawm was a Marxist and while he does not laud the Soviet system and in fact identifies flaws in it from the outset that were to ultimately lead to its downfall, he does see the political situation of the 1980s ('the Landslide') with the move to New Right attitudes as a grave catastrophe in a way that probably many historians of the time would see differently. Until the end he does tend to play down the climate change challenges, but that is probably because he was more alert to the more immediate environmental harm caused by pollution. Ironically he ends on an optimistic note, which in fact in the period following has proven to be false and looking at the present news one can see behaviours and conflicts that are so reminiscent of the 1910s, 1930s and 1970s.

Hobsbawm brings a general perspective of realism, though perhaps over-estimates the room for manoeuvre for politicians in the democracies in the inter-war era. He is good on their fear of a repeat of the Great War, but tends to under-estimate how much the fear of the spread of Communism shaped so much of their responses especially to the rise of the Fascist regimes. Though he is better on the reason why the short-lived alliance between the West and the USSR could not be sustained.

Often taking an economic perspective, his writing on the Depression and then the 'Golden Age' of economic prosperity in the West, about 1948-73 is well handled and also why it unravelled. Though he picks up on the Vietnam War and the Iranian Revolution, these are more seen through the lens of the West and there is an absence of seeing things from those countries' perspectives which was a refreshing approach in earlier books in the series. His writing on cultural changes is less well focused and he seems despairing of post-1945 art as lacking the dynamism of the earlier decades.

Overall, there are gems to be picked from this book as there was with the others in the series. I remember reading that the right-wing historian Andrew Roberts picked out Hobsbawm's series as the most over-rated one. I would not go as far as to condemn it in the way he does. I think Hobsbawm had a perspective which is often sorely lacking nowadays especially in era or general history books that is well worth recapturing. The prime challenge is that he seems to have struggled to disengage from those aspects which not simply interested him, but which to him seemed essential. When he touches on those things it distorts his writing and he is a better analyst when less attached to a topic. Consequently, this book like the preceding three are useful for reference. As a sum of the parts, the quality is lesser than individual chapters and analyses and as a result, viewpoints which stand out today and retain real value are liable to lost amongst the mass.

The Books I Read In March

 Fiction

'The Amulet of Samarkand' by Jonathan Stroud

This is a children's book that is often likened to the Harry Potter series. Stroud actually makes a passing jibe at apprentice wizards being sent to boarding schools to learn their craft. Though there is a sense of a world of magic, it intrudes more into the actual world than in the Potter novels. The British parliament is entirely run by wizards who provide ministers. There is that kind of mid-20th Century undefined time period, though used in many British novels, not just fantasy ones; at times it seems to have hangovers from the Victorian era, echoed by the fact that Britain is the centre of an empire run on magic and fighting on continental Europe with its arch-rival centred on Prague.

Magic in this world is centred on the use of demons/spirits of various strengths, thus what wizards can predominantly do is summon such creatures and put them to work. This culturally appropriates Middle Eastern spirits including djinn and afrits, with no explanation how Europeans came to be using them.The hero of the story, Nathaniel, apprenticed to the ineffectual Arthur Underwood at the age of five manages to secure a djinni, Bartimaeus, a middle-ranked creature in effect to exact revenge on those who have been cruel to him throughout his childhood. However, this then draws him into a conspiracy to trigger a coup d''état. The treatment of Nathaniel is very reminiscent of Victorian novels too but by the end it turns into a magic adventure story in a contemporary setting with which we are familiar.

While you can draw parallels to the Potter books, Stroud works hard to distinguish them. Nathaniel for much of the book is driven by revenge. Unlike Harry Potter he is also very isolated, his parents having sold him into apprenticeship and others he relies on briefly being killed. The main strength though is the fact that the alternate chapters are told by Bartimaeus a rather world worn and cynical creature who is ancient and has his own antagonisms going back many centuries; he is able to shape shift too. It is interesting the trilogy is named after him rather than Nathaniel.

While more juvenile than I had expected, the novel is engaging and I enjoyed it. If I see the following two books in the series I would buy them.

'The Friends of Harry Perkins' by Chris Mullin

Like a lot of people of my generation I was very influenced by the dramatisation of Mullin's book 'A Very British Coup' (novel 1982; TV series 1988 available still to watch on All4: https://www.channel4.com/programmes/a-very-british-coup). Harry Perkins was the left-wing Labour politician elected Prime Minister in that previous novel, before being forced from office by the Americans. This book is set in the 2010s following the Brexit vote. Mullin in the introduction outlines the challenges of trying to have this novel feature characters from the first, some 35 years before. He has to make some of them have very long lives. I feel it would have been much better for him to set one or more books sometime in those three decades or to bring in a new cast, even if they were children of the previous characters.

The novel is effectively a 'what if?' history. Perkins remained in parliament and it has gone through many years of Conservative rule, leading to the referendum and Brexit withdrawal but under different politicians to those we know in our world. Labour at the start of the novel is led by a woman. Fred Thompson who was a minor character in the previous book rises to be Labour leader, though to the left of Sir Keir Starmer and manages to win an election in the late 2010s. Overall the book feels very rushed with so much to cover - including Thompson's private life - in a short book.

The climax is telegraphed well in advance. It feels rather like a book which Mullin has to work out various irritations. Thompson and his coterie still mourning Perkins meet in an Austrian restaurant very akin to 'The Gay Hussar' where Michael Foot and his gang used to dine regularly. Mullin is clearly distressed by the killing of Jo Cox and felt that he had to look at that danger for politicians too. Thus, there is a real mish-mash of elements which are straitjacketed into the framework he had created for 'A Very British Coup' while failing to have the genuine jeopardy of that context.

There was a lot which could have been done better in this book. It would have been interesting for him to explore the challenges of a left-wing leader in the current age, even if he avoided comparisons with Corbyn. It would have also been interesting to look at why Labour has never actually had a female leader, whereas the Conservatives have had three who have become prime ministers. The personal violence against MPs would have been another area to explore. However, Mullin seems to have felt shackled to his earlier successful book and in this one as a result has a context in which he cannot really handle all the various elements successfully or, as he effectively admits in the foreword, feasibly.

'Dead Souls' by Ian Rankin

This is the 10th Inspector John Rebus novel and it is strange that only getting this far through the series, I am feeling that as an author Rankin is reaching the standard that he was strangely acclaimed for almost right from the outset. 

This is a very messy novel, with Rebus back on alcohol; his daughter temporarily confined to a wheelchair after the accident in the previous novel, and in an on/off relationship with his lover Patience. There are a number of components which it takes a long time to see are related, but in many ways this makes it feel rather more like an account of genuine detective work. Rebus is angered when he finds a convicted paedophile who has served his time in prison has been housed in the area and effectively sets out to take revenge by 'outing' him. While he begins to regret this decision later, he is too late. There are also the suicide of a colleague and the disappearance of the son of old friends, one of whom Rebus dated when a young man in Fife and he finds he remains attracted to, while also has questions about his own path triggered. There is also a murderer repatriated from the USA to Edinburgh who is allowed to get away with playing with both the police and a journalist; a very slimy character who seems largely untouchable even when he beats up Rebus and later a retired detective too. Added to that there is case against two child abusers at a children's home and who the third man was with them on a particular occasion.

The book has quite a toing and froing, but Rankin manages not to lose the reader. There are long sections of self-reflection but again he just manages to keep these from getting repetitive or tedious. While most of the questions are resolved, there is no big conclusion and that adds to the sense of realism. Rebus even more than before comes over as a world-weary detective running up a string of horrific incidents, injustice and the unsolvable. This novel might frustrate readers looking for a clear tying off of elements, but I feel it is one of the better ones in the Rebus series.

'Talon' by Julie Kagawa

A lot of fantasy, especially that written by women gets 'dumped' into the YA category no matter its focus or the characters. This novel, is very clearly both fantasy and YA. It is one of numerous books in recent years featuring dragons living in contemporary society who are able to shift to being humans. The last one of these I read was 'Chasing Embers' (2016) by James Bennett (not the one by Rachel Skatvold): https://rooksmoor.blogspot.com/2021/03/books-i-read-in-march.html and this is a now well-established sub-genre.  

Kagawa includes the urban fantasy/dystopian tropes of sinister authoritarian organisations - Talon which rules over dragons putting them into a rigid caste system when they mature but eliminates 'weaklings' and renegades and the Order of St. George a human organisation of highly trained soldiers whose mission is to kill all dragons they encounter. Kagawa gets in a lot of YA tropes - teenaged sister and brother sent to spend the summer on the beach in California, surfing, star-crossed first loves, at the mall, at the funfair, two handsome dudes for the heroine to be torn between, one a mysterious biker.

Ember and her twin brother Dante - rather giveaway names for dragons! - are sent to Crescent Beach for their last phase of training before allocation in the Talon caste system. They have to prove that they can blend in with humans and naturally make friends. The focus is primarily on Ember who falls for another visitor to the town, a 17-year old called Garret, unaware that from orphaned child he has been trained as an excellent soldier for the Order and has been sent to Crescent Beach to hunt down new 'sleeper' dragons. You can probably tell how this unfolds in a very Montagues and Capulets way. Biker Riley, also attracts Ember's attention as he is a 'rogue' dragon, Cobalt, who has broken away from the authoritarian rule of Talon and is hunted by both them and the Order.

I read this book expecting it rather to go through the motions. We see first person through the eyes of Ember and Garrett and later Riley too. However, Kagawa's writing has to be commended that even with so many tropes, she rises above them to provide a genuinely gripping, fast paced story which appears to have genuine jeopardy while also grappling with the challenges that 'ordinary' US teenagers face as they approach adulthood. In addition, there are unexpected twists and I felt she ably dodged some of the possible expected outcomes. While I would not rush out and buy the next book, if I came across I would buy it. Kagawa certainly makes a strong argument for people not looking down on fantasy, even those books, which aim clearly to appeal to a YA audience.

Non-Fiction

'Nazism 1919-1945. Volume 4: The German Home Front in World War II' ed. by Jeremy Noakes

This fourth volume came out in 1998 so while the document numbering continues on from the previous three volumes (the page numbering does not) it is a bit apart from those volumes published 1983-88 (themselves drawing on 1970s volumes organised differently). They all got new covers in the 2000s. In addition, while Geoffrey Pridham is still alive today, this fourth volume was edited only by Jeremy Noakes.

This book might seem to have a rather narrow focus but in fact is a really useful supplement especially to Volumes 2 and 3. For example, Volume 4 looks at the concentration camps whereas Volume 3 focused on the extermination camps. Volume 4 picks up from the pre-war analysis of Nazi Germany's economy and society seen in Volume 2 and so on. Thus, while coming late, it really rounded out the series. There are chapters in Volume 4 which cover aspects often neglected by general surveys of the Nazi regime, notably welfare, attitudes to youth and women and indeed to sex. Things such as the NSV welfare body; the evacuation of children from bombed cities and morale, all are handled well and provide a useful counter-balance to portrayals of these aspects of the British wartime experience which have been covered more extensively.

One point is that while there are lots of useful documents and sources referenced in Volume 4, they tend to be included in full, which can lead to extensive (small print) sections that you sometimes feel are not adding and that the smaller extracts pointing to the kernel of the issue to be discussed, used in the earlier volumes were often more effective.

Another point which I meant to raise when reviewing Volume 3 back in January:  http://rooksmoor.blogspot.com/2023/01/the-book-i-read-in-january.html was how scarily current the rhetoric which appears throughout these books seems to a reader in the early 2020s. I know it is easy to label alt right politicians and commentators as 'Fascists' or 'Nazis' but reading through the texts translated into English, you keep hearing echoes of what you might hear if you turn on the television these days. 

The whole attitude from Hitler, Goebbels, et al, that they were at the same time, supremely powerful and assured of victory yet always insisting that they were the real victims; that others were responsible for the conflicts, is so often used nowadays and it is very unsettling when a turn of phrase you read meshes precisely with what you can hear or read quoted from contemporary politicians. I guess the BBC TV series, 'The Nazis: A Warning from History'  (1997; my emphasis) had it spot-on in that title. It is not a question of bandying about terms like Nazi, it is much more about seeing these unsettling parallels and knowing to what they can lead. As I used to remind students, every single step towards the use of Auschwitz was bad; right from the ending of German democracy and removal of civil rights from Jews.

This has been an excellent series of books and while there is a lot to cover, if you really want an insight to the Nazi regime, because of the use of many hundreds of original sources, I would heartily recommend these books.

The Books I Read In February

 Fiction

'A Symphony of Echoes' by Jodi Taylor

This is the second book in The Chronicles of St. Mary's set in an autonomous department of a fictional university in Yorkshire that deals in time travel. As I noted with the first book: http://rooksmoor.blogspot.com/2022/12/the-books-i-read-in-december.html it is a strange mixture. I theory it is set in the future, but a lot of the technology (cheques!) referenced seems to be from the mid-20th century. Max, the heroine, while holding a doctorate and having a mature(-ish) sexual relationship with a colleague often comes over more like a teenager. At times you feel that it is rather weighed down by very British tropes about special centres that owe a lot of the 1940s and 1950s even than the 2010s. However, in this quirky way it is quite charming if you are not tired of such tropes and in the way the Harry Potter books embedded in traditional British private school novels appealed to a modern audience I can see the same with this series.

A lot happens in this novel. Max goes into the future and becomes head of the unit to get it back into shape and then uncovers a conspiracy by the prime antagonist trying to change the course of the life of Mary Queen of Scots. With the various missions through time, it can be a little episodic, but the mission to 16th Century Scotland is really well handled in terms of practicalities. The unit is prone to disaster and this can get rather wearying in time, but I felt Taylor was really getting into her stride with the final third of this book. I was disappointed that (spoiler) she kills of the disabled character in a way I think many readers will disapprove of. However, having become reconciled to the rather quirky context laden with tropes, and with the flow improving, if I see any more of these books, and there are now 28 in total this series - Taylor writes at a real pace; this is not her only series - I would pick them up.

'Melmoth' by Sarah Perry

This novel has nothing to do with the town of the same name in South Africa but some connection to 'Melmoth the Wanderer' (1820) a Gothic novel by Charles Maturin and according to 'The Guardian' to 'Melmoth Reconciled' (1835) by Honore de Balzac. Melmoth is a kind of Wandering Jew character, someone condemned to wander the world for centuries or eternity. In this novel, which has a Gothic feel though set in the 20th and 21st Centuries, sees Melmoth as a female spirit who both bears witness to horrors but also seeks to lead away those in utter loneliness to accompany her.

We see through the eyes of Helen Franklin a British woman who lives in Prague and has a small selection of eccentric acquaintances. One of these through being passed the research of a man who had been looking into reports of instances of the appearance of Melmoth from the 17th Century down to the present day. Helen works through these documents and we see them the way she reads them. One is set during the German takeover and control of Prague 1939-45; one earlier in 1930s Egypt and Franklin's own encounter in the Philippines that led to the loneliness of her own life. Franklin and those she knows are uncertain if Melmoth is real and whether they are seeing her.

The uncovering of the information and the stories of those who have encountered Melmoth or her stories before; their moral decisions in particular, add to the richness of the novel. Perry keeps these tight so you do not feel overloaded and indeed despite all that it has to grapple with, the novel is brisk and that makes it very effective. Her conjuring up of different locations, notably Prague in two time periods is also done well. There are some unexpected turns too. Thus, while I cannot say I enjoyed this novel, I felt impressed by the competence in rendering it and may pick up others by Perry, especially her renowned 'The Essex Serpent' (2016).

'A Case of Two Cities' by Qiu Xiaolong

Maybe because Xiaolong (that is their surname, they render it in the Western order) is based in the USA I have never come across the Inspector Chen novels, of which this is the fourth (he is Chen Cao with Chen his surname). Though published in 2006, this is set in Shanghai in the 1990s. Chen is charged by a high level committee of the Communist Party in Beijing with pursuing what is left of a chain of corruption after a leading corrupt businessman has fled to the USA seeking asylum. Later Chen, who had some small fame as a poet, is sent to the USA as head of a cultural delegation and is able to pursue his investigations in Los Angeles and especially St. Louis, hence the title of the novel.

Having taught modern Chinese history, I think Xiaolong's portrayal of China in the era shown is very well done. He has been criticised, but as is often the case with crime novels, his characters are drawn from the wealthiest and the poorest in China of the time, a divide which was especially apparent in Shanghai. He does show parallels to similar divides in the USA too.

A prime challenge is that Xiaolong has to communicate so much to the average reader. Especially in the early part of the novel he has to provide a dense potted history of how much China and especially Shanghai changed in the 1990s as well as outlining how the Communist state was run at this time. On top of this, Xiaolong as a student of literature cannot resist putting in loads of classic Chinese poems throughout. This does really overload the book. Dealing with the recent history would be a great deal for most English-language readers; grappling with the numerous quotations let alone the other literary references he has to explain made it heavy to wade through at times, though it picks up towards the end.

Some commentators have complained about the lack of deduction and unresolved situations. However, I think this is because they set Xioalong in the wrong context. I would view him in the company of  Josef Škvorecký, Leonardo Sciascia, Philip Kerr and Michael Dibdin in setting crime novels in authoritarian and/or corrupt states where the interest is as much in the interplay between different forces and vested interests in those societies as in solving the crime. Typically the interests are able to outweigh the desire for justice in a way that is less familiar to readers of crime novels set in seemingly democratic societies.

While I am in no rush to buy more of the Chen series, I was not put off by this one and if by some rare chance another one of them turns up where I am shopping for books, I would buy it.

Non-Fiction

'The Age of Empire 1875-1914' by Eric Hobsbawm

When published in 1987, 26 years after the first volume 'The Age of Revolution: Europe: 1789–1848' had been published, it was intended to be the final one, so combined, covering the so-called 'long 19th Century'. Hobsbawm did though go on to produce 'The Age of Extremes: The Short Twentieth Century, 1914–1991' (1994) which I will read later this year. As with the other volumes in 'The Age of Empire' comes at the period in terms of themes rather than in chronological sequence. Thus each chapter is almost an independent essay though he does refer back to other chapters and books in the series. Some of the chapters are strong. The one on women; the tensions in science; the 'second world' - Persia, China, the Ottoman Empire, Latin America and the one of the lead up to the First World War stand out.

The main challenge as I have noted when reviewing the previous two volumes is that as a Marxist, Hobsbawn is too often on the hunt for the glimmer of revolution and this distorts his writing especially when looking at social class and economics. It is apparent here as he comes ever close to the second and third Russian revolutions. To a degree his attitude is tempered by the passing of time on his own timeline and there are some references to the rise of New Right attitudes in the 1980s which temper what otherwise might have been glee at the growth and advance of socialist parties and ideas in the period covered by this book. However, he cannot shake off his hunt and this does weaken to a degree otherwise good analysis on the rapidly changing patterns of life for the bulk of people who by 1914 were industrial workers.

The prime weakness of this volume I feel is ironically the title's prime focus, i.e. empire. Hobsbawm clings so tightly to the Marxist perception that imperialism was primarily motivated by economic factors that despite the fact that he cannot help but details a whole range of other factors that are not economic, he feels he has to keep asserting the overwhelming authority of the economic perspective almost at the same moment as disproving this status for it. A big absence notable from comparison with 'The Age of Capital: 1848–1875' (1975) is that there is nothing on the victims of imperialism. With the earlier phase importantly he looked at that side of imperialism, by discussing those who had it imposed on them, a perspective that has even greater attention now than when Hobsbawm wrote this book. His ability to look at that side of the experience was what marked out his earlier work, even nowadays so I feel in this third volume he missed a real opportunity to develop that element. Despite the declared theme this is probably the most Eurocentric of the three books.

Overall as with the preceding two volumes, there is a mix of strong and weaker material. Hobsbawm does still stand out through freeing himself from chronology in a way which does still seem to hamper modern historical writing, especially on this semi-popular basis. However, his perception of the world shaped so strongly by his politics means that whenever he focuses on the economy and the working classes, his analysis is far weaker than when he brings it to other areas of less concern to Marxism such as intellectual and cultural trends.

The Books I Read In January

Fiction

'Azincourt' by Bernard Cornwell

As the title suggests this novel is set around the events of the Battle of Agincourt in 1415. While the French village nearby is called Azincourt, it has gone down in British history as Agincourt and that provided the US title of this book. Published in 2008, it owes a lot to Cornwell's novel 'Harlequin' (2000), the first of The Grail Quest series which I read in July 2020: http://rooksmoor.blogspot.com/2020/07/books-i-read-in-july.html  That featured the 1346 Battle of Crécy. As in that book it features an English archer, this time Nicholas Hook rather than Thomas of Hookton, who after a bloody rivalry in his village and trying to stop the rape and execution of some Lollards is sent to be part of the invasion of France that went so badly, especially due to the prolonged siege of Harfleur. There are many parallels with that earlier book, such as the hero fixing up with a woman in distress though this one survives longer than ones in that previous series.

Even for Cornwell, the book is very bloody and he does not hold back on the brutality of war at the time. The novel starts with the massacre at Soissons which gives Nicholas additional motives for his fight. It is better for being free of the mysticism seen in the holy grail books, though at times Nicholas does hear the voices of saints that guide him at vital moments. I guess, though given the beliefs of people at the time this can be seen as realistic. As usual, Cornwell provides a great deal of historical detail about battles but everyday aspects. However, this does not bog down the book, in part because the tensions between the characters are probably just the right side of overblown. While I did not enjoy this book as much as 'Fools and Mortals' (2017) which I read last year: http://rooksmoor.blogspot.com/2022/04/books-i-read-in-april.html it is a decent novel and certainly better than the second and third books in The Grail Quest sequence.

'The Hanging Garden' by Ian Rankin

This is the ninth Inspector Rebus novel and in contrast to the preceding one, 'Black and Blue' (1997) which I read in November: http://rooksmoor.blogspot.com/2022/11/the-books-i-read-in-november.html is much tauter. There is some confusion with it going back in time after the outset. However, the plot which involves Rebus going both after a new crime lord, Tommy Telford and investigating a potential Nazi war criminal living in Edinburgh is better focused without him gallivanting all over the place, rather it is more character focused. His daughter being harmed in a hit-and-run is another element, but in this novel Rankin balances them well and teases the reader with what is involved with the others. 

That element of wanting the novel to have a Hollywood feel, as he aimed to with 'Let It Bleed' (1995), http://rooksmoor.blogspot.com/2022/08/books-i-read-in-august.html is apparent here when there is a raid on a medical narcotics factory. The introduction of the Yakuza might be a step too far, but proves to be a necessary device to provide leverage when dealing with gangsters starting a gang war across Edinburgh and neighbouring locations. There is reference to the war in Bosnia and a trafficked refugee from it. Despite Rebus's connection to the woman, the engagement with her is rather unresolved and I did wonder if she turns up in subsequent books. Overall this was one of the more satisfying books in the Rebus series.

Non-Fiction

'Nazism 1919-1945. 3: Foreign Policy, War and Racial Extermination', ed. by J. [Jeremy] Noakes and G. [Geoffrey] Pridham

The title makes the focus of this book very clear. Like the preceding two volumes it draws heavily on a range of sources to provide translated primary material and connects this with historical analysis. That approach, hearing such a diverse range of voices is vital in this book because there are still included all the horrendous statistics of the German terror and extermination programmes. It is easy when reading of tens of thousands and then millions of victims to become numbed to what you are reading about. This is grounded in the human input.

This book is effectively a survey rather than focused explicitly on the Holocaust. It does however as with the previous volumes raise points that tend to get forgotten in a lot of general books on the Nazi regime which mean that though published in 1988 it remains of great value to students of the period. As with Volume 2, it continues to highlight how chaotic the regime was and is very adept at showing up the competing forces. This is an important counter to the portrayals of the regime as an efficient totalitarian machine. Looking at the foreign policy, the war and the racial policy, it shows the absence of clear plans beyond sweeping statements and the importance of local initiatives in moving forward activity, usually by men seeking Hitler's attention. The tensions that arose between wanting to exploit Jews, Poles and Russians for the war economy and wanting to slaughter them, comes out clearly. 

Karl Schleunes wrote of the 'twisted road to Auschwitz' and this book shows you that there were also many side turnings from that road. Though focused the book covers the 'euthanasia' programme, known later as T4, for killing disabled people and how, much stronger than I realised, it fed directly into the extermination camps. It looks at ghettoisation and Operation Reinhard and how the challenges of mass extermination combined with the wish to clear regions of Jews, drove the campaign on, but even then how much was chaotic and ad hoc. Overall, this book while chilling, successfully balances detail with the human perspective and I commend it now as a source even more than a third of a century on from its publication.

The Books I Read In December

 Fiction

'Cause for Alarm' by Eric Ambler

I only came to Ambler as a result of being given a couple of his books. This one was a green Penguin edition from when the book originally came out in 1938. Though writing adventure stories, Ambler was very good at making them realistic. This novel features unemployed British engineer Norman Marlow who desperate for work takes a job representing a British company which manufactures artillery shell casings in Italy. He is soon wrapped up in various conspiracies, typical of Ambler novels, pressed into providing information to a Yugoslav general who may be a German agent; an operative of the OVRA, the Italian secret police and an American who may be a Soviet agent, at a time when though there were concerns about Communists infiltrating the West, things such as the Cambridge Spies had not come to light. 

While it is fiction, it is well rooted in the realities of the time and interestingly plays on the tensions between Germany and Italy, who though allies retained a suspicion of each other. The second half of the book is an escape with Marlow aided by Andreas Zaleshoff as they make their way quite violently to Yugoslavia with the Italian authorities after them, in a way which is reminiscent of Buchan novels. Ambler does represent that bridge between Buchan and Deighton and gives an interesting and entertaining insight into what was going on in that period of the 20th Century. Some readers might find the 1930s manners unengaging but it is nice compared to some 'middle aged hero' books of today to find that the protagonist is flawed, uncertain and not superhuman.

'Trace' by Patricia Cornwell

This is the 13th of the 26 Dr. Kay Scarpetta novels that have been published since 1990. By this novel Scarpetta is the former Chief Medical Examiner for Virginia, now working as a private forensic specialist. In this novel she is called back to Richmond, Virginia to help into the investigation of the killing of a girl that initially looked like death from flu. Scarpetta's history in Richmond, including people she worked with and the building she worked in, all become mixed up in the story which turns out to be about a serial killer whose eyes we see through from early in the novel. Matters are confused by two parallel stories, about Scarpetta's niece Lucy Farinelli, a former FBI agent who runs a detective agency and training school in Florida and is investigating an assault against a trainee who was staying with her that she fancies. Lucy packs this woman off to stay with Wesley Benton, Scarpetta's current partner for psychological support. 

Jumping between the three strands, sometimes in chapters just two pages long does not add the pace that was presumably intended, but adds to a real sense of fragmentation. The connection between the three strands seems rather tenuous. It is difficult to invest in Lucy and Wesley but I guess that is because I was given this book alone without having seen those characters' histories develop across a series of books. This book is very much a procedural book and I guess it draws fans who are interested in all those details of process. I realised reading these books that I only engage with those when they supplement a mystery. I have spoken before about how I am not keen in seeing through the eyes of the killer which seems so popular these days. However, stripped of mystery, this seems to emphasise the plodding nature of the story working towards what feels like an inevitable conclusion.

I can understand why the Scarpetta books have proven to be popular, but this single one that I was given, has shown me that this is not the sort of writing that engages me in the slightest.

'Just One Damned Thing After Another' by Jodi Taylor

This is the first in what is now a 14 book series, with some extra sub-books listed, though I do not know what format they come in. It is set in St. Mary's Institute of Historical Research. Knowing both St. Mary's University and the Institute of Historical Research, maybe that was what drew me to the series. The novel is set in some undisclosed near future. The Institute is an offshoot of the fictional University of Thirsk on the edge of the North Yorkshire Moors. Holographic presentations are relatively easy to use, but cheques still seem to be around. The institute carries out its research using time machines though no details of how these function is given.

The novel is rather erratic. Taylor seems to have felt compelled to draw on a range of tropes. With a specialist unit working in relatively secrecy in a rural English setting I was reminded of the true stories of Bletchley Park, and of 'Enigma' (1995) by Robert Harris and 'The Small Back Room' (1943) by Nigel Balchin. Some reviewers have noted the almost old fashioned British behaviour, including lots of tea drinking. However, despite some modern swearing a lot of the relationships could be from a wartime novel. 

Perhaps unsurprisingly there is a real feel of a UK version of 'Timeless' (2016-18) though as that was shown three years after this novel was published, perhaps it informed that, rather than the other way around. The sub-plot of a devious antagonist who stole a time travelling pod, certainly seemed to ring bells. Similarly with the different units such as technicians, security, catering, etc. it also reminded me of 'Battlestar Galactica' (2004-09) especially with a love interest called 'Chief' for much of the time, I could not help envisage him as portrayed by Aaron Douglas who has a very similar role in that TV series.

The internal politics of the place seemed characteristic of the numerous 'school' novels that are common in Young Adult literature. In fact by effectively stripping Dr. Madeleine 'Max' Maxwell of her doctorate and rendering her 'Miss. Maxwell' and people using lots of surnames does give that 'boarding school' feel and makes Madeleine feel much younger than she is. Maybe this is because it is written in the first person so foregrounds her personal feelings a great deal, which do seem rather youthful. The novel covers five years and she must be in her late 20s or early 30s by the end and yet she feels more like Enola Holmes.

The story is adventurous with all the induction and training that is necessary in the first novel of someone coming to an institution. It gets through characters at an alarming rate. Many of those we are introduced to are either kicked out, leave or are killed. The title fits very well with the course of the book, but to a degree as one of the nastier characters argues, it almost becomes ridiculous. I know Taylor probably wanted there to be a genuine sense of jeopardy and thus to eliminate characters who we had invested in, but she does it a bit too much, reducing our investment in other characters. Keeping track of all the names, especially with the switches between title, surname and first name, does not help.

The book does, fortunately, take a feminist outlook. The handling of everyday misogyny is handled reasonably well; overcoming a miscarriage gets rather lost in the flashes and bangs. One twist revealing harassing behaviour is well done. There is a challenge because Taylor has a set-up which looks like 1943 but set in perhaps 2043. The 'cast' is not diverse, it is very much like an English boarding school. Maxwell, as she is usually called, does press back against some of the unacceptable attitudes, but in some ways because she is rather juvenilised, there is still a default to her 'elders'.

As you can probably tell I was ambivalent about this book. I felt it was almost weighed down by all that had gone before. At times Taylor shakes off that: both the fictional and the real life British (historical) culture. Her protagonist is in a difficult position as a mature, knowledgeable woman, yet who has to deal with incessant danger and it seems that the only acceptable mode for that is to face it as a kind of sparky teenager. There is enough in here to interest me and there were good twists I had not foreseen. I am interested to see how the story goes once the 'induction' period is done with and the characters settle down, assuming Taylor does not continue to burn through them at a rate. I do admire her willingness amongst all the tropeage to turn in different directions. While I feel Dr. Maxwell is reducing herself to fit in, she is an interesting character to follow.

Non-Fiction

'The Age of Capital. 1848-1875' by Eric Hobsbawm

As Hobsbawm identifies himself, in contrast to the previous volume in this series 'The Age of Revolution: Europe 1789–1848' (1962): http://rooksmoor.blogspot.com/2022/09/books-i-read-in-september.html  there is not the energy given to this survey that the concept of the Dual Revolution gave that book. The main theme is the success of liberalism in terms of pushing the capitalist economy not simply on in Europe but increasingly in other parts of the world. Like a 1st Year undergraduate, at times Hobsbawm gets rather dazzled by all the figures of coal and steel production or the length of railways laid. 

What leavens this is that he does try at times to see both sides of these developments. While not unique in 1975 when this book was published, especially with the rise of so-called 'subaltern history' (Hobsbawm uses the term 'subaltern' quite a bit), it was relatively rare of people especially in general histories to look at the downsides of the onward march of capitalism and industrialisation. However, Hobsbawm includes a chapter on the Losers of the process, including people outside Europe exploited by the advance of industry as well as those Europeans whose livelihoods were disrupted or destroyed and had to comply with the increasing authoritarianism in the workplace. He is particularly interesting in terms of patterns of migration both within and to outside Europe.

The prime flaw is one that we saw in The Age of Revolution'. As a Marxist, Hobsbawm seems compelled to sniff out even the tiniest sign of revolutionary potential. He is rather patronising towards those rebellions such as in Hungary or bringing about the unification of Italy, which lack that social revolutionary aspect. Given that this is a time when Karl Marx (1818-83) was particularly active, he feels obliged too, to reference any input that Marx had and to judge other thinkers as lesser than his hero. While Marx was important, this distortion in viewing the other inputs, which as the meagre evidence of revolution in this period he brings forward shows, had a far greater impact on the thinking and behaviour of people in this period, weakens his case.

Without the great dramatic events of the previous book, the thematic approach, making sure to investigate culture and science as well as industry and politics, works even better in this volume. Hobsbawm is good at countering the default assumption of too many that somehow all the 19th Century was pretty much the same and brings out effectively the differences between life at the start of this period and life 27 years later. In itself that does bring home that while one may not be able to speak of a revolution per se in this period, millions of people in many parts of the world saw radical change in their lives within a single generation. While Hobsbawm touches on this on occasion, I feel that actually the message you take away from this book, has that, rather than any seedlings of revolution, as its prime point and indeed a strength of what at times can be rather erratic analysis.

The Books I Read In November

Fiction

'Black and Blue' by Ian Rankin

It is interesting that the editions of Rankin's books I am reading have an introductory essay from the author about where he was in his career when he wrote the particular book. While this is the eighth book in his Rebus series, he still felt he was only just coming to the end of his kind of apprenticeship period. I guess a kind of scrappiness is something that is characteristic of Rankin's writing but though maybe he felt it took him time to get into producing these books, the rough edges do not seem to have put off readers. Perhaps this is because the tone seems to be appropriate for his character and the cases he deals with.

This one has quite a lot of running back and forth and is almost too inter-twined for its own good. A number of disparate cases including a man committing suicide while being tortured prove to be connected and link the drugs trade in Glasgow with that in Aberdeen especially supplying oil rig workers - the book was published in 1997 when the industry still seemed to have a glorious future. There is too much jammed into this book. There are environmental protestors one of whom is missing, maybe murdered. There is a separate element about Rebus being grilled about his involvement with the framing of another killer in the past which leads him having to be accompanied everywhere and leads to him giving up alcohol. There are also corrupt police involved and a parallel story which was not really necessary of a serial killer called Johnny Bible seeking to copy the genuine killer of the late 1960s Bible John. While the latter has never been found, Rankin features him as a character through whose eyes we see.

While there are some interesting elements including seeing a portrayal of 1990s Aberdeen and Shetland as well as Edinburgh, it is very much as if Rankin is trying too hard to get all these themes in when there was sufficient in the parallel plots to provide two, perhaps three novels. It does get rather tedious with all the travelling back and forth even when it shows you different settings. The distinctiveness of each of these is reduced by him putting in so much. Overall, while it has some good elements, it is too ragged, too full to be really engaging.

'Devices and Desires' by K.J. Parker [Tom Holt]

Not to be confused with the books of the same title by P.D. James [Phyllis James/White] or Kate Hubbard. This is another book in which less could have been more. It is a straight forward fantasy in a kind of non-magical late medieval style setting. While there are some nomadic tribes and an exotic 'old country' which provides mercenaries, the story is mainly focused around the city state of the Republic of Mezentine, a kind of Venice-like place which has a monopoly on the most advanced engineering, but is choking itself by barring innovations which go against the established specifications and the internecine fighting of guilds and bureaucracy. The two other states featured are mountain neighbours, with a low level of technological development, the Duchy of Eremia and the Duchy of Valdis which is wealthier due to silver deposits. The chief military engineer from Mezentine, Ziani Vaatzes escapes execution for creating a toy which is not compliant with specifications and finds refuge in Eremia which he equips with some of the Mezentine technology allowing the duchy to hold off invasion.

I have two problems with the novel. One is that we flit among the points of view of a number of different characters often very abruptly, taking us back and forth between Mezentine and the duchies and then within them, so bringing in sub-plots about a sense of duty and correspondence between the Duke of Eremia and Duchess of Vadania. This makes the book which is 706 pages in my edition a slow read as you have to keep reorientating yourself to whose view you are now seeing and then mercenary generals are also thrown into the mix.

The other thing is that it feels that Parker is trying to pull off a satirical, almost whimsical attitude in the vein of Jonathan Swift. He seeks to satirise perhaps fantasy writing or the real world elements that lay behind it. We see him take on bureaucracy, the attitudes of nobility, merchants, the military and engineers - especially tinkerers in their garages. This is done in a kind of affectionate way and yet it jars. It is not deft enough to be Swift or funny enough to be Terry Pratchett. It leaves a bitter taste when Parker describes torture, wounding and death. It would have been a lot better if either more light hearted, or particularly, if Parker had played it straight and put in a real sense of jeopardy and grimness rather than pulling his punches in an attempt to be satirical.

Non-Fiction
'Nazism 1919-1945. 2: State, Economy and Society, 1933-1939', ed. by J. [Jeremy] Noakes and G. [Geoffrey] Pridham

As with volume 1, this book is very useful in reminding you about aspects of the Nazi regime which these days too often get overlooked in general coverage. In its different sections, again drawing on speeches, articles, accounts and reports, it shows you the machinery of the regime and its contradictions. It considers a range of themes such as agriculture, the Nazi party and the state; women and young people. It is particularly strong on the economic aspects showing the growing militarised situation and how this was organised, pretty chaotically. There are also useful sections on public opinion and on anti-Semitism, important contexts ahead of Volume 3.

For me I think the most interesting aspect was simply how much conflict there was within the Nazi regime, aided by Hitler favouring a Social Darwinist approach to the development of the society and so at different times in different locales one of the sides would come out on top but elsewhere at other times another party or state agency would win through. We do see how the 'little Hitlers' were empowered and fought for supremacy often at a small, local level or in one sector. There was conflict within the Nazi party itself as well as outside it. In many ways you end up wondering how it managed to last so long without imploding, in part perhaps due to the efficiency of the civil service caste in Germany that while asserting its authority, did nothing to undermine the Nazi machine as a whole.

I feel this is a useful book for those interested in understanding how a dictatorship might work and showing how the Nazi regime was far from being a monolith, instead a seething mass of individual jealousies and attempts to grab power by men in various sectors and locations in the country and increasingly beyond too.