Review: The Loosening Skin by Aliya Whiteley

The Loosening Skin is another very smart, high concept,  immersive novel by Aliya Whiteley. She is truly one of the most original talents writing speculative fiction at the moment.

The novel is set in a world where humans shed their skins every few years. And with the skin, they shed something crucial: (romantic & erotic) love. So, every seven or eight or ten years, humans get a complete reset of their emotional attachments - aside from "The Bond" with their parents, which can survive the shedding, and, generally, platonic friendship.

We follow the story of a woman who sheds more than just love: she reinvents herself after every shedding. She's been a soldier, a bodyguard, a private investigator, a charity shop clerk. We get her story in 2003. 2005. 2006. 2013. Then, to her surprise, it's her shop clerk persona who is hired to investigate perhaps the greatest mystery, a locked room heist that should have been impossible...

Aliya Whiteley is brilliant at writing authentic, human characters. They're not usually heroic, but they might be involved in larger than life situations, albeit in a slightly selfish, slightly flawed, not always in complete control kind of way. No matter how strange the premise of her worlds are, the people who live there are always recogniseably, convincingly human.  So, too, in The Loosening Skin.

I pretty much devoured the whole book on a long train journey. It was mesmerising and evocative, as Whiteley's writing always is. It did get unsettling at times, but the sense of the uncanny was less all-pervading than it was in The Beauty (her masterpiece so far). However, the switches between third person and first person, the non-linear structure, and the final third of the book, jolted me out of the story a little. In fact, I felt the second ending, or the extended epilogue, wasn't really necessary: the story had ended, and then we got a new perspective, a sequel of sorts, stretching the novella into a novel-length book, but not, in my opinion, into a better whole.

Even so, if you want to experience a world that is very different and yet very recogniseable, and horror of the most human sort, The Loosening Skin is first rate speculative fiction, by a world class author.

Rating: 4/5

Review: The Traitor by Seth Dickinson

The Traitor (also known as The Traitor Baru Cormorant) is a novel set in an alternative world with alternative peoples, cultures, history. Unlike Westeros, it has no dragons, no ghosts, no magic - or at least, it does not have them yet, not in the parts of the world that this novel takes place in.

We first meet Baru Cormorant when she is a little girl in Taranoke, a volcanic island inhabited by fierce and loving people. Her family consists of two fathers and one mother, and life in Taranoke is seemingly uncomplicated when it comes to matters of society. There is sex equality, liberty, tolerance. There are also skirmishes between tribes, little wars, diseases, but Baru is as yet untouched by trauma.

Then, Empire arrives. The empire of Falcrest, the Maskerade, sends ships and goods and trade and comes with innovations like paper money and standard currency, with technology and medicine and progress. Baru is fascinated by the ships, fascinated by the people, fascinated by the way her parents are scared and the way her people trade their freedoms away for improvements in living standards and consumer goods. Soon, she is offered a place in an Imperial school, where she has a chance to learn so much about the world...

...but the most memorable lessons are not the ones about astronomy, navigation, mathematics. Baru's mind loves those things, and she excels, but they do not shape her soul. Instead, it is what happens to one of her fathers that leaves a mark on her self. Or what happens to her people while she is kept safe in school - a mass dying, disease and catastrophe, also the result of engagement with empire. And what happens to lesbians, gays, people who do not fit the empire's principles of "incrastic" hygiene.

Eventually, Baru leaves her island, aiming for the heart of the empire. Aiming to change.

The Traitor is an amazing novel. It is told in dramatic, epic prose. It is a novel that looks at the world through the eyes of accountancy, macroeconomics, history, and wonders about systems, changes, individuals, compromise, absolutism. Falcrest is a strange empire, filled with persecution, racial theories, eugenics and terrible persecution, but also with meritocracy, scientific progress, capitalist enrichment and even a certain kind of democracy. And power in that empire is not wielded by an individual, but by a cabal of people who hold the power to destroy each other, but who conspire together to keep wielding the power in their little group.

The Traitor is a novel of political theory and accountancy and grand drama. It's much more overtly interested in theory and philosophy than Song of Ice and Fire, but similarly epic in scope. Reading it a second time (as the next novel in the series has finally been published), it felt like a somewhat cold and ruthless and cynical novel - but that is the point. Baru is a ruthless character, a player, an operator, someone who is driven and hungry to succeed no matter the cost. The fact that she is not a psychopath makes the book all the harder to read, as she is all too aware of the costs of her actions.

I still recommend The Traitor unequivocally. Few novels made me sit up and think as much as this one. Now, in 2019, I think the novel grossly overestimates the influence and effectiveness of intelligent conspiracies, and woefully underestimate the impact of chaotic elements...  the world is apparently run by stupid conspiracies of stupid people being stupid. The past few years have been a hard lesson in how shameless, overt and incompetent the powers that be can really be. So the novel now feels ridiculously idealistic in its belief in the fundamental competence of the main actors that shape the world, even if they are mostly evil.

Still, despite having aged less well than I'd thought, Baru Cormorant is worth your time.

Rating: 5/5

PS: I also reviewed The Traitor Baru Cormorant in 2015, when I first read it.

Review: The Prince of Cats by D. E. Olesen

The Prince of Cats is an adventure novel about a thief in a fictitious medieval Arabian city. We meet Jawad, our hero, in a dungeon, awaiting his fate. Instead of the executioner, a private guard comes to visit him, to interrogate him about the Prince of Cats - an infamous thief. Jawad offers up just enough information to be useful, so he is taken from the dungeon and put in the service of a rich trader. His task: to catch the Prince of Cats, and to protect the wealth of the merchant.

The novel does the handwaving, vaguely Arabic thing that some stories do - infatuated with the aesthetic, but not willing to locate the novel in one place or time. Its setting is basically the world of the tales of "Arabian Nights", only there is no magic, there are no djinn, and there is no Islam. It's not really a fantasy setting, nor history.

So we get street rats, slaves, guards, gangs of thieves, rich merchants trading silk and dyes, jewels and silver and gold. We get Arabic names and words (medina, haramlik, etc - I assume it's Arabic rather than Ottoman, but cannot be sure as I don't know any of the languages of the Middle East). And we get the threat of thieves' hands being chopped off, a lot of socialising over tea, and advances in astronomy and mathematics. On the other hand, we also get a gay character, and women characters who have a relatively high degree of autonomy and independence.

Between the setting and the adventure filled plot, the novel makes for an easy read. Jawad keeps his plans and schemes to himself, so the reader might see what he does, and get glimpses of his thoughts, but anything that relates to why he does the things he does, or what he plans to do, is withheld until it happens / comes to fruition. Even so, some plot twists are not hugely surprising.

What was a bit surprising is just how much Jawad gets put through the wringer in the book. Clearly, the author is of the Jim Butcher school of thinking, throwing his protagonist into ever deeper piles of shit, peril and torture. Unfortunately, I did not find that this made me feel more worried about the character, or more invested in him. He tries to play it cool, so as a reader, I shrug off his pains quite easily.

By far the biggest problem the book has is that Jawad has virtually no friends. He has some connection with two old men who both seem to suffer from the early stages of Alzheimer's, but they aren't his peers / mates, but acquaintances he feels fond of. He also slowly grows slightly attached to two people in the merchant's household, but keeps them at arm's length and ultimately proves himself unworthy of their trust.

The Thief of Cats is entertaining, but not brilliant, not breathlessly paced, not so engrossing that you can't put it down. Its characters are okay, but not charismatic or mysterious or memorable enough to feel very strongly about them. It's basically the sort of novel that you might get if you took The Lies of Locke Lamora, set it in an Arabian setting, and toned down all the  excitement by a notch, and took out any Locke-Jean bromance (and any other close friendship).

Fans of Harry Dresden novels are likely to find this book right up their street - it's on a par with that series.

Rating: 3/5

Review: Nondula by Ana Salote

Nondula is a children's fantasy novel and the sequel to the amazing Oy Yew. So, before you read this review, check out my review of Oy Yew - it's such an awesome children's book.

Now, Nondula. After their narrow escape at the end of Oy Yew, a handful of waifs are blown into a different land by a tornado. Specifically, Oy, Alas, Gertie, Gritty and Linnet. The land they arrive in is Nondula, and it is something akin to a utopia, only its neighbour is a dystopia, so there's trouble brewing ahead.

Nondula is a land of vegetarian peaceful academics, who live peacefully, discover their inner jenie (spirit) and are driven mainly by self-realisation. Their neighbours, Fellund, are carnivorous thugs, short-sighted, short-tempered, abusive, violent and greedy. They abduct Nondulans (and people from other lands), enslave people, and are entirely villainous. Soon, Oy and his fellow waifs are caught up in the conflict.

Nondula is a very different book to Oy Yew. There is still a gentleness around the way the waifs are written, but other than that, everything has changed. Even the characters have changed: Alas is now standoffish and paranoid, in a way that felt like it was exaggerated compared to his characterisation in Oy Yew. That change in particular made me wonder whether the book was written after a long break rather than immediately after its predecessor.

There are also changes in the pacing, plot, and atmosphere. Oy Yew was a masterpiece, even if it was sometimes bewildering and disorienting. It built an atmosphere of peril and threat, but did so by using dread more than anything else. Nondula tries to be less bewildering. We spend the first third of the book in a utopia where everyone has a bit of a rest after the grand adventures of the first book. The slow and gradual start is then followed by adventures in Fellund, but those adventures feature more violence and physical abuse than the first book, and less ominous dread. Torture, executions, animal abuse, children being hunted with dogs (and, it is implied, being torn apart by them)... if Oy Yew was a novel comparable to Krabat, Momo, The Owl Service, then Nondula is more like Gulliver's Travels or the Wizard of Oz, a travelogue through weird lands, but distinctly more violent.

There is still a richness and a gentleness around the way the book sees the waifs. Poor Linnet's illness is heartbreaking throughout the story. But the kid gloves have come off  - Oy gets thrown around, injured, tortured. Slaves and dogs and animals are whipped, tortured, abused, killed en masse. The first book was about something fragile and kind trying to survive in an ominous and cruel world. This book is about fragile and kind things being abused and kicked around and damn near pulverised. For me, dread and threat are more effective in a story than brute force, so Nondula didn't bewitch me the way that Oy Yew did.

Much as I loved Oy Yew, I must admit that I struggled through Nondula. With unsteady pacing and a totally different atmosphere, it didn't feel like a continuation. I still wholeheartedly recommend the book Oy Yew: it works fine as a standalone and needn't be a trilogy. Nondula... well, I don't know if my expectations were too high after the first book, or whether having a case of man-flu was affecting my enjoyment, but I wasn't engaged by it in the same way. That said, other reviewers rate Nondula as highly as Oy Yew, so I may well be the odd one out on this one.

Rating: 3/5

Review: Oy Yew by Ana Salote

Oy Yew is a children's novel set in another world. It's not a world of magic or dragons or aliens, but a world much like ours around the time of Charles Dickens' stories.

Oy is a tiny boy who grows up sustaining himself on crumbs and the smells of food. He's mostly unnoticed until one day someone does spot him. Then, he is quickly caught and forced into servitude, first in a factory, then in a country mansion. His comrades in slavery are other waifs, children from Poria who arrived on the shores of Affland as boat people on tiny rafts, sent across the sea by desperate parents during a famine.

Oy is the smallest waif, the quietest waif, the one who listens and offers nothing but kindness and intuition to those around him. His presence gradually improves the lives of the other waifs, but it also brings with it an intuition that something is wrong. How come there have been more accidents than usual lately, always befalling the waifs about to be freed? What secrets lurk in the sinister Bone Room? And why is Master Jep, a bone collector, suddenly so interested in Oy's thumbs?

Oy Yew is a fantastically atmospheric novel. It reminded me of Otfried Preussler's Krabat, and of Michael Ende's Momo. (Oy is quite similar to Momo in many ways). Or, in more British terms, of Alan Garner's scary children's novels - except that the atmosphere in Oy Yew is richer, the story more lovingly told. There is a tenderness in Oy Yew where Alan Garner goes for grand drama, and that tenderness makes it a more beautiful story. Basically, it's a superior novel to The Owl Service and The Weirdstone of Brisingamen.

It's not flawless: at times, the text moves too fast, in a disorienting way. Some of that disorientation happens early on, which could discourage some readers. I don't know whether the author was trying to create an atmosphere of hectic movement, or whether she saw the story in her mind and left out some words that might have helped me as a reader to follow it. All I know is that there were quite a few times when I was a little bewildered over who was there, who was who, and what was going on. I imagine child readers are likely to get confused, too. Those moments of bewilderment are literally the only flaw, and it's very much worth persevering if the text befuddles you momentarily.

The prose is beautiful, the story is filled with atmosphere, creepiness, tension, kindness and joy. The waifs are lovely and the characters around them include quite a few memorable personalities. Even as an adult reader, I was on the edge of my seat at many points, and I felt the peril in the story was real.

To my mind, this is one of the finest children's novels ever written. It's so good that I consider myself an instant fan of the author and immediately ordered the sequel.

Rating: 5/5

Review: The Bullet-Catcher’s Daughter by Rod Duncan

The Bullet-Catcher's Daughter is a fast-paced adventure novel set in an alternative, steampunky Britain, where the industrial revolution has slowed to a crawl and a civil war has split the country into a puritan Republic in the North and a flamboyant Kingdom in the South.

Elizabeth Barnabus, our heroine, is a refugee from the Kingdom, living in the Republic. She has fled because she was about to be enslaved due to family debts, and being the (sex) slave of an evil old Lord did not appeal to her. In the Republic, she leads a double life, running a detective agency dressed as a man (her supposed brother), while managing the home (a boat) and neighbours as herself. Here, too, she has financial problems, and unless she can earn a huge sum within a few months, she'll lose her home.

Enter a mysterious Lady from across the border, with an assignment that promises to be richly rewarded: find her missing brother (who has left the Kingdom with a circus now touring the Republic), and all Elizabeth's troubles will be solved.

Of course, things never quite go to plan.

There's a lot to like about The Bullet-Catcher's Daughter. The pace is fast. The tropes are fun. (Femme fatale! Circus! Detectives and spies! Mysterious strangers! Women dressing as men to outsmart the Patriarchy!) ... It's never boring and Elizabeth is kept busy chasing her quarry and being chased by nefarious villains.

There's also a lot that could be a bit better. (One of the defining features of Angry Robot books is that they have a portfolio of interesting, promising books, many of which could have used a bit more editorial massaging to polish into shape). For example, the world building is a bit wonky. The history is drip fed into the story, but feels like it only exists in the very broadest strokes. The plot paints a sinisterly powerful Patent Office, but after reading it I still have no idea why the patent office has powers, what its motives are in the present, nor what it was set up to do in the first place. Our hero is supposed to be very good at leading her double life, undiscovered for five years, but in the space of the novel a surprising number of people find out her secret. And ultimately, the resolutions of the plot around the missing brother and the McGuffin felt rushed and a bit... inconsistent. (Pretty much everything about the McGuffin was a bit odd).

So: a pleasant steampunky caper, good fun, but a little rough around the edges.

Rating: 3.5/5

Book Review: Farthing by Jo Walton

Farthing is a novel set in 1949 in an alternative history version of England. The war with Germany is over. After the British humiliation at Dunkirk, Rudolf Hess' flight to the UK ended not in his lifelong imprisonment, but in a negotiated "Peace with Honour" along the lines that Hess proposed: the two nations no longer fought each other, leaving Germany free to concentrate on Hitler's campaign in Russia and Britain free to keep an iron grip on its Empire. Germany is still at war, but Britain is at peace, and the war never really turned into a World War...

Lucy, our protagonist, is the daughter of two of the aristocrats involved in arranging this outcome. Known as "the Farthing set", these aristocrats and conservative politicians have faded from the political mainstream after successfully outmanoeuvring Churchill and making peace with Hitler.

When Lucy married a Jewish banker working on microloans to help disadvantaged people, her mother was horrified. A Jew in her family - such an outrage! So it is a surprise when Lucy and her husband are invited to a weekend party in her parents' countryside manor.

An even bigger surprise is revealed in the morning, when one of the key Farthing Set politicians is found dead, with a yellow felt star stabbed into his chest. So begins a murder mystery unlike any other I've read. A smart inspector, supported by his earnest constable, is investigating the case. Immense pressure rides on its outcome - and keeping a bunch of very rich and powerful people restricted to a manor house quickly turns out to  be half the challenge.

Meanwhile, Lucy's husband quickly finds himself the prime suspect. Over the next few days, secrets, intrigue, and a growing number of bodies turn the investigation into an ever-more-complex mystery.

Farthing is not just outstanding because the mystery at the heart of the plot is a well-executed homage to Agatha Christie style crime fiction. Nor is it the alternative history that makes the novel remarkable. Instead, it is the cast of worryingly authentic characters. Lucy, a former socialite whose motive for loving her husband is at least in part a rebellion against her unpleasant mother, is a flighty, shallow heroine to begin with. A homosexual inspector who, like most of British society, is antisemitic, but who does not let his prejudices colour his investigation. Antisemitism and prejudice (and people's responses to both) are handled very authentically in the novel. The plot progresses very smoothly from pure crime mystery to something much more thoughtful.

To be honest, I didn't expect to like Farthing. While I generally very much enjoy Jo Walton's work, I also happen to have a dislike of fiction set in WW2 / Nazi times, and a dislike of period fiction about aristocrats flouncing about in period dress. Farthing was thus a novel that I bought (due to being a fan of Jo Walton) and then ignored on my Kindle for years (due to its subject matter & cover). I'm glad that I eventually gave it a try. It's a smart, tense, compelling novel, worthy of praise for its originality, its pace, and especially for its authenticity.

Rating: 5/5

Review: Digger by Ursula Vernon

Digger is a graphic novel that started life as a webcomic. Unlike many webcomics, this was not merely a short strip of cartoon humour. Instead, Digger is a long form fantasy epic, told through the medium of a serialised comic strip, almost right from the start. And so Digger - the complete Omnibus Edition is absolutely the best way to read the story.

Digger is a wombat, from a world where wombatkind live in warrens and where wombats are a no-nonsense, practical and deeply unspiritual species, concerned primarily with feats of civil engineering. Or so we are told by Digger herself, whom we meet elsewhere.

When we first meet Digger, she's in the process of accidentally tunnelling into a different world, through sinister, magic-infested caves that induce hallucinations (and which may contain monsters who want to skin her), and out through the floor of a temple dedicated to an elephant God of compassion and peace and stuff. This is a world where no one has ever seen a wombat themselves (though the species is not unheard of, merely semi-mythical and rumoured to be extinct).

Being an atheist in the temple of a God can be a bit awkward. It's even more awkward if the statue of the elephant god in question starts having conversations with you, probing why exactly you breached the temple, through a troublesomely semi-metaphysical hole which doesn't quite seem to be part of the world, and what exactly your intentions are...

What follows is a story that finds its feet by improvising, introducing this strange world and its inhabitants to Digger, before deciding that it was meant to be a tale of epic fantasy all along, and developing a plot to suit. Except, this is an epic fantasy starring a hero who really doesn't like gods, or prophecies, or magic, and who deeply distrusts anyone who foolishly messes around with such unpredictable things.

Digger is a refreshingly different hero. She's tough, a builder (with the mannerisms and working class attitude that entails), and primarily concerned with a desire to return home. She doesn't have an ounce of nambypamby romance in her heart. There's no romantic interest, no desire to start a family or have children, and we even find out that wombat marriages are arranged through medium term contracts, a few years in length. Digger herself is often rude (especially to oracular snails) and generally selfish (quests to save the world from unspeakable evil are only of any interest if they further her goal of returning home)

The humour in Digger ranges between wry wit, subverted expectations and slapstick. However, despite plenty of chuckles, Digger is not a work of comic fiction in my mind. Humour serves and enhances the story from time to time - but the story does not serve the humour.

In her adventures, Digger encounters joy, triumph, heroism, tragedy, innocence, atrocity, wisdom and stupidity. She may have no stomach for spiritualism or romantic notions of heroism and valour, but she always has time for people (no matter what shape, species or gender those people may have). Digger is one of those works which have a certain kindness at their heart. Often in the course of the story, Digger starts out at cross purposes with a character, but eventually grows to know them. Some become friends and allies. Others don't, but are generally understood by Digger (and the reader) to be decent enough people in their own way (or at least, to be following their own moral logic), even if they happen to be trying to do evil things to Digger and her friends.

What really makes Digger work is that it's filled with show-stealing characters. Digger herself is a great centre of gravity for all the others to circle around, but those others are largely outstanding in their own right. There's tragic Ed, a male hyena expelled from his matriarchic tribe, there's the innocent but frighteningly powerful Shadowchild, and there's the very very young Hag, and perhaps most showstealing of them all, there's Sorka the Bridge Troll...

Digger is a wonderful book.

If you took Labyrinth and The Princess Bride and substracted the romance / teen notions of love, but left in everything else magical and wonderful and added a prosaic, impatient wombat civil engineer to the mix, you might - just might - end up with something a little bit like Digger. But you'd have to be a bit of a genius - and Ursula Vernon, it seems, is definitely that.

Rating: 5/5.
Super highly recommended.

PS: I am selling my copy (with a heavy heart) as I will be moving house soon. Interested in buying it? Get in touch!

Review: River of Teeth by Sarah Gailey

River of Teeth is a novella that is completely irresistible. Here's the back cover blurb:

"In the early 20th Century, the United States government concocted a plan to import hippopotamuses into the marshlands of Louisiana to be bred and slaughtered as an alternative meat source. This is true.
Other true things about hippos: they are savage, they are fast, and their jaws can snap a man in two.
This was a terrible plan.
Contained within this volume is an 1890s America that might have been: a bayou overrun by feral hippos and mercenary hippo wranglers from around the globe. It is the story of Winslow Houndstooth and his crew. It is the story of their fortunes. It is the story of his revenge."

An alternative Western, full of hippos and cowboys riding on hippos, herding hippos, ranching hippos? As alternative histories go, that has surely got to be one of the most unashamedly fun premises ever conceived, made all the more delicious by the fact that it is based on a real historic plan which never quite got carried out..

And as far as the hippos go, the novella doesn't disappoint one bit. Ruby, Abigail, Rosa and Betsy (the hippos) are show stealers: the human cast of the story are, to be honest, not half as interesting as their mounts.

Aside from the novelty factor, River of Teeth is a fast moving story of revenge and a great caper totally-above-board operation, featuring an evil robber baron as villain, as well as a motley crew of Western archetypes: an ex-rancher, a gun-for-hire, an assassin, a technical (explosives & poisons) expert, a pickpocket con woman...

This being 2017, post Hugo-gamergate-alt-right-social-justice-warrior kerfuffle, the cast is ethnically and sexually hyper-diverse to the point of very ham-fisted pandering to (certain) audiences' demands. It's mildly distracting, until one of the plot points is the fact that the only white male of the group has become unavailable for a task that only a white male with a moustache could accomplish, putting the quest at risk. That particular obstacle, and its resolution, are more full of plotholes than an Emmental cheese.

As a matter of fact, the story as a whole is quite full of holes and discontinuities: it could have used some editorial browbeating into something that has convincing internal logic. For a novella, the cast of characters is quite big, so the story spends 40% of its length on putting the gang together. Some characters turn out to not have very many tasks to accomplish within the gang, fulfilling narrative purposes rather than fitting the mission. Internal logic, it turns out, only mattered to the author when it comes to the hippos (the appendix contains a detailed history of this alternative America and its hippos). For the main plot, not so much.

Despite the OTT diversity pandering and the very loose attitude towards internal logic, River of Teeth is rollicking fun. Ultimately, this is a Western filled with hippos, and it moves fast enough and has hippos enough to make its narrative sins more than forgivable.

Great fun!

Rating: 4/5

The Beginning Woods by Malcolm McNeill

The Beginning Woods was originally written and published in German (with a title which translates as 'The Forest of Dreaming Stories'), by a Scottish Brit living there. Now, it's being published in English for the first time. This is the sort of cultural mixing worth celebrating about Europe and the EU...

OK, ok, back to the topic at hand. The book, not Brexit.

While it is marketed as a children's novel, The Beginning Woods strikes me as book that grown ups will appreciate more. Reading it on an e-reader, I can't be absolutely sure, but my impression was that this is a fairly thick novel. It's not just the length that might intimidate children - the story starts with two nestled prologues, each of which concerns adult characters. One explains the back story of this world - people have started vanishing and leaving behind only a puddle of clothes, and no one knows why - while the other introduces readers to a scientist and a witch.

Only after those preambles do we meet our protagonist, a kobold baby in a human orphanage, too ugly to be adopted. Except, at the very last minute before he would have been discarded / moved to permanent accommodations (apparently, orphanages are sort of showrooms for children - those no one wants are taken elsewhere. Who knew?), a one-armed man and his wife adopt him after all. They call him Max.

Max grows up, and over several chapters we follow him during his childhood. Eventually, he reaches an age where he starts to resent his parents (who had been nothing but loving), predominantly for being different from him and not wanting him to be a complete bookworm. Then, books are banned as a scientist claims they are to blame for the vanishings, and events rapidly take turns for the dramatic.

The Woods, which are mentioned in the prologue, only begin to enter the narrative when Max crosses from the real world into theirs, in search of his origins. Once in the woods, Max meets Marta, a cold girl, and the story gains a lot of heart, soul and joy. It becomes playful where it had been sullen and sulky.

The English blurb reads like a movie trailer. The German blurb, meanwhile, calls the book a dark fairytale with philosophical depth, perfect for fans of Carlos Ruiz Zafon and Michael Ende. It's pretty clear in both cases that publishers and editors saw a treasure in this book. They are not wrong.

There is indeed a lot to love about the novel. Once Max is having adventures in the Woods, the story is alive and wonderful. However, it takes a long time before the novel reaches that point. Comparisons with The Neverending Story and The Shadow of the Wind are well deserved: the book is indeed rich and deep. Like the Neverending Story, the transition between worlds happens almost halfway through the tale. However, unlike the Neverending Story, the joyful, pacey half comes second. The Neverending Story hooks you from the start, while The Beginning Woods hook you in the latter half of the tale. With a somewhat plodding pace (similar to Shadow of the Wind's), the first half might lose readers' attentions.

I don't really think this is a children's novel. No, there is no inappropriate language, gore or sex. However, children't novels rarely follow characters as they grow from babies to teenagers. Usually, children's books take place at a specific age of their protagonist's life. Similarly, children's novels tend to start with children, not with prologue after prologue about adults. Most importantly of all, children's novels don't usually allow themselves any slack in their pace. It takes patience to stick with this book. Much as that patience is rewarded by the richness and depth of the fantasy woods, I fear child readers are unlikely to persevere (and I'm not entirely sure about adult readers, either).

The Beginning Woods is indeed a magical, beautiful book. It's much better than Shadow of the Wind (in my opinion), but not as accessible to young readers as The Neverending Story. Recommended for grown ups who love stories, books, and stories about stories.

Rating: 4/5

The Dragons of Heaven by Alyc Helms

The Dragons of Heaven is a debut novel, set in a world where superheroes and some kinds of magic are real. It's also a world in which not everyone believes in magic - sceptics believe the superheroes just have very advanced tech (which some do) and very good PR (ditto). There are laws about 'citizen vigilantes' and some form together into SHIELD-like organisations, some commercial, some state-run. But all of that is merely backdrop: the novel is much more interested in its Chinese-influenced mythology and magic and a hero's journey.

Our hero is Mr Mystic, one of those superpowered vigilantes. Able to control shadows and even drift from the 'real' world into a shadow realm, Mr Mystic is a fedora wearing, arch-British-sounding, Chinese-magic-wielding martial arts expert. Oh, and she's also a woman, Missy Masters, who inherited the superpowers from her grandfather, the original Mr Mystic, whom she impersonates. (Said grandfather, meanwhile, has disappeared without a trace or a goodbye).

Superheroes tend to be the stuff of movies and comic books, but The Dragons of Heaven is a funny, slick, energetic romp, filled with action and jaw dropping (but believable) plot twists.

I will admit that it took me a while to get properly absorbed by the story: the timeline is a little wobbly at the start of the novel, with two parallel storylines (one in the now, one in the past) and flashbacks galore. Also, I am not good with (character) names at the best of times, so I tended to get confused between all the Asian characters. Worst of all, I read the book while stressed / struggling with concentration, so even though I noticed the humour and the playfulness, I really struggled to focus on anything. (This has to do with life issues rather than any issues of the book, but it makes me feel I missed out on enjoying this book properly).

Eventually, even though the stress factors in the real world were still there, the book hooked me, and by the end I was not just invested in Missy, but her world and all the characters within it. In fact, The Dragons of Heaven is a novel where there is no such thing as a pure villain - all characters, even the antagonists, have reason and richness and perspectives that are perfectly understandable.

Basically, if you want a book that is fun, funny, action-packed, thrilling, a bit romantic and sexy, joyful, whip-smart, and a good romp, The Dragons of Heaven really should be up your street.

Rating: 5/5

80 Days by inkle

Back in October, I read Strange Charm's review of 80 Days. The review made me buy the game immediately: it sounded like something quite special. And it is.

80 Days is not like most games I have played. It's basically a choose-your-own-adventure story, based primarily on text. The player is Passepartout, valet to Phileas Fogg, travelling around the world for a wager. In every city, you get to choose how and where to travel next, from the connections that are available and which you have been able to discover. (You may not discover every route out of a city)

During every movement from city to city, you choose what to do - look after Fogg (which boosts his health), talk to someone (to find out more about your destination and onwards travelling options), or read the newspaper (to find out about things going on in the world, and sometimes, travel options). In most cities, you can go to a market to buy and sell goods, to a bank to take out loans (which slow you down because you have to wait some day(s) before the funds are cleared), explore to find out onward travel routes and stay overnight. Sometimes, you don't have enough money to continue your journey and you have to find ways to earn it. Other times, Fogg may not have enough health to withstand a particularly arduous route, and you have to let him recuperate. On top of all this, there are a multitude of encounters, on transport and in cities, and adventures and sub plots that you may get embroiled in.

This makes it sound a little dry. It isn't. The characters you meet are a cornucopia of interesting people, of all races, backgrounds, sexes, occupations and opinions. You may meet pirates and royalty, engineers and slave traders, revolutionaries and soldiers. You may get embroiled with a notorious cat burglar or a quest for a robot soul. And the means of transport themselves are fantastically imaginative: this is a steampunk universe realised to its full potential, letting you travel by land, sea, air and, in some places, by even more esoteric means. Not to  mention all the little adventures en route: from murder mysteries to grand adventures in the best tradition of Jules Verne and 19th century explorers, this world is chock full of possibilities.

The first time I played the game, I was focused entirely on getting around the world as quickly as possible, so I picked very long, expensive journey legs. I soon ran out of money and ultimately failed to meet the 80 days deadline. The next few times, I played with more focus on balancing income (through trading profitably) with movement. It got fairly easy to get around the world within 80 Days. Then I started geting more and more interested in exploring the world that the creators have produced, and the sub plots. I'm still playing, after dozens of journeys, because I am trying to resolve different mysteries. In all the many, many times I've gone around the world, I have so far only found one way to find a different ending to the game - but that discovery in itself was highly rewarding. I still haven't figured out the Agatha Christie-esque murder mystery on one leg of one itinerary, and I have stumbled across different story paths related to an object you can acquire at a railway station in Western Europe, but I suspect there is a more exciting possible outcome somewhere, if only I could find it.

The plotlines you might stumble into have very different possible outcomes, both in what happens and what it says about the world. You may come into possession of things that some consider the ultimate abomination, while others venerate them, and depending on what you do with them, you may get lots of money or change the world...

At the same time, I'd lie if I didn't admit that some things are a little bit frustrating. As you travel, most circumnavigations will go without really connecting to most of the characters you meet. You may meet two dozen larger-than-life characters and glimpse their lives for the brief duration of the shared journey from A to B, and then never see them again. Sometimes you glimpse something in passing which hints at an intersection with another plotline, had you only chosen differently. Sometimes you read newspaper headlines that tell you about things you have passed. Then again, that is more or less what travelling is like, no?

It is those frustrations which make the game so addictive: I replay again and again because I want to know what I've missed, what I have passed by. When going around the world again and again, I start getting off at different stops, taking different branches, trying to find different routes. This can be hugely rewarding: having passed through an area and witnessed brutality in one journey, I came through the same town on a different route and got a chance to take part in a daring rescue. Another time, in a different place, I had to choose whether to help robbers or fight them, and the two outcomes were vastly different.

I absolutely adore this game. I can't praise it highly enough. Who'd have thought that a text adventure (accompanied by admittedly very nifty, pretty illustrations and a lovely globe) could be so addictive in the age of smartphones?

Rating: 5/5
Go buy it now!

The Traitor by Seth Dickinson

The Traitor (also sold as The Traitor Baru Cormorant) is a unique novel, quite unlike anything I've ever read before. That alone earns it a lot of respect from me. It's also intelligent, thoughtful, strategic, all without ever forgetting about character complexity.

The Traitor starts when Baru Cormorant is a girl, watching sails in the distance. She is aware that her parents are troubled: Empire is at their doorstep, and they fear their civilization and culture is about to be subsumed. Baru has mixed feelings: there is something exciting about these ships, these foreign traders, and their spectacle and overwhelming power. Soon, she is recruited into their special school, destined to become one of the first of her people to absorb the Empire's culture fully. Then, a small skirmish with a neighbouring tribe turns into all-out war as the Empire 'supports' their allies with an army, and one of Baru's fathers dies. Her mother tells her foul play was at work: the Empire murdered him because he was in a family unit that was not monogamous. Some years later, the Empire's treatment of homosexuals becomes an urgent problem for Baru.

Baru Cormorant decides that the Empire is too big, too powerful to defeat by (her mother's dreams of) rebellion. She throws herself ever more deeply into her studies in order to rise to the very top and change the empire itself. The novel tells the story of her rise, her assignment, her betrayals...

The Traitor Baru Cormorant is not an epic fantasy novel in the traditional sense. No orcs, no dragons, no elves, no monsters, no magic. In fact, it is more akin to an alternative Earth, with alternative human cultures. Some names echo names on Earth: there are several cultures whose naming conventions appear to be Latin American, African, Polynesian, etc.

Baru Cormorant is not a traditional hero. She might leave her family behind, but she does not have a benevolent mentor. She has grand designs and dreams and wants to change the hostile world, but she does not do so through being a chosen one heading into battle on the back of a prophecy. You could argue that she is a chosen one, but she is chosen for her mind and her skill, called a savant. She is not chosen by her people or the good guys; she is chosen by the Empire.

Perhaps most importantly of all, Baru does not pursue a path of heroism and binary good/bad, does not fight the empire from outside in futile rebellion. Instead, she uses realpolitik, manoeuvring the politics of power in a way that Tywin Lannister would be proud of. She acts utterly ruthless, even if she suffers internally.

Baru Cormorant is a striking, memorable hero. I don't recall ever coming across a character like this - hard, strong, a stone cold operator, willing to do terrible things in the short term in service to her longer term goals. Not since watching the documentary 'The Fog of War' have I come across a personal conflict like that, and I struggle to think of any instance when such conflict occurred in books I've read. A Song of Ice and Fire, for example, may be full of politics and battle and betrayal, full of power struggles, but in comparison with Baru Cormorant, no character or family comes close in complexity. Song of Ice and Fire has good guys and bad guys, well-intended roads to hell (Daenerys, John Snow) and degrees of badness (Jamie Lannister, Stannis Baratheon). Baru Cormorant is so much more complex because she does terrible things, knowing they are terrible, internalising her regret and guilt. She'd not a baddie nor a hero.

There is a whole lot more to the novel, beyond complex characters. An ultra-conservative empire, obsessed with eugenics and family values / 'social hygiene' but technologically advanced and, at least at the level of middle management, meritocratic. It's improving people's living standards, quality of life, life expectancy (unless you fall foul of their moral barometer), spreading through trade and capitalism and banking... while local cultures of diversity, minority faiths, non-nuclear families and sexually liberal attitudes get absorbed and destroyed. The book has geopolitics that do not match or even closely mimic our own, but take different aspects and play around with them. Falcrest acts like modern America  / China, with the social mores of Nazi Germany and Saudi Arabia. You can read it in a dozen different ways, but it's a chilling adversary to encounter in a novel.

Similarly, there is a lot in the book about the workings of power, the difference between the power people see and power as it really works. In fact, even though it must have written well before the #piggate affair, The Traitor's circles of power work exactly as described in 'The PM, the Pig and Musings of Power'. The parallels between novel and real events are so striking that I cannot help feeling a chill at how insightful, intelligent and authentic this novel really is.

I will admit that it lost some momentum in the second half, but it makes up for that with an utterly relentless finale. Highly recommended if you're looking for a very smart, complex and entertaining read.

Rating: 5/5

Dream Paris by Tony Ballantyne

Dream Paris is the second in a series of books, following on from Dream London. The book ditches most of the characters from Dream London, with only two (that I noticed) reappearing.

Dream Paris is the story of Anna, a teenage girl living in the slowly redeveloping ruins of London, which has only just re-established its reality after a takeover attempt by the Dream World.

Her parents are absent, having marched into the parks at the end of Dream London, while Anna only  narrowly escaped from the march. She's coming to terms with life on her own, looking after lost and vulnerable neighbours from time to time, and vaguely looking forward to passing her A-levels and moving on to university.

Dream London has not passed without leaving some aftereffects behind. People take an undue interest in the social lives and virtue of women. Social mores have reverted by a generation or two (in Dream London, women were either housewives, whores, or, much more rarely, femme fatales), so Anna is not entirely surprised when a social worker shows up at her door, tasked with taking her into care.

The meeting with the social worker does not go as expected: another person shows up, a representative of the government with a clear history with the Dreamworld, and he has plans for Anna. She is given a fortune, a relic from Dream London. Fortunes are absolutely deterministic: what is foretold must happen. Unfortunately, the fortunes are in short snippets and impressions: an argument with her mother, a night of passion, a death...

Anna's fortune foretells that she will meet her mother in Dream Paris. The British government has an interest in revisiting the Dream World, as the incursion into London has left Britain reeling. They send Anna on her quest, accompanied by a soldier / bodyguard.

Dream London, if you haven't read it, is a mesmerising, evocative novel. Surrealism and dream logic intermingle effortlessly with an adventure story. It's a novel that reminds the reader of Dark City, of Terry Gilliam's Brazil. It's very archetypal, with patriarchical gender roles and a strong sense of location / London.

Dream Paris, by comparison, is different. This time, too, there is surreal dream logic at work. The plot successfully balances the unpredictable nature of crazy dreams with the predictable shape of a regular story. Having a good structure with plenty of thrills makes it satisfying to read.

Once again, there is also a strong sense of location. Paris is a different city, with different archetypes. Dream Paris is caught up in perpetual revolution. Eiffel Towers spring up everywhere and need to be repressed, while La Terreur and Madame Guillotine lurk just around the corner.

Dream Paris stands up to reading on its own. It is a slightly superior novel to its precursor: Dream London made the reader feel like being sucked further and further into a dream. It was a sinkhole of surrealism, a huge credit to writerly craftsmanship, but, towards the end, it was so surreal that the reading experience stopped being pleasurable and started feeling more than a little nightmarish. Dream Paris, on the other hand, is set in an established Dream City. It is not trying to take over real Paris. There is less of a sense of spiralling, exponentially growing surrealism, as this city is more or less set in its ways. People are still shaped by the Dreamworld, but citizens here have lived their entire lives in Dreamworld: they are not brutalised by a shifting reality. Dream London turned women into whores, ethnic minorities into primitives. It did this, fairly rappidly, to people who were modern Londoners to begin with. Dream Paris may be full of iconic characters, but they have grown into their roles over their lifetimes. They have more agency, are less the victims of a traumatic invasion of their psyches.

Dream Paris is full of interesting, quirky ideas. Scary clowns, porcelain dolls, sinister banks, edible duels, integer bombs, non-continuous mathematics, sexism and morality... it's a novel that positively fizzes with originality.

If you enjoyed Dream London, I think you'll love Dream Paris. If you found Dream London interesting, but not quite to your liking, you will probably enjoy Dream Paris more, And if you haven't read Dream London, I would recommend it, and recommend Dream Paris more.

Rating: 4.5/5 

The Rest of Us Just Live Here by Patrick Ness

The Rest of Us Just Live Here is a post-modern suburban-fantasy teen novel. Set in a world where, every generation or so, some big supernatural events occur which happen to be solved by teenagers, the book focuses on the regular teens instead.

The 'indie kids' are the ones who have the grand, world-saving adventures with zombies or vampires or Gods or aliens or multidimensional whatsits. Everyone knows who they are - the ones who keep themselves apart and whose names are pretentious and hipster-y. The ones who go through life-or-death stuff a lot, while forming their little Scooby Gangs, staying off the internet and Twitter and not really telling anyone else what's going on.

Meanwhile, Mikey, Mel, Henna, Jared, Meredith and Nathan are having their own problems. The final year of high school, the change in their lives that's imminent with most of them moving to different colleges, and the heartbreak, sexualities, attractions, anxieties and confusing matter of being teenagers. Not to mention their parents, who are bizarre and flawed and in some cases quite dysfunctional. Oh, and there's also OCD and anorexia in the mix...

The Rest of Us Just Live Here is a much more serious teen novel than it sounds like from the blurbs. Each chapter starts with a one-paragraph summary of the 'indie kid' story that happens simultaneous to whatever Mikey's experiences are, but it's Mikey's everyday problems that the novel is built on. Occasionally, Mikey's path intersects with indie kid events, and his friends speculate about what this year's big hoo-hah might involve, but mostly, they try to avoid being caught up in those things. After all, who wants to be collateral damage?

Really, it's a novel about the transition that takes place at the end of school. These teens are about to have one of the biggest changes of their lives - from living at home with their parents and being surrounded by kids they grew up with to being thrown into a mix with strangers and living on their own - and they are half-excited, two-thirds-terrified. Some of them are damaged (Mikey has OCD episodes, his sister Mel once had a heart attack due to anorexia and malnourishment), and the relationships they have with each other don't fit the fairy tale stereotypes. There've been sexual experiments, there's been flirtations with polyamory, there is jealousy and awkwardness.

It's also a novel about anxiety and self-loathing and trying to deal with those. Mikey's jealous, often passive-aggressive or outright hostile, and self-consciously needy. He feels like he is always at the edges of his group of friends, the least necessary one, the one all the others could do without.

I found this book a hard read. The prose is easy, and the characterisation is spot on, but that's what makes it hard. It resonates. I remember that time all-too vividly. Mikey's view of himself resonates all the more, even now.

Meanwhile, the indie kid events are told with a certain amount of spite. This does not feel like the affectionate satire that stories like Redshirts and Galaxy Quest have mastered. This parody seems to resent the Buffys and Harry Potters and Twilights and Veronica Marses of the universe. Whenever they sit around to ponder events they do so with mocking extra corny adverbs in the description. They have the life-and-death adventures, they do their teenage moping and they keep themselves apart. They're walking talking parodies. No one minds much that so many of them die: it's expected.

Patrick Ness is a hugely talented author, and this book does exhibit truckloads of writerly craftsmanship, with spot-on characterisation, authentic dialogue, and a terribly smart understanding of teenagers. All of which makes this a literary achievement - but my desire to have fun and be entertained was disappointed by the novel. It's too serious for its premise.

Rating: 3.5/5

Sorcerer to the Crown by Zen Cho

You can read an excerpt of Sorcerer to the Crown online.

Zacharias Whyte has just inherited the position of Sorcerer Royal from his mentor and adoptive father. Already, there are many who would like to see him fail, some who conspire against him. Mysteries surround the death of his mentor: how did he die, and where did his familiar, a small dragon, disappear to? What secrets is Zacharias keeping?

Prunella Gentleman is a young woman living in a school of magically gifted girls from high society. There, they are being taught means to keep their magic in check and repress their unnatural natures. But what if conventional wisdom is wrong - what if women are not too frail to be competent at sorcery?

Sorcerer to the Crown is one of the most eagerly anticipated fantasy debut novels this year. Only Aliette de Bodard's House of Shattered Wings is getting (slightly) more word of mouth in booky e-circles. So I've been keen to get my mitts on a copy for a while now.

Inevitably, the first comparison that springs to mind once you start reading is Susanna Clarke's classic Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell. Readers could be forgiven for thinking Sorcerer to the Crown is a sort of Strange & Norrell light. The setting is all-too similar: during the time of the Napoleonic Wars, English magic has been floundering and is in need of revival. Magic is governed by a society of stuffy noble men, as a sort of alternative to politics and priesthood for surplus younger sons. In comes a burst of magical talent from an unexpected direction, and the society of magicians gets flustered and alienated by the changes foisted upon it. Meanwhile, politicians want magic to solve foreign policy problems and assist in war and empire building efforts, while sorcerers need magic to remain aloof and respected, distanced from the grime of politics.

There are some key differences between Sorcerer and Strange & Norrell. Sorcerer to the Crown is a lot more light hearted in its narrative, and most of its characters are actually pleasant individuals. The writing voice isn't quite as infused with dry wit, but the story moves along at a brisker pace and with a lighter touch.

The other key difference is the very conscious decision to make this not yet another book about white men. Jonathan Strange had the outstanding semi-tragic black hero of Stephen Black as one of the minor characters. Sorcerer to the Crown puts a black male sorcerer (Zacharias Whyte) and a half-Indian female magical person (Prunella Gentleman) in the protagonists' chairs, and of the side characters, it's a South Asian witch who steals the show. Zacharias and Prunella are both outstandingly gifted, both adopted and mentored by well-meaning but quite patronising white noble people, and both used to repressing themselves in order to please their adoptive parental figures. Until things change, through death or betrayal of trust.

Of the two, it is Prunella who is more strong willed, single minded and proud. Zacharias is a scholar, with a tendency to isolate himself and keep aloof. Prunella is a social butterfly, outgoing and a force of nature.

If the novel were told through Zacharias' eyes, Prunella would be a manic pixie dream girl. But the book gives them equal space, which means we get a lot more Prunella (and insight into her) than Zacharias does. This de-pixies her and serves the novel well.

While it's light-hearted and fun, I did not love the novel entirely. Zacharias does not take the danger to his person seriously, so neither could I, which softens the drama. When the grand finale happens, the big confrontation is handled with a lightness that reminds me more of mid-season Doctor Who battles: it's a very tongue in cheek finale, and very very safe. It feels more like a story for children than young adults or adults at that point.

This lightness does not really work for me, in the context of a novel about disadvantaged people flourishing and succeeding against all odds. The novel does not have to get all po-faced and worthy, but when there are conspiracies to murder and do blood sacrifice, the intended victim should probably not shrug those things off. When there is a real risk of people being burnt alive, the people in question should probably not laugh at their persecutors.

Sorcerer to the Crown is a novel about girl power, attitude and inherited superpowers overcoming persecution, oppression and conspiracies. It makes the book fun and light, but it sells short the challenges involved, and it's lazy. It's very much like Doctor Who in that regard - The Doctor often beats his opponents with attitude and gobbledigook and a huge (sense of) superiority. This is why I dislike many episodes of Doctor Who. I like it no better when the character beating their opponents with attitude and surprises and a huge (sense of) superiority are ethnic minority sorcerers in Regency Britain. They never act like people who perceive themselves to be in genuine peril, and so their successes end up looking too easy, not earned.

Despite those criticisms, I enjoyed Sorcerer to the Crown. I will want to read the sequels when they come out: it's a promising start to a series, even if it errs a little on the sight of lightness.

Rating: 4/5

Europe In Autumn by Dave Hutchinson

Europe in Autumn is sold as a science fiction thriller. This may not be the best possible description: there's not a whole lot of science fictional themes in the plot (some camouflage suits but little else) and to describe it as a thriller is a bit optimistic.

The book has been highly recommended by other reviewers, so I bought it without having much of an idea of what it was about. The level of enthusiasm and the description as one of the genre literary highlights of the year intrigued me.

Our protagonist is Rudi, a chef living in a near-future Krakow. This is a world where the European Union has collapsed, and where nation states have largely crumbled into dozens or even hundreds of little "polities" - micro-nations. (No wonder it's popular among Brits). This was all preceded by a flu epidemic (which triggered the reintroduction of tight border controls and the abolition of Schengen), but it does not feel like a post-flu-apocalyptic novel. Rather, it feels like a novel imagining what it would be like if the growth of the EU (and UN) are cyclical rather than linear geopolitical developments, ultimately leading to a backswing from the currently-growing supra-national entities to crumbling, splintering and widespread micro-nationalism.

In that world, Rudi is soon hired to become a Coureur. Self-described as a glorified postal service, Coureurs are working for an organisation that smuggles. They smuggle information, objects and even people across the myriad borders of the world, using "tradecraft" (i.e. cloak and dagger techniques and habits that seem to be inspired by spy stories), subterfuge and every possible means except legitimate ones.

The book does have an original and unique vision of a possible future for Europe / geopolitics, but once you get past the setting, you are left with a story about an uncaring protagonist who stumbles through events with no initiative, no curiosity or interest in anything, and not a whole lot of motivation. In fact, the only reason he persists at becoming a coureur is because someone is very discouraging and abusive towards him - and this turns it into a battle of wills, which tickles his stubborn streak.

Once he is a coureur, each chapter of the book describes one episode in his life. Some major things happen between chapters (the book does not dwell on all the big events in-chapter), and Rudi rarely has any idea what exactly he is doing, for whom. In fact, it is a mark of the coureur organisation that no one seems to understand anything - all the people painstakingly manufacturing fake identities and alibis, all the people working on supplying coureurs with fake papers and gadgets, all the people delivering or patching through coded instructions in innocuous everyday conversations - they are all ignorant of their organisation and its leadership, just as Rudi is ignorant about what his cargo is or whom he is working for. Even when he encounters peers and superiors, no one dares to ask or answer querstions, everyone suspects everyone else, and the unsaid remains so unsaid that one wonders if there actually is an unsaid, or whether everyone is involved just happens to be ludicrously paranoid. This is a network of networks in a permanent fog - no one knows who is in charge, no one has any overview, and most of the time, no one knows what they themselves are doing for whom. This lends the book a surreal, Kafkaesque feel (if it ever gets adapted, Terry Gilliam should direct), but combine it with an unbothered protagonist, and you end up with a story that is mindbending without being engaging. (Heroes in these sort of tales usually despair about the insanity of their situation - think Jonathan Pryce in Brazil. If the hero instead shrugs and gets on with being a tiny uncaring cog in a machine he does not understand, there isn't all that much of a story.)

The book does have plenty of action sequences, but it lacks suspense: as it's hard to care about Rudi, and as he doesn't really care about anyone, it's a bit like reading a James Bond movie, only without any charme, without repartee, without sexy stuff / romantic interests and with added Kafkaesque themes and Polish cuisine.

There are some subtle hints in the text that this may not be a future version of our Europe in autumn, but a parallel Europe somewhere else. But even with all the clever world-building and clever premise and clever subversion and clever surreal ignorance going on, it's ultimately too boring.

Clever, it turns out, is not on its own entertaining, and not really the best heart to build a book around.

Rating: 2.5/5

A Darker Shade of Magic by Victoria Schwab

A Darker Shade of Magic is a book that knows what it wants to achieve: swashbuckling adventure, likably spunky but tough heroes, plenty of energy and fun. With magic. It doesn't do too badly.

There are four parallel Earths in this book, each just a quick dimension apart. Each has a city called London in the same place on the Thames, but they have different languages, different countries, different histories. The biggest difference, however, is the level and role of magic in each city.

• Grey London has almost no magic - and matches our London under Mad King George.
• Red London is rich in magic, and people live in harmony with the magic.
• White London is poor in magic, and people strive to steal, control, and dominate the magic as much as they can.
• Black London is dead: here, people had let themselves be controlled by their magic, and the world had experienced a mysterious apocalypse as a result.

There are only two magicians left who can travel between worlds: Kell, from Red London, and Holland, from White London. They act as messengers between the royal families of the three Londons that are still accessible. Black London has been sealed off to prevent its apocalypse from spreading into the other dimensions.

Kell is our hero, and the story really kicks off when he smuggles an artefact (which is treason) that turns out to be a relic from Black London (which makes it powerful and dangerous). Suddenly, all kinds of nefarious characters and thugs are after Kell. To make things worse, he gets entangled with Lila, a tough teenaged orphan girl from Grey London who wants nothing more than to be a pirate captain and see the world...

A Darker Shade of Magic has all the right ingredients: a good pace, repartee between the good guys, sinister and creepy baddies, adventure and magic... it's great fun to read.

It's not flawless: there are some holes in the plot, and while it is nominally set in (four) London(s), Grey London doesn't quite feel like UK London to me. In terms of plotholes, it's never quite clear what the royal families in the different Londons have to say to each other / why any connection continues to exist, and what magic can and can't do is quite nebulous. It feels a little as if the author hasn't quite worked out the workings of magic in her worlds. Still, these are flaws only some (overly pernickety) readers will mind: I think most readers who like to read the occasional fantasy novel will thoroughly enjoy A Darker Shade of Magic. I certainly did.

Rating: 4/5

Cannonbridge by Jonathan Barnes

Cumberba... erm, I mean, Cannonbridge.

"Something has gone wrong with history," the blurb on the back of Cannonbridge promises. It's an intriguing premise. In the world of this novel, a famous British writer, Matthew Cannonbridge, connects all the famous writers and figures of the Victorian / Fin de Siecle literary age. He was there when Doktor Frankenstein was conceived by Mary Shelley. He met, inspired, and interacted with every major writer of the age. He is the canon bridge. Except, what if he never existed?

Toby Judd, our present day hero, is an unknown academic, a professor of literature who has not made a big name for himself. The novel starts with a rather devastating experience: his girlfriend leaves him for a more successful pop-academic, whose new work about Cannonbridge is annoyingly bestselling and shallow and populist. Devastated by his humiliation, Toby suddenly has an epiphany: Cannonbridge never existed! He's a literary hoax! And Toby promptly uses his inaugural professorial lecture to present that hypothesis, before being interrupted a few minutes into his raving rants and kicked out of his university for being a lunatic.

Only he isn't mad, and suddenly those who believe in a conspiracy start dying...

Meanwhile, in the Victorian age, Matthew Cannonbridge meets one famous writer after another, and grows increasingly sinister in aspect.

I really enjoyed Jonathan Barnes' first novel, The Somnambulist, but did not enjoy its sequel, The Domino Men. When I saw that a new standalone novel is coming out, I was curious. The premise sounded promising and intriguing. Unfortunately, Cannonbridge was a bad disappointment.

Our hero, Toby Judd, is a bit of a wet blanket. That's fine, but there is no logic behind his sudden conviction that Cannonbridge is a hoax. He just suddenly has a feeling that Cannonbridge  has no reality, and then he irrationally decides to base a lecture on that feeling without being able to properly rationalise his own theory. That seems a bit unconvincing.

Logic is, in fact, in very short supply in the novel. As in: there is no internal logic whatsoever. There is a big conspiracy killing people, not because it makes sense for them to kill people, but because people dying is necessary to give the plot some momentum and drag Toby out of his academic exile.

Meanwhile, Matthew Cannonbridge pops up all over the Victorian place without actually having a clear effect. The central plot is that Matthew Cannonbridge is the writer of his age. Yes, he has encountered all the others, but it's his works (rather than theirs) which is most well-remembered. He is, in effect, the Shakespeare of that age (writing prose rather than drama), only of course he never actually writes anything - he has written, without having to go through the writing. The problem is that it's never clear whether the works of his contemporaries still exist (in the form they do in our world) or not. If they do exist, then there is no compelling reason why Cannonbridge's writings have eclipsed all the others. If the other works do not exist - if, in fact, he somehow detracts from all the writers of his age by meeting them, passively leeching creativity and influence and fame off them - then it hardly matters that he met them all, and it would not matter much to his fame. Unfortunately, I have no idea which is the case - he seems to meet the Shelleys the night that Frankenstein was first conceived, and it seems as if that meeting results in the book never being written, or not in its famous form - but he meets most of the other writers mid-career or even towards the end of their careers.

I found Cannonbridge a struggle to read, not because of any difficulties with the language or ideas, but because it soon became very frustrating and repetitive and boring. For a long while, the basic pattern is:

1. Toby meets someone. That someone dies.
2. Cannonbridge meets someone famous, and is so inherently charismatic that he makes an impression on them, then he disappears.
3. Reiterate.

Later on, the novel aims for a sense of the uncanny. A strangely calm but super-effective hitman, a sinister island, some monstrous events... the sort of things that I suspect are Lovecraftian (I still haven't read more than one Lovecraft short story, so I still use that term second-hand or third-hand). Perhaps even a bit like Lost - a build up of uncanny that has no internal logic whatsoever.

Unfortunately, the novel never really succeeds at building up tension, or horror, or anything but exasperation. The final resolution is... well, silly would be the word I'd choose, and the final twist is an excuse for shoddy writing in earlier chapters. Truthfully, I only finished it because I got a free copy through Netgalley and felt obligated to read it all the way to the end so I could write a review.

I'd give this one a miss.

Rating: 1/5

The Eye of Zoltar by Jasper Fforde

The Eye of Zoltar (third book in the Jennifer Strange series) continues the adventures of Jennifer Strange and her wizardly companions more or less where the previous book left off. It starts in the middle of an action sequence (a Trafalmasaur has escaped, and guess who has been selected to act as bait in a risky scheme to catch it again...) and keeps up a brisk pace and hilarious sense of humour throughout.

This time, Jennifer is off to the Cambrian empire (Mid-Wales), where she has to try to retrieve a magical relic (the Eye of Zoltar, a ruby), negotiate for the release of a wizard, all while trying to evade the perilous dangers of the land, including carnivorous slugs (presumably inspired by the fact that the only new species ever discovered in Wales is, in fact, a carnivorous, nocturnal GHOST SLUG, so don't think this part of the story is too far-fetched...), wild Trafalmasaurs, aggressive cannibalistic taxidermy enthusiasts and other dangerous tribes. The satire / farcical absurdity is great, the sense of humour witty, and the story is richly enhanced by the presence of a princess and a tour guide who both add much to the plot.

Where The Eye of Zoltar differs from the previous novels is that it has a somewhat higher body count. Or maybe it just seemed that way to me. I found it a little baffling how many people were killed as collateral damage of the various adventures and incidents, and this somewhat callous approach to life and death detracted from my enjoyment of the story. It made perfect sense to take an unsentimental approach to things in some contexts (where it fit the ultra-perilous adventure tourism / fatality probability satire), but at other times it seemed a lot more dubious to me. (The comment about honour being weaponised manners is very funny, but the result is quite sad).

If you've enjoyed the other Jennifer Strange novels, there's every chance you'll enjoy this one too. I certainly did (even if it was a little darker than I felt comfortable with).

Rating: 4/5.