"And Put Away Childish Things" by Adrian Tchaikovsky

Our main character, Harry, scratches the dark underbelly of a fairy tale children's book series - one that definitely did not have a furniture based portal. A beautifully twisted and somewhat dark take on back-of-the-wardrobe fantasy worlds.

Harry Bodie has a famous grandmother, who wrote beloved children’s books set in the delightful world of Underhill. What if Underhill is real? What if it has been waiting decades for a promised child to visit? What if it isn’t delightful at all? And what if its denizens have run out of patience and are taking matters into their own hands?

Adrian Tchaikovsky really seems at home in a dark novella, and this doesn’t disappoint. As with the other books in this series, there is dubious morality, selfish desires, and half-hearted ethical choices - in this case it’s in a fantasy-world-gone-bad in a knowing parody of the Narnia books.

“really flicking the noses of their lawyers now Magdo!”

Harry is a nicely drawn mediocre antihero, and Tchaikovsky does a great job in dragging him through the plot with lacklustre motivation powered by the flickering flame of a sense of duty. He is so very human - with unremarkable levels of luck, behaviour, achievement, and inspiration. This is nicely balanced by Seitchman the (dare I say “plucky”?) sidekick, and together they get embroiled with the fairy tale sized villain of Underhill.

One ongoing minor quibble with Tchaikovsky is that he tends to have little unexplained nuggets that aren’t important to the plot, but can feel slightly like smug inside knowledge. For example, not every reader will know who Dee and Crowley are (apparently historical English occultists), nor why mention of Barnard Castle is funny (a political incident in the UK during COVID). And the half-explained context of COVID lockdown is likely to age. But these are minor niggles.

The plot is meticulously constructed, and at the culmination of the story I really enjoyed the callbacks to the compulsive behaviour of some of the fantasy characters that were developed earlier in the narrative.

A very fitting conclusion to the “Terrible Worlds: Destinations” series of novellas.

My rating: ★★★★☆

"Artificial Condition" by Martha Wells

Our favourite neurodivergeant construct is back, and is heading to the mining colony where this run-of-the-mill Security Unit became Murderbot. This is a fitting sequel to All Systems Red, exploring a little more of the back-story of Murderbot. There is also the introduction of ART, as an all-powerful sidekick.

For me, some of the changes introduced in this story diluted the essential Murderbotness that we were introduced to in the first book. Murderbot’s attitude to, and integration with, the humans in the story softens, which is a departure from the extreme awkwardness shown in the first book. Also, the introduction of ART as an all-powerful sidekick is a slightly over-convenient way to get through situations that would otherwise be exceptionally tricky for Murderbot alone - and it does give it a bit of a Deus ex Machina vibe.

Giving Murderbot a companion in ART also makes it a bit more of a buddy story, again softening the isolation of Murderbot that we saw in the first book. But I guess all of these things are necessary in order to provide room for more complex plot and character development to occur, which isn’t a bad thing.

So these two powerful buddies engage set out to uncover some of Murderbot’s back story, and grumpily right some wrongs along the way, deftly covering their tracks lest their true nature be discovered. It’s fun, the plot is fast and snappy, and I did really enjoy Murderbot’s development and the interactions with ART. And I’m looking forward to the rest of the books in the series.

My rating: ★★★★☆

"Exodus: The Archimedes Engine" by Peter F. Hamilton

An epic space opera spanning millennia, across multiple star systems and a variety of advanced races, political machinations, and good old-fashioned humans. The skill of the author in building an intricate, inter-connected, believable set of worlds and cultures in which to set this story can’t be overstated. It’s quite an achievement.

The Set Up

The story is set 40,000 years in the future, in an area of space known as the Centauri Cluster. Playing the part of “advanced aliens” are humans that travelled to the Centauri Cluster, 16,000 light years from earth, “early” in the book’s timeline and made massive advances in technology and genetic engineering. They have highly sophisticated technology, and hugely extended lifespans. They are known as “celestials”.

And it’s just as well that they have extended lifespans, because there are no sci-fi tricks to allow anybody to travel or communicate faster than light: no hyperspace, no warp drive, no wormholes, no subspace communication. OK, so there’s one trick: a technology that allows very quick acceleration up to relativistic speeds (and deceleration), but this doesn’t change how relativistic laws still apply - including time dilation, where time passes more slowly for the people travelling than those left behind. And this is used to great effect in the story telling, where decades can pass on the planets while the plot follows some characters that are travelling between star systems.

The celestials originally arrived, as humans, in the Centauri cluster in generation ships - ships that travel at relativistic speeds, but still take millennia to travel between star systems (although it seems like less time to those on board). When they found an abundance of habitable worlds in the Centauri cluster, they sent out a “green worlds” signal to all of the other generation ships that had left earth. These ships then arrived in dribs and drabs over the next millennia, but weren’t especially welcome amongst the advanced (and now heavily populated) worlds of the Centauri cluster.

It is into this context that the latest generation ship arrives - the ‘Diligent’, which had been travelling away from the Centauri cluster when it received the “green worlds” signal, and thus has taken a somewhat circuitous route, to arrive late at the party.

And thus we have everything we need for an epic story of enormous scale. A downtrodden human population, into which new arrivals are injected. Plenty of opportunity for exposition, as the new arrivals have things explained to them about everything from technology, to politics, to celestial history. There are power structures amongst the celestials, with traditions and relationships that have spanned millennia, and are focused on retaining stability. There are secretive strategists, that have extensive information networks amongst their own, and their rivals, populations, and play the Great Game - a long game of strategy and political positioning.

And there is a rogue planet that is destined to enter one of the central star systems of the Centauri cluster, for reasons that nobody fully understands. And it is around consequences of the arrival of this planet that the main plot of the story revolves.

But Is It Good?

This book is… long. Obviously, I knew that when I started reading it. And it has to be reasonably long, given the scale and scope of the world building and the extensive cast of characters. And the length isn’t gratuitous at the paragraph level - there are no rambling descriptive passages that you can skip over. It’s wall-to-wall plot. However, the author does use plot to establish character and back-story, often telling entire sub-stories to flesh out the background of a character, technology, or organisation. The fine details of these sub-stories aren’t always important - but they might add flavour or depth to a particular character or broader sequence of events.

So to really enjoy this book, you need to be engaged and interested enough to want to immerse yourself in the sub-stories, and for those to be satisfying in themselves. This is space opera in its “soap opera” sense - where you want to hear more stories of the characters, places and organisations for their own sake, and where the advancement of the overall plot can sometimes take second place. And this is where I had a problem. I’m going to compare this to Dune and Lord of the Rings, and not in a good way. Dune, because many of the characters aren’t particularly likeable, and I’m not particularly interested in political manoeuvring and power struggles; and Lord of the Rings, because many of the side quests don’t advance the plot as much as you might hope, and if you don’t care about the culture of dwarves in Middle-Earth (for example), you’re going to find it frustrating.

But Dune and Lord of the Rings are well liked, so perhaps it’s just me.

As I said at the beginning, there is no doubting the achievement of intricate world building that this book represents. If I was rating for that alone, it would get a solid 5 stars. But my personal enjoyment was hampered by my disinterest in the themes around politics and power struggles.

This is the first part of a duology. Will I read the second part when it’s released? I genuinely don’t know.

Thank you #NetGalley and Pan MacMillan Tor for the free review copy of #ExodusTheArchimedesEngine in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own

My rating: ★★★★☆

NetGalley Review

“Out of the Drowning Deep” by A.C. Wise

This is crammed with intricate, detailed and intriguing world building, which I absolutely loved. It is set in a universe where gods are revealed, angels are manifest, and prayers are a genuine and means of communication and compulsion. Meanwhile, Scribe IV, an ancient steam-punk automaton, has developed a depth of feeling and emotion beyond his original design intent. He is custodian of the Bastion, a once important but now crumbling relic, where there has now been a murder. Scribe IV calls for the help of Quin, an investigator who has troubles of his own, and a chequered and traumatic past with gods and angels.

The murder mystery is the thread that binds the plot together and gives it momentum, but isn’t really the core of the story (if you’re looking for a meaty murder mystery in a sci-fi setting, then this isn’t that book). Rather, the murder itself is just a vehicle to tell a much wider, much more interesting story. And there is so much more story to tell: Quin and his sister Lena have a dark memory from their childhood; the fearsome and powerful Sisters of the Drowning Deep have their own agenda relating to the Bastion and their sleeping god; Quin has a troubled and dysfunctional relationship with an angel, and is struggling with addiction; Scribe IV is struggling with identity and regret; and Angel is grappling with duty, honour and friendship.

The depth and complexity of the universe that the author has created is astonishing, and incredibly satisfying. My main complaint is that I wish it had been a full novel. There is so much crammed into this novella that there are too many things that I would loved to have seen given a more detailed treatment. But “I wish there was more of this!” is more of a frustration than a criticism.

Thank you #NetGalley and Titan Books for the free review copy of #OutoftheDrowningDeep in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.

My rating: ★★★★☆

NetGalley review

“Wyrd Sisters” by Terry Pratchett

The witches are in good form in this fun-packed caper. They’re doing their best not to meddle, as the king of Lancre is deposed by a power hungry duke, and the witches are left holding the baby. Literally.

The mysterious baby that the witches find themselves with gets left in the care of the kindly leader of a travelling band of actors, and their fates are intertwined with the duke and the kingdom of Lancre, ably assisted (not meddling, honest!) by the witches. The story is littered with Shakespeare references - most strongly Macbeth, with the three witches, and the duke obsessively cleaning the blood from his hand - to little snippets and references to other plays, as the playwright in the band of actors crafts subtly familiar lines into his plays.

There are also nice little touches of satire creeping in, as the duke realises the power of language to “reinterpret” history, and attempts to use the mass media of the time (travelling theatre) as a form of propaganda. The book was written in 1988, but I suspect if it had been written after 2020, the phrase “fake news” might even have appeared. The satire, however minimal, is done with a deft hand and is full of humour.

I was smiling and chucking the whole way through this book. And while the overall story arc was largely predictable from the beginning, the journey was very enjoyable. The characters were all solid, and it’s lovely to see the three witches having their own distinct characters, as more of the witch lore is established. I’m looking forward to enjoying in the later books in the witches sub-series.

My rating: ★★★★☆

“Recursion” by Blake Crouch

A solid, fast-paced thriller, with a mind-bending plot where people find themselves having lifetimes of memory of a life they didn’t live. The mechanism behind these “false memories” has far-reaching, global, existential consequences. Our two main characters, Barry and Helena, find themselves in the position of being the only people who have any chance of stopping the gathering chaos - but hope seems slim. To say much else would be to give away more than is in the blurb - which I don’t want to do.

The entire story - including the main jeopardy, and some delicate nuances of what our heroes need to do to save the day - has a foundation on a characteristic of the main plot device that I found very difficult to believe, and was never properly explained. There’s even a bit of “lampshade hanging” that goes on when one character incredulously queries whether or not this surprising characteristic is really true, and another character simply says “Apparently”.

For a while, this was niggling at my enjoyment of the story, but it does result in some really thorny and interesting problems for our heroes to solve, and a genuinely exciting escalation of jeopardy towards the end of the book. So is it forgiven? Well, mostly.

This is thoroughly plot-driven story, but with a couple of very solid main characters. There is some romance, and the blurb refers to the book as “a deeply emotional story about time and loss and grief”, which, for me, is overstating the emotional content enormously. Yes, there is a believable connection between the two main characters, and the impact that this has on their decisions, and outcomes, make sense - but I never felt the emotion of their relationship. However, this isn’t to say that the book is without an emotional impact: some of the climactic sequences towards the end of the book are quite raw - and appropriately so.

If I’d have felt the emotion between the main characters, and if my suspension of disbelief hadn’t been so robustly challenged, then it would have been a firm 5 stars. But it’s still a solid, page-turning thriller, based on a unique, imaginative, and interestingly complex central premise.

My rating: ★★★★☆

"In Universes" by Emet North

An incredibly imaginative and compelling tale across parallel universes, as we follow various versions of our main character, Raffi, as they search for identity, belonging, love and redemption.

The book can be seen as a set of 11 short stories involving Raffi and a loosely common set of people and situations. These are tied together by a single thread of regret about an incident with one of Raffi’s friends, Britt, when they were teenagers. The other characters - Kay, Graham, Alice - have different roles in each story: sometimes friends, sometimes lovers, sometimes just acquaintances.

Raffi is a cosmologist, with an interest and expertise in the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics - the theory that the randomness of quantum mechanics is resolved by all possible outcomes occurring in alternate, newly created worlds. But that’s where the science stops - this is not really a sci-fi book, and there is no attempt to explain any mechanisms for people to travel to, or even be aware of, the alternate worlds. Rather, each story is set in an alternate universe, and any brief mention of the science just serves to guide the reader’s understanding about the loose relationship between each story. And that’s not a criticism - I actually found it a subtle but effective way to relieve what might otherwise be jarring switches of context between each story.

In most of the worlds, Raffi is dealing with feelings of loss, regret, or detachment. By the end of each story, Raffi tends to come to a conclusion that that these feels are unresolved, and wonders what life would be like in different circumstances. Each following story then takes on some of these different characteristics, but often with other significant changes - sometimes fantastical rather than realistic. And sometimes these are as a consequence of what Raffi wishes for (Monkey’s Paw style), and sometimes they are a vehicle to explore other issues (like the world in which women fracture into hordes of animals).

In one respect this is a difficult read, because each of the stories is a further exploration of these feelings of loss and regret, which remain unresolved for a majority of the book. However, this was lifted enormously by the range and breadth of imagination that the author has poured into each story. Each chapter could stand alone as a short story in its own right, with its own unique sense of character and place. Even (or especially) those with a fantastical element, where the world building was concise and compelling.

I found Raffi’s search for identity, for an authentic self, and for a sense of redemption or resolution, to be engaging and compelling. And that’s testament to the author, as I have found these themes in other books to be off-putting when they come across as the minor dissatisfactions of someone in an otherwise privileged situation. But I found Raffi’s character to be sympathetic, and these struggles of identity and authenticity to be meaningful rather than trite.

And I found the final story, with its fantastical elements, to be a fitting conclusion to Raffi’s struggles.

So why not 5 stars? Only because I found the book so difficult to pick up from time to time. And by three-quarters of the way through the book, I was finding it affecting my mood - but perhaps that in itself is an indication of the quality of the writing and emotional engagement.

This book isn’t for everyone, and I definitely need something lighter for my next read. But it is an incredibly accomplished debut work.

Thank you #NetGalley and Random House UK Cornerstone for the free review copy of #InUniverses in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.

My rating: ★★★★☆

NetGalley review

“Walking to Aldebaran” by Adrian Tchaikovsky

Wow, that was intense. In this novella, Gary Rendell is lost and alone inside an alien artefact in the outer reaches of the solar system. The exploratory mission he was on went wrong, and now he’s wandering the corridors of this strange ancient place, trying to find his way home, or at least something familiar.

Adrian Tchaikovsky captures the alienness of the location, and everything that Gary comes across while he’s exploring, brilliantly, and there is a creepy sense of otherness that maintains the tension. The story is told in a dual timeline - the beginning of the mission, and Gary’s current predicament - alternating between chapters. We slowly learn what happened to the exploratory team at the start of the expedition, while Gary’s current attempts to find a way home slowly unfold. The slightly flippant first-person narrative helps the story skirt the edges of unreliable narration, giving the question of how Gary has survived so long a sense of doubt and unease.

A very well paced, straight-forward plot, just the right length, excellently told, and nicely disturbing.

My rating: ★★★★☆

“Everyone I Know is Dying” by Emily Slapper

Trigger warning: suicide ideation.

This is a very difficult for me to review. On the one hand this is a very accomplished, intense, authentic and powerful portrayal of someone struggling with significant mental health issues in the context of the societal and peer pressures that young women face. And I say that with no authority, as I’m not a young woman, but that’s how it seems to me. And on the other hand, I found reading it a chore. My rating is for the quality and importance of the book that I believe that it is. And I’m attributing my lack of enjoyment down to me being the wrong audience.

Is that fair? I don’t know. It is what it is.

The book is essentially in two parts: the first part (the first 34 chapters, or roughly 90%) is an incredibly raw portrayal of the day-to-day struggles of Iris, a young woman trying to understand what happiness is, whilst searching for it in the reflected judgement of others; the second part (the final 3 chapters) is the resolution. The resolution was exactly what I expected it to be, but also the only thing it possibly could be - and is also totally fitting, given what I believe the author is trying to say.

The main body of the book is a brave, difficult, genuine, and very difficult portrayal of Iris grappling with her sense of self, identity, and worth. She sees herself only in the reaction she gets from other people; she has no genuine friendships; she is not her authentic self.

“I can’t understand why people don’t like to be seen as objects when to be seen as an object is to be desired. This is why I keep coming back”

She knows that there is something lacking in her life, and she persistently misidentifies it, bouncing from one potential source of happiness to another.

“It’s disconcerting when you realise that getting what you want doesn’t make you feel better”

There is an audience for this book, and it isn’t me. That’s not to say that I didn’t get anything from reading it - rather that there was no part of me that could identify with anything that Iris was going through. All I could really do was feel sorry for her. Perhaps I got a deeper understanding of the internal struggle related to certain types of mental health issue. But for that I need to totally rely on the authenticity of what the author is portraying (which I have no reason to doubt) rather than being able to draw on any of my own experience.

Reading the comments about this book from other reviewers makes it clear that there is an audience for this book - people who can directly relate to some of the struggles that Iris had. In the reviews I have read, there are more comments from people who directly relate to Iris, at least in some small part, than from those who don’t. And for those people, I have a sense that the portrayal of Iris has a resonance, depth, and meaning.

If I could relate to Iris, this would probably be a 5-star read. If I were to give a rating solely on my personal, subjective enjoyment of the book, it is a 3-star read. What’s a reviewer to do?

Thank you #NetGalley and HQ for the free review copy of #EveryoneIKnowisDying in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.

My rating: ★★★★☆

NetGalley review

“Quarantine Notes: Aphorisms on Morality and Mortality“ by Yahia Lababidi

I don’t really have a frame of reference for reviewing this. I’m not familiar with Lababidi’s works, nor aphorisms in general, but I found this collection inspirational. My thoughts are more eloquently summarised in the Afterword by Andrew Benson Brown:

Yahia Lababidi […] somehow manages not to be trite or shallow in his appraisals, and even to be the opposite. His wisdom has an ancient quality that speaks to the present about its future.

…and…

This book […] encourages one to contemplate brevity by quarantining Lababidi’s sayings, mirroring the condition of their creation. Lababidi himself puts it in a way that nicely reflects the volume’s organization: “Aphorisms are the sushi of literature.” A large bite, carefully prepared by a master chef, delicately savored. Wrapped in white space like rice, each piece’s placement on the page helps cleanse the palate like a slice of ginger, preparing one for the next bite. Though readers will inevitably douse their sushi in the soy sauce of their peculiar, accidentally-acquired prejudices, the author would encourage light dipping so as to not overwhelm the natural flavor of each insight.

Lababidi is clearly very spiritual, and this comes across in many of the aphorisms. While I wouldn’t necessarily describe myself that way, I found that even those aphorisms that had an overt spiritual nature still spoke to me in a way that I found relevant.

I took a long time to read this, as I wanted to savour each morsel. And I’m glad I did. And I will almost certainly revisit it.

My rating: ★★★★☆

"Minla's Flowers" by Alastair Reynolds

Minla’s Flowers is the second short story in the chronology of the Merlin series by Alastair Reynolds. Where the first story, Hideaway, was plot heavy, Minla’s Flowers is more philophical - covering issues around influence, interference, and self determination in a society.

Merlin’s ship is damaged, and he seeks help on a nearby little-known planet, Lecythus, which was colonised by humans in the distant past, but has been out of touch with broader human society ever since.

The two factions on the planet have been at war for decades - with a technology level equivalent to early 20th century Earth. On top of this, Merlin identifies an extinction level event that will occur in about 70 years - an event that he knows they will not have the technology to avoid.

The story that unfolds explores the morality of interference, and follows similar themes used in, for example, Star Trek’s “Prime Directive” (a directive against interference with non-spacefaring peoples). The technology to avoid extinction could also swing the balance of power in the war, and the story touches on what actions can be justified in order to achieve a greater goal.

This makes for a thoughtful reading experience, and I enjoyed the moral ambiguity throughout the story, and in the ending.

My rating: ★★★★☆

(Side note: This story could probably be read stand-alone, but the first short story, Hideaway, did a lot of world building that this story uses as background and context for Merlin. It can be read as part of the collection “Beyond the Aquila Rift”, where it is presented stand-alone. It can also be read in the “Zima Blue” collection, where it is presented alongside Hidaway and Merlin’s Gun).

“The Ministry of Time” by Kaliane Bradley

This was a compelling and engaging cross-genre combination of time-travel, mystery/thriller, historical fiction, and romance. It had a lot to pack in, and it did it very well.

According to the blurb: “In the near future, a disaffected civil servant is offered a lucrative job in a mysterious new government ministry gathering 'expats' from across history to test the limits of time-travel. Her role is to work as a 'bridge': living with, assisting and monitoring the expat known as '1847' - Commander Graham Gore. As far as history is concerned, Commander Gore died on Sir John Franklin's doomed expedition to the Arctic.”

The first half of the story is establishing Graham and the other expats in the 21st century. This part of the book is a charming fish-out-of-water tale, as the expats try to adjust to cultural and technological differences from their own time. The main expat character, Graham, is incredibly likeable. He has a laid back, sarcastic take on the world, and his dry observations of what he seems around him are insightful and often pithy. I also really enjoyed the character of Maggie, from 1665, whose joyous and boisterous reaction to the pleasures of 21st century living were delightful, and made me laugh.

I don’t generally read historical novels, so it was an added interest for me that Graham Gore was a member of the Franklin Expedition, an ill fated expedition into the arctic.

The friendship between our main character (whose name, weirdly, we never find out) and Graham grows throughout the first half of the book, and continues to blossom as the story progresses. Most of the first two-thirds of the book are taken up with establishing the characters and the romance. There’s even a bit of smut thrown in, for those who like that in their books.

As the plot develops, it becomes clear that all is not as it seems with The Ministry, and our intrepid band of expats and ‘bridges’ are both caught up in, and try to navigate, the unfolding events. The time travel elements were quite satisfying - the time travel ‘door’ isn’t fully understood by The Ministry, and the cautious approach to time travel contributed to the plot. At about 80% of the way through the story, the pace picks up, things start to come to a head, and it became a real page turner.

Only one niggle for me: I would personally have preferred a different balance between the character/romance development and the mystery/thriller elements of the plot (less romance, more plot) - especially as, despite the focus and detail on their relationship, I never really felt the emotion in the romantic relationships.

But regardless of this, it’s a cracking story, with something for everyone, and a masterful combination of genres.

Thank you #NetGalley and Hodder & Stoughton / Sceptre for the free review copy of #TheMinistryofTIme in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.

My rating: ★★★★☆

NetGalley Review

“Hideaway” by Alastair Reynolds

Hideaway is a short story that starts the chronology of the Merlin series by Alastair Reynolds. It packs an enormous amount of plot into a very short space, and is a wild ride of world building, concepts, plot, jeopardy and character development, all wrapped up in a hard sci-fi shell.

Set in a universe where the last vestiges of humanity are running from the ‘Huskers’, who would have humanity wiped out. The inevitability of being trapped by the Huskers in a deep space equivalent of a pincer movement leads a group of Humans, including the title character, Merlin, to hide rather than run.

The story spans several years - the inevitability of the Huskers’ arrival doesn’t mean it’s imminent… just inevitable. During this time, our people find themselves in a star system in which they could potentially hide, but also has some mysterious characteristics. The exploration of these mysteries, and their consequences for our intrepid band of humanity, carries us through the story.

There is a lot of ground that gets covered, and the writing is very concise - although it sometimes felt like I was drinking from a plot and world-building fire hose. But the result is very satisfying. My only complaint is that the story feels a little empty of people, despite how many thousands there actually are. But this is almost certainly just a consequence of having to squeeze so much plot, and some decent character development of the small number of main characters, into the short space available. This left me wishing it had been a novella rather than a short story.

An enjoyable introduction to the series. I look forward to the rest.

My rating: ★★★★☆

“Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers” by Mary Roach

A fascinating, if slightly outdated, exploration of all the things that can happen to human cadavers: from anatomy classes for students studying medicine, to investigating the efficacy of vehicle safety systems, to the various ways people ingest human remains, to their ultimate disposal.

“Mary Roach is an American author specialising in popular science and humour”, according to her Wikipedia page, and that’s exactly what you get here - a well research look at what could potentially be quite a dark subject, but treated with just the right amount of humour and occasional well-pitched irreverence.

There’s some fascinating insight here into both current and historical uses of cadavers. It’s only a shame that the book is slightly dated now, having been originally published in 2003, so some of the descriptions of “upcoming” advances in areas covered by the book are now over 20 years out of date (although I’d be fascinated to know how things have progressed).

My rating: ★★★★☆

"Alien Clay" by Adrian Tchaikovsky

This is a gripping and fast-paced adventure set on a very alien world.  The world buiding is excellent, and the “alienness” is so well depicted that it I had a creepy sense of foreboding throughout a lot of the book.

A plot summary from the blurb:

On the distant world of Kiln lie the ruins of an alien civilization. It’s the greatest discovery in humanity’s spacefaring history – yet who were its builders and where did they go?

Professor Arton Daghdev had always wanted to study alien life up close. Then his wishes become a reality in the worst way. His political activism sees him exiled from Earth to Kiln’s extrasolar labour camp. There, he’s condemned to work under an alien sky until he dies.

For me it was a page-turner from the very beginning - it was engaging and well paced, and I enjoyed the slightly flippant first-person narrative.  This is my first Adrian Tchaikovsky book, but if this is his writing style, then I’ll definitely be reading more.  One odd stylistic quirk: the author broke the fourth wall a few times - talking directly to the reader.  It wasn’t clear what the purpose of this was, and I was expecting it to become relevant at some point - which it didn’t.  This didn’t detract, but I did wonder what the point was.

The world building is so well integrated with the plot that it felt effortless.  And it had a lot of ground to cover - from the Mandate, an ideological quasi-scientific/relgious organisation with totalitarian control over Earth’s society, to the flora and fauna of an oh-so-alien planet, “Kiln”, that Daghdev gets exiled to.  And it’s that alienness that I really enjoyed about the book - it was somehow simultaneously seductive and replusive.

The plot has jeopardy from start to finish, but this really ramps up about two-thirds of the way through the book.  Events unfold that emerge beautifully from the world building - the potentially extreme risks of the situation the characters find themselves in have been so well established that the consequences are obvious without having to be described.

So why not 5 stars?  Only because it’s not a book that will stay with me.  The plot and characters were enjoyable and engaging in the moment, but I’m not sure I’ll remember them a few months from now.  I enjoyed the alienness, but it won’t stay with me in the same way as the unknowable alienness in "Solaris" by Stanislaw Lem, for example.  None of that stopped it from being a cracking adventure, though, and I’d happily recommend it to anyone looking for that.

Thank you #NetGalley and Pan Macmillan Tor for the free review copy of #AlienClay in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.

My rating: ★★★★☆

NetGalley review

"The Space Between Worlds" by Micaiah Johnson

By the end of this book, I was deeply invested in the main characters.  I loved it.  I delayed reading the last chapter so I could savour being in their world a little longer.  I’m so tempted to give to give it 5 stars, especially while my book hangover is still raw.  But I have to acknowledge where it didn’t fully hit home.

First, a small snippet of blurb as a précis…

Multiverse travel is finally possible, but there’s just one catch: No one can visit a world where their counterpart is still alive. Enter Cara, whose parallel selves happen to be exceptionally good at dying—from disease, turf wars, or vendettas they couldn’t outrun. Cara’s life has been cut short on 372 worlds in total.

Cara’s slim grip on life in so many of the parallel worlds makes her ‘Earth Zero’ self ideal to work as a ‘traverser’, gathering intelligence from parallel worlds that are sufficiently similar to Earth Zero.  And so the scene is set.

The main conflict in the story comes from the two-tier society that has developed on Earth.  There is the wealthy, enclosed, Wiley City, where the company “Eldridge” runs everything to do with multiverse travel; and there is Ashtown, in the area outside the city where pollution and poverty have a firm grip.  Cara comes from Ashtown, but works for Eldridge in Wiley City.  Cue conflict and tension.

Wiley City is believable as a community of the elite, with various levels of privilege, but it is in Ashtown where the author’s world building really excels.  Here there is a gritty, multi-facetted society with power structures that have evolved around religion, prostitution, and a self-styled Emperor with his fearsome teams of Runners that wield his power.  I could almost taste the dirt in Ashtown, and the power struggles were so well crafted that I fully understood the consequences of a wrong word here, or an unintended insult there.

And the writing style.  I loved the writing style.  I could just marinate in it.

An economy of words that could be evocative, blunt, eloquent, direct, poetic, or just plain gorgeous.  I so often found myself smiling from the little rush of joy I would get from a phrase or paragraph that felt like a little nugget of perfection - even when it was used to illustrate something cruel or callous, to fill in the colour in a character’s motivations.

So what’s not to like?

I really struggled with the first 20% or so of the book.  This is where the heavy lifting was done for the world building.  This was establishing Cara’s credentials as having come from Ashtown, with a hardness of character and a set of sensibilities that have allowed her to survive, when so many of her parallel world selves didn’t.  And I really didn’t like her very much.  Then there is an extended visit to a parallel Earth that takes the remainder of the first half of the book.  Again, this is critical world building, and was quite enjoyable as it was beginning to benefit from a pay-off of the earlier character establishment.  And the consequences and differences of parallel worlds started to become really interesting.  But I still didn’t understand where the story was going.

It was only in the second half of the book that the full pay-off for all of the world building and character establishment really kicked in.  And then it *really* kicked in.  The second half of the book was an exciting ride of twists and dense plot - fully taking advantage of all of the world building that had been done across multiple parallel worlds.  This is where I really started to engage with the characters, and get to like so many of them… and I enjoyed it immensely.

So while the second half of the book is 5 stars through and through, I can’t fully forgive it for my struggles in the first half.

But here are some other random things that I enjoyed:

• The central conceit that it is only Earth Zero that initiates traversing isn’t ignored or glossed over, but is quite neatly explained, and even contributes to the plot. I appreciated this not-so-little detail, that is missing in some other parallel worlds stories.
• At the 50% point in the book, I made a prediction about what would happen to one of the main characters by the end of the book. And although it turned out that I was wrong, there was a moment when the character contemplated that course of action and rejected it. That felt like the author rewarding me twice: once as a nod to me having predicted it, and again for providing me with something else that was ultimately more satisfying.
• The mechanism for traversing was only obliquely ‘explained’, but is clearly intended to be entirely based on science and technology. However, the traversers themselves had developed a little mysticism around it that I found incredibly human.

Until this book hangover subsides, I will continue to find it intrusive and an invasion of privacy that other people have read this book, and may have become as attached as I have to so many of the characters.

It will pass.

My rating: ★★★★☆

"Klara and the Sun" by Kazuo Ishiguro

Klara is an android, an “Artificial Friend”, an AF.  It is a world in which AFs are habitually used as companions for children, and Klara is bought by a family for their ailing daughter.  This is their story, told from Klara’s perspective.

It’s difficult to succinctly say what the core theme of the book is - what the book is ‘about’ - as there are three threads that play equal parts and weave around each other throughout the story.

Firstly, there is the use of AI and robotics, and how they can be used to displace people in a variety of roles - the most obvious being the use of AFs as companions for children.  Klara’s role is depicted as being a positive experience for the family that she becomes part of, but there are glimpses of where relationships between AFs and their associated children have become dysfunctional.  

The story is told from the first-person perspective of Klara, so it is implicit that Klara is conscious and sentient - she is, afterall, the narrator.  And yet AFs are treated as property, and Klara unquestioningly accepts that - indeed, is happy to be bought by a family.  These broader themes, and the societal impact of using AFs in other contexts, such as displacing people from their jobs, are hinted at but not explored.

Another thread, almost entirely independent of the use of AFs, is the practice of using medical intervention to ‘enhance’ children (referred to as ‘lifting’ in the book), using hinted-at procedures that are not without risk.  The ethics of this decision, along with the two-tier society that can result, are not dealt with head-on, but instead form a foundation for much of the conflict within the story, and the emotional struggles of some of the characters.

And then there is the internal life of Klara herself, and the reason for the title of the book.  The story is told through a lens of naïvety as Klara learns about the world around her.  Klara is described as an AF with particularly good observational skills, and she learns about the world around her mostly through observation - drawing conclusions and inferring cause and effect from what she sees around her.  However, this unguided observational learning leads Klara to believe that the Sun (yes, the fiery ball in the sky) has omniscient and mystical power.

This belief in the Sun leads Klara to interpret other events around her as cause and effect, which she then struggles to make sense of - largely due to the inscrutable nature of the Sun’s decision-making process.  The parallels with religious faith are clear, and it’s difficult to know what message the author is trying to convey, given some of the questionable behaviour that Klara engages with as a consequence of her belief, and the ultimate outcome of the story.

The world building is very satisfying, and the glimpses of the various issues, ideas and concepts that come out of it are intriguing and thought-provoking.  With such broad scope, it’s inevitable that very little is dealt with in depth.  While there were many things that could have been explored in more detail, I wasn’t left frustrated that they weren’t - rather, I enjoyed skirting around the edges.

My rating: ★★★★☆

"Floating Hotel" by Grace Curtis

The Abeona: a hotel in space, with an ensemble cast of crew and guests.  They all have their own stories, most of which overlap to a greater or lesser extent: an amiable manager; an anonymous political dissident; a professor and a mathematician attending a conference; some imperial spies; a chef; staff members who have fallen from fame, and those that have joined the hotel from more chequered backgrounds.

To the extent that there is an overall story, it is told, chapter by chapter, from the varying perspectives of each of the characters - sometimes overlapping in time with each other, and sometimes carrying the story forward.  These vignettes are almost like fully formed short stories of their own - with each character vividly drawn, and uniquely distinct.  This laying of stories and characters gradually builds an intricate picture of the vibrant life on the hotel, while weaving in a few mysteries and a (very) small amount of jeopardy, as the plot ambles forward.

While it was nice to immerse myself in the life of the Abeona, the stucture of the book isn’t without its issues.  The switch in point of view in every chapter was a little jarring until I got into the rhythm of it - the need to ‘reset’ to a new perspective at (almost) every chapter.  Some of the characters that have a chapter devoted to their point of view play quite a minor role in the overall plot - so, while their backstories and relationships with other characters were engaging, I wonder how necessary their inclusion was.  Some of the major characters had an emotional authenticity that I found quite poignant and moving (Angoulême being particularly memorable), and I would have liked to have explored their lives a little more.

This *could* have been a plot-driven book if it had gone into greater depth with the mysteries, imperial spies, and shady backstories - the material is certainly rich enough.  But, for me, that’s not what this book is.  The book is about the characters of the staff, the guests, and the Abeona itself.  The resolution of the plot in the closing chapters successfully ties up all the loose ends and mysteries that had been developed throughout the story, although this did seem a little weak.  But, for me, this didn’t really matter, as the overall plot was a vehicle to tell the stories of the individual characters - it’s just good form to give the story an ending.

Thank you #NetGalley and Hodder & Stoughton for the free review copy of #FloatingHotel in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.

My rating: ★★★★☆

NetGalley Review

"The Kaiju Preservation Society" by John Scalzi

Jamie Gray gets fired and, out of desperation, gets recruited to “an animal rights organisation.”  This turns out to be the Kaiju Preservation Society (KPS), working with massive, dinosaur-like creatures on an alternate Earth in a parallel dimension, where everything wants to eat everything else.

This is an enjoyable, lightweight, fish-out-of-water tale, with likeable characters, an engaging plot, and massive monsters.  In the Author’s Note at the back of the book, John Scalzi says:

“KPS is not, and I say this with absolutely no slight intended, a brooding symphony of a novel.  It’s a pop song.  It’s meant to be light and catchy, with three minutes of hooks and choruses for you to sing along with, and then you’re done and you go on with your day, hopefully with a smile on your face.”

And that’s exactly what it is.  And it does it very well.

This is quite a short book, but there’s a lot of world building to do in order to set up everything you need before the jeopardy kicks in.  This world building is achieved through the experience of our main character and three other new recruits - so the explanations of the alternate Earth, the kaiju, and the KPS itself, come naturally out of the characters having to learn or be taught.

The need for this amount of world building in a short book means that things only start to get ‘interesting’ (a.k.a. actual jeopardy) about 70% of the way through the book.  Up to that point, while I was enjoying the characters and finding out about the alternate Earth, I was wondering what was going to actually happen.  I was also wondering what a gang of 4 newcomers could do in the face of jeopardy involving massive monsters that could wreak havoc on a global scale.  But the book really starts to deliver at this 70% point, with a pay-off for all the world building, and a scope of ‘peril’ that fits perfectly with the characters.

The characters are all likeable, albeit quite similar to each other: they’re all bright, quick-witted, and slightly sarcastic, and the dialogue between consists largely of banter.  They’re people I’d probably enjoy hanging out with.  This made the story accessible and an easy read, but with very little depth of character, and no real emotional inner life for any of them.  But for a plot-driven book of this length, that was fine.

Perfect length chapters, too.  Is that a strange thing to include in a review?  It has such an impact on my progress through a book… that “just one more chapter” feeling when the clock is ticking towards 1:00am.

Anyway… very enjoyable.

My rating: ★★★★☆

"Twas The Nightshift Before Christmas" by Adam Kay

Short but excellent set of stories from Adam Kay’s time as a junior doctor. This selection from his time doing Christmas shifts.

I read the first third of this book and listened to the audiobook for the remainder, narrated by Adam Kay himself. While it’s nice to hear the voice of the author, his comedy timing doesn’t do justice to the material, so I’d actually recommend reading the book.

Nice short read for the festive season!

My rating: ★★★★☆