Archives

The Fort

Mar22

The Fort is a rare standalone novel from Bernard Cornwell.

It tells the story of an early engagement in the American War of Independence. On paper the battle should easily have been won by the Americans but it turned out to be a victory for the British.

It is very closely based on fact and Cornwell manages to bring alive the cast of characters and show how personality can make a huge difference to the outcome of a fight like this.

It’s not his best work. Of course, it’s not bad by any standard, but I’ve come to expect more from Cornwell. I think it would have benefitted from another editorial pass. There were a lot of dialogue tags which I haven’t noticed in his writing before and I feel that had it had one more rewrite these would have come out. Because of that it feels rushed.

Otherwise, this is an episode of history I knew nothing about and I enjoyed the telling of it. Cornwell is very balanced in his presentation of what happened and it is hard to pick a side. There are sympathetic characters amongst the British and the Americans. I liked it, but it’s probably one for the fans.

The God Species

Mar19

The God Species by Mark Lynam is about how humans are affecting the planetary environment and about how some of the things the environmental movement are proposing as solutions aren’t helping. Lynam explains why and suggests alternatives. Basically, technology has got us into this mess and only technology can get us out of it.

As a long time environmental activist and journalist, Lynam challenges some of the central tenets of the environmental movement. He explains the concept of planetary boundaries and shows how we can identify a point of no return for several issues including biodiversity, nitrogen, land use and ocean acidification. Given these boundaries there are some solutions that will work and some that are contributing to the problem. Lynam says that the environmental movement needs to embrace some technologies it has been vociferously against in order to achieve its goal of saving the planet.

I’m persuaded that humans are affecting the environment in ways that are damaging and that we have to do something about it. I recycle, buy organic food and try to be energy efficient. And I feel guilty that I don’t do more. But for sometime I’ve been uncomfortable with the smug, judgemental attitude that seems to go along with environmentalism, and a lot of that seems to centered around food. You’re a bad person if you don’t grow your own vegetables, eat only organic, natural food, and cook from scratch. Except that I don’t want to. It’s time-consuming and boring and I’m quite time-poor right now. Lynam argues that organic farming takes up more land and can’t support as many people. While it may be better for biodiversity than non-organic farming, Lynam argues that it is not as good for biodiversity as giving the land over to wilderness, so a better solution is genetically modified crops that need less land and more wildlife parks. I’ve never really understood why GM crops are bad, except for the practices of big agribusiness, so I like this idea. GM crops can also be developed to fix their own nitrogen and be pest resistant, meaning less use of toxic fertilisers and pesticides.

The other big issue is energy generation. Lynam argues that it is futile to take a sack-cloth and ashes approach to how we will live and says that the challenge is to find another way to meet our energy needs. The only credible answer is nuclear power supported by renewables. This is another point I’ve never understood – that nuclear is so much more scary than carbon fuels. The French have been using nuclear for ages with little apparent problem.

I enjoyed this very much. It was stimulating and caused me to change my mind about some things, and to think harder about other things. It left me feeling very positive about the future of the planet and for humanity. Defintely worth a read.

The Crisis of Global Capitalism

Mar16

George Soros wrote The Crisis of Global Capitalism in 1998, in the last credit crunch. I thought it would be interesting to see if what he said was still true.

The central point of the book is that money markets aren’t based on natural laws that are always true no matter what, but are actually realities created by the beliefs held by the people participating in them. So, basically, the global financial system is a massive delusion that we all create together. I’m completely on board with that. Unfortunately, the book is written in incomprehensible gibberish. I couldn’t finish it.

The Shelters of Stone

Mar12

The Shelters of Stone is the fifth in the Earth’s Children series by Jean M. Auel. I read the first book, The Clan of the Cave Bear, when I was eleven and I loved it. I read it many times and it remains one of my favourite books. I’d also read the other three, with declining attachment, and the last of those hadn’t been very engaging at all.

In this instalment, Ayla comes to Jondalar’s home and learns whether she will be accepted or not.

I got about halfway through and it was a hard decision to stop reading. When I was actually reading it I found it enjoyable and it was quite an easy read. I found Ayla a little too perfect, the characters were simplistic, and the dialogue a little stilted and formal. These weren’t insurmountable issues though. This is essentially a lecture on prehistory in the form of a novel and parts of it are fascinating.

I think what really killed it for me was the lack of conflict. There’s never any real doubt that everyone will love Ayla and welcome her in, no doubt that she will teach her new family how to tame animals, no doubt that she and Jondalar will come up with lots of new inventions. But given the choice of spending an hour on the train reading this or doing something else I found I was quite keen to do anything else.

The Way We Live Now

Mar8
Free kindle books! Yay. There are books now out of copyright that are available free for the kindle and I have availed myself of a few. One of them is The Way We Live Now by Anthony Trollope which I wanted to read as it was mentioned in an article on The Business Case for Reading Novels.

Mr Melmotte arrives in London amidst rumours of vast wealth, shady deals and a lack of breeding. It is set in London in 1870 and there are several lordlets in search of an heiress. Melmotte’s wealth is reckoned to be so great it overrides any considerations that he might be a commoner.

One of the lordlets is Felix Carbury whose mother has decided that she will make a living (she has to because her son gambles away her money) writing books. She surmises that it is more important to persuade influential critics to say her books are good than it is to actually write good books. Felix’s sister, Hetta, has an offer of marriage from her cousin, Roger Carbury, who is a model of virtue. But she is in love with Paul Montague, a hapless young man who is manipulated into investing his entire wealth in a transamerican railway and finds it hard to disentangle himself from a previous engagement.

Melmotte is brought in on the railway scam and the share price rises. Melmotte’s wealth is reckoned to be incalculable and his ego is flattered to the point that he is persuaded to stand for parliament. Then everything starts to unravel.

This was originally published as a serial and occasionally there is a bit of recapping. Obviously this is a very old book so there’s not much to say about style – it is of its time. However, I found it highly readable and was completely absorbed. None of the characters really come out well and yet it is hard to say who is really bad.

It was funny in places and is very relevant to the current economic climate. I was a little disppointed by the ending and would have preferred a less fairytale resolution, but that’s a minor point. Overall it was an excellent read and I recommend it.

The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake

Feb13
The first thing to say about The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake by Aimee Bender is that it has a great title. It’s evocative and intriguing, the rhythm is good and is the sort of title that makes me wish I had a talent for titling things.

At the age of nine Rose discovers she can taste emotions in the food she eats. If it is manufactured food she can tell all the layers that contributed to creating it. If it is homemade she can taste how the person who made it was feeling. She finds that people around her feel things that they don’t display on the surface and she struggles to work out a way to manage it.

Rose’s brother Joseph is quiet and reclusive. As he reaches his late teens he starts to disappear in mysterious ways. Their mother is frantic and their father is distant. Eventually Joseph disappears and doesn’t come back. Rose feels she can’t move out now, but gradually she finds a way to use her gift and have a life of her own.

It’s an easy read but the title really is the best thing about it. The powers that Rose and her brother have are not explained until the end when their father reveals that his father had a similar power. I found this element of the book unsatisfying. I could have accepted any number of causes had an effort been made to provide one.

The description of the emotions in the food could have been richer and more detailed. I thought that they were flat and I found them disappointing. What I did like was the concept; it’s an interesting idea. The execution didn’t do it justice and didn’t live up to the title.

I wasn’t keen on the writing style, even acknowledging that anything read after Babel Tower would suffer by comparison, and I found it difficult to engage with the characters. It was not so bad that I couldn’t finish it but I would certainly avoid anything else by this author.

Babel Tower

Feb10
One of my top ten books is Possession by A. S. Byatt and so it stands to reason that I would like other books by the same author. I read Angels and Insects and wasn’t blown away. I bought Babel Tower and it has sat on my bookshelf for ten years. Part of the reason I haven’t read it is that it is a hardback and is 615 pages. The other part is that I was worried I wouldn’t like it. Oh, how wrong I was.

On the surface it is the story of Frederica Potter, a woman who was a Cambridge graduate in the early 1960s, then her sister died and while she was grieving she married an inappropriate man. At the start of Babel Tower Frederica has a two year old and is realising that she made a mistake in her marriage. When she runs into an old friend it accelerates this realisation. The cracks in her marriage widen and her husband becomes extremely jealous and violent. After he hits her with an axe, she leaves and begins a life in London.

There Frederica renews old friendships and makes new ones, including one with the author of a book which is tried under the Obscenity Act. At the same time, Frederica starts divorce proceedings. What the book is really about is the terrible position and treatment of women in the 1960s and it is very feminist. It is also about the nature of art and about obscenity, morality and freedom of expression.

The quality of the writing is astonishing. It was so rich and complex without ever becoming florid. I wish I could write like this. On every page I was in awe. It is the third in a series of four and, of course, I haven’t read any of the others but it easily stands on its own. Byatt is a literary writer who is gripping, tense and utterly absorbing. This was amazing and I could barely put it down. You should definitely read it.

Tiger of Talmare

Feb6
Tiger of Talmare by Nina Scott is a novella that I stumbled across while I was browsing Amazon for contemporary science fiction written by women.

Mel is a space pirate who has been hired to hijack a spaceship carrying the cryogenically frozen Zach to be tried for a massacre on Talmare. Zach is a tiger-human hybrid soldier, who happens to have been chasing Mel across the galaxy for the last ten years, ever since she stole his ship.

The cryochamber is damaged so Mel has to revive Zach. He convinces her he’s innocent. The man who hired her is the real culprit and is trying to silence Zach. As the story is uncovered it turns out there is connection to a troubled member of Mel’s crew so Mel decides to do the right thing. And as this is a romance as much as an adventure, Mel and Zach get it on.

This is a fun romp heavy on action and dialogue. These elements are well done and the book is pretty entertaining. It’s a novella, coming in at a mere 100 pages, so there’s not much room for anything else. I think these characters have a lot of potential and if the story was fleshed out with description and context it would make a great novel.

I liked it. It’s currently free as an ebook, so give it a go.

On a side note, I’m keen to read science fiction written by women. Any suggestions? I’m looking for people publishing now, rather than classics of the genre.

The Hidden Empire

Feb2
The Hidden Empire by Kevin J. Anderson is the first book in The Saga of Seven Suns series which runs to seven books. It’s a meaty space opera of around 660 pages. A nice substantial book to really get my teeth into. In theory.

Humanity expanded out into the universe in generation ships. They encountered the Ildirans who gave them advanced technology for spaceflight and helped them settle colony planets. They’ve discovered another extinct alien race and in the course of learning about them they’ve found a tool for tunring gas giants into suns.

Using this tool triggers a third alien race to reveal themselves and declare war on both humans and Ildirans.

As this is the first book in a series of seven it is largely setting up the war. Through numerous characters Anderson builds up a picture of human and Ildiran society and draws the relationships between them. The Hidden Empire is broad in scope which I liked, but it lacks depth which I didn’t like.

Chapters are short, lasting only one or two scenes. This makes the pace quite quick. The chapters are told from the point of view of a single character and often ends refering to the character whose chapter is next so there is a pleasing chain effect.

What it lacks is depth. There is one main bit of human society (Hansa) and two further cultures (Theroc and Roamer) which have a tense relationship with the main bit. But the groupings are simplistic. For example, the Hansa have devolved to a psuedo-monarchy for their system of government and the rationale seems rather weak. There is also a lack of understanding of the dynamics of oppression and marginalisation. The characters are shallow stereotypes that exist primarily as narrative mouthpieces. The whole thing is heteronormative and white-centric – probably not consciously, but it does demonstrate a lack of thought or analysis.

I finished it (and I won’t be finishing anything truely terrible this year), but I won’t be reading the rest of the saga. While I do love fiction with a broad sweep I need that to be balanced with depth, good characters and complex relationships.

The Memoirs of Cleopatra

Jan26
I love a big book – it’s very satisfying. There is a depth of immersion that just can’t be achieved in anything less than 500 pages. The Memoirs of Cleopatra by Margaret George is a big book at 960 pages and it is well worth the effort.

The memoirs tell the story of the whole life of Cleopatra; from growing up in Alexandria to her death by suicide at the age of forty. It covers her relationship with Caesar, her part in the chaos after his death and the side she eventually chose. That was the side of Marc Anthony and the book details their unsuccessful war with Octavian.

Margaret George derives a lot of the events from the historical record – relying on a broad range of sources and stripping away the exaggerations and defamations of Cleopatra’s enemies. Some things are fictionalised but as much as possible is derived from the historical clues available.

It is an interesting story in that it is essentially the story of defeat all the way through. Cleopatra snatches her country from the machinations of her siblings and aligns herself with Caesar to preserve her throne. Which fateful decision sets her up for a lifetime of trying to prevent Egypt from becoming a Roman province. She fails at that, and ironically, it is a far richer prize at the end than it would have been if she had not saved it in the first place.

This was utterly engaging. The worldbuilding is very good and Rome and Egypt are fully realised. The staggering wealth of Cleopatra is effectively conveyed. I really enjoyed this.