Category: Books

Flame in the Mist (2017): Renée Ahdieh

Leave a comment

★★★

Since childhood, Hattori Mariko has always been regarded as a bit odd: too curious, too inventive for a girl of her high station. But even oddness can’t protect her from fate. As she travels by litter from her parents’ home towards the imperial city of Inako, she feels no different from any other well-born young woman, being forced into a marriage not of her choosing. Far away in Inako, in the enchanted precincts of Heian Castle, her betrothed waits: Minamoto Raiden, son of the emperor himself. But between the Hattori lands and Inako lies Jukai Forest, the haunt of ghosts, spirits and desperate men. And Mariko’s entourage, having entered the Forest, will never emerge.

Continue reading →

Devices and Desires (2005): K.J. Parker

10 Comments

★★★★½

The Engineer Trilogy: Book I

With a long trip looming, I was hunting for the perfect book: something with engaging characters, brilliant world-building and a plot I could really get my teeth into. Fate must have been listening, because it brought me face to face with this unassuming-looking volume. For the last week, this has been my constant companion: a deliciously rich tale of intrigue and vengeance; love, loyalty and friendship; and clashing cultures. It’s shelved under fantasy because it takes place in a place not registered on any map of our world, but there isn’t a speck of magic in it. Anchored in technological experimentation and political strife, this is a superb story of human ambition – and how one small act can ripple out to bring down civilisations and change history for ever.

Continue reading →

Facing the Tank (1989): Patrick Gale

6 Comments

★★★½

This is the first book I’ve read by Patrick Gale: I have A Place Called Winter waiting at home to be read but, with a transatlantic flight before me, Facing the Tank‘s e-book format pushed it to the top of my list. What was I expecting? I’m not quite sure, but it wasn’t this: a profoundly quirky exploration of purpose, love and belonging in a small country town, where normal life is thrown into disarray by something which might just be a miracle.

Continue reading →

Penelope’s Web (2015): Christopher Rush

Leave a comment

★★★

I was drawn towards this book in the library by a kind of magnetic field, as usually happens with books about Troy. I’d never heard of Christopher Rush before, but I was tempted by the sound of a novel that retold the story of the Odyssey and Iliad from different perspectives, focusing on the way that stories ennoble and refine the hard, unpalatable facts of real life. The concept is intelligent, but the language is occasionally unremittingly filthy and the attitude to women is (perhaps unsurprisingly for soldiers in Bronze Age Greece) dismally misogynistic. While I don’t for a minute suggest that the author shares the views of his characters, I found it very hard to warm to a book in which women are seen as having only one function.

Continue reading →

City of Masks (2017): S.D. Sykes

3 Comments

★★

The Somershill Manor Mysteries: Book III

The first thing to bear in mind about this book is that it’s actually third in a series. This wasn’t made clear in the blurb for my Netgalley ARC, so I was immediately wrong-footed when it assumed much more knowledge of its protagonist, and his history, than I had. It’s part of the Somershill Manor Mysteries series, the first of which is Plague Land and the second The Butcher Bird. If you are interested in reading City of Masks, I strongly recommend you read those two first, as I think they would add considerably to your enjoyment. In my ignorance, however, and lured by the promise of a novel set in 14th-century Venice, I simply plunged straight in…

Continue reading →

New Boy (2017): Tracy Chevalier

Leave a comment

★★★

Hogarth Shakespeares are like buses, aren’t they? I haven’t picked one up for years and now there are two at once. Following on from the quirky, inoffensive Vinegar Girl (retelling The Taming of the Shrew) is New Boy, Tracey Chevalier’s reworking of Othello. I’m a great admirer of Chevalier and her concept is clever – to set the story among the ever-changing alliances and rivalries of an elementary-school playground. Certainly, this setting gives plausibility to the lightening-swift shifts of Shakespeare’s characters, but I just couldn’t shake off a certain… uneasiness. Such a story, which hinges so heavily on sexual jealousy and very adult violence, doesn’t sit comfortably in such a place. On one hand, we risk the complexities of the story being lost; on the other, we see children behaving in a way which feels too mature for eleven-year-olds. Nevertheless, it’s an interesting – and disturbing – experiment.

Continue reading →

The Winter Isles (2015): Antonia Senior

3 Comments

★★★★

Lyrical and heartfelt, this novel set in 12th-century Scotland feels like a natural successor to King Hereafter. It occupies much the same territory, following the ambitious young lord Somerled as he negotiates the rivalries and alliances of the Western Isles and develops a name for himself as a fearless warrior. Based on a figure who is as tantalising a blend of history and myth as Macbeth himself, it’s a novel that lingers on the feel of the wild land and the yawning breadth of the playful, fearsome, lovely sea, despite the occasional savagery of its battle scenes. With characters you truly grow to care about, and with a wonderful star-crossed love story at its heart, it’s a rewarding read.

Continue reading →

As Nature Made Him (2000): John Colapinto

5 Comments

★★★★

The Boy Who Was Raised As A Girl

Following on from Genie, this book explores another case which featured prominently in my A level Psychology textbook. It’s one of the most famous stories in the canon, a case which has been used on both sides of the nature-nurture debate, and one which does more than any other to prompt outrage at the medical establishment. It tells the tale of twin baby boys, born in Winnipeg in 1967 and admitted at eight months old for circumcision. When error, either mechanical or human, caused catastrophic burns to the penis of the elder twin, doctors advised that the only option was to castrate the child and raise him as a girl. His distraught parents followed this advice. This is the story of David Reimer: a story of dizzying medical hubris and humbling resilience, made deeply poignant by a tragic coda which postdated the publication of this study.

Continue reading →

Oswiu: King of Kings (2016): Edoardo Albert

7 Comments

★★★★

The Northumbrian Thrones: Book III

In this third and (currently) last instalment in The Northumbrian Thrones, the ramifications of Oswald‘s untimely death spread across the feuding kingdoms of Britain. It is now 642 AD and the unification that seemed within reach during the reign of Edwin has crumbled away. Even Northumbria is no longer united. Oswald’s younger brother Oswiu faces a long, hard battle to secure his kingship against the mightiest ruler in the land: Penda, ambitious and ruthless king of Merica. But Oswiu has one advantage that Penda lacks: the posthumous, miracle-working reputation of the murdered Oswald.

Continue reading →

The Ladies of Llangollen (1971): Elizabeth Mavor

Leave a comment

★★★★

Like the Chevalier d’Eon, the Ladies of Llangollen came my way thanks to a work project. When trying to find an introduction to their lives, I judged that Elizabeth Mavor’s book seemed the best option, despite now coming across as slightly dated (it was published in 1971). Yet, for all that, it presents a thorough and sensitive discussion of these two remarkable women, who created an idyllic lifestyle together on their own terms and in defiance of social convention. Drawing on the Ladies’ own journals and correspondence, along with the letters of their immediate circle, newspaper reports and other documents, Mavor’s book isn’t just the sound introduction I was looking for, but an admirably unbiased and scrupulously fair double biography.

Continue reading →