Category: Books

Esther: Royal Beauty (2014): Angela Hunt

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★★★

A Dangerous Beauty Novel: Book I

Ladies and gents, it’s time for another foray into Achaemenid historical fiction. This time we’ll be travelling via the medium of Biblical fiction – a genre which is not of any great interest to me, in and of itself, but which accounts for the vast majority of historical fiction set in the ancient Near East. As you’ll probably remember, I read a novel about Esther not very long ago and I was curious to see whether Hunt’s rendition of the story would have anything in common with Lofts’s beyond the bare bones of the story related in the Bible. The answer is: very little, but Hunt has evidently read her Herodotus, which means that this Esther has a weight of historical plausibility that Lofts’s lacked.

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My Grandmother Sends Her Regards and Apologises (2013): Fredrik Backman

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★★★★

Fredrik Backman has sidled into my awareness during the last couple of months and I now marvel that it took me so long to discover him. Funnily enough, this wasn’t the first of his books that I planned to read – that was his debut novel, A Man Called Ove – but when I spotted it in the library the other day, I thought I’d take the plunge. And it is absolutely brilliant. A big-hearted, generous, poignant novel, this tells the story of almost-eight-year-old Elsa, her rakish Granny, the wonderful world of fairy tales that they share, and the treasure hunt that Granny leaves behind for Elsa when she dies. A story of eccentricities, regrets and second chances, this had me choking back tears at least three times, while simultaneously wanting to give it a massive bear-hug. Utterly magical.

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Eric (1990): Terry Pratchett

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★★

The Discworld Reread: Book IX

Technically speaking, Eric isn’t part of the Discworld series. Guards! Guards! calls itself the eighth book and Moving Pictures the ninth, but Eric is always listed in between them. It’s more of a novella than a novel and seems to be aimed at more of a young adult audience, as an inept teenage demonology hacker finds his summoning rite answered by the worst possible ‘demon’ in the world: the eternally inept wizard Rincewind.

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Twelve Kings in Sharakhai (2015): Bradley Beaulieu

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★★★★

The Song of the Shattered Sands: Book I

You hear a lot of fantasy novels being described as ‘epic’, but the opening novel in Bradley Beaulieu’s new series deserves that epithet better than most. It isn’t just huge – 580 pages in the hardback version – but it features a monumental concept, rich with history, legends and backstory, which is all the more memorable for stepping outside the usual traditions of Western European-inspired fantasy. Beaulieu’s Sharakhai is a desert city of mud-brick and stone, a compelling blend of Marrakesh and ancient Baghdad, full of intrigues, secrets and half-truths. For one young woman, seeking vengeance for her mother’s murder, these secrets will offer a road out of the fighting pits, and a future more dazzling and more lethal than anything she could have dreamed.

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Midnight Blue (2016): Simone van der Vlugt

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Simone van der Vlugt © Merlijn Doomernik

★★★

Recently widowed, Catrin Barentsdochter is a free woman again at the age of 25 and vows that 1654 will finally be her year of change. She’s tired of working the land and amusing herself by painting decorative furniture in her spare time. She wants nothing more than to escape the claustrophobic parochialism of her little village, De Rijp, and make a new life for herself in the nearby town of Alkmaar. However, when an unexpected meeting leads to an offer of work in distant Amsterdam, Catrin realises that the scope of her world might be wider than she ever dreamed.

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Rome: The Emperor’s Spy (2009): M.C. Scott

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★★★★

The Rome Novels: Book I

Manda Scott; the Emperor Nero; chariot-racing; mystery cults; a love triangle; and an imperial spy fighting against time to prevent disaster: it’s a formidably tempting combination. Needless to say, I’ve been itching to read this ever since I finished the last of the Boudica novels and was finally able to wait no longer. And it thoroughly lived up to expectations, as I tore breathlessly through an audacious, fast-paced story, plotted with an almost Dunnettian dexterity.

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The Secret Lives of Baba Segi’s Wives (2010): Lola Shoneyin

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★★★

I picked this out at the library as part of my plan to read more fiction set in other cultures, and it was certainly illuminating, though I’m not able to judge how far (if at all) it’s exaggerated in regard to the characters’ beliefs, habits and interactions. Set in contemporary Nigeria, it follows the educated young woman Bolanle as she joins the prosperous household of Baba Segi as his fourth wife. Her arrival worsens the already fraught relationships between his existing wives and, ultimately, will destroy the very foundations of this uncomfortable ménage.

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Guards! Guards! (1989): Terry Pratchett

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★★★★

The Discworld Reread: Book VIII

In the series so far, we haven’t seen much of the Ankh-Morpork City Guard. One or two guardsmen have had speaking roles, but essentially they’ve occupied the place that such figures occupy in traditional fantasy: bland figures, so expendable that they don’t even have names, whose function is to fight, pursue or be killed by the maverick hero. This novel goes a long way towards rectifying that, as the estimable men of the Night Watch have their moment in the sun (so to speak) at last – introducing some of my favourite characters along the way.

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Académie Royale (2015): Hannah Williams

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★★★★½

A History in Portraits

Published in 2015, this lavishly-illustrated book offers a engaging study of the Académie Royale, from its foundation in 1648 until its abolition in 1793 as part of the intellectual readjustments of the Revolution. While the Académie’s meetings and statutes are well-documented and have furnished much research over the years, Williams seeks to go beyond a simple chronological history of a great institution. Instead, she interrogates the Académie’s values and networks by reconstructing the lived experience of its members, as far as possible, through an examination of the Académie’s collection of official artists’ portraits. It’s an ambitious idea, but the book pulls it off remarkably well and is all the more appealing for its spirited accounts of machinations, alliances and rivalries in the corridors of the Louvre in the 17th and 18th centuries.

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Pyramids (1989): Terry Pratchett

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★★★★

The Discworld Reread: Book VII

The Old Kingdom of the Djel river valley has endured for millennia, governed by ancient rituals and overshadowed by its pyramids, the mighty tombs of former monarchs, which flare their power up into the night. It isn’t a place that accepts change easily. And yet, in a small act of defiance, King Teppicymon XXVII decides to send his son away to school. He’s heard that the Assassins’ Guild in Ankh-Morpork offers a fine modern education, and so young Teppic is bundled off for an improving course of etiquette, history, foreign languages and rudimentary chemistry. Oh, and learning how to ‘inhume’ people as well, of course, but it’s considered a bit vulgar to talk about that. The problem comes, however, when the King shuffles off this mortal coil mere hours after his son’s graduation exam, and Teppic is suddenly forced to confront a burning question: how on earth does one reconcile being a thoroughly modern assassin and a living god?

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