Category: Books

Hunting the Eagles (2016): Ben Kane

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★★★★

The Eagles Trilogy: Book II

Five years after the massacre in the Teutoburg Forest, we rejoin the Roman centurion Tullus, his optio Fenestela and his loyal men Piso and Vitellius as they work to come to terms with the loss of their legion and their eagle. Their presence at the catastrophe has hit them hard. Officially forbidden to set foot in Rome, they remain on the German frontier, allocated to new legions, demoted (in Tullus’ case) and subject to the stares and mockery of men who weren’t there to witness what they saw.

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The Philosopher Kings (2015): Jo Walton

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★★★½

Thessaly: Book II

We rejoin the inhabitants of the island of Kallisti twenty years after the conclusion of The Just City, when the project to construct a living version of Plato’s Republic foundered on the rocks of debate, arrogance and divine impatience. A generation has passed since then and, with many of the Masters dead and a new crop of Young Ones growing up, it falls to the Children – those brought to Kallisti at ten years old – to steer their way towards the best possible world. But things are not what they once were and, in the absence of Athene, the high ideals of a philosophical city are already beginning to crumble.

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The Trouble with Women (2016): Jacky Fleming

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© Kevin Hickson

★★★★

I suspect Jacky Fleming will hate being labelled with this word, but she’s a little bit of a genius. Her new, tongue-in-cheek book of cartoons takes on one of the big questions of modern society: why is it that there are so many more male geniuses than female? Carefully studying the evidence from the 19th century, and presenting us with the ‘facts’, Fleming embarks on a simple exposé of the downright absurd reasoning by which men have traditionally ‘proven’ that women are the weaker sex.

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Uprooted (2015): Naomi Novik

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★★★★

Naomi Novik has now finished her phenomenally successful Temeraire series and I’m looking forward to catching up with the final four books, as and when I can track them down in the local library. In the meantime, I spotted a copy of her new standalone novel, which I carried off in triumph. It takes place in a very different world from Temeraire: a medieval, Eastern European setting rich with fairytale motifs: dense forests, dark winters and a great evil stalking the land. But there’s a Dragon here too, who lives in a tower at the end of the valley and comes down once every ten years to carry off one of the daughters of the peasant families. Things are not, however, exactly what they seem and in fact this gorgeous, sprawling, magical novel stands triumphantly independent of its scaly-clawed forebears.

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Death on the Cherwell (1935): Mavis Doriel Hay

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I haven’t been able to find a photo of Mavis Doriel Hay. If anyone knows of one, please let me know!

★★★

Sally Watson, Daphne Loveridge, Gwyneth Pane and Nina Harson meet on the roof of their Oxford college boathouse to swear foundation oaths for a new society, the Lode League. Their purpose is to stand against the pernicious influence of Persephone College’s hated Bursar and to do everything in their power to repay her for some of the misery she inflicts on the poor students. But, as they share out wire rings to mark themselves as members of this noble enterprise, something happens that they could never have expected. Down the river in the twilight comes a canoe, nosing its way along the bank; and in the canoe lies the figure of the Bursar herself; and the Bursar, when the girls manage to hook in the canoe with a punting pole and paddles, is definitely and unequivocally dead.

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The Little Chronicle of Magdalena Bach (1925): Esther Meynell

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★★

I have an ongoing ‘merry war’ with a friend of mine about whether Bach or Vivaldi is the better composer. Before you all splutter over your morning cups of Earl Grey, the squabble is primarily founded on an unjust comparison. I point out that Bach surely couldn’t have written a decent storm aria if he’d tried, whereas my friend quite reasonably argues that Vivaldi is nothing but a faint shadow of Bach when it comes to religious music. Anyway, when I spotted that this book was up for review, I thought I’d better show willing and try to understand a little bit more about (and here I quote my friend) ‘the best composer born in 1685’.*

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The Harrowing (2016): James Aitcheson

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★★★

Set in the dark days after the Norman invasion, this novel takes us behind the martial glamour of the shield wall and the sword song and gives us a glimpse of the experiences of ordinary people in a newly uncertain world. As the new king Wilelm secures the south, bribing and terrifying local thegns into submission, those loyal to the aetheling Eadgar retreat north. As English forces make a stand at Eoforwic, Wilelm sends an army to meet them, burning, killing and destroying as it goes. In this land of blood and fire, no one is safe and a  motley band of travellers find themselves drawn together on the road as they flee, partly from the Normans, but also from their own dark pasts.

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The Paying Guests (2014): Sarah Waters

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★★★½

I read this a while ago and, at the time, hadn’t read any of Sarah Waters’s books except The Night Watch and, according to LibraryThing, The Little Stranger, although embarrassingly I can’t remember a thing about that. The Paying Guests was yet another of those books stumbled over in my local Oxfam. Even it didn’t exert quite the power I’d been hoping for, it turned into an unexpectedly engaging thriller whose final pages kept me up past midnight in my impatience to find out what happened.

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The Strays (2014): Emily Bitto

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★★★★½

The Strays has enjoyed great success in its native Australia and it’s easy to see why. It brims with the ribald, feverish glamour of bohemian life, seen through the eyes of a narrator who grows to adulthood on the margins of an exotic world so very different from her own humdrum existence. Romantic and poignant, it manages to feel much larger than its slim size would suggest. There are hints of Brideshead Revisited, of The Secret History and The Lessons, of A.S. Byatt’s The Children’s Book and, like Elena Ferrante’s Neapolitan Novels, it focuses on an intensely-rendered, many-layered picture of adolescent female friendship. It’s a stunning debut.

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Eagles at War (2015): Ben Kane

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★★★★

The Eagles Trilogy: Book I

In a sacred grove in the depths of a German forest, a seven-year-old boy watches a human sacrifice and takes an oath which will shape his entire life and strike at the very heart of Roman power. The boy’s name is Ermin of the Cherusci. He will grow up to become Arminius, Rome’s ally, Rome’s auxiliary and Rome’s greatest enemy.

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