★★★★
Empires of Dust: Book I
Well, by Jove, I wanted to find out what grimdark was and I think The Court of Broken Knives is more or less a one-novel definition of the term. Searingly brutal, full of political intrigue, without a single purely good character, but plenty of fascinating ones, this debut fantasy gripped me with the tenacity of a cutthroat in a dark alley. It isn’t without its issues, as you’d expect in a first novel, but it has a fearless, blood-drenched flair.
★★★★
The Discworld Reread: Book 15
Sam Vimes is having a bad day. It isn’t that he’s hungover, as he was last time we met him in the opening pages of a novel. It’s worse than that. He’s about to get married. Not today, you understand, but soon enough that it’s unavoidable. And it isn’t that he has concerns about his bride-to-be. On the contrary, Sybil Ramkin sweeps all before her with the gusto of a migrating glacier and Vimes isn’t strong enough to challenge her. But he’s worried about what marriage will entail: hobnobbing with aristocrats, whom Vimes loathes, and who he knows perfectly well loathe him; losing his sense of identity; and, worst of all, giving up his place in the Watch.
★★★½
In an ideal world, I’d use long journeys to finally read that second volume of Proust, catch up on some Herodotus, or focus on foreign-language exhibition catalogues. Instead, my brain cheerfully clocks out and I end up reading stuff like this. That isn’t to say C.S. Pacat’s trilogy is bad: on the contrary, it’s an engaging tale of political skulduggery and brooding romance. But I wasn’t going to own up to it until I saw a photo that Kerstin posted on Facebook, while lazing in the garden with her Kindle, and noticed that she was reading it too. At that point I decided that everyone’s entitled to a bit of froth once in a while, and thought I’d do a quick post on the trilogy – if only because, as Kerstin’s interest indicates, there’s more here for Dunnett readers than you might initially expect.
★★★
There’s a modern trend for historians to try their hand at fiction. As far as I can tell, it started with Alison Weir’s Tudor novels; more recently, Lucy Worseley and even Neil Oliver have jumped on the bandwagon. Now it’s the turn of Ian Mortimer, a brilliant medieval historian and the author of the various Time Traveller’s Guides to British history. You can understand the appeal. After all, historians have immersed themselves in the modes and manners of their specialist periods and should be perfect guides to fictional recreations of those worlds. But, but, but. Knowledge alone isn’t enough to make a good historical novel. Mortimer’s speculative time-slip moral fable is packed with instructive observations about daily life in the past, but does it work as a story?
★★★★
I thoroughly enjoyed T. Kingfisher’s retelling of the Snow Queen legend in The Raven and the Reindeer and was unable to resist this reworking of Beauty and the Beast. It’s a fairy tale I’ve always loved, ever since I was six years old and went to see the animated Disney film at the cinema for a friend’s birthday treat. There’s much to love about the traditional version, but Kingfisher’s story is delightful in a different way, offering a no-nonsense heroine, a Beast with a dry sense of humour, and brooding dark magic.
★★★½
Gosh, what a strange novel. Part historical fiction, part fable, this book feels wilfully enigmatic, its meaning hovering just beyond reach, like a shattered reflection in water. This is only the second of Ishiguro’s novels that I’ve read (the first, some years ago, was Never Let Me Go) and so I’m not sure which elements are typical of his writing and which merely adopted for this book. One thing which the two books have in common, though, is that an apparently simple story turns out to have a much deeper significance. I have a sneaking suspicion that The Buried Giant has several layers, so this post is primarily an attempt to tease out meaning from this dreamlike tale of an ancient British past.
★★★★
The Shattered Sea: Book I
When I found this book in the library, I decided to spend some quality time with Joe Abercrombie. I’ve meant to read his novels for ages and now, having enjoyed my first taste of alleged ‘grimdark’ thanks to K.J. Parker, and savoured Abercrombie’s short story Two’s Company, I think the time has come. I’d always intended to start with The Blade Itself, but this story caught my imagination right away. A king murdered in strange circumstances. A prince robbed of his throne by a wicked uncle, and sold into slavery. And a ragtag band of galley-slaves stumbling into the wilderness, dreaming of freedom… and revenge. Oh yes. This was definitely my kind of book.
★★★★
For some reason, I always had Judith Tarr down as an author of historical fiction set in Ancient Egypt. However, though she has written some books with this setting, it turns out she’s a prolific author of historical fiction more broadly, as well as historical fantasy. I discovered this book completely by chance thanks to a post Tarr wrote at Tor.com on C.S. Lewis’s The Horse and his Boy, and have been utterly charmed by it. It’s an Arabian-Nights-style fantasy, set in Cairo in the 13th century during the rule of the young sultan Salah Al-Din: a tale of enchantment, arrogance, romance, and self-realisation, with a fiery young heroine and a most unconventional hero.
I’ve really been enjoying reading short stories from Tor.com – it feels decadent to sample one or two different authors during my commute – and so I decided to continue working my way through their treasure-trove of original fiction, each story presented with its own specially-designed cover by one of various talented artists. This selection includes all manner of fantastical sub-genres, taking in horror, romance, morality tales and epic fantasy with a comic twist. Find the first batch here. More coming soon!
★★★½
The Greatcoats: Book I
I’ve been saving this book as a treat, because I felt sure it was going to be a sparkler and, while I’m not exactly disappointed, it didn’t turn out to be quite what I was expecting. In many ways it ticks all the boxes of a fantasy-tinged swashbuckler, featuring dashing blades, impossible odds and dastardly nobles. These are all very, very good things. There are times, however, when it seems to lose its way: it shoehorns in a vague quest element and too often uses magic as a convenient way to achieve something, or to get out of a tight spot, rather than an integral part of the world. I can’t help feeling it’d be much more successful without its fantasy elements, as a simple character-driven adventure.
The Idle Woman 