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Eleven – Mark Watson

I bought this book because it was deal of the day a little while ago, and because it sounded like I might like it. I wasn’t aware of who Mark Watson is (though I might have confused him with Mark Haddon of Curious Incident fame). Turns out he’s a stand-up comedian and I have seen him on TV. His one of those people who are not quite a household name but you’d recognise from being on Mock the Week or whatever. Anyway all this is just to say I’m glad in a way that I hadn’t known/remembered that and read this as “just” another book.

Eleven is the story of Xavier Ireland who is originally from Australia but living in London and working as a DJ on a call-in radio show in the early hours of the morning. Whilst on his show he’s happy to dispense “common sense” advice in his life outside work he takes a much less interventionist approach. He’s happy to let things lie and not get involved. Whether that’s in the lives of his neighbours or the course of his own career. Then one day he goes to a speed dating evening where he doesn’t find a date but does find a new cleaner.

I enjoyed this book a lot and to be honest I wasn’t sure I was going to. For one thing it’s written mostly in the present tense and I find that a little irritating. However once I was engrossed in Xavier’s story that slipped away and I soon forgot to notice. For another the book does a thing where we are shown a series of apparently unconnected characters and what they are doing at a particular moment in time – near the start of the book. Throughout the book we then keep revisiting these characters and start to see the connections. I thought I wasn’t going to enjoy this structure because I was mostly interested in Xavier. However this took up less time than I thought – there was still plenty of space for Xavier, including his backstory and why he left Australia. Also there were some funny and touching moments in the others’ stories.

This is a book about consequences. It’s about the unfathomable chains of events that can occur and not only how we can be connected in surprising ways, but how one can never really predict the outcome of our actions, and so ultimately how it’s not necessarily “safer” to not get involved than to be more proactive.

I liked this book because of the characters. Not only were the main characters well drawn they were sympathetic and likable. I also felt that the book was warm about all its characters, even the ones with less going for them. It felt humane and hopeful and I liked that. I had a slight problem with the very end which I can’t really talk about without spoiling. But let’s just say I choose to put a certain interpretation on the events at the end of the book because it’s the way I want it to be.

8/10 – a warm-hearted web of inter-connected stories.

TBR still at 256 – which I’m happy with.

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book reading reviews

Ice Diaries – Lexi Revellian

When I read Revellian’s Remix last year I enjoyed it well enough but it was enough outside my personal tastes that I didn’t think I’d be picking up another of her books. However when I came across Ice Diaries as one of the February picks for the UK Amazon Kindle group on Goodreads I was intrigued by the concept and so I decided to give it a go.

The year is 2018 and shortly after a pandemic has wiped out most of the population a shift in the climate, what looks like a mini ice age, occurs and within a few weeks the UK is under 20 metres of snow. A small group of survivors are living in what were once luxury penthouse apartments. The have to forage for supplies by raiding the buildings that are still accessible i.e. the tall ones, or ones they can get to through them. How long this lifestyle is sustainable if the climate doesn’t change back is a question they ponder and the main character, Tori, would like to head south for warmer climes. Into this a stranger arrives bringing questions and violence in his wake.

The main thing that Ice Diaries has going for it is scenery. The idea of an almost empty London which consists of only the tallest buildings is quite a cool one. Unfortunately the book itself doesn’t do much with this idea. As post-apocalyptic novels go this definitely falls on the “cosy” side. The group have dinner parties, a book club, musical and poetry recitals – and this is the less well organised of the two communities in the book! Also although there’s talk of frostbite and of course mention of the depth of the snow, you get more of a sense of people surviving in what would be a normal, but on the very cold side of normal, British winter. I’m no expert but surely the kind of change that could deliver such a radical change in the landscape would mean the kind of climate where keeping warm, keeping fed and generally keeping on guard against the elements would be a constant struggle. However it seemed like so long as they wrapped up they could mostly move about outside ok and once inside it was sort of assumed that they could dress how they liked.

Of course this kind of thing normally doesn’t bother me and I wouldn’t be thinking about it if the writing was better. It was easy to read but the dialogue seemed obvious and on the nose and the plot was often predictable. Whereas Remix had some plot twists and turns and the pace quickened, Ice Diaries felt very sedate. There were whole sections where the action conveniently paused so that the main characters could spend time together, or explore a new venue. Never mind that they were being pursued by someone who potentially wanted to harm them. It felt very odd.

I see that I noted in my review of Remix that “some of the characterisation was lifted from a chick-lit novel and placed in a crime story“. Here I felt the same way and because of the setting it jarred more. One of the male characters literally was a tall, dark brooding character with a mysterious past who was potentially dangerous, and he was contrasted with a safe, sensible type. When Tori broke off from musings about how to escape to somewhere more sustainable, or where to get the next load of firewood from, to compare these to potential mates, or talk about how she went weak at the knees at his touch – it felt very odd indeed.

All of which makes it sound like I disliked this book. I didn’t really. In its favour it’s a quick read. I just didn’t find much to enjoy about it.

5/10 – a romantic scifi thriller in a snowy future London.

Current TBR count is 256 which is up from 253. I blame book groups and Amazon’s deal of the day!

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Night Watch – Terry Pratchett

So, I’ve been looking forward to this book for some time. It’s one of Melissa’s favourite books and she’s not the only one to tell me that it’s one of the best Discworld novels.

Night Watch, unsurprisingly, is a Watch book. In particular it’s a Vimes book. It’s very much a Vimes book in fact. Whilst chasing a murderous thief Vimes gets caught up in a magical storm which sends him back in time. He gets to experience a period in the history of the City of Ankh-Morpork from his youth. A time when rebellion is fomenting in the streets and the Watch must protect the public from, well, the public.

A lot of the enjoyment of this book lies on whether or not you enjoy the character of Sam Vimes. Fortunately I do. Here he is at his most Vimes-y. He’s alone in the city but quickly becomes part of, then effectively runs, a Watch house and plays a major role in the ongoing historical events. His sense of command of the situation, his common sense and level-headedness in general, along with the fact that he clearly cares about people, all go to make you like Vimes in this book. There are also younger versions of a few familiar faces from the Ankh-Morpork based books, which is fun.

It is quite a serious book. The jokes don’t flow as quick and fast as they do in other Discworld novels and there’s some grim business takes place. But that didn’t particularly put me off.

However I did fail to see the greatness of this book (and I’m sure it is my failure rather than the book’s). For me it was merely good. Very good perhaps but not great. Still well worth a read though.

8/10 – Vimes on top form.

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book reading reviews

Among Others – Jo Walton

Among Others is a pick from my currently reading shelf (i.e. it’s one I’d started before and now finally finished.) I originally bought it when a friend from work suggested it a) because he knew I like SciFi/Fantasy and b) because it was Amazon’s deal of the day that day for 99p.

Among Others tells the story of Morwenna Phelps. She’s a twin whose sister died and she herself was injured in a car accident. She loves to read and specifically she reads SciFi/Fantasy which she devours at a scary and intimidating rate (5+ books a week!). Oh and she sees fairies and can do magic.

Which makes it sound more about that than it is. If it’s about anything it’s about books and stories and how they make you see the world a certain way. It’s also about how that can be a refuge. I think the book makes a case for it not being a withdrawal as Mor, as we come to know her, is always really trying “to live” and it’s not that she abandons ‘real life’ in favour of books, it’s that she has expectations of what life should be that come from books and these expectations cause her to reject certain things about ‘real life’ – things she sees as trivial perhaps.

The book is told from her point of view, in fact it comprises her diary for a period from the autumn of 1979 to the end of Feb 1980. This places some of the books she references very specifically in their time.Which is also the right time for when I was growing up and discovering books and SciFi books in particular.

A big question that arose for me was whether or not the magic was real. Did she really see fairies or did she merely think she did? Was her mother really a dangerous witch or simply someone with mental health issues? I don’t think it’s a spoiler to say that the book never steps outside of the point of view of Mor, so that question if it arises for you – and it may not – is left open to interpretation.

I enjoyed this book. It’s very good on her everyday life. She’s been shipped off to an English boarding school and is having trouble fitting in – because she’s Welsh, because she reads, because she neither cares about nor can participate in sport. So the sense of a lonely outsider is well drawn. I did feel that she was somewhat ‘spiky’. I felt I ought to have liked her more, on paper she had a lot of stuff going for her – a tragic back-story,  being the outsider, being picked on, being bookish and smart. But I never quite got over the slight sense that she felt herself better than all these other girls who weren’t into books and SciFi.

Another minor irritation – and it is no more than that – was the book references. There were so many and I’d read a handful, had heard of most but not heard of a few. However I got most of what I needed to know about them from context. Which was fine but it rankled every time she compared her situation to characters I knew of but hadn’t read, or concepts I didn’t know from SciFi novels. (If you’re thinking of reading this for example and you don’t know what a karass is then I’d look it up. She explains toward the end of the book but uses it a lot before that.)

As I said though, I did enjoy it. And if you ever felt yourself out of step with others because of a love of books, and especially SciFi/Fantasy then this might well be the book for you.

7/10 – a book about books and about magic (which may be the same thing)

TBR has gone back up to 253 because having finished one book I’d bought two new ones. Need to be careful about that deal of the day. Currently Reading holding steady at 10 because my next book is not from that list. I feel like I’m doing well but then I remind myself that this time last year I’d read 7 books. However that slowed down considerably. Plus I’m reading with an eye to enjoyment not (purely) book count this year.

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Bridge of Birds – Barry Hughart

This is the Sword and Laser pick for February and unusually for me I not only read it early but finished it before the start of the month (obviously). It’s actually out of print in the UK and I want to say it was hard to get hold of but it wasn’t really, I searched on Amazon and there it was, and quite cheap too. It’s not that long ago when buying a book meant looking in various physical book shops, compared to that browsing a website for 5 mins isn’t “hard”. What was – let’s say challenging to my patience – was that it isn’t available in the UK as an ebook. It, together with its two sequels is available in the US in ebook form for the very reasonable sum of $10. I almost persuaded Barnes and Noble’s .com site to sell me a copy but they bailed at the last minute. There was also a free audio recording (sanctioned by the author) on a blog (here if you’re interested) but I really wanted to read rather than listen to it. So I ordered the ‘dead-tree’ edition. (Some people might use the fact of buying a paper copy as a sop to their conscience in order to then go ahead and ‘acquire’ an ebook version from an ‘unofficial’ source. Some people might do that…)

Anyway, to the book itself.

Bridge of Birds: A Novel of An Ancient China That Never Was – to give it its full title – is the story of the strong but simple soul Number Ten Ox going on a quest with a hired sage, Master Li. Ox’s village suffers an unfortunate attack of poisonings of the children between the ages of 8 and 14, and Ox ventures out to try to find The Great Root of Power – the only known antidote. He soon comes across Master Li, a very learned, very old man with “a slight flaw in his character” who agrees to help him track down this item. To say that their quest takes them on a wide variety of adventures, meeting strange and wonderful people and creatures is an understatement. What it reminds me of most is The Princess Bride. It has the same sly sense of humour, of not quite parodying the fantasy setting but occasionally throwing in a line or a point of view that feels more modern. On the other hand, like Princess Bride, the essential structure and style is one of myth, of a fairy tale. It’s fair to say that this sits right in the centre of where my sensibilities lie.

I really enjoyed this book. It took me a while to get into it but it’s short and it’s an easy read. It felt episodic at first. There seemed to be a lot of needing to go find the person who would be the key to thing that would help them find the person who knew the secret… a bit like one of those old video games. What’s actually fun about that though is that a) these interludes were entertaining in themselves, b) characters started to recur and c) they ended up coming together in a way that not only made it feel more of a connected story but also gave a rationale to it (sort of – you have to have bought into the story but by that stage I had).

This is a story that contains ghosts, monsters, fights, travel, puzzles, contests, magic, medicine, science, sex and even cookery (the section on how to properly prepare porcupine is hilarious) but ultimately it’s a love story. If that sounds like it might be of interest to you – I highly recommend this book.

9/10 – a great deal of fun.

As I bought this book and then read it my TBR remained steady at 252.

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Whispers Under Ground – Ben Aaronovitch

So book 3 in the Rivers of London (or PC Grant, opinions differ) series. It felt like a long wait before I got to read this. It was 3 books and 14 days. But all those books were perfectly fine (all 7s) and two weeks isn’t that long.

So we’re back with Peter Grant, Lesley May and Inspector Nightingale. Lesley is now also training to be a wizard (or a ‘practitioner’). Like the previous two books Whispers Under Ground has its own story – the mysterious death of an American art student at Baker Street tube station. Also like the previous books there’s more of an ongoing element. This time I suppose you could say it stretches back as well as forward.

I did really enjoy this book, but not quite as much as the other two. Whether that has anything to do with the fact that it took me a couple of weeks to read it – which was about being tired a lot not about the writing – I don’t know. It does have the trademark humour but either I’m getting used to it or the one-liners are less zing-y than they were. Also the separation between the story-of-this-book and the unfolding narrative is more clear cut. I guess that in book 1 that’s almost accidental because as events occur and discoveries are made you have no way to know whether it’s connected to the current story because you don’t really know until the end that some of it will carry on to the next book. However I also think the on-going story is given more time here. I think in two or three books time it will be the story of that book.

I think I enjoyed those elements more. Getting drip-fed more details about Nightingale’s past is tantalizing and the ‘Faceless Man’ is an intriguing villain. Also I think that the ‘A plot’ involves a lot of running around tunnels and sewers and under the ground generally and it didn’t grab me as much as the other stuff. I like the ‘nazareth’ though.

So now there is a long wait – June! – for book 4 to be published. And I believe book 5 has at least been commissioned. Lots of stuff on the TBR pile to be catching up with in the meantime.

8/10 – our favourite wizard ‘going underground’.

Speaking of TBR it currently stands at 252 down from 253 which is obviously good. The currently reading list is standing still at 10 but I hope to knock that down soon.

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Old Man’s War – John Scalzi

I did two things on my seventy-fifth birthday. I visited my wife’s grave. Then I joined the army.

Isn’t that a great way to open a book? Intriguing, it draws you in. I guess there’s nothing in it that isn’t implied by the book’s title but still, I like it.

I read Old Man’s War because I got it as part of the humble bundle back in October and Sword and Laser were doing it for their January pick. I confess the later reason was less important. My record with online book clubs is not great. When I do manage to finish the book in time I often read what’s already been discussed and don’t have much to add. When I do post something often there’s no reply. But I did find it interesting to see what others thought.

Old Man’s War is the story of John Perry who, as we’ve read, enlists on his 75th birthday. The army he enlists with is the Colonial Defence Force and involves him leaving earth, and his former life – he becomes legally dead, behind. The CDF recruits exclusively from 75-year-olds and there are rumours of rejuvenation technology, which is why so many enlist. The truth is slightly more disturbing.

The book follows John through the process step by step – leaving earth, initial induction, the treatment, military training, military campaigns. In fact for the first third of the book it’s pretty much one thing after another rather than a plot per se. Then there’s a section when we get to see John and the CDF battling various alien threats. This seemed mostly just to illustrate the variety of aliens and how they need to adapt tactics to fight them. The final section has something more of a plot.

I enjoyed this book, particulary parts 1 & 3. A common criticism and one I think I agree with is that you don’t really get a sense of an older person. Once we get to the training and the battles John is just a character we’re following and the fact that he has seven decades of experience doesn’t seem to play into it. I’d’ve thought at least in terms of the training we’d’ve see that oldies have less patience for their drill sergeant’s nonsense than your average 19-20-year-old.

I was also not a fan of the book’s treatment of the morals of war. The CDF seem to believe in Manifest Destiny and the one character who was given anything to say against this was also a character shown to be stupid by his actions. It’s true I suppose that there’s a constant tongue-in-cheek tone so how much we’re supposed to take any of this seriously is up for question. I’m told that this is dealt with again in the follow-up books. To be honest though I can’t see myself reading them.

7/10 – good decent old-fashioned spaceships and aliens SciFi.

TBR is down to 253 from 255 (this book plus a short from Nick Hornby – ok but not worth blogging about)

 

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The Amazing Maurice and his Educated Rodents – Terry Pratchett

One of the things I’ve always thought was very clever about the Discworld is that it’s an entire world. It’s big enough, and like the real world, diverse enough that it can cover virtually any type of story. Certainly you can parody gothic horror, classic fantasy, crime fiction and on and on. I mention this because sometimes the only connection between one Discworld novel and the next is that it’s set on the Disc.

The Amazing Maurice and his Educated Rodents is a bit like that. It’s the Discworld’s first ‘YA’ novel and it’s basically a riff on the idea of the Pied Piper, from the point of view of the rats (er and a cat called Maurice). For all that it contains talking animals and a little magic it could easily take place in a generic fantasy world rather than the Disc per se.

Maurice as I said is a cat and a talking one at that. He travels with a band of also talking rats and a ‘stupid-looking’ boy called Keith. Together they perpetrate a scam whereby they turn up at a town, create a very visible nuisance of themselves until Keith offers to play his pipe and lead the rats away, for a reasonable fee. This usually goes very well until they arrive in a town that already seems to have a very serious rat problem and some pretty effective rat-catchers. Soon Keith, Maurice, the rats and a girl they meet along the way are uncovering what’s really going on and it’s not pretty.

When I first started this book I was very aware that the language was aimed at a YA audience. However that faded fairly quickly as I became engrossed in the story. I will say that this is quite dark for a book for younger readers. It does have some disturbing scenes. However the humour is there as are the likeable characters.

I know I often complain that Pratchett has apparent difficulty ending a book and there’s really only two endings here, which is not that many compared to some, but I would have preferred a single show-down/climax and then a coda. That said I enjoyed the book overall. There’s some interesting thoughts here about leading/following, the need for and dangers of stories.

7/10 – a good story that works for old-not-so-YA-ers like ne.

TBR is up again to 255 (from 254) because I had a Christmas Amazon gift token to spend.

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Russell Wiley is Out to Lunch – Richard Hine

So this is my first book of the new year, and the new regime it represents. I bought it because it was part of Amazon UK’s “12 Days of Kindle” sale. (which if you’re in the UK you should check out, some bargains for some well-known and/or excellent books – you’ve got just over 24hours from time of posting to grab them).

Russell Wiley is Out to Lunch tells the story of a mid-level manager in a publishing company who’s trying to sell advertising on a print newspaper in the emerging online era. It was written in 2010 but set in 2006. Although I don’t think that matters, you just need to know that he’s working in a business that is in a market that’s in the process of being disrupted and no-one, least of all his superiors, seems to know what to do about it.

Alongside the comedy of corporate politics there’s the story of his home-life which consists of what looks like an increasingly fragile marriage. We get Bridget Jones’ style commentary on how many days it’s been since he’s had sex with his wife.

I definitely enjoyed this book and although it wasn’t laugh-out-loud funny it did make me smile quite a few times. The main character is interesting because he seems a little too competent at work (though stymied by those around him) and little too pathetic at home. Still on balance I did like him and I think you need to for the book to work. I could have done with a little more sympathetic view of his wife. Not that she was completely awful but I think we were supposed to come to a realisation of wondering why they were still together perhaps gradually rather than never really seeing it to begin with. There were some cute, touching and funny flashbacks to the beginnings of their relationship I suppose, perhaps they needed to be put earlier in the book.

The other irritation for me was the company politics was perhaps a little too convoluted and had too many characters. I suspect that this meant it was more realistic (the author has worked in publishing, I never have) but I felt like I ‘got it’ and didn’t need as much  characters/office-politicking as we got. Unfortunately this made a relatively short book feel longer.

The ending was perhaps a little too perfect in terms of wrapping things up nicely and the good ending happily. But then if the book was a little like a RomCom (and it was in places) then this ending fitted that genre fine.

7/10 – a fun read overall.

Thanks to said sale my TBR now sits at 254 up from 251.

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RED Book 34: Moon Over Soho – Ben Aaronovitch

I wasn’t kidding when I said I loved Rivers of London. Not only did I buy this and book 3 in the series straight away but I started reading this as soon as I could.

Moon Over Soho picks up a few weeks (possibly months) after Rivers of London. The consequences of that story are still with us and make for a touching and sensitive opening chapter. However Peter Grant is still a police officer and trainee wizard, so when jazz musicians in London start to die of apparently “natural causes” he has to investigate. Oh, I didn’t mention in my last review that Grant’s father was a musician did I? His speciality? Jazz.

So I loved Rivers of London and the follow up didn’t disappoint. It had the same wise-cracking main character narration and a similarly complex plot that weaves through both the everyday and other-worldly versions of London, leavened with some real London history/geography/trivia thrown in. A couple of differences: first there was more left open at the end of this book. It was a complete case and the investigation comes to a definite conclusion but there are elements that will no doubt be picked up in book 3 (and beyond?). I suspect with have met Grant’s nemesis, his Moriarty if you will. I think this is probably because with the success of book 1 Aaronovitch probably has the freedom to plan a few books ahead and so is able to have an on-going component as well as the story of the book itself.

A second difference is the amount of sex in this book. Now the previous book certainly has some sexy characters and a fair amount of unresolved tension between the same but in this book there’s some definite ‘resolving’ going on. This was neither too explicit nor too coy and without giving anything away it did add to the plot. Plus, like the humour, it adds to the fun of the story.

9/10 – book 2 as much fun as book 1.