mtvessel | Recent Entries

Dec 2024
Augustus - John Williams – Vantage, 2003
* * * *
Multi-viewpoint novels have somewhat gone out of fashion of late in favour of extreme first person or third person narratives focusing on one or two characters, which is a shame because I much prefer the opportunities for nuanced story-telling and examination of themes that they offer. Granted, they can be difficult to write - readers may become frustrated if a viewpoint character whom they particularly like has to take their turn with other characters with whom they have less sympathy - but when done well (as here) they provide a satisfying richness that single-viewpoint novels cannot manage.

In this case the theme is a person; Augustus, the Roman Emperor who succeeded Julius Caesar, whose life and times are explicated in fictional letters written by his family, friends and enemies. What’s great about this is that the characters can speak directly for themselves without needing to be introduced or commented upon, and the text has a freshness and immediacy that would be unachievable if it had been forced into a more conventional first person or third person narrative. Although we do not hear from the man himself until right at the end of the book, the insights of his friends and the baffled remarks of his enemies build up a very effective portrait of a man forced into a public persona that is sometimes at odds with his private wants, not least in his treatment of his daughter Julia, whom he exiles for breaking adultery laws that he himself had enacted. We do get Julia's viewpoint in the second half through excerpts from her journal, and there are letters from Cleopatra, Augustus' wife Livia, and his sister Octavia, but it has to be said that the majority of the novel is somewhat male-dominated, as might be expected from the sources on which it is based. Other than that, though, this is a fine and compelling read.

Feb 2024 / Dec 2024
Legends and Lattes / Bookshops and Bonedust - Travis Baldree – Tor, 2022/2023
* * * * / * * * *
They're so annoying. Those alliterative titles, clearly intended to evoke early roleplaying games (Dungeons and Dragons, Tunnels and Trolls, Call of Cthulhu). They're so trite and twee.

And yet.

The setting - about as generic a fantasyland as you can imagine. No history, no attempt to give character to the land in which the stories are set, barely a mention of political or religious institutions. Both books have cities with a city watch, but no indication of who controls them or how it all gets paid for.

And yet.

The peoples are standard fantasy fare, largely drawn from D&D. The characters are orcs, elves, dwarves, humans, gnomes and ratkin (Warhammer skaven). Oh and a "succubus" who from her description is actually a tiefling. There's some mild racism but otherwise very little to delineate them.

And yet.
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Dec 2023 / Nov 2024
Bring up the Bodies / The Mirror and the Light - Hilary Mantell – Fourth Estate, 2012 / 2020
* * * * / * * *
These continuations of the life of Thomas Cromwell begun in Wolf Hall present an interesting contrast. Bring up the Bodies is a tight sequel, twenty-five percent shorter than the original, that maintains its propulsive drive as it tells the story of Anne Boleyn's brief reign as queen and Cromwell's orchestration of her downfall. There is a closer focus on Cromwell's point of view which fixes the major stylistic issue of wavering narrative viewpoint, and the way in which realpolitik, Cromwell's subtle vengeance on his detractors, and Henry's and Annes's character flaws combine to make her end inevitable is fascinating.

By contrast, The Mirror and the Light is twenty-five percent longer than the original, which was a mistake. Cromwell starts off as the king's most trusted advisor and remains that way for the vast majority of the book, which means that events don't really affect him until right at the end. Instead we get a lot of worldbuilding, courtly politics, and threats from rivals, but because the reader already knows where this is all going, these are not compelling. It is a classic example of what I like to call fantasy author's bloat, the tendency for big name writers to produce fat, self-indulgent novels in which plot development and pacing is undermined by excessive worldbuilding (in this case, historical detail), abetted by pusillanimous editing. It's still readable, but frankly there were some longeurs.

May/June 2024
The Obelisk Gate / The Stone Sky - N.K. Jemisin – Orbit, 2016, 2017
* * * / * * *
Well, her ending was a little different at least. As I said previously, these books have a geologically-themed magic system that is similar to one that I came up with for roleplaying purposes when a teenager. This gets developed over the following two books, but in a wild ad-hoc way that I would have been fine with when I was younger but do not find satisfactory now.
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May 2024
Doomsday Book - Connie Willis – Gollancz, 2012
* * * *
The author, as I have remarked before, has a writing style similar to minimalism in modern music, by which I mean that her characters find themselves circling in repetitive situations as the plot slowly develops. This is also true of her shared world of books featuring time-travelling Oxford academics, which repeat tropes (researchers getting trapped in the past) and characters (such as Professor Dunworthy) from book to book, whilst doing something different each time thanks to the varying historical periods visited and the theme that each book has. This one is the first of the full length novels set in this world, and has the advantage of freshness as a result.
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Apr 2024
Unruly - David Mitchell – Michael Joseph, 2023
* * *
If you come at the king, you best not miss. The definitive humorous history of Britain, 1066 And All That, was written almost 100 years ago, and no-one has ever managed to match its density of jokes and its subversive take-down of both the great man and enlightenment models of history. This book, by someone I shall be forced to tag as "David Mitchell (comedian)" to distinguish him from the novelist of the same name, is a better attempt than some, but still misses by miles.
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Mar 2024
The Left Hand of Darkness - Ursula Le Guin – Orbit, 2017
* * *
At the risk of appearing a contrarian, I have to say that I don't think that this is Le Guin's finest work. The consensus among SF fans is that it is one of her best, but it is also one of her earliest and to me that shows. The premise is very interesting: on the planet of Winter, or Gethen, humanity has developed a sexual cycle where people are androgynous and celibate most of the time, but become male or female at random during a short mating period each month known as kemmer. But to me this wasn't reflected in the depiction of the cultures of Geth, which had rather too many Asian referents to be comfortable. For example, the King's cousin in Karhide is described as having "a yellow face all webbed … with wrinkles" and the story's main protagonist, Genly Ai, an envoy from the confederation of planets known as the Ekumen, comments on the fact that the locals pronounce his first name as "Genry" because they struggle with the L sound, which now reads as astonishingly crude stereotyping. The brutal courtly politics and the heavy emphasis on shifgrethor, or honour, also felt like a westerner's interpretation of Japanese or Chinese historical cultures seen through a very thin SF veil rather than a natural outworking of the main idea.
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My usual round-up of some of the lighter books from last year.
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Mar 2024
Dangerous Visions - ed. Harlan Ellison – Blackstone Publishing, 2024
* * *
This collection, first published in 1967, is credited with dragging SF kicking and screaming out of the golden age and into the new wave. Ellison solicited and got stories that the mainstream SF publications of the late sixties would not have touched - visions too political, too violent, too sexy. Of course, time will have tempered their edges, but I wanted to see if they still retained their bite. On the whole, I have to say - no, they haven't. Though there are a few good ones.
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Nov 2023 - Jan 2024
The Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas, tr. David Coward – Oxford World's Classics, 2008
* * *
This is an oddly structured book. The first 200-odd pages is an exciting adventure tale starring Edmond Dantès, a dashing midshipman promoted beyond his years for his heroic qualities, and featuring evil conspirators, lovers torn asunder, Napoleonic spies, family secrets, a prison break and an Arabian Nights-style quest for fabulous treasure. But then it bizarrely veers into social comedy set in Rome at carnival time, introducing two characters, Albert de Morcerf and Franz d'Epinay, who have nothing to do with what's happened previously, and featuring what is perhaps the most insouciant kidnapping by bandits in literature. The rest of the book (around 800 pages) remains firmly focused on the French upper classes, with the action transferring to post-Napoleonic Paris where Edmond hatches a set of improbable plots (in even more improbable disguises) to ensnare and bring down those who have wronged him.

Apparently this was an editorial decision. Dumas wrote the opener at the request of his publisher to explain Dantès' motivations, and it evidently got away from him. It's a shame because it is by far the most compelling part of the book.
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Oct 2023
Some Desperate Glory – Emily Tesh – Orbit, 2023
* * * *
In my previous review of this author's work, I expressed the hope that she would try something at novel-length so that her characters could breathe a little. I'm pleased to say that she has delivered. This is a thoughtful novel about a soldier learning that the universe is not what she thought, and what it lacks in subtlety is made up for in good characterisation, world-building, and plot.
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Jan-Mar, Aug-Sep 2023
Asimov’s Guide to Shakespeare – Isaac Asimov – Wings Books, 1970
* * * *
So this is a bit outrageous. It is a 1500-page commentary on all 38 of Shakespeare’s plays and two epic poems, written by an author most famous for stories about robots and intergalactic politics. What could a science fiction writer possibly have to add to the centuries of analysis and criticism that have been lavished on these texts? I can almost hear the sneers of the literary establishment from here.

Well, to some extent the establishment is right. If you want deep insights into Shakespeare's language or his characters, you won’t find them here. What you will get is a refreshing new approach which focuses on explaining the mythic and historical contexts behind the plays. It’s not entirely successful, but it is interesting.

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Aug 2023
Uproar! - Alice Loxton – Icon Books, 2023
* * *
I have always enjoyed political caricature, particularly when it is imaginatively venomous. Gerald Scarfe's and Steve Bell's drawings of Margaret Thatcher and John Major are engraved on my memory and were a comfort during the long years of Tory rule in my youth. In a functioning democracy, political caricature and satire are essential to express the frustration of those whom the electoral system has left unrepresented, and it is saddening to see that the mainstream expressions of these are becoming increasingly tired and anodyne. While I refuse to accept the definitions of "cancel culture" promulgated by right-wing critics, I do worry that the calling out of violent, racist, misogynistic or homophobic opinions, necessary though that probably is in our social media-dominated landscape, might be inhibiting caricature's crude energy.

This is an interesting history book that is let down by its style. I strongly suspect that it will be unreadable in twenty or thirty years' time. Which is a shame, for its story of the rise of eighteenth century political caricature, and the popular if ultimately unsuccessful rebellion against an overmighty state that it represented, is as relevant today as it was 250 years ago.
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Aug 2023
The Three-body Problem – Liu Cixin, tr. Ken Liu – Head of Zeus, 2014
* * * *
I'm amazed he got away with it. This novel opens with a depiction of the Cultural Revolution that is decidedly less than complimentary towards the Communist Party, emphasising the brutal repression and shaming that forced Chinese academics into conformity. It motivates one of the main characters, Ye Wenjie, though she isn't the main viewport character. That is Wang Miao, a materials scientist who, along with crude but effective detective Da Shi, is co-opted into an international investigation of the deaths by suicide of several prominent scientists. The trail leads to a mysterious organisation known as the ETO and a virtual reality game called Three Body. Wang becomes increasingly obsessed with the game, which may hold the key to the mystery.

This is a hard science fiction novel that reminded me strongly of my teenage explorations of the books of Arthur C. Clarke. Like them, it suffers from cold characterisation and an overly talky plot that only occasionally bursts into action, but the ideas on which it is based are top notch and the Chinese historical and cultural themes make it a more interesting read than its western equivalents. It won't be for everyone, and it's annoying that the book just ends in media res, but I will probably pick up its sequels to see what happens next.

July 2023
Grave Suspicions – Alice James – Solaris, 2023
[Note: This book is written by a friend, so this is more an introduction than a review.]

The final volume in the Toni Windsor series (for now), this novel rings the changes by introducing a locked room murder mystery and an element of witchcraft. Our disaster-prone protagonist is called upon by her policeman brother Will to raise the corpse of Derowen Polkerris, an unpleasant cheese magnate found dead in his study after sacking his housemaid and arguing with his wife. All of his staff hated him so there is no shortage of suspects, but the man himself is annoyingly unhelpful about his demise, being more interested in the flavour of the crisps that Toni has brought with her. But she has no time for that, as she is immediately plunged back into vampire games, with a demand from Benedict the local leader to help a protégé of his, a young vampire called Nicky whose coterie has disappeared.

No prizes for guessing who Toni's next unsuitable love interest is. As with the other two books, there is almost too much plot, meaning that some established characters get short-changed (Bredon the presentable zombie especially - we may never find out why he is so different from the other zombies that Toni raises). It's also a pity that the inspired worldbuilding idea of vampire blood as an acknowledged cure-all has not been further developed. There are so many interesting possibilities - criminal gangs "farming" captured vampires, or vampiric super-soldiers, to name just two off the top of my head - but the constraints of the mystery-with-romance formula mean that none of them has been explored.

That said, the resolutions to the mysteries are particularly satisfying and help to develop the increasingly complex magical background. With the threatened return of an old enemy and the opening up of Toni's back story, there are clearly more adventures for her to have. Let’s hope that we get to read them one day.

Jun 2023
Terry Pratchett: A Life in Footnotes – Rob Wilkins – Doubleday, 2022
* * * *
This is a somewhat unusual biography in that it is partly written by the man himself. The first half, encompassing Pratchett's early years and career up to his decision to become a full-time author after the success of the first four Discworld books, is based on notes for an autobiography that he would occasionally dictate between bouts of writing. For reasons of stylistic consistency Wilkins has expressed them in third person, but it means that the text has moments of uniquely Pratchettian phrasing that read slightly oddly. It's not that Wilkins is in any way a bad writer, but, as he himself would be the first to admit, he is no Pratchett.
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Jun 2023
Grave Danger – Alice James – Solaris, 2023
[Note: This book is written by a friend, so this is more an introduction than a review.]

Hurrah, a new story featuring estate agent-cum-necromancer-cum-reluctant vampire groupie Toni Windsor. It satisfyingly develops some of the good ideas from the previous book.

Set in a well-described wintry Staffordshire, the plot centres around the murder of a girl in the upstairs classroom of a school. There are two main suspects, the janitor Spiky Mikey, who had the means, and local teenage drug dealer Paul Mycroft, who had sneaked into the school at the time of the murder. But why would either of them have done it?

As in Grave Secrets, the mystery is sidelined while developments happen in Toni's love life, which inevitably leads to her becoming increasingly involved in vampiric politics. Without wanting to spoil anything, it is safe to say that readers who were dubious about the wisdom of some of Toni's choices in the previous book will feel well justified by developments in this one. Toni shows rather more self-awareness which makes her much more relatable. And the witty dialogue is as great as ever, with Toni giving no quarter to her arrogant vampiric companions when they try to do her down (should the collective noun for vampires be a "smugness"? I think it should.)

A couple of small criticisms: Some additional suspects would have given the murder mystery more substance. It's a shame that there wasn't much room for development of the necromancer aspects of Toni's character (though there are some interesting revelations). And it's noticeable that all the social power structures that Toni encounters are headed up by men - it would be nice to have a few more agentful female characters. But these are very minor. This book moves things along nicely and I look forward to seeing which unsuitable person Toni falls for next.

Apr 2023
A Brief History of Black Holes - Dr Becky Smethurst – Macmillan, 2022
* * * *
The author is an Oxford University Junior Research Fellow in astrophysics who, in the way of modern academics, is also a YouTuber with over 700,000 subscribers (including me). Her channel covers all of space news, but her research focuses on the super-massive black holes that are now thought to exist at the centres of most galaxies. This is a subject I know little about - supermassive black holes not being a thing during my formative years - so I was interested to see if her breezy and enthusiastic presenting style, which is excellent for explaining the minutiae of scientific papers, would translate well to the page. On the whole, it does, though there were a few annoyances.
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I'm way behind again, so here's a roundup of the lighter books from last year.

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Mar 2023
Black Water Sister – Zen Cho – Macmillan, 2021
* * * *
In a previous book of this author's that I reviewed, I complained that the Malay elements of the story were short-changed by being yoked to a British setting that didn't quite fit. No such problem with this one, which is a modern-day fantasy set in Penang and featuring deities, temples, vengeful ghosts and some deeply traditional family attitudes.
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Mark's Booklog

Twenty years of arguing with books

Recent Entries

Roman Correspondence

The Overuse of Cosy

History Bloat

A God In All But Name

Minimalist Story-telling

Stand-up History

An Incomplete Experiment

The 2024 Mega Review

Not So Shocking

Maximum Melodrama

Deradicalisation through Space Magic

The Thing in Itself

Just Tell It Straight

SF with Chinese Characteristics

Ringing the Changes

A Bit of an Oddity

Unsuitable Love Interests

Stellar Trashpiles?

Catchup 2023

Malay Ghosts