Catch up 2018 Part One

[mtvessel]

Way behind again, so here is a round-up of some of the lighter books from the first half of 2018.

Feb 2018
Escape from Baghdad! - Saad Z. Houssain – Unnamed Press, 2012
* * *
To get a feel for what this book is like, imagine a film of Catch-22 transposed to Baghdad shortly after the fall of Saddam Houssein, and directed by Quentin Tarantino. Two regular guys, mild-mannered university professor Dagr and dodgy gun-runner Kinza, acquire a prisoner who was Saddam's chief torturer from a local Jihadi group. He promises them riches from a secret bunker if they get him out of Baghdad. Abetted by Captain Hoffman, a corrupt officer in the occupying US invasion force, they make a run for it, but religious extremists, an unstoppable serial killer, an ancient secret society and the US military all put obstacles in their path. It's entertaining and occasionally quite funny, but the tone is wildly uneven and the tendency to skip important events that really ought to have been narrated makes it more confusing than it ought to be. Still, it captures the madness of war very effectively.

Feb 2018
The Garden of the Hesperides - Lindsey Davis – Hodder, 2016
* * * *
Another good Flavia Albia outing, this is a cold case involving Rufia, a long-missing barmaid, whose bones are found under the patio of the tavern where she used to work when it is being renovated by Albia's fiancé Faustus. And hers are not the only ones. Albia’s investigations lead her into the seedy world of builders, brothels and public houses in the Viminal Hill area of ancient Rome. As always, Davis’ depictions of day-to-day life are excellent, though for once I felt they went a little too far and slowed the pacing. The ending, however, is outstanding.

Mar 2018
Uprooted - Naomi Novik – Macmillan, 2015 (Kindle edition)
* * *
This is a fun slavic-inflected tale about a wizard known as the Dragon, the spirited girl Agnieszka whom he takes as his servant, and an evil, insidiously corrupting wood. I have to say that I did not go a bundle on the perpetuation of tiresome sexist tropes of gendered magic - the (male) mage is insufferably condescending and narrow-minded, and his magic is academic and book-bound, while Agnieszka's is witchy and intuitive (wouldn't it be interesting if, just for once, it was the other way round?). But I liked the clever use of elements of Beauty and the Beast, and the way in which the story opened up from domestic fairy tale to kingdom-spanning epic fantasy.

Apr 2018
Utopia for Realists - Rutger Bregman, tr. Elizabeth Manton – Bloomsbury, 2018
* * *
I've become such a cynic. In the past I would have thought a book like this, with its polemical and fact-heavy advocacy of unfashionable political ideas such as a universal income, a fifteen hour working week, and a borderless society, to be truly eye-opening and life-changing. But now, while admiring the author's enthusiasm, I also find myself wondering whether he has read the studies that he cites with a sufficiently critical eye (the author's note describes him as "one of Europe's most prominent young thinkers", which is not a job). Certainly it's not apparent from the text that he has. And that, I fear, means that this book will speak to people like me who are fellow inhabitants of the liberal echo chamber in which the author clearly lives, but probably not to those outside it.

Apr 2018
Norse Myths - Neil Gaiman - Bloomsbury, 2018
* * * *
Like many in my generation, my introduction to Asgard, Odin, Thor and Loki happened at a very young age thanks to a book with a purple cover. The question is whether Gaiman has added enough to justify another retelling of the same tales when we already have Roger Lancelyn Green's definitive Myths of the Norsemen. I think he has. There is wit and humour, tales that were new to me, and some nice characterisation that makes Thor in particular more interesting than the dull blockhead as which he is often portrayed (including in Gaiman's own Sandman comics). I would have preferred the dialogue to have had fewer colloquialisms - which will almost certainly not date well - and more poetry, but given that not even J.R.R. Tolkien could get it right, it was probably wise not to try.

Apr 2018
The Song of Achilles - Madeline Miller – Bloomsbury, 2012
* * * *
Modern retellings of ancient myths are clearly trendy among the creatives at the moment. The BBC was at it recently with a dramatisation of the Iliad. There was some pleasingly diverse casting - both Zeus and Achilles were black, which is not, to my shame, a way in which I had ever envisioned them before - but in general it was a chore to watch because the writer followed the modern trend of "grounded" narrative with gods who look just like humans and motivations for the main characters that made them thoroughly unlikeable. The Iliad is a poem, for goodness sake. It is full of imagery which requires a vivid, impressionistic visual language to match. Without the poetry, it is just a bunch of grimy, hairy men doing despicable things to each other and their womenfolk. No amount of detailed set dressing, realistic armour or magnificent pectorals is going to make it a compelling watch.

Madeline Miller gets the poetry and the necessity for deities to behave differently from humans. She also has an interesting perspective, telling the story from the point of view of Patroclus, Achilles' childhood friend and - strongly implied though not stated in the original - lover (no such ambiguity here). In doing so, she makes us question who the real hero of the Iliad is. Achilles is the warrior hero that the gods, particularly his icy mother, the sea goddess Thetis, want him to be. But Patroclus, in trying to turn him from his bloody path, has the bravery and the character to defy their will.

May 2018
The Flowers of Vashnoi - Lois McMaster Bujold – Tor, 2018
* * * *
Another novella that could have done with being longer, but much more welcome than the first Penric tale because a) it stars Miles Vorkosigan's go-getting wife Ekaterin, b) it’s about biotreatment of radionuclide contamination, the subject of my D.Phil thesis. Rather than using bacteria as my research did, however, Bujold has gone for the scientifically less plausible but more entertaining radbugs, a modified form of the butterbugs that made such a memorable contribution to A Civil Campaign. Bujold, being the good science fiction writer that she is, explains how they work. They eat radioactive soil and stick the heavy metal ions to clay, which they vomit up at collection points while excreting clean soil (clay-based chelation has indeed been proposed as a means of radionuclide cleanup, but the absorption efficiencies - mass of heavy metal to mass of support material - are not great. But I digress.). While investigating a test site where the radbugs have been at work, Miles, Ekaterin and their resident only-slightly-mad inventor Enrique discover that half of them are missing. Could it be sabotage? Predators? A miscalculation in the bugs' genetically engineered behaviour? Or something else?

The resolution of this mystery is more shaggy dog story than anything else, but it makes for an engaging tale based on established history and dumb but plausible human behaviour. The novella format does work against it - there is little drama and the characters have no room to grow - but more time in the engaging company of Ekaterin and Miles is always welcome. And I'm all for more tales about humans fixing their mistakes and making the world a better place. As opposed to what our leaders are doing at the moment.