The Frangipani Tree Mystery is set in Singapore, then a British Crown Colony, in 1936. It is pretty much a perfect cosy mystery and with an original vThe Frangipani Tree Mystery is set in Singapore, then a British Crown Colony, in 1936. It is pretty much a perfect cosy mystery and with an original voice, a novel historical setting and a lot more excitement than I’d expected.
The main character SuLin is sixteen years old, the granddaughter of a powerful Singaporean woman who is the de facto ruler of her son’s not-always-strictly-legal businesses. Like her grandmother, SuLin is sharp and independent but she carries the stigma of being the unlucky granddaughter because both of her parents are dead and she has a permanent limp as a result of childhood polio. She has had an education, speaks fluent English and dreams of avoiding the marriage her family is arranging for her and becoming a journalist.
Through a series of events, SuLin finds herself under contract as a housekeeper to the man running the local British Police but, before she can take up her post, the governess of the Acting Governor’s only daughter dies suddenly, and SuLin is roped in to fill the gap until a white governess can be hired.
SuLin comes to believe that the governess was murdered and sets about finding out by whom.
What I liked most about the mystery was the mirror that it held up to the way the English Colonial Class thought. Initially, the arrogance and casual racism of the Governor’s family is presented as amusing. For example, here is how SuLin describes an attempt by the Governor’s wife, Lady Palin, to compliment her about how well she is looking after her step-daughter:
“Lady Palin didn’t try to hide her relief: ‘Thank you. It’s such a pity you’re not one of us. You would have made a good teacher – or mother.’ For a woman who did not set out to be offensive, Lady Palin certainly managed it.'” As the novel progresses and the secrets the Lord and Lady Palin are guarding become known to SuLin, the tone becomes darker and SuLin is placed in danger.
The passage where the senior police officer warns SuLin of the danger she is in resonated with me. He explained to her that the Palin’s were very good with people but that the Palin’s didn’t regard her or him as people but rather as useful accessories, as disposable as a horse or a gundog. I think this shows a very clear understanding of how the British Empire worked. It seems to me that it’s a mindset that’s shared by our present government.
I had a lot of fun with the book. It was cleverly done. The mystery was straightforward but the resolution was more complex and more satisfying. It was original enough to feel fresh and stimulating while still being familiar enough and gentle enough to be soothing.
It also laid the foundation for an intriguing series. I will definitely be back to find out what SuLin does next....more
I thought I knew what I was getting into when I decided to read 'Death Overdue' for the 'Sleepy Hollow' square inn Halloween Bingo, which needs a bookI thought I knew what I was getting into when I decided to read 'Death Overdue' for the 'Sleepy Hollow' square inn Halloween Bingo, which needs a book set in New England. I selected it as an antidote to the book I'd originally planned to read, which had left my imagination so gore spattered in the first thirty minutes that I wanted to take a shower.
I expected 'Death Overdue' to be the candy and smiling pumpkins version of Halloween rather than the blood and blades type. It's a cosy mystery set on Halloween in a haunted library in a small town in Connecticut with the librarian playing amateur sleuth.
Unfortunately, from the beginning, the mystery was so cosy that I felt I could have left the book running, gone and made a pot of tea and come back without having missed anything much.
The murder part was OK. A spectacularly public death. A link to a local murder cold case. A rich pool of possible suspects.
The ghost of the librarian was OK. I had little difficulty imagining her hanging around the place she'd given her life to and offering helpful hints to a newly promoted librarian.
My problem was that I couldn't believe in or care about Carrie, the heroine of the book. She's a college graduate, about to turn thirty, who has lived and worked in a number of towns and yet she has a child-like view of herself and the world. She has no confidence in her own abilities yet gets insulted when under-estimated. She sets out to solve a murder and confront a killer but lacks the strength to stand up to her overbearing boss. Her relationships with men seem immature and naive.
She seems to be the cosy mystery version of a nice but unthreatening every-woman, someone not too bright, not too confident, not too aggressive but still motivated to try and do the right thing. When I described Carrie's profile, someone labelled it as Cosy Mystery Heroine Syndrome.
I made it a third of the way through the book and found myself sighing when I realised I had five more hours to listen to Carrie stumble through her life and I knew I wouldn't make it. So I'm setting this aside and heading to Millers Kill for another mystery by Julia Spencer-Fleming. ...more
A novella about a young woman in a future Mexico City deciding what to do about her dreams after her well-planned life has been derailed.
In 'Prime MerA novella about a young woman in a future Mexico City deciding what to do about her dreams after her well-planned life has been derailed.
In 'Prime Meridian', Silvia Moreno-Garcia shows us a young woman, Amelia, trying to shape her life, to make the right choices after having been knocked off course from a career planned to take her to Mars when she had to drop out of college to look after her sick mother.
The story is set in a near-future Mexico city with some interesting extrapolations of current trends: gangs taking over the entrance to train stations for a day a charging commuters an admission fee; a rich elite living in a parallel world to everyone else; a lack of job opportunities pushing people into taking up roles as paid stalkers or, like our heroine, selling blood or selling her time on Friendrr, a service where people pay her to sit with them while they talk to her about their lives as if she was their best friend.
'Prime Meridian' is the kind of speculative fiction that is set in the future not so much as a prediction of where we are going but as a change in the surface manifestation of things to allow us to see ourselves and our choices more clearly. By setting her characters in a familiar but slightly changed environment which offers different choices and constraints, Silvia Moreno-Garcia shows us that our hopes and fears and loves and hatreds do not change fundamentally from one era to the next but remain the constants that energise us. That energy is shaped by the choices and constraints we have in front of us.
This idea is reinforced by interspersing the main narrative with the script of a (very) low-budget space adventure set on Mars where the setting has very little impact on THE HERO and the woman SPACE EXPLORER. She also gives Amelia an elderly Friendrr client who, in her youth, played the female lead in those kinds of movies. Both the script and the actress say to Amelia:
'There are only two plots. You know them well. A person goes on a journey or a stranger comes into town.'
In this story, it has always been Amelia's intention to go on a journey, to head out to a new life on Mars. Mars is a symbol of transformation as a new start for colonists but Mars is also as the setting for a so-awful-it's-an-art-form bimbos-in-fur-bikinis SF movie that was the brightest moment in the life of Amelia's elderly actress client, I think this means that Mars is both the physical planet and a metaphor for the pursuit of the extraordinary.
The central problem Amelia has is, should she / can she follow her dream and go to Mars? This becomes a problem of identity for Amelia. Now that she's not an on-track-to-a-career student, who is she? Who should she be?
Is Amelia the person she dreamt she would be or is she the dreamer whose dreams were partly shaped by who she knew she was not and by things she knew she could not have?
Amelia stumbles towards the question of her own identity by reflecting on the changes in her ex-lover. She says:
He did not appear older most days, but that morning, he was his full 25 years, older still, not at all the boy she’d gone out with. He’d looked very much the Hero when she’d first spotted him and now he did not seem the Villain, but he could not save maidens from dragons or girls from space pirates. He had settled into the man he would be. That was what she saw that morning. Whom had she settled into? Had she?
He is the man who was her lover when they were both at college, dreaming of who they would like to be if they were not who they were. He, a rich man's son with dynastic duties, she a scholarship student with a sick mother.
As she considers her own failure to change, it seems to Amelia that:
'There was an expiry date to being a loser. You could make “bad choices” and muck about until you were around twenty-one, but after that, God forbid you committed any mistakes, deviating from the anointed path, even though life was more like a game of Snakes and Ladders than a straight line.'"
We watch Amelia slide back towards this man, more from inertia than choice, until one day she thinks to herself:
'I think I'm becoming a professional mistress.'
We see her considering the route taken by the elderly but rich former actress who tells her of her own choice:
'So, I cashed in my chips and married well. I thought it was more dignified than shaking my ass in a negligee until the cellulite got the better of me and they kicked me off the set.'
Slowly, carefully, Amelia decides on who she is going to be and what plot she is going to follow.
I found this to be a thoughtful and engaging story with people who seemed real to me making the kind of choices we all have to make in one way or another.
It made me think about the title, 'Prime Meridian'. Clearly, it's meant to be a science fiction-ish title even though the story is more about an interior dialogue. So, why 'Prime Meridian' rather than SPACE EXPLORER or MARS as used in the script? I think it's because the Prime Meridian, the line of longitude that marks the division between East and West, is unlike the equator, entirely a matter of convention. It is wherever we all agree it is. Perhaps there is a message here that, before she can get her life back in motion, Amelia needs to define her own Prime Meridian, a reference point against which she can measure her progress....more
Today, with the ebook market exceeding $5 billion in the US and $10 billion worldwide, it's hard to remember the resistance that e-readers faced back Today, with the ebook market exceeding $5 billion in the US and $10 billion worldwide, it's hard to remember the resistance that e-readers faced back in 2007 when Amazon released their first ugly duckling Kindle.
In 2009, when Amazon released the slightly less ugly Kindle 2, they decided to give it a boost by asking Stephen King to write a story exclusively for the Kindle platform. King agreed to write the story as long as he could write one about the Kindle itself.
The result was 'UR' a story about an English professor in a minor college in the US who, in a fit of pique with his girlfriend, decides to buy one of these new-fangled Kindle things to show her how up to date he is. What arrives isn't quite what he ordered. For a start, it's pink. In 2009 all Kindles were white (why did they ever think that was a good idea?) and it gave access to books that weren't available anywhere else. No, not 'Only On Amazon' exclusives, but books written by writers in other realities.
What follows is a classic Stephen King story where he makes just one small change to the world by supplying one object that shouldn't be there to a man who is ripe for change and then extends and extends the consequences until that object becomes the trellis that the fate of his characters twists around.
This starts off feeling like a 'What a great idea! Wouldn't that be fun?' thing and slowly becomes something that can wreck, end or perhaps save lives.
I'm sure it's no accident that the power of the story comes not from the new, other-worldly Kindle, but from how clearly drawn and how believable the people are. Their fears, their hopes, their choices are all ones we can understand and connect to so that what happens to them is more important than the resolution of a logical paradox or a colourful explanation of how the multiverse works.
I've never read King's 'Dark Tower' books. I could see that they were being referenced here but my ignorance of them didn't get in the way of the story.
'UR' is a good read in its own write but what makes me smile most is that King wrote a story for Kindle about Kindle that really tells us that people and books are always more important than the technology we use to read them.
I read the Kindle version of 'UR' on my trusty old iPad Mini 2. That also made me smile. I take it as proof that there are still more Gods than Amazon....more
I'm happy to say that, with 'The Accidental Alchemist' I've found a new, light-but-not-fluffy Urban Fantasy series to read.
Gigi Pandian has managed toI'm happy to say that, with 'The Accidental Alchemist' I've found a new, light-but-not-fluffy Urban Fantasy series to read.
Gigi Pandian has managed to produce a book that is original, engaging, has a good enough plot to keep me turning the pages, characters well-drawn enough for me to care about, avoids gore and insta-love/rote-romance and still manages to keep a feel-good tone. That's quite an achievement.
Zoe Faust, the Accidental Alchemist of the title, was a breath of fresh air. In her fourth century of life, after decades of travelling America in a trailer, she is moving to a falling-down house in a rural neighbourhood of Portland Oregon so that she can live a quiet, unnoticed life amongst people who will not regard her dabbling in herbalism and alchemical antiques as overly eccentric.
She's frustrated in this by two discoveries: a murdered man on her porch and, in one of the packing cases that she has had shipped from storage in Paris, a brought-to-life centuries-old French stone gargoyle who is an excellent chef, even when forced to cook vegan food, and has a passion for Golden Age detective fiction.
What follows is a prayer to vegan food, an explanation of alchemy, and solving a mystery that involves local kids, Portland's Shanghai Tunnels, a local detective who thinks he's seeing monsters and a rich pool of interesting suspects.
It was a lot of fun, never degenerated into a Scooby-Doo episode and left me keen to read the rest of the series.
I recommend the audiobook version, narrated by Julia Motyka. Click on the SoundCloud link below to hear a sample.
'The Beast Must Die' has one of the best opening paragraphs to a murder mystery that I've ever read:
'I AM GOING to kill a man. I don’t know his name, 'The Beast Must Die' has one of the best opening paragraphs to a murder mystery that I've ever read:
'I AM GOING to kill a man. I don’t know his name, I don’t know where he lives, I have no idea what he looks like. But I am going to find him and kill him …'
It's a clever, surprising and original start to a clever, surprising and original novel.
The man writing the entry that opens what is his 'murder diary' is Frank Cairnes. Frank is seeking to revenge the hit-and-run death of his young son on the man who was driving the car, the man that hit his son on a quiet road in a small village and left him to die.
Frank is a comfortably off widower, who took up writing detective stories to relieve the boredom of his early retirement, turned out to be quite good at it and now earns a living from it. Like the author of 'The Beast Must Die', our hero writes under non de plume and refuses to allow his real identity to be revealed. He determines to use his detective novel writing skills and the mask of his nom de plume to find the killer and kill him in a way that makes the death look accidental.
The first forty per cent of the book is in the form of Frank's murder diary, in which he explains how he found the driver's identity, how he got close to him and how he intends to kill him. It's cold-blooded, credibly, gripping stuff.
In the second part of the book, the perspective changes and we see Frank from a distance, attempting to carry out his plan. By this point, it's fascinating to see him as others see him. He seems suddenly smaller, more vulnerable and less threatening. Then we get the first surprise when things don't go as our hero planned. This is beautifully done and left me wondering what on earth could happen next.
I should have seen it coming of course, as this is a murder novel with Nigel Strangeways in it, but a murder happens next, one that throws the whole story on its head again.
Finally, we get to see Nigel Strangeways at work, tugging at facts and impressions, getting to know the people, theorising with his wife who he's brought along ostensibly because she's more approachable than him but I think, rather charmingly, she's really there because he wants to be at her side. The who-did-it-and-how? investigation that follows is well done, giving new perspectives on characters that we've previously only seen through Frank's eyes in his diary and providing some intriguing suspects and a web of alibis.
The ending is another surprise. One of those forehead-slapping of-course-it-is surprises that I enjoy kicking myself for not having seen.
All in all, it was a very entertaining read and a great example of a Golden Age mystery. Although this was written in 1938, it felt fresh and modern. It also works as a standalone novel.
I strongly advise avoiding the audiobook version of this novel. The narrator, Kris Dyer, who sadly is the narrator for the entire series, delivers a terrible performance. He takes muscular prose and turns it into a limp-wristed luvvy-fest filled with inappropriate pauses and stresses that ignore the texture of the text and mutilate its rhythm. I sent my audiobook back....more
I had my first taste of Dennis Lehane last year when I read his first novel, 'A Drink Before The War'. I was impressed. Then I found out he wrote 'Mys
I had my first taste of Dennis Lehane last year when I read his first novel, 'A Drink Before The War'. I was impressed. Then I found out he wrote 'Mystic River' and 'Shutter Island' and I knew I had to read some more. I thought I'd read his latest book for the Genre Mystery square for my Halloween Bingo reading game.
This was me two days ago when I started 'Since We Fell'
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The Prologue was even better than I expected. It opened with these killer sentences:
'On a Tuesday in May, in her thirty-fifth year, Rachel shot her husband dead. He stumbled backward with an odd look of confirmation on his face, as if some part of him had always known she'd do it.'
I clapped myself on the back for choosing a good book and moved on to Chapter One...
...turned out not to be about a murder investigation but about Rachel's childhood with her mother and it read like something by Elizabeth Strout.
Still, I like Elizabeth Strout and the writing was good, so I continued
This was me this morning:
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'Sadly, wearily, he flicks the headphones to off, sets down his phone, looks up, wipes his brow and with grim resignation says:
"OK. I'm calling it. Time of Death of interest is 10.52 September 7th."
I set 'Since We Fell' aside after 23% (2.5 hours).
The publisher's summary described 'Since We Fell' as:
'Bringing together Dennis Lehane's trademark insightful and empathetic characterisation, razor-sharp dialogue, stunning atmosphere and breakneck twists and turns, Since We Fell is a true masterpiece that will keep you in suspense until the very end. '
I wasn't seeing any of that. I was bored. I didn't care about the main character. OK, her mother was a nasty secret-keeping power-hungry emotionally-distant nightmare who wouldn't tell Rachel who her father was. It's more than two decades later and Rachel, who has the perfect career and the perfect husband and has never had to struggle for anything in her privileged white middle-class life, feels her life is empty because she's an orphan. And I should care why?
Nothing interesting had happened since Rachel shot her husband in the first paragraph. I felt like I was watching a set being assembled while waiting for the play to start. The prose was good but there was no suspense, no mystery and no engagement in the main character's plight.
I decided l was done.
Maybe I'll come back to this when I'm looking for a slow burn read but for now, life's to short to read a book that's boring me.
'Quarry' is the story of an amoral, emotionally distant man who became acquainted with killing in Vietnam and carried on the habit when he returned ho'Quarry' is the story of an amoral, emotionally distant man who became acquainted with killing in Vietnam and carried on the habit when he returned home and found his wife had taken a lover. After he kicks away the jacks holding up the car his wife's lover is working under, he discovers two things: that he lost no sleep over it and that he got away with it. So he lets himself be recruited by The Broker as an assassin for hire.
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We first meet Quarry five years later, killing a man in the airport of a small town on the Mississippi. He does this with dispassionate efficiency and then returns on foot to his airport hotel and takes a swim. A woman approaches him and we learn that she's been sleeping off an early session of sex with Quarry and is now wants to fit in a second session before her husband returns. Quarry obliges, as much to consolidate his alibi as for the sex itself.
Quarry makes Reacher look like a sensitive guy with a White Knight complex. Quarry is just as deadly as Reacher but he doesn't believe in rescuing anyone but himself. He's a man who knows that he's hollow inside. He kills because it pays well and he's good at it. He swims because when he swims he doesn't have to think. He has sex with women who he sees primarily as what he describes as accessories for his own self-abuse.
Then things go wrong for Quarry. He loses faith in The Broker. He has doubts about his partner that he's been working with for five years. His latest killing goes bad and he goes looking for... well he's not entirely sure. Answers? Revenge? Money? A way out of his present life?
Watching Quarry unravel his life and deal with the people he feels have let him down is like watching a shark tear through prey.
The plot is linear but compelling, with bits clicking into place for Quarry as if he were reassembling a gun in the dark. The writing is muscular, direct and cliché-free and yet delivers a strong sense of place and time. What I admired most about the book was the way Collins uses Quarry's direct to camera thoughts to draw a clearer and more complex picture of him for the reader than Quarry is capable of seeing for himself.
Quarry's relationship with the ex-bunny-girl owner of a bar and club shows him at his most human. This is a woman who says that, for her, a long-term relationship is one that lasts a week and who is attracted to Quarry because she felt that when he looked at her he saw a woman and not a piece of meat. Quarry seems to feel protective towards her. He even fantasises about making a life with her. At the same time, he uses her to get what he wants and is willing to walk away from her if it becomes necessary.
For me, what makes 'Quarry' is much more than an entertaining piece of pulp fiction is its honesty about how people behave How they deceive themselves. What they are willing to do to hold on to what they have. How they let their subconscious make their decisions and spend time later rationalising them.
I think that I can only take Quarry in small doses - being in his company is like constantly having an itch - but I'm also sure I'll be back for more.
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I picked up 'Quarry' after watching the TV series from Cinemax. I can see that the series draws upon multiple books about Quarry and that it has gone onto a path of its own. much as the Trueblood series diverged from the Sookie Stackhouse books. I've never understood the point of that. Why buy the rights to something and then make it into something else?
Even so, the TV series was fun - dark, violent and depressing - but fun....more
Here's what I wrote about ‘Petra’s Ghost’ immediately after I finished it, a week ago.
'Petra's Ghost' is an emotionally powerful book about guilt and Here's what I wrote about ‘Petra’s Ghost’ immediately after I finished it, a week ago.
'Petra's Ghost' is an emotionally powerful book about guilt and forgiveness. It follows a recently widowed man as he walks the Camino de Santiago. Burdened by guilt over his wife’s death, he begins to doubt his own sanity and we are left to judge how much of his reality we share.
In the intervening days, the book has been haunting my imagination, showing me how real the journey along the Camino had felt to me and how invested I had become in the fate of the characters and most of all of how this portrayal of the challenges and possibilities of forgiveness had touched me.
Some of the power of 'Petra's Ghost' comes from how well described the journey along the Camino is. This isn't a romanticised travelogue or tourist promo. It's more in the nature of a remembered experience. All the geographical, historical and cultural reference points are there, but they are subordinate to the sense of the power of the Camino over the pilgrims. It speaks of walking along on a shared path. Of stepping outside of your day to day life. Of seeking... something. Self-knowledge? Change? A hope for the future? A release from the past?. The Camino calls pilgrims to understand what they really want from it and what they're prepared to give to get it.
Then there is the power of the main character, Daniel who is at once a likeable, down-to-earth man and a man whose sense of self is being eroded by grief and guilt about the death of his wife, to the point where he and we doubt his sanity. He is a man unable to stand still or move forward. Lost to himself. Carrying his wife's ashes with him but not sure what to do with them. A man who is in motion because he cannot decide where to stand.
I found Daniel an easy man to identify with. He's an almost secular Catholic and yet he's committed himself to a spiritual pilgrimage. When he's asked by an American travelling companion if he's a devout Catholic he says:
“I’m not one for Mass every Sunday, if that’s what you’re saying.” The last time Daniel had been to a full Mass was the funeral. He and Petra had gone to church only irregularly. They liked the idea of taking time out to pay their respects to God, but they enjoyed sleeping in on a Sunday morning.
When his companion presses further and asks if he believes in everything the Catholic Church says, he gives a reply that I've heard many times:
“Most of it.” “Most of it?” “Sure, there are things I disagree with.”
His answer to the follow-up question was not one I'd heard before but it sums up what being a Catholic means to many of the people I grew up with who, unlike me, have not 'lapsed' into atheism:
“If you disagree with it, why are you still a Catholic?” “Are there things the U.S. government is after doing that you don’t agree with?” he asks. “I suppose.” “And yet, you don’t stop being an American, now do you?”
So here's a man who knows himself. Who is normally comfortable in his own skin. A man who loved his wife. A man who has left the family farm in Ireland and made a life for himself as an Engineer in America. The thing I kept asking myself was: why is a man like this making a pilgrimage along the Camino?
A lot of the book is about Daniel finding the answer to that question.
A lot of what makes the book stand out is the novel way in which this is achieved.
Instead of offering deep internal meditations or curated discussions of spiritual themes with fellow pilgrims, the author gave me something much more interesting: ghosts.
As Daniel journeys along the Camino, carrying his wife's ashes like a penance, he starts to feel that he is being stalked by something violent and malevolent. Daniel isn't entirely sure whether he can trust his own eyes or whether he is losing his mind.
These instances grow more frequent and more threatening and Daniel starts to lose his grip on himself. He stops having the regular Skype sessions with his sister that have kept him tethered to his family in Ireland by regular. He admits to himself that he is seeing things that others cannot see. He starts to feel that the guilty secret he is carrying with him about the death of his wife is costing him his sanity.
I admired the way I was kept guessing about whether the ghosts were real or only in Daniel's head and whether or not the answer made a difference.
There was no denying the reality of Daniel's grief and guilt and need for forgiveness.
I won't reveal the ending here, except to say that it worked beautifully, making sense of everything I'd seen up to that point. I left the book feeling that I'd shared Daniel's journey not just along the Camino but towards his ability to forgive himself and that it was a journey I believed in.
'Petra's Ghost' is hard to label. It doesn't fit easily into a genre. It sets out to do something difficult and chooses a unique path to do it. It uses an unreliable narrator to show us and him the truth and it does the whole thing with wit and compassion. I recommend it to you....more
I'd heard that Paul Tremblay was a rising star amongst horror writers, so I came to 'Survivor Song' with high expectations. Paul TrOverall Impressions
I'd heard that Paul Tremblay was a rising star amongst horror writers, so I came to 'Survivor Song' with high expectations. Paul Tremblay exceeded them, delivering a gripping, intense novel built around big ideas and driven by strong, memorable characters.
'Survivor Song' is one of those timely books that suggest precognition by the writer, or at least being tapped into the zeitgeist. Published this year, it imagines a fast-spreading, deadly virus hitting Massachusetts. Hospitals are overrun, there are shortages of PPE for front-line medical staff, disagreements between Federal and State authorities on what needs to be done, a struggle to impose a quarantine and small groups of self-appointed alt-right militia patrolling with guns to keep their neighbourhood safe and resist what they've convince themselves is a UN-led conspiracy to take over America using a mind-altering vaccine against a virus they released in the US.
Sadly, in these days when, despite 200,000 deaths, COVID-19 is labelled as both a hoax and an attack by the Chinese and making wearing a mask mandatory is seen as a violation of freedom and an attack on the Constitution, this all sound familiar.
What's new is that this virus is a form of fast-acting rabies, passed on by saliva. Within an hour of being bitten, people go rabid, lose their minds and start to bite others. Yep, you got it, a zombie plague.
But Paul Tremblay refuses to go down the route set out for us in all those zombie-apocalypse TV shows and video games. He keeps the focus human and real. He lets us continue to see the infected as victims, people who have been bitten and are losing themselves. He rejects the it's.-the-end-of-the-world-so-let's-abandon-civilization-and-kill-stuff knee-jerk reaction and frames the plague as something that will pass, something that can be survived, something where what we do and what we refuse to do to survive will define our futures.
As I neared the end of this book, with my emotions wrung-out, my mind buzzing with questions about what I'd do in these circumstances and with new real-to-me characters taking up residence in my memory, I tried to name what Paul Tremblay was doing to me, the kind of fear he'd been feeding me or letting feed on me.
It wasn't horror, that hair-standing-on-end from a nameless fear feeling. It wasn't terror, where the fear is like a pain so intense and overwhelming there is no room for anything else, not even the belief that it will pass. It was dread, the slow-burn cousin of the fear family. The one you see coming. The one that leaves you with your ability to think and act but slowly, inexorably extinguishes your hope.
What gives 'Survivor Song' extra bite for me is that it captures and amplifies the car-crash-in-slow-motion that has become daily life under COVID-19. The ending of the book goes a little beyond the car-crash of the plague. In some ways, it can be read as hopeful but I found it mostly sad. The survivors have a future but it's a future salvaged from the wreckage of another generation's dreams. It's a message that survival has a cost and survivors have scars but they make other people's future possible.
Paul Tremblay manages to make real the idea that as a species we are not so fragile that a major disaster topples our civilisation but that as individuals we can be ended by the actions of a moment, that what survival of the fittest really means is the survival of the fittest species, not the fittest individuals.
How it works
The book opens with a warning to the reader:
'Olden times: when wishing still helped.
This is not a fairytale. Certainly, it is not one that has been sanitised, homogenised or disneyfied, bloodless in every possible sense of the word. Beasts and human monsters defanged and claws clipped. The children safe. The children saved. The hard truths harvested from hard lives if not lost then obscured and purposely so.'
It's learning those 'hard truths harvested from hard lives' that this story is really about.
As well as rejecting the zombie fairy tales we tell ourself, Paul Tremblay breaches most of the rules of a pandemic story and the book is all the better for that. We're not following a lone scientist valiantly trying to defeat a killer disease, or leaders in government agencies trying to hold back the chaos or even a group a talented people prepped and ready to lead their tribe through the danger. We're following two women, long-term friends, one thirty-eight weeks pregnant, one a Doctor, as the super-rabies pandemic rolls over them like a forest fire. The story-telling is detailed and personal and very powerful.
Book One, which sets out the situation and introduces the two women, focuses on what it means to be in the middle of this kind of disaster. It brings home that you do what you can with what you have, you try not to let your decisions be driven only by fear and you don't let yourself think too far ahead. A lot of that felt very familiar and all of it felt scarily real.
This is a book powered by strong, clearly-drawn, complex characters. The two main characters are women in their thirties. Natalie, who is thirty-eight weeks pregnant and Rams, Dr Ramola "Rams" Sherman - her friend from college who works as a paediatrician at a local hospital. When Natalie's husband is killed by a rabid man and Natalie is bitten, she calls Rams for help and the two begin a nightmare journey looking for treatment for Natalie and a safe place for her baby to be born. Natalie and Rams are very different from one another. Natalie is a white American woman who is married and pregnant. Rams is an English woman of Indian descent who chooses to live a solitary life.
Paul Tremblay writes excellent dialogue, capturing the nuances of speech from Rams, the English doctor, through to the bro-speak of two teenage boys. He also takes the time to get us inside the heads of Natalie and Rams.
I found myself feeling a strong affinity for Rams when Paul Tremblay shared her attitude to happiness.
There would always be a point during their conversations, when Ramola would tell mom not to worry because she was happy. Which was more or less true. Although happiness was never Ramola's ambition.
Happiness held no nuance or compromise, did not allow for examination, did not allow the hopeful hungry will that fills the vacuum of failure and what might have beens. Nor did it allow for the sweetness of surprise.
Happiness was as rigid in its demands for adherence as a calendar shouting about compulsory date nights. Happiness was for dogs, lovely creatures though they were.
Ramola yearned for something more complex, something earned and something more satisfying. If she ever felt lonely, it was a passing storm. Not one she brooded upon and it was easily banished by resolving to be better about seeing friends, seeing Natalie and Paul.
What Ramola yearned for was not a gormless vision of happiness or a dewy romantic relationship, but a future when she was financially stable enough to travel wherever she wanted on holiday. In some daydreams, she travelled with friends. In others, she travelled alone. That was the life she desired to live.
The insights into Natalie's thoughts are given in a way that tugs at the emotions while showing her slowly degrading capability: she records messages to her unborn child on her phone.
Much of the novel is structured as a quest with Natalie and Rams travelling across the broken city, overcoming obstacles, risking encounters with the rabid and meeting people who may try to help them or kill them.
The quest trope is twisted in four clever ways:
- the rabid are not zombies, they're sick people, the kind of sick person that Natalie may soon become, so they're more than threats to be eliminated.
- the 'get the pregnant woman to the hospital' quest seems hopeless. She's infected and likely to turn rabid, She's not a I'll-die-if-my-baby-can-live sacrificial vessel but a woman who wants to live but knows she probably won't. The hospitals are as likely to be hotspots for trouble as they are sanctuaries offering help,
- the back-stories of the women make them more and more real as time passes. We're not getting the fortunately-I'm- ex-Special Forces-background, or the-quiet-woman-with-a-deadly-past background, just women who you might meet anywhere in America, trying to live a life that is now being taken away from them.
-as the journey continues, everything gets worse on every page but not in the 'now we have to make a desperate effort to win' way, but in a 'we are going to lose and our only choice is on how badly' way and our only hope is not to betray each other before we lose.
I was warned at the beginning of the book that this wasn't a fairy tale. I think the part that brought that home to me most was the story of the two bike-riding teen boys, self-styled zombie hunter, who try to help Natalie and Rams to get to the hospital. They have played zombie video games so often that they have convinced themselves that they know what's going on and are now heroes in their own movie.
This illusion is shattered when they encounter an informal militia in a scene that was full of tension, then violence and finally sadness. Paul Tremblay gives the boys their own 'Interlude' chapter where we break off from the quest and see what becomes of them. This was one of the toughest parts of the book. Tremblay doesn’t pull any punches. It’s not gory, just sad and doomed but he makes the sadness real and the doom count.
I strongly recommend the audiobook version of 'Survivor Song' which is delivered with great power by Erin Bennett. Click on the SoundCloud link below to hear a sample.
Cold Moon Over Babylon’ is a story of violent supernatural revenge wrought on a small town in Florida after a young girl is murdered. Reading that youCold Moon Over Babylon’ is a story of violent supernatural revenge wrought on a small town in Florida after a young girl is murdered. Reading that you might be thinking 'Scary creature slasher story with screaming teens being picked off. Been there. Done that. Change channels.' but this time you'd be wrong.
'Cold Moon Over Babylon' isn't a trope twist. Published in 1980, it pre-dates most of the tropes. It isn't a something you can sit back from, munching popcorn and cheering when the person dumb enough to go into the dark cellar alone after hearing a weird noise finally gets theirs. This is horror that doesn't allow you the luxury of emotional distance, doesn't follow a well-trodden path and doesn't go away when you close the book.
This is because Michael McDowell writes with great power. He allows time for the reader to feel the pain and grief caused by the bad things that happen rather than going for the splashy thrill of the arterial spurt. He makes the people real, which makes the evil done to and by them, real.
The book reminds me of a steam train. Like that first flurry of steam and scream of the whistle when the train starts, the noise of violent death at the beginning of the book grabs the attention at once. Then movement feels slow, almost ponderous. The chaotic noise of released steam is replaced by the quiet rhythm of wheels starting to turn under power. You don't notice the speed and momentum of the train until the next bad things happen and then you realise that the train is unstoppable and is going to smash your emotions.
Babylon is a small town where the same families have known each other for generations. McDowell's descriptions of small-town life, its people and their challenges feel real. His descriptions of the sudden deaths and shocking violence that start the novel are vivid and textured. When the violence triggers a supernatural response, the response also feels real.
The most frightening force in the book isn't supernatural, it's human. Evil, twisted, repugnant but entirely human and entirely believable. That the revenge against this evil included not just returning the violence inflicted but destroying the sanity and dignity of the person being punished was deeply satisfying.
The juxtaposition of a detailed description everyday small-town life with acts of human violence and supernatural revenge amplifies the emotional impact of the killings, making the violence more tragic and the vengeance well-deserved.
The scene where the corpse of the missing girl is recovered is an example of how McDowell gives his writing power. The body recovery scene is one I've seen in countless TV crime dramas. I know how it goes. It's sad but it's the first step towards catching the bad guy. Except when McDowell writes it, all that distance disappears. I didn't see a body and evidence or hear the tick of a clockwork plot advancing. I saw raw grief. I felt the true horror that totally overwhelms the people that it strikes. I saw something broken and lost that could never be fixed or returned. I had to stop and let that pass through me before I could read more.
The plot of the book didn't go quite where I expected. The resolution it offered was as stark. It offered no comfort, just revenge and revenge, even the supernatural kind, brings only mutual destruction.
Scott Brick was the perfect choice as the narrator for this book. His tone is implacable. His accents are perfect and the voices of his characters easy to recognise. Click on the SoundCloud link below to hear a sample.
Powerful end-of-the-world science fiction that is well written, elegantly structured and delivered on personal, human scale that increases its impact.Powerful end-of-the-world science fiction that is well written, elegantly structured and delivered on personal, human scale that increases its impact.
Nancy Kress' novella packs a big punch into a small package by combining powerful ideas with a clever story-telling structure and telling the story through the eyes of people you don't typically find at the heart of a so-this-is-the-end-of-the-world? story.
The makes-my-brain-stutter title, 'After The Fall, Before The Fall, During The Fall' isn't just decorative. It reflects the three converging timelines the story is told on.
We start 'After The Fall' in 2035, with twenty-seven human survivors, split between the ageing adults and the often weak or disabled young, living in a dome they didn't build and can't leave, on a devastated barren Earth and hoping to be the future of humanity.
We go back to 'Before The Fall' and watch a quant mine the data that tells her the world is heading for disaster and knowing that not only will no-one listen but that sharing the data will make her a target.
We converge on 'During The Fall' through an elaborate hard-for-the-reader-to-predict-but-fun-to-watch path. Then, right at the end, when we think we know just how bad everything is and how blind we were and how screwed we are, we get something new.
Nancy Kress makes this multiple timeline technique work well, using it to increase the tension and the sense of doom while leaving just enough wriggle room for hope that you don't give up.
The book was published in 2012. Reading it in 2020, it seems even more grimly plausible than it must have done then. I think it's a great example of Cli Fi (Climate Fiction).
Engaging Police Procedural mystery amplified by the involvement of the demon realms and a well thought through system of magic.
'Blood Of The Demon' isEngaging Police Procedural mystery amplified by the involvement of the demon realms and a well thought through system of magic.
'Blood Of The Demon' is the second book in Diana Rowland’s series about Kara Gillian, a Police Detective in Beaulac, Louisiana who has a talent for summoning demons. The novels are a mix of police procedural and a magic system involving summoning demons, beings from a parallel plane of existence, spiced a little bit of sexual frisson.
I read the first book. ‘Mark of the Demon’ back in 2014 and, although I enjoyed it, it didn’t light me up the way the Angel Crawford books did and it's taken me a while to get to the second book.
I thought this book was stronger than the first, mostly because there's a fairly complicated and engaging murder mystery to solve. Most of the book is straight police procedural made more complex by the involvement of demons of various kinds who Kara Gillian can't even tell anyone about. The magic system is original and well thought through and there are hints that it will continue to evolve with the series.
The action scenes are very well done. The scene where Kara is in danger of drowning which was very vivid. The police procedural things are very down to earth and believable and the plot was complicated enough that it took quite a while to work out who had done what.
The only thing that didn't work for me was the scene where Kara has sex with the Demon Lord. It was so badly written, it made me reach for the fast forward on my audiobook. The sex wasn't gratuitous, it made sense both for the story and for the characters, but it read like amateur erotica. It was supposed to be a power exchange scene with the Demon Lord as the Dom and Kara as the willing Sub, except none of the participants, including the writer, seemed to have their hearts in it. If we'd had had the lead-up and the analysis afterwards with only a few words in between, not only would we not have mussed anything but I wouldn't have felt as if I'd wandered into a different novel for a while....more
A bold novella that, despite its splatter-punk attire and childhood narrative, is neither a horror story nor a coming of age story, but a ruthlessly wA bold novella that, despite its splatter-punk attire and childhood narrative, is neither a horror story nor a coming of age story, but a ruthlessly wrought thought-experiment, soaked in blood.
This was a beautifully written and deeply strange novella. It started in bloody chaos that challenged me to live with not understanding what was going on, to let the strangeness and blood gush over me as I sifted it for meaning.
Before I could make sense of the situation, I was dropped into a retrospective narrative of childhood. This should have been more familiar territory but it was not. It was a childhood bounded by simple but inscrutable rules and filled with violent death and unacknowledged secrets. Of course, in some ways, all childhoods are bounded by the inscrutable and filled with unacknowledged secrets held both the adults and the child. Part of the power of this strange story is how close it is to normality.
The journey to unlocking the rules and secrets of Molly Southbourne's childhood and their consequences led me back to the start, a place I now understood, and then offered one final surprise.
It was a stimulating journey of the kind that classic Science Fiction short stories are made of: relentlessly pursuing the consequences of an original idea. Despite its splatter-punk attire and childhood narrative, this was neither a horror story nor a rites of passage, coming of age story of the kind that builds empathy for the young person coming to adulthood. Rather it was a ruthlessly wrought thought-experiment, soaked in blood.
I realise now that Tade Thompson had signposted his intent with the 'Epigraph', a quote from an eighteenth-century psychologist that I should have paid more attention to. It reads:
'With each failure, each insult, each wound to the psyche, we are created anew. This new self is who we must battle each day or face extinction of the spirit. Writings on the Natural History of the Mind Theophilus Roshodan, 1789
One of the big debates in psychology is the nature of the self, sometimes seen as reflexive self-defence mechanism conjured by need and sometimes as the heart of cognisance.
'The Murders of Molly Southbourne' takes a look at the concept of self in a very dramatic, very physical way. I think Tade Thompson uses it as an experiment to answer the question 'What if, every time we bled, we were confronted with a new self that wanted to replace us?'
He looks at how we would react to the new selves, at how we would survive at how the new selves would change us and whether the struggle to sustain the self that is constantly challenged and constantly changing, is worth it.
I think it's a sign of his skill that I was so wrapped up the story while reading it, that I only understood that it was a thought experiment when the experiment was over and the results were in.
I think that's because Tade Thompson loves playing with words as much as he loves playing with ideas. He virtually declares as much when he attributes this passion to the deadly, isolated, constantly under threat Molly:
Molly loves reading. Words used to be homework, a chore, but books make words do magic tricks. She loves that writers make words their servants and bend them to their will.
I enjoyed the story for its boldness and its matter-of-fact approach to survival through violence. Molly's parents were a great invention. They create everything Molly is an yet have almost nothing in common with her and almost no understanding of who she is. Tade Thompson takes this common situation and uses it to amplify the strangeness in his story.
I think the ending is one that will either be loved or hated. I liked it. It seemed to me to be a result of the experiment that was credible even though it was unexpected. It also seemed a brave way for a writer to end a story. Of course, being a writer, Tade Thompson also managed to make the ending a great opening to a new story. Some may see that as a cliff-hanger ending. I think we plunged madly over the edge of the cliff and are now surveying the wreckage and looking for survivors.
Tade Thompson has written a second novella, 'The Survival Of Molly Southbourne', which starts where 'The Murders Of Molly Southbourne' ends. I'll be reading it soon. I'm hoping to find that, unlike the 'Murderbot' novellas which felt like a novel served in slices, the next novella will conduct a new experiment. I'm intrigued to know what that will be....more
'Bannerless' by Carrie Vaughn, is a gentle, thoughtful, book that uses a murder mystery to tell the story of an Investigator's life and to display the'Bannerless' by Carrie Vaughn, is a gentle, thoughtful, book that uses a murder mystery to tell the story of an Investigator's life and to display the post-apocalyptic community she was born into.
'Bannerless' is a book that's easy to under-estimate. It's not Hollywood Blockbuster material. It's quietly original and combines truth with hope. It sets aside all our post-apocalyptic dystopian tropes, most of which either mourn what was lost or try to revive it or revel in the chaos and cruelty of the new world. Carrie Vaughn gives us a different view, She lets us see the world after The Fall, through the eyes of Enid of Haven, a woman who was born after The Fall, for whom Before is a set of stories of wonders, nightmares and mistakes passed on in her childhood by the oldest among them. She comes from a generation with nothing to mourn. A generation for whom the world is not a dystopia but their home, a place to be cherished and enriched.
The book excels at showing rather than telling. Instead of infodumps or potted histories, we learn about this world by learning about Enid. Enid's story is told through two inter-cut timelines. In the main one, we see Enid in her early thirties, taking the lead in an Investigation for the first time after three years as an Investigator, supported by her mentor, a man she has known since childhood. In the secondary one, we see Enid in her teens, leaving home for the first time, to travel the Coast Road, the only human settlements within a thousand miles, to follow her first love, a charismatic bard, who takes his guitar and his voice and his wide smile from village to village where his arrival always triggers parties and celebrations.
Enid's work as an Investigator gives us a look at the underbelly of her society, at the things that aren't working and which people can't or won't fix for themselves but it also shows us the values the Investigators are upholding and the how these values change the way in which an investigation is done. This is a world where pride comes from forming a household that is productive and stable enough to earn a Banner that entitles that household to birth a child and where shame comes from Bannerless births or breaking quotas and growing or catching more than you need. It's a world that remembers billions of deaths as being caused by the unending pursuit of more and the prioritisation of me and now over us and the future. It's also a world were violence is uncommon and murder is almost unheard of,
As I watched Enid investigate a suspicious death, I was fascinated by how different her role is from our own police. Investigators aren't trying to wrangle the criminal herd, doing their best to enforce laws that are often broken and collecting evidence for others to decide guilt or innocence. They Investigate by consent. Their presence is requested. They Investigate to resolve disputes or to discover whether someone has done something that places their needs above the rules designed to allow everyone a sustainable opportunity to thrive. They are there to pass judgements against which there is no appeal. Yet, perhaps the biggest difference is that, when Enid asks her mentor for advice on how an Investigator should behave, his answer is 'Be kind'.
Inevitably, the investigation is shaped by Enid's own experience, which guides not only how she investigates but why she does so. The storyline that shows Enid in her teens gives us a view on how Enid became who she is as well as showing us the world she lives in. Her youthful passion for her travelling minstrel took her everywhere on the Coast Road, from prosperous settlements to settlements struggling to survive or settlements that chose to sit at the edges of the world, doing just enough to get by and then on to the ruins of an old city, reduced to rusted stumps of buildings and slabs of crumbling concrete where a small number of people scrabble for a living rather than accept the Banner-driven rules of the Coast Road settlements. Through all her travelling two things became clear about Enid, firstly, wherever she went, she felt the urge to held, to get involved, to fix things and secondly that she wanted to go home, to a place that was hers where she could be with people that she loves. In this way, Enid embodies the values the Coast Road is built on.
'Bannerless' gave me a character I believed in and liked, showed me that an apocalypse is not the end, that life will find a way if we let it, and that the next generation might not mess up a second chance. I liked that is showed the apocalypse,'The Fall', as something that had no definitive date but as something that happened slowly enough for us all to get used to it without being able to prevent it. The Fall and the creation of the Coast Road community that followed were made up of what one chapter calls 'The Things History May Not Remember', the personal tragedies that ended one way of life and sometimes led to the starting of another. That seems very real to me.
The only thing I didn't like about 'Bannerless' was the publisher's summary which seems to have been written by someone who either read a different book to me or had been hoping that Carrie Vaughn would give them an easy-to-sell-to-the-SyFy-Channel post-apocalyptic thriller. Here's the first paragraph of the summary. It's in bold type to let you know it's the pitch:
A mysterious murder in a dystopian future leads a novice investigator to question what she’s learned about the foundation of her population-controlled society.
'Bannerless' won the Philip K Dick Award in 2018. I think I think it's an excellent piece of speculative fiction as well as an intriguing mystery. I'll be reading the next mystery that Enid investigates in 'The Wild Dead' shortly....more
'Floaters' is a slick, engaging, don't-go-near-the-water creature feature book that avoids groan-making clichés while delivering the mix of gory actio
'Floaters' is a slick, engaging, don't-go-near-the-water creature feature book that avoids groan-making clichés while delivering the mix of gory action, slow-reveal plot, ancient monster and a modern heroine that a really good creature story needs.
Most of the book reads like a good police procedural, which somehow makes the floating coffins, the desecrated Indian burial grounds, the strange slices on the bodies of the dead and the deadly tentacles that the police don't know about at first, seem both scarier and more believable.
The creature attacks were set up with a nice mix of human interest, tension and sudden violence. The disturbingly well-described damage to the victims at the crime scenes and on the autopsy table brought with them the threat of something old, powerful, lethal and very unhappy.
The detective's personal life was a mess but I never became truly engaged with that trauma, possibly because it was one she was trying to drink herself out of.
The end is violent and plausible but surprisingly low-key.
I thought this was a solid piece of entertainment. I'll be looking for more of Kelli Owen's books.
'The Name Of The Star' was one of my favourite Young Adult reads this year. It was fresh and engaging, with a good story to tell, likeable characters,'The Name Of The Star' was one of my favourite Young Adult reads this year. It was fresh and engaging, with a good story to tell, likeable characters, just the right amount of threat and an underlying optimism that I enjoyed.
This is the story of Rory Deveaux, a teenaged young woman from Louisiana, the daughter of academics, who is attending a residential Sixth Form College in the East End of London while her parents are on assignment to Bristol University.
Rory is easy to like. She's funny and self-confident without being pushy or self-obsessed. She's excited by being in London but she hasn't fallen into the 'I wish I was English' trap. She's comfortable with and proud of her Louisiana background. London is feeding her curiosity, not changing her identity. I found it a joy to read about a young American who wanted to be in London rather than complaining about their surprise that it's not just like home.
The descriptions of the Sixth Form College were well done and seemed fairly real. I got a kick out of learning what Rory saw as odd (like a school timetable that varies every day). that I'd take for granted. Rory makes some friends and some (mild) enemies. She loves the reading and is horrified by having to play hockey (field hockey to American readers) and ends up being bundled into the massive padding hockey goalies wear.
Grounding Rory in this everyday world and infusing it with humour and her contagious enthusiasm, makes the threat, when it comes, have a much bigger impact.
Two things drive the threat part of the plot: a near-death experience leaves Rory with the ability to see the spirits of the dead and women are being butchered in a way that mirrors the killings by Jack The Ripper.
I won't go into the plot here except to say that it was skilfully done, neither minimising the horror of the killings nor feeding off them and that the plot twists that brought together Rory's news-acquired abilities with the killings and placed her at risk felt plausible and kept ratcheting up the tension.
Dealing with something this gruesome and staying within the bounds of a Young Adult book while still making the deaths of the women and the threat to Rory feel real, was quite an achievement.
I finished the book having had a thoroughly good time. I'll be back to see how Rory fares in the next book in the ' Shades of London' series, 'The Madness Underneath'
I strongly recommend the audiobook version of 'Name Of The Star'. My enjoyment was increased by having a narrator who all the accents right, gave the characters distinctive voices and had the perfect pace in her delivery. Click on the SoundCloud link below to hear a sample.
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