Steve's Bookshelf 2015

[woolf woolf]

By the time I was 80 - 90% of the way through the book I was losing the will to live, struggling to keep my eyes open

 

I knew a princess in a similar situation, it was roughly ten years ago. I hope you're better now.

[More reading time required]

4:45am Michelle?? Did Ellie give you a wake-up call?

Yes indeed! I see that time quite regularly at the moment - much more than I want to!

[Little Pixie]

Yes indeed! I see that time quite regularly at the moment - much more than I want to!

 

Oh, the horror. *Shudders* 

 

Do the cats think, yay, breakfast !   

[Athena]

Steve, I hope you enjoy your new books . I'm glad you read some nice books. A Natural History of Dragons sounds interesting in particular.

[Karsa Orlong]

A Natural History of Dragons sounds interesting in particular.

 

Thanks - it's a good 'un!

 

 

Talking of which . . .

[Karsa Orlong]

The Tropic of Serpents: A Memoir by Lady Trent by Marie Brennan

 

 

2014 - Tor ebook - 331 pages

 

Three years after her fateful journeys through the forbidding mountains of Vystrana, Isabella Camherst defies family and convention to embark on an expedition to the war-torn continent of Eriga, home of such exotic draconian species as the grass-dwelling snakes of the savannah, arboreal tree snakes, and, most elusive of all, the legendary swamp-wyrms of the tropics.

The expedition is not an easy one. Accompanied by both an old associate and a runaway heiress, Isabella must brave oppressive heat, merciless fevers, palace intrigues, gossip, and other hazards in order to satisfy her boundless fascination with all things draconian, even if it means venturing deep into the forbidden jungle known as the Green Hell . . . where her courage, resourcefulness, and scientific curiosity will be tested as never before.

 

 

Damn expectations!  You read a book as surprising and joyful as Marie Brennan's first 'Memoir by Lady Trent', A Natural History of Dragons, and you go into the sequel with those expectations suddenly sky high.  Damn them!

 

This book picks up a year or two after the first.  The pressures of motherhood and society have tied Isabella down to the point where she has become reclusive ('Being a recluse,' she observes, 'is not good for one's conversational agility'), but here she is planning an expedition under the patronage of Lord Hilford and in the company of Thomas Wilker, to the Tropic of Serpents, to the country of Bayembe, a country embattled on each of its landlocked borders and with the jungles of Mouleen to the south.

 

Naturally, this journey is frowned upon by nearly all around her, due to the highly dangerous area to which she is to travel, and because Lord Hilford cannot lead the expedition for health readons, and especially as it will mean leaving her young child, Jacob, behind.  'But at that point in time,' Isabella says, 'little Jacob made less sense to me than a dragon'.  Motherhood does not come naturally to her, and the calling of her true love - the study of dragons - is too much for her to bear.

 

So off she goes - with Mr Wilker and Lord Hilford's runaway granddaughter, Natalie, in tow - to the forbidding heat and savannahs of Bayembe, where the people are reliant on Scirling investment for its vast iron deposits (which are also the reason for the threatening forces on either side).  But here she will find dragons on the plains and, to the south, the lure of the enigmatic and fearsome swamp wyrms - if only she can be brave enough to venture into the Green Hell of Mouleen.

 

So yeah, expectations be damned.  Whilst this book might not have the vibrant pacing of the first book, and whilst it might lack the central mystery and one or two of the characters that made the first come alive, it has other aspects that made it, for me, equally compelling.  For one, there is the atmosphere.  I could almost feel the sweat dripping as Isabella inevitably ventured into the tropics.  I feared along with her as she encountered fauna that might bite or suck or bleed the life out of her, the spiders that might lay eggs beneath her skin, with all the resulting unpleasantness that could ensue.  I felt her frustration with the cultural and linguistic differences that forced her down avenues she might not otherwise have chosen.  Whilst the pressures put on women pre-suffrage are once again a very strong thread within the story, it is the cultural differences that play a stronger role here.

 

The narrative voice is, again, rock solid and full of charm and wit.  Yes, there are a couple of occasions where those Americanisms creep through again (sorry, but no-one would say they'd 'gotten turned around' in Victorian times, and one use of the dreaded 'obligated' instead of 'obliged' drove me to distraction for several minutes ) and to me that's a sign of lazy writing or lazy editing, one or t'other, but it is less apparent than in the first book, for which I am grateful.  There are many laugh out loud moments, some brilliant new characters among the Moulish, and some fabulously exciting set pieces, all told perfectly in the memoir style, with countless tongue in cheek asides to the reader.

 

In a lot of ways, the style reminds me of M.R.C. Kasasian's 'Gower Street Detective' novels, only this is much more cohesive, engaging, and somehow more believable.  Brennan's next biggest trick - after using her story to address many issues past and present - is to make dragons into a species of animal as exciting, scary and real as any you might find in a David Attenborough documentary.  And, much like the shark in Jaws, the rarity of their appearances makes those moments all the more thrilling and frightening.

 

I found The Tropic of Serpents to be another absolute joy.

 

 

 

The warnings delivered in my first foreword continue to apply: if you are likely to be deterred by descriptions of violence, disease, foods alien to the Scirling palate, strange religions, public nakedness, or pin-headed diplomatic blunders, then close the covers of this book and proceed to something more congenial.

 

But I assure you that I survived all these things; it is likely you will survive reading of them, too.

 

[Athena]

I'm glad you enjoyed the second one too .

 

I think some of those Americanisms would annoy me a little bit too. Not enough to not read the book, as I read plenty of American books, but it might make me stop and think. Since my boyfriend's British, I always try to speak British English as opposed to American English (so 'colour' etc.), as I prefer this .

[Karsa Orlong]

The Empty Throne (The Warrior Chronicles Book #8) by Bernard Cornwell

 

 

 

2014 - HarperCollins ebook - 305 pages

 

 

“My name is Uhtred. I am the son of Uhtred, who was the son of Uhtred . . .”

Britain, early tenth century AD: a time of change. There are new raids by the Vikings from Ireland, and turmoil among the Saxons over the leadership of Mercia. A younger generation is taking over.

Æthelred, the ruler of Mercia, is dying, leaving no legitimate heir. The West Saxons want their king, but Uhtred has long supported Athelflaed, sister to King Edward of Wessex and wife of Aethelred. Widely loved and respected, Athelflaed has all the makings of a leader—but could Saxon warriors ever accept a woman as their ruler? The stage is set for rivals to fight for the empty throne. 

 

 

I'm slightly shocked that I read the seventh book in this series back in January.  Can't believe it's been that long.  Where has this year gone?

 

Anyway, returning to the series with this eighth entry was great.  Picking up a while after the brilliant finale to the previous novel, The Pagan Lord, here we find Uhtred to be feeling his age, for various spoilery reasons.  Cornwell's characters are always engaging and here he gives Uhtred a world-weary edge that sees his relationships with others gain a pleasing warmth.  The other characters aren't short-changed either.  I've always loved the banter between Uhtred and Finan and here it goes above and beyond, full of witty one-liners and a level of trust that comes from their shared experiences.  Additionally, Cornwell brings Uhtred's son (called Uhtred, of course!) and daughter, Stiorra, to the fore, and his development of them - particularly Stiorra - is wonderful.

 

There's less action in this one than in previous entries, and I didn't mind a bit, because the characterisation, the setting, the atmosphere, and the history is so rich.  When the action does come it is thrilling, but it is far from the be-all and end-all of this novel.

 

Apart from a brief dip in interest around book five, The Burning Land, this series has never failed to entertain me, and the last couple of books and been bang on form.  The Empty Throne is, for me, one of the best instalments in the series so far.

[Karsa Orlong]

Luna: New Moon by Ian McDonald

 

 

 

2015 - Gollancz ebook - 393 pages

 

 

The Moon wants to kill you.

Maybe it will kill you when the per diem for your allotted food, water, and air runs out, just before you hit paydirt. Maybe it will kill you when you are trapped between the reigning corporations - the Five Dragons - in a foolish gamble against a futuristic feudal society. On the Moon, you must fight for every inch you want to gain. And that is just what Adriana Corta did.

As the leader of the Moon's newest "dragon," Adriana has wrested control of the Moon's Helium-3 industry from the Mackenzie Metal corporation and fought to earn her family's new status. Now, in the twilight of her life, Adriana finds her corporation - Corta Helio - confronted by the many enemies she made during her meteoric rise. If the Corta family is to survive, Adriana's five children must defend their mother's empire from her many enemies... and each other.

 

 

No, this isn't a sequel about the Harry Potter character    This is the story of the Cortas, one of the five families - or 'Dragons - whose corporations rule the Moon.  Set in the year 2110 (why not 2112???     ), some fifty years after first colonisation. the Moon is now home to one and a half million people.  In one way or another they are all beholden to one of the five families: the Brazilian Cortas, the Australian McKenzies, the Russian Vorontsovs, the Ghanaian Asamoahs, and the Japanese Suns.  These families form allegiances through marriage and business, or scrape sparks off each other and fight clandestine corporate wars over territory and broken contracts.  The last real war between any of them happened eight years before the book starts.

 

That start is suitably and literally breathtaking: Lucasinho Corta, grandson of Adriana (the matriarch of the family) takes part in a Luna Run, a few seconds of life or death scramble across bare yards of Lunar surface from airlock to airlock without suit or oxygen.  In the wake of this, a party, and an assassination attempt on his uncle, Raphael Corta, big boss of Corta Helio, and the story is off and running. 

 

I've seen several reviews refer to this book as 'Game of Thrones in space'.  I'm glad Gollancz have, thus far at least, not chosen to market the book in that vein.  That sort of lazy comparison irritates me.  On this occasion, though, especially if the upwardly mobile Cortas somehow resemble Martin's Starks, and the all-powerful McKenzies have a whiff of Lannister, it's a comparison that is kind of valid.  McDonald is neither less frightened to take chances with his characters nor to dispatch them when the story requires it.  'Humans are not made for endless light,' one character says, 'Humans need their darknesses'.  He is equally as brutal as Martin ever was and, freed from the constraints of a hackneyed fantasy setting, I found his writing style - concise, to the point - really took flight.  It took me a few pages to get used to it but once in I was there for the duration, swept along by his characters, the dialogue, the imagery, the edge-of-seat action sequences,  the occasional skips back in time as Adriana tells her story.

 

Four hundred pages of plotting, conniving, backstabbing, alliances, feuds, sex, marriages, relationships, divorces and bitter, bitter enmity later and the book threw me out emotionally drained and gasping for more.  It's a book full of ideas, but those ideas are just a backdrop for the characters' lives, loves, hates and desires.  All of the Cortas are fantastic characters - not particularly likeable, but fantastic nonetheless.  Take them, add Marina Calzaghe - new to the Moon, struggling to make ends meet, whose crucial intervention finds her on a startling upward curve - throw in the various McKenzies (who you may or may not want to punch), plus a whole host of lesser characters - it's a lot to get your head around at first, but it works.

 

On the negative side, one or two of the ideas didn't quite work for me (particularly with regard to the use of air as a commodity that could be denied to an individual, which seemed fine if they were wearing space suits but when a character is in the same room as others and breathing the same air, but somehow denied that air . . . I must've missed some explanation as to how that worked).  Also, in the early goings, frequent references to the glossary at the back of the book were required.  Fortunately this is incredibly easy on the Kindle.  It's not helped by the fact that there are a lot of spelling errors in the Kindle version.  These weren't deal-breakers, for me, as they tended not to break the flow of my reading because the word was obvious.  Still, it shouldn't really happen to this degree.

 

Luna: New Moon is the first book in a duology.  CBS have already snapped it up for a tv adaptation.  I would rather a cable channel had it.  I'm afraid a network may water it down too much.  As the story effortlessly moves through the gears towards its breathless and breathtaking final chapter it left me with no doubts that part two can't come soon enough. 

 

It's not like Game of Thrones in space.  It's much better than that.

 

[Athena]

Nice reviews, I'm glad you enjoyed both books .

 

Comparisons like 'Game of Thrones in space' or 'the new Hunger Games' or whatever, always annoy me . A book is its own thing, why should it be compared in such a stupid way to something it's not? Well done Gollancz for not marketing the book as such!

[Timstar]

Great review! Luna was one of the main books that picqued my interested at the Gollancz Fest. He did mention there was a lot of sex

 

ETA: In the book... not at the festival

Edited October 26, 2015 by Timstar

[Athena]

ETA: In the book... not at the festival

!

[Karsa Orlong]

Great review! Luna was one of the main books that picqued my interested at the Gollancz Fest. He did mention there was a lot of sex

 

ETA: In the book... not at the festival

 

 There are three or four sex scenes, that I can remember.  Only one of them was particularly explicit.

 

 

Tried to make a start on Alexander: God of War by Christian Cameron.  Four days and I only got 80 pages into it.  Bad sign.  Put it to one side.  Picked up Patrick Lee's new one, Only to Die Again, instead

[Karsa Orlong]

Only to Die Again by Patrick Lee

 

 

The problem with Patrick Lee books is that it's very difficult to say a lot about them without giving too much away.  All of them are Lee Child-style thrillers set in the present day, the big difference being that each revolves around a science fiction idea. 

 

Only to Die Again is the second book about his character Sam Dryden, an ex-military type whose past is shrouded in mystery.  It begins with FBI again Marnie Calvert arriving at the scene of a terrible crime in the middle of the Mojave desert, where four girls' bodies are found.  The girls had been held prisoner for three years in a cage in a mobile home which has now burned to the ground.  The man who owned the place is nowhere to be found.

 

Then the story zips back two hours in time.  Sam Dryden receives a panicked call from ex-colleague Claire Dunham, who asks him to meet her . . . in the Mojave Desert . . . where they save the four girls and kill their captor.

 

What?  How?  Why?  Well, that would spoil everything

 

I can say that it made my head hurt in places.  The central idea is a tricky one to pull off, to make it coherent and convincing, and to do it without leaving gaping plot holes.  I thought Lee just about managed the former but failed somewhat in the latter.  What he does do - as usual - is have a lot of fun with his 'big idea'.  It's another story that moves along at a phenomenal pace.  The pages fly by, and the plot holes fade into the background as you get completely caught up in the tension and excitement.

 

Unfortunately he stumbles badly at the end.  I'm not sure whether he couldn't come up with a good and proper way to get the characters out of their predicament and end the story, or if he was up against a deadline, but the ending is horribly, unforgivably rushed.  The story doesn't so much end as just stop.  It's an unfulfilling conclusion to an otherwise hugely enjoyable adventure.

 

It's nowhere near as good as the phenomenal Runner, or the brilliant Breach trilogy.  Sadly, that means it's his weakest novel so far.

[Karsa Orlong]

Finally got some of Mike's photos and videos from our Canada trip.  I'm sure he won't mind me sharing 

 

At the Calgary Stampede:

 

 

 

Mike likes steak.  Mike loves steak.  As I soon discovered, Mike won't eat anything other than steak, so much that he even takes photos of it!     :

 

 

(Got to say, the jacket potatoes were the best  )

 

 

Calgary Tower:

 

 

 

I made him take this photo, for obvious reasons   :

 

 

 

Me being mature    Hey, if someone took your photo whilst you were drinking a cocktail you'd do the same   

 

 

 

The hotel in Calgary was also a casino.  We may have spent some time in there.

 

 

 

No Direction - er, I mean One Direction fans.  Their concert was the same night as Rush.  The nerve. 

 

 

 

I spent hours standing like this.  My arms are now stuck in this position.  I'm typing with my nose 

 

 

[Athena]

Nice photos ! It looks like you two had a great time. I love steak too, but not to the point I take photos of it . I can't really afford to eat it much though, unfortunately. I'm glad you had a great time at the concert. I'd much rather see Rush than One Direction!

[Timstar]

No Direction - er, I mean One Direction fans.

 

 It's strange... they look like normal people!

 

Looks like you had a great time

[Little Pixie]

 @ the photos ! That jacket potato does look good. 

 

Was there a manly parasol in the cocktail ? 

 

Also - Buzzfeed Canadian Memes.  

Edited November 10, 2015 by Little Pixie

[Anna Begins]

Looks like a good time, hope the cocktail was yummy

[Karsa Orlong]

 It's strange... they look like normal people!

 

More normal than a Rush crowd, I suppose

 

 

 

 

 

Was there a manly parasol in the cocktail ? 

 

Also - Buzzfeed Canadian Memes.  

 

Don't remember a parasol  I should've asked for one 

 

LOL at the memes - so true, especially number 6

 

 

 

hope the cocktail was yummy

 

I had so many cocktails while I was there I can't remember that particular one    I think it was peach  Peach and alcohol 

[Karsa Orlong]

Caesar (Masters of Rome Book #5) by Colleen McCullough

 

 

 

1998 - Head of Zeus ebook - 932 pages

 

 

Rome 54 BC:

 

Caesar's legions are sweeping across Gaul, brutally subduing the tribes who defy him. But, in Rome, his enemies are plotting his downfall and disgrace. Vindictive schemers like Cato and Bibulus, the spineless Cicero, the avaricious Brutus. Even Pompey, Caesar's former ally.

 

But all have underestimated Caesar.

 

When the Senate refuse to give him his due he marches upon Rome, an army prepared to die for him at his back. Rome is his destiny - a destiny that will impel him to the banks of the Rubicon, and beyond, into legend.

 

 

It's about a year since I read the previous book in this series, Caesar's Women.  I found that one really heavy-going, mainly because I was burnt out on the series at the time having read four such doorstoppers in quick succession.  I'd always intended to return to the series, though, and - having failed miserably with Christian Cameron's Alexander: God of War - I found I was still in the mood for some epic historical fiction.

 

Caesar didn't disappoint at all.  Beginning some five years after the fourth book, with Caesar's second foray into Britannia drawing to a close and then taking in the sweep of his campaign in Gaul of the Long Hairs, the political machinations in Rome as various factions set out to deny him, his subsequent attempts to achieve a peaceful resolution before finally crossing the Rubicon and forcing Rome into civil war, this is a huge, sweeping, gripping tale.  

 

I suspect a lot of authors wouldn't be up to the job, there is so much detail, so many characters, so many facts and events.  McCullough is well up to it, though.  She achieves this with a mixture of styles - sometimes through human drama, sometimes through pages of historical info dumps, sometimes epistolary, sometimes romantic, sometimes tragic, always with an undercurrent of mischievous humour that never fails to bring these people to life.

 

As you would hope, the sections about Caesar are gripping.  As a character he is immense, dominating every scene in which he appears, and McCullough leaves you in no doubt as to why his men would follow and die for him, through both action and rousing, tub-thumping speeches.  At times I wondered if she was perhaps deifying him a little too much, but then she'd slip in some sly character observation that makes you see a darker side, or perhaps examine his grief at the loss of loved ones back at home in Rome, whom he has not seen for years due to his campaigns on foreign soil.  I found it a really impressive work of characterisation.

 

But it's not just about him.  His cohorts include Mark Antony and Gaius Curio.  Back in Rome we are party to the lives of, among others, the arrogant, ineffectual Pompey; the irritating, adversarial Cato; the simpering Cicero; the clawing, manipulative, bitter Servilia and her cowed son, Brutus.  In Gaul of the Long Hairs, amidst a host of others, we have Vercingetorix, whose attempts to unite the Gaulish against Caesar see his rise to power.  And then, as the story rolls back eastwards, there is Cleopatra.  There are so, so many memorable characters.

 

In every way I can imagine, Caesar is an absolute triumph, historically accurate, breathtaking in its detail, and vivid in its characterisation.  It makes Conn Iggulden's attempt look like a comic book.  Historical fiction at its very best, and second only in my affections to Patrick O'Brian.

 

Fabulous.

 

 

 

"Goddess Fortuna is a very jealous mistress.  I propitiate her."

 

"One day she'll desert you."

 

"Oh, no.  Never."

 

"You have enemies.  They might kill you."

 

"I will die," said Caesar, getting to his feet, "when I am quite ready."

 

 

 

Suddenly he threw his head back and laughed, remembering a line from his favourite poet, Menander.

 

"Let the dice fly high!" he cried, and rode across the Rubicon into Italia and rebellion.

 

[Athena]

Tub-thumping? Is that an actual word or did you make it up ?

 

Great review, I'm glad you enjoyed the book .

[Karsa Orlong]

Thanks!  No I didn't make it up

 

ETA: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/tubthumping

Edited November 12, 2015 by Karsa Orlong

[Karsa Orlong]

The Builders by Daniel Polansky

 

 

2015 - Tor ebook - 224 pages

 

 

A missing eye.
A broken wing.
A stolen country.

The last job didn't end well.

Years go by, and scars fade, but memories only fester. For the animals of the Captain's company, survival has meant keeping a low profile, building a new life, and trying to forget the war they lost. But now the Captain's whiskers are twitching at the idea of evening the score.

 

 

I needed something quick and refreshing after the epic-ness of Caesar and this fit the bill.  As it's a novella and a very quick read I don't want to say too much about the plot.  Basically, it's about a bunch of animals (a mouse, a stoat, a badger, a mole, an opossum, an owl, and a salamander) who formed a squad during a civil war, which their side won, only to discover there was a traitor in their midst and have the tables turned in their hour of victory.  The story is set five years after that, and naturally it is a tale of revenge.

 

Now, animals.  They are completely anthropomorphised, stand upright, wear clothes, use weapons, talk, smoke and drink.  Wind in the Willows this ain't.  It kind of begs the question why Polansky didn't just make them human, and why he never really assigns the qualities of each animal to that particular character, but never mind, because it is a huge amount of fun.  Most of that fun comes from the characters.  My favourites were Bonsoir, the French saboteur stoat, and Barley, the chaingun-wielding badger who swore himself to peace until the Captain (a mouse) turns up and drags him back in.  All of the characters are introduced in quick-fire vignettes that read like the recruitment scenes in Seven Samurai.

 

And there's no doubt that the story owes a lot to Westerns like The Magnificent Seven and The Wild Bunch via Sergio Leone and maybe a bit of war movies like The Dirty Dozen.  It's got that hard-bitten feel where the characters utter as few words as possible whilst chomping on cigars and squinting against the sun from beneath stetsons and sombreros.

 

It's a simple tale (Polansky admits it began life as a one-note joke) that wins through on style rather than depth.  I have no problem with that in the short form.  The only problem I had with it was that I felt he didn't do enough with the traitor subplot, which held a lot of interest at the start and could've led to some interesting and tense scenes, but seemed rather thrown away in the end.

 

Apart from that, I rather enjoyed it.

[Athena]

Thanks!  No I didn't make it up

 

ETA: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/tubthumping

Oh wow , thanks for that!

 

Nice review. It's a shame about the author not assigning the characters qualities that would fit the animal they are. But I'm glad you enjoyed the book for the most part (minus the traitor subplot).