I started reading China Mieville’s ‘Iron Council’ at the end of May. It’s a chunky read, and I finished it in June. I did not want this book to end, I wanted it to continue, through the landscape of my future self, a story telling grinding and forcing its way through my life, ceaseless and everchanging. But it’s finished. I could return, and revisit, and explore the story again, but it wouldn’t be the same.
I read Perdido Street Station many years ago, then lost track of the sequels. I bought The Scar not knowing it was a sequel, and read it quite recently. Where The Scar grabbed me straight away and didn’t let me go, Iron Council was a slower starter, I read a few pages at a time, then a chapter or two, then raced to the end through whole sections. This book is something amazing and beautiful. I loved it, and will miss it.
However, most book hangovers can be cured by a new Stephen King anthology, and luckily I had one to hand. ‘You Like It Darker’ holds lots of stories, some so typically King that it felt like I’d read them before, but they ARE King, and at his age, themes come around a lot.
My main takeaway is that ‘Danny Coughlin’s Bad Dream’ deserves at the very least a movie, and possibly a five season Netflix series. I loved this story so much. The supernatural elements are sparse, the real horror comes from the David and Goliath situation that our protagonist finds himself in. Imagine reporting a dead body and finding yourself under investigation by a cop who is so utterly convinced that you’re the killer that he’ll twist anything and everything to justify that conviction. ‘Laurie’ wasn’t a new story for me, but I enjoyed the re-read. ‘Rattlesnakes’ is absolutely pure vintage King, with creepy dead twins, hallucinations and best of all, Danny Trenton’s dad reflecting on the events of ‘Cujo’. Another favourite was ‘The Answer Man’, again full of familiar themes but so nicely and invitingly laid out. I can’t give a King anthology less than a 5, your mileage, as they say, may vary.
There were a couple of hot days in June, remember? When it’s hot I need an easy read, and fortunately charity shop bargain, Ben Elton’s ‘The First Casualty’ was on hand to give me what I needed. I like Ben Elton books because they don’t annoy me and they’re easy to get through. OK, the characters are drawn with an eight inch paint roller but the settings and descriptions are fine. This once was a detective story set in the horrors of WWII, with a likeable protagonist (well, I liked him) and a cartoonish feminist sidekick.
Octavia Butler’s ‘Xenogenesis’ trilogy is getting a lot of attention from the sf community at the moment, and deservedly so. I’m doing a fair job at the moment of unpacking and sorting books these days, and finally have all three books on the shelf together, so I took the opportunity for a re-read. ‘Dawn’ is the first book in the series. It’s a long time since I read this book. I remember buying it new, so it would have been late eighties, so thirty five years ago maybe? I remember enjoying it, but finding it a little confusing, and now I understand why. I just don’t get the xenophobia that is the main theme of the book. Honestly, if some alien creature wanted to improve an otherwise extinct human race and its own race by cross breeding with us physically and culturally, then honestly, go for it! There doesn’t seem to be a single human character in the book that feels the same way. Maybe there’s someone in the sequels, I don’t remember. Having said that, I very much did enjoy the re-read.
‘Adulthood Rites’, book 2 of ‘Xenogenesis’ was my next read, and I finished it on the last day of June. In this book we follow the progress of one of the first ‘constructs’, a being created from human and alien genes and raised within a family consisting of all its living parents. A great story, fascinating characters, and wonderful world building.
I read book 3 in July, but for the sake of tidiness I’ll put my review here. I read it in a day. Reader, I binged the whole trilogy over the course of five days. So … ‘Imago’, the third book of ‘Xenogenesis’ – Jodahs is the first of its kind. Lilith’s child, another of her many offspring from her mating with a human and one of each Oankali gender. Jodahs has five parents and many siblings, including their paired sibling, born from the body of their Oankali female parent. It’s complicated.
Being the first of its kind, it has a long journey ahead of it as a young adult. It has to find its own way in the world to become all that it can be.
A wonderful, beautiful story from one of the masters of science fiction.