Lauren groaned theatrically. Ellie was consulting her phone again. It was a new and expensive model that came with an advanced personal assistant. It had been marketed as ‘Artificial Intelligence’ and Lauren had been very vocal about her insistence that it was more like ‘Artificial Incompetence’. Two weeks into the holiday of a lifetime, and Lauren was thoroughly irritated by FLASH.
‘Please don’t trust that slop.’ Lauren complained. ‘Come on, we’re travelling, we’re supposed to be finding out about different cultures, meeting interesting people, exploring islands and cities! That thing just sucks up the commonest stuff and pukes it out again. Follow its advice and we’ll just end up doing what everyone else does.’
‘FLASH is better than that. It’s not like the other assistants. It’s trained to challenge me, to be an extension of myself. I’ve just uploaded our dietary preferences too. It knows I’m vegan and about your … ’ Ellie ignored Lauren’s eye rolling. ‘It was FLASH’s idea to get the ferry to this island. It’s quieter here.’
Lauren had a different view. ‘Hmm, the place needs more tourists, I reckon someone’s paid FLASH HQ to push people here. It has nothing to do with your personal development you know? You’re just paying a lot of money to be advertised at. Come on, leave that thing at the hotel, let’s just wander.’
Ellie sighed. ‘Just give me a minute …’
She consulted her phone and smiled. ‘Right, I’ll put FLASH away. I promise. But it did recommend a good restaurant in the next village, and it’s ordered a taxi. That’s it, for the day, we’ll do things the old fashioned way for a while. It’s your holiday too.’
Lauren smiled, relieved. She’d been getting worried. The taxi ride was uneventful, and the restaurant was, she admitted, very nice. The food was good too, tasty and plentiful, washed down by a jug of peach flavoured sangria.
At first, she thought she’d just drunk too much, her lips were numb, and she felt pleasantly buzzed. She didn’t start to get worried until her tongue started to swell. ‘What’s in the punch?’ she asked the waiter.
‘Orange juice and peaches, some spices. Nothing on your allergy list. I’ll go and check.’
He came back quickly. ‘I’ve called an ambulance. It’ll be here very soon. The orange juice is fresh, squeezed today, but we got an order an hour ago for pureed strawberries for a special customer. I’m so sorry, there must have been some cross contamination.’ Ellie watched the air ambulance leave. Lauren would be OK, another customer had found her epipen and jabbed her. It hadn’t occurred to Ellie, and when she’d demanded advice from FLASH, it had merely suggested that Lauren should drink some milk. It looked like the holiday was over. She checked her phone. ‘Ideas for the single traveller …’ popped up.
I kicked off the second half of the year with a re-read from the bookshelves. Pamela Zoline does not write accessible stories. She’s a writer, an artist, an activist and a caretaker, and her words reflect the complexity of her thoughts. Perhaps that’s why she’s one of the lesser known sf writers of the 60s, 70s and 80s, when women’s sf was enjoying a brief period in the sun.
‘Busy About the Tree of Life and Other Stories’ was published by The Women’s Press in the late 1980s, but not under its science fiction imprint. Luckily for me, it was shelved as such in the indie bookshops and I got a copy. It’s quite rare now, and if my copy hadn’t had a squashed bluebottle between the cover and the first page for the last fifteen years or so, it might be worth something … let it go.
‘Busy About the Tree of Life’ is an entertaining look at a very unusual family tree, and the ultimate and single fruit of it, via a series of historical catastrophes. I’d forgotten how much I love this story.
‘The Heat Death of the Universe’ concerns, as many great stories do, the life of a great, hugely intelligent woman who is exhausted and destroyed by her lonely existence as a mother. The repetition of the idea that our protagonist isn’t even sure how many children she has, got to me at a very basic level.
‘The Holland of the Mind’ concerns a couple and their child who move from the USA to Holland, maybe for a few weeks, maybe for longer. They feel a need to change their lives, but as we know, we can’t escape ourselves. Against a background of collapse, they play out their inevitable future.
‘Instructions for Exiting this Building in case of Fire’ is now, and has been for decades, one of my favourite short stories. I have another copy of this story in the Women’s Press SF collection ‘Despatches from the Frontiers of the Female Mind’ edited by Jen Green and Sarah Lefanu. So, credits aside, this story concerns the ends justifying the means, even when the means are cruel. The beginning of the story, in which the reader is invited to imagine a specific child, is one of the hardest hitting things I’ve ever read. Imagine how she looks, the sound of her voice, her weight in your arms, imagine her scent, the way she turns her head …
The final, and the longest, story in the collection is ‘Sheep’, in which the counting of sheep is interwoven with several other stories in a complex web. It’s hard to follow in places, and although there is obviously a depth of meaning to it, I struggled to fathom what it was. Zoline is smarter than me, and it shows. Still, I read to the end.
So, from a much underappreciated genre writer to probably THE most appreciated one. Never Flinch. It’s King, of course I bought the hardback … and yeah, I know he doesn’t need the sale and I should wait for it to turn up in a charity shop, or read the library book … but I wanted it NOW.
So, book 4 in the Holly Gibney series, or book 7 if you include the Bill Hodges trilogy where she first made her appearance. Holly and her friends face up to not one, but two antagonists as a serial killer takes a twisted revenge on behalf of a falsely accused murder victim, and an indoctrinated church goer goes after a celebrity feminist. By and large, I enjoyed the book, but there were two points that bugged me. The first one was that it was hard to work out the identity of the serial killer. Admittedly I’m not a fan of murder mysteries but I do watch them on tv, and I would have appreciated more early hints at their identity … surely that’s where the fun of the genre lies? The second point is that there’s an unnecessary and unacknowledged red herring in the book, which lies in the name of one of the characters. All through the book, I thought it was a clue, but no …
None of this, of course, will stop me from re-reading the entire Hodges / Gibney series when I start my King re-read binge very soon.
‘Never Flinch’ has a great cast of very human characters, and a slight supernatural kick at the end that will please fans of more traditional King novels.
Next, another much anticipated read … ‘The Fates’ is a change of direction for Rosie Garland. Historical fiction with a wave to the weird comes naturally to her, but this is her first dip into actual mythology (to my knowledge).
This novel concerns the Fates, and their desire for a gracious retirement from the affairs of humanity. It tells a tale of Atalanta, a great huntress, and Meleager, a hero. It’s a great read, with an absorbing storyline and vivid characters. Zeus and his court are portrayed as a squabbling, terrified playground ruled by a nasty boychild with more powers than he can safely handle. I quite liked that, and I LOVED Zeus’ self reinvention at the end of the book.
Next – Jyn and Tonic, by Pete Hartley. In my review of ‘Ice and Lemon’, the previous book in this duology, I wondered if there would be a sequel. Silly me, of course there was, I just didn’t look hard enough. I found it almost by accident, when Pete Hartley and I had stalls at the same book fair in North Lancashire earlier this year. We did a swap and I hope that he was as happy with my book as I was with his.
‘Jyn and Tonic’ continues the story of the survivors of the global catastrophe and mass die off chronicled in ‘Ice and Lemon’. Our hero and his increasingly malignant ward travel around England and Wales, dealing with unsympathetic communities and narcissistic military units. Eventually, Lemon’s plans become clear, and a change of name heralds a change of tactics. Meanwhile, in France, a new force arises.
My next read was also an indie read, from the lovely Dan Forrester.
‘Havock’ is basically slapstick sword and sorcery. A fun light read with an absolutely massive body count and the funniest elf slaughter scene I’ve read in a long time.
I did start a Datlow anthology before the end of the month, but as I finished it in August, I’ll leave it until my next book blog.
I’ve had a busy June, visiting libraries, taking my books to sales, and organising more events, so I didn’t read many books.
I started with Caroline Blakes’ murder mystery. I’ve met Caroline a few times now, and I picked this book up at the book fair in Scorton that was organised by the lovely people at Big Thinking Publishing.
Caroline Blake’s crime novel is a cosy murder mystery that reminded me in its style of Belinda Bauer’s ‘Exit’. The story is set in a Lancashire village in the 1970s. There is a lot of smoking, it feels like everyone smokes, a lot. Reading it made me so grateful for the indoor smoking ban, and how much I hated being around smokers when I was growing up. I’m having flashbacks …
Anyway, the story. Mrs Chadwick is a nasty piece of work, she bullies her adult son mercilessly and has no friends. When she’s found dead in her kitchen, surrounded by tater hash, there isn’t much mourning, and the main suspect seems to be her son, who can’t provide an alibi. Ah, but then there’s the vicar, who isn’t as clean cut as he seems (he’s a smoker too). When he’s taken in for questioning, gossip abounds. A fun read.
A re-read. This book was a gift from a friend, maybe a couple of decades ago, and I can’t read it or even think about it without thinking of her. Books are magical like this. I’ve read a shamefully low number of Tanith Lee books (this, and, long ago, The Birthgrave) and I intend to put this right. For a start, I had no idea that there was a sequel to this book!
‘The Silver Metal Lover’ is a simple coming of age novel with a sf background. Jane and her friends are the children of the ultra rich, cossetted and protected by all that wealth can bring. When Jane meets a robot who looks and acts like her ideal man, her world changes. The first time I read this book I cried, looking back I must have been particularly hormonal! Still, it’s a good story, and Janes’s relationships with her mother and her friends are well written.
I’ve been reading this book for most of my life. My adult life, certainly. Zenna Henderson is best known for her ‘The People’ stories, but this collection shows that there is a great range to her stories. There isn’t a dud in the collection. It mostly focuses on children, or adult / child interactions, although my favourite is a story about an old lady who is so ancient she’s become something of a family heirloom. ‘Walking Aunt Daid’ is one of those stories that I’ve read so many times it’s become a part of me.
I’d forgotten how truly terrifying some of these tales are. I’m fairly sure I’ve seen ‘Hush’, or at least the idea behind it, adapted for film or TV, but I may be wrong. Maybe it just summoned such strong visuals that I think I’ve seen it …
Edit – OK, I have a little more time now, so I’ll do a deeper dive. This book deserves it. The title story ‘The Anything Box’ is about imagination, its value, and how easily it can be quashed … but also, how it can be shared. ‘Subcommittee’ is a delight of a story, very much of its time, with ideas that have been well explored but are still very valid. Whilst the menfolk of two different species try to make a peace deal during a horrific war, the women and children secretly swap knitting patterns and learn each others’ games. Yes, it’s stereotypical, but the ideas are still there … ordinary people need to meet and learn that they have something in common. ‘Something Bright’ could be a People story, and is a companion piece to ‘Walking Aunt Daid’. There is such longing in this story, to leave a body that isn’t the right one and to escape to a real, brighter, life. I’ve already mentioned ‘Hush’, and the next story ‘Food to all Flesh’ is truly one of the saddest stories ever written. A man befriends an alien that lands near his home, and together they try out every possible foodstuff and non foodstuff in an attempt to nourish the alien. Eventually, the alien reveals that they have babies to feed … and one of the babies finds the one food that can nourish them. ‘Come on, Wagon’ again focuses on children, and how their talents are overlooked, how they grow up and turn their backs on their unique specialness. And back to ‘Walking Aunt Daid’, which is hitting hard because you know, my copy of this book is old and waterstained and not very pretty. I was thinking of putting it in the recycling, because nobody else would want it … and then … ‘Why do we keep her?’ asked Ma. ‘She doesn’t die. She’s alive. What should we do? She’s no trouble. Not much, anyway.’ ‘Put her in a home somewhere.’ I suggested. ‘She’s in a home now,’ said Ma. So yeah. this books stays on the shelves. It convinced me all by itself. Moving on – ‘The Substitute’ is about a boy with all his defences up, and the teacher who gets past them. Of course, this being Zenna Henderson, there’s a lot more to it. ‘The Grunder’ is way ahead of its time, tackling a toxic relationship from the point of view of the abusive partner, who so, so, wants to change his ways. It’s partly a shaggy dog story, partly folk magic, but it’s all feeling. ‘Things’ isn’t subtle at all, it’s too angry to be subtle. It’s about the destruction of lives and cultures by the obsessive need for, and addiction to, consumerism. It was written 65 years ago, that’s three generations ago … ‘Turn the Page’ is a story about stories, about what we tell ourselves about other people, and what we learn from the earliest tales that we are told. It’s very sad, but also very lovely. ‘Stevie and the Dark’ is a straight up horror story that King himself would be happy to claim. The power of a child’s belief is a wonderful thing. ‘And a Little Child’ in comparison, is pure sf. Every so often there’s a child with the clearness of sight to perceive what others merely glance at and accept. ‘The Last Step’ is the final story in the book, and is a perfect little sf / horror story.
In conclusion, fans of horror / sf / fantasy should all read this book. Repeatedly.
I’ve booked more library visits to give my talk about my Ransomed Hearts books. July and August dates are listed below. The talks are free, but booking is recommended.
This one is an easy one. I re-read my favourite books, and vowed not to leave it so long next time.
For the record – the Bold as Love series by Gwyneth Jones.
Ten stars. Seriously. This is my favourite series. This is the series, the book, the author, that I’ll recommend if anyone is asking.
How many times is this now? I read The Salt Box in Interzone, a long, long time ago, and then pounced on ‘Bold As Love’ when it was first published. With every new book, and sometimes between new books, I re-read the series, including ‘The Grasshopper’s Child’.
I love the characters, the story, the world building. It says everything.
And yet, since ‘The Grasshopper’s Child’, this is my first re-read of the whole series. We’ve been redecorating, moving things around, and last year I got the gang together on one shelf for the first time in a long time, and I’ve been indulging in deferred gratification every since …
No more. From now on, this series gets read whenever I damn well feel like it.
Book 2 picks up straight away as Book 1 finishes, mere minutes later. And this is where things start to get very nasty indeed for our three protagonists. Separation and torture are the order of the day, and Fiorinda’s reunion with her rapist father is not a pleasant one.
And through it all, I fall for this threesome all over again.
A re-read, probably number 3 for this book. It gets better every time.
Our trio is back together, fragile but united. Fiorinda is terrified of her powers and traumatised by the torture and barely averted execution that she was subjected to, Sage is recovering from a near fatal injury, and Ax is struggling to get his mojo back after being kidnapped, raped, and kept captive for a year. They’re laying low, and being very gentle with each other.
Can this last? Of course not, they’re figureheads and rallying points, and it’s not long before they’re summoned by the President of the USA to help him deal with some home grown neuronautical terrorists.
The Triumvirate get the old bands back together under cover of a Hollywood film about the UK Countercultural Revolution, and do their very best to track down the Big Bad.
Hard to put down. Bewitching. Gorgeous.
I stayed up until 1 am to finish this one.
This is one of the slower books in the series, but it’s still satisfying. The Triumvirate have been persuaded to return to England, with Ax to take up the Dictatorship again. Spooked by evidence of the machinations of their enemies, they make a detour and spend a while doing baseline poverty reality TV in a cold Paris garret whilst friends and allies join them in France to plan their next steps.
As always, once back in England, they walk a fine line, implementing their plans to care for as much of the population as possible whilst keeping some freedom for themselves. Of course, their resistance makes their enemies hate them even more, and a long ago slight of a journalist by Sage comes back to bite all three on the arse. Last time, Fio was accused of witchcraft. This time, the lads are accused of lycanthropy.
They survive, make a deal, and end up living the dream. Well, their dream anyway. Everything is going well. And then the world changes. Again.
I think this is the third read for this one. Incredibly, it’s coming up to twenty years since the first time I read it. Although it’s not the final book in the series, it’s the last one featuring the adventures of Sage, Fio and Ax. I will re-read ‘The Grasshopper’s Child’ just as soon as I find it on my shelves, but for now, I’ll leave it as a treat for future me.
What can I say about this, the end of the story of the most charismatic, stubborn, talented threesome that ever loved? It’s satisfying, it’s a happy ending, you’ll be glad to know, and it comes after another thick book full of mortal danger. The Chinese have invaded England, but luckily their leader fancies Ax. Who could blame them, to be fair? So, there’s a sex show in an old prison camp, a visit to a bunch of affluent Ruskinites in Cumbria, the Adventures of Cos and Min – deserving of a book in itself – and just as we think everything is going just fine, Fio finds out that no good turn goes unpunished.
I adore these books, and I promise myself that I won’t put off the next re-read so long.
So, that was that. Five amazing books in less than three weeks, savouring every word. I had, as always, a book hangover from hell afterwards. Six weeks later I’m still half in their world.
My only option was a complete change of pace – hence ‘Frankie & Dot’ by Rosie Radcliffe.
Chick lit isn’t my usual diet, but I met Rosie at a craft fair and swapped books with her. Honestly, the first few pages didn’t grab me, but the book was well written and edited, so I persevered. I’m glad I did. This is a well paced book that doesn’t succumb to the usual romantic happy ending, and instead builds a relationship up between a group of intelligent and generous people who have ended up sharing a house.
I did find that the main character found herself to be rescued from her frequent pickles a tad too quickly, real life in poverty doesn’t work that way, but this is a feel good story and I can forgive the author for her magic wand license.
I enjoyed this book, and found myself returning to it whenever I had a few moments of spare time.
I finished my seventh May read at the beginning of June, but will include it in the May blog, as I spent the last week or so of the month reading ‘The Mill on the Floss’
Maggie Tulliver just can’t get a break. She adores her dad, and he adores her, but he lets her down by being an arrogant idiot who won’t listen to his wife. She adores her big brother, but he’s a self righteous fool who dismisses everything she says and thoroughly believes that she’s a naughty kid. She loves her friend Phil, and honestly, he loves her back, but a family quarrel and her brother’s prejudices disallow the friendship and anything that might come of it. And finally, she seriously has the hots for Ste, and if anything, he’s nuts for her, but he’s dating Maggie’s cousin and is friends with Phil, so …
Duty or love? Passion or obedience?
I love this book because Maggie’s aunts are such an important part of her life. The sibling relationship is horrendous, and Maggie has to tolerate it.
Location is such an important part of the book, we learn to love the natural world that surrounds Maggie and Tom, and which form their characters. The Floss, that quiet river that brings life and livelihood to the family, is always there in the background, a constant presence.
There are so many bold, fully formed characters in this book. I loved it. I will try to read more George Eliot, because to my shame, I’ve left it until late in life to read this. I think there may be a copy of Middlemarch lying around somewhere …
I’m taking my books to a new venue this month. On the afternoon of Sunday 25th May, from noon to 4 pm, I’ll be at the John Alker Club, Flixton Road, Flixton, Urmston, M41 6QY. It’s going to be a lovely afternoon in the company of lots of crafters from around the North West.
This Spring has been about re-reading some old favourites. I ended March on ‘Native Tongue’, by Suzette Haden Elgin. It’s long been one of my favourite books. I started April with a reread of the sequel, ‘The Judas Rose.’ This is a complicated book with many points of view, continuing the story of Nazareth Chornyak, a linguist and quiet revolutionary. This was a re-read, and an enjoyable one, although the science behind the colonisation of worlds seems vague compared to the huge detail given to the linguistics that are the backbone of this series. Understandable, but a little jarring nonetheless.
It still surprises me that I’m finding previously unknown sequels to much loved books. This third book in the Native Tongue series has been out there for over thirty years, and I only found out about it relatively recently. A re-read of the first two books prompted me to buy book 3.
It surprised me, although the first two books were light on science and heavy on the linguistics, this book took a giant leap out of the realm of any science that I’m comfortable with, and landed squarely in the land of weird, where humans can sustain themselves with song and without any need for physical food. The women of the Lines find themselves responsible for spreading this knowledge through a scattered humanity that have been abandoned by the Aliens of the first two books. Again, there are many jumps in point of view, and the story stretches across centuries of history, encompassing a period of Earth history where male humans almost become extinct. This feels more like a collection of novellas than an actual novel, but it is held together by the philosophy of Nazareth Chornyak, which runs throughout the book.
The next read was a library book. ‘The Women of Troy’ by Pat Barker. I haven’t read ‘Silence of the Girls’ yet, but am familiar enough with the characters and the story that it didn’t hurt. This is the continuing tale of Briseis, a prize of war and widow of Achilles, who is pregnant with his child and under the protection of her new husband. The book follows her attempts to protect and save the Trojan women who are prisoners and slaves of the Greek army that are trapped near Troy by unfavourable winds. Entwined with their story is the tale of Pyrrhus, the teenage son of Achilles, who is clumsily finding his way in the world, hindered somewhat by his lack of social skills and his reputation as a killer of babies, women and old men. In the background, the kings and heroes of legend go about their business …
I’ve been saving N K Jemisin’s ‘Great Cities’ books until the third book in the trilogy came out, but recently found out that she decided that it would be a duology. All that time, and these lovely books have been sitting patiently on the shelf … Anyway, time to tuck in to ‘The City We Became’. This is a love song to New York, in all its messy glory. True love sees all, and accepts all, and this book loves the grit and grind and endless variety of the city. Fair warning, I’ve only spent two or three days in New York, and by the time it came to leave, I would have happily bought a ‘I hate NY’ t shirt. I don’t do hot, I certainly don’t do humid, and I’m not very good with noisy. If it hadn’t been my husband’s idea of a dream holiday to celebrate a big birthday, I wouldn’t have been there. But still, Jemisin’s book has drawn me in, and helped me to see the charm of the place. So, the plot … New York is a baby city, in the throes of being born, but there’s an Enemy out there that wants to kill the emerging city before it comes into its strength. To be born, it needs a human avatar to guide and protect it. Strike that, it needs six human avatars, one for each borough, and one for the city itself. This is the tale of those avatars, and the city they need to become. Great characters, a nice sideways plot, and worldbuilding that drew me into the book. A little slow in places maybe, but I don’t need every book to get where it’s going at a galloping pace.
And so to Book 2 of ‘Great Cities’. I loved ‘The World We Make’. Possibly even more than I loved book 1. I enjoyed the age diverse cast of characters, it’s good to see older women kicking alien multiverse ass. I enjoyed the shy courtship of NYC and Manhattan, I loved the slow realisation of SI that she’s a bad guy … and her refusal to give up on her monstrous friend. I COULD put it down, but only on the understanding that I’d be picking it up again very soon.
And so, having indulged myself with some of the very best sf of the last fifty years, I went to the library to find something that would be good for my soul. I couldn’t find any sf / fantasy or horror by women, so I decided to improve my mind and finally get round to reading Virginia Woolf’s ‘Mrs Dalloway’. It’s a book that I’ve always meant to read, and time is ticking, so … ‘Mrs Dalloway’ is coming up to it’s century birthday … a couple of weeks from now. I didn’t realise this when I picked it up from the library, but I guess there’ll be some love for this book over the next month or so. I went in blind, I had no idea what the book was about. The nearest comparison my mind could come up with was Adam Roberts, whose books inspire a similar delirious state. You want to know what it’s about? It’s literally head hopping. You know, that thing that a writer should never do. The baseline is a day in the life of Mrs Dalloway, and is set in the book’s ‘present day’ of the early 1920s. The narrative moves via the internal thoughts and emotions of a sprawling cast of vaguely connected characters, as Mrs Dalloway prepares for a party that evening. It is a brilliant book. I closed it with exactly the same thought that I had after reading Shirley Jackson’s ‘We Have Always Lived In The Castle’ – WHY DID NOBODY MAKE ME READ THIS BOOK FORTY YEARS AGO?
My final book for April was Linda Sherlock’s ‘Shampoo and Set’. I’ve known Linda for a few years now, I met her at a writing group when she was first playing with the idea of writing a book about her mother’s long, long career as a hairdresser. The book came out four years ago, and I finally got my hands on a signed copy when Linda was reading at an event at Chorley Theatre. This is a story about a family, a place, a business. Linda’s mother, Margaret, worked hard to get an apprenticeship as a hairdresser in mid 20th century Ireland. Once trained, she moved to Chorley in Lancashire, married, set up shop as a hairdresser, and then spent the next seventy or so years cutting, setting, perming and colouring hair, eventually becoming something of a local celebrity. The book is told through Linda’s eyes, and we learn a lot about both Linda and Margaret, with honourable mentions to Margaret’s husband and her son. It’s an interesting look behind the scenes at the long career of a determined and hard working businesswoman.
So, that was April, two library books, two unread books from the shelves, two brand new books, and one re-read. Not bad stats. I suspect that May will be all re-reads, because this month I’m REALLY going to indulge myself. Guess which series I’m planning to enjoy all over again?
I’m taking my Ransomed Hearts books to Scorton Village Hall this Saturday, 3rd May, for Big Thinking Publishing’s very first book fair. There’ll be other indie authors there, covering practically every genre imaginable. Personally, I’m looking forward to chatting to Caroline Blake again, and meeting Pete Hartley. I must try to sell more books than I buy!
Thank you to the lovely people at Lancashire Libraries. They’ve been helping me to organise a library tour of the county. I’ll be reading from my Ransomed Hearts books, talking about why I wrote them, and why I decided to publish them myself.
I’ll be taking books for sale, there’ll be an opportunity for readers to get their books signed, and there’ll be a Q and A session after the talk.
March’s reading was very much a mixed bag, with three library books, one December book, and two re-reads.
After the fun of the Elysium Cycle, I decided to widen my horizons a little and picked up Silvia Moreno-Garcia’s ‘Mexican Gothic’ from the library shelves. This book has been on the edge of my consciousness since it was published, it has a cool cover and made it onto several popular reading lists. I’ve read it now, and consider myself Gothicked out for the time being. I think that’s enough ‘Gothic’ for the time being. The plot of this book and of Ava Reid’s ‘A Study in Drowning’ were pretty much identical, although the setting was different. Reid’s book was set in an imagined future Wales, whereas this was set in mid 20th century Mexico. Basically – evil English immigrants settle on top of a mountain in Mexico, start mining silver, terrible things happen to everyone connected with them. A scion of the family marries a girl from Mexico City and takes her back to the gothic house, the bride soon after sends a garbled letter, begging for help, to her own family. The girl’s cousin, the heroine of the story, travels to the gothic house to try to save the bride, and inevitably becomes embroiled in shenanigans. OK, I enjoyed it, is that so bad?
And so to a re-read of a book that’s been on my shelves for at least forty years, and has been sadly neglected for the last twenty. I used to read this book on at least an annual basis, back in the days when I only had a hundred books or so. It deserves an in depth report. In a time when once again, young men are expressing surprise that there are female authors of sf / fantasy / horror, and when people who are approaching middle age and should know better really DO think that Joke Rowling was the first woman to ever write a book, it’s refreshing and somewhat humbling to revisit this book. The book itself, a celebration of women in sf, is almost fifty years old, so when it looks back in time to the 1940s, it gives us an even longer reach. What’s even more astonishing is that the editor, Pamela Sargent, is still with us, and was still in her twenties when she was commissioned to put this book together and given the space to write a long essay about women in sf, both as characters, readers and authors. If you do read this book, take the time to read the essay, it’s well worth it. Having got all that out of the way, what of the stories? We have here a slim collection of short stories / novellas, mostly by writers who I met in the 1980s / 90s The Women’s Press SF imprint. The first story though, is an 85 year old sword and sorcery tale by CL Moore, a frequent contributor to the pulp sf scene. Her hero, Jirel of Joiry, is a tough, determined warrior monarch. In this story, Jirel encounters an adversary who seems to be her match, but proves that sheer bloody mindedness is sometimes enough to save the day. Jirel’s stubborn refusal to give in to powers greater than her own is an absolute joy. Leigh Brackett is a familiar name to lovers of golden age sf, and like CL Moore, wrote under a gender ambiguous byline. As a screenwriter and novelist, she was well known in mid 20th century sf circles, and wrote a draft screenplay for ‘The Empire Strikes Back’. In ‘The Lake of the Gone Forever’ we see a typical sf rockets and colonisation story set in a future solar system. There is no female main character, but the male main character is strongly influenced by the native woman who guides him through his troubles. I was born in the early 1960s, and suffer from the common mindset that anything before I was born is ‘historical’ and anything after it is ‘modern’. And so, to the first ‘modern’ story in the book, Joanna Russ’s ‘The Second Inquisition’. I’ve read this book so many times, and have enjoyed finding more little details every time. Russ’s intellect vastly overshadows my own, and it’s always a pleasure to read a story for the fifteenth time and know that I’ll still be wowed by it the next time. Of course, Joanna Russ should need no introduction, but if you’re wondering, most of her books are still gloriously in print. Another of my favourite authors, Gwyneth Jones, has written a great book about Russ, which is well worth reading. ‘The Power of Time’ by Josephine Saxton is so absolutely, purely, Josephine Saxton that nobody else could have written it. I ‘met’ Saxton in her Womens Press novels, and have enjoyed her work ever since. She writes with dry humour and wild imagination. This story is an entertaining dual perspective look at the adventures of a British housewife on an all expenses paid luxury trip to New York, and her many times great granddaughter as a left behind trillionaire on a far future earth, following her ancestor’s dreams. Kate Wilhelm is another big name from the mid 20th century, and her 1972 story ‘The Funeral’ deserves to be in many more collections. It gives very strong ‘Handmaid’s Tale’ vibes but with, of course, a different perspective. This is a beautiful tale of rebellion against the destruction of love and spirit. It should be on all the school reading lists. Joan D Vinge breaks my heart on a regular basis, it’s my own fault, I know what’s going to happen every time I pick up ‘The Snow Queen’, but I just can’t resist. The story in this collection, ‘Tin Soldier’ is another reworking of an old tale, and again, it’s a heartbreaker. It’s absolutely solid sf romance and I urge everyone who loves a bit of ‘romantasy’ to find it and read it. The last story in the collection is Ursula Le Guin’s 1974 novella, ‘The Day before the Revolution’ is a prequel to her wonderful novel ‘The Dispossessed’ and is a perfect way to end the collection. We all have to let go at some point.
And so, back to the library. I gave C J Cooke’s ‘A Haunting in the Arctic’ five stars on Goodreads because it’s well written and does what it says on the tin. It’s a ghost story set in the arctic.
SPOILER
A warning, just in case anyone doesn’t figure out within the first few pages that Nicky = Dominique. This seems to be the big reveal, and the point of the story, but it’s way too obvious, and is even signalled at least once. To be fair, it’s a hard trope to get away with successfully, especially in a ghost story. It still managed to keep my interest because I wanted to know if the other three characters were also ghosts or if they were running a seance, and what their connection was with the ship. I won’t tell you that. Also spoilerish, there are a lot of rape and mutilation scenes, which didn’t exactly rock my boat (sorry …). The book conveyed the cruelty and brutality of late nineteenth century arctic whaling very well. I read it very quickly because it’s a library book, I picked it up because I’m only reading women writers for the first half of the year, and I’m also trying to use my local library more. Sadly, my library doesn’t stock an awful lot of sf / fantasy / horror, so I keep going off genre. Ghost stories are kind of horror adjacent, but this one didn’t light up the spooky / weird bulb for me.
And so to another library book, this time Belinda Bauer’s debut, ‘Blacklands’ One of the things about selling my own books at events is that it gives me time to read, and I polished off most of this book yesterday whilst sat behind a stall at a craft / artisan fair near Manchester. It’s not my usual choice of books, but I read and enjoyed ‘Exit’ last year, and when I saw ‘Blacklands’ displayed prominently in a local library, I couldn’t resist picking it up. I was expecting a cozy crime novel, something like ‘Exit’ and got a harrowing tale of a psychopathic serial rapist and murderer of small children, and his correspondence with the wise young nephew of one of his long ago victims. This book looks at the devastation that murder leaves in its wake, at the damage it does to families, and the wisdom that lurks in unexpected corners. Apart from my visceral reaction to the evil that the killer has wrought, the main thing I’m taking away from this book is the lovely relationship between Stephen (the victim’s nephew) and his next door neighbour / best friend, Lewis. Lewis constantly and consistently takes Stephen for granted, and Stephen knows this, but forgives him anyway. Lewis is a bit dim, and Stephen knows this, and gives him the leeway he needs to keep his self confidence. It’s a lovely bit of character development. Bauer won the Golden Dagger for this book, and I’m not in the least bit surprised.
And then, on to a book that I bought with my Christmas / birthday book money. Charlie Jane Anders is one of my favourite ‘new’ writers, and I loved her sf anthology ‘Even Greater Mistakes’. A generously thick collection of science fiction stories that will appeal to readers right across the genre. I loved the imagination and sense of fun that pervaded the book, even when tackling difficult and intensely personal issues.
My last read of the month was Suzette Haden Elgin’s ‘Native Tongue’. It’s one of those books that shaped me, its a book that I love beyond measure, and it’s a book that seems to have disappeared from my shelves. There’s a solution to that, I bought it again. Reading this book was like sinking into a hot bath. The re-read did not disappoint, the characters were warm and funny and relatable, the story was multi layered and fascinating, and the ending was pretty much perfect. On to Book 2 of the trilogy …
