Mystery Review: 'Gently With The Painters' by Alan Hunter

This is the seventh of the series about the genial pipe-smoking George Gently, now promoted to Superintendent, and chafing rather at his desk-bound life. The author is getting into his stride now, and many of the rather dated quirks which enlivened the earlier books have been dropped - no more peppermint creams, for instance, and the investigation is much more conventional - Gently visits various suspects, asks them questions and mulls over the answers. He even philosophises over his approach, describing it as more art than science. There are still meals, fortunately; I do enjoy Gently’s hearty meals. Grapefruit, followed by liver and bacon for breakfast, then toast and marmalade. Lunch is naturally a multi-course affair - soup, steak, new potatoes and peas, followed by apple turnover and 'custard sauce'. Not quite as vintage as the brown Windsor soup of a previous book, but still entertainingly large.

The other vintage aspect of these books (these early ones were written in the mid to late fifties) is the attitude to women. Female characters are never regarded as being worthy of attention. They may have evidence to impart, like Dolly the barmaid (addressed simply as 'Miss'), or they may be right in the middle of the action, like the girlfriend (addressed respectfully as 'Miss Butters' because her father is someone of importance; the class system is alive and well), but they are otherwise ignored. One woman who takes a car and drives off in it causes a tremor of alarm in the policemen: you mean she was on her own, they cry plaintively. A woman who dislikes her husband is inevitably thought to be a lesbian (even though there's absolutely no evidence of it). Often the women are portrayed as being on the verge of hysteria. The girlfriend would be a prime suspect in any rational story of this type, but it never occurs to anyone to investigate that angle. A woman of that era could probably get away with literal murder because no one would imagine her capable of it.

The actual perpetrator of the crime is not terribly surprising, although there's a lot of obfuscation along the way to avoid revealing the identity too soon. Gently, of course, guesses it early on and then, Poirot-like, spends time circling around in a slightly underhand sort of way. I have to say, though, that the murderer's motivation was not terribly convincing. And for all the comments about how clever he was, it always seems to me to be fairly stupid rushing round after the crime trying to pin it on other people. Nevertheless, this was one of the better books of this series. The attempts at dialect have almost entirely gone (not quite, sadly), the investigation depends less on lucky breaks than before and Gently himself is now a much more believable character. Three stars.

Fiction Review: 'Wolf Hall' by Hilary Mantel

Well, I got through two thirds of it, by virtue of listening to the audiobook while I do other, more worthwhile, things. Like ironing. Eventually, I lost the will to live and stopped listening. I’ve been putting off writing anything about this in case I get a sudden urge to pick it up again and carry on, but it’s not going to happen.

There’s a lot to enjoy in this book. There are wonderful characters, caught at a crucial moment in history. The author has captured to perfection the sights and sounds and smells of the Tudor era. There’s humour, too, from time to time. But there’s just so much of it, every scene dragged out to many times the necessary length, endless discussion around meal tables with only a few meaningful lines. If it could have been distilled to normal book size, it would have been a very readable book. As it is, I found it plain tedious, especially after Wolsey’s demise.

For historians, it must be a thrill to see these important characters brought to vibrant life. For literary types, there is pleasure in the elegant language and apt turns of phrase. For me, as a reader looking for a story, it was a failure. There was no tension in the retelling of events to which every child knows the ending. The one character who needed to spring to life, Thomas Cromwell himself, was flatter than paper. He was described in the blurb as ambitious, and other characters mention him as a climber, yet we see no examples of it. On the contrary, he remains loyal to Wolsey to the end, and appears to luck into his role with the king. He’s hard working and intelligent, rather than conniving. We see something of his family life, but rarely see any signs of affection. And in the end, I didn’t care about him, either, or any of them, with the possible exception of Wolsey. One star for a DNF.

Fantasy Review: 'Havenstar' by Glenda Larke

This was the author’s first published work, but shortly after its appearance in 1999 the publisher sank, and the book with it. Now the author has self-published it (hurray for the digital age). Not only is it available once more, it has been picked up by a traditional publisher too. A result whichever way you look at it.

The story has one of the most original settings I’ve encountered. A cataclysmic event tore the world apart, spreading chaos everywhere apart from a few islands of stability which are kept that way by rigorous adherence to a religion-based system of rules. Travel between these islands is made possible by accurate mapping of the chaotic patches between them. Main character Keris is the daughter of a mapmaker who dies under mysterious circumstances in the unstable lands between islands, and she is forced away from her home as a result. And that doesn’t begin to describe the complexities of this world.

There’s no easy entry here. The reader is dropped into this complicated background without a parachute, so the early chapters are riddled with jargon and references to unexplained events, places, people. It isn’t long, however, before explanations begin to appear, and although it took me a long time to work out the differences between tainted, unbound, excluded, unstablers, ley-lit and the like, things do become clearer. The ley lines are the most significant element; these are the ever shifting rivers of chaotic energy which criss-cross the landscape, the source of power for Carasma, the lord of chaos and his minions.

Keris is accompanied on her journey into the unstable world between the eight stabilities by a motley collection of people - a priest following orders, a high-ranking man making a pilgrimage alone, a brothel-keeper repenting of her sins, a timid man trying to impress his father and so on. The guide, Davron, and his tainted assistant, Scow, seem almost normal by comparison. And then there's the mysterious Meldor, who is blind but surprisingly adept for all that. All of them feel like real, fully rounded people, and if they aren’t exactly people you would meet down the pub (Scow is described thus: ‘His head was built on a grand scale, perhaps twice normal size, and his outsized face was circled by an animal’s mane. The hair—fur?—of it cascaded down on to his shoulders, hiding his neck.’), they all have their own secrets and tragedies. The tainted, in particular (those caught out while crossing a ley-line and transformed in some way) are very tragic figures, unable to return to the stabilities, unable even to touch other people. Davron is particularly tragic, and the way he and Keris gradually come to understand one another, and the development of their slowly unfurling love story, undeniable and yet impossible, is masterfully done.

The story is intriguing right from the first page, and quickly builds to a fast paced and dramatic adventure. The consequence of a world infused with chaos is that anything can happen at any moment, creating a tale which crackles with tension and (I’ll be honest) fear; some of those tainted and wild creatures were pretty horrifying. And yet there was always humour, too, especially from Corrian, the pipe-smoking former brothel-keeper with her down-to-earth attitude and appetite for life, and the timid Quirk, who takes to life in the unstable world with surprising nonchalance.

The religion of this world is not, at first sight, much different from any other hierarchical, rigid, dogmatic religion, but beneath the surface it’s unusual. For one thing, it’s an integral part of the division between stable and unstable areas. The stable zones are maintained by the continuous application of kinesis (a kind of gesture) around the borders and rigorous adherence to exhaustively detailed rules within the boundaries, which prescribe what may be grown where, what colours and styles of clothing may be worn, how many children may be born and what jobs they can do. All of this is intended to minimise the number of changes occurring and thus maintain order, a kind of stultifying stasis. Inevitably, this leads to some painfully inhumane results. Babies surplus to the permitted two are removed at birth and brought up in the religious order. Those who are deformed or who defy authority are thrown out of the stabilities altogether, left to survive as best they can. Inevitably, such a system has its share of the secretly defiant, the petty tale-tellers and the corrupt, who will bend the rules or turn a blind eye for a consideration. I wasn’t sure whether the author was making a general point about organised religion, but I found it very thought-provoking.

This book is awesome. It has all the characteristics I look for in fantasy: an original, well thought out world, a simple but powerful magic system, compelling characters who behave realistically, and a plot which never lets up for a moment. It’s emotionally engaging, too; I always cared about the characters and there were moments that reduced me to tears. Keris the map-maker’s daughter is a fantastic heroine, and the ending - well, the ending was perfect, I can’t describe it any other way. A truly wonderful story. Five stars.

Non-fiction Review: 'Below Stairs' by Margaret Powell

This was written in 1968 and was supposedly the inspiration for the popular TV series ‘Upstairs Downstairs’ and (much later) Downton Abbey. The author describes her impoverished childhood, and then her experiences of working in service for various wealthy families, first as a kitchen maid and later as a cook.

The writing style is best described as naive. It reads as if she were simply chatting about her life, talking in her everyday manner, with all the repetitions and clichés intact. Everything is ‘marvellous’ or ‘tremendous’ or ‘I remember an occasion...’. I have an image of her as an old lady sitting in a wing chair beside the fire, telling her tales as someone (a favourite neice, perhaps) takes down her words. Which is the intention, I daresay.

The early chapters about her childhood and family are fairly stilted and dull, although there are occasional anecdotes that liven things up, and the author’s own personality shines through. Bolshy is the word that comes to my mind. She’s definitely not a meek and mild sort, and you wouldn’t think that a life of servitude to the upper classes would suit her, really. Once she starts work as a kitchenmaid, her asides about the disparity of life above and below stairs become an entertaining feature. Upstairs is furnished with plush carpets, elegant draperies and fine furniture, while downstairs is lino and wobbly cast-off chairs. Vast quantities of food are cooked, picked at and later thrown away by the fussy family upstairs, while down below the servants never have quite enough to eat.

At first, as the harrassed and put-upon kitchen maid, the chapters are full of grumbles, but as she branches out and becomes a cook, there’s more about the pleasures of life downstairs and the humour shines through. The most interesting aspect, for me, was the difference between those employers who treated their staff as little more than slaves, and those, more enlightened, who treated them as people. Some houses the author worked in provided properly furnished rooms for the servants, with plenty of modern equipment and good wages, and the staff were generally contented and stayed for many years. It was an era of transition, the period between the wars when staff were increasingly hard to find and so conditions had to improve, but some grand folk apparently adapted better than others to the new circumstances.

The author was always focused on getting a husband and thereby escaping from domestic service altogether, but it seemed to me that her married life was in many ways harder and less comfortable than her life as a cook. Certainly she had more freedom, but she was never well off, and at times was desperate for money. But at least she had the intelligence to see the value of education, and took evening classes and read a great deal. This (combined with her bolshy nature) gave her a certain self-confidence. My favourite moment from the book is when her posh employer tells her off for damaging a mirror. ‘You must treat things better, Margaret,’ she said. ‘Don’t you love good objects?’ ‘No, I don’t, Mrs Schwab,’ I said. ‘To me they’re just material things; I have an affinity with G. K. Chesterton who wrote about the malignity of inanimate objects,’ I said, ‘and I think they are malign because they take up so much of my time, dusting, polishing, and cleaning them.’ At this point in her life, she was a daily cleaner, and any daily who can answer back with such a quote (the malignity of inanimate objects!) is at least the equal of her employer, in my view.

Not the best written book ever, and it starts slowly, but it’s still a fascinating look at a lost way of life, and an entertaining read. Three stars.

Mystery Review: 'Heat Wave' by Richard Castle

Anyone who’s watched the TV detective series ‘Castle’, featuring Nathan Fillion as a writer tailing a NYPD cop solving murders, will know that this is the book that featured in the show, the book that Castle the character supposedly wrote as a result of his experience with the cops. The joke, of course, is that the characters in the book are thinly disguised copies of their TV show counterparts: Castle is Rook (a Pullitzer-prize winning journalist this time, not a fiction writer), Kate Beckett is Nikki Heat, sidekicks Esposito and Ryan are Ochoa and Raley, pathologist Lanie is Lauren and so on. Except that this time, the sexual tension between the two main characters is resolved in the steamy sex scene on page 105 (as fans will surely remember from the show).

As a murder mystery, this is a fairly run of the mill affair, but it rattles along pretty well and the plot really isn’t the point, after all. I found the overuse of slang and jargon a bit trying, but it does fit with the character. A (fictional) writer researching a book like this might very well accumulate a whole bunch of such phrases and sprinkle them absolutely everywhere. And it’s very funny imagining Castle writing this stuff. It seems like a hack piece of work, but then that’s the intention, so it’s actually quite cleverly done. Not recommended for anyone unfamiliar with the show, but for fans who would likely get all the jokes and sly references, this is an entertaining piece of fluff. Three stars.

My Other Blog: While I Was Away (Part 2)

Catching up with the new reviews added to Fantasy Review Barn, my shared blog, by my fellow bloggers Nathan and Anachronist over the last month which might interest you:

Urban Fantasy: 'Even White Trash Zombies Get The Blues' by Diana Rowland

Fantasy: 'The Shadowed Sun' by N K Jemisin

Fantasy: 'Thraxas and the Warrior Monks' by Martin Scott

Fantasy: 'Moving Pictures' by Terry Pratchett

Sci-Fi: 'Song of Scarabaeus' by Sara Creasey

Fantasy: 'Exile' by Betsy Dornbusch

Urban Fantasy: 'Greywalker' by Kat Richardson

Mini-Review: 'From Man To Man' by D E M Emrys

Fantasy: 'The Swordsman's Oath' by Juliet McKenna

Historical Fantasy: 'Twelve' by Jasper Kent

The Pratchett review is part of Nathan's ongoing project to reread the entire Discworld canon in sequence.

You can find the blog here. Naturally, all my reviews will continue to be posted here and on Goodreads, and my other ramblings will be posted here. All my fantasy and sci-fi reviews will also be posted on Fantasy Review Barn.

Steampunk Fantasy Review: 'Healer's Touch' by Deb E Howell

This is billed as a steampunk fantasy, but don’t be fooled. The steampunk elements are negligible. In reality, this is a romance with a fantasy background. Since the heroine is seventeen and there’s a bit of a love triangle, I suppose it’s YA, too. The book has perhaps the most cliché-riddled opening I've ever encountered. The main character is an orphan with mysterious powers. She makes a living on the streets as a pick-pocket [*], disguised as a boy. Despite the disguise, twice during the first couple of chapters she suffers violent attempted rapes. She is betrayed by a former friend, arrested for a murder she didn't commit, and condemned to death. But she escapes and manages to run away. It's all pretty familiar stuff. It just needs a prophecy, a magic sword and a quest to complete the set (maybe that comes later...). And yet, despite the predictability, I kept reading, which is, I suppose, a testament of sorts to the author's writing ability, if not her originality.

[*] Why oh why do orphaned children always end up on the streets in fantasyland, their only option thievery or prostitution? Did their parents have no friends who might help them out? Is the town so lawless that orphans are simply abandoned to their fate? Is there really no honest work to be had?

The biggest interest for me is the main character's magical ability. Llew has the power to heal herself when injured, but only by drawing the life force from some other living thing - human, animal or plant. This is such an intriguing power that I really want to know more about it. Then there's Braph, a man with a mysterious background who is clearly searching for Llew, for reasons unknown. (Horrible thought: maybe she's the secret heir to the kingdom? No, surely not.) Less intriguing by far is the romantic interest. We know he's the romantic interest from the start because Llew comments on his nice ass, and mentions how handsome he is. Needless to say, he dislikes her on sight.

The plot isn’t much to write home about, but it’s serviceable. Llew picks up with a group heading north to the only port on a long, thin island-continent (really? no other suitable place?). There are encounters with highwaymen, Braph the Mysterious and the law, since Llew is still wanted for murder, and now witchcraft, since she used her magic to escape hanging. This is all good fun, and there’s the expected moment where Llew’s less-than-convincing boy disguise fails, and her new friends pop her in a frock for dinner. Cue much ogling from the men. There are some logic fails: a day when they appeared to have lunch twice, a bedroom scene segues to the garden and back again, and a time on a boat when Llew needed a living being to draw energy from, and everyone forgot about the horses in the hold. But still, things rattle along nicely, with one misadventure after another.

In a shock twist (not), the group includes the romantic interest, Jonas, who despite being a mean, cynical killing machine, immediately gets the hots for our heroine. He also shows his sensitive side, bringing her cloths when her period starts, giving her cute little hugs when she’s down and cuddling in bed in a heroically non-libidinous way at night. I began to wonder when they would start doing each other’s hair. But this does highlight the biggest problem I had with this book - the characters don’t behave in believable ways. When Jonas and Llew sneak out at night to meet up with Braph, a man known to be hostile and with probably evil intentions, how do they pass the time while they wait for him to show up? Sharpening their knives, perhaps? Discussing tactics? Hiding so they have the element of surprise? No, they lie down in plain view and get all hot and steamy. And when a child is accidentally killed, everyone acts like it’s the greatest tragedy ever, and Jonas is so distraught he gets wildly drunk. This is the man who says ‘I’ve killed... dozens, hundreds.’ Then when Braph does eventually turn up, no one recognises him or gets even remotely alarmed. There are any number of oddities like this.

I found this a very frustrating read. On the one hand, there's some wonderful magic, solid world-building and an interesting steampunkish vaguely western feel to it. The author's writing style is neat and unobtrusive, and the plot moves along at a fair canter. On the other hand, the romantic element pops up at the most inopportune moments, and the characters just don't behave rationally. There are also aspects that aren't explained well (or perhaps I just failed to get it, I don't know; I never did work out quite who Emylia was - friend, relative or paid chaperone?), so there are a number of wait-did-we-know-that? moments along the way. Better editing would have smoothed out some inconsistencies and odd hiccups, filled in the strangely sketchy minor characters and produced a better flow. But despite all the issues, I kept reading, sneaking a chapter here and there when I was supposed to be doing something else, until the ending lost me. Sadly, the last few chapters are littered with unlikely events, coindidences and outright deus ex machina. For those who can enjoy the romance, the interesting setting and a terrific magic system, and don’t mind the implausibilities, this would be a great read, and it’s clear the author can write, but for me it just didn’t work. Two stars.

Fantasy Review: 'Sheepfarmer's Daughter' by Elizabeth Moon

I’m reading this in the omnibus edition, entitled ‘The Deed of Paksenarrion’, but I’ll review each of the the three volumes separately, for convenience. The series tells the story of Paksenarrion Dorthansdottir, or Paks for short, who runs away from her humble home to join Duke Phelan's army as a way of avoiding a marriage being forced on her by her father. This first book is about her training, her first battles and her involvement in the Duke's various military enterprises, and although it starts slowly with a lot of detail about training regimes and the like, it builds in time to a much pacier level. From the middle onwards I found it completely absorbing.

The author doesn't shy away from the realities of military life. There are plenty of details about the privations of life on the march, the difficulties inherent in a mixed-sex army and the chaos of the battlefield. There are plenty of deaths, too. But on the whole, this isn't in the gritty realism school of fantasy; there is little gore or graphic descriptions of injuries, for example. I did wonder sometimes just how this particular army would work. It's a wonderful idea to have women fully integrated and treated identically, and although I squirmed every time Paks had to strip off alongside the men, I daresay that's just a cultural issue. But I did wonder how they coped with periods on those long, mud-filled marches.

It's traditional in this type of story for the main character to become a hero - acquiring unusual skills with weapons, for instance, or showing improbable levels of strategic thinking, and rapidly graduating to a leadership role. This book avoids that cliché. Paks is exactly what she seems - a sheepfarmer's daughter who simply wants to be a good soldier. She makes mistakes, she has weaknesses and prejudices, and in tricky situations she often depends on others more experienced than her, such as during the flight with Canna and Saben. She’s good at what she does, but it comes from determination and intense training rather than special abilities. She does heroic deeds, but again, it’s not because of some unusual quality or because she seeks out risky missions, but rather that she doesn’t shy away from such situations when they arise, seeing them as just a part of her job. I liked Paks very much. Her self-effacing quiet bravery and unwillingness to stand out from the rest of her cohort are not just admirable qualities in themselves, but rare in fantasy, where every main character these days seems brash and opinionated. And then there’s her unquestioning loyalty to the Duke, her employer, even when she discovers that his soldiers are not quite the heroic idealists she aspired to but something much more pragmatic, being simple mercenaries.

I very much liked the way the world is revealed slowly, in small increments, with names and places and even religions tossed into conversations without explanation. It’s hard to grasp what’s going on, sometimes, and even with the map I couldn’t always follow the journeys, but it gave the world an unusual depth. There’s not a great deal of magic in view, but it clearly permeates all the various societies, and where it does turn up, it’s used very effectively. I found the Marshall and the paladin, with their beliefs which so disturbed the Duke, absolutely compelling, and I would have liked to know more about them. Every scene with the Marshall was dynamite, in fact. This aspect is something Moon does brilliantly - weaving a complex mesh of religion and magic and a variety of belief systems into the story without ever resorting to dry infodumps.

Some grumbles. The names are difficult. I applaud the author’s efforts to demonstate the social and cultural diversity of the Duke’s soldiers and the various others they encounter by having a range of different types of names, but it made it very difficult to work out who was who. Neither rank nor gender was obvious from most names, and I constantly forgot whether a character was a captain or a private or from a different band altogether. More than once I was startled to find that a long-running character was not the gender I had assumed (shame on me, I suppose, for making assumptions at all, but I do like to know, as a minimum, whether a character is male or female). The sheer number of characters made this problem worse. And if character names were tricky, places and groups were even worse. Occasionally, when discussing who might turn up for the next battle, I’d see something like this: A and B have to stay home because they’re threatened by C, and D has to defend E, but F and G have said they’ll come, but then after what happened at H they may not, and you can never count on I and J... Without taking notes, it’s just impossible to follow this sort of thing. One other grumble: I liked that events were seen through Paks’ eyes, which meant gaps and missing information and changes without explanation, but there were times when a little more information would have been nice. We never did learn, for instance, what punishment, if any, was handed out to Stephi (or if it was mentioned, I missed it).

The ending is wonderful. Yes, there’s a dramatic series of battles, but ultimately it’s about Paks and her beliefs, and about right and wrong, and being true to your ideals, and I can’t fault it. This is a terrific story of one person, a humble and very likeable woman, just doing a job she enjoys, and finding herself by no choice of her own drawn into bigger and more important matters. I liked the details of her life as a soldier, which was never sugar-coated, but also never resorted to overly-graphic grimness. I liked that she didn’t want marriage or a lover, and that was accepted without question (too often authors think a female protagonist has to have a sex life). This was very close to five stars for me, but the confusing number of characters and names, which made some events hard to follow, and the slow start, keep it to a very good four stars.

Non-fiction Review: 'Sex At Dawn' by Christopher Ryan and Cacilda Jetha

I was a bit nervous about reading this book - not another tract on evolutionary psychology, and how humans are all just bonobos at heart! Fortunately, it’s much more than that, and the authors dissect evolutionary psychology with such surgical precision that I was mentally cheering at several points. They still take the view that modern humans carry the scars of our evolutionary history with us, but they don’t buy into the whole enchilada.

The basic premise is that humans are not evolved for lifetime monogamy, a thesis the authors support by physical, anthropological and comparative evidence. I found many of these arguments quite compelling, especially where they dismantle the research of some of the big names in the field. It’s clear that evo-psych makes far too many assumptions about what the evolutionary environment was like, and that too much dependence has been placed on research into models of hunter-gatherer societies which are based on surviving groups who have been affected by contact with modern lifestyles, or are not true foragers at all. However, not all the authors’ own conclusions are rock solid, either.

Where the book fails, perhaps, is in determining just what kind of arrangement humans might have had in hunter-gatherer days. They convincingly argue against monogamy, but what else was viable for early humans? Full-on promiscuity? Pair-bonding with plenty of playing away? Serial monogamy? Long-term multi-mate groupings? They look at all of these, but make no conclusive case for any one in particular. Perhaps they preferred to leave that open, but still it would have been interesting to know which of them they thought our ancestors might have enjoyed, and why. Serial monogamy is the only one widely tried in modern society, with limited success. The others are very minority states. They also fail, I think, to take sufficient account of the economic benefits of monogamy - it’s an arrangement that works well in a property-owning society, on the whole. It may have weaknesses, but it’s survived more or less intact in the vast majority of cultures for millennia. Until our economic and social systems change, I don’t see much likelihood of any movement away from it.

This is an interesting book, written in a relaxed and readable style, with plenty of humour. It’s not going to revolutionise society, and some of the arguments are over-stated, perhaps, but if it causes even one couple to think twice before sending for the divorce lawyers, it will have achieved something worthwhile. Four stars.

My Other Blog: While I Was Away (Part 1)

Well, folks, I'm back from my wanderings to New Zealand, Australia and Thailand, and catching up with this and that. Over the past month, quite a few new reviews have been added to Fantasy Review Barn, my shared blog, by my fellow bloggers Nathan and Anachronist which might interest you. There are too many for one post, so here's the first set:

YA Horror Fantasy: 'The Curse of The Wendigo' by Rick Yancey

Fantasy: 'The Killing Moon' by N K Jemisin

YA Horror: 'Isle of Blood' by Rick Yancey

Fantasy: 'Blood's Pride' by Evie Manieri

Sci-Fi: 'Blackcollar' by Timothy Zahn

YA Paranormal Romance: 'Daughter of Smoke and Bone' by Laini Taylor

YA Paranormal Romance: 'Days of Blood and Starlight' by Laini Taylor

Urban Fantasy: 'Death Ain't But A Word' by Zander Marks

Urban Fantasy: 'My Life As A White-Trash Zombie' by Diana Rowland

Dystopia: 'Wool Omnibus' by Hugh Howey

Nathan has an ongoing project to reread the entire Discworld canon in sequence.

You can find the blog here. Naturally, all my reviews will continue to be posted here and on Goodreads, and my other ramblings will be posted here. All my fantasy and sci-fi reviews will also be posted on Fantasy Review Barn.

Mystery Review: 'The Woman Before Me' by Ruth Dugdall

A simple premise: after her own baby dies, Rose Wilks becomes friendly with Emma, a fellow new mum whose own baby, Luke, was born at the same time. When a cigarette starts a fire which kills Luke, Rose is convicted of manslaughter. The story picks up several years later, when Rose is due for a parole hearing, and has to convince probation officer Cate that she should be released.

That bald summary doesn't begin to do justice to the story, of course. Most of it is written in the first person by Rose herself, in the form of a sort of lengthy letter/journal addressed to her boyfriend Jason, and this part of the book is utterly compelling. Rose's history, how she came to the point of being accused of killing Luke, and her personality are fascinating. The big question is whether she is telling the truth when she claims to be innocent. It's clear that she's a disturbed and manipulative person, intelligent and not uneducated, but with some seriously odd ways. She does very well in prison, for instance, keeping on the right side of the prison officers and yet easily dominating or intimidating other inmates.

The other part of the book, about Cate the probation officer, is much less interesting. It's a necessary counterpoint to Rose, I suppose, to show someone apparently successful and powerful, who is actually very fragile - something of a mess, basically. It was also useful for plot purposes, since she has to ask questions of all the main characters. I didn't find Cate very believable or well-rounded, and it was always a disappointment to turn the page to find it was a Cate chapter. This may have been partly because Cate's sections were written in the third person, with the inevitable distancing effect (at least compared to the intimacy of Rose's sections).

The ending, and the reveal of exactly what happened when Luke died, is not actually a surprise (or at least, I guessed it ages before), but nevertheless there are enough twists along the way to keep things bubbling along. I found this an absorbing read, and a real page-turner. It's only the dull Cate chapters that keep it to four stars.

Fantasy Review: 'The Prophecy' by Jeffrey M Poole

This is Book 1 of the Bakkian Chronicles, which is, naturally, a trilogy. The premise is a simple one: Steve Miller learns that he has inherited a mansion from his little-known grandparents. When he and his wife Sarah go to investigate, they find themselves stepping through a portal into a strange new world, one where griffins, dragons and magic exist.

Now, I like the idea of a portal. It's a simple and effective trick to set straightforward modern-day people in a fantasy world. The reader finds it easy to identify with Steve and Sarah, with no need to understand complicated backstories for them, the fantasy world can be explained step-by-step by the clueless newbies asking questions or simply walking into trouble, and there's an immediate set of problems to be solved - survival, first and foremost, and ultimately a return to the home world. Plus, portals are compelling by their very nature. Who could not read Narnia, and then look at their own wardrobe and think... if only?

The trouble with portals, however, is that they've been done to death, and it's increasingly hard to put an original spin on it. The hapless arrivals blunder around getting into and out of trouble, and eventually get drawn into whatever big event is going on in the fantasy world. What's new to say? The twist here is that the protagonists are a happily married couple, and hurray for that, something which is all too rare in fantasy. Problem is, Steve and Sarah are just too nice. They rarely so much as disagree, and when they do, it's over in a flash and they're high-fiving or hugging. There's altogether too much enthusiasm for their newfound world, in fact. They are lovely people, in the real world sense, and I would be delighted to have them as neighbours or workmates or friends, but for my taste fictional characters need a bit more bite to make them interesting.

Another problem I had is with grandma and grandpa. You would think, wouldn't you, that if you planned to leave your house to your unknown grandson, knowing that sooner or later he would blunder unwittingly through the magic portal and all too probably be eaten by a griffon, that a hint or two on health and safety issues, and how to get back might be in order? Unless the family feud is so serious that the griffon-eating is actually the intention... BAD grandma and grandpa.

Up to the halfway point, I struggled to find the spark in this book. But with the appearance of Kahvel the dragon, things begin to pick up and the book finds its proper tone - lighthearted and humorous, with Steve's infectious enthusiasm finally winning me over. The macho contest between dragon and man was a highlight, and the expedition with the dragon and five soldiers turned into a very entertaining romp. The battle with the guur was very satisfactory (I hate bugs too). Although I have to say, the idea of a dragon of Kahvel's size sneaking up on anyone without being noticed stretches credibility somewhat.

This book will never win any prizes for originality or depth, and it has no literary pretensions. The writing style is basic, characterisation is flat and the point of view head-hops with dizzying speed. It fails to provide any unexpected plot twists, and there's not as much humour as I might have expected, in the early parts at least. And having criticised it to death, I have to say that, actually, I rather enjoyed it. If there were few stand-out pluses, there was nothing that really grated, either. It's incredibly readable, with a certain charm and plenty of lively action in the second half, and that was more than enough to keep me turning the pages. For those who enjoy a straightforward traditional easy to read fantasy, this would certainly fit the bill. It doesn't quite make it to four stars, but it's a good three stars.

Mystery Review: 'Gently In The Sun' by Alan Hunter

This is the sixth in a very long series of murder mysteries featuring the middle aged Inspector George Gently, all written in the fifties and sixties. This one is back by the seaside, in a small and not very interesting village baking in a heatwave (cue lots of comments along the lines of 'what a scorcher' and frying eggs on the pavement). A beautiful young woman visitor is found murdered on the beach beside the fishing boats. The locals can make nothing of it, and Gently is summoned from Scotland Yard to solve the case.

Books of this type depend on one of three factors to give them legs. Either the mystery itself is ingenious, or the setting is evocative, or the detective is interesting enough to carry the story. The mystery here is neither clever nor (frankly) very interesting. The best murder mysteries give the reader enough information to work out the solution for themselves, but here there are three obvious suspects with motives yet the identity of the perpetrator and the actual motive are such that they can't really be deduced. There were one or two aspects that might be guessed at, but that's it.

Nor is the setting interesting. The author has already dealt with a seaside holiday setting in an earlier book ('Gently By The Shore') and this adds nothing new. The author describes the heatwave and the inevitable thunderstorm which follows in unconvincing purple prose. And the detective has become almost invisible, doing very little here except stand around while clues and information materialise in front of him. He does very little actual investigation, interviewing the obvious suspects while relying on 'intuition' to divine the truth of the matter. But at least he has stopped chewing peppermint creams, his only quirk now being to play with a pipe from time to time.

This series has never been very compelling. The plots are weak, the characterisation unconvincing and the writing might best be described as workmanlike. For me the charm has always been in the period details of post-war British life - the food, the clothing, the social distinctions and attitudes and so on. Sadly there is very little here of interest - some snippets of clothing, a reference to florins and a small coastal village which still has an active fishing trade. The only meal mentioned is salad and trifle, although a great deal of ice cream is consumed. Without the historical veneer, the story is exposed as a flimsy and insubstantial affair, with Gently inexplicably fascinated by one character while ignoring other possible leads, doing very little detective work until the solution is simply presented to him. I assume this is meant to be his unique characteristic as a detective, to simply stand and watch while the mystery unfolds itself before his eyes, but it really isn't a convincing technique. Two stars.

Fantasy Review: 'Lokant' by Charlotte E English

Warning: contains major spoilers for book 1 of the series, 'Draykon'.

I really enjoyed the first book of the Draykon series. It had interesting characters, an unusual world and magic system, and that just-one-more-chapter style that makes even such a long book flow past very easily. This one, the second in the series, picks up not long after its predecessor ended, and is largely concerned with the fall-out from events in that book. Eva and Tren are trying to work out just what is going on, Llandry's father is trying to find her, and Llandry herself - well, more on Llandry in a moment.

I was a bit hazy on the details of the story so far, but there's enough information given to get even the most casual reader up to speed without infodumping. The setting is quite complicated - a series of seven realms, some of which are in permanent daylight, some in permanent night, and one is half and half, comprise a 'middle' world, and there are upper and lower worlds as well, which in some way occupy the same space as the middle world, but are very different. We don't see quite as much of the enchanting light-filled upper and threatening lower worlds in this book, which is a shame. Their constantly changing aspects and bizarre life forms fascinate me.

As always, it's the characters who make or break a book for me, and there's a particularly fine collection of them here. Llandry and her parents were a highlight of the first book, but the stars here are Eva and Tren, who provide both romantic interest and comic relief, as well as much of the action. Eva was difficult to like in the first book, being a little too composed, too competent, too contained for sympathy, and Tren seemed like a minor character, but both of them blossom here, and are a delightful pair. An honourable mention, too, for Rheas, Llandry's grandfather, who combines stubborn eccentricity with family affection in a delightfully unusual way. There are several new characters, too, amongst the Lokants of the title, about which I will say no more, to avoid spoilers. As before, the odd creatures from the upper and lower worlds prove to have their own quirky charms, although we see less of them in this book.

OK, here comes the big spoiler from book 1: at the end of it, Llandry was transformed into a draykon (a dragon, basically), and her delight in her new form, the contrast with her timid and all too human self, and her relationship with Pensould, the draykon revived at the end of book 1, are wonderful to read. Both of them have adjustments to make which are clearly not easy for them. She shows at one point that she's capable of very draykon anger, while he becomes noticeably more human as the book progresses. I am very much looking forward to finding out the conclusion of their story in book 3, to see where on the draykon/human spectrum they end up, and whether they end up together or not.

The story opens out a great deal in this book, and many things which mystified me in book 1 are explained, such as the full importance of the strange 'istore' material which Llandry found, and something of Llandry's own nature and the significance of it. We learned a lot about Eva, too. I found the Lokants and their abilities a little too convenient, but the explanation for it, and the way it relates to the known forms of magic (the split into sorcery and summoning abilities, for instance) is very clever, and elegantly done.

The pace seemed to be quite slow for much of the time - there was a great deal of Eva and Tren researching, for instance, and a certain amount of sitting around while one of the Lokants explains the backstory - but things hot up dramatically at the end and suddenly there's the threat of full-scale war looming. And then, rather abruptly, it ends. I suppose that's the sign of an enjoyable book, when you're so absorbed that the end comes as a surprise. I liked the way that, despite the action (and actually, there's plenty), the book is largely about people and their relationships. Llandry and Pensould, Llandry and her parents, her parents and her grandfather, Eva and Tren - all of these relationships are believable, and most of the characters are likeable, in their various ways, even the grumpy Rheas and the unevolved Pensould. I loved that Tren and Eva have only the slightest qualm about their age difference (she's thirteen years older than him); the difficulty is far more subtle and more unusual than that.

If I have a grumble, it's that the names are difficult to remember - people have first names, surnames and diminutives; there are multiple names for places, too. And none of the names are meaningful (to me, that is), which makes them hard to remember. But I'm at last beginning to get the hang of the seven realms (the wonderful map helped here), the daylands and darklands, and the upper and lower worlds, which I found confusing initially. As the second book in the series, it naturally loses a little freshness and originality, but it gains in the greater depth in the characters and in revealing more of the overall story. I enjoyed this perhaps more than the first, and I'm very much looking forward to reading the conclusion. A good four stars.

Fantasy Review: 'Mark of the Dragon Queen' by Katie W Stewart

I rather enjoyed 'Treespeaker' by the same author, so I was more than willing to try this. It turns out to be very different. The setting is a fairly generic one - a small town ruled by a lord, with doctors and horse-drawn buggies and a stratified society, but also with wizardry and dragons. Magic is tightly controlled in this particular realm. The main character, Kira, is living a quiet life with her widowed father, a teacher, when he uses magic to save a child's life, breaking an oath and condemning himself to death. The story follows Kira's attempts to rescue him from his fate.

There is an interesting story in here, and the background was very intriguing. The use of magic, how and when it can be used, the crystals which somehow enable its use to be monitored, the way it operates elsewhere, the agreement with the dragons - all of this was rather nice, and I would have liked to know more. But for me things fell apart with the characters, particularly Kira.

Now, there's no immutable law that says that every female main character in fantasy has to be feisty, resourceful, independent-minded and spirited. It's perfectly possible for a heroine (or hero, for that matter) to be timid, nervous, awkward, reclusive or shy, and still bravely do whatever the plot calls upon them to do. But what really doesn't work is stupidity, and Kira, it has to be said, is stupid. I thought at first she was just very young - everyone calls her 'child', and she acts like one, too. People treat her as if she's some delicate flower who has to be protected from the wind at all costs. Initially I guessed she was about six or so, but no - turns out she is actually fifteen. Even having lived a very sheltered life, she should be more sensible than she appears here.

First she is startled and falls over while escaping with her father, getting herself injured and causing him nobly to sacrifice himself so that she can be treated. Then she droops around doing nothing very much for several months, being looked after by helpful friends. Then when she thinks a former student of her father's, Arun, is going to rescue him, she decides to tag along. Why? What can she possibly hope to achieve? She has no skills, no magic, no artefacts which could conceivably make any difference, and she's so helpless, she's only likely to get in the way. As she does, in fact. When he (very sensibly) tells her to go home, she follows him anyway and manages to fall in the river. And so on. She isn't the only one making irrational decisions in this book (Arun is not without blame here, and Kira's father isn't always sensible either) but Kira is the worst. Being determined is an admirable quality, but not without a modicum of common sense.

The other characters are either good, kind people, or thoroughly bad people, with no in between, and sometimes without an obvious reason for being bad. The woman who is nasty to Kira, for instance, because her father has been sent to Verebor prison - why? In a small town, where Kira has grown up, there would surely be a great deal of sympathy for her situation, and people would rally round to help. It's designed to make the reader sympathise with her, perhaps, but it just seemed unrealistic to me.

This may seem very critical, but it's purely a personal reaction. There's a good story in here, and plenty of action. For those who don't mind a heroine who starts off rather limply and (I assume) becomes more self-sufficient later, this would work very well, and there are some interesting details to the magic system and background to be uncovered. I enjoyed the author's 'Treespeaker', a more unusual story than this, so it's not the author's writing style that's the problem here, but purely the extreme wetness of the main character which grates on me. I got about a third of the way through before giving up. One star for a DNF.

Fantasy Review: 'And All The Stars' by Andrea K Höst

I don't read many young adult books, but I do read everything by Andrea K Höst, so this was a must for me. It's the author's first venture into post-apocalypse fantasy, and it begins, literally, after the apocalypse - the very instant after, as main character Madeleine finds herself amidst rubble from a disintegrated underground station. Rubble and dust, in fact, vast amounts of dust which coat everything, including Madeleine herself. And as she makes her escape through the ruined station, she encounters the base of the Spire, a black spike, which has instantaneously risen into the Sydney skyline, along with numerous others all around the world.

The early chapters of the book show a world divided in two - those who, like our heroine, have been exposed to the strange dust and begin to develop patches of colour on their bodies and unusual powers, and those who have not yet been contaminated. People know by instinct that the dust is something to avoid. One of the iconic moments of the book for me is the vivid image of Madeleine emerging from the train tunnel and climbing onto the platform of the next station down to escape, coated from head to foot in the mysterious dust, while passengers on a stopped train, staying safely enclosed beyond reach of the dust, peer through the windows at her in horrified pity.

As with all books of this type, survival is the first priority, and this part of the book is fairly conventional. Madeleine meets other survivors of the contamination, they begin to organise themselves, and use their ingenuity to avoid being hunted down. Naturally, there are constant threats and near-misses, but the gang is smart, and finds some pretty imaginative ways to hide and to provision themselves. Some of this is predictable and some is very ingenious, but although the plot burbles along quite nicely, it all felt slightly ho-hum. I think this is probably because it's YA, and quite an extreme YA book at that. All the main characters were teenagers, without a single older person (bar one in his twenties, later on), and the hide and survive plot made it seem almost like an Enid Blyton adventure - the Famous Five, only with romantic angst and a bit of sex thrown in. Although the characters were all interesting enough in their way, the uniformity of age made it a little flat for me.

But then, just past the two thirds point, there's a moment which changes everything, one of those magical OMG moments when your perception simply shifts sideways to open up the story in innumerable different ways. I love it when an author manages to do that to me. The ending is less magical and more prosaic, but still an enjoyable page-turner, and the epilogue - well, I'm never keen on epilogues, but that's just me. I can see the need for it here, however.

I was worried at one point that this was going to be a disappointment to me, but in the end the strong opening and that wonderful twist saved the day, and left me mulling over all the implications. I never fully engaged with the characters or the romantic entanglements early on, but eventually there was a great deal of depth to the story, and some of the issues raised buzzed round in my head for days. I liked, too, that the characters weren't the standard issue beautiful people who leaped into perfectly honed action when called upon. These were relatively ordinary people with odd combinations of talent and weakness. Problems were solved by intelligence, common sense and teamwork, rather than brute force. Nor was everyone uniformly heterosexual. An interesting and thought-provoking, if slightly uneven, effort. Four stars.

Fantasy Review: 'The Cloud Roads' by Martha Wells

Many works of fantasy tell epic tales without a single non-human character in them. Most have largely human casts with a sprinkling of non-humans thrown in for effect - a few elves or dwarves or demons. But here we have a world, it seems, with no humans in it at all. The main character, Moon, is a Raksura, a shapeshifter - a humanoid in one form, and a somewhat reptilian winged creature in the other. His family was killed long ago, leaving him to survive amongst the ‘groundlings’, a variety of humanoid species (or races, perhaps), by hiding what he is, and in fact not even knowing exactly what he is, until he finally meets up with other Raksura. How he adapts to his new way of life forms the body of the story.

It's not easy to create a whole new species which feels believably 'other', and yet at the same time has enough recognisable human characteristics to be likeable, but the author does a brilliant job of it here. The Raksura are a social species, like ants or wasps, building colonies around a fertile queen, and with various different castes to fulfil the various roles. Queens, their consorts (fertile males) and warriors have wings, while the Arbora (drones or workers) are smaller and wingless. Yet in many ways a Raksura colony is very like hua man village. They bake bread and cook their vegetables, wear clothes and jewelry, fall in love and have sex at will, read and write, and so on. They also have mentors - historians and archivists who also have shamanistic powers.

The other species are just as well thought out, with an array of sentient beings of various shapes and sizes and temperaments, the Fell being the bad guys in the neighbourhood, being set, it appears at first sight, on destroying pretty much every settlement they can get their hands (or claws) on. They too are winged reptilian beasties and the Raksura can take them on, en masse, but the Fell currently have the upper hand. Wells doesn't go into much unnecessary detail with the world she has created, simply describing this valley or that range of hills or lake as needed, but there are numerous ruins scattered about which tell of civilisations long gone. I don't know whether these become important later in the series, but in this book they are simply there, structures and decorations crumbling into the forgotten black hole of unrecorded history. There are current civilisations, too, sometimes created in the ruins of the old, or in one case literally on top of it, where a species of sentient winged beetles has built a hive above a disintegrating city. I also loved the idea of floating islands, chunks of land which simply drift along on the air currents.

For all their non-humanness, the characters are incredibly real. Moon, in particular, is a wonderful mixture of shyness and suspicion and aggression, perfectly in line with his nature and upbringing, or lack of it. I was intrigued by the behaviours that came to him by instinct - his hostility when challenged, for instance, and the willingness to fight, which was common to all the Raksura, from the queens downwards. Despite the Raksura way of life, which necessitates a large number of characters, there were many whose individual personalities made them stand out - Chime, Stone, Flower, Pearl and Jade, for instance. The names sound odd, perhaps, but then it must be difficult to dream up names for all the children when they arrive in clutches of five at a time. It was hard to keep all the Raksura straight, though, especially the numerous warriors, hunters, teachers and so on, which made it more difficult to care when one was injured. And the Fell, despite the bestial nature of some of their castes, which seemed to do little beyond killing and eating pretty much anything, were given depth and reasons for some, at least, of their behaviour. It's always good to find villains whose objectives are purposeful and reasoned, rather than simply being evil for the sake of it.

This is not a book of epic scope, involving vast armies and the future of empires, but those who enjoy action will find plenty to satisfy here. The problems at Indigo Cloud Court, their pursuit by the Fell and their attempts to escape and form a new, safer colony provide numerous conflicts, both aerial and grounded. It's hard to describe aerial combat well and I occasionally got lost in the details, but it didn't matter. I liked that both the Raksura and the Fell turned to ingenious and creative methods to attack and defeat their enemies, rather than simple brute force or magic. There is magic in this world, but it's innate and low-key rather than dramatic, and it felt completely right to me. The ending leaves open enough loose threads for future books in the series, while tidying up this one nicely and bringing Moon's relationship with Jade to a very satisfactory point with a perfectly judged moment (which I won't spoil by describing).

I loved this book, absolutely loved it to pieces. It has all the characteristics I look for in my fantasy - characters I really care about who behave credibly, world-building that's original and well thought out, subtle magic and a plot which derives from these factors. There are themes of real depth for those of us who look for more than action in fantasy - about how you come to terms with who you are, for instance, and about fitting in, even when you're different. I found Moon's transition from outsider to someone who belongs, and his awkwardly prickly relationship with the Raksura, to be endlessly fascinating. The book was a real page turner right from the start, and as Moon and his fellow Raksura are hounded and attacked relentlessly and the pace picks up, I found it hard to put down. A great read. Five stars. And now I'm terrified to read the next book in the series; it can't possibly be as good, can it?

My Other Blog: Weekly Roundup

Here are the reviews added to Fantasy Review Barn, my shared blog, by my fellow bloggers Nathan and Anachronist for the past week which might interest you:

Fantasy: 'Gardens of the Moon' by Steven Erikson

Fantasy: 'The Six-Gun Tarot' by R S Belcher

Fantasy: 'Eric' by Terry Pratchett

Steampunk: 'A Conspiracy of Alchemists' by Liesel Schwartz

The Pratchett review is part of Nathan's ongoing project to reread the entire Discworld canon in sequence.

You can find the blog here. Naturally, all my reviews will continue to be posted here and on Goodreads, and my other ramblings will be posted here. All my fantasy and sci-fi reviews will also be posted on Fantasy Review Barn.

Announcement

I shall be away travelling to New Zealand, taking in Australia and Thailand on the way, for the rest of February. All those long-haul flights should mean plenty of reading and reviews, but posting may be a little erratic, depending on technology and connectivity. However, my fellow bloggers Nathan and Anachronist will continue to post on a regular basis over at Fantasy Review Barn. Normal service will be resumed in March.

Mystery Review: 'Convictions' by Julie Morrigan

This starts out as a straightforward child abduction case, but quickly becomes something more complicated. Two sisters, aged twelve and eight, sneak out from Grandma’s house during an overnight stay to go to a concert. When they find they’re too late to catch a train or bus home, and have no money for a taxi, they accept a lift from an apparent good samaritan. The older daughter manages to escape but the younger vanishes. The family implodes during the police investigation, there’s a suspect but no evidence and no sign of the missing daughter. But then, strangely, the suspect confesses. The story then jumps forward several years...

The biggest problem for me is that all the characters are completely colourless, and never come to life. Even when they’re ranting and raving and falling apart, there’s no impact behind it, no emotional engagement. The facts of a child abduction, a guilt-ridden survivor, a cruel mother are not enough in themselves to arouse sympathy in the reader. After all, it's not an original idea, we've all read similar tales and seen them on TV. It needs something more from the author to make us feel for these characters. It doesn’t help that there is no real focus. Who is the book about? Is it Tina, the daughter who survives? Or is it Ruth, the police officer who stays with the case and the family over the years? And the story hops about from one character to another, never long enough or in enough depth to give any real insight into motivations.

Another problem is that the settings are not terribly convincing. There’s no sense of place (apart from the odd use of ‘pet’ to suggest the north-east, and name-dropping one or two real locations), and the prison seems to be a terribly nice, cosy affair, less brutal than the average girls’ school, where the inmates fall out over a bar of chocolate. The police don’t seem very convincing, either. Right the way through, they fail to ask obvious questions and follow up on possibilities that would occur to any reasonably sensible person.

However, once the police manage to get themselves on track, the book beomes something of a page turner, although there's never any real tension. It's not just the prison inmates who are unusually nice here, even the child abductors are mild-mannered gentle souls, shocked by the occasional swear word and clearly incapable of actual violence, so despite the police flap, the reader feels no real fear that the abductees will ever be killed. This is revealed at an early stage, along with the abductors' motives, so the only real excitement comes from watching the police gradually circle in on the perpetrators.

And then it ends, just like that, leaving readers to imagine for themselves just what would become of the various characters, which isn't very satisfactory. On the whole, this is a readable little book with a few logic flaws, which suffers from trying to cover too many aspects of the story. I get the point of the prison story, another instance of a vulnerable youngster falling under the influence of a strong character, just like the obedient young people of the church, but it felt like an unnecessary distraction. The story would have been stronger, I think, if it had focused solely on one side or another. This just about scrapes three stars.

Romance Review: 'Deirde and Desire' by M C Beaton (Marion Chesney)

This is the third of the six book series of Regency romances by the author of the Agatha Raisin murder mysteries. They are, of course, no more than fluff, mildly entertaining yarns of misunderstandings and infatuations and cross-purposes and secret elopements, leading to the inevitable happy ever after at the end, but enjoyable enough to while away a few hours.

The plot is much as before: the Squire is impoverished again, despite having married off his two eldest daughters to wealthy husbands, so he decides to set up a marriage for the third daughter, Deirdre, with Lord Harry Desire, a young man who stands to inherit a fortune, but only if he marries. Unfortunately for this beautiful plan, Deirdre is in love with the ne’er-do-well from a neighbouring estate, and so the merry-go-round begins. The trouble with books like this is that they stand or fall on the strength of the characters, since the plot is essentially a formula. Deirdre, sadly, is almost as silly as her older sisters were in the two previous books. It’s a pity the author can’t find a way to reconcile naivety and immaturity with just a modicum of common sense, because it seems so implausible that any reasonably intelligent young man would want to marry anyone who does quite so many silly things. Luckily, Our Hero is not just intelligent, but perceptive enough to detect the many good qualities of the heroine, buried as they are beneath so much seeming stupidity.

Once the plot gets properly underway, things build nicely to the usual unravelling of all the misunderstandings. There are a few genuinely amusing moments, a certain amount of farce and a rather likeable hero, even if the heroine never really seems to deserve him. As with the previous books, it’s the man who has to show initiative and common sense, while the woman runs around being childish, and this pattern is becoming repetitive. The conclusion was enjoyable enough to merit three stars but I’m not sure I’ll continue with the series after this.

Fantasy Review: 'The Black Prism' by Brent Weeks

This is one of those authors I’ve been meaning to catch up with for ages, and this finally got to the top of my to-read pile. The opening is snappy - short chapters, lots of action, plenty of background detail that just about stops short of info-dump and a magic system that has me hooked right from the start, even if I don’t quite ‘get’ it yet.

But only a few chapters in, and already there are irritants. One of them is Kip. On the one hand, hurray for a main character who’s not super-handsome, super-intelligent, super-powerful, that’s fine. But he really is stupid, sometimes. And all the oh-no-he’s-going-to-die drama - no, actually, he’s not, he’s a main character, he’s going to escape by the skin of teeth. Again. And yet again... this is tiresome. Then there’s Gavin. He’s so powerful he can do a dozen impossible things before breakfast, and that’s just not interesting. And there’s the author’s habit of switching tense for a sentence or two. It’s intended (I think) to indicate internal thought, but with no other marker to differentiate it, it’s just confusing.

But the pace is fast, there’s lots of things going on and the magic system, with its use of colour to create physical artifacts, is unusual and interesting. There was a sticky patch of super-implausibility (Gavin, his long-lost son and the rebel king all meet at the same hick town at the same time, purely by happenstance? Really?) that almost had me abandoning the book altogether. And then there's a Shocking Twist which even I, who gets surprised when farmboys turn out to be the heir to the kingdom, saw coming. And later there's another Shocking Twist which is only marginally more unexpected.

The book could have done with another thorough edit. It's not full of typos, but it feels quite rough in places and there are some big 'what?' moments. An example: Gavin learns that he has a son called Kip in a very early chapter, and he even muses a little on Kip. But when he actually meets him and hears that his name is Kip, it doesn't register. Only when Kip's mother is mentioned does he have his can-this-be-my-son moment. This sort of thing is just untidy, and it’s far from the only example. On pacing, the author has clearly read The Rules of Fantasy, especially the parts that say Thou Shalt have a Fight in every Chapter, and Thou Shalt end every Chapter on a Cliffhanger, but not, apparently, the one that goes Thou Shalt not take too much notice of these Rules, lest Thou seriously annoy Thy Readers, for Verily such tricks soon grow Tedious and make Thy Readers roll their eyes.

Kip the ‘natural’ son remained an irritant, and Karris wasn't much better. Honestly, authors, can we please retire this tired old cliche of bastard children causing huge angsting and grief? This is fantasy, there are worse things around than the odd child conceived out of wedlock (like global wars, and out-of-control mages). And Karris... yes, let's talk about Karris. Authors, a strong female character is not simply one who is physically strong, has extraordinary abilities, is the only woman in a man's job. It means a character who is not defined by her gender OR by her relationship with a man. Karris may be the first woman in the Blackguard, may be the fastest drafter (colour-magic user) in the universe, but what drove her to that? She was betrayed and abandoned by a man. She goes to pieces around her man. She learns about the bastard child, conceived while they were betrothed, and she falls apart. Please. This doesn't make her interesting, it makes her tedious.

Fortunately, things do eventually settle down into a more readable and less irritating story. The whole magic setup is nicely worked out to the last detail, and if it makes drafters incredibly powerful, there are subtleties in there which are quite brilliant. For instance, drafters use light in one of the colours to create physical artefacts, but what they can create and how the object can be used is entirely a matter for the individual, defined not just by their degree of ability but also by their imagination and intelligence. A smart drafter, even one of below average capability, can use their power in inventive and original ways, a great asset in war. There are also some nice details in other aspects of the author’s world. For example, it’s not polite to address a slave by name unless the slave has previously revealed it to you.

There’s a really interesting backstory lurking behind all the dramatic action and not-quite-believable characters, the story of the war between the two brothers, their family and the relationship with Karris’s family, and when the author focuses more on that and less on the Prism showing off his superpowers, the book actually rolls along very well. In time, I even became interested, up to a point, in Kip and, to a somewhat lower point, in Liv, the disgraced general’s daughter. The prisoner in the dungeon is also a great story, and I wish he’s been a bigger part of things (although to be fair there isn’t a lot to say about a man permanently locked away from the world).

But then, just when I was getting interested and the story was starting to fly, Kip goes off and does something totally stupid. Again. Now, I’ve given this book a good go, I’ve got two thirds of the way through and there’s stuff in here I really enjoy - the magic system is awesome, and the family history is intriguing. But... I really have very little tolerance for a book which substitutes relentless action and carefully contrived plot twists for character depth, believable motivation and emotional engagement. Lots of people love this book, so I accept that I’m in a small minority here, but I’m giving up on it. One star for a DNF.