Books Catch Up 1

As well as a backlog of short story and film reviews, it turns out that I have read more books than I have daily slots for this year (in part because I watched too many films and wrote about too many stories). Time for a catch up post!

1. Venus In Copper

After problems and disappointments and poor pay working for the government, Falco, a private detective in Flavian Rome, is finally arrested for embezzlement. Let out on bail he decides to take a private case. A family of freedmen are concerned about one of their member planning to marry; their worry is that the bride has been married three times and each time her husband has died under suspicious circumstances leaving her richer.

There are complications. His girlfriend, the superior Helena, a senator’s daughter, is unsure of where their relationship is going. Falco lives in a two room apartment on the top of a terrible block. He finds a better place. And just as well as Titus Caesar, son and junior partner of the Emperor owes him a favour – a royal fish the turbot.

Falco navigates love, landlords, dirty business and the perils of holding a family dinner party when your family is too large to all be entertained, and then a member of the Imperial family turns up. All this is bad enough but then the husband-to-be is indeed murdered, before the wedding, so the serial bride seems to be in the clear.

It’s a clever, fun and compelling Ancient Roman mystery that Falco has to try and solve while running around trying to clear his name from the last novel and also deal with family and romantic problems. The research is well integrated if a little on the heavy-handed. We’re given detailed bits of Roman street life and housing arrangements, as well as food (two dinner parties in detail, also a pastry baker and several street food meals) and wine.

Read This: A clever and well-plotted historical mystery
Don’t Read This: There’s a lot of horrible avaricious people and others seeking revenge 2000 years ago

2. The Norman Conquest

A deep dive into what’s known and what’s not known about the Norman Conquest. I mean I say deep dive; this is a popular history for the general public. Still, Morris takes us through the sources, who they are, when they wrote, who they worked for and what they said and how this matches up with other evidence.

There’s much to dig into, from the early life of William Of Normandy, the overturning of the English Kingdom when it was conquered by Cnut, and hence the exile of Edward the Confessor. How under Cnut, initially Danes were promoted into the highest offices of the land, yet by the end of his reign Englishmen of obscure origin found themselves in the position to determine the next king. One of them, Godwine, and his sons, take aim for ultimate power.

Read This: A concise yet thorough history of what England and Normandy were like before, during and after the conquest
Don’t Read This: You want a simple, uncomplicated, best guess explanation of what happened in broad strokes

3. Fool’s Quest

At the end of Fool’s Assassin Fitz, not recognising his old friend and comrade the Fool, stabbed him when he was speaking to Fitz’s daughter Bee. He took the Fool through the passage stones to Buck Keep to try and save him. While Fitz was away mysterious attackers raided his home and kidnapped Bee, and also Shun, who Fitz was looking after.

At Buck Keep secrets are revealed. What happened to the Fool, and what is wrong with the school where the prophecies are kept. But other secrets too. Why Chade sent Shun and Lant to stay with Fitz. Who Chade’s new apprentice is.

But once Fitz is back at the keep it’s hard to get away. There’s no news from home, which is concerning but they weren’t expecting the attack. Everyone wants something from Fitz. The Fool wants him to become an assassin again, to take revenge on the school, and destroy its evil. And the king, he wants Fitz to return as a prince.

All this is transformed when they learn of the attack and Bee and Shun’s capture.

Read This: Fitz and the Fool learn many secrets, reveal some truths
Don’t Read This: Every time something good happens to Fitz he suffers a worse setback

4. Wintersmith

Tiffany Aching is still training to be a witch. She’s with Miss Treason now, and Miss Treason’s thing is justice. People come to her with disputes and she resolves them. She’s also very old, blind, has two ravens who she often uses to see, borrowing their eyes (also other people’s eyes), and a clock she carries everywhere. She has skulls and cobwebs and is generally spooky, something that gets referred to as Boffo*.

She takes Tiffany to see the Dark Morris, the dance in the autumn that balances the one in the spring. And in the dance Tiffany sees a space, a role. And despite the warnings she dances into that space. And there she meets… someone.

The Wintersmith, the personification of winter, sees her. Learns something of being human. Tiffany takes on some aspects of the Summer Lady. But there’s more to this. Miss Treason is dying and Annagramma takes on her cottage. Annagramma is unsuitable and arrogant but Tiffany rallies the young witches to help her. In other sub-plots she still has to deal with the Nac Mac Feegle, the chaotic fairies, and her not-boyfriend Roland is being imprisoned by his aunts as his father, the Baron who owns, or “owns” the Chalk where Tiffany is from, is dying.

And while this goes on the snow keeps falling.

As part of this re-read, it seems to me that Pratchett often gets more interesting on a second go at a topic. And here with the third Tiffany Aching, the second of her as an apprentice witch, it seems to pay off. The Dark Morris was brought up before (Reaper Man); Hogfather and other Death-adjacent novels had a lot of the anthropomorphising of ideas and concepts. Here it all comes together splendidly, and with some good jokes.

Read This: A brisk fun novel about growing up and what makes up a human and stories and getting on with things while the world freezes
Don’t Read This: A comic young adult novel about witchcraft is not a good vehicle for timeless myth

 * Granny Weatherwax has previously mentioned headology, which is essentially about presence, and initiative, and psychological dominance. The difference between being an old woman and being a witch is shown by the hat, but it’s mostly in the heads of the people being witched at. Boffo is related to this.

5. I, Virgil

A fictional autobiography of the Roman (specifically Augustine) poet. Born in a period of turmoil to a modest family, Virgil is educated to become a lawyer but is sidetracked into becoming a poet. Between his abilities and his contacts he finds himself drawn ever higher, until at last Augustus Caesar – who Virgil refers always to as Octavian – commissions the Aenid. This epic poem is designed to bolster the political settlement that has brought peace to the Roman state.

Virgil observes, from a distance, the complex and turbulent times. And he can’t refuse Augustus, because there is no other answer. But it’s a brutal, terrible answer and so he hides within the poem a critique.

Probably one for the real Rome-heads, and the classic poetry heads at that.

Read This: For a look at the end of the Roman Republic and Augustus’s rise from an unusual angle
Don’t Read This: If you don’t care about art and propaganda in the Early Roman Empire

6. Suldrun’s Garden

The first in Jack Vane’s Lyonesse trilogy. The Elder Isles lie south west of Britain, north west of Spain, in the early years of the first millennium*. Never conquered by the Romans it was once unified under a high king, now sadly split into ten kingdoms; also inhabiting are various fairies, magicians, ogres, trolls etc.

King Casmir of Lyonesse has plots and plans to reunite the Elder Isles under his rule. He has a daughter, Suldrun, who is too wilful to fall in with his plans, he tries to marry her to Faude Carfilhiot, a lord with control of a strategic castle, but she refuses and she is locked away in her titular garden.

Faude Carfilhiot was created when the witch Desmëi, cast off by the magician Tamurello, decided to take her revenge on all men. At the same time she created the lady Melancthe, and the remnants of her malice became a green pearl. Carfilhiot steals magical apparatus from Shimrod, the scion of the great magician Murgen, who struggles against Doom and is constantly being rivalled by Tamurello. Shimrod sets out to find out who has taken his apparatus, disguised as Dr Fidelius.

Meanwhile Prince Ailas of the island kingdom of Troicenet is sent on a diplomatic voyage with his cousin Prince Trewan, looking for allies against the danger of Lyonesse. Discovering the succession is in doubt, Trewan tips Ailas overboard and he washes up in Suldrun’s garden. The two fall in love.

Ailas, discovered, is put in a pit. Suldrun gives birth to a boy, Dhrun, who is smuggled away by her old nurse. Learning this, Casmir sends for the child, and gets back a girl, the princess Madouc. This puzzles him as a magic mirror prophesied that Suldrun’s son will sit on the throne of the Elder Isles. Ailas escapes, but in the meantime Suldrun, believing her lover and child dead, hangs herself.

Dhrun has been kidnapped by fairies, Madouc, the child of the fairy Twisk, being a changeling. In the year he spends with them he grow up to the age of nine or so, and is sent away, though with a curse. He has various adventures, eventually teaming up with a girl Glyneth, and Dr Fidelius.

Ailas trying to find Dhrun and get home, also has various adventures, including magical ones. These have him captured by the Ska, and engaging in a siege of Faude Carfilhiot’s castle and other interesting places in the Ulflands, on the fringe of Lyonesse.

All this picaresque wandering sort of comes together, the various characters crossing and re-crossing each other’s paths. Sometimes there are great events, often dealt with in a pair of terse paragraphs. At other times a night at an inn and meeting a weird traveller there will take up half a chapter. And it’s written, sometimes over-written, in lush, very full prose. Slightly out of time, the last great fantasy achievement of Jack Vance’s writing career.

Read This: A whimsical mix of strange magic, odd adventures and epic battles
Don’t Read This: Everyone talks at great length and the small events are given as much, or more weight than the large ones

* Many high medieval elements are present, indeed the inns closely resemble early modern coaching inns, don’t worry about this.

7. Assignment: Zoraya

“Another torrid SAM DURRELL suspense shocker by EDWARD S AARONS,” reads the cover copy. Well okay then. This is the 1tth in the Assignment/ Sam Durrell series. Durrell is a CIA agent working for the K Section. He’s sometimes known as “Cajun” because he's the only Louisiana backwoods native in any particular group (CIA agents/ students at Yale).

At Yale he met the Prince and heir to the Sultanate of Jidrat. Jidrat’s ruler, the Imam, is old, and best known as a scholar. Two of his opponents have formed an alliance – Colonel Ta’arife of the security police who wants to form an Arab Nationalist state and the Q’adi Ghezri who is more of an Islamic Republic type. The sultanate is both strategically placed on the gulf of Oman and a major oil exporter. As the Imam says “Today, a stone cast in Jidrat can smash the skyscrapers in New York City.”

This is 1960 so the Soviets are interested. When the Americans dispatch Durrell they send Major Mikelnikov*. He has the job to kill Durrell, and if possible turn Jidrat to favour the Soviets, or at least not favour America.

The Prince was betrothed to Zoraya when she was a child, but she was kidnapped that night and so their relationship was fractured. Durrell goes to her to find the Prince who is on a never-ending tour of European decadence. He finds him on Sardinia, in a Russian exile’s palace, watching a dance with a naked woman and a black panther. At that moment assassins strike.

It's pacy, with a lot of moving parts, all of which come together into the finale. There’s grit as well – a woman is raped and then her husband tortured to death in front of her. There are reversals and surprises. There’s even an effort to understand some of what’s going on in the state of Jidrat, and the motivations and regrets of the Soviet assassin. But mostly it’s just “Another torrid… suspense shocker.”

Read This: For a fine example of a 1960 spy thriller
Don’t Read This: 1960 spy thrillers are of no interest to you

 * For some reason Durrell refers to the MVD, the internal affairs ministry who in this period performed regular police work. We would expect Mikelnikov’s work to be undertaken by the KGB, state security, who were both secret police and foreign intelligence. Were the workings of the Soviet Security state poorly understood in the West, or (possibly) was it more complex.

8. Tower Of The King’s Daughter

Forty years ago crusading armies came and conquered Outremer, a fantasy crusader kingdom. Now Julianne de Rance, daughter of the King’s Shadow, is to marry the heir to Elessi, one of the divisions of the kingdom. Her father is called away, departing by magic, and he sends her to Roq de Rancon*. On the way she meets Elisande, a woman travelling as a boy, and immediately after a djinni. Ignorant she asks the djinni a question and it answers, putting her in it’s debt. It tells her to go where she is sent and marry where she must.

Roq de Ranson is held by the Order of Ransom a military holy order. Newly arrived in Outremer is Marron, a brother of the order. He has been dazzled by magic, and disgusted by his troop’s slaughter of heretics, men, women, children, even babies. Somehow he cannot satisfy his confessor, the troop leader. And his friend, and former lover – they joined together and take their oath of celibacy seriously – and he are drifting apart.

Marron is the best swordsman in the troop so he spars with the knights, noblemen who join the order for a year or two before returning home, under a lighter rule, allowed such things as armour and wine. Marron is injured – a wound that will not heal, no matter where and how he does. He becomes Sieur Anton’s squire. He will betray the order, and save it as well. And there are many strangers enjoying the order’s hospitality, not just Julianne.

Strangers who may come from Surayon, the folded land. A land of heretics, that cannot be entered, that was hidden. The secret division of Outremer. One of the Magisters of the order, Marshal Fulke is preaching war, a new crusade against them. He lowers his hood during service and spits on the altar – doing penance for these – to make the point; that this is an insignificant insult to the church compared to the existence of Surayon.

Roq de Ranson was extended by the new arrivals in Outremer, but it existed before. There’s a mysterious, locked tower, the highest point, known as The Tower Of The King’s Daughter. But the king does not have a daughter, and the reason it’s called that has been forgotten. Roq de Ranson is at a pivotal strategic location. Whoever holds it controls the entire northern edge of Outremer. For that reason alone Hasan, the new war leader of the fractious, divided nomadic desert tribes of the Sharai, would try any trick to seize it. But the contents of the tower are still more important.

Read This: The first volume in a queer, cross-cultural fantasy trilogy with clever plotting under amazing scene setting
Don’t Read This: The actual crusades were even more fantastical

* Fantasy Krak des Chevaliers.

9. The Dragons Of Babel

Will Le Fay is a young wight in a backwater village. Then one day the war comes. A damaged dragon crawls in. It uses the threat of destruction, it’s stealth technology and sheer force of magical will to declare itself king; Will, part-mortal and so immune to the damage of iron, is made lieutenant. He carries out the dragon’s commands, which are cruel and terrible; he eventually manages to overthrow it, using someone else’s sacrifice. After this he’s cast out from the village.

Will come across Esme, who seems a six-year old but is much older, having sold her memories for immortality. This includes luck, always having something turn up for her, in this case Will to save her from bandits, then a troop of amazon centaurs when the war comes by again, evacuating them. But her luck eats others, the centaurs are lost, she and Will making it to a refugee camp.

Babel turns refugees into citizens, and they’re put on a train. There Will encounters Nat Whilk, fixer in the camp, who hides them from the secret police. He sneaks them into Babel, a city on a mountain, or sets of cities, but Will is separated, and finds himself down in the tunnels. After a confusing and possibly imaginary stay there Will finds himself back in the city again, and Nat puts him to work, running cons and scams, and as a fixer himself, for a haint alderman, solving problems for him and his constituents, who are ghosts. Specifically they’re ghosts from the southern US, or an analogy, who are systematically disenfranchised.

So this is set in the same world as The Iron Dragon’s Daughter, and Swanwick brings in his mixture of folklore, fantasy and hyper-real mortal world analogues. The library is New York City Library, where the stone lion outside reads over your shoulder, and is waiting for his mate to give birth and the mountain, and therefore the city, to be torn down. The elves use recognisable brands. The tourist brochure uses a description from Eddison’s classic The Worm Ouroboros to describe the train station, and on arrival it has suffered over the years. (Not especially subtle). Babel has more biblical references than Daughter, as might be expected, sprinkling them into the story here and there. This world is a glorious and terrible reflection of ours, or perhaps vice versa.

Nat has plans for Will. Plans for the lost prince scam. Because Babel has been missing a king and although Will would inevitably be found out, before that happens they can make a fortune. A mysterious part-mortal, without obvious high elven blood, such a creature could pass the obvious tests.

Swanwick uses myth and fantasy to cast light on class and war and immigration, collaboration and resistance, power and hope. And in turn these reflect back on our understanding of the references he’s making. Some parts implied in Daughter are stated out loud – that high elves are petty and cruel because they are in the process of becoming inhuman powers and that this grounds them. But grounds them to do what exactly?

Read This: For a fantasy of democracy and monarchy, of depths and heights, of reality and fairyland in gritty, chiaroscuro shades
Don’t Read This: Dragons that are monstrous constructs that poison the minds and souls of all who cross them are too fantastic, and too real

10. Lost Light

After seeing the TV version of Harry Bosch I dive into the middle of the book version. The ninth book, published in 2003, this takes places shortly after Bosch leaves the LAPD. Licensed as a private investigator he’s contacted by an old colleague, Cross, who is now disabled after being shot in the line of duty. Cross reminds him of a case, never solved, about the murder of Angella Benton, a movie production assistant. Initially it had been Bosch’s case, but he had been on set questioning people three days after her death when a daring heist of $2,000,000 took place there. (The director insisted on real money). Thinking they might be linked, with the high profile and Bosch involved in the shootout, Cross and Dorsey in the Robbery And Homicide division took it over*.

Although they did their best, time went by without any breakthrough, new crimes came along. And after Cross and Dorsey were shot, Dorsey killed and Cross retired on disability, it gets the usual six month review by an overworked, unconnected detective. So Bosch picks it up again.

It turns out the last clue that Cross and Dorsey got was a strange one. Not all the bills in the $2,000,000 had had their serial numbers recorded, but a random selection had. And one of them turned up on an FBI database, as it was in a car crossing the border, with money to fund terrorism.

This is 2003 and there was a lot of worry about terrorism, and as much again about the FBI and other federal agencies going hog-wild with their new powers. How seriously are we to take what this novel tells us? When an FBI agent tells Bosch to drop the investigation before he screws up what they’re doing, as that money was going to fund a terrorist training camp 100 miles across the border, does he mean it? Does he believe that? And if he does, is there actually such a camp there, in the Mexican state of Sonora?

Since Bosch sees, with his own eyes, prisoners being held (illegally even under the PATRIOT Act) secretly in an FBI office building in Los Angeles, I guess maybe? No one seems concerned that one agent kidnaps and threatens Bosch, a (white) American citizen and former police officer, until he acquires recorded evidence that would embarrass them. But then that’s noir law enforcement I guess. Do what you want until someone who matters catches you out with incontrovertible evidence. It’s a fascinating bit of period stuff

Anyway enough of this. One of the reasons Bosch has to tangle with them is that he’s no longer in the police. He doesn’t exactly flail, but when he tries to ask for favours and files, people say no, and he has to work harder to find things out. Just like in Bosch: Legacy he has to use a tech guy to help fill in where usually being part of a police department would let him do things or have people help.

Anyway for a variety of reasons Bosch has to go to Las Vegas where he enlists help from his ex-wife, ex-FBI agent Elenor Wish. Despite his best intentions he is intensely curious about her life there and comes to the conclusion she is hiding something from him**.

It’s a superior crime novel, one that makes criticisms of the police. Bosch, formerly an insider, is now an outsider and finds himself running into the worst of it. And more, the federal security state run amok with new powers and looking for new threats. And within that is an intricate crime plot, with a lot of moving parts, some working as expected. Others, like in all classic noir, taking advantage of the situation, confusing it.

Read This: A cool crime novel, with some bits that jar just a little from that moment in time
Don’t Read This: The lengths everyone goes to to avoid finding out the truth(s) seems excessive, including several very violent scenes

* Here’s how it works; LAPD is broken up into various community (geographical) divisions, each of which deals with their own crimes. Meanwhile there are other divisions, as resources for the whole city, which would not make sense for each individual station to have, which are supposed to both conduct their own operations and support the divisions. Obviously this creates bureaucratic tension. Bosch was a homicide detective in the Hollywood Division.

** It’s not a surprise to those of us who’ve watched the TV show