December Book Update 1

Ten books I read earlier this year

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1. Babel, Or The Necessity Of Violence

Robin Swift is born in Canton, brought up to be fluent in both English and Cantonese. After his family dies from disease he’s brought back to England by Professor Lovell and taught more languages, being prepared to go to Oxford university and study at the Royal Institute of Translators. This is vital to the British Empire, as silver can be enchanted by having words from different languages and the magic comes from the similarity yet difference of the meaning.

The Institute is a tower in Oxford where translations are made and magic is done. It’s the 1830s and Britain’s translators make their empire superior to any in the world. Robin and the others in his class, his cohort, bond over life in Oxford as outsiders (three are non-white, two are women). But being outsiders gives them perspective. The empire is violence and blood, the silver used to aid those who are already rich. Now traders and politicians are concerned about China. China has little need for British goods, being able to supply it’s own, yet Britain wants tea and porcelain and silk. To pay for them costs silver. But if they could sell something in return, opium, then the balance of trade might be maintained.

Opium is banned in China. A translator might be needed to negotiate. Yet we know that it’s not negotiation that will result. It willbe war.

And what violence is justified to prevent war?

Read This: Brilliant historical fantasy weaving language, translation, empire, resistance and magic
Don’t Read This: A lot of time hanging about in Oxford, then a bloody ending that costs too muc and does too little 

2. One Virgin Too Many

It’s 75 AD and Falco has returned to Rome, his brother-in-law having been killed by a lion and his rival and mother’s lodger Anacrites, the Chief Imperial Spy, injured in the arena. A previous case involved poisoned grain, grain that had been destined for the sacred geese of Juno. Having accidentally saved an important part of the Roman religion, the Emperor rewards him with a position as Procurator Of The Sacred Poultry. Almost immediately he’s caught up in another case as Gaia, a six year old girl, tries to commission him as she believes a family member wants to kill her.

Her family is prominent in religious circles; her grandfather was the Flamen Dialis, though he had to retire when his wife died as the couple are needed for ritual purposes. She learned about Falco from his niece at a meet-and-greet for candidates to become the next Vestal Virgin. (The niece was an unlikely choice even before the death of her father disqualified her; Gaia is the favoured candidate).

Falco tries to disentangle himself from this, not taking it seriously, and finds himself caught up in yet another mystery. His brother in law on the other side has been trying to get elected to a college of priests in an effort to get a leg up socially and politically. At a celebration he discovered a dead body, one that has been stabbed. He recruits Falco to investigate.

Falco finds himself getting involved within various arms of the official state religion whether he likes it or not (he doesn’t). Some of this is weird ritual. Some is groups and families closing ranks. And having made a nuisance of himself, when Gaia goes missing the emperor gets involved – and as Pontifex Maximus is able to cut through the layers of secrecy.

Read This: Deep dive into the strangeness of Roman State Religion via crime sleuthing
Don’t Read This: You’d rather read actual history

3. Mary Queen Of Scots by Antonia Fraser (1969)

In the introduction Fraser notes that there are many stories about Mary Queen Of Scots and she aims to test the truth or otherwise of them. Perhaps the most important revolve around her husbands. Six days after she was born her father, James V of Scotland, died, leaving her as monarch. Henry VIII of England attempted to involve himself; as the granddaughter of his sister Margaret Tudor, she was also an heir to the throne of England. Despite a treaty to marry Henry’s son Edward, at the age of five Mary was sent to France, and engaged to the dauphin (crown prince) Francis.

Fraser thinks the evidence suggests that Francis, congenitally impaired, never reached puberty before his death at the age of sixteen. He and Mary not having children, the union of France and Scotland that their marriage had created fell apart and having reached her majority Mary returned to Scotland to rule personally. Things were complicated there; the country had been haphazardly managed under regents and had become reformed, while Mary had been brought up a Catholic.

She married Henry, Lord Darnley, a half-cousin, and also in the line of succession to both England and Scotland. The two of them enjoyed each others company and it had been thought that this marriage would be acceptable to Elizabeth, now queen of England. In fact Elizabeth was furious; essentially any marriage of Mary was unacceptable to her as an heir would strengthen any claim to the throne of England. Mary and Darnley had a child, James (later James VI of Scotland and James I of England). They fell out. A rather complex plot had Darnley killed (discovered strangled with a servant in the grounds of the house he was staying in after it had been blown up).

Fraser makes it clear that Mary had no motive (Darnley had been politically sidelined and in addition the two were personally somewhat reconciled) and that there is no evidence that she had foreknowledge or had condoned any such action. After Darnley’s death the situation in Scotland unravelled; one of the chief conspirators, James Earl Bothwell captured Mary and convinced her to marry him, as the least worst outcome. His fellow conspirators turned against him and Mary escaped to England.

There she was detained by the English authorities and imprisoned for the rest of her life. The faction who seized the regency of Scotland brought evidence to a commission to try and prove that Mary had conspired with Bothwell to kill Darnley, and that the two were lovers. Fraser goes through the surviving copies of the documentation and determines that the letters presented are mostly not letters between Mary and Bothwell, and in any case do not prove what they claimed they did. The commission did not exonerate her and this formed the rather dubious grounds to keep her imprisoned.

Over the next 18 years in various prisons Mary made a number of appeals and attempts to return to Scotland, or possibly France. Some of these turned out to be conspiracies against Elizabeth; indeed English Catholics wanted to replace Elizabeth with Mary. In the end Elizabeth’s spymaster Walsingham arranged for conspirators to Mary to contact her so he could read the letters. A law had been passed that anyone who might benefit by a conspiracy would be held as guilty of it as those who took part; once evidence that Mary would co-operate in an escape that was to be co-ordinated with the murder of Elizabeth and an invasion of Spanish troops was uncovered her fate was sealed. She was executed and despite the best efforts of the court to make this purely matter of state was considered a Catholic martyr.

Fraser uses the book to disprove Mary’s involvement in the worst crime she was accused of, and to put her imprisonment and execution in a poor light. Willing to always consider the arguments of Mary’s enemies she finds them lacking. As for Mary herself we find her as tall, good-looking, almost magnetic in character, and intelligent and politically able if not able enough to navigate the treacherous shoals of the 16^th century.

It is very much a biography of Mary; the religious and political changes in Scotland during her time in France are glossed over lightly compared to her childhood growing up, and much the same during her imprisonment in England. Nevertheless there is much to be gleaned about events and life of the time. Still, if you wanted more than a closely focused look at the life of this one woman, you might choose another history.

Read This: Very clear, well written biography of Mary, Queen Of Scots
Don’t Read This: Many dangling threads

4. Waylander II: In The Realm Of The Wolf

After the events of Waylander, Waylander has retired to a cabin in the mountains. One of his adopted daughters has gone away to marry; Muriel the other runs and trains, wanting to be a warrior like him. Both of these choices he’s ambivalent about.

Then Angel, an old friend, calls by warning him that a price has been placed on his head with the Guild, a shadowy organisation of assassins. Also a sorcerer Zhu Chao sends black templars after him. Waylander goes to see Dardalion, the Source priest who founded the order of The Thirty, but Dardalion refuses to give him advice or help.

In the meantime several of the assassins arrive in the mountains and Angel, a former gladiator, and Muriel, manage to stop them, also the Dark Templars, causing some of the assassins to change sides. Waylander’s encounter with Dardalion in Waylander, turned the murderous assassin towards heroism and the gentle priest towards violence, keeps spreading out, In that book it kept having ripple effects, allowing terrible men to reach for redemption; this continues.

Waylander and various companions, including a former fighting pit dog he rescues, decide to cross the Nadir steppes and kill Zhu Chao, who is in Gothir, the chief minister to the emperor. It turns out that Karnak, victorious General in Waylander and now Lord Protector of the Drenai, has paid The Guild. His wastrel son and friends decided to rape a woman; she ran, fell and died and then when her husband tried to intervene they killed him. The woman was Waylander’s adopted daughter and Karnak’s son has been sent into exile in Gothir, where he has come under the spell of Zhu Chao.

There’s another strand to this; the Realm Of The Wolf bit. One of the assassins brought a group of hirelings with him, including a Nadir from the steppe. Because the Guild is racist, Nadir can’t join so once his employer is dead he no longer has reason to kill Waylander (can’t get paid) and joins him.

You know who else is racist against the Nadir? The Gothir. Everywhere is overwhelmed by prophecies of the Nadir Uniter who will weld the disparate tribes into a single force, and destroy the Gothir. Zhu Chao has foreseen the Uniter will rise from the Wolf clan, convincing the Emperor to send a force to destroy them. He has an ulterior motive; in their territory is an ancient ruin with a magical device that will give him immortality. Obviously when attacked the Wolf clan retreat there.

This leads us to a classic Gemmell siege, along with some musings on fate and the futility of violence. The Thirty have a debate about whether violence can actually be a route to the Source, their god of love and harmony, and decide, probably not but they have to anyway and accept their damnation. And Waylander gets to carry out a cool assassination. Something for everyone really.

Read This: Sequel to Waylander that explores the limits of redemption and peace when you have done horrific things
Don’t Read This: Gets a bit incoherent at the end, also the dog dies, sorry

5. Black Gods And Scarlet Dreams

An anthology of C L Moore short stories, specifically her Jirel of Joiry swords and sorcery and her Northwest Smith space opera.

In the majority of both characters stories, they find their way from their usual haunts (Joiry castle for Jirel, running some sort of scam on Mars, Venus, or in one case futuristic New York City for Smith) to some alternate dimension. In classic weird fiction manner there is usually some sort of being there, either hostile to humanity, feeding off humanity, or once ruled over humanity like a god and wants to return. Moore was a master* of this type of tale; her first two Jirel stories (the 2^nd and 3^rd in this volume) Black God’s Kiss and Black God’s Shadow have a truly creepy underworld. Jirel, having her castle seized and been sexually assaulted by her captor, seeks vengeance from an elder, pre-Christian god, succeeding only to regret her actions and trying to put them right.

Moore burst onto the scene with the first Northwest Smith story Shambleau. Northwest Smith finds himself in a dusty Martian town on the frontier, waiting for his partner, the Venusian Yarol, making contacts and arrangements. Seeing a woman being chased by a mob he intervenes, rescuing her and taking her to his rooms. In these 1930s stories both Mars and Venus have human inhabitants. It’s explained that there was an age of spaceflight in pre-history. And so creatures from myth and legend appear, sometimes on the planets, sometimes from stranger places, and elder gods and races can exist. Shambleau links this to a Greek myth, but in a strange and warped way.

These are the highlights with intense imagery and out of left field ways of combining myth and adventure. Some of them are not quite so good, the ideas a little stale 90 years on, the formula a little too obvious. And if the rich and verbose style of the 1930s isn’t for you, those stories won’t hit the spot. Nevertheless at their best they’re excellent.

Read This: Stylish, ornate and spooky 1930s weird fiction that continues to inform the sub-genres
Don’t Read This: Over-written seductive monsters

* Mistress?

6. Faultlines

We sit across from each other and try
To assign blame is it YOURS/MINE?

In Mark Ward’s interactive sonnet, you get to choose at every pair of lines where the poem goes. How the relationship unfolded. Where the faultlines were.

We sit across from each other and try
To understand how you did it. Were things
So bad you had to explode your life?

How the relationship unfolded? How it fell apart, where the betrayals sat. Who did what to who and how long ago it was, and what has been forgotten. Telegraphically through one or two word choices we make our way through.

The Truth. How unattainable that is.

Mark wrote the same sonnet 28 times for this, which is something I understand, except that I if I did it I would have at least 27 bad ones to discard, rather than enough to fill a book. And more, to make the reader choose and be complicit.

It is, of course a trick. The volta is the key, the turn in the sonnet, where the octet meets the sextet. In the past, perhaps over-modestly, I’ve said I’m not equipped to review books of poetry. Here, though, with the sonnets dissected, their innards and structure cut apart on the page, I think I can see what’s been done.

It’s a trick, created by pouring out heart and words on the page, revealing alternatives that may or may not have happened. A trick made through hard work, craft and guts. A very fine piece of interactive poetry.

Read This: A tour de force marrying the circling, spiralling technique to the parallel emotional journey
Don’t Read This: You don’t want to read poetry and you especially don’t want to have to re-construct your own
Full Disclosure: I read a poem at the online launch of the book

7. Kushiel’s Chosen

At the end of Kushiel’s Dart Phèdre saved the kingdom of Terre D’Ange, but in the chaos Melisande Shahrizai got away. The two are entangled, by fate, or possibly the angel Kushiel; Phèdre marked as an anguissette, one who experiences pleasure through pain, a gift of the angel, and also trained as an intelligencer and courtesan by her deceased master. Melisande a descendant of Kushiel, and the foremost plotter in the realm. She sends Phèdre her cloak from La Serenissima (fantasy Venice) highlighting that someone unknown in the kingdom must have helped her escape.

To do that she has to return to the city and to her former role as courtesan. This causes trouble with her consort Joscelin. Already foresworn from his chastity in the Casseline brotherhood, he can’t bear to see this again. This connects with a subplot about a minority religion; they want Joscelin to teach them weapons skills as they go to seek a homeland (and maybe join them). Phèdre needs their language skills and legends to seek a way to release her friend Hyacinthe (see Kushiel’s Dart).

Her hunt for traitors inevitably leads her out of the city and to La Serenissima. D’Angelines have been involved there for a generation, since Prince Benedicte, the queen’s great-uncle, married one of the ruling family. Now with the Doge declining, political factions are conspiring to elect his successor. Phèdre inevitably gets caught up in this, which ranges from high to low, and into the very heart of the temple of Asherat-of-the-sea. And when Phèdre uncovers the truth she will find herself in still stranger places, with piracy, betrayal and blood-curses.

Having been in Fantasy France, Fantasy Germany and Fantasy Britain in the first novel, we now get to take a look at Fantasy Venice, and then down the Adriatic and Ionian Seas. A lovely mish-mash of historical and legendary ideas, with La Serenissima more commercial and practical than Terre D’Ange, though their patron goddess (an aspect of Mother Earth) is almost as active as the D’Angeline angels. And when Phèdre leaves the city she encounters other myths and legends, again framed by pragmatic political actors. Yet the sensual, vibrant description shines through.

Read This: Phèdre breaks plots, has a moderate amount of kinky sex
Don’t Read This: If you found the first one a bit much, this is more of the same

8. Titan

It’s the near future of 2004*. On one momentous day the Cassini probe returns data from Titan, a moon of Saturn, that indicates there may be life, or life products, and life precursors on the ice moon. Meanwhile the first Chinese taikonaut Jiang Ling lifts into orbit. And a space shuttle, coming in to land, crashes.

The crash ends the space shuttle program and the bureaucracy of NASA, the US government and the entire aerospace industry means there is no manned spacecraft replacement. The companies would rather take money for design and test contracts and everyone in NASA is too busy defending their own bureaucratic empire. And more, the rising generation is not interested in space and science, navel gazing with art and junk TV. Xavier Maclachlan is tipped to be the next president, riding a wave of isolationist, xenophobic, Christian nationalist feeling; his education is strong on the Bible and Aristotle, denying the possibility of exploring beyond the sphere of the moon.

This inspires a small team within NASA to use the shuttle assets, and other left over hardware, for one great mission before it all goes away. Titan has readily available resources that can be used to make food, and also water which can make oxygen; it’s a strategic spot in the outer solar system. Despite everything NASA is a place where people want to do big space things, and advanced science, and it gets done, despite opposition from the Air Force who go so far as to try and shoot down the manned launch.

The early part of the novel is about NASA and various related parts of the US space program and industry, going to the place, seeing the people, talking about the equipment. (Baxter went through a phase of this, near-future and alternate history stuff grounded in NASA technology). In the background the US turns down a dark path, with the rest of Earth following. After the launch it details the grinding unpleasantness of a long-term deep-space venture, spending hours a day trying to get the material that keeps them alive to work. Psychologically this begins to break them, and accidents disable and kill crew.

Titan turns out to be a difficult place to live, especially as it becomes clear no one is coming after them, the follow up missions cancelled. They’re going to die there, but first can they learn something about the place, about the possible place for life here?

Did I say near-future science fiction? In the coda, Titan Summer, it’s far-future and there are some answers, or if not exactly answers, at least some encounters, some conclusion. You can’t ask for more than that.

Read This: Novel mostly about rocket science and space travel with a handful of big science fictional ideas scattered across it
Don’t Read This: All about engineering weirdos with some swipes at kids today and how they make art from their bodily waste

 * Titan Copyright © Stephen Baxter 1997

9. Assassin’s Fate

Bee Farseer got kidnapped and is being taken to Clerres. Her captor Dwalia is ruthless, or perhaps desperate; she uses Vindelier’s magic, which can cloud or change minds, to make their way. Bee keeps making attempts to escape, and to learn her own magic, yet inevitably she ends up at Clerres. There the Four who rule it are bound up in their own concerns, interested in punishing Dwalia and seeing if or how Bee can be used for their own gain. Each of them is working according to dream oracles, yet none of them can see what is actually going on.

But no one ever knows what’s going on in Hobb’s stories. Fitz and his companions believe Bee is dead, so are on their way to Clerres for revenge. They move through Kelsingra, meeting characters from the Rain Wild Chronicles, and on to the Cursed Shores where we see what has gone on in the pirate kingdom since The Live Ship Traders trilogy. Problems of course, and with the return of dragons, the nature of the liveships and their final disposition is at question.

After nine, or sixteen, volumes Fitz and the Fool are still keeping secrets from each other, trying to protect the other, trying to protect themselves. They’re always going to be doing this. Right to the end. They can’t help hurting each other. This is what people have been telling Fitz all along. He hurts Bee and everyone else around him too, by trying to stop them helping and by insisting on taking everything upon himself.

Bee has to learn to be ruthless, despite still being a child. Perhaps because. That was how Fitz got started, as a boy. The efforts to break the cycle bring us back to the same place, the same choices.

There’s a lot of backstory and dragon stuff that is nice in a completist way. Prophecies fulfilled and occasionally broken.  That it doesn’t quite add up is fine, they’re living in the ruins of a broken world, and had the truths hidden from them deliberately.

Read This: Vengeance, prophecy, violence and somehow coming out the other side
Don’t Read This: You aren’t interested in how this epic saga ends

10. The Daughter Of Doctor Moreau

In the Yucàtan peninsula, Dr Moreau lives with his daughter Carlota, his mayordomo Laughton and his human-animal hybrid creatures. Carlota has a chronic disease that requires regular treatment. The hybrids are dependent on medicine too. Although remote they are not entirely cutoff; Moreau’s patron Hernando Izalde sponsors his work in an effort to produce workers. There is a local rebellion and the landowners keep losing workers to them (this is historical). But here Carlota lives with her hybrid friends, Moreau performs his research and Laughton drinks to forget his past.

But it can’t last. Carlota is growing up. Hernando is growing impatient for results. And his son is of age, returning to his father’s estates. Eager to make something of himself, perhaps to hunt rebels, perhaps to run the estates. Perhaps to court the beautiful and mysterious Carlota.

Mysteries abound, and revealing them will break the tiny, dark paradise.

Inspired by the H G Wells story The Island Of Doctor Moreau, this places the ideas in a particular time and place, intersecting with family, colonialism and duty. Moreau wanted to make things better, but his ideas are grotesque and masked in lies. His daughter, hidden from the world, must learn who she is and what she must do. Laughton, the drunken assistant, must come to terms with what he has done.

There must be an end.

Read This: Lushly written novel of growing up and discovering dark secrets
Don’t Read This: Slow story, an obvious twist, ends as things start to get interesting