Timeless Humour: One Day All This Will Be Yours, by Adrian Tchaikovsky

 

A dude with a fetish for Soviet tractors lives a solitary but extremely contented life beyond the reach of time. He also has, of course, a partially feathered pet Allosaurus called Miffly. In order to retain dominion over his little corner of Eden he has to do certain things… I need to stop here because if I told you what that was, I might will be giving away the main plot of this extremely funny book.

Sometimes when I felt I need to cheer up due to living through these times of plague I have selected a few books from the NetGalley humour section. This book wasn’t under humour, but in the sci-fi and fantasy section, and because I had read and enjoyed a previous book by Adrian Tchaikovsky (Bear Head, see https://clarianabhc.blogspot.com/2020/12/great-bear-bear-head-by-adrian.html), I downloaded it. Apart from being sci-fi it is also one of the funniest books I have read: “… And if hunting someone down with a dinosaur isn't old-fashioned, I don’t know what is.”

If you love the murderbot stories or Terry Pratchett, you will love this.

Classic LA Noir: "Serpentine" by Jonathan Kellerman

 Serpentine is the 36^th Alex Delaware novel and I have read every one of them.

Jonathan Kellerman is one of a select band of my go-to authors. These are authors whose books I will always eagerly order before they are even published and when I get them in my hot, eager hands, they tend to last less than two days. One day I will write an article dedicated to this group, but for now let’s talk about Mr Kellerman and his work.

I have been a fan since the mid-80s when I was introduced to Kellerman’s novels by a work colleague, yes hard to believe, almost FORTY YEARS. Given my age I can’t really claim to have “grown up” with Kellerman what I can say is that I have aged with him, which, when you think about it, is perhaps even more laudable.

What do I find so compelling? Well in the first place there is the main cast of characters, basically Alex Delaware, a child psychologist and consulting psychologist, his partner, Robin Castagna, a luthier, their pet, latterly a French bulldog called, Blanche, and of course gay LAPD detective Milo Sturgis, there are a cast of secondary characters some of whom have even starred in their own novels, but I have to say I have never found them to be quite so compelling as the original quartet.

And then there is ambience, Kellerman always gives you throwaway but compellingly detailed descriptions of the different areas of LA, a smattering of history a brief description of the landscape, food, architectural styles, décor, or flora. Dialogue is fast and witty. Plotting is occasionally contrived but strangely satisfying. There is always a clear ending.

Serpentine belongs to the sub “historical” group of Delaware novels, novels based on the past.  A highly successful entrepreneur wants to know what happened to her mother, she has one photograph of her, wearing the serpentine necklace of the title, and a smattering of recollections gleaned from the man who brought her up but is now dead. Milo is called by the brass to resolve this coldest of cases.

The plot is as twisty and turny as the name suggests and there are some nice flashbacks to the flamboyant 80s in LA and a series of killings. We also get to learn a little more about Dr Rick Silverman, Milo’s partner.

Classic Kellerman. A riveting read.

 

A Butterfly Tethered to A Slug: The Last Thing to Burn by Will Dean

 

“My name is not Jane.”

This is the stuff of my nightmares. A woman is held prisoner by man and is compelled to comply with his every whim. If she attempts to escape, he will break her ankle, if she fails to obey an order, he will burn one of the few “personal” possessions she has left, effectively erasing her personal history and the inner life she clings to. He ensures she becomes addicted to strong painkillers in order to better ensure her compliance and her passivity. Her day-to-day existence is a misery of fear, loathing, housework, drudgery, and rape.

Somehow this is all made even worse by the fact that the man in question is the dumpy child of a drab culture whereas the woman is a living spark from a culture full of beauty and vividness, it is as if a slug had enslaved a butterfly.

I picked up distinct vibes here not only of contrasting differences between the sexes but between different ways of life. Is this a post Brexit novel? I very much think it is. The dull farmer with his flat life, bland food and unimaginative lovemaking seems to be the epitome of British cultural isolation. He also has all the prejudices inherent to those who voted for Brexit, the obtuse intolerance and misunderstanding of other ways of existence, the completely unmerited sense of superiority, the hatred and prejudice of everything and anything foreign.

This is a hard, hard novel to read, I found it unbearable in parts, but I could not put it down. If you have the stomach for it, you will discover it is definitely one of the best books of 2020 and probably even of 2021. 

Thank you as always to Netgalley for making an ARC copy of this text available to me.

A Supernatural Prison Break: Strange Ways by Gray Williams

This is another instalment set in the creepy universe created by Gray Williams in which magic is real, demons exist, and practitioners and summoners have mostly been co-opted by organised crime.

Due to the fact that a wave of uncharacteristic liberalism has led to the automatic death penalty usually applied to those practising magic being commuted, there are now also, of course, special magic-resistant jails created to hold such people, the Strange Ways to which the title of this book alludes (Strangeways being an actual category “A” prison in Manchester).

The main plot of this novel is therefore a prison break, an attempt by the daughter of an incarcerated practitioner to liberate her mother, using her supernatural gifts to create new-fangled black-market magic-based drugs that directly impact the emotional state of the users to generate funds. All her plans are, naturally, rent asunder.

The world portrayed is an extremely seedy and depressing version of the UK convincingly bought to life. The writing is visceral, and the narrative is full of twists and turns with some impressive plot developments along the way.

I will definitely continue to read the books in this series.

Great Bear: Bear Head by Adrian Tchaikovsky

 

Okay, I would admit that when I saw this book on NetGalley I was looking for a little light relief. The pseudo Soviet style cover, the blurb and the author's surname (Tchaikovsky? Surely not!), seemed to promise exactly what I was searching for. Well that really does serve me right for not keeping au courant with modern sci-fi literature. Fortunately by the time that I realised that my initial impression was utterly wrong, this book had already taken a big bite out of my attention.

This is not to say that Bear Head is not funny, it is very funny, but it is also deadly serious. There is humour here but no one could say it is light. Indeed the main themes of the book appear to be economic exploitation and political oppression and how near future technological advancements have been co-opted to implement them. 

Fortunately, these same technological advances, especially the creation of bio forms, animals that have human or superhuman intelligence, and Distributed Intelligence, artificial intelligence that is not limited to a single site, also serve to create the agents that will undermine the would-be exploiters and oppressors: Enter Honey the Bear, HumOS (is this pun Mr Tchaikovsky? It means "smoke" in Spanish), and the mysterious, omnipresent, goddess-like, Bees. Together with good guy lawyer Aslan, hapless Jimmy Marten and Sugar the pusher (yes, I don't think all the animal names are a coincidence), they are arrayed to fight for the liberation of the beings of earth... And Mars.

This fight is crude and savage at times. In particular, there is a character who is regularly brutalised, sensitive souls should beware, and one of the most upsetting scenes screwed up my translations that morning. The feminist in me however was pretty mollified, since it was surely not a coincidence that most of the saviours were female.

Bugger, this is probably one of my books of the year, and now I will have to read the first one (it is part two of The Dogs of War series). 

Thanks as always to NetGalley for allowing me to read an ARC copy.

Premier Scottish Detective Fiction: Still Life, by Val McDermid

If Ian Rankin is the Da of contemporary Scottish detective fiction, there can be little doubt that Val McDermid is the Ma. A long time ago, shortly after its publication I read The Mermaids Singing, although that very dark novel made a deep impression, I didn't follow up, I don't think I found the protagonists particularly congenial. 

This book is obviously also part of a series but I had no issues here with the protagonists. In fact, they were highly enjoyable, I found their insouciance towards a certain senior officer particularly engaging. The plots (there are actually two for the price of one), although they had their "out there" moments, were intriguing and kept me turning the pages. Throw in some very sharp dialogue and the occasional Scottishism, pertinent observations about contemporary British politics and the hint of an encroaching plague and this was for me a very satisfactory novel with a contemporary feel.

I will definitely be seeking to read more in this series.

Thanks as always to NetGalley for allowing me to read a copy of the ARC.

P.S. 15 February 2021. I am now on my FIFTH Karen Pirie novel. 

P.S.S. Is it wrong that I ship "the Mint"? Dumb but dogged is good in my book.

A classic for lockdown: "Meditations", The Annotated Edition, By Marcus Aurelius, Translated, Introduced, and Edited by Robin Waterfield.

Every now and then, NetGalley throws me a golden opportunity, and this must be one of them. I have always been  curious about the "Meditations" and now I've had the chance to peruse them. When talking about the modern translation of a classic it is always difficult to know who you should be reviewing, the original writer or the translator? There is a little problem regarding the former, of course, who am I to criticise the writings of Imperator Caesar Marcus Aurelius Antoninus Augustus, 16th emperor of Rome and aspiring Stoic philosopher? 

Well no one, so there you go, especially where it seems that these writings were never intended for publication anyway, but to act as a sort of personal comp sheet of Marcus's lifelong quest for personal self-improvement. What I would say is that I do not think it is appropriate to read the jottings in one sitting, but rather as the writer wrote them, that is to say dipping in and out of them, and attempting to digest the ideas he sets out.

As to the second, I am a translator myself, albeit not a literary translator, so it is therefore almost duty that I should say something about this translation. Since I'm not an expert in ancient Greek, I cannot judge the quality of translation as such but what I can say is that Robin Waterfield makes the "Meditations" extremely accessible to the 21st-century reader, both in the simplicity of the language he uses, and the explanatory notes.  Occasionally the language is a little too modern, for example, I personally found the use of the term "control centre" too anachronistic. 

The notes however are fantastic, both in terms of explanation and contextualisation. So we have Marcus's complex family history and how he got to be Caesar of Rome, in full detail  but also some very nice references to our life today. For example, there is mention of Covid-19, given that much of Marcus's reign was characterised by a horrible epidemic, probably smallpox, which for all their advances the Romans were in no position to address and which they therefore simply had to leave burn its way through the population. In fact, this background may explain Marcus's attempts to be a better person and establish a philosophical approach to his own life and the lives of those around him. A personal favourite is a mention of Marcus's son and heir, Commodus, "But little that Commodus did as Emperor would have pleased his father. He seems to have been as unpleasant and unstable a character as he was portrayed in the 2000 film Gladiator."

In conclusion, I can thoroughly recommend this version of the "Meditations", I think there must be few books more appropriate to take with you during lockdown.