”The church had never approved of human interference in disease …”
“Having held for centuries that prayer and holy relics were God’s method of healing ”The church had never approved of human interference in disease …”
“Having held for centuries that prayer and holy relics were God’s method of healing and anything else was satanic.”
Dateline, Cambridge, England, 1171:
Four children have been murdered. The brutal nature of their wounds is suggestive of crucifixion and blame by the Catholic townsfolk falls quickly (and all too readily) onto their Jewish neighbours. The wealthy Cambridge Jewish community (being responsible for a significant contribution to Henry II’s exchequer income) is interned and placed under official royal protection. It is Henry II’s hope that forensic investigation from the best that current medical science has to offer will exonerate the Jews and mitigate the virulent anti-Semitism that the event has unleashed. That best of class is a young doctor from Sicily, an expert anatomist and medical detective who happens (God forbid … literally in the minds of the zealous hidebound papist Catholics of the day!) to be a woman. A woman with skills like that runs the dire risk of being accused of witchcraft and being condemned to a painful execution. Her success in finding the real murderer is far from an assured conclusion!
MISTRESS OF THE ART OF DEATH is an enthralling novel of historical suspense; a totally satisfying (and very much less than cozy) medieval medical mystery; an engrossing, informative, rich history of 12th century medical science, the Crusades, and daily English life of that time; plus a disturbing reminder of the extent to which the papacy and Catholic doctrine dominated that daily life and generated virulent anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, and endemic misogyny. A selection of examples will serve to illustrate the power of Ariana’s depiction of the era.
For example:
“Just then the clang of the monastery bells sounding for nones clashed with the call to prayer from the muezzin of mosques and fought with the voice of synagogue cantors, all of the rising up the hill to assault the ears … in an untidy blast of major and minor keys.”
And on the undue influence of the Church in holding back the advances of scientific research and medical treatments:
“The church … allowed treatment to be carried out in the monasteries and, perforce, tolerated lay doctors as long as they did not overstep the mark, but women, being intrinisically sinful, were necessarily banned … and they had to take care not to be accused of witchcraft.”
On Abrahamic religion’s common ground of devout misogyny:
“… the three great religions were at least united when it came to the inferiority of her sex. Indeed, a devout Jew at his prayers thanked God every day that he had not been born a woman.”
And, on the long term effect of the Crusades and the white western European Catholic’s outrageous persecution of the Jews and attempted genocide of the Saracens:
“They’d slaughtered Greeks, Armenians, and Copts of an older Christianity than their own because they thought they were heathens. Jews [and] Arabs, who were versed in Greek and Roman philosophy and advanced in the mathematics and medicine and astronomy that the Semitic races had given to the West, went down before men who could neither read nor write and saw no reason to.” They inspired “such a hatred amonst Arabs who used to hate each other that they’re combining the greatest force against Christianity the world has ever seen … called Islam.”
“Homelessness, persecution, degradation, attempted genocide, all these things had been visited on the Jewish people – who clung even more tenaciously to their Jewishness. During the First Crusade, Christian armies, filled with religious zeal and liquor, seeing it as their evangelic duty to convert such Jews they came across, had presented them with the alternative of baptism or death. The answer had been thousands of dead Jews.”
Indeed, when one looks at the current state of affairs in Israel and the Gaza strip, not to mention Islamic theocratic hotbeds such as Iran, one wonders whether the world has any hope of ridding itself of the violence and ills created by organized religion in all of its incarnations.
MISTRESS OF THE ART OF DEATH is unquestionably a literary masterpiece which I add, without the slightest hesitation, to my Top Ten list for the year. An easy strong recommendation for lovers of the historical fiction genre. I might add that the sequel, A MURDEROUS PROCESSION awaits my attention and I’m eagerly looking forward to it.
“A lie goes halfway round the world while the truth is getting its boots on.”
NEVER is a masterpiece. No doubt about it! A compelling, gripping, breath“A lie goes halfway round the world while the truth is getting its boots on.”
NEVER is a masterpiece. No doubt about it! A compelling, gripping, breathtakingly credible, terrifying, provocative, heart-stopping, and predictably open-ended version of a concatenation of incidents, confrontations, political decisions, scenarios, sabre-rattling, threats and retaliations, and globally dispersed events that lead to the beginning of the use of nuclear weapons in what would certainly escalate to WW III. At the close of the novel, the reader is left with no doubt as to what is coming and will almost certainly ask themselves whether there would actually be any historians or history books who would remain to analyze the events that brought about the horror!
On a side note – for me it was an open question whether Follett was making mock and lampooning politics in the US or portraying the danger that current right-wing neo-fascist and obstructionist knee-jerk Republicans pose to a fragile world peace. It doesn’t take much knowledge of the US political stage to know who a female president with a philandering husband and a demagogue blowhard male opposition candidate for the opposing party actually represent.
But I digress.
The bottom line is that NEVER has definitely been added to my Top 10 of 2023 list and, even more notably, to my short list of lifetime favourite novels. Obviously, recommended wholeheartedly without reservation for your reading enjoyment.
For a popular science nerd and a reader of sci-fi with a lit“Good night, Rocky.” “Good night, Grace.” “Good night, Mrs Calabash, wherever you are!”
For a popular science nerd and a reader of sci-fi with a little more than a passing knowledge of university level physics and math, PROJECT HAIL MARY is a gift that keeps on giving, manna from heaven, or a smashed piñata that will allow you to sit cross-legged below it as it rains down a blizzard of gifts from above. I’ll acknowledge that my reaction may be more ebullient than others but, having closed the last page with a sigh of satisfaction and a small sniff that it was over, I’m thrilled to have just been privileged to read one of my personal Top 10 Favourites for 2023 and, arguably, one of my Lifetime best!!
Jumping off from the reality of the existential threat of global warming, Weir takes the opposite tack and posits the coming of the mother of all killer ice ages. Science has detected Astrophage – a primordial life form capable of literally feeding on the heat of the sun and causing its output to decline precipitously to a point at which life would be unsustainable on earth. The solution – if one exists at all – requires an interstellar multi-year voyage to Tau Ceti, a nearby sun in the galaxy. Nearby, hah! Yeah, right! Even having solved the problem of rocket propulsion and fuel capable of accelerating a ship to near light speeds, the voyage would take over four “ship” years and nearly thirteen “earth” years after accounting for relativistic time dilation.
The back cover marketing blurb characterizes PROJECT HAIL MARY as a tale of discovery, speculation, and surivival to rival THE MARTIAN. Well, that’s for sure. A list of the topics that Weir’s blockbuster follow-up to THE MARTIAN touches on would be nearly as lengthy as the novel itself – relativistic time dilation, of course; stellar evolution and star classes; suspended animation; exobiology; extraterrestrial first contact and communication; linguistics; artificial gravity; the psychology of space travel; EVAs; panspermia and evolution; orbital mechanics; and much, much, MUCH more!
Because I thought ARTEMIS was such a ridiculous letdown after THE MARTIAN, I waited a long, long two years before I had the courage to crack open PROJECT HAIL MARY. I needn’t have worried! It was worth the wait and a good deal more besides. Definitely recommended.
How many fantasy novels (or series) have you read that begin with a magic portal into another world orUnique twists on tried-and-true age old tropes!
How many fantasy novels (or series) have you read that begin with a magic portal into another world or another universe? THE CHRONICLES OF NARNIA, OUTLANDER, ALICE’S ADVENTURES IN WONDERLAND, GREGOR THE OVERLANDER, INKHEART, KINDRED, HARRY POTTER, the list is more than a little lengthy! If a novel is going to tread down such a well-worn path, then the author had better find a way to somehow differentiate their book from the field. Well, no worries … A JOURNEY UNVEILED pulls it off in spades! The use of a plane crash caused by some unknown magical agency and a frenzied climb down a mountainside by Lexi and one of the other survivors looking for help succeeds in spades and manages to make the entry into that portal a genuine surprise!
And the use of well-worn chestnut fantasy tropes continues apace – swords and sorcery; the evil king and a dystopian kingdom; witches, elves, dwarves, trolls, and goblins; frustrated, unwitting and reluctant young love; a novel system of magic and a reluctant, unskilled user … once again, the list is long and well-used. Lexi’s position as an apprentice user of magic and the sole possible hope for the rescue of Gowerland from the rapacious clutches of its heartless, evil king Ulric and for the conversion of his much hated son, Prince Aeric, to the side of right and good is utterly predictable. But it’s gripping and compulsively readable through every page from start to finish.
Kudos to a Canadian author on the creation of a gripping new fantasy series that promises much to come in future novels. Definitely recommended with two thumbs-up! Nice addition to my list of top ten favourites for the year.
“The big smile I’d been sporting vanished like critical thinking skills at a Trump rally …” It’s tough not LOL, you had me with the opening sentence!
“The big smile I’d been sporting vanished like critical thinking skills at a Trump rally …” It’s tough not to feel proud of a clever Canadian author who likes to take an occasional dump on the Republican situation in the USA. But I digress.
LOVER’S MOON, #5 in Leslie’s CANADIAN WEREWOLF series, closes with an ominous epilogue in which Michael Andrews, expat Canadian author living in New York City and the eponymous werewolf of the series, is advised in curt, unfeeling, and very hard-edged terms, that any further contact with Gail, the hard-won love of his life is out of the question. She is, forever more, beyond his reach. Gail’s brother, Ben, goes on, “Sit down, Andrews … you’re definitely going to need to be sitting down for this.” With hardly enough time to draw a shocked breath, HEX AND THE CITY picks up the story line there and continues.
For reasons long buried in the mists of paranormal’s antiquity, Michael Andrews’ and Gail Sommers’ love, their friendship, and, indeed, even the act of thinking of or communicating with one another, has fulfilled the terms of an old curse and opened the world to the predation of evil denizens of the paranormal world – trolls, wraiths, evil witches, and the mundane world of violent crime, hatred, and the unfortunately more familiar likes of hard right-wing xenophobia, pugilistic nationalism, and neo-Nazism. The ugliness of white supremacist skinhead groups like the Proud Fighters for America degenerates to dangerous new levels. HEX AND THE CITY is the story of Michael’s and Gail’s battle to deploy the tool of witch’s magic to reverse that curse and to find a way to fulfill their love for one another in spite of it.
“ … understand that you are a very small part of the world. You cannot create magic; you are magic. And you can learn to harness the power of the earth’s magic if you stop thinking about it and start listening to it. Every animal, every star, every blade of grass and drop of water. All life. All death. All of it is connected, and all of it is magic.”
In more general terms, HEX AND THE CITY might be characterized as an adult good vs evil tale set firmly in a world that is a combination of human evil, horror, and the paranormal. To a reader with firmly established left-wing proclivities like my own, it might even be perceived as an extended metaphor for the USA’s current struggle against the accelerating existential threat posed by the rise in right-wing Republican nationalism and its effect on American culture. However you interpret the novel’s story line, it must be said that HEX AND THE CITY is a gripping, fast-paced and deeply moving page-turner from first page to last that represents growth and an as yet unseen maturity in Mark Leslie’s writing skills that has been enabled, fostered, and assisted by his partnership with co-author Julie Strauss.
Kudos to both Leslie and Strauss for a job well done. I’m definitely looking forward to more of your work both in partnership and as individuals.
“Her father did not know – she held to it from that time – how much she loved him”
There really can be no other suitable word. DOMBEY AND SON is, “Her father did not know – she held to it from that time – how much she loved him”
There really can be no other suitable word. DOMBEY AND SON is, in many respects, a stereotypical Dickensian tale. It’s dense, it’s long, it’s hilarious, it’s heartwarming, it’s heartbreaking, it’s shocking, it’s complex, it’s multi-thematic, it’s plot-driven, it’s character driven, it’s forward thinking and generally left-wing – in short, it’s Dickensian. And, despite the fact that if general readers, or even confirmed Dickens fans, are asked to name a Dickens title, few will think to mention DOMBEY AND SON, I think it’s one of his best.
Consumed with the desire and the need to see his family name, his wealth, and his business success continued through his only son, Dombey ignores, and indeed comes to bitterly hate, his dedicated, loving daughter who blames herself for her father’s failure to love her. The themes that Dickens tosses into the DOMBEY AND SON kettle are legion – parental, filial, and romantic love; friendship and loyalty; patriarchy and misogyny; evil, theft, and embezzlement; feminism; family; wealth versus poverty; marriage, divorce, and the societal expectations and laws that govern them; and much more.
I can only ask, as a confirmed Dickens fan, what was I thinking of waiting so long to pull this one off my shelf. Definitely recommended.
“ … our mission is sabotage or destroying things like railroad tracks, telegraph lines, factory equipment and such, in order to hinder the Germans.”
““ … our mission is sabotage or destroying things like railroad tracks, telegraph lines, factory equipment and such, in order to hinder the Germans.”
“We also help the local partisans arm and resist.”
Able-bodied male spies in occupied France or Nazi Germany during World War II must have stuck out like the proverbial sore thumbs. The obvious reaction of any local civilians or German soldiers, enlisted men and officers alike, would have been, “What are you doing here? Why aren’t you in the military – either for us or against us!?” And so, the British government – or at least a very small piece of it, conceived of the idea of a corps of female spies and operatives who, in contrast to the men, could blend in and operate undercover much more easily. Based on true events, THE LOST GIRLS OF PARIS is a gripping fictionalization of the stories of twelve of these women, their recruitment (and the predictable misogynistic opposition to the idea), their training, their friendships, their missions, their valor, their betrayal and ultimately, their failure to return home to their families and loved ones.
Pam Jenoff has done a beyond brilliant job of conveying the story and bringing it to life with a nerve-wracking suspense-filled atmosphere that is positively electric and will put massive knots into the pit of your stomach. A hands down candidate for my Top 10 list of reads for 2023. Definitely recommended.
The most polite word for the McKenna family is “dysfunctional”. There are certainly other less clinicalLots of suspects and plenty of reasons to kill!
The most polite word for the McKenna family is “dysfunctional”. There are certainly other less clinical (and less polite) adjectives which one might use – mean-spirited, nasty, selfish, narcissistic, perhaps even ugly and evil. Lauren borders on normal but perhaps that’s only because she’s unquestionably a problem drinker who souses herself in alcohol to block out the problems of the real world and her relationship with that family. Although her brother, Tristan, was acquitted of the murder of Lauren’s best friend Zoe fourteen years earlier, Lauren is still suspicious that Tristan was the killer.
When Tristan’s pregnant wife disappears into a Canadian winter storm on the shores of Lake Ontario, Lauren’s suspicions crystallize into a belief verging on certainty. The gathering of the family to attend the imminent death of their father becomes a pitiful reunion peppered with hate and scorn and it becomes clear that the father intends to pass away with more information concerning the long cold murder case than he let on to the police so long ago. In short, BLEEDING DARKNESS is a brilliant police procedural driven by a full cast of memorable and sublimely well-developed characters, each of whom seems to have the requisite means, motive and opportunity to be included on Kala Stonechild’s lengthy list of possible suspects.
Aside from the gripping murder case, BLEEDING DARKNESS continues the development of Kala Stonechild and her gaggle of orbiting friends and family. Kala Stonechild is damaged and complicated carrying the memory of a background of alcohol, absentee parents and violent sexual abuse. She’s still a lone wolf and still difficult to understand but she’s unquestionably a self-assured, strong-willed survivor who has matured into a valued and highly skilled member of the Kingston homicide unit. Despite considerable uncertainty regarding the mothering decisions she has to make, she’s grown more or less comfortably into her role as a loving surrogate parent for her niece, Dawn.
And what would such a series be without the possibility of developing romantic entanglements? – Stonechild with her colleague, Paul Gundersund and Stonechild’s boss and mentor, Jacques Rouleau, with a crusty and feisty local journalist, Marci Stokes. Last but not least, just as young Dawn seems to be reconciling herself to living comfortably with Stonechild and accepting the fact that her mother is cooling her heels in prison, Dawn’s father is released from prison and may be looking to re-establish his parental rights. A complicated but thoroughly fascinating series universe!!
Definitely recommended. BLEEDING DARKESS is the fifth in a series that moves from strength to strength and seems to be just getting better with each outing. A caution to potential readers … do yourselves a favour. DON’T START HERE. Head back to the beginning and treat yourself to Kala’s full story by starting with COLD MOURNING. Number six TURNING SECRETS is already on my shelf and I’m looking forward to it with considerable anticipation.
“Eddie Flynn used to be a con artist. Then he became a lawyer. Turned out the two weren’t that different.”
Olek Volchek, the local kingpin of the “Eddie Flynn used to be a con artist. Then he became a lawyer. Turned out the two weren’t that different.”
Olek Volchek, the local kingpin of the Russian Mafia, is in the dock for murder. And the FBI has a slam-dunk witness whose rock solid incontrovertible testimony constitutes the sure win for the prosecution, under tighter lock and key and more safely guarded than the main vaults in Fort Knox. And that has placed Eddie Flynn, Volchek’s defense lawyer, into a rather prickly pickle. Volchek’s last resort was to kidnap Flynn’s young daughter and to weaponize the lawyer himself – to force him to wear a small tactical bomb into court and to plant it underneath the witness chair. Boom … no witness, no conviction!
And there you have it! A simple but wickedly ingenious evil premise and THE DEFENCE wins my recommendation as one of the fastest, most gripping, high speed legal thrillers that I’ve ever had the pleasure to read!
The story is told in a convincing first person narrative style in absolutely linear real-time with nary a single deviation over the period of the three day duration of the trial and what an exciting story it is! Flynn’s character development is brilliant as Cavanagh manages to make him tread that razor thin edge between deceptive and cleverly unscrupulous versus flat out illegal. Think of ANY of the time-worn chestnuts and tired tropes that are commonly plastered on the back cover marketing fluff for lesser contenders for entry into the crowded thriller genre – “pedal to the metal on page one”, “never lets you go”, “you’ll be reading into the wee hours”, “an exhilarating roller-coaster ride”, “will take your breath away” … they ALL apply without the least exaggeration!
And BONUS – this is the debut novel for Eddie Flynn’s character in a series that now holds such extraordinary promise. Definitely recommended and I’m on the hunt for a copy of #2 THE PLEA.
“The chaos reminded Sage of a painting she’d seen of hell … ”
“… the sinners of the world tangled together like fish in a net, some missing arms and l“The chaos reminded Sage of a painting she’d seen of hell … ”
“… the sinners of the world tangled together like fish in a net, some missing arms and legs, some being eaten by demons, all bleeding and crying and screaming. Bulging, vacant eyes in emaciated faces, giant heads and wasted bodies.”
The vision of hell committed to canvas by the tortured imagination of Hieronymus Bosch in his masterwork “THE GARDEN OF EARTHLY DELIGHTS” serves as an apt description of the reality of the chamber of horrors that was Staten Island’s 20th century mental asylum, Willowbrook School.
“A trio of girls, perhaps nine or ten years of age, lay sideways and crooked in four plastic chairs like three forgotten rag dolls, their heads shaved, their arms twisted behind them inside filthy strait jackets. A girl of about twelve smeared feces on the wall, while a teenager in a muzzle stood near the door slapping her own face. A group of naked residents huddled around the steam radiator to get warm, burn marks lining their arms and shoulders.”
Six years after the alleged death of her identical twin sister by pneumonia, sixteen year old Sage Winters is shocked to overhear a conversation and discover that her stepfather had lied to her. Her twin sister, Rosemary, had actually been committed to Willowbrook, ostensibly a school for mentally challenged children and adults, in reality a mental asylum (concentration camp?) whose lack of care and brutal treatment of its inmates (they prefer the term “patients”!) might make a sojourn in Alcatraz look like a vacation on the California shore. Determined to find her lost sister, now believed to be alive and loose somewhere in New York city, Sage visits Willowbrook School. In a case of seriously mistaken identity, she finds herself treated as a recovered escapee and imprisoned in place of her sister. Her insistence as to her real identity is presumed to be part of her mental illness, her delusions, and her identity disorder.
A brutal, shocking, and heart-breaking tale reminiscent of the many stories – both real and fictional based on reality – of aboriginal residential schools, THE LOST GIRLS OF WILLOWBROOK is graphic in its depiction of the miserable conditions of the school; the sexual mistreatment of its patients; the understaffing and lack of care; the over-prescription of drugs, sedatives, and tranquilizers; and the complete lack of governmental oversight. It is most assuredly not for the queasy or fainthearted reader.
Most shocking of all? This extraordinary novel is based on reality. Consider the first question which author Ellen Marie Wiseman thought to include in her “Discussion Questions” to guide readers and reading clubs at the end of the novel:
“An institution for people with disabilities, the Willowbrook State School opened in 1947 on Staten Island, New York, and remained in operation until 1987. Despite having a maximum capacity of 4,000 people, by 1965 it housed over 6,000 intellectually and physically disabled children and adults, becoming the largest state-run mental institution of its kind in the United States. Due to staff and money shortages, there was one nurse per ward, one or two attendants per 35 to 125 residents, and more than 200 residents living in houses built for fewer than 100. An estimated 12,000 residents died at Willowbrook from 1950 to 1980, approximately 400 a year, due to neglect, violence, lack of nutrition, and medical mismanagement or experimentation. What was your awareness of Willowbrook State School before reading THE LOST GIRLS OF WILLOWBOOK? Why do you think most people today are unfamiliar with history of Willowbrook?”
Shocking and highly recommended. Definitely a candidate for my Top Ten List of 2023.
“I know I shouldn’t love [Fae] as I do, stolen as I am from the mortal world, my parents murdered. But I love it all the same.”
When your fairy half-s“I know I shouldn’t love [Fae] as I do, stolen as I am from the mortal world, my parents murdered. But I love it all the same.”
When your fairy half-sister’s father slaughters your human parents and carries you in the dark of night to Fae, it ought to be a clue that Holly Black’s vision of the fairy kingdoms is not a gracious, welcoming land of beautiful green-skinned diminutive creatures and shimmering pixie dust. After her abduction by a Faerie warlord, who makes no secret of his hatred for the human race, Jude Duarte knows she has entered a land that you and I might think of as dangerous and darkly enchanted, a land in which the likes of Tolkien’s Gollum, Sauron and a cohort of bloodthirsty orcs would be comfortable and at their ease. With youthful courage, strength and resilience, Jude carves out a place for herself (literally, I might add!) in a world that despises her and treats her as beneath contempt for nothing more than her very human mortality.
Despite its characterization as young adult fantasy, THE CRUEL PRINCE is a harsh story, graphic in its depiction of violence, murder, and death, and plain speaking in its depiction of treachery, betrayal, the self-serving attitudes of wealth and privilege, xenophobia and misogyny. That said, lovers of fantasy are certain to find it compelling, gripping, and entertaining from first page to last. Jude Duarte certainly came of age but what a voyage it was to get there!
”Northing was fair in Faerie. She had learned to stop expecting it to be.” Her father ”hauled Jude to her feet and threw a heavy arm over her shoulders. He drew her and her twin in for an embrace. He smelled like smoke and dried blood, and Jude let herself sag against him. It was good to be hugged. Even by a monster.”
Unconditionally recommended. Upward and onward to the sequel THE WICKED KING.
Science writer Mary Roach regales her fans with an unlikely overview of the story and history of cadavers – their Aaaarrrrrh … dead men DO tell tales!
Science writer Mary Roach regales her fans with an unlikely overview of the story and history of cadavers – their disposal; their interment (and disinterment); the science of decomposition; forensic pathology; their medical uses; their contributions to medical research and medical instruction; the sourcing of transplant organs; their use as surrogate stand-ins for live human bodies in no end of off-the-wall experimentation; contemporary and future alternatives to simple burial and cremation; and more – that is insightful, shocking, instructive, informative, entertaining, compelling, provocative, witty, and (whether you would expect it or not) often times tongue-in-cheek disrespectful and laugh-out-loud hilarious!
It’s hard to read STIFF with anything less than a 5-star appreciation of both its entertainment and information value. Definitely recommended.
In which Llewelyn the Great, much loved husband of King John’s bastard daughter Joanna, takes on his father-in-law for mastery of Wales and Norman EngIn which Llewelyn the Great, much loved husband of King John’s bastard daughter Joanna, takes on his father-in-law for mastery of Wales and Norman England
Richard the Lionheart was an absent king bent on defeating the Saracens in the Holy Land and that suited Llewelyn, an upstart prince of Wales and would be unifier of a patchwork of Welsh provinces and landholdings, just fine! But the recently deceased Richard’s younger brother, King John, although a capable administrator and a skilled military leader was also a heavy-handed, mean-spirited, and (not to put too fine a point on it) cruel, nasty and spiteful monarch of a distinctly different colour. Welsh autonomy, and Gwynedd’s hegemony under Llewelyn’s stern but always disputed leadership, was in for a lifelong struggle against the evil machinations and battlefield tactics of King John.
HERE BE DRAGONS is a story of 13th century England – King John’s heavy handed rule over England, his loss of English landholdings in northern France and Normandy and his struggle to maintain Norman sovereignty over a Wales bent on flexing its own sovereign muscles; a fictionalized biography of Llewelyn (now known as Llewelyn the Great in Welsh history) and his unification of Welsh opposition against King John; the story of 13th century misogyny and the oppressive rules under which nobly born women were made to live; the fascinating drama of Llewelyn’s political arranged marriage to Joanna, King John’s much-loved bastard daughter and, in turn, the story of the breaking of Joanna’s heart and her struggle to find peace and a way to exemplify her love divided between her husband and her father; and, finally, the story of the revolt of King John’s barons against his tyranny and their forcing King John to put his signature to the Magna Carta on the open fields of Runnymede on a summer day in 1215.
As expansive as the historical canvas on which Sharon Kay Penman paints her recreation of 13th century England is - its politics, its landscapes, and its evolution – she keeps a firm and disciplined grip on all of the story lines, all of her characters, and all of the meaningful real-life historical developments. The reader of what is a door-stopper by any definition will never find themselves forced to re-read, or to stop to gather one’s thoughts. The lush drama, the thrill, the gripping re-creation of the real-life historical developments and the heart throbbing romance that Penman has chosen to create between Llewelyn and his child bride, Joanna, is, to say the least, compelling. The female members of the cast – King John’s daughter and Llewelyn’s wife, Joanna; King John’s wife, Isabella of Angoulême; and King John’s mother, the celebrated Eleanor of Acquitaine, (as different as chalk, cheese, and snow), were the ladies through which Penman narrated the story of women’s embattled and distinctly downtrodden place in 13th century Norman England.
HERE BE DRAGONS is unquestionably a masterwork of the historical fiction genre and will doubtless be considered a classic to be loved, re-read, and loved again over the years to come. Definitely recommended.
Project Spaceguard, the 23rd century version of NASA’s current attempts to defend against earthbound collisions “Rama Base. Endeavour has landed.”
Project Spaceguard, the 23rd century version of NASA’s current attempts to defend against earthbound collisions by NEOs (Near Earth Objects) has detected an incoming object. Given its fantastic rate of spin and virtually flawless high albedo cylindrical outer surface, it is clearly artificial and engineered and directed by an extraterrestrial intelligence. Its hyperbolic orbital trajectory means that, barring any mid-flight orbital corrections, the object (now named Rama by the members of the United Planets – the Earth, the Moon, Mars and Mercury) is cruising on a one-time only high speed pass through our solar system (from interstellar origins unknown) with a perihelion well inside Mercury’s orbit and perilously close to the blistering heat of the sun’s corona.
RENDEZVOUS WITH RAMA is Arthur C Clarke’s hard sci-fi imagining of humanity’s up close and personal investigation of this enigmatic visitor; our examination of their interstellar space craft and its unique cylindrical geometry; our attempts to decipher the structure of their sealed buildings; the analysis of the propulsion system and a curious internal lake encircling the entire interior of the craft; the decision as to whether the “biots” that the visiting scientists encounter are biological or robotic; the meteorology of the closed system inside Rama; the profound psychological cognitive dissonance caused by the mismatching of inner ear reactions and visual stimuli in the varying low gravity conditions of a spinning cylinder; communication issues at distances that are large enough to make the finite speed of light matter; and much more.
RENDEZVOUS WITH RAMA’s focus is definitely hard, hard, hard sci-fi and my expectation is that the possibilities for exploring softer issues such as a first actual meeting or communication with an extraterrestrial intelligence will come up in the sequels. But it wasn’t entirely ignored. One of the most interesting plot lines, for example, was the antagonistic (and, if I may say so, all too “human” and all too predictable) government military decision to deploy a nuclear warhead into orbit with Rama to destroy it in response to a threat that had not been actually defined and certainly never sent or received. Regrettably, another soft issue which was implicit in Clarke’s story from cover to cover was the atmosphere of patriarchal misogyny that was an endemic part of life through much of the 20th century when the novel was written. It was portrayed, for example, as perfectly normal for a space-faring man to have two wives on two different planets (a sailor’s “woman in every port”, as it were). The number of female crew members on spaceship Endeavour and their representation in senior positions was definitely limited. And Clarke’s repeated juvenile fascination with the visually pleasing effect of low gravity on the perkiness of a woman’s boobs was at once laughable and rather pathetic.
Ah well … nothing and nobody is perfect! That said, RENDEZVOUS WITH RAMA was a stunning and thoroughly gripping hard sci-fi classic that I believe has stood the test of time. Of course, it is only time that will tell us if it was prescient as well. Definitely recommended.
“The lady is dark. She moved forward a few steps – and I said to myself, …”
“… The lady is young. She approached nearer – and I said to myself (with a “The lady is dark. She moved forward a few steps – and I said to myself, …”
“… The lady is young. She approached nearer – and I said to myself (with a sense of surprise which words fail me to express), The lady is ugly!”
Marian Halcombe’s unbecoming features and distinct lack of beauty are offset with wit, intelligence, strength of character, bravura and courage, shrewdness, and loyalty. Laura Fairlie, her half-sister, by contrast, suffers a frail disposition and a weak, self-effacing, retiring personality but possesses a comely figure and undeniable facial beauty. Potential readers will not earn any insight points for guessing which one Walter Hartright falls in love with.
Late night on the road to Limmeridge House to undertake a contract as a drawing master, the previously mentioned Walter Hartright first encounters Anne Catherick, the eponymous woman in white, whom the reader learns is a mentally challenged young woman recently escaped from her commitment in an asylum. When he meets Laura and Marian, his student charges, the next day, Walter is shocked at the resemblance between Laura and the woman he had met and helped the previous night under such bizarre circumstances. Of course, notwithstanding their difference in class and Laura’s previous engagement to a wealthy local landowner baronet, Sir Percival Glyde, not to mention her melodramatic propensity for swooning, her heaving bosom and her Victorian tears, her sniffing at cologne and smelling salts, and her suffering from “back of the hand to the forehead” female illnesses, weaknesses, and bedroom confining headaches, Walter and Laura fall in love with each other. To avoid the likelihood of a certain scandal and the loss of reputation that would entail for Laura, Marion advises Hartright to leave Limmeridge House before the completion of his employment contract and he complies.
Shortly thereafter, Sir Percival Glyde, accompanied by his close friend, the outgoing, obsequiously charming, and spectacularly fat Count Fosco, (and his unaccountably surly and always subservient wife) arrives at Limmeridge House seeking to set a date for his contracted marriage to Laura. That arrival is overshadowed by the receipt of an anonymous letter warning Laura not to marry him under any circumstances. The plot begins to thicken quickly and one wonders whether a youthful Sherlock Holmes might have used his oft-repeated aphorism for the first time, “The game is afoot”!
If THE WOMAN IN WHITE were a modern novel (abundant servings of Victorian melodrama and sensation notwithstanding), it would be characterized as a psychological thriller based on criminal identity theft for financial gain. Gain to the tune of £30,000 to be more exact, which was an enormous fortune at the time. Walter Hartright’s and Marian Halcombe’s astute investigations to undercover the nature of the theft and its motives, and their legal machinations to restore the stolen identity to its rightful owner are exciting and compelling. Add in some thematic overtones of greed, misogyny, satire and political commentary on women’s legal rights in the mid-19th century, international spycraft, murder, fraud, adultery, and good old-fashioned criminal skullduggery blended with character development that is simply masterful in its depth and completeness, and it’s no wonder that THE WOMAN IN WHITE, first published in 1860, consistently ranks as one of the best English literature novels ever written and has never been out of print.
Highly recommended, I have no hesitation in adding THE WOMAN IN WHITE to my list of lifetime favourite novels.
“Al Jazeera called us ‘the New Extremism’ … Britain’s political pundits shook their heads as if to say, ‘Oh th“One after another, they laughed at us.”
“Al Jazeera called us ‘the New Extremism’ … Britain’s political pundits shook their heads as if to say, ‘Oh those daffy Yanks. What are they doing now?’ The Italian experts … shouted and pointed and laughed … Was this really how they saw the United States?”
Not really! I dare say the intent of the tongue-in-cheek humour was to hold their nose tightly and to add a thin, cautious veneer of diplomatic politeness to their true feelings of abhorrent horror, disgust and disdain.
Unlike Margaret Atwood in her classic THE HANDMAID’S TALE, Ms Dalcher takes no steps in the direction of literary pretension. VOX is a straight-up, hard-nosed and heart-rending portrayal of a far right wing misogynistic USA in which women – all women of all ages beginning from the very youngest and tenderest ages – have been subjugated and forced by a theocratic authoritarian government to wear electronic bracelets that limit their vocal interaction with the world around them to 100 words per day. Violations of that strict prohibition are met with physical electrical punishment that escalates in severity with each further transgression. Women may not hold jobs, they may not drive, they are no longer even taught to read or write. Their sole place in society is to assume women's biblical roles - wives, mothers, and subservient homemakers who are seen and not heard.
Homosexuality and transgenderism is strictly 'verboten' and the discovery that anyone is a member of that hated LGBT community will be rewarded with a one-way ticket to gender affirming and sexual re-adjustment education in strictly controlled concentration camps.
VOX, aside from being a thrilling and deeply disturbing commentary on the right-wing and patriarchal evangelical Christian proclivities that are assuredly making deeper and deeper inroads into American society, is also a gut-wrenching, compelling thriller – the story of Jean McClellan, formerly a linguist and neuroscientist, looking for a way to rebel against the government and to release the chains that hold her, her daughter, and every one of her sisters in the country. She is looking for a resistance that she is certain exists and is determined to find a way to revolt.
Christina Dalcher’s political commentary is scathing, terrifying and brutally on point:
Consider one woman’s comment to another before the final installation of the new order: “You have no idea, ladies. No goddamned idea. We’re on a slippery slide to prehistory, girls. Think about it. Think about where you’ll be – where your daughters will be – when the courts turn back the clock. Think about words like ‘spousal permission’ and ‘paternal consent.’ Think about waking up one morning and finding you don’t have a voice in anything.”
On the conduct of the first lady (and I have absolutely no doubt that Melania Trump was very much in Ms Dalcher’s thoughts as she penned this particular paragraph): “The trio [of armed Secret Service agents] stays with her night and day. In other times, this constant supervision of the first lady would be accepted as routine security for her protection. The truth, however was in [her] eyes; they have the vacant, lusterless quality of a woman who now sees the world in shades of gray.”
On the process by which a country can allow such horrors to come to pass: “Maybe this is how it happened in Germany with the Nazis, in Bosnia with the Serbs, in Rwanda with the Hutus. I’ve often wondered about that, how kids can turn into monsters, how they learn that killing is right and oppression is just, how in one single generation the world can change on its axis into a place that’s unrecognizable. Easily, I think … ”
I am terrified to realize that I live next door to a country that is within a single election of allowing such people to enter the halls of government and implicitly support the installation of a culture such as Dalcher brought so vividly to life in VOX. I’m a confirmed atheist but I’m more than willing to say, “God willing, the USA will find the strength, the wisdom, and the courage to vote in a manner that will tell the world they refuse to take their country down such a path”.
Definitely recommended and added to my Top Ten of 2023 reading list.
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