The Way We Live Now

Free kindle books! Yay. There are books now out of copyright that are available free for the kindle and I have availed myself of a few. One of them is The Way We Live Now by Anthony Trollope which I wanted to read as it was mentioned in an article on The Business Case for Reading Novels.

Mr Melmotte arrives in London amidst rumours of vast wealth, shady deals and a lack of breeding. It is set in London in 1870 and there are several lordlets in search of an heiress. Melmotte's wealth is reckoned to be so great it overrides any considerations that he might be a commoner.

One of the lordlets is Felix Carbury whose mother has decided that she will make a living (she has to because her son gambles away her money) writing books. She surmises that it is more important to persuade influential critics to say her books are good than it is to actually write good books. Felix's sister, Hetta, has an offer of marriage from her cousin, Roger Carbury, who is a model of virtue. But she is in love with Paul Montague, a hapless young man who is manipulated into investing his entire wealth in a transamerican railway and finds it hard to disentangle himself from a previous engagement.

Melmotte is brought in on the railway scam and the share price rises. Melmotte's wealth is reckoned to be incalculable and his ego is flattered to the point that he is persuaded to stand for parliament. Then everything starts to unravel.

This was originally published as a serial and occasionally there is a bit of recapping. Obviously this is a very old book so there's not much to say about style - it is of its time. However, I found it highly readable and was completely absorbed. None of the characters really come out well and yet it is hard to say who is really bad.

It was funny in places and is very relevant to the current economic climate. I was a little disppointed by the ending and would have preferred a less fairytale resolution, but that's a minor point. Overall it was an excellent read and I recommend it.

The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake

The first thing to say about The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake by Aimee Bender is that it has a great title. It's evocative and intriguing, the rhythm is good and is the sort of title that makes me wish I had a talent for titling things.

At the age of nine Rose discovers she can taste emotions in the food she eats. If it is manufactured food she can tell all the layers that contributed to creating it. If it is homemade she can taste how the person who made it was feeling. She finds that people around her feel things that they don't display on the surface and she struggles to work out a way to manage it.

Rose's brother Joseph is quiet and reclusive. As he reaches his late teens he starts to disappear in mysterious ways. Their mother is frantic and their father is distant. Eventually Joseph disappears and doesn't come back. Rose feels she can't move out now, but gradually she finds a way to use her gift and have a life of her own.

It's an easy read but the title really is the best thing about it. The powers that Rose and her brother have are not explained until the end when their father reveals that his father had a similar power. I found this element of the book unsatisfying. I could have accepted any number of causes had an effort been made to provide one.

The description of the emotions in the food could have been richer and more detailed. I thought that they were flat and I found them disappointing. What I did like was the concept; it's an interesting idea. The execution didn't do it justice and didn't live up to the title.

I wasn't keen on the writing style, even acknowledging that anything read after Babel Tower would suffer by comparison, and I found it difficult to engage with the characters. It was not so bad that I couldn't finish it but I would certainly avoid anything else by this author.

Babel Tower

One of my top ten books is Possession by A. S. Byatt and so it stands to reason that I would like other books by the same author. I read Angels and Insects and wasn't blown away. I bought Babel Tower and it has sat on my bookshelf for ten years. Part of the reason I haven't read it is that it is a hardback and is 615 pages. The other part is that I was worried I wouldn't like it. Oh, how wrong I was.

On the surface it is the story of Frederica Potter, a woman who was a Cambridge graduate in the early 1960s, then her sister died and while she was grieving she married an inappropriate man. At the start of Babel Tower Frederica has a two year old and is realising that she made a mistake in her marriage. When she runs into an old friend it accelerates this realisation. The cracks in her marriage widen and her husband becomes extremely jealous and violent. After he hits her with an axe, she leaves and begins a life in London.

There Frederica renews old friendships and makes new ones, including one with the author of a book which is tried under the Obscenity Act. At the same time, Frederica starts divorce proceedings. What the book is really about is the terrible position and treatment of women in the 1960s and it is very feminist. It is also about the nature of art and about obscenity, morality and freedom of expression.

The quality of the writing is astonishing. It was so rich and complex without ever becoming florid. I wish I could write like this. On every page I was in awe. It is the third in a series of four and, of course, I haven't read any of the others but it easily stands on its own. Byatt is a literary writer who is gripping, tense and utterly absorbing. This was amazing and I could barely put it down. You should definitely read it.

Tiger of Talmare

Tiger of Talmare by Nina Scott is a novella that I stumbled across while I was browsing Amazon for contemporary science fiction written by women.

Mel is a space pirate who has been hired to hijack a spaceship carrying the cryogenically frozen Zach to be tried for a massacre on Talmare. Zach is a tiger-human hybrid soldier, who happens to have been chasing Mel across the galaxy for the last ten years, ever since she stole his ship.

The cryochamber is damaged so Mel has to revive Zach. He convinces her he's innocent. The man who hired her is the real culprit and is trying to silence Zach. As the story is uncovered it turns out there is connection to a troubled member of Mel's crew so Mel decides to do the right thing. And as this is a romance as much as an adventure, Mel and Zach get it on.

This is a fun romp heavy on action and dialogue. These elements are well done and the book is pretty entertaining. It's a novella, coming in at a mere 100 pages, so there's not much room for anything else. I think these characters have a lot of potential and if the story was fleshed out with description and context it would make a great novel.

I liked it. It's currently free as an ebook, so give it a go.

On a side note, I'm keen to read science fiction written by women. Any suggestions? I'm looking for people publishing now, rather than classics of the genre.

The Hidden Empire

The Hidden Empire by Kevin J. Anderson is the first book in The Saga of Seven Suns series which runs to seven books. It's a meaty space opera of around 660 pages. A nice substantial book to really get my teeth into. In theory.

Humanity expanded out into the universe in generation ships. They encountered the Ildirans who gave them advanced technology for spaceflight and helped them settle colony planets. They've discovered another extinct alien race and in the course of learning about them they've found a tool for tunring gas giants into suns.

Using this tool triggers a third alien race to reveal themselves and declare war on both humans and Ildirans.

As this is the first book in a series of seven it is largely setting up the war. Through numerous characters Anderson builds up a picture of human and Ildiran society and draws the relationships between them. The Hidden Empire is broad in scope which I liked, but it lacks depth which I didn't like.

Chapters are short, lasting only one or two scenes. This makes the pace quite quick. The chapters are told from the point of view of a single character and often ends refering to the character whose chapter is next so there is a pleasing chain effect.

What it lacks is depth. There is one main bit of human society (Hansa) and two further cultures (Theroc and Roamer) which have a tense relationship with the main bit. But the groupings are simplistic. For example, the Hansa have devolved to a psuedo-monarchy for their system of government and the rationale seems rather weak. There is also a lack of understanding of the dynamics of oppression and marginalisation. The characters are shallow stereotypes that exist primarily as narrative mouthpieces. The whole thing is heteronormative and white-centric - probably not consciously, but it does demonstrate a lack of thought or analysis.

I finished it (and I won't be finishing anything truely terrible this year), but I won't be reading the rest of the saga. While I do love fiction with a broad sweep I need that to be balanced with depth, good characters and complex relationships.

The Memoirs of Cleopatra

I love a big book - it's very satisfying. There is a depth of immersion that just can't be achieved in anything less than 500 pages. The Memoirs of Cleopatra by Margaret George is a big book at 960 pages and it is well worth the effort.

The memoirs tell the story of the whole life of Cleopatra; from growing up in Alexandria to her death by suicide at the age of forty. It covers her relationship with Caesar, her part in the chaos after his death and the side she eventually chose. That was the side of Marc Anthony and the book details their unsuccessful war with Octavian.

Margaret George derives a lot of the events from the historical record - relying on a broad range of sources and stripping away the exaggerations and defamations of Cleopatra's enemies. Some things are fictionalised but as much as possible is derived from the historical clues available.

It is an interesting story in that it is essentially the story of defeat all the way through. Cleopatra snatches her country from the machinations of her siblings and aligns herself with Caesar to preserve her throne. Which fateful decision sets her up for a lifetime of trying to prevent Egypt from becoming a Roman province. She fails at that, and ironically, it is a far richer prize at the end than it would have been if she had not saved it in the first place.

This was utterly engaging. The worldbuilding is very good and Rome and Egypt are fully realised. The staggering wealth of Cleopatra is effectively conveyed. I really enjoyed this.

A Diary of The Lady

So, how do you review a book you didn't finish? There might be a few more of these this year.

A Diary of The Lady by Rachel Johnson is an account of her time as editor of The Lady magazine. She is the sister of Boris Johnson, a columnist for one of the broadsheets, and a novellist. I got about a quarter of the way through before abandoning it.

I stopped reading because I found the writing dull and leaden. It could have been an interesting, funny story, but Rachel Johnson contrives to make it and herself come across as boring and unpleasant. Give it a wide berth.  

Finders Keepers: A Tale of Archaeological Plunder and Obsession

New for 2012! Book reviews for non-fiction titles! I read quite a bit of non-fiction and, as my reviews have slid away from being purely about what I've learned about writing through reading into more traditional book review territory, I thought it was time I started recording those as well. First book of the year is Finders Keepers: A Tale of Archaeological Plunder and Obsession by Craig Childs.

The book is an exploration of the ethics of archaeology and I was attracted to reading it because I have a love for the artifacts of the past. Archaeologist was one of my many answers to the question 'what do you want to be when you grow up?'. The book isn't quite what I thought it was. I expected a more scholarly approach to the complex and ambiguous question of what we should do with old stuff.

Who should have it? Does it belong in museums where it can be studied? Lots of the stuff in museums has been obtained unethically, especially in the top institutions. Should it go back to the culture it came from? Are artifacts art or information? Should they be displayed for aesthetic enjoyment or catalogued for posterity? Should they be owned by private collectors or held by governments and public insitutions?

There are no easy answers to these questions and Childs presents a range of views in an objective and non-judgemental way. He tells his own stories of his experience of making archaeological finds and what he has done with them, as well as the stories of people involved at various levels of the antiquities trade.

In the end, Childs' view is that artifacts should be left where they are found, in context. But this view is based on feeling and he struggles to articulate why that is the right thing to do, so the reader is left to make up their own mind if they can.

I enjoyed this, even though it wasn't quite what I thought it would be, and if you're interested in old stuff, museums or archaeology it's worth a read.

100 Books in 2011: Others

This is the last book in the 100 Books in 2011 challenge and it is Others by James Herbert. A man's soul is in Hell, tormented, and is given a chance to redeem himself. He accepts the offer.

Nick Dismas is a private investigator running a small, successful business in Brighton. He happens to be mishapen and ugly and so encounters much of the worst of humanity. A woman approaches him and asks him to find her long lost son. She was told that her baby didn't survive but she believes that he is still alive and now wants to find him.

After he takes this commission he is plagued by nightmares which he tries to explain away as the result of the drugs he takes to deal with his condition. The woman is revealed to have been recently widowed, requiring a son in order to benefit from her husband's will, and acting on the advice of a psychic. Dismas tells the woman he can't help her, but a combination of psychic phenomena, intuition and pressure from the psychic pushes him into following up the one lead he has. He thinks it's pretty tenuous but it leads him to a place where deformed and mutated children are kept secretly from the world, experimented on and exploited.

Dismas rescues them and comes to remember who he was in his previous life. Then, having redeemed himself, he dies.

This is definitely a book on the warm end of the spectrum of writing technique. We spend most of our time in Dismas' interior world as he ruminates on what is true and what is not, follows his intuition, and explores his feelings for the people around him.

Much of Others feels more like a thriller than a horror. Dismas is trying to find a missing person whilst battling personal demons. It's ok. It's pretty readable but I didn't find the characters that engaging. There is a motif of 'ugly but good' and 'beautiful but evil' running through the book like a freight train, which I found unsophisticated and heavy-handed.

As a thriller, it was alright until the ending, which was Dismas remembering the bargain he had struck and then all the loose ends being tied up in a couple of expository pages. It felt hurried, especially as the final escape from the burning building had taken over sixty pages to play out. The action was tense and exciting in places but the pacing was a little haphazard. As a horror, I didn't really get it. I suspect the horror lies in what has been done to the 'others', how they have been treated and how society has effectively erased them. The horror is in how easily we decide people aren't people. But choosing to tell the story from the POV of the private investigator distances us from that for most of story. Unless, of course, you're freaked out by the idea of demons invading your nightmares. I don't believe in an afterlife of any kind and so I find it hard to be afraid of that sort of thing.

Anyway, it's alright. If you enjoy mild supernatural horror, you might like this.

100 Books in 2011: Line of Polity

Line of Polity is the second in the Ian Cormac series by Neal Asher, which is sci-fi spy thriller, basically James Bond in space.

A rogue scientist is experimenting with ancient alien technology far more advanced than that of the Polity, and his intention is to use that technology to make himself all-powerful.

The outlink station Miranda has been destroyed by a fungus that appears to have been deployed by Dragon, a mysterious alien being. The refugees from Miranda are picked up by a ship from Masada, a world outside the Polity which is ruled by a theocracy and keeps most of its population as slave labour. There is a rebellion on Masada led by Lellan Stanton, the sister of John Stanton, an arms dealer.

Because of Dragon's involvement, Ian Cormac is sent to investigate.

Describing this as James Bond in space is not doing it justice as Neal Asher's books are much richer and more complex than Ian Fleming's were. Cormac is a more rounded creation and the supporting characters are much more real as well.

Gant is back. He was killed in the first book but it turns out he had himself backed up and so was downloaded into a golem body. Gant and Thorn were my favourite characters from the first book and I was happy to have Gant back. He spends a lot of time wondering whether he is still the same person as he was. When he is reunited with Thorn, who had not known Gant was backed up and so had grieved for the loss of his friend, there is some awkwardness in the relationship. The way Asher uses this relationship to explore what constitutes a person is really well handled and he portrays a deep, intimate friendship between these two men.

Many of the central characters are from the first book, allowing much development. Cormac is much less centre stage than he had been, but he is still struggling with being disconnected. As well as excellent characterisation, and the great dialogue that goes along with that, Line of Polity has plenty of plot. This is an action driven novel as Cormac chases both Dragon and Skellor about the universe. The ending is a bit of a shock. Cormac pulls off a clever trick, forcing Skellor to choose between destroying Masada and killing Cormac. Skellor chooses Cormac and runs into an outpost world run by arms dealers, who Cormac fools into thinking he is attacking. Their defence system is the only thing that can destroy Skellor at this point and it does so. It also seems that Cormac dies in the process. Right up to the last page I was waiting for Asher to reveal how Cormac survived, but he didn't. Which leaves me desperate to read the next one. Genius. (There are currently three more Ian Cormac novels, so he has to have survived, right?)

I thoroughly enjoyed this. If you like space opera, particularly Iain M. Banks, then you'll enjoy this. It's exciting, entertaining and well written.

100 Books in 2011: Surface Detail

Continuing on with wrapping up the last few book reviews for the 100 books in 2011 challenge we have Surface Detail by Iain M. Banks.

Lededje Ybreq is an indentured servant who is killed by her owner. She is revived on board a Culture ship, courtesy of a neural lace given to her by a passing eccentric ship when she was younger. Once she is used to the idea of being alive again, she seeks to return home to kill him.

Meanwhile, several lesser civilisations are engaged in a virtual war over the right to have virtual hells. The Culture is profoundly anti-Hell but felt that it shouldn't participate. The war has been raging for decades and the anti-Hell side is losing. Because of this it is about to break out in the Real.

Lededje finds herself travelling home with the warship Falling Outside the Normal Moral Constraints, a delightfully psychotic mind created to be a weapon but knowing it will almost certainly never get the chance to show its full capability.

Lededje's journey home takes her right into the middle of the outbreak of war in the Real, giving Falling Outside the Normal Moral Constraints the opportunity it never thought it would get.

I love the Culture and I want to live in it. With Surface Detail, Banks has created a new Culture novel that is possibly one of the best. I love the ideological discussions presented by the existence of virtual Heavens and Hells and what that means for civilization. One hell world is explored through the POV of two activist characters who voluntarily go to their world's Hell to support the anti-Hell movement. The pain, despair and hopelessness is vividly brought to life. I found myself profoundly anti-Hell.

Characterisation is excellent, and my favourite of the many memorable characters was Falling Outside the Normal Moral Constraints. I love ship minds in the Culture novels; they're so very entertaining. FONMC was wonderful. It is the mind of a ship created to be the ultimate deterent and loves destruction and mayhem, but is aware that it may never get to truly express itself. So it's avatars are cruel, mean, spiteful and sadistic, and charming, elegant and manipulative, like the psychopath that the ship really is. And when FONMC gets to destroy an entire fleet of warships all by itself, it is so joyful that it is hard not to be happy for it.

In Surface Detail, Banks does not disappoint. It is full of interesting characters, sparkling dialogue, and rich with intellectual concept. It will make you think, and laugh, and cry. Highly recommended. This is a contender for best book of the year.

100 Books in 2011: Heart of Darkness

I've not read many classics this year, due to a perception that they take longer to read that modern novels of the same length, and I've been conscious of having a target. Towards the end of the year I stopped picking short books in order to meet the target because I wanted to read books I could get my teeth into. One of those was Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad.

It's the story of a man, Marlow, who takes up an ivory trading post in the Congo. While there he accepts a commission to travel into the jungle to find and return Kurtz. Kurtz was a trader, like Marlow, but has been in the jungle for a long time and there are disturbing reports.

Marlow is confronted with the venality of his fellow Europeans and dismayed with their treatment of Africans. When he sets off to find Kurtz he is deeply conflicted about what he is doing. His inner turmoil is increased when he finds Kurtz, who he experiences as a very charismatic man, and discovers that Kurtz has set himself up as a King. His hold over the Africans is derived from his willingness to present himself as a supernatural being; he encourages them to worship him by participating in their rites.

Kurtz is ill, so Marlow is able to take him from the tribe, to the great distress of the woman who was his mistress, but he dies on the way back down-river. Back in Europe, Marlow is sought out by people who knew Kurtz and has to decide what he will say about the man's final years.

I found this surprisingly easy to read. Surprising, because I picked it up a few years ago and had trouble getting into it. That's the benefit of a long commute - you have time to get into books that require a bit of time and effort. Once I got going, I found it quite hard to put down. It uses the frame narrative technique, a story within a story, which I find quite tedious. It's a slow way of getting into a story and I'm glad it's fallen out of fashion.

I liked the sense of oppression. The world Conrad describes is indeed dark, things happen at night, inside dark buildings and under the canopy of the jungle where the light rarely penetrates. He shows European colonists as small and greedy as they claim the Africans they're enslaving are. The European characters, including Kurtz, talk about the civilising influence that empires bring to Africa while demonstrating behaviour that belies the claim. Conrad doesn't pull any punches about the nature of colonialism. Marlow's confusion and disillusionment is well drawn.

This is a book with a big reputation and is definitely one of those books you should have read. Fortunately, it's pretty good and I really enjoyed it.

100 Books in 2011: Worth Dying For

Ah, Jack Reacher, I just can't stay away from you. And in Worth Dying For, Lee Child's taciturn alpha male itinerant troubleshooter/maker is on good form.

Reacher is hitching across the US, as is his wont, and is dropped off in the middle of the desolate plains of Nebraska. He finds a motel and walks into a village terrorised by the Duncans, a family of thugs who deal in human trafficking.

The battered wife of the youngest Duncan calls the drunken doctor drinking at the motel bar and Reacher, having a chivalric moment, drags the unwilling doctor to assist, then tracks down the husband and breaks his nose. As things start unravelling, Reacher discovers that the Duncan's are implicated in a thirty-year old case of a missing girl.

Meanwhile, the Duncan's are waiting for a shipment that is late. The buyers have sent a couple of guys to find out where it is. There are further buyers in the chain, who also send thugs to expedite the process.

After much chasing around windy, flat farms and the grisly, violent deaths of many a criminal, Reacher solves the case and the bad guys get their just desserts. 

I think Lee Child is getting better as a writer, Reacher seems a more complex character than when I first picked up one of these books, and as he gets more complex he gets more likeable, which was definitely missing at the start.

I also appreciate the short time span the novel is set in. All the action happens over a few days, maybe a week. With Reacher able to have many adventures in a short space of time, he doesn't age at the same rate as the reader. Which can be a problem with your action hero. Worth Dying For has all the strengths and weakness I've come to expect from Lee Child. What's good is the plotting, the pace, and the creation of a insulated little world wrapped up in its own problems. Not so good is the dialogue and Reacher's god-like powers. Still, all in all, it was fun and if you're looking for an easy, relaxing read, you could do worse.

100 Books in 2011: Definitely Dead

The sixth in the Sookie Stackhouse series, Definitely Dead by Charlaine Harris, is a bit of a return to form.

Sookie is left an inheritance by her cousin Hadley, former ghoul of the Queen of Louisiana. She has to go to New Orleans to collect.

At the same time, Eric Northman wants her to go to the Queen's wedding to use her telepathic powers for him. She's dating the were-tiger Quinn and they are attacked by werewolves.

So, there's quite a bit of plot here, which has been lacking in the last couple of Sookie stories. The Queen's marriage is a political one and her fiance is looking for an excuse to kill her. Such an excuse might be provided if a jewellery gift if missing - and the Queen asks Sookie to find it for her. Hadley stole it in a fit of pique and it's hidden amongst her belongings. Meanwhile the werewolf attacks turn out to be the revenge of relatives of Debbie Pelt, killed by Sookie in a previous book. It was nice to have some action going on and Definitely Dead is a return to the style of the first two books.

The sexual tension between Sookie and Quinn is pretty hot, which I liked. The relationships between Sookie and the other characters has developed a bit and they were more real. In previous books the supporting characters have been a bit flat, with Sookie the only one with real personality. This has been addressed a little and so the book was a bit more satisfying.

100 Books in 2011: The Post Office Girl

The Post Office Girl by Stefan Zweig was the last Book Club book of 2011. I didn't think I would enjoy it, but actually I loved it.

Christine is a young woman living in Austria in the years after the first world war. Life is hard, there's not enough money and the rooms she lives in with her mother are permanently damp.

Her aunt, who emigrated to the US before the war, is touring Europe and invites Christine to join her in a ski resort for a week or so. Her mother is too ill to go, so Christine goes instead. Her aunt and her husband are very rich and Christine is catapulted into a world of luxury.

But it comes to an abrupt end when gossip starts that Christine is not wealthy and is in fact a poor girl dressed up in her aunt's clothes. Christine returns home to find her mother has died and everything seems so much grimmer now.

Life goes on and Christine feels ever more estranged from the village. She decides to spend weekends in Vienna to try to recapture the glamour of her holiday. While she is there she visits with her sister and brother-in-law, Franz. On one occasion her brother-in-law runs into Ferdinand, who he had known in the war. In a quirk of fate, Franz got sent home and Ferdinand spent two years as a POW in Siberia. Ferdinand is bitter and disappointed at the arbitrariness of life and Christine finds her soul mate in him.

Their affair is made grim and joyless by their consciousness of their poverty and eventually begins to fizzle out. Then, unexpectedly, Ferdinand comes to see Christine in the post office because he has been laid off. He has a plan for them to commit suicide together and Christine agrees, but then Ferdinand discovers how much money is kept at the post office and hatches a new plan to steal the money ad flee to France. The book ends with him presenting his plan to Christine and asking if she wants to go along with it.

From a slightly slow start, this develops into a really fast-paced book. The pace is achieved by a POV tight into the head of the POV character resulting a stream of consciousness type narrative that is quite breathless. The emotion is ramped right up and it borders on melodrama at points. For me, that worked brilliantly. The swirl and joy and freedom of the two weeks Christine has in an environment where money appears to be limitless leave the reader as giddy as Christine. And then the plunge back into the grim, grinding, drabness of her life without money is just as all-consuming.

I liked the depiction of the relationship between Christine and Ferdinand. They didn't seem to like each other much, but the fact that they understood each other in a way no one else could bound them together. They shared despair and a sense of unfairness.

The ending was a bit strange, and lost the tone of the rest of the book. I suspect this is due to it having been published post-humously. Despite that, I really enjoyed this. It was difficult to put down, moving and the social commentary is still, tragically, relevant.

100 Books in 2011: Watchers

Watchers by Dean Koontz is a story about the consequences of genetic engineering. A little bit. Mostly its a creepy horror story of nice people being stalked by horrible things.

Travis Cornell is hiking when he meets a dog. The dog is quite keen to get him away from the woods and he realises they are being stalked by something large and dangerous. They get away and Travis takes the dog home. Later they meet Nora Devon who's being stalked by a sexual predator. The dog convinces Travis they should go to her house at the moment her stalker attacks her, and they are able to save Nora. A relationship develops and they become a family of sorts.

Vince Nasco is a hitman who has been hired to kill several scientists who were working on projects to genetically engineer a super-intelligent dog and a super-soldier baboon. He gets the idea that if he can find the dog he can get a lot of money in ransom for it. So he starts searching for Travis and his family.

National Security are searching for the baboon creature and the creature is searching for the dog, because it hates the dog.

I liked this quite a lot. It's tense, well-paced and compelling. The section at the start with Nora and her assailant is toe-curling. The mystery of what the scientists have been creating is revealed carefully. Characterisation is good, dialogue is good. This is evidence that best-selling pulp fiction can be really well written. It's the third of Dean Koontz's novels that I've read and easily the best. He's a prolific author and that can sometimes mean that some of his books aren't up to the same standard as others. This one though, is definitely worth reading.

If I had a criticism, it would be that the wholesome, god-fearing, family values American ideal is a little heavy-handed. But that is taken in balance with the way that he portrays the creature. To start with it is the stuff of nightmares, a relentless killing machine driven by irrational hate. But over the course of the book we learn how it was created, what was done to it, and how it became aware of what it was and how it experienced the digust of the people who had created it. It's quite heartbreaking and at the end, I cried for the monster. It's an achievement to create a chilling horror story and make your audience empathise with the monster. Highly recommended.

100 Books in 2011: No Place for a Lady

Somewhat disturbingly, I rather enjoyed No Place for a Lady by Louise Allen. I've grown so used to not enjoying Mills & Boon that at first I wondered if my critical faculties were on the fritz.

Bree Mallory runs a stagecoach company. She has aristocratic relations but has to make her own living which she does quite well. One night a driver lets her down and rather than cancel the coach, Bree drives it herself. On the way she is caught up in a race between members of a gentlemen's club. One of the racers is Max Dysart, a handsome, rich and eligible aristocrat.

Rather nicely, the conflict in their relationship is not driven by internal insecurities, but by the differences in their social status and by Max's uncertainty over whether his first wife is dead. Unfortunately, the plot twist at the end where someone pretends to be his dead wife is rushed and never really becomes a threat to the inevitable wedding.

Well, I sort of enjoyed most of it, because Louise Allen gets right something that really bugs me about Mills & Boon. She provides her romantic leads with context. There are lots of other characters, several of whom are well drawn and rounded, and the Regency set in London is brought to life quite effectively. Bree is genuinely an independent woman and that's quite refreshing.

Obviously, I'm not really recommending this as it's still a romance and not really my thing, but it was ok.

100 Books in 2011: The Left Hand of God

The Left Hand of God by Paul Hoffman is the first of a trilogy following the life of Thomas Cale, a strange boy with a dent in his head and the uncanny ability to anticipate an opponent's moves.

We meet Cale in the Sanctuary, a sort of monastery/training school for boys who are to become Redeemers. The faith expressed by Redeemers is a thinly veiled version of the Abrahamic religions and the Sanctuary is a brutal environment where the boys are treated with such violence and neglect that many of them don't survive. Cale is a survivor and what that makes of him is delicately handled, for the most part.

Cale discovers one of the Redeemers dissecting a girl while another girl is tied up waiting for it to be her turn. He kills the Redeemer and then has to escape. He takes with him two associates (friendship is an offence punishable by being beaten to death) because he believes they will suffer once he is discovered missing.

Against the odds, they evade the Redeemers sent to capture them and end up in Memphis, capital city of a nearby Empire. There they discover a world ruled by subtle gradations of status conferred by birth and bloodline. The Chancellor is a talented and intelligent man and recognises that Cale can give them information about the Sanctuary. He sends them to the Empire's military training academy where they wreak havoc and make some enemies. In passing, Cale meets the daughter of the Marshal of the Empire and falls in love. Said daughter, Arbell Swan-Neck, is kidnapped by the Redeemers in an attempt to draw the Empire into battle. Cale rescues her. The Redeemers attack again and Cale is forced to admit that the tactics they are using are his, but that he doesn't know what the big picture is. He doesn't know why the Redeemers are attacking, or really why they do anything. In the end, Cale finds himself back in the possession of the Redeemers.

This is an odd book. It starts off well. The initial chapters introducing us to the Sanctuary and the relationship between the boys are great. They are delightfully disturbing and the environment is solidly evoked. This world seems very real. The writing style is compelling and engaging. Characterisation is good, although less so for the female characters. The action and dialogue are great, keeping the book moving at a nice pace. This first quarter of the book is definitely the best and it is worth reading just for this.

Then it all gets a bit wobbly. The quality of the writing remains high and the style is still compelling. In fact, the writing style is basically what carried me through the rest of the book because there are some weaknesses. The main weakness is the worldbuilding. When the setting is the Sanctuary it's really good. This is a real place with great detail and an oppressive sense of horror about it. Outside the Sanctuary, everything seems a bit haphazard. Nothing seems to fit together particularly and there is some confusion about where places are in relation to each other.

If the POV was tight third person centred on Cale you could argue that he wouldn't have the first idea about the world outside the Sanctuary and that it would all be confused. But Hoffman uses a loose third person POV for various characters and frequently slips into an omniscient POV where the authorial voice can be used. His handling of POV is good and the changes flow smoothly. The use of the authorial voice contributes to the engaging nature of the writing style. However it jars badly with the poor worldbuilding. There are POV characters who would know exactly how their world works but they are never used to convey that information to the reader. And there's no map so you can't check (although I believe that if worldbuilding is done well a map is unnecessary).

To compound the rather haphazard communication of the worldbuilding, Hoffman randomly throws in elements of the real world, which, to my mind, only adds to the confusion. It starts with a reference to the Norwegians (never followed up), then one to the Middle East, then the Redeemers attack a city called York. I'm wondering if this is more of an alternative history than a fantasy but this is never revealed. (Whilst looking for the image for this post I went on the Left Hand of God website which has a map. It's not this world.) Towards the end, in a discussion about the cost of war, there is mention of a group of people called Jews who happen to live in a ghetto and lend money.

I know most fantasy worlds are based on elements of the real world and that some authors are better at it than others, but this is just lazy. It feels like he was just making it up as he was going along with absolutely no regard for internal coherence. It's annoying. But other elements of the book are really good. I don't really know whether to recommend it or not. I enjoyed it but also was frustrated with it.

100 Books in 2011: The Girl who Played with Fire

I've become fed up of reading short books in order to hit my 100 books for the year target and was feeling the need to get into something more substantial. The Girl who Played with Fire by Steig Larsson is the second in the Millenium trilogy and is a 650 page brick.

Lisbeth Salander is hiding out in the Carribean, having had some cosmetic surgery and done a bit of travelling. She's wondering what she will do with herself now she doesn't have to work for a living.

Blomkvist is working on an expose of the sex trade in Sweden. Salander comes back and starts to pick up the pieces of her life, including checking in on her guardian and making sure that she is on track to be declared competent. But her guardian has hired a hitman to kill her. Then the journalists Blomkvist is working with get killed and it looks like Salander is the murderer.

The police investigation focusses on finding Salander but Blomkvist doesn't believe she did it and does his own investigation. Salander takes matters into her own hands. All three investigations come together in a tense climax with some interesting revelations, which hopefully will be expanded on in the last book.

This book was actually a little better than the first one. It still suffered from a lack of editing, especially visible in the frequent summing up passages. It probably could have been a hundred pages shorter without losing anything.

The dialogue is stiff and stilted but the pacing of the action sequences is good. The plot and story line are really exciting and the characters are becoming more rounded and engaging. I wouldn't make this top of your reading list, but it is worth reading.

100 Books in 2011: Sword Song

Book 4 in Bernard Cornwell's Saxon Stories is Sword Song. Cornwell is one of my favourite authors and I am really enjoying the Saxon Stories.

Uhtred is nowhere nearer Bebbanburg. He's busy building forts to protect Wessex from the Danes and raising a family. Then some Danes invade London, try to convince Uhtred to join them by promising to make him King of Mercia so that he will bring Ragnar to join the cause.

At the same time, Uhtred's cousin Aethelred, is married to Alfred's daughter, Aethelflaed and becomes the Lord of Mercia. Not king though; Alfred doesn't want a King in Mercia. Alfred commands Uhtred to drive the Danes from London. He gives Aethelred the nominal command of the mission.

They win the battle for London and the Danes take refuge in the Kingdom of East Anglia from where they raid Wessex. On one of these raids, Aethelflaed is taken hostage and an enormous ransom is demanded. If it is paid, the Danes will have enough money to raise an army capable of overrunning Wessex. Uhtred is sent to negotiate and discovers that Aethelflaed has fallen in love with one of the Danes and they want to run away together. Uhtred is fond of Alfred's daughter and knows that her husband is violent and jealous, and if she goes with her lover then the ransom won't have to be paid and Wessex will be safe. So he agrees to help them escape.

I think I was grinning from the minute I opened this book. I like the character of Uhtred. It's told in first person but from the point of view of the elderly Uhtred looking back on his life, so the character can be presented as arrogant and impulsive, but with the self-deprecating awareness of experience. It's extremely likeable. Uhtred is a torn man. He's bound by oaths he doesn't want to keep and which prevent him following his dream. I can certainly identify with that.

A good third of the book is taken up by a detailed description of the battle for London, which is very exciting, but the consequence is that the plot feels quite thin in this book. I don't remember thinking that for the previous three. However, it is gripping and the Saxon Britain is fully brought to life. As always, Cornwell's skill is evident and the writing is excellent. I thoroughly enjoyed it and am looking forward to book five.