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mafiabadgers's reviews
148 reviews
The Mimicking of Known Successes by Malka Older
1.0
First read 03/2025
I really struggled to get into this one. The book was terribly short on description. Regarding our protagonists, Mossa had short hair. That's all I got. The setting also needed a lot more. Jupiter has metal rings running around it that function like train tracks, and people build habitat bubbles at various points along them. So far so good, but these bubbles are called platforms, not to be confused with the platforms for the trains, which are still called platforms, and the word is frequently used in both senses. The rings apparently intersect, but if I've got this right, the same two rings can intersect at enough points that it's difficult to predict another person's route? Either I'm imagining this wrong, or that's not how rings work. Putting a diagram at the front would have laid so, so much of the groundwork for this book. Don't get me wrong, I think trains are great, and writers should put more of them in space, but not like this. We never even learn what they look like on the outside. I don't think there was anything in this book I managed to visualise easily.
The only point where I felt the sci-fi element was handled well was in the off-the-cuff mentions of atmoscarfs and atmoshields: items familiar enough, and names evocative enough, to render explanation unnecessary. It took me a while to figure out exactly what the blurb meant when it described the book as "Holmesian"—wouldn't Doylist be more appropriate? But I eventually cottoned on to the fact that this is mediocre fanfiction about a gender-swapped, gay Holmes and Watson, who happen to be in space.
First things first, it's necessary to think of these characters as Holmes and Watson, because they don't hold up on their own. Mossa is ostensibly part of an organised, official investigative force (essentially space cops), but seems to do whatever she wants, with no oversight. This isn't treated as loose cannon behaviour, it's just taken for granted. When she arrests someone, she ties them up and leaves them lying on the floor of her house. Do they not have cells? Protocols for proper treatment of prisoners? I sense a lawsuit coming up. It's a private detective's approach to investigation, not that of someone with legally granted and curbed powers, and it's very jarring.
Secondly, the approach to writing relationships is right out of a fanfiction. When treating each other's wounds, characters may be overwhelmed by moments of skin-to-skin contact, rather than, I don't know, focusing on providing medical attention. It's not a plausible human reaction, but it's great if you want to play up a burgeoning relationship. Also, Pleiti blushes constantly, even though she's a professional academic instead of a hormonal teenager. I think writers should only be allowed to use the formulation "face heat" once per book. Even that may be excessive.
And third, these aren't characters who are organic products of their setting. Pleiti apparently has the leisure to walk away from her academic job to tag along on a murder investigation whenever she wishes, and Mossa's investigative approach I mentioned above. Even the setting isn't an organic product of the setting! The book is very clear that it's set in a future following on from our own, but Older's attempt to mimic Victorian language (invariably a doomed project for American writers) has convinced her shecan't cannot use contractions, which is jarring in a futuristic setting. Also, "Radiation and recombinants!" is a terrible curse, and yes, I'm nitpicking now, but hey, it annoyed me.
And my complaints are not merely technical, but political also! For starters, our academic protagonist gets called a conservative at one point, and whenever she remembers this she has to try very hard not to cry, even though she's essentially doing conservation work and the term is not inaccurate. She even refers to this as the "c-word". It comes across as an attempt to satirise overly sensitive academics who are excessively proud of the leftist credentials... or it would if the protagonist wasn't otherwise depicted sympathetically. It's baffling and bizarre and out of keeping with the rest of the book's tone. In addition to this, the argument that we cannot return to a halcyon golden age but must ceaselessly strive to build a better and different future, an argument typically used to critique reactionary politics, is principally voiced by a man who kills others who get in the way of him living the sort of life he wants to live. Yes, the protagonist grudgingly admits that the argument has its merits, but it's a disturbing framing nonetheless.
Anyway, I could have overlooked the lack of skill that went into this one. I might have been able to overlook the politics. But what I cannot overlook is the horrendous ending. Imagine reading a bog standard Sherlock Holmes mystery and then at the end, Watson says, 'I've just realised that the bad guy's going to release a virus that will kill half the world's population! We'd better get there in time to stop him.' And then they don't get there in time to stop him. Supposedly this has been set up because Watson is a doctor, so, you know, it's not completely out of nowhere, right?
Older expects me to believe thata small-scale murder mystery (working theory is that it's a land swindle) is actually part of a conspiracy to change the course of history. A conspiracy that can acquire and prep a rocket for launch. A conspiracy that can manufacture and install a theoretical nose cone design. A conspiracy that can clear out everyone who usually works at the rocket launch pads. A conspiracy consisting entirely of... three guys? I suppose it's not too implausible, given that prepping the rocket to launch consists of tapping buttons on a console that sits on the launch pad, right next to the rocket. Once you're done, you can just climb aboard and blast off in ten minutes! It feels like a film that ran out of budget and put the final sequence on an implausibly small set with a conspicuous lack of extras.
Full marks to Christine Foltzer for that cover design, though.
I really struggled to get into this one. The book was terribly short on description. Regarding our protagonists, Mossa had short hair. That's all I got. The setting also needed a lot more. Jupiter has metal rings running around it that function like train tracks, and people build habitat bubbles at various points along them. So far so good, but these bubbles are called platforms, not to be confused with the platforms for the trains, which are still called platforms, and the word is frequently used in both senses. The rings apparently intersect, but if I've got this right, the same two rings can intersect at enough points that it's difficult to predict another person's route? Either I'm imagining this wrong, or that's not how rings work. Putting a diagram at the front would have laid so, so much of the groundwork for this book. Don't get me wrong, I think trains are great, and writers should put more of them in space, but not like this. We never even learn what they look like on the outside. I don't think there was anything in this book I managed to visualise easily.
The only point where I felt the sci-fi element was handled well was in the off-the-cuff mentions of atmoscarfs and atmoshields: items familiar enough, and names evocative enough, to render explanation unnecessary. It took me a while to figure out exactly what the blurb meant when it described the book as "Holmesian"—wouldn't Doylist be more appropriate? But I eventually cottoned on to the fact that this is mediocre fanfiction about a gender-swapped, gay Holmes and Watson, who happen to be in space.
First things first, it's necessary to think of these characters as Holmes and Watson, because they don't hold up on their own. Mossa is ostensibly part of an organised, official investigative force (essentially space cops), but seems to do whatever she wants, with no oversight. This isn't treated as loose cannon behaviour, it's just taken for granted. When she arrests someone, she ties them up and leaves them lying on the floor of her house. Do they not have cells? Protocols for proper treatment of prisoners? I sense a lawsuit coming up. It's a private detective's approach to investigation, not that of someone with legally granted and curbed powers, and it's very jarring.
Secondly, the approach to writing relationships is right out of a fanfiction. When treating each other's wounds, characters may be overwhelmed by moments of skin-to-skin contact, rather than, I don't know, focusing on providing medical attention. It's not a plausible human reaction, but it's great if you want to play up a burgeoning relationship. Also, Pleiti blushes constantly, even though she's a professional academic instead of a hormonal teenager. I think writers should only be allowed to use the formulation "face heat" once per book. Even that may be excessive.
And third, these aren't characters who are organic products of their setting. Pleiti apparently has the leisure to walk away from her academic job to tag along on a murder investigation whenever she wishes, and Mossa's investigative approach I mentioned above. Even the setting isn't an organic product of the setting! The book is very clear that it's set in a future following on from our own, but Older's attempt to mimic Victorian language (invariably a doomed project for American writers) has convinced her she
And my complaints are not merely technical, but political also! For starters, our academic protagonist gets called a conservative at one point, and whenever she remembers this she has to try very hard not to cry, even though she's essentially doing conservation work and the term is not inaccurate. She even refers to this as the "c-word". It comes across as an attempt to satirise overly sensitive academics who are excessively proud of the leftist credentials... or it would if the protagonist wasn't otherwise depicted sympathetically. It's baffling and bizarre and out of keeping with the rest of the book's tone. In addition to this, the argument that we cannot return to a halcyon golden age but must ceaselessly strive to build a better and different future, an argument typically used to critique reactionary politics, is principally voiced by a man who kills others who get in the way of him living the sort of life he wants to live. Yes, the protagonist grudgingly admits that the argument has its merits, but it's a disturbing framing nonetheless.
Anyway, I could have overlooked the lack of skill that went into this one. I might have been able to overlook the politics. But what I cannot overlook is the horrendous ending. Imagine reading a bog standard Sherlock Holmes mystery and then at the end, Watson says, 'I've just realised that the bad guy's going to release a virus that will kill half the world's population! We'd better get there in time to stop him.' And then they don't get there in time to stop him. Supposedly this has been set up because Watson is a doctor, so, you know, it's not completely out of nowhere, right?
Older expects me to believe that
Full marks to Christine Foltzer for that cover design, though.
Under Your Spell by Laura Wood
3.0
First read 03/2025
I recently attended a literary pub quiz with some people from my book club. We won a handful of books, including this one. Nobody wanted it, being too busy fighting over the dinosaur lift-the-flap book. Since I had to run for my train, I grabbed it and disappeared into the night, swearing revenge.
I annotated it extensively so that I can more effectively force it on others in the club. The dedication declares that it's "For the six-books-a-week, just-one-more-page, trope-loving, library-card-owning, smutty-audio-book-in-public-listening, HEA-chasing dreamers. This is a love letter." Since it's 450 pages long, this did not suggest that it was written to stand up to close scrutiny. It didn't, but pulling it apart was half the fun.
It had very similar issues to Alexis Hall's Boyfriend Material, in that it's enamoured of the excessively-exercised, hyper-maintained male body, so while it's aware that such a body requires a physical and mental cost, its critique is fairly perfunctory and never willing to let it go.
Under Your Spell deals with fame the same way: for all its criticism of it, it ends with the couple voluntarily making the personal public, thereby shoring up the values of a surveillance society that positions publicity as sincerity. When it comes to romance and celebrity, that one Check, Please! fanfiction has yet to be knocked off its pedestal.
For all that it's badly written and poorly thought out, it was pretty good fun, and I struggled to put it down, so if you're likewise susceptible to zingy romance you should enjoy it.
I recently attended a literary pub quiz with some people from my book club. We won a handful of books, including this one. Nobody wanted it, being too busy fighting over the dinosaur lift-the-flap book. Since I had to run for my train, I grabbed it and disappeared into the night, swearing revenge.
I annotated it extensively so that I can more effectively force it on others in the club. The dedication declares that it's "For the six-books-a-week, just-one-more-page, trope-loving, library-card-owning, smutty-audio-book-in-public-listening, HEA-chasing dreamers. This is a love letter." Since it's 450 pages long, this did not suggest that it was written to stand up to close scrutiny. It didn't, but pulling it apart was half the fun.
It had very similar issues to Alexis Hall's Boyfriend Material, in that it's enamoured of the excessively-exercised, hyper-maintained male body, so while it's aware that such a body requires a physical and mental cost, its critique is fairly perfunctory and never willing to let it go.
Under Your Spell deals with fame the same way: for all its criticism of it, it ends with the couple voluntarily making the personal public, thereby shoring up the values of a surveillance society that positions publicity as sincerity. When it comes to romance and celebrity, that one Check, Please! fanfiction has yet to be knocked off its pedestal.
For all that it's badly written and poorly thought out, it was pretty good fun, and I struggled to put it down, so if you're likewise susceptible to zingy romance you should enjoy it.
The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi by S.A. Chakraborty
She's dictating the story to a scribe, and I'm willing to overlook all the usual conventions of this premise: that she never misspeaks or backtracks; that the scribe can take her words down verbatim; that she can recount every line of dialogue spoken by her and others. Since there is no in-fiction translator rendering her words in contemporary American English I am less willing to overlook phrasings like "get off of me" and "Anyway. Back to that night." Amina makes a point of beginning her narrative in a non-conventional, exciting manner, but within three pages she's breaking off to tell her learned scribe that "This part of the world has always been rich; the Romans once called us Arabia Felix, “Blessed Arabia,” for our access to the sea, reliable trade routes, and lucrative frankincense groves." When she's offered a million dinars, the explanation of how much she could buy with it feels less like an expression of her shock and more like a clumsy attempt to tell the reader how much money this is. It's jarring for this sort of exposition to be included in a story told between two historical individuals, and I do wish it had been left out, or worked into the book more elegantly.
The importance of religion is often glossed over in (historical) fantasy, so it was good to see it pervading this book. I think Amina could have spent a bit more time experiencing ethical qualms, though, to give her a bit more heft; as a character, she's more memorable for her snarky narrative tone than psychological depth. Her crew and her relationships with them don't get a lot of time, and they're all so bloody nice and emotionally intelligent that there's never any friction between them. Aside from their external enemies, Raksh is the only person to really antagonise the crew (Salima too, I suppose, but she's mostly off-page). Unfortunately, any animosity towards him comes through pretty weakly, Amina often being distracted from his actions by his good looks, which tend to position him in an 'attractive bad boy' sort of role. To Chakraborty's credit, he doesn't have the stereotypical bad boy personality, and he might have been my favourite character simply because his attitude doesn't conform to expectations.
The writing can be clunky, and I think this was the biggest thing holding me back from really getting into it. The locations were splendid, particularly Aden, the city built in the crater of an extinct sea volcano, and the ships were well described whenever they were viewed from a distance. More effort to evoke the experience of sailing would have improved things, though. The action scenes were consistently the best parts of the book, and the ones on the water were the best of the lot. In the end, it came down on the right side 'meh' to earn a second star, but I doubt I'll continue the series.
adventurous
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
2.0
First read 03/2025
Perhaps I had my hopes set a little too high for this one. Periodically I dip my toes into pirate fiction, searching for something with a real swashbuckling thrill, but I've never found anything that was entirely satisfying. The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi wasn't bad per se, but it never quite clicked.
The diegetic foreword gives us a few popular legends about Amina al-Sirafi, before telling us "that to be a woman is to have your story misremembered." This isn't conveying a historical belief about what women are like, but rather a comment about women as a collective and their treatment by a society that they are excluded from. It suggests a collective feminist consciousness that feels jarring from a supposedly mediaeval narrator. This is far from the only time in the book that characters feel more informed by Twitter politics than contemporary modes of thought—at one point, Amina declares that:
Perhaps I had my hopes set a little too high for this one. Periodically I dip my toes into pirate fiction, searching for something with a real swashbuckling thrill, but I've never found anything that was entirely satisfying. The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi wasn't bad per se, but it never quite clicked.
The diegetic foreword gives us a few popular legends about Amina al-Sirafi, before telling us "that to be a woman is to have your story misremembered." This isn't conveying a historical belief about what women are like, but rather a comment about women as a collective and their treatment by a society that they are excluded from. It suggests a collective feminist consciousness that feels jarring from a supposedly mediaeval narrator. This is far from the only time in the book that characters feel more informed by Twitter politics than contemporary modes of thought—at one point, Amina declares that:
I should have reached out sooner, and for that, I do apologize. But I am sorry for what happened at the village. I would never want you to think I would make such a distinction between our peoples, and if I've acted in a manner that suggests so... I need to change that.
She's dictating the story to a scribe, and I'm willing to overlook all the usual conventions of this premise: that she never misspeaks or backtracks; that the scribe can take her words down verbatim; that she can recount every line of dialogue spoken by her and others. Since there is no in-fiction translator rendering her words in contemporary American English I am less willing to overlook phrasings like "get off of me" and "Anyway. Back to that night." Amina makes a point of beginning her narrative in a non-conventional, exciting manner, but within three pages she's breaking off to tell her learned scribe that "This part of the world has always been rich; the Romans once called us Arabia Felix, “Blessed Arabia,” for our access to the sea, reliable trade routes, and lucrative frankincense groves." When she's offered a million dinars, the explanation of how much she could buy with it feels less like an expression of her shock and more like a clumsy attempt to tell the reader how much money this is. It's jarring for this sort of exposition to be included in a story told between two historical individuals, and I do wish it had been left out, or worked into the book more elegantly.
The importance of religion is often glossed over in (historical) fantasy, so it was good to see it pervading this book. I think Amina could have spent a bit more time experiencing ethical qualms, though, to give her a bit more heft; as a character, she's more memorable for her snarky narrative tone than psychological depth. Her crew and her relationships with them don't get a lot of time, and they're all so bloody nice and emotionally intelligent that there's never any friction between them. Aside from their external enemies, Raksh is the only person to really antagonise the crew (Salima too, I suppose, but she's mostly off-page). Unfortunately, any animosity towards him comes through pretty weakly, Amina often being distracted from his actions by his good looks, which tend to position him in an 'attractive bad boy' sort of role. To Chakraborty's credit, he doesn't have the stereotypical bad boy personality, and he might have been my favourite character simply because his attitude doesn't conform to expectations.
The writing can be clunky, and I think this was the biggest thing holding me back from really getting into it. The locations were splendid, particularly Aden, the city built in the crater of an extinct sea volcano, and the ships were well described whenever they were viewed from a distance. More effort to evoke the experience of sailing would have improved things, though. The action scenes were consistently the best parts of the book, and the ones on the water were the best of the lot. In the end, it came down on the right side 'meh' to earn a second star, but I doubt I'll continue the series.
Monstrilio by Gerardo Sámano Córdova
dark
emotional
sad
- Loveable characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.0
First read 03/2025
It was a good book, but it wasn't for me. It reminded me of Han Kang's Human Acts, in that it deals with some heavy stuff but it's not particularly cathartic, so it's best to set everything else aside and plough through it quickly. I read it over two days, which was too long.
The first section worked best for me as a piece of horror, and as a meditation on grief and its many derangements, but it became less and less unsettling as it went on. It's difficult to go all out on beautiful, literary prose when doing first-person narration, so the quality of this book mostly came from its particulary incisive statements about grief.
The most interesting issue raised by this book, for me, was the question of to what extent one should attempt to alter one's child into the person one thinks they ought to be, versus giving them free rein to be 'themselves' (whoever that might be; another preconception, perhaps). There is always something authoritarian in parenting, in the implicit assumption that the parent is better with the child and can therefore dictate their actions to an extent that would be horrifying if practiced upon an adult (except for those classic exceptions: the physically and mentally ill, the convict, the soldier...). At its best, this power is used to prevent children from crossing the road without looking; at its worst, to beat them for being too gay; but no matter how it is used, it relies on the exercising of power over an unwilling subject. We think well of parents who use 'alternative punishments' in place of corporal ones, but there is a violence there, too. The book doesn't do a lot to connect the parenting of the replacement child with parenting more broadly, and I don't suppose it particularly needed to, but it might have been more to my taste if it had.
It was a good book, but it wasn't for me. It reminded me of Han Kang's Human Acts, in that it deals with some heavy stuff but it's not particularly cathartic, so it's best to set everything else aside and plough through it quickly. I read it over two days, which was too long.
The first section worked best for me as a piece of horror, and as a meditation on grief and its many derangements, but it became less and less unsettling as it went on. It's difficult to go all out on beautiful, literary prose when doing first-person narration, so the quality of this book mostly came from its particulary incisive statements about grief.
The most interesting issue raised by this book, for me, was the question of to what extent one should attempt to alter one's child into the person one thinks they ought to be, versus giving them free rein to be 'themselves' (whoever that might be; another preconception, perhaps). There is always something authoritarian in parenting, in the implicit assumption that the parent is better with the child and can therefore dictate their actions to an extent that would be horrifying if practiced upon an adult (except for those classic exceptions: the physically and mentally ill, the convict, the soldier...). At its best, this power is used to prevent children from crossing the road without looking; at its worst, to beat them for being too gay; but no matter how it is used, it relies on the exercising of power over an unwilling subject. We think well of parents who use 'alternative punishments' in place of corporal ones, but there is a violence there, too. The book doesn't do a lot to connect the parenting of the replacement child with parenting more broadly, and I don't suppose it particularly needed to, but it might have been more to my taste if it had.
The Builders by Daniel Polansky
adventurous
dark
tense
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
4.0
First read 03/2025
Growing up, I read oodles of books by Beatrix Potter and Brian Jacques, as well as the Uttley & Tempest Little Grey Rabbit series. I had a mercilessly abridged copy of The Wind in the Willows, thankfully with the E.H. Shepard illustrations. There were others, too. There are always plenty of children's books about animals that wear clothes. It is unsurprising, then, that the desire to read about small furry animals in waistcoats persisted into adulthood. Yes, the later Redwall books were bloody, but I'd love to see the genre turned to more traditionally adult ends. I want to read life-and-death political intrigue books about shrews. I want to read Cold War spycraft shenangians starring gerbils. But for many years, I was unable to find such a book.
Enter The Builders. I got very excited when I first heard about it, and I have to say it delivered. The Wild West-iness of it all went down a lot better when accompanied by a cowboy playlist I made for TTRPGs a few years ago. It's all dialled up to eleven, Stetsons and shootouts and cigars, and it would be achingly generic pulp action if it weren't for the wee beasties. Over a quarter of the book is spent getting the crew back together! And it's so desperate for you to think it's cool that it would undercut itself, if it weren't for the simple fact that they're animals. In the acknowledgments, Polansky describes it as "essentially a one-note joke that remains funny for me", which is a perfectly accurate description. That said, I'm usually more willing to tolerate misogyny if it's in historical(ish) fiction, but I do think it was unnecessary here. Still, the women of the Captain's crew were written as well as the men; it only crops up in passing bouts, usually relating to prostitutes.
Other than that, my only real critique is that I think Polansky could have done more in the narration to sell me on the animal-ness of the characters. Convey emotion through a twitch of the ears or tail, have them stroke their whiskers, brush their fur. At several points he used "hand" when "paw" would have been more evocative. The book is trying to be an animal fantasy, so I'm not inclined to cut it any slack on that front.
I wasn't expecting quite so many of the animals to go down in a hail of bullets, but Polansky is a grimdark fantasy author, so I can't say I was too surprised. It was suprisingly affecting, in the end. The book will never win any literary awards (the inconsistent third person limited/omniscient switching was particularly annoying), but if you want to read about spilled whiskey, bloody revenge and torn fur, it'll hit the spot.
Growing up, I read oodles of books by Beatrix Potter and Brian Jacques, as well as the Uttley & Tempest Little Grey Rabbit series. I had a mercilessly abridged copy of The Wind in the Willows, thankfully with the E.H. Shepard illustrations. There were others, too. There are always plenty of children's books about animals that wear clothes. It is unsurprising, then, that the desire to read about small furry animals in waistcoats persisted into adulthood. Yes, the later Redwall books were bloody, but I'd love to see the genre turned to more traditionally adult ends. I want to read life-and-death political intrigue books about shrews. I want to read Cold War spycraft shenangians starring gerbils. But for many years, I was unable to find such a book.
Enter The Builders. I got very excited when I first heard about it, and I have to say it delivered. The Wild West-iness of it all went down a lot better when accompanied by a cowboy playlist I made for TTRPGs a few years ago. It's all dialled up to eleven, Stetsons and shootouts and cigars, and it would be achingly generic pulp action if it weren't for the wee beasties. Over a quarter of the book is spent getting the crew back together! And it's so desperate for you to think it's cool that it would undercut itself, if it weren't for the simple fact that they're animals. In the acknowledgments, Polansky describes it as "essentially a one-note joke that remains funny for me", which is a perfectly accurate description. That said, I'm usually more willing to tolerate misogyny if it's in historical(ish) fiction, but I do think it was unnecessary here. Still, the women of the Captain's crew were written as well as the men; it only crops up in passing bouts, usually relating to prostitutes.
Other than that, my only real critique is that I think Polansky could have done more in the narration to sell me on the animal-ness of the characters. Convey emotion through a twitch of the ears or tail, have them stroke their whiskers, brush their fur. At several points he used "hand" when "paw" would have been more evocative. The book is trying to be an animal fantasy, so I'm not inclined to cut it any slack on that front.
I wasn't expecting quite so many of the animals to go down in a hail of bullets, but Polansky is a grimdark fantasy author, so I can't say I was too surprised. It was suprisingly affecting, in the end. The book will never win any literary awards (the inconsistent third person limited/omniscient switching was particularly annoying), but if you want to read about spilled whiskey, bloody revenge and torn fur, it'll hit the spot.
The Cautious Traveller's Guide To the Wastelands by Sarah Brooks
It is also a climate change novel, as well as one concerned with the Company and its (desire for) controls. I was particularly interested in Zhang Weiwei, who was born and grew up on the train and now worked there. This was the only life she'd ever known, and yet it was wholly dependent on the continued and consistent operation of a Company that (perhaps necessarily, given its size) did not care about her or her wishes. Quite possibly many of the higher ups in the Company felt that their hands were tied by circumstances, leaving them with little choice but to act the way they did—certainly the powerful today are unwilling to see themselves as culpable for the world's ills. Whether that is the case or not, we are all slaves of capital, the ways and rhythms of our lives subject to change by forces that are man-made and yet far beyond our control, and I would have liked to see this explored more.
Some reviewers have said that they found the characters a bit flat, and I can see what they mean, but the way the book was narrated gave it a slightly distant feel in a way that reminded me of Tanith Lee. Not being entirely certain of the characters, of who they are and what they want, was entirely in keeping with the overall effect. Others have complained that it was too slow, and certainly there were not a lot of dramatic happenings until quite far in, but the air of mystery and the short chapters shifting between protagonists more than compensated for that. This also meant that we were able to get multiple opinions on things, such as the eponymous Guide; some characters treated it like a Bible, while other thought that Rostov, the author, was little more than a crank. In a court of law, multiple witnesses are considered to shore up the truth, but here the effect is very much to destabilise it.
I love it when a particular section of the world gets super fucky, whether it's the Zone in Roadside Picnic, the Mournland from Eberron, or the Misery in the otherwise mediocre Raven's Mark. (I really need to read Annihilation at some point.) This time it is the Wastelands, another unsettling exercise in psychogeography. I liked it best when it stuck to distortions of the natural world and the train/travellers—there were a few points when it tried to go beyond that (the big lizard monster, the character-prompted flooding near the end ) that didn't do it so much for me. The evolutionary biology concept of mimicry was very well deployed.
I also happen to like grand, imperious trains. For all my cultivated dislike of them, I cannot fully excise my fascination with the upper classes that still pervades England, and one of the ways this manifests itself is a love for the encapsulated luxury of an old-timey First Class carriage. This was a pretty good train, I have to say, and this book ranks way up there with Railhead in terms of train-based speculative fiction. It sells the old-timeyness of it reasonably well. The habit of referring to people as the Captain, the Cartographer, the Countess etc. put me in mind of Fallen London, or maybe a murder mystery, for reasons I can't quite pin down.
The only thing that I really disliked about it was the tendency to repeat lines from earlier to drive home their relevance. It was annoying when it happened in The House in the Cerulean Sea, and it was annoying here, though not nearly so egregious. I'd much rather the book trusted me to pay attention. That said, the whole time I was reading I couldn't help but imagine it as a high-budget miniseries, so the echoing felt more like a heavy-handed cinematic technique than didacticism.
The general thrust of the ending was fairly predictable, but perhaps necessary to drive home the political points it was making. Overall, it was a blast, and I'm glad I picked it up. Not quite an heir to Roadside Picnic, but certainly a worthy compatriot.
mysterious
reflective
tense
medium-paced
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
4.0
First read 03/2025 for the r/Fantasy book bingo (pub. 2024 square)
"The relation between organism and machine has been a border war."
—Donna Haraway, 'A Cyborg Manifesto', in Simians, Cyborgs, and Women (Free Association Books, 1991), p. 150
The Cautious Traveller's Guide to the Wastelands could almost have been inspired by Haraway's 1985 article, concerned as it is with the violation of boundaries and the possibilities thereof. The book sets up all sorts of oppositions: inside/outside, crew/passenger, natural/abomination, innocent/guilty, rational/superstitious, control/freedom, and has a great deal of fun toying with them. In so doing, it establishes itself first as a horror novel, concerned with the unfamiliar, the unstable, and the unsettling. (No coincidence that these are all un- words, a negation of the known point of reference.) As it goes on, it asks readers to accompany it in a giddy, headlong rush into the future and all the terrifying change caught up in that. The book's location at the end of the eighteenth century is part of this, I think.
"The relation between organism and machine has been a border war."
—Donna Haraway, 'A Cyborg Manifesto', in Simians, Cyborgs, and Women (Free Association Books, 1991), p. 150
The Cautious Traveller's Guide to the Wastelands could almost have been inspired by Haraway's 1985 article, concerned as it is with the violation of boundaries and the possibilities thereof. The book sets up all sorts of oppositions: inside/outside, crew/passenger, natural/abomination, innocent/guilty, rational/superstitious, control/freedom, and has a great deal of fun toying with them. In so doing, it establishes itself first as a horror novel, concerned with the unfamiliar, the unstable, and the unsettling. (No coincidence that these are all un- words, a negation of the known point of reference.) As it goes on, it asks readers to accompany it in a giddy, headlong rush into the future and all the terrifying change caught up in that. The book's location at the end of the eighteenth century is part of this, I think.
It is said that so much had been taken from the land that it was always hungry. It had been feeding off the blood spilled by the empires, and by the bones of the animals and people they left behind. It gained a taste for death.
It is also a climate change novel, as well as one concerned with the Company and its (desire for) controls. I was particularly interested in Zhang Weiwei, who was born and grew up on the train and now worked there. This was the only life she'd ever known, and yet it was wholly dependent on the continued and consistent operation of a Company that (perhaps necessarily, given its size) did not care about her or her wishes. Quite possibly many of the higher ups in the Company felt that their hands were tied by circumstances, leaving them with little choice but to act the way they did—certainly the powerful today are unwilling to see themselves as culpable for the world's ills. Whether that is the case or not, we are all slaves of capital, the ways and rhythms of our lives subject to change by forces that are man-made and yet far beyond our control, and I would have liked to see this explored more.
Some reviewers have said that they found the characters a bit flat, and I can see what they mean, but the way the book was narrated gave it a slightly distant feel in a way that reminded me of Tanith Lee. Not being entirely certain of the characters, of who they are and what they want, was entirely in keeping with the overall effect. Others have complained that it was too slow, and certainly there were not a lot of dramatic happenings until quite far in, but the air of mystery and the short chapters shifting between protagonists more than compensated for that. This also meant that we were able to get multiple opinions on things, such as the eponymous Guide; some characters treated it like a Bible, while other thought that Rostov, the author, was little more than a crank. In a court of law, multiple witnesses are considered to shore up the truth, but here the effect is very much to destabilise it.
I love it when a particular section of the world gets super fucky, whether it's the Zone in Roadside Picnic, the Mournland from Eberron, or the Misery in the otherwise mediocre Raven's Mark. (I really need to read Annihilation at some point.) This time it is the Wastelands, another unsettling exercise in psychogeography. I liked it best when it stuck to distortions of the natural world and the train/travellers—there were a few points when it tried to go beyond that (
I also happen to like grand, imperious trains. For all my cultivated dislike of them, I cannot fully excise my fascination with the upper classes that still pervades England, and one of the ways this manifests itself is a love for the encapsulated luxury of an old-timey First Class carriage. This was a pretty good train, I have to say, and this book ranks way up there with Railhead in terms of train-based speculative fiction. It sells the old-timeyness of it reasonably well. The habit of referring to people as the Captain, the Cartographer, the Countess etc. put me in mind of Fallen London, or maybe a murder mystery, for reasons I can't quite pin down.
The only thing that I really disliked about it was the tendency to repeat lines from earlier to drive home their relevance. It was annoying when it happened in The House in the Cerulean Sea, and it was annoying here, though not nearly so egregious. I'd much rather the book trusted me to pay attention. That said, the whole time I was reading I couldn't help but imagine it as a high-budget miniseries, so the echoing felt more like a heavy-handed cinematic technique than didacticism.
The general thrust of the ending was fairly predictable, but perhaps necessary to drive home the political points it was making. Overall, it was a blast, and I'm glad I picked it up. Not quite an heir to Roadside Picnic, but certainly a worthy compatriot.
Shigidi and the Brass Head of Obalufon by Wole Talabi
Did not finish book. Stopped at 24%.
Did not finish book. Stopped at 24%.
DNFed 03/2025
Shigidi and Nneoma feel like caricatures of masculinity and femininity. He's tall and heavily muscled, as the book keeps reminding me, and she's all breasts and hips and raw sex appeal. She is, unsuprisingly, a succubus, because what else could a female spirit be? Certainly not a uniquely talented nightmare god. She has sex three times in the first five chapters, and the emphasis is always on male pleasure derived from her body, and frankly it's all rather wearying. Plus, the writing isn't good enough to make this story of spirit companies and supernatural corporate espionage gripping.
Shigidi and Nneoma feel like caricatures of masculinity and femininity. He's tall and heavily muscled, as the book keeps reminding me, and she's all breasts and hips and raw sex appeal. She is, unsuprisingly, a succubus, because what else could a female spirit be? Certainly not a uniquely talented nightmare god. She has sex three times in the first five chapters, and the emphasis is always on male pleasure derived from her body, and frankly it's all rather wearying. Plus, the writing isn't good enough to make this story of spirit companies and supernatural corporate espionage gripping.
The Book of Swords by Gardner Dozois
adventurous
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.0
First read 01-03/2025
Dozois' introduction is a perfectly functional recounting of the history of the sword and sorcery subgenre, with a touch of nostalgia for boyhood purchases of various anthologies and magazines. There isn't really anything else that can be said about it. The author introductions that precede each story are similarly unimaginative, listing off book titles and awards before giving an incredibly rudimentary premise. I know Dozois has a reputation as a legendary editor—presumably this comes from his behind-the-scenes work with the authors, or the sheer number of titles he's put out. It's certainly not coming through in the finished product. The stories are of a remarkably uniform length and quality—nothing overwhelmingly good, but sword and sorcery is not renowned for its literary productions. A good recommendation for any fans of the subgenre. Favourites have been starred.
'The Best Man Wins', K. J. Parker, three stars.
It's fitting that the anthology should start with a sword-forging story. Perhaps a sword will break in the last one to round things out? (Edit: it didn't. ) Narrated by the swordsmith, who gives us enough insight into his own past to make things interesting. The twist is visible from a mile away, but it doesn't hurt the story since it's already drawing on those sorts of archetypes. Tonally, it's unremarkable gritty tough-guy stuff.
* 'Her Father’s Sword', Robin Hobb, three stars.
I have only the dimmest memory of reading Assassin's Apprentice from my local library as a kid—it didn't click, but after all these years I'd be willing to give it another go, and all the more so after reading this story. Technically part of the same series, it works just fine without any knowledge of the setting. After having been taken by raiders, villagers begin to return to their homes without any inhibitions whatsoever. They're called "Forged", with a capital F to make you understand how big a change this is. It's suggested that magic might be involved in the process, but never clarified, and the spectre of the lobotomy hangs heavily over the story, giving it a deeply unsettling air that blends well with the grief and the pain. Great stuff.
'The Hidden Girl', Ken Liu, one star.
I've never really been able to get into Asian-inspired fantasy fiction, though I keep trying. Liu isn't necessarily a bad writer, I don't think, but he can't do action, which is a shame, because it makes up most of this story. I think he imagines the scene very vividly, but then makes the mistake of trying to write down exactly what's happening. The over-description gives the impression that the reader ought to know exactly how people are positioned and what movements they're making, even though action writing benefits from leaving those unnecessary details to the imagination.
'The Sword of Destiny', Matthew Hughes, one star.
A rather generic story, poorly punctuated, with total disregard for its one female character.
'‘I Am a Handsome Man,’ Said Apollo Crow', Kate Elliott, two stars.
A wearily enjoyable story, rather too willing to co-opt the aesthetics of revolution without thinking about why it might matter. More description might have helped it nail the atmosphere.
'The Triumph of Virtue', Walter Jon Williams, three stars.
I haven't read Williams' Hardwired series, but it looks good, and this story bodes well for it. If I were inclined to quibble I'd say that without magic, it's a Ruritanian romance rather than sword and sorcery, but it's a compelling little adventure. All the same, I'm not rushing out to pick up the Quillifer books, which feature the same protagonist.
'The Mocking Tower', Daniel Abraham, two stars.
Not a bad story by any means! The dénouement was very satisfying and really gave it some thematic heft. Some good stuff about fathers and sons and grief and growing old. Unfortunately the slightly clunky writing and generic fantasy components made it difficult to appreciate before that point.
'Hrunting', C. J. Cherryh, three stars.
I haven't read any other Cherryh but she's on my list, and going by this story she ought to be respectably good. This story picks up a generation after the events of Beowulf, treating that story as a song passed down by skalds rather than as a canonical foundation. Thematically, it's not treading any new ground, but it was nicely done. A good one for people called Tara.
'A Long, Cold Trail', Garth Nix, one star.
I enjoyed quite a lot of Nix's books growing up, and the first three Old Kingdom books (Sabriel, Lirael, Abhorsen) held up fairly well when I reread them a few years ago. He can't do endings, though, but I didn't think that would be a problem in a short story. Turns out that Nix's short storytelling style involves a lot of clunky exposition, and also cuts off even before the action is finished. Disappointing.
* 'When I Was a Highwayman', Ellen Kushner, four stars.
I picked up this collection because there were so many familiar names in it. I haven't read Kushner before, but I have an copy of The Complete Riverside lurking on my ereader. I see I shall have to bump it up the list! This is a tale of freewheeling bisexuality, of good days and lean times, of obsession and love and murder. Looking at Wikipedia, it seems to be a prequel to the 1987 queernorm fantasy of manners Swordspoint. Stay winning, bisexuals.
* 'The Smoke of Gold Is Glory', Scott Lynch, three stars.
I think I remember seeing somewhere that Lynch enjoys running D&D games? This was definitely a story drawing heavily on D&D tropes, even riffing on play conventions at times. I've often said that there has never been a D&D novel that was good, but that's not to say they can't be fun; fortunately this is a short story and also not a licensed work, because it came perilously close to making me give up my maxim.
'The Colgrid Conundrum', Rich Larson, three stars.
If you've played Dishonored or Blades in the Dark, then the smokey, industrial streets of Colgrid will feel very familiar. A pair of thieves with troubled consciences get dragged into a revenge plot; it's reasonably well done, a fun and satisfying read, but like every other piece in the collection it lacks the literary heft it would need to really boost its rating.
'The King’s Evil', Elizabeth Bear, one star.
The introductory spiel suggests that "they have no idea at all what they're getting themselves into. If they had, they might have rowed back again just as quickly..." Unfortunately, it turns out that our adventurers are fairly well-equipped to deal with the situation, and do so rather competently. If the story had taken the time for more description, I think it would have worked much better, but unfortunately it tried to jam a variety of disparate concepts together, not too successfully.
'Waterfalling', Lavie Tidhar, three stars.
Replace the eye-rolling misogyny of Conan the Barbarian with guns and you've got the feel of 'Waterfalling' down to a T. It constantly throws in references to distant lands, cultures, and "races", thereby creating the impression of a far vaster setting than we get to see in the story—an old trick, but successful. Competently written and entertaining, but without hope or joy there's little reason to return to it.
'The Sword Tyraste', Cecelia Holland, three stars.
The evil king has promised to set the dwarves free once they make him a good sword. Predictably, he kills them. A young man is the lone survivor of an attack by the king's men. Predictably, he swears revenge. Things play out exactly as expected, but it was written well enough to draw me in. Enjoyable fare.
'The Sons of the Dragon', George R. R. Martin, two stars.
I haven't read any ASOIAF since secondary school, when it was tolerably enjoyable. Imagine my surprise when incest crops up... in the very first line. It's more like a chronicle of the events of a strategy board game than a story in the usual sense, an endless cascade of names, births, and deaths. All things considered it's surprisingly engrossing, but the relentless bloodshed begins to feel miserable rather than dramatic. Probably should have stayed amongst Martin's notes as an aide-mémoire.
Dozois' introduction is a perfectly functional recounting of the history of the sword and sorcery subgenre, with a touch of nostalgia for boyhood purchases of various anthologies and magazines. There isn't really anything else that can be said about it. The author introductions that precede each story are similarly unimaginative, listing off book titles and awards before giving an incredibly rudimentary premise. I know Dozois has a reputation as a legendary editor—presumably this comes from his behind-the-scenes work with the authors, or the sheer number of titles he's put out. It's certainly not coming through in the finished product. The stories are of a remarkably uniform length and quality—nothing overwhelmingly good, but sword and sorcery is not renowned for its literary productions. A good recommendation for any fans of the subgenre. Favourites have been starred.
'The Best Man Wins', K. J. Parker, three stars.
It's fitting that the anthology should start with a sword-forging story. Perhaps a sword will break in the last one to round things out? (
* 'Her Father’s Sword', Robin Hobb, three stars.
I have only the dimmest memory of reading Assassin's Apprentice from my local library as a kid—it didn't click, but after all these years I'd be willing to give it another go, and all the more so after reading this story. Technically part of the same series, it works just fine without any knowledge of the setting. After having been taken by raiders, villagers begin to return to their homes without any inhibitions whatsoever. They're called "Forged", with a capital F to make you understand how big a change this is. It's suggested that magic might be involved in the process, but never clarified, and the spectre of the lobotomy hangs heavily over the story, giving it a deeply unsettling air that blends well with the grief and the pain. Great stuff.
'The Hidden Girl', Ken Liu, one star.
I've never really been able to get into Asian-inspired fantasy fiction, though I keep trying. Liu isn't necessarily a bad writer, I don't think, but he can't do action, which is a shame, because it makes up most of this story. I think he imagines the scene very vividly, but then makes the mistake of trying to write down exactly what's happening. The over-description gives the impression that the reader ought to know exactly how people are positioned and what movements they're making, even though action writing benefits from leaving those unnecessary details to the imagination.
'The Sword of Destiny', Matthew Hughes, one star.
A rather generic story, poorly punctuated, with total disregard for its one female character.
'‘I Am a Handsome Man,’ Said Apollo Crow', Kate Elliott, two stars.
A wearily enjoyable story, rather too willing to co-opt the aesthetics of revolution without thinking about why it might matter. More description might have helped it nail the atmosphere.
'The Triumph of Virtue', Walter Jon Williams, three stars.
I haven't read Williams' Hardwired series, but it looks good, and this story bodes well for it. If I were inclined to quibble I'd say that without magic, it's a Ruritanian romance rather than sword and sorcery, but it's a compelling little adventure. All the same, I'm not rushing out to pick up the Quillifer books, which feature the same protagonist.
'The Mocking Tower', Daniel Abraham, two stars.
Not a bad story by any means! The dénouement was very satisfying and really gave it some thematic heft. Some good stuff about fathers and sons and grief and growing old. Unfortunately the slightly clunky writing and generic fantasy components made it difficult to appreciate before that point.
'Hrunting', C. J. Cherryh, three stars.
I haven't read any other Cherryh but she's on my list, and going by this story she ought to be respectably good. This story picks up a generation after the events of Beowulf, treating that story as a song passed down by skalds rather than as a canonical foundation. Thematically, it's not treading any new ground, but it was nicely done. A good one for people called Tara.
'A Long, Cold Trail', Garth Nix, one star.
I enjoyed quite a lot of Nix's books growing up, and the first three Old Kingdom books (Sabriel, Lirael, Abhorsen) held up fairly well when I reread them a few years ago. He can't do endings, though, but I didn't think that would be a problem in a short story. Turns out that Nix's short storytelling style involves a lot of clunky exposition, and also cuts off even before the action is finished. Disappointing.
* 'When I Was a Highwayman', Ellen Kushner, four stars.
I picked up this collection because there were so many familiar names in it. I haven't read Kushner before, but I have an copy of The Complete Riverside lurking on my ereader. I see I shall have to bump it up the list! This is a tale of freewheeling bisexuality, of good days and lean times, of obsession and love and murder. Looking at Wikipedia, it seems to be a prequel to the 1987 queernorm fantasy of manners Swordspoint. Stay winning, bisexuals.
* 'The Smoke of Gold Is Glory', Scott Lynch, three stars.
I think I remember seeing somewhere that Lynch enjoys running D&D games? This was definitely a story drawing heavily on D&D tropes, even riffing on play conventions at times. I've often said that there has never been a D&D novel that was good, but that's not to say they can't be fun; fortunately this is a short story and also not a licensed work, because it came perilously close to making me give up my maxim.
'The Colgrid Conundrum', Rich Larson, three stars.
If you've played Dishonored or Blades in the Dark, then the smokey, industrial streets of Colgrid will feel very familiar. A pair of thieves with troubled consciences get dragged into a revenge plot; it's reasonably well done, a fun and satisfying read, but like every other piece in the collection it lacks the literary heft it would need to really boost its rating.
'The King’s Evil', Elizabeth Bear, one star.
The introductory spiel suggests that "they have no idea at all what they're getting themselves into. If they had, they might have rowed back again just as quickly..." Unfortunately, it turns out that our adventurers are fairly well-equipped to deal with the situation, and do so rather competently. If the story had taken the time for more description, I think it would have worked much better, but unfortunately it tried to jam a variety of disparate concepts together, not too successfully.
'Waterfalling', Lavie Tidhar, three stars.
Replace the eye-rolling misogyny of Conan the Barbarian with guns and you've got the feel of 'Waterfalling' down to a T. It constantly throws in references to distant lands, cultures, and "races", thereby creating the impression of a far vaster setting than we get to see in the story—an old trick, but successful. Competently written and entertaining, but without hope or joy there's little reason to return to it.
'The Sword Tyraste', Cecelia Holland, three stars.
The evil king has promised to set the dwarves free once they make him a good sword. Predictably, he kills them. A young man is the lone survivor of an attack by the king's men. Predictably, he swears revenge. Things play out exactly as expected, but it was written well enough to draw me in. Enjoyable fare.
'The Sons of the Dragon', George R. R. Martin, two stars.
I haven't read any ASOIAF since secondary school, when it was tolerably enjoyable. Imagine my surprise when incest crops up... in the very first line. It's more like a chronicle of the events of a strategy board game than a story in the usual sense, an endless cascade of names, births, and deaths. All things considered it's surprisingly engrossing, but the relentless bloodshed begins to feel miserable rather than dramatic. Probably should have stayed amongst Martin's notes as an aide-mémoire.
Hellish Nell: Last of Britain's Witches by Malcolm Gaskill
This quote neatly encapsulates the ambiguity that pervades the book. The Notes section at the back doesn't clarify what that last clause means, and no explanation is given in the chapter itself. Whose memories faded? How could Gaskill's research have drawn on a faded memory? It's a baffling line.
The first six chapters (out of ten) seem oddly credulous of these accounts of ectoplasm and materialisation, and when the unreliability of the sources is raised, it is glossed over. Page 21 mentions a memoir but casts doubt on its authenticity in the same breath; nonetheless, a good deal of Gaskill's material is drawn from it, as well as other sources similarly close to Duncan. Chapter Three opens with the story of Duncan's grandchildren, left alone in the house, seeing an apparition of her, reported just as factually as the events of her trial. I initially assumed that Gaskill had fallen in love with his material and was loathe to strip away the supernatural air, but in his acknowledgements, he said that he wholeheartedly endorsed "Collingwood's dictum that history should aim to be 'the re-enactment of past experience'". Apparently, that only stretches as far as the experience of the mistaken, the deluded, and the conned. (Notably absent from the book are the much-discussed photographs; here's one, and it looks ridiculous.)
Only in the epilogue are we told that "The research materials for this book lend themselves more to fiction than would be usual in a historical biography, which is why I have limited how far the narrative steps outside the world those materials purport to describe." (p. 378) I think I would have had much more patience for the liberties this book takes if it had said this up front, but even then, some sections are still going too far: the assertion that "Between three and four in the morning, with Albert and the legions of the beloved dead beckoning in her dreams, Helen pushed softly through the veil" really hacked me off—how could he possibly know what she was dreaming about as she died? I suspect Gaskill felt the primary audience for a book about Duncan would inevitably be present-day Spiritualists, and was reluctant to take too combative a stance.
Before it was issued in a revised edition, the subtitle was "Last of Britain's Witches", which seems far more appropriate for a book that is more a biography than it is a deep dive into her 1944 trial. The first six chapters tell her life story up to her post-trial imprisonment, beginning with a wearyingly long aside on the tenuous supernatural connections of Callander, the town she was born in. Aside from the lack of critique, it's interesting enough. Chapter Six was particularly good, specifically the sections discussing wartime secrecy and paranoia and their intersection with Spiritualism. The book began to give me what I wanted after that, with Chapter Seven covering contemporary conjuring tricks; it was the first chapter to take a critical stance, and to address the psychological reasons why people believe in these things, from both sides of the curtain. Chapter Eight tackled Spiritualism as perceived by The Powers That Be, reframing it as a potent presence in contemporary politics, rather than just a balm for the grieving. It reverts to the wishful thinking of the early chapters to close out its account of Duncan's life. The book's working with some interesting material, but I wish it had been handled better. For an example of a book dealing much more deftly with very similar topics, see Judith Brown's Immodest Acts: The Life of a Lesbian Nun in Renaissance Italy.
1.0
First read 03/2025 for Farnham book club
No matter what the Storygraph tags say, this is not a challenging book, except insofar as it rattles off a lot of names and acronyms and doesn't provide a good way of keeping track of them all. It's fairly easy to separate them into the for and against camps based on context, though, and within those categories they're fairly interchangeable. It is very much a popular history book, not an academic one.
No matter what the Storygraph tags say, this is not a challenging book, except insofar as it rattles off a lot of names and acronyms and doesn't provide a good way of keeping track of them all. It's fairly easy to separate them into the for and against camps based on context, though, and within those categories they're fairly interchangeable. It is very much a popular history book, not an academic one.
Albert was one of the few spirits to admit that war was inevitable, and further predicted the coming of a great British leader, the failure of a German invasion, the alliance with Soviet Russia and the survival of the Empire - although memories of this last prophecy were to fade. [p. 154]
This quote neatly encapsulates the ambiguity that pervades the book. The Notes section at the back doesn't clarify what that last clause means, and no explanation is given in the chapter itself. Whose memories faded? How could Gaskill's research have drawn on a faded memory? It's a baffling line.
The first six chapters (out of ten) seem oddly credulous of these accounts of ectoplasm and materialisation, and when the unreliability of the sources is raised, it is glossed over. Page 21 mentions a memoir but casts doubt on its authenticity in the same breath; nonetheless, a good deal of Gaskill's material is drawn from it, as well as other sources similarly close to Duncan. Chapter Three opens with the story of Duncan's grandchildren, left alone in the house, seeing an apparition of her, reported just as factually as the events of her trial. I initially assumed that Gaskill had fallen in love with his material and was loathe to strip away the supernatural air, but in his acknowledgements, he said that he wholeheartedly endorsed "Collingwood's dictum that history should aim to be 'the re-enactment of past experience'". Apparently, that only stretches as far as the experience of the mistaken, the deluded, and the conned. (Notably absent from the book are the much-discussed photographs; here's one, and it looks ridiculous.)
Only in the epilogue are we told that "The research materials for this book lend themselves more to fiction than would be usual in a historical biography, which is why I have limited how far the narrative steps outside the world those materials purport to describe." (p. 378) I think I would have had much more patience for the liberties this book takes if it had said this up front, but even then, some sections are still going too far: the assertion that "Between three and four in the morning, with Albert and the legions of the beloved dead beckoning in her dreams, Helen pushed softly through the veil" really hacked me off—how could he possibly know what she was dreaming about as she died? I suspect Gaskill felt the primary audience for a book about Duncan would inevitably be present-day Spiritualists, and was reluctant to take too combative a stance.
Before it was issued in a revised edition, the subtitle was "Last of Britain's Witches", which seems far more appropriate for a book that is more a biography than it is a deep dive into her 1944 trial. The first six chapters tell her life story up to her post-trial imprisonment, beginning with a wearyingly long aside on the tenuous supernatural connections of Callander, the town she was born in. Aside from the lack of critique, it's interesting enough. Chapter Six was particularly good, specifically the sections discussing wartime secrecy and paranoia and their intersection with Spiritualism. The book began to give me what I wanted after that, with Chapter Seven covering contemporary conjuring tricks; it was the first chapter to take a critical stance, and to address the psychological reasons why people believe in these things, from both sides of the curtain. Chapter Eight tackled Spiritualism as perceived by The Powers That Be, reframing it as a potent presence in contemporary politics, rather than just a balm for the grieving. It reverts to the wishful thinking of the early chapters to close out its account of Duncan's life. The book's working with some interesting material, but I wish it had been handled better. For an example of a book dealing much more deftly with very similar topics, see Judith Brown's Immodest Acts: The Life of a Lesbian Nun in Renaissance Italy.