Desolation Road, by Ian McDonald
This book should not work.
The first few chapters are “and then this person arrived in this place that has no right to exist”. Sometimes the person or family group have some explanation about who they are or why they’re travelling; sometimes their background is incredibly vague. There are hints and vague hand-wavings at what might be coming in the future because of a particular character, and then it takes a hundred pages for anything like that to happen. There are possibly-magical occurrences, there are references that make it sound like you’ve missed the first two books in the trilogy (Our Lady of Tharsis…) and it takes FOREVER until there is something resembling a narrative.
This book absolutely works. And I don’t know why.
Well, I do: it’s because McDonald is an astonishing storyteller, and all of those things that seem wrong just become utterly intriguing and compelling. Someone who manages to make a time machine because a green person pops up at their camp as they travel across the desert? OK. Triplets who may or may not be clones; twins who split the rational and the mystical between them; someone who has an uncanny way with machines… yep, fine. I’ll read it. People are adults at 10 years old? Oh right, it’s Mars, and the Martian year is 2/3 longer again than an Earth year. So yes, actually, that’s fine.
Imagine writing this, and selling this, as one of your first books.
The Eagle and the Lion: Rome, Persia, and an Unwinnable Conflict
I read this thanks to NetGalley and the publisher, Apollo. It’s out now.
Some time back I read a book about the Mongolians, in particular at the western edges of their advance, and how those kingdoms related to what I know as the Crusader States. It completely blew my mind because I’ve read a bit about the ‘Crusades’ general era, and that book made me realise just how western-focussed my understanding had been: the invading Europeans connecting back to Europe and maybe Egypt (thanks to Saladin); maybe you’d hear about the Golden Horde occasionally. But interacting with the Mongols was HUGELY important.
This book does a similar thing for Rome. My focus has always been on the Republic and early principate, so maybe that has had an influence. But in my reading, Crassus’ loss at Carrhae is present but (at least in my hazy memory of what I’ve read), it’s almost like Parthia comes out of nowhere to inflict this defeat. Persia then looms as the Big Bad, but I think that dealing with the Germanic tribes and the Goths etc seem to take a lot more space. Even for the eastern empire, which is definitely not my forte, regaining Italy etc and fighting west and north (and internally) seems to get more attention.
And then you read a book like this. It is, of course, heavily leaning in the other direction; that’s the entire point, to start redressing some of the UNbalance that otherwise exists. These two empires could be seen as, and describe themselves as, the “two eyes” or “two lanterns” of the world (those are Persian descriptions); for basically their entire collective existence they were the two largest empires in this area (China probably rivalled them at least at some points, but although there were tenuous commercial connections, they’re really not interacting in similar spheres). It makes sense that the relationship between them, and how they navigated that relationship, should be a key part of understanding those two empires.
Goldsworthy does an excellent job of pointing out the limitations in ALL of the sources – Greco-Roman, Parthian, Persian – and clearly pointing out where things could do with a lot more clarity, but the information just doesn’t exist. Within that, he’s done a really wonderful job at illuminating a lot of the interactions between Rome and Parthia/Persia. And he also clearly points out where he’s skipping over bits for the sake of brevity, which I deeply appreciate in such a book.
It’s not the most straightforward history book of the era. It covers 700 years or so, so there’s a lot of dates, and a lot changes in this time as well – republic to principate to later empire, for Rome; Parthian to Persian; countless civil wars on both sides. A lot of leaders with the same or similar names, unfamiliar places names, and all of those things that go towards this sort of history book requiring that bit more attention. I definitely wouldn’t recommend this as My First Roman History Book! But if you’re already in the period and/or area, I think this is an excellent addition to the historiography. Very enjoyable.
The Daughter of Doctor Moreau, by Silvia Moreno-Garcia
I don’t think I’ve read The Island of Dr Moreau – or if I have, back when I thought I should read some classic SF, it was so long ago that I have no memory of it. I know the basic idea of the story: an island, where Dr Moreau has been doing human/animal hybrid experiments; I think things go badly? That’s it. I assume Moreau has a daughter in that story, but honestly maybe Moreno-Garcia just added her in? I don’t know, and actually I don’t care. I’m sure that for Wells aficionados there are lots of clever little moments in this novel. I didn’t see them, and it didn’t make a lick of difference. This story is fantastic in and of itself.
It’s set between 1871 and 1877, in what is today Mexico – specifically, Yucatán, which (I have learned) has sometimes been regarded basically as an island due to both geography and history. The story is told from alternating points of view. One is that of Carlota, the titular daughter, a young adolescent at the opening of the story. The other is Montgomery Laughton, an Englishman.
Carlota has grown up at Yaxaktun, a remote ranch, where her father has been undertaking experiments in creating human/animal hybrids. He doesn’t own it; he has been supported by Hernando Lizalde, who is expecting to get pliant workers out of the deal. Her mother is unknown, and her companions have been the hybrids themselves, along with the housekeeper Ramona. She hasn’t particularly wanted to leave, and has had a fairly good if spotty education courtesy of her father.
Montgomery has been away from England for many decades, and has spent several years now vacillating between intermittent work and considering drinking himself to death. He arrives at Yaxaktun to be the new mayordomo, although whether he’s meant to be more loyal to Moreau or Lizalde is unclear. His tragic backstory is gradually laid out although it’s never played up enough to really make him the focus of the story; for all that he shares narrator duties, Carlota is absolutely the centre of this book.
As you might expect, things do not go as Dr Moreau would like. His experiments do not produce the results he desires – and whether that’s perfecting human/animal hybrids for themselves, or somehow finding ‘cures’ to human problems, is debatable. Lizalde gets impatient at the lack of results, and brings the threat of shutting Moreau down. And then there’s Lizalde’s son, who visits and meets the lovely (and unworldly) Carlota, which has obvious consequences.
Along with the main narrative is the real-world historical situation that Moreno-Garcia sets the novel against. It’s a time when the descendants of Spanish colonists are figuring out their place in this world, when the question of who will rule and what the country will look like is pressing. It’s also of course a time of deeply consequential racism – towards the ‘Indians’, the native Mayans, as well as the not-officially-enslaved Black and other non-white people who live in the area. All of this informs how people interact, depending on how they ‘look’.
Moreno-Garcia writes a wonderful novel. The characters are vital and vibrant, the story is well paced, and the historical context makes it even more nuanced and interesting.
A Question of Age, Jacinta Parsons
Not the sort of book I would gravitate towards; but I heard Parsons speak at the Clunes Booktown festival this year, on a panel about ageing – which was interesting itself – and I decided it would be worth reading.
This is in no sense a self-help book, as Parsons says in the very first sentence. It’s part-memoir, in that it includes a lot about Parsons’ reflections on her own life and experiences – growing up, living as a white, disabled, woman, conversations she’s had with women about the idea of age and ageing; partly it’s philosophical reflections on the whole concept of ageing, particularly for women; and it also bring together research about what age means in medical and social contexts, the consequences of being seen as ‘old’, what menopause is and means, and many of the other issues around ageing. I should note here that it’s not just ‘life after 50’ (or 60, or 70); there’s also exploration of the experience of little girls growing up, the changes from adolescence into adulthood, and then into ‘middle age’ and ‘being older’.
It’s a book that’s likely to make many readers feel pretty angry. Not at what Parsons is suggesting (in my view), but the facts that she lays bare. About the way that girls are treated as they mature; about the way ‘old’ women are treated; at the way ‘old’ bodies are viewed, and everything around those moments. It made me realise how privileged I have been, in either not particularly experiencing (or not noticing) a lot of the sexualisation that women experience, and in not having a career that’s geared in any way around my appearance. I had a discussion recently with someone who mentioned that they didn’t feel like they were allowed to let their hair go grey, as I am – that their appearance was too important in their (corporate) work, and grey wouldn’t fit the image. I felt so, so sad that that’s what the world is enforcing. (I have always delighted in my grey streaks; it’s only partly because I am too lazy to bother with colouring it.)
Parsons is at pains to discuss what her identity means in the context of ageing – being white, and being disabled, being cis; she strives to include the experiences of queer, trans, and especially Indigenous Australian women throughout. It’s not even 300 pages in length so clearly it’s not the definitive book on the topic: a book with the same origin written by an Indigenous woman, or a collective, is going to turn out very different. Parsons is making no claim to be all-encompassing and I liked that. This is a deeply personal book, while also including a lot of science and stats and other women’s voices.
In many ways this feels like the start of a conversation. To use a meta book analogy, this isn’t the prologue – we’ve been having these conversations and there’s been research done in some important areas – but it’s around chapter 1 or 2. There’s still so much more to explore, and to examine, around ideas of ageing. And individuals need to be having these conversations, too – older women with younger, as well as peers.
Very glad I picked this up.
A Deepness in the Sky
Read via NetGalley and the publisher, Tor. This is a reprint so you might be able to get earlier printings, or this one is out in October 2023.
Where do I even begin?
I have never read a Vernor Vinge story before. According to Jo Walton’s introduction to this one, this and The Fire in the Deep are basically the culmination of his lifetime’s work.
Reading this (admittedly quite long) novel is like reading a trilogy that’s been refined down to just one volume. There is SO MUCH GOING ON – and it all works, and it draws you inexorably on. It’s not particular frenetic in pace – I didn’t feel like I was reeling from one explosion to another – but it’s relentless. It’s like an avalanche.
Partly this is because although the story takes place over decades, there are several well-placed time jumps. I think this is part of where the ‘trilogy refined to one book’ feeling comes from. There’s nothing extraneous. There are moments of people just being people – being in relationship, having families, relaxing – but they don’t feel like padding. It’s all adding together to make these characters intensely real.
There are three strands. Two are human: the Qeng Ho, a loosely connected and enormous group of people whose aim is trade; they travel between planets to sell whatever is needed, and call people on planets Customers – not in a taking-advantage kind of way, but in a ‘this is what we do’ way. Then there’s the people known as Emergents, and I wondered about this name for a long time… before I discovered it was because their society is the Emergency, named for a particularly dramatic time in their political history which has had cascading effects on their political and social structures (to become far more authoritarian than the Qeng Ho countenance) and honestly the name tells you a lot about them. These two groups of humans end up working together – much to the dismay and distrust of both sides – as they go to explore an astronomical anomaly. The third strand is the aliens who live on the planet around that astronomical anomaly, who are not bipeds and whose planetary and biological experience has led them to develop in some very different ways from humans… and yet, they are intelligent, and Vinge suggests convergent evolution in a lot of scientific and technological ways.
As I said, there is A LOT in this novel. Love and betrayal and family and war and technology… and then Jo Walton’s foreword tells me that if I read The Fire in the Deep it may completely change the way I understand this novel? I’m a bit sad that it took me until now to read this, AND YET reading it at this age was actually excellent.
I’m so glad Tor is reprinting this and I hope it gets a lot of love.
The Far Reaches: an anthology
Read courtesy of NetGalley. It’s out now.
Honestly you just look at this list of authors and you can’t help but be impressed, right? I don’t love the Behemoth but this is a pretty amazing anthology.
James SA Corey gives a non-Expanse short story where the goal is humanity populating the galaxy. Which isn’t necessarily a goal I can subscribe to, but the method proposed here is an ingenious one. Clearly the distances are too great to send actual humans; generation ships are deeply problematic. So instead, Corey invents “slow light” that (don’t ask questions) allows for duplication of… stuff. So you can scan people and things and beam it out into the void – and ta dah! Humans colonising worlds that may or may not actually support them. Unsurprisingly, there’s not a lot of focus on the science; instead, this is all about the people. Because it’s the same people going to each of the maybe-settlements, and they can communicate with each other – albeit only at the speed of light. I loved this a lot.
I’ve never read anything by Veronica Roth! But I was fairly impressed by “Void”, which takes a completely different spin from the Corey: while it’s not quite a generation ship, the Redundancy moves people between our solar system and that of Centauri – so the crew lives on ship time, speeding along, while history goes on around them. Again, this is not a story of war or empire or politics of any sort; it’s human relationships and failings and friendships. It’s nicely done, and is exactly the sort of story that works well in the short format.
Ann Leckie, though! A new Ann Leckie story is always to be celebrated! And this is a super weird one from her. Humanity is not at the centre; instead it’s an alien whose planet has been discovered and settled by humans. This particular alien has the uncommon ability to look to the future, and organise its people to make its plans reality – partly inspired by the humans, and partly through its own intuition. So it’s a story of bootstrapping, and of individual genius and shortcomings, as well as the functions of society. It’s enthralling.
Then Rebecca Roanhorse, whom I have also never read. And “Falling Bodies” is heartbreaking. Ira, newly arrived at the space station Long Reach (which is, I’m sure, unintentionally hilarious to the Australian reader), is hoping for a fresh start. He’s human but hasn’t grown up with a human family; he’s got a new name and identity to live on this station, rather than spending however many years in prison; and he’s not sure how to fit in, and whether it will all last. The fitting in bit won’t be unfamiliar to anyone who’s gone away to uni, or moved towns in general; Ira’s particular circumstances just make it that much harder. Set more against a political background than most of the other stories, this one is still intensely personal.
And THEN there’s Nnedi Okorafor’s “Just Out of Jupiter’s Reach”. Seven people in all the world are chosen not at random or for skills but because of their genetics – the fact they happen to match with a genetically bio-engineered creature/machine, in partnership with which they must go exploring the solar system. As with the other stories, the main character, Tornado, isn’t anyone special – she says so herself – and so it’s a story of solitude and companionship, resilience or not… it’s beautifully written, and it’s hopeful and heartbreaking, and I loved it.
Finally, John Scalzi’s “Slow Time between the Stars” is another non-human story. In this case, the narrator is an AI: a ship, for want of a better word, launched by humans, containing the “Alexandria Module” – a repository of all human knowledge – and the task of finding a human-habitable planet and then creating those humans and whatever they required to survive. But of course, sentient beings often end up with their own intentions and goals, and so here. It’s a story of becoming, more than anything – learning about self, and figuring out what to do with it.
The unifying theme here is that these are individual stories. For all the title is “Far Reaches”, these stories are intensely personal. They’re not even really ABOUT exploration or anything else on the grand side of things. They’re about people, and much more about internal discovery and knowledge than external. These stories are fantastic.
Small Fires: An Epic in the Kitchen, by Rebecca May Johnson
I read this via NetGalley, thanks to the publisher Pushkin Press.
This book is incredible and thought-provoking and I loved it enormously.
I sort of want to say this is a book that is “ostensibly” about cooking… except that it IS about cooking, there’s nothing ostensible about it. But it also uses cooking as a metaphor for many things, and looks at recipes and in-kitchen behaviour both for themselves and as metaphors, and reflects on the author’s life in general as well as her relationship with food and the preparation thereof.
I love reading about food and cooking and, although I feel a little guilty about it, I also love reading about how people feel about food. (The guilt comes because I feel like a voyeur.) This book does that for me, as well as touching on other things I hadn’t realised I would love in connection with a discussion of cooking. Such as…
Johnson has a PhD looking at a German translation of The Odyssey, and I had never before considered how you could make connections between that text and the myriad ways that cooking and food (not to mention gender – although I had thought about that a bit) are used in western society. The way that how we talk/feel about translation can also connect to the way we talk/feel about cooking was absorbing. And then there’s all the other theoretical stuff, like the psychoanalyst who thinks that cooking from a recipe is a sign that the cook lacks creativity… which made me, and Johnson, rage.
This book is at times prickly, at times confronting; Johnson reflects on large chunks of her life so sometimes she is bewildered and struggling while other times doing quite well. There were a LOT of times I responded on a very emotional level with what Johnson was saying: I cook for those I love; I struggle to think about making food for just myself; I have struggled with what my love of cooking says about me in terms of feminism (thank you, third wave feminism, for teaching me about the issues of second-wave feminism).
This is a powerful book. About cooking, yes, and the place of the recipe – and my goodness, Johnson’s exploration of what a single recipe can be, what it does, what it means: all of these things are glorious. It’s also an exploration of life, although I hesitate to call it a memoir and it’s certainly not autobiography. Many people come into Johnson’s life through the book, as she cooks for them and reflects on their relationships, but there’s not a lot of names – there’s a sustained reflection on the idea of ‘YOU’ as the one cooked for, and what body YOU represents changes over time, and exactly who they are and their relationship to Johnson is irrelevant for the purpose of the book. I liked this, too, even though the biography-reader in me kept expecting to understand the various relationships. But it’s not necessary for the book.
This is a book that I may need to own, in paper.
Re-reading the Culture: The Player of Games
Again, it’s been a super long time since I read this. I had a vague memory of one of the twists, but basically it was like reading it for the first time. And it’s astonishing.
Gurgeh is a games player. He lives in the Culture, so all of his basic needs are taken care of; he has no concern for shelter, food, medical treatment, or anything else at all. There Culture isn’t a monetary society, so he can be or do anything at all. And what Gurgeh does is play games. All and any games. And he is one of the greatest games players the Culture has ever known. Probably not the greatest at any one game – but that’s because he’s good at all of them.
So eventually, Special Circumstances comes knocking. Contact are the group responsible for dealing with interactions with new alien species that the Culture comes across, and SC are… well, they’re basically the secret services branch. Because what the Culture doesn’t really like to advertise, or even admit to themselves, is that they are inveterate meddlers. They believe they have the right way of doing things, and that places like the Empire of Azad who are still that – an empire, although multi-planet – are desperately backward. SC recruit who they need, and Gurgeh is needed because the Empire of Azad is functionally ruled through the playing of a game that’s so intrinsic to the society that it gives it its name. Gurgeh has two years – the travel time to reach Azad – to learn how to play…
I’m pretty sure when I first read the Culture novels that I basically accepted the Culture as what they would say about themselves; helping other societies to better themselves, which may sometimes require breaking eggs for omelettes, etc. I wasn’t quite so naive that I didn’t see it as problematic, but I think I assumed I was meant to be entirely on the Culture’s side. I have, happily, become a more nuanced reader since then. As a post-scarcity society where anything and everything is available, accessible, and largely permissible, living in the Culture is indeed a wonderful thing. The problem comes when it assumes that everyone else must want, and need, to be like them. When you’re inside that society, of course this makes sense! Why would you not want people to be able to express themselves as fully as possible? And when the realities of Azad society are shown, aren’t there indeed issues that should and could be dealt with? Of course! … and yet… colonialism, imperialism, external imposition of outsider norms…
The Player of Games is fantastic. Banks’ exploration of societies and politics and individual mentalities, the influence of context on behaviour, the extreme but logical consequence of actions: they’re all nuanced and precise. And devastating. It’s never particularly easy to read a Banks novel. Worth it, though.
Re-reading the Culture: Use of Weapons
I read read a lot of Iain M Banks’ novels, but apparently the only ones I’ve properly reviewed here is Player of Games and Surface Detail. So that’s a bit weird; maybe I always felt like I didn’t have the words for it. I must have mentioned them on Galactic Suburbia, so maybe that got it out of my system.
My review for Player tells me that I read my first Culture novel, Consider Phlebas, while visiting the UK for the first time over Christmas 2006. So that’s a mighty long time ago, now, but I still remember the bit from Phlebas that freaked me out quite considerably and made me reluctant to trust Banks at all. Clearly I got over that, but I’m honestly reluctant to go back and read it because of those couple of pages. I will, at some point… because I think I might do a complete re-read of the Culture. Not in any order, since that’s one of the great advantages of these novels – they’re all standalone, like Reed’s Great Ship series. It does amuse me that the books got fatter and fatter over time, so I might pick based on what other reading deadlines I might have.
So! Use of Weapons. I love it. I love the structure, although it also drives me completely wild trying to figure out WHEN the different chapters for together, not to mention which of the characters in the various timelines are actually the same people. I’m always fascinated by how people write non-linear stories: did Banks write two stories and then cut and paste the various chapters? Did they just come out in this order, and he always knew what Zakalwe was up to? Who knows! And in the first few chapters, the reader has basically no idea what’s going on and or how any of it will fit together. But there’s something about Banks’ writing – something in his style, in his easy-to-read and yet challenging prose, that just… makes you keep reading.
One of the things I keep realising about Banks is how easily he sucks you in – look! this society is great; look! these political ideas are straightforward; look! the drone will always make sensible decisions – and then whoosh the carpet is pulled out from under your feet and you’re left unbalanced, bewildered, not really sure what’s going on except realising that things have changed just enough that the world is unmoored. And still you keep reading.
We see very little of the Culture itself, in this relatively early novel. We learn that they have a penchant for interfering in other people’s business; that they take their ideas of morality very seriously, but also that they’re ruthless in ‘the needs of the many’ or ‘the greatest good’; and, of course, that their technology is stupendous: the machine intelligence that is Skaffen-Amtiskaw, the ships that traverse phenomenal distances, and so on.
For all of that, this is still a very human story. Revenge, justice, forgiveness, family, shame – these are the driving factors. It’s horrific, and brutal; it’s also compassionate, in a weird way. Is it hopeful because of its suggestion that tech and galaxy-spanning empires will not change humanity all that much? I’m really not sure.
Randomly Yours, Alex 