The Fall of Egypt and the Rise of Rome
Read via NetGalley and the publisher. It’s out now.
My feelings on this book are conflicted. There are some good bits! There are also some frustrating bits that definitely got in the way of my enjoyment.
The good bits: just the existence of a book about the Ptolemys is a pretty good thing, I think. They so often get ignored in histories of Egypt; and they just end up as a prologue to Cleopatra VII. And I get it – it’s hard to figure out where they fit in, as an invading ruling family that doesn’t fit with OG Egypt. I am also intrigued by the idea of putting the Ptolemaic dynasty and the rise of Rome together: if you know anything about the two, you know they have a stunning convergence in Cleopatra VII/ Caesar / Marc Antony, but what de la Bedoyere shows is the ways Egypt and Rome had been interacting for generations beforehand, and why therefore Caesar went to Egypt and Cleopatra thought getting the Romans involved made sense. I have a much greater appreciation now for the ways Rome was meddling in their surrounds, and how Egypt and Syria and others were using external players in their internal struggles.
Other positive aspects are the fact that the women get some discussion (although that’s also a source of frustration, see below), and the fact that this is written fairly accessibly, within the confines of ‘there are a lot of the same names and that gets very confusing’. I appreciated that the author did acknowledge things like ‘Roman historians have a LOT of prejudice’ and that there are several aspects of Ptolemaic history where historians simply do not have enough information to adequately explain things.
So. The less good bits. Firstly, the frustrating-ness is partly a product, I suspect, of writing a book that’s intended to be generally accessible – so it doesn’t go into a lot of detail about some aspects, and doesn’t have all THAT many references either. Instead, the author just makes claims… which are sometimes such that I raised my eyebrows. Perhaps the most egregious, from my perspective, is the fact that he doesn’t try to examine why various non-Roman kings in the Mediterranean world would appeal to Rome at the start, when Rome is an international upstart. He simply says that it happens because the Romans had won some wars. There seems to be an underlying assumption that Rome was always going to preeminent, so it makes sense that everyone acknowledged this early on. I wanted to write “needs more evidence” in the margin.
Secondly, the portrayal of the women is fairly problematic. The second Ptolemy was the first to marry his sister. De la Bedoyere blithely states that the sister, Arsinoe, basically made the marriage happen after she ran to her brother for help when previous marriages had gone badly wrong, because she was so ambitious. There is no explanation offered for her characterisation as ‘ambitious’. The fact that she married various rulers doesn’t tell us anything about HER attitudes. There is no suggestion that maybe Ptolemy forced or convinced her to marry him. Given the extravagant after-death cult stuff set up by Ptolemy II – which may be partly about playing into Egyptian religion – it seems more like to me Ptolemy II was either besotted or very, very political (why not have both?!). There are other moments when the various other Cleopatras, Berenices, and Arsinoes are also treated like this: mothers acting as king instead of stepping down for their sons, or manipulating brothers… and maybe some of them were indeed political machines! But I need evidence of that – because achieving that in such a patriarchal world would be admirable and worthy of applause! I point you also to this claim: “Worried that her power and influence were waning after his triumph over [another ruler], [Cleopatra Thea] tried to poison her son. Having already killed one child, killing another must have seemed comparatively easy.” NO WORDS.
Fourthly, connected to what I said earlier about acknowledging the problems with Roman sources in particular: relaying what those sources say in great detail, AND THEN spending a couple of lines saying ‘but we can’t take everything they say at face value’ doesn’t really work. Pretty sure that’s what lawyers do when they know a jury will be asked to ignore some evidence, but THEY’VE ALREADY HEARD IT (lol, at least that’s how it works on tv, and you see what I mean). I really think those sections – usually bad-mouthing a Ptolemy, and especially Cleopatra VII – needed to be PREFACED with ‘but the Romans had an agenda’. I really got the sense that de la Bedoyere doesn’t care for Cleopatra VII at all, to be honest; he claims she didn’t care for Egypt in the slightest, just her own power, and again – I’d like to see more evidence please.
Finally, there are some odd choices in terms of the book’s presentation. Every now and then there are boxes with random bits of information that is tangentially connected to the main part of the story. I found these more distracting than helpful – although I guess YMMV and maybe for some people this really works.
Overall… I’m reluctant to recommend this to an Egypt or Rome novice. I really think you need a slightly sophisticated reader who is able and willing to question some of the assumptions, and put things into context. So like I said: I am conflicted.
Ocean: A History of the Atlantic before Columbus
I read this courtesy of the publisher and NetGalley. It’s available now.
Broad sweeping history like this, even when done well, is both very intriguing and enjoyable to read, and occasionally frustrating. As long as you know what you’re reading, you can get around that.
To get the frustrating bit out of the way: the book focuses almost entirely on the European experience. It touches briefly on Africa, and even more briefly on the Americas, but largely through a European lens. Now, I am sure that this is partly a dearth of written records – but a significant portion of the book is about pre-history and/or relies on archaeology, so that doesn’t hold as a reason. I would have less of a problem with this if the book itself made clear it was “the European Atlantic,” but it doesn’t.
So, on the understanding that this book is largely about the European experience of the Atlantic before Columbus sailed across it, this is a pretty good book! It’s a survey, so it covers an enormous swathe of time and, within the European bounds, a broad range of cultures too – which does mean it doesn’t have really nitty-gritty detail, but that aspect is entirely expected.
Having recently visited Skara Brae, on Orkney, I was delighted to discover a section on that site, and to learn more about what it reveals of how Neolithic folks used the ocean. Haywood covers what we can know about how humans have eaten from the ocean (isotopes in bones, how amazing), as well as – when the literary sources exist – how they thought about it, used it in myths and stories, and so on. And then of course there’s sailing, for a variety of reasons and in a variety of vessels.
I left this book intrigued by the different ways people have used this ocean over time. I generally enjoyed Haywood’s writing style, and think this is accessible to the general reader.
The City in Glass
I am relatively new to Nghi Vo and now I want to read pretty much everything she has ever written.
There is so much that is enchanting about this book.
I love the idea of an immortal being having a long-term connection to, basically a relationship with, a particular place and group of people. What that looks like over a long period of time is a key part of what Vo is looking at here. I think connection to place is something that we don’t talk about enough.
And then there’s the fact that the main protagonist is called a demon, while the antagonist is an angel… nice work on the challenging expectations and flipping conventions, Vo.
The writing itself is also just a delight. This was such an easy book to read – it was so easy to just KEEP reading, to be sucked into the world and desperately need to know what was going to happen. This is always a good sign.
I remain delighted to have read this.
The Mercy of Gods
Read courtesy of NetGalley and the publisher. I will admit to a little trepidation when I saw this was coming. I’m a major fan of The Expanse series; there’s always that mix of excitement for new work from a favourite author (combo, in this case), and worry that new work will not compare to the old. What if the first stuff was a result of thinking and planning for their whole life, and now they are doing stuff with less preparation?
Happily, my fears were completely and utterly unfounded. This book is wildly imaginative, the characters are flawed and complex and compelling, and I am already psyched for the next one. Which is probably in at least a year, so that’s going to be so very frustrating.
Humans live on Anjiin. They haven’t always been there, but they have no history to explain how or why or even really when they arrived. But they’re doing very well in terms of arts and sciences and general life standards. They have a highly structured society, which isn’t great for everyone, but people deal with it as people always do. Dafyd works in a team that has recently made a major breakthrough: they have figured out a key step in integrating the two sets of biology on Anjiin. Because this is the clue as to humanity not being indigenous to Anjiin: there is the biology that seems related to humanity, and there is… everything else. And ne’er the twain shall meet. Until now.
At this point, it seems like the story will be about science and scientific rivalry. Which is all well and good. But then something is spotted on the edge of the heliosphere, and it turns out to be aliens, who do dreadful things to Anjiin and then collect a bunch of humans and take them… somewhere else. At which point the story becomes something else entirely. There are a whole range of aliens under the dominance of the Carryx, and humans are now one of them; they have to figure out what that means, on a personal and collective level. There are (unsurprisingly) a range of responses – and it’s in this that Corey shows a deep and compassionate understanding of humanity. I don’t agree with all of the ways various characters respond – and I’m not meant to – but I do understand why they act like they do.
It’s a first book in a series, so the ending is in no way a finale. It’s absolutely a prologue to what’s to come – indeed, the opening of the book, written by a Carryx, already says that Carryx interaction with humanity is going to have unexpected and catastrophic consequences. Exactly how will that happen? No idea! Need the rest of the series to figure that out!
The Book Eaters, Sunyi Dean
How, exactly, did I manage to miss reading this when it first came out? I am bemused, because this is exactly the sort of thing I should have been all over.
Well, thanks to the Hugo packet I have finally devoured it.
Book eaters are exactly what they sound like: they are people who look human, but who rather than eating human-food eat, well, books. (Most of them anyway: there are also a few who eat, uh, minds. So it’s a bit zombie-ish (but not).) These folk live in our world but generally have no interaction with humans – they’re a very insular community, necessarily. They’re also a community on the wane; women tend to have a maximum of two children, and some will have none, for health reasons. An intensely patriarchal society as well, women are moved around and married where needed – and, key to this story, kept separate from their children after about the age of 3.
Devon experiences exactly this life: growing up she is treated as a princess, as the only daughter in the house; she is married off, to act as a brood mare basically. However, she is a feistier woman than the men in her life expect, and when her son is born a mind-eater… well, things go a bit sideways, frankly.
The story is told across two periods, in parallel: Devon growing up, and Devon in the now, living in hiding with her son. Eventually, of course, the past catches up with the present, and we understand exactly how Devon has got to this point. So while we certainly start sympathetic to Devon, our appreciation and horror at what she has endured deepen steadily and relentlessly: Dean gets the pacing just right, with a steady revelation of more and more terrible things committed both by and against Devon.
A story of mothers and children, families both blood and found; highly enjoyable, with compelling and fascinating characters, and a plot that REALLY works.
Troy, by Simon Brown
I bought this, I think, at one of my first Swancons – I know I bought it direct from Russell, and Ticonderoga. I don’t know if Simon Brown was there, but for some reason I think Sean Williams was? I did discover that I have a a page with signatures from all of the contributors – also including Garth Nix, who wrote the delightfully whimsical introduction – so that’s pretty cool.
All but one of these stories have direct or indirect connections to the Trojan cycle; the exception is an interesting enough story, but one that I do rather wish wasn’t included, because it feels quite jarring to come across (and it’s about troubling Catholic priests, which is not exactly an enjoyable topic). Some of the stories use the issues of war and trauma; others confront the sheer length of time involved with the cycle.
My favourite story is “The Masque of Agamemnon,” for a lot of reasons. First, the title is clearly brilliant. Second, it combines SF elements – AI and space ships – with the Trojan story in delightfully clever ways. Third, it manages to get into some of the key issues and relationships of both the original stories and the ways in which it’s been dealt with since. Also the final line is hilarious.
I have no idea whether this can still be bought anywhere, but I hope so.
Mexico in Your Kitchen: Mely Martínez
I received this book from the publisher, Rock Point (part of the Quarto Publishing Group), at no cost. It’s available now, $45.
I’ve been making my way through this book for… a while now. But: life. Anyway! Now I’ve made enough of the recipes to be able to say that yes, this is a cookbook I’ll be keeping; there are several recipes that I expect will become staples.
How I got to now without a Mexican cookbook in my house is something I can’t quite believe, but here we are. I’ve made bits and pieces, but just by looking recipes up after having something particularly good at a restaurant. Oh, and one of my lockdown purchases was a tortilla press, at a time when a local Mexican supplier had a deal on (press + 3x1kg bags of corn meal). So I’ve now been inspired enough that I have bought more corn meal, Mexican oregano, some dried chillies, and Mexican chocolate…
The first thing to know before you rush out to buy this as your first Mexican cookbook is that it is Martínez’ second book. This means that it does not include some of the more basic, fundamental recipes; she includes a list of the recipes from that first book, and it’s things like tortillas, Frijoles Refritos (Refried Beans), and Pico de Gallo. So if you want the very basics, I suspect it’s actually a good idea to get that first book (The Mexican Home Kitchen), which I don’t personally own but I assume is as good as this one.
Martínez starts with an overview of Mexican food customs, and then – ever-useful for folks looking to cook outside of their usual customs – “The Mexican Pantry”. This section doesn’t just explain foods that the reader may be unfamiliar with (in my case, nopales); it also talks about how particular foods (eg carrots) are used in Mexican cuisine. There’s an entire section on Peppers; living where I do, many of these are inaccessible, but it was useful to see which are hotter than others, so I can make adjustments as necessary.
So, things I have made!
- Chilquiles: actually a breakfast food, but we had it for dinner. Fried tortillas, avocado, refried beans, a tomato salsa… this was totally delicious.
- Papas con Chorizo (chorizo with potato): hilariously, thanks to a mistake with my butcher, I did not get my chorizo… so I made this with bacon instead. And it was fine, but it would be better with chorizo.
- Chilorio: pork shoulder, simmered for an hour, then cooked with a sauce made from peppers and various spices. Super tasty, super easy; almost a breakfast, but this Anglo-Celt can’t come at that.
- Spicy Pork Short Ribs: didn’t make this with short ribs, because this isn’t a common cut in Australia, as far as I can tell (at least not in my area). But it was delicious nonetheless: simmering the pork and then frying it in its own fat is intriguing and excellent.
- Tuna empanadas: delicious also! Empanadas are very easy!
- Tilapia a la Veracruzana: I don’t think we have tilapia, so I used rockling. Fish, capers, olives, tomato… you’re not really going to go wrong.
- Enfrijoladas: same deal as enchiladas, but the sauce is made with beans (frijoles), rather than a tomato or pepper sauce. The things you learn! Stuff tortillas (cheat and use bought wraps) with (store-bought) roast chicken, top with a black bean sauce and avocado… fancy as! And super tasty.
… and there are still more I haven’t made yet. Recipes are generally well written, with clear instructions and times. Photos aren’t the most stylish I’ve ever seen but they do convey what the end result should look like. I’m looking forward to a lot more Mexican in my life. (Anything to facilitate more avocado.)
The Last Binding, Freya Marske
Why haven’t I read these earlier? Look, I just have a lot of books on my TBR pile. This first book didn’t immediately jump out at me when it was published – I don’t know why – and so, although I occasionally heard about them as they got published, they just didn’t get to the top of the pile. (Slight spoilers below, largely in terms of who gets romanced.)
But the final book was published last year, and the trilogy has been nominated for the Best Series Hugo, and thanks to the enormous generosity of the publisher the whole trilogy was in the Hugo packet. And so, finally, I have now read the whole trilogy. One book straight after the other. Because, turns out, this is a really great series. What a surprise.
Marske writes of an England where the magical live unknown but side by side with the unmagical – which is similar to what Celia Lake does, but Marske doesn’t have the magical largely keep to themselves; there are nobles with magic who sit in the House of Lords, for instance. But most unmagical don’t know that magic exists; when they do find out, it’s described as ‘unbushelling’,
which has a great explanation behind it as a term. As the first book opens, an unmagical man (Robin) has landed an unexpected civil service job, liaising between the magical and the Prime Minister… but he doesn’t know about magic. His predecessor is missing, and he assaulted for unknown reasons; so he ends up working with magic-user Edwin, and others, to figure out what’s going on. Which turns out to be a whole conspiracy, of course, and unravelling which becomes the trilogy. At the same time, Robin and Edwin are falling in love. Which is a whole delightful thing, but did I mention this is the first decade of the 20th century? So it’s also a rather dangerous thing, given the laws at the time. This is a fantastic introduction to the series, giving all the necessary information about magic etc without ever losing the fast pace.
The second book takes place entirely on a ship – so it’s not quite a locked-room mystery, although there are indeed a lot of locked rooms; but there are a limited number of people to do things and a limited number of places for them to happen, which puts all sorts of intriguing boundaries on the author. This time the key characters are Robin’s sister and the dashing Violet, who enjoys being entirely outrageous. A different pace from the first one – partly that’s the ship, partly it’s already knowing about magic and the conspiracy – but nonetheless the consequences are real.
Finally, A Power Unbound – I had realised who one of the likely romance partners would be, in this book, halfway through the second. And I wasn’t overly enthused, I have to say, because his particular style of cynicism isn’t one I love. And the relationship that’s portrayed in this book also isn’t one I enjoyed as much as the first two; I am not as comfortable with how they interact. It’s a dom/sub relationship, and Marske is very clear
about the pair having boundaries and consent; the play-acting at making use of unequal power isn’t something I enjoy. This is very much a me thing, though; and the relationship does develop, as the others have, in interesting ways. Aside from the romance, the plot ratchets up the consequences of the conspiracy and quickens the pace and basically makes this a tremendous finale to the trilogy. A lot of secrets are drastically revealed, issues dealt with, relationships both restored and complicated – Marske really knew what she was doing.
This trilogy will be high on my Hugo ballot, and I am excited to read Marske’s new book this year.
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks
I saw this film a long time ago – maybe it was on TV? – and ever since then “I should read the book” has been vaguely in my head. I’ve finally done so because someone else, in my book club, nominated it as one of our books. Sometimes it really does take that external influence. And I’m so glad I did because this really is a great book, and an amazing story.
The basics of the Henrietta Lacks story are that she was an African-American woman who, in 1951, was diagnose with cervical cancer. Doctors took a sample of the cells of the cancer, as was standard; they were sent to a lab that was doing some early work on trying to get cells to live in petri dishes (basically). For whatever reason, her cells were the first to prove functionally immortal: they did not die as every other human cell did, but reproduced… and kept reproducing… and, after a fairly short while, HeLa cells were being used all over the world for a variety of biomedical research.
Lacks, meanwhile, died. She had not been told her cells were being cultured; her family were not told either. Eventually, the family found out – there’s a whole story about how it was revealed who these cells that revolutionised the world came from – and it wasn’t an easy thing for them, for a whole bunch of reasons.
This book would be interesting if it were just the straightforward (well, as straightforward as it could be) story of Henrietta and her cells. But that’s all this book does. Instead, there are really three stories.
There’s the story of Henrietta herself. This is necessarily brief: she only lived to 30, there’s not a whole of sources, and she lived a difficult, but fairly straightforward, life: not a lot of education, married and having children young, not working outside of the home – then sick, and dying. Skloot writes about her life with compassion and, honestly, love; she doesn’t moralise or condemn, she doesn’t go all ‘woe what a tragedy’ in that fake ‘oh how hard things were’ way that some people might.
There’s the story of Henrietta’s cells, and the larger scientific story around it. This, too, is fascinating; the attempts at culturing cells, the fear felt by society about what might happen with such cells… and then there’s all of the ethical issues, too, about whether tissues outside of the body are still the property of the person who grew them. And this is tied into larger questions of American medical history around the white scientific establishment and Black bodies, which is of course a whole thing itself.
And thirdly, there’s the story of the Lacks family. Skloot doesn’t try to keep herself out of the story; in fact, she is very present, as she tries to get in touch with the Lacks children, to learn their part of the story. The children – in particular, the only surviving daughter, Deborah – are reticent, for a lot of good reasons. But they gradually come to trust Skloot, and Deborah takes part in a lot of Skloot’s research; the story of their time together, learning about Henrietta (and the eldest daughter, who died as an adolescent) is a vital part of the story: about Henrietta as a human woman, about the consequences of medical decisions, and about the lives of African-Americans in the last half of the twentieth century.
This is one of the best science history books I’ve ever read.
The Fortunate Fall, by Cameron Reed
Read courtesy of NetGalley and the publisher, Tor Books. It’s out in August 2024 (and also was published in 1996, if you can somehow get your hands on an original copy).
This book is amazing and the fact that Tor is reprinting it and I therefore found out about is a very, very good thing.
“The whale, the traitor; the note she left me and the run-in with the Post Police; and how I felt about her and what she turned out to be – all this you know.”
As first sentences go, that’s breathtaking.
It seems from Jo Walton’s introduction to this edition that the people who read The Fortunate Fall when it first came out all loved it… but that ‘all’ was super limited, for whatever reason. And that’s just an absolute tragedy, because this book should absolutely be seen as a classic and it should get read by everyone and it should be discussed in all the conversations that are had about gender, sexuality, AI interactions, the use and purpose of the media, human/animal interactions, medical ethics… and probably a whole bunch of other issues that I missed.
It was originally published in 1996, and certainly some of the technology feels a little dated; the idea of a dryROM is amusing, and moistdisks are fascinating and gross. But honestly (as Walton points out) it also feels incredibly NOW. The main character, Maya, is a ‘camera’; when she’s broadcasting, people can tune in and see what she sees, hear what she hears – and experience her memories and reactions as well. This is mediated by a screener, who basically works to help amplify or minimise parts of the experience, as well as doing the tech work behind the scenes. For all that it’s from the very early period of the internet, this aspect feels prescient in terms of using social media, the difficult lines between personal and big-business media, and a whole host of other things that, again, are being thought about and talked about now. Not to mention the question of how much we actually know someone from their public-facing presentation.
And really? this isn’t even the most meaty part of the story. There’s the relationship between Maya and Keishi; that could have been the whole book. There’s Pavel Voskresenye and his experiences with genocide, being experimented on, surveillance – which could also have been a whole book by itself. And the whale. It’s honestly hard to talk about everything that is packed into this book: and it’s not very long! The paperback is 300 pages! How does Reed manage to fit so much in, and still make me understand everything that’s going on, and bring it all together such that I know it doesn’t need a sequel, and I know Maya in particular more than she would be happy with – and it’s only 300 pages in length??
I want to shove this into the hands of basically everyone I know. And then, like Walton says in her introduction, we can all talk about the ending.
Randomly Yours, Alex 