It’s been the hottest week on record in the UK, with temperatures reaching 38C/100F and with no rain. Our normally green fields are a scorched yellow, trains are derailing as the lines deform, and wildfires are consuming homes. Climate change is flexing its claws. Our new normal has arrived.
Fortunately, there are still books. For me, they work almost as well as air conditioning, and even better with air conditioning. We had a long drive north on the hottest day of the year so far. Tempers were short; people walked slowly but drove too fast. Each motorway stop was like stepping into a sauna. But inside the car, the air conditioning cooled us and listening to ‘Stitches and Witches’, a cosy paranormal mystery, soothed us.
Anyway, here’s what I read and bought this week and what’s coming up next.
My reading this week was all Science Fiction and Fantasy, I went from a cold, inimical world where people have lived for centuries under an airshield that protects them from the lethal vastness that they are trying to reshape using terraforming techniques that will take many generations to make a difference, to the rich farmlands of an empire that has spent centuries using biochemistry to reshape themselves and their environment into something that is becoming increasingly strange and hard to hold together, to the magic-is-real-but-we-don’t-talk-about-it world of Peter Grant’s London and finally, to the liminal space of a gas station that sits against the forest at the edge of town draws weirdness too it like moths to a to a bright light.
This collection includes:
The Home Crowd Advantage, The Domestic, The Cockpit,The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Granny, King of The Rats, A Rare Book of Cunning Device, A Dedicated Follower of Fashion, Favourite Uncle, Vanessa Sommer’s Other Christmas List, Three Rivers, Two Husbands and a Baby, Moments One -Three
‘Tales from the Folly’ (2020) made me smile. It reminded me of all the light-hearted things that I enjoy in the series without entangling me in the threats and conflicts that Peter and the others have to cope with in the novels.
It’s a collection of six Peter Grant short stories, five short stories with other members of the ensemble cast at their centre, and three ‘Moments’ which Ben Aaronovitch describes as vehicles for when “…you have an idea for something this is more of a mood than a story, something that will last a page or two and conjure an atmosphere.”
I recommend it to any Rivers of London fan.
My review is HERE
Isako is a legendary swordswoman, but every legend has to come to an end. When her long-time client unexpectedly retires, she plans to follow-to walk out into the frozen wasteland of their planet with her head held high and her family enriched by her legacy. But when a competitor offers her a final mission, it’s one she can’t refuse. Soon, she’s thrust deep into a world of corporate espionage, duty-bound duels, and shadowy secrets. What she uncovers will change humanity’s existence in the stars forever.
This was a strikingly original piece of Science Fiction. The culture of the world the action takes place in is fully imagined, highly plausible, but full of surprises that gave me things to think about. The characters are given the time to unfurl, reveal themselves and adapt to the unexpected. The mystery at the heart of the action is complex, clever and unusual. The plot has a twist which I saw coming a long way off. This meant I was initially a little frustrated with how long it took for the twist to be acknowledged and explained. I changed my mind as I saw that what was being revealed about the characters and the motivations for their choices was more important than the change in direction. I was impressed with the quality of the writing and the power of Fonda Lee’s imagination. I’m looking forward to more from her.
The heir to one of the Empire’s most powerful families sits in jail, accused of murder. His hands are covered in his victim’s blood, and he can neither deny his guilt nor explain his actions.
If the great detective Ana Dolabra – along with her assistant Dinios Kol – cannot save him, the farming canton of Sapirdad will explode into war, plunging the Empire into famine and chaos
‘Trade of Blood’ is the third novel in Robert Jackson Bennett’s ‘Shadow of the Leviathan’ series, and I think it’s the best yet. The writing was powerful and accessible. The mystery plot was complex and satisfying. The world-building was original and vivid. I was impressed with the way Ana and Din’s personalities and relationship developed throughout the novel and how well-drawn the new characters were.
As well as being engaged with the novel as an exciting story with complex characters, I was fascinated by the emerging picture of Empire reaching its breaking point. What started as a series of ingenious adaptations to defend themselves against the Leviathans that come onshore once a year has evolved to the point where the servants of the Empire sacrifice their humanity to carry out their duty.
Each novel in the series looks at an aspect of how the Empire works. This novel looks at the monstrous distortions of nature that the Empire has wrought to feed its insatiable hunger for meat. I liked that this worked well as a means of deepening my understanding of the scope and impact of the Empire, but also held up a mirror to the US meat industry.
Drunk customers. Shoplifting raccoons. Otherworldly visitors. As night shift clerk at the 24-hour gas station at the edge of town, Jack has pretty much seen it all.
That is, until his best friend reveals the body of a local politician hidden in the trunk of a car, setting off a chain of events with apocalyptic potential. Soon, Jack finds himself entangled in a supernatural conspiracy involving monster hunters, sociopaths, doomsday cultists, and…garden gnomes?
Armed with nothing but his wits, sarcasm, and alarming amounts of coffee, can Jack stay alive long enough to see another morning shift? Or will he also fall victim to the dark, ancient force infecting the dreams of everyone around him?
One thing’s for sure. He’s not getting paid enough for this.
I had high hopes of this quirky novel but it turned out to be too chaotic for me. I set it aside at 25%
My review is HERE
This week, I bought five books, spanning all of my favourite genres.
I have a particular hunger for Science Fiction at the moment so I’ve bought two Space Operas: Bethany Jacobs’ ‘These Burning Stars’, which is the first book in a now completed triology and which was a Locus Award Nominee for First Novel (2024), and Elizabeth’ Bear’s ‘Ancestral Night’ was was a Locus Award Nominee for Best SF Novel (2020).
The newly published ‘Spies and Other Gods’, written by an ex-British Intelligence Officer, is my attempt to fill the gap Le Carré left in my reading life.
The thriller genre is covered by a new novella by Don Winslow.
I’m a fan of Catherine Aird’s twenty-eight-book Inspector Sloane series, so I’m picking up books whenever they’re on sale. This week, I bought her ’Some Die Eloquent’, the eighth book in the series.
Jun Ironway, hacker, con artist, and only occasional thief, has got her hands on a piece of contraband that could set her up for life: evidence that implicates the powerful Nightfoot family in a planet-wide genocide seventy-five years ago. The Nightfoots control the precious sevite that fuels interplanetary travel through three star systems. And someone is sure to pay handsomely for anything that could break their hold.
Of course, anything valuable is also dangerous. The Kindom, the ruling power of the three star systems, is inextricably tied up in the Nightfoots’ monopoly – and they can’t afford to let Jun expose the truth. They task two of their most brutal clerics with hunting her down: preternaturally stoic Chono, and brilliant hothead Esek, who also happens to be the heir to the Nightfoot empire.
But Chono and Esek are haunted in turn by a figure from their shared past, known only as Six. What Six truly wants is anyone’s guess. And the closer they get to finding Jun, the surer Chono is that Six is manipulating them all – and that they are heading for a bloody confrontation that no one will survive unscathed.
There is no mess that Kelly Henderson can’t clean up. The right question here, the right pressure there, maybe a bit of cash is all it takes. Kelly walked away from a legit career as a lawyer, and there are days he regrets that his livelihood relies on unscrupulous people doing dishonest things. But he is very good at what he does.
Then, a new case comes his way, a hot potato so scorching that Kelly should have never laid his fingers on it.
Through it all–the big-time politician, the wannabe actress, the fading porn star, the rich lady with a secret agenda–Kelly keeps asking himself the same question:
Haimey Dz thinks she knows what she wants.
She thinks she knows who she is.
She is wrong.
A routine salvage mission uncovers evidence of a terrible crime and relics of a powerful ancient technology, just as Haimey and her small crew run afoul of pirates at the outer limits of the Milky Way and find themselves both on the run, and in possession of ancient, universe-changing technology.
When the authorities prove corrupt, it becomes clear that Haimey is the only one who can protect her galaxy-spanning civilisation from its potential power – and from the revolutionaries who want to use it to seed terror and war.
But doing so will take her from the event horizon of the super-massive black hole at the galaxy’s core to the infinite, empty spaces at its edge.
Along the way, she’ll have to uncover the secrets of ancient intelligences lost to time as well as her own lost secrets, which she will wish had remained hidden from her forever . . .
The Head of British Intelligence is having a bad day. Only six months off retirement and Sir William Rentoul is wondering if he’ll make it that far, what with the sudden descent of a brain fog dense enough to turn every day into a series of small humiliations.
To make matters worse, Parliament’s Intelligence and Security Committee – the body that oversees Sir William – has received an anonymous complaint from one of his officers. Sir William dimly recalls accepting that there should be a channel for whistleblowers, but he never expected that they would pick his most sensitive case, one involving an Iranian assassin and a trail of dead bodies, or that the person who turned up to poke their nose into his files should be a lowly parliamentary researcher named Aphra McQueen, who displays smarts, tenacity and rebelliousness in unsettling measures.
Aphra seems to know more about the operation than she is letting on. What will she uncover? What is she really up to? And can she survive the unexpected events that will bounce her from London to Birmingham to Paris to Lausanne?
That Miss Beatrice Wansdyke had died is not particularly surprising. A chemistry mistress at the Girls’ Grammar School in Berebury, she was a longtime sufferer of diabetes who managed to live her modest life to a ripe old age. But one thing is odd—Beatrice Wansdyke died a very wealthy woman. What was an old schoolteacher doing with a small fortune?
Meanwhile, Detective Inspector C. D. Sloan, Calleshire’s finest investigator, learns he is about to become a father. But with ominous players hell-bent on pursuing Miss Wansdyke’s money, will Sloan live to see his child’s first birthday? . . .
This week, I’ll be reading one mainstream novel and two Science Fiction novels. Two of the books are debut novels and one is the second book in a trilogy. I’m looking forward to all of them but ‘I Am Agatha’, Nancy Foley’s debut novel, is the one that calls to me most strongly.
Anders Jensen is having a bad month. His roommate is a data thief, his girlfriend picks fights in bars, and his best friend is a cyborg…and a lousy tipper. When everything is spiraling out of control, though, maybe those are exactly the kind of friends you need.
In a world divided between the genetically engineered elite and the unmodified masses, Anders is an anomaly: engineered, but still broke and living next to a crack house. All he wants is to land a tenure-track faculty position, and maybe meet someone who’s not technically a criminal-but when a nightmare plague rips through Hagerstown, Anders finds himself dodging kinetic energy weapons and government assassins as Baltimore slips into chaos. His friends aren’t as helpless as they seem, though, and his girlfriend’s street-magician brother-in-law might be a pretentious hipster – or might hold the secret to saving them all
Edward Ashton is probably best known for his Mickey7 novels, the first of which was made into the movie ‘Mickey 17’. ‘Three Days In April’ (2015) was his debut novel. I’m looking forward to seeing what he does with this intriguing premise.
Agatha and Alice are in love. Agatha, a celebrated painter and even more famous recluse, finally wants to settle down. But Alice has dementia, and a lingering fixation on her late daughter, who’s buried in her backyard.
In an ideal world, Agatha would move Alice – and her daughter’s remains, if necessary – into her isolated house in the mesa high above their New Mexico town. But Alice’s son wants her safely shut up in an assisted living facility and her property deeds in his pocket. As unlikely allies come to her aid and secrets are unearthed that should have stayed below ground, Agatha engages in a ferocious battle of wills with the townsfolk who stand between her and happily ever after.
‘I Am Agatha’ is Nancy Foley’s debut novel. I was hooked from the first paragraph. I like that this is a book about non-stereotypical old people and the New Mexico setting.
Naira and Tarquin have escaped vicious counter-revolutionaries, misprinted monsters and the pull of a dying planet. Now, bound together to find the truth behind the blight that has been killing habitable planets, they need to hunt out the Mercator family secrets.
But, when the head of Mercator disappears, taking the universe’s remaining supply of starship fuel with him, chaos breaks loose between the ruling families. Naira’s revolution must be put aside for the sake of humanity’s immediate survival.
‘The Fractured Stars’ is the second book in ‘The Devoured Worlds’ trilogy. I was impressed by the first book ‘The Blighted Stars’. I’m hoping that second book will be just as good.
Mike Finn's Fiction 