Revelation Space Series by Alastair Reynolds

While this former Welsh astronomer's Revelation Space series has a lot of things going for it, it's unfortunately filled with some terrible writing. Reynolds does science well, as he ought to. He places real limitations drawn from physics on his plot and the actions of his characters. His stories are on the whole engaging and memorable like a lonely archaeological dig on Resurgam, a lifeless arid world that once hosted the civilization of the Amarantin, an evolved bird like species or later in Chasm City when the story of a latter day messiah is told in flash backs particularly when Sky sets off to investigate the mysterious phantom ship that is allegedly tailgating a flotilla of interstellar craft out on a hundred year journey to colonize a distant planet or when on the icy moon of a gas giant, pilgrims make their way to enormous mobile cathedrals that lumber across the Way, an equatorial path they follow to keep the gas giant directly over head so they don't miss its mysterious nano-second vanishings which the pilgrims take to be a sign from god. All that is outstanding. What Reynolds sucks at is writing about relationships, sex, characters that are any thing other than space opera figurines, and dialogue - oh man some of it is really bad. It's one more reason to appreciate Kim Stanley Robinson's exceptional talent. To write about science fantasy and yet portray realistic relationships - evidenced by Revelation Space - it's no mean feat.  The series is quite uneven. The Prefect and Redemption Ark are really weak whereas Revelation Space, Chasm City and Absolution Gap are far superior.  

A Red Sun Also Rises by Mark Hodder

I get the feeling I've read at least one of Hodder's Burton & Swinburne books but when I read the blurb for Spring Heeled Jack, it's a case of tabula rasa. His style however feels strangely familiar or maybe I am just thinking about one of the numerous Victorian fantasy/steampunk oeuvres we've been inundated with. At the beginning of the book, I was actually quite disappointed. It felt like regular old period fiction with vicars in cottages; as if the cover were some kind of supreme foil. Aiden Fleisher, the narrator of the tale is a dull and submissive parish vicar from England who after running into a spot of bother with some local baddies takes up a missionary assignment in the South Pacific. Accompanying him is his trusted companion and completely unlikely assistant - a polymath hunchback named Clarissa Stark. On their island mission, they find their seemingly nonchalant natives hiding an inter-dimensional portal which of course our duo find themselves duly sucked into. 

Aiden and Clarissa find themselves on an alien planet named Ptallaya under the bright rays of two suns worshiped as divinities - the eyes of the saviour. Ptallaya is populated by the Yatsill, a sentient insectish crustacean like race who turn out to be excellent mimics - so much so that they (with alarming speed) throw off the earlier Pacific islander culture on which their civilization was based and adopt a Victorian lifestyle, right down to top hats, tail coats and bizarre albeit English names. Aiden and Clarissa find themselves in positions of prominence and are given military and research assignments respectively to keep themselves engaged. But, they're dogged by the mystery of what happens when night falls because a Ptallayan day stretches for months and months. The Yatsill fear the setting of the eyes of savior and make oblique references to the blood gods. When night finally falls, the enigma that holds the planet in thrall finally begins to unravel ... inevitably a red sun also rises. 

The story was entertaining for the most part if a little incredulous. I don't think it's meant to be "that" kind of fantasy/science fiction. What ticked me off though was Aiden's inane rumblings about spirituality and questioning his faith and all that crap. The bugger was irritating enough without his constant blathering on about the existence of god. Threw a spanner into a perfectly good read. Also, after Clarissa is miraculously healed of her hunchback and general hideousness and suddenly grows boobs, Aiden feels that he has loved her all along and Clarissa is so thrilled that her master wants to shag her. Honestly! I could still accept it if she was a deformed scullery maid but after portraying her as a society-defying genius, only to have her live up to the expectations of male fantasy fiction. Aiyyo! 

The Islanders by Christopher Priest

I have posted some pretty vile things about certain books and writers. But no, I am not about to express remorse for my words. What I am regretful for is the shocking way in which I put away Christopher Priest's islanders after reading a mere 29 pages(I reckon it was about three years ago). It was at the start of my current proclivity for alternative fiction. So, I was perhaps not ready. Virginal in my knowledge of fantasy, I denigrated The Islanders by thinking it a mindless sandbox exploration. I am truly, deeply sorry. 

It was actually a television show that prompted me to return to The Islanders. This is Jinsy is about a surreal island where residents live regimented and idiosyncratic lives in numbered chalets under the auspices of the omniscient but never present Great He. In the last episode, one of the characters reveals there is a whole world outside Jinsy's autarky - a world of other islands and islanders. Jinsy could possible be one of the islands from the dream archipelago that form the backdrop, cast and narrative of Priest's book. At first glance (at least from the perspective of page 29), The Islanders looks like a wiki entry for fictional islands in an imagined archipelago. However, there is a plot. A subtle one but it's definitely there as characters and themes are repeated and patterns appear. It's in fact very clever. I just needed a little bit of patience to appreciate it. And the whole "tunneling as art" angle was ingenious.

Nightly bye as they say in Jinsy.

"His eyebrows met in the middle like two caterpillars fornicating" - my favourite quote or what I remember of it from This is Jinsy.

Gary Gibson Space Operatic Overdose

I thought I would review more regularly this year but truth be told, I think I've reached some sort of saturation point. It could also be because of the kind of books I've been reading for the last couple of years. Engaging but certainly not work that I really want to reflect on. I've just reached that stage in my life where I don't want to be subjected to tortured nihilistic characters in refined prose. I just want to escape and space opera is filling that need right now. Who knows what it might be tomorrow?

I started Stealing Light with almost no expectations and it took me some time to get into it. And get into it I did! Gibson narration is choppy at times but he's adept at world building, develops fairly interesting characters, and has a plot that leaves you with blue balls. Ergo, rapidly did I finish the three books in the Shoal Sequence. Gibson's apparently writing a fourth tome as this very moment (pumps fist in the air in space nerd style). 

It wasn't enough. I needed more. The two books in the Final Days duology weren't as fine as the Shoal Sequence but entertaining nonetheless. I just need to track down Angel Stations and Against Gravity and become an official Gibson groupie. BTW, Gibson is Scottish. Yet another talented British Scifi writer. It's as if these charlies were born preprogrammed to write about our space-faring future. I am on an Alaistair Reynolds' binge at the moment - Reynolds is a Welsh astronomer and science fiction writer, always a good combination. 

The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making by Catherynne M. Valente

I did say no more catch-up reviews but this is a book that really deserves a few words. The Girl Who is a Wizard of Ozish type fairy tale at first glance but i'ts so much more than that. This is such a sweet, fun story and you just don't want it end (and it doesn't have to because Valente is writing sequels, 4 to be precise). 

And I must thank the Little Red Reviewer because I tried reading Valente's The Habitation of the Blessed and I couldn't. The fault didn't lie with the book. Valente's intricately baroque style is original and engrossing. I don't think I was ready for The Habitation of the Blessed. However, The Girl Who presents perpetually distracted people like me with a pared down version of her style and scope in a far more accessible and familiar story.  

I hope to give The Habitation of the Blessed another go this year. 

The Long Earth by Terry Pratchett & Stephen Baxter

This is probably going to be the last of my catch-up reviews. There are several more books I haven't written about but I couldn't really be arsed particularly because I have to get back to the daily grind tomorrow. 

I haven't read anything by Terry Pratchett in yonks and I have never really ventured outside Discworld - I wasn't even aware he'd written non-Discworld books. So The Long Earth piqued my curiosity especially since it's co-authored by the venerable Stephen Baxter. 

The Long Earth's premise is interesting for the most part. As in Ian McDonald's Planesrunner, the existence of parallel earths is discovered. But, unlike Planesrunner, these parallel earths are not a closely guarded secret and nor are they finite. The doppel-earths stretch infinitely in both directions are easily accessible through a potato powered device known as a steeper with mild nausea as the only side effect. Some of the earths are similar to our own or Datum Earth as it is referred to in the book. Others are very different - ocean worlds or planets in the grip of an ice age. However, none of the earths are inhabited which fuels a huge outflow of colonists from Datum Earth who set out to exploit the availability of unlimited amounts of land and resources.  

Joshua Valiente, an orphan raised by some pretty funky nuns, is a natural stepper who can navigate the parallel earths without the assistance of a stepping device. He is also a pioneer, having journeyed deep into the parallel earths on his own. He comes to the attention of a large corporation interested in investigating earths millions of steps away. Consequently, he is teamed with an artificial sentient being named Lobsang who is apparently a Tibetan mechanic reincarnated into a computer. Joshua and Lobsang travel in an airship, countless earths away from Datum Earth and encounter hominid species, termed elves and trolls, who are escaping from some sort of cataclysm as well early settlers from Datum Earth. 

I'll say it again. The premise of Long Earth is really interesting but it just doesn't go anywhere. I was waiting and waiting for something to happen. And I would still understand it if this was a sandbox type leisurely exploration like Christopher Priest's The Islanders (a book that I've never been able to finish) but it's not! 

I would have liked to have liked The Long Earth but it was just kind of flaccid. 

Succession series: The Risen Empire and The Killing of Worlds by Scott Westerfield

I have recently become a big fan (in others words a genre whore) of space operas. In one sense, I am returning to the space operas of early adolescence. Westerfield's work of course is a completely different species. Those books of my childhood were John Carter-like in their scope and plot. The Succession Series, however, endeavour to present to us a more credible world and yet a universe that is still tinged by enigma. 

The Risen empire is set thousands of years in the future when human diasporas have set up galactic empires that span countless worlds. Earth, or Earth Prime as it is referred to, is a historical point of reference more than a place. The Risen Empire is a galactic nation of 80 worlds ruled by an immortal emperor who in an attempt to save his sister's life discovered a way to cheat death by using a "symbiant". The books don't  elaborate on whether the symbiant is a parasite or even organic for that matter. But living bodies reject the symbiant so the host needs to dead (through the normal course of events or through suicide if not naturally dead) in order to become immortal. Immortality is conferred on  loyal subjects who like the Thanati in China Mieville's The Scar, form a caste of the undead known for obvious reasons as the gray. Some of the gray help the emperor rule as members of the Political Apparatus. Others live in secluded colonies, painting abstract art and going on pilgrimage around the empire. When book one opens, we discover that the Child Empress, the emperor's sister who was the reason immortality was invented, being held hostage on Legis IX, a far-flung planet in close proximity to the territory of their arch-rivals, the Rix. The Rix were once human but they eschewed humanity to become semi-organic beings in their quest to create and propagate compound minds - immense sentient entities - akin to AI gods. 

Succession is strangely a love story between an eccentric senator, Nara Oxham, who has the ability to sense emotions and read minds and Laurent Zai, a crippled war-hero and captain of the the Lynx - the ship in charge of rescuing the Child Empress. As the story unfolds, things become increasingly complicated as the protagonists' values come under question - who is the real enemy?  

Both Succession books belong to the "feverishly turn the page" variety. In many ways, this is an old fashioned adventure underscored by a love story between a powerful woman and her poor lover who is being used as a pawn. However, Westerfield has really done his homework. The science behind what's happening is expounded in great detail - but in a way that eggs you to read on.  It's also very realistic. For example, it takes 10 absolute years to travel between Legis IX and the empire's home planet - time that passengers and crew spend in stasis. Travelling at speeds greater than light presents all sorts of conundrums with respect to time. For example, you may return to your planet having lost just several years whereas your family and friends may have aged by generations. It's rare to find a science fiction writer who doesn't sweep these issues under carpet for ease of narration and comprehension. The voice of the all-knowing narrator is ever so slightly dodgy at times. I wish Westerfield had focused on the present action (particularly in battle sequences) instead of annotating it with extraneous details about the future - "The processing chief, Samuel Vries, was knocked unconscious by the jet of water and drowned before rescue could come. The Lynx was left without a functional water-recycling system for days, and three decks smelled noticeably for a long time. Vries was eventually rewarded with immortality, and continued his researches into human/bacterial interactions in small closed environments, but at a far less practical level of application." I found this quite jarring. 

The Killing of Worlds didn't bring the story to a neat (or maybe conventional is a better word) close and it seemed like there would be another volume. However, book two was published in 2003 so I assume that Westerfield has no plans to release another or maybe he just got bored and moved on to better things. I hope I'll get an opportunity to read some of those better things.  

Oaxaca Journal by Oliver Sacks

I haven't read any of Oliver Sacks' other books. His other work is apparently quite well-known and makes research and insights into neurology (naturally, he's a neurologist) accessible to laypeople. Oaxaca Journal is a diversion of sorts from his usual fare. If I've understood correctly from his preface, it seems the material in the book is mostly from his journal of a trip to the state of Oaxaca in Mexico and was published at a much later date. At the time of this trip, Sacks was 72. 

So, a travelogue in the exotic Mexican countryside with the colourful Zapotec culture, the ruins of Monte Alban etc. Well, the book has all of these things but the core objective of the trip quite surprised with me. Sacks didn't go alone. His companions were members of the American Fern Society which as you might have guessed is a bunch of old folks who go completely batty in the presence of a pteridophyte. Sacks appears to be a late entrant to this club and he doesn't seem as passionate or in the know as his ferny friends. 

You'd imagine that a book about pensioners looking for ferns on a Oaxacan hillside would make for pretty boring reading. However, Oaxaca Journal is actually kind of sweet. It's a very brief book about a very brief journey so it's fairly superficial as travelogues go but Sacks is honest, humble and endearing.  

"I have also observed - I was a little slow to see it - two lesbian couples, and one gay couple, in our group. very stable, long term, as-if-married relationships, solidified, stabilized, by a shared love of botany. There is an easy, unselfconscious mixing here of all the couples - straight, lesbian, gay - all the potential intolerences and rejections and suspicions and alienations transcended completely in the shared botanical enthusiasm, the togetherness of the group. 

I myself may be the only single person here, but I have been single, a singleton, all my life. Yet here this does not matter in the least, either. I have a strong feeling of being one of the group, of belonging, of communal affection  - a feeling that is extremely rare in my life, and my be in part a case of a strange "symptom" I have had, an odd feeling that in the last day or so, which I was hard put to diagnose, and first ascribed to the altitude. It was, I suddenly realized, a feeling of job, a feeling so unusual I was slow to recognize it. There are many causes for this joyousness, I suspect - the plants, the ruins, the people of Oaxaca - but the sense of this sweet community, belonging is surely a part of it."

In that sense Oaxaca Journal is truly a journal because it is not merely about the observations along a journey, but observations about oneself. 

Beautiful Thing by Sonia Faleiro

I feel incredibly guilty that I've waited till the absolute end of the year to post this review. Indian reporter and writer, Sonia Faleiro's Beautiful Thing deserves much better treatment. This is the best work of non-fiction I've read this year, perhaps even the best book period. A lot of other bloggers have their end of the year top ten lists. My own meagre blog can't harbour such delusions of grandeur, at least not yet. But, if I did have a year end chart of best books of the year - Beautiful Thing would be at the very top. 

This is the book's official description: 

"Sonia Faleiro was a reporter in search of a story when she met Leela, a beautiful and charismatic bar dancer with a story to tell. Leela introduced Sonia to the underworld of Bombay's dance bars: a world of glamorous women, of fierce love, sex and violence, of customers and gangsters, of police, prostitutes and pimps.

When an ambitious politician cashed in on a tide of false morality and had Bombay's dance bars wiped out, Leela's proud independence faced its greatest test. In a city where almost everyone is certain that someone, somewhere, is worse off than them, she fights to survive, and to win. 

Beautiful Thing, one of the most original works of non-fiction from India in years, is a vivid and intimate portrait of one reporter’s journey into the dark, pulsating, and ultimately damaged soul of Bombay."

I also feel guilty that these are true stories about real people who barely registered in my mind when the shutting of the dance bars episode happened. I couldn't have given a shit about illicit pursuits of vernaculars so long as the cops stayed away from my watering holes. And in doing so, reduced human beings with hopes and wants to non-entities. Faleiro lifts these personae non-gratae from oblivion, from the faraway exurb separated from the city by "the bobbing of other people's faeces and filth" called a river; lifts them not to a stature of the noble oppressed as intellectuals are so fond of doing in India, but reveals them for who they genuinely are - flaws, sloth, avarice and tragedy - nothing is repackaged. 

Beautiful Thing is not for the meek-hearted. This is a deeply disturbing book and some of its incidents will trouble you long after you have finished reading it like the stoical way in which a bar dancer recounts how her own son raped her.

"Anita had been raped by her father. But that wasn't 'aaj ki taaza khabar'. Breaking news. She had had two sons by two different men. Or was it four different men? she said, with some confusion of how these things work. As she thrust and twirled to buy her sons milk and toys and to educate them in an English-medium school, she dreamt of when they would one day get 'big-big jobs' and say to her grandly, 'Now you put your feet up Mummy and let your daughters-in-law do everything.' But then her elder son, Sridhar, turned sixteen and one monsoon night he said to Anita in a voice as water undisturbed: 'Khat pe chal.' Get on the bed. 'I ignored him,' Anita said. 'Our chawl had flooded and the water had risen to our knees. Even my Reliance stopped working. So I thought to myself, "Poor boy, water is swimming in his brain. he's having a fit.' But Sridhar wasn't having a fit and the night after he didn't bother with the politeness of a request. He raped his mother. The night after that he raped her once more and when it was and he had returned to his own bed in his own dark corner, Anita slid under her chunni and, gently patting her cheeck, comforted herself, 'At least he didn't hit me. I'm an ugly face in a glamour line and had he damaged me further I would have been thrown out of the dance bar and forced to become a waiter in a Silent Bar. The humiliation! Merciful God, you saved me!"

I've always been a little skeptical about non-fiction writers who include copious amounts of dialogue. Is it really possible to have a record, written or taped, of so many conversations and in such detail? In the book's acknowledgements, Faleiro reveals that although she was "present for most of the events described in this book, some dialogue and characters were reconstructed."

Whether real or reconstructed, Beautiful Thing is powerful and moving. 

Can I interest you in a Sea Bath with Seaman?

Chakra Tirtha Road, Puri, Orissa: And if you don't fancy a sea bath with seaman, you can always go in for a gents to gents or a ladies to ladies, whatever that is. Sounds mighty pimpish if you ask me. 

Night of Knives by Ian C. Esslemont

While I was dissatisfied with Black Bottle, I am really disappointed with Night of Knives. I'd heard so much of the Malazan Empire series and I was champing at the bit to get into it and I tried especially hard to start with the very first one so I'd be completely clued into all the what's its and who's whats. And while I understand the whole dope about how Steven Erikson and Esslemont have created a shared fictional world; and how Esslemont, a Canadian writer, is building on previously elucidated events and narratives - I still don't see any of this as justification for such a poorly-developed story.  

Night of Knives got off to an okay start, set on the island of Malaz which despite having lent its name to an empire, has slipped into quiet obscurity. But, it's the night of the shadow moon and strange things are supposedly afoot as the walls between worlds become porous for a night. There's just nothing thrilling about the city of Malaz or maybe Esslemont was trying to avoid repeating things that Erikson may have already said in his novels. The two main characters in Night of Knives, Temper and Kiski are drop dead boring and irritating respectively. Their stories are told in crude flashbacks. But, neither their past nor their present is interesting enough to make you care as to whether they live or die. Indeed, that's the main problem with Night of Knives. It feels like Esslemont is just going through the motions of storytelling without really being invested in. It all results in a pretty dull reading experience with all your regular unoriginal fantasy devices: ancient castle check, zombies check, giant monsters check, witches check, power-hungry undead rulers check, rival mage factions check, clueless idiot local girl check, unwilling veteran warrior check etc. 

All this mediocre fantasy is rotting my brain.  

Our Lady of Alice Bhatti by Mohammed Hanif

It feels like I read this book eons ago. It was actually several months ago but time enough to dilute the reasons why I completely adored it. I can't offer more than vague justification for Our Lady of Alice Bhatti's uber-coolness but this is an exceptionally well-written work. Pakistani writers like Daniyal Mueenuddin seem to have an uncanny ability to craft incisive, goose-bump creating prose. Hanif takes it to a completely different level blending his sharp observations with deliciously dark humour, presenting the social rot in his country in all its satirical glory.  

Alice Bhatti is the only daughter of a sewage worker from Karachi's Christian Choohra community. People outside Pakistan know little about Karachi's Choohras but they have a long history according to Alice's father, "Choohras were here before everything. Choohras were  here before the Sacred (Heart) was built, before Yassoo was resurrected, before Muslas came on their horses, even before Hindus decided they were too exalted to clean up their own shit. And when all  of this is finished, Choohras will still be here." "Yes ..." Alice adds, "... when everything is finished, Choohras will still be here. And cockroaches too."

Alice, who has spent time in a borstal, knows the odds are stacked against her. She's a Choohra, a Christian, a convicted criminal and worst of all in possession of a vagina. By page 6, she's in an interview trying for a nurse's position at the Sacred Heart Hospital. Already, we get a potent dose of Hanif's characteristic humour. "My job is to cure people..." her interviewer tells her, "... to cure them at the worst of time. I don't decide when someone is going to die. he does." He raises his forefinger towards the ceiling. Alice Bhatti looks at the ceiling fan in confusion: Put Your Faith in Philips, it says." 

I've missed seeing Hanif at two litfests. This is one author I desperately want to meet. 

The Corpse-Rat King by Lee Battersby

Marius, a serial opportunist, is out scavenging corpses on a battlefield with his dimwitted apprentice Gerd when he spots the mother load - a dead king in full regalia. Marius quickly divests the deceased sovereign of his crown and other possessions, only to find that Gerd has been seen by soldiers. Gerd is quickly executed while Marius hides among the dead. Escape though is not so easily sought as a dead solider mistakes him for the late king and whisks him away to the realm of the dead. The dead, it seems, crave attention from God and require an intermediary to intercede on their behalf - and who better to do that then a non-living, non-breathing king. The only problem is that Marius is no king and he is certainly not dead as he repeatedly points out to his decomposing hosts. The dead seethe with anger and send Marius out into the world to search for a real king. They saddle him with Gerd who is to monitor him as well as the affliction that renders him neither living nor dead. Marius runs. He runs as fast and as far away as he can. But, there's no escaping the dead. 

I was pleasantly surprised at how engaging The Corpse-Rat King is. It's funny in a sort of surreal (like when Marius walks across the seabed with the fused skeleton of a dead king and his beloved horse, only to be attacked by a shark) and semi-macabre way. It's difficult to develop any empathy for Marius. He's just a total fuck-wit who seems to deserve everything he's being subjected to. But, after wandering the land with him, you do get a little attached to his selfishness and other idiosyncrasies. Battersby's writing is very fine and this is his debut novel. His narration walks that line between observational and absurd and makes for robust writing. The one thing that could have been executed better was the overall flow of the story. Individual incidents and events were captivating but what tied them together - Marius' journey - felt monotonous and repetitive. It almost felt like Battersby sat down and wrote a series of related stories and joined them together and unfortunately these bits seem like an afterthought. 

Overall, I thought The Corpse-Rat King was surreal and original.  

Black Bottle by Anthony Huso

I always manage to pick the worst possible book to take with me on holiday. I was in Orissa last week - not the most action-packed of places but I wasn't really worried because I had already resigned myself to filling my time on a sun chair next to the pool with an absorbing book. I had two poolside companions: Black Bottle by Anthony Huso and The Night of Knives by Ian C. Esslemont. And both left me wondering what the fuck was going on.  

I still have about 50 pages to finish in The Night of Knives but that's a relatively brief book in comparison to Black Bottle - four hundred and forty odd pages and I kept thinking that I'd somehow, somewhere find some meaning in its utterly verbose randomness. But, nothing. To give Huso the benefit of the doubt, I haven't read The Last Page whose sequel Black Bottle is. However, is that reason enough for such poor character development in Black Bottle? Sena and Caliph, the chief players of this rambling tale say a whole load and do a lot including travelling between realms, fighting monsters and escaping witches who use blood magic - but even on page bloody four hundred and forty four - you are still wondering who the fuck these people are.

The plot chiefly concerns some sort of world shattering apocalypse which no one is aware of save Sena Illool who happens to be a ravishingly beautiful and strikingly odd witch and fuck-buddy to one Mr. Caliph Howl, High King of the paltry northern state of Stonehold. Stonehold is locked into intense geopolitical struggles with its southern neighbours, particularly Pandragor, which in a nod to America eyeing the axis of evil theme, fears an illicit transfer of technology. The technology that runs this fantasy world is partly based on steampunk, partly on blood magic using "holojoules" and the remainder on idiocy. Anyhoo, Caliph hasn't been clearing his plumbing of late because his girlfriend the witch is completely engaged in solving a massive quandary which involves being away for long periods of time and spending time staring at books in her library. When she does return, she and Caliph go off to an important conference, at which as we are told a million times, the high king must deliver a critical speech and perhaps be subjected to an assassination attempt. So, off they go, Sena and Caliph in three airships. Still, no sex for the high king. Oh I nearly forgot the big-boobed delusional priestess cum spy Taelin who invented her own religion. After one of the wordiest airship trips in recent memory jarred solely by some ultra-sexy witches (from where else but a witchocracy?) who attack using bits of floating intestines and make away with a red doomsday book, our one-dimensional couple reach the destination - the incredibly dull cliff-top town of Sandren. But, no welcome party here. The city's been struck by a plague that's turned its inhabitants into silvery fishy zombies. And on and on and on and bloody on.

I don't know what Huso was trying to do but I just wish he'd done it in fewer words. Verbose and meaninglessly so. He comes across as a try-hard in every possible aspect of this book - the world, characters, technology, dialogue - you name it and Huso got it covered.  He has characters spout allegedly enigmatic words in unfamiliar tongues and clarifies their meaning in footnotes:

"Ofoo Ou tuldoo auyoo, auyou'doo leyghou."16 said Sena

16 W.: If I told you, you'd laugh. 

Ridiculous! I don't know how much effort he expended in creating this forced lyricism but it has some fairly asinine results.


"Only in dreams can the entire universe be emptied of your species and leave you to haunt the cosmos, a solitary morsel of meat.

He looks up into heavens the color of paint mixed with ash.
The sky hates him.

He stumbles into the middle of the square, feeling catarrhine, barely capable of balancing without all four feet on the ground. He swaggers, hardly standing. For a moment the heat is incredible, then that whimsical-strong ocean breeze tongues the trees. Stray currents swirl into the square and goose bumps rake his skin.

The jungle moves. It unrolls and blooms and sways. It mouths the ruins and the beach, slobbering, drizzling nectar from millions of blossoms. Caliph appreciates the sticky mist coating the back of his neck, spattering against his cheeks, like strange rain, like bat urine. Sweet, aphrodisiacal and repugnant."

Gosh, the familiar stench of bat urine. That's one simile that was just waiting around to be used.

That was part one of my holiday reading. More love and kisses to follow for The Night of Knives.

The Supernaturalist by Eoin Colfer

Colfer's Artemis Fowl series was well-written and entertaining for the most part. The Supernaturalist makes you feel like he's run out of ideas. At the heart of this sci-fi Oliver Twist tale is Cosmo Hill, christened after Cosmonaut Hill - the place where he is found abandoned as a baby. Satellite City, the setting for the story, is a partially dystopian place controlled by a large corporation and its low orbit, failing satellite.  

Clarissa Frayne Institute for Parentally Challenged Boys, Cosmo Hill is subjected to all sorts of tests and experiments and used by evil corporations in human trials as a guinea pig for everything from cosmetics to video games. When his transport crashes on the way back to the orphanage, Cosmo escapes only to find himself electrocuted on a rooftop and he opens his eyes to spot a blue thing on his chest. He is rescued by a gang of oddballs whose mission it is to find and destroy the blue parasites which allegedly feed on human life force.  

It's all very silly and the blue parasites are particularly puerile. I was bored through much of the book; thankfully it's not very long.  

The Secrets of the Immortal Nicholas Flamel by Michael Scott

When I was at University, I did a presentation in French class (I had a minor in French - tragique non?) on Nicholas Flamel. This was over a decade ago well before The Alchemyst was published. I got the idea from the very first Harry Potter book which you may recall revolved around a certain philosopher's stone crafted by a French gentleman named Nicholas Flamel. In case you don't remember, this reenactment by some Spanish kids in Spanish (completely random) might jog your memory: 

My presentation was apropos the real Nicholas Flamel who lived in medieval Paris and whose house incredibly still stands. It is in fact the oldest residential structure in Paris. Legend has it that Nicholas and his wife Pernelle discovered the secret to immortality and their graves have lain empty. After hightailing it around Europe for a while, the immortal Flamels went east, hiding out in India where they may still remain. While I 'd imagined that the mysterious Anglo-Indian couple down the road may be the still undead Flamels, Irish writer Michael Scott started a YA fiction wave by plotting the Flamels down in San Francisco where their paths cross with American twins, Sophie and Josh Newman who are apparently twins of legend foretold in an ancient prophecy. The basic story line concerns a world where powerful non-mortal beings have retreated from the human world but now conspire to control it again. And obviously the twins are entrusted with the task of defeating them. 

In procuring material for his six books, Scott liberally plunders world history, populating his cast of characters with all manner of gods, major and minor, epic warriors, philosophers, and others. His chief human baddies are Dr. John Dee, an advisor in the court of Elizabeth I and Niccolò Machiavelli. The books have many inconsistencies and anachronisms but its protagonists are earnest and action scenes (including car chases) frequent. And hey maybe the intended audience might even look up these characters and become interested in history, might. I reckon that was quite cleverly done. 

The first two books were page-turners and then my interest levels seem to fall under the ambit of the curve of marginal depreciation. Book 5 and 6 were just downright bad. The series closer is poorly plotted. Some of its pivotal events are kinda lame. It's almost as if Scott became bored or lazy just as he was at the finish line. I suppose the pressure of producing book after book in a short span of time and meeting the expectations of young readers who have so many other arguably more attractive distractions, was bound to have an impact.