Pilgrim sidles into Spring 2020

Yes, I am starting this thread a little late!

I will continue the old one, for reviewing books that were read during the first quarter of 2020. But l without really start writing about my April reading.

April

1. Manuscript Tradition (short story) by Harry Turtledove - 2 stars
2. Empire V by Viktor Pelevin - 4.5 stars
3. The Hitman's Guide to Making Friends and Finding Love by Alice Winters - 2 stars
4. The Hitman's Guide to Staying Alive Despite Past Mistakes by Alice Winters - 1 stars
5. Gold Dragon by Lindsay Buroker - 3 stars
6. Dragon Rider from Beginnings by Lindsay Buroker - 2.5 stars
7. Old Man's War by John Scalzi - 1.5 stars
8. In the Lands of the Spill (short story) by Aliette de Bodard - 3 stars
9. The Visitor: Kill Or Cure: Wild Cards Book 24 (short story) by Mark Lawrence - 3.5 stars

May

1. War in Heaven from The Charles Williams Collection by Charles Williams - 4 stars
2. The Domestic (short story) by Ben Aaronovitch - 2 stars
3. Favourite Uncle (short story) by Ben Aaronovitch - 2 stars
4. Preface to Essays Presented to Charles Williams (essay) by C.S. Lewis - 3 stars
5. ♪♪King of Rats (short story) by Ben Aaronovitch (read by Doc Brown) - 1.5 stars
6. The Screwtape Letters by C. S. Lewis (read by Ralph Cosham) ♪♪
7. Invasion (short story) by Russ Linton - 1 star
8. "Eminently Combustible" - Charles Williams, the Most Interesting Inkling (research paper) by Clay Waters - 1 star

June

1. The Trial of Duncan Terig, alias Clerk, and Alexander Bane Macdonald, for the Murder of Arthur Davis, Sergeant in General Guise's Regiment of Foot by Sir Walter Scott - 3 stars
2 . Marvel Adventures: Super Heroes (2010-2012) #1 by Paul Tobin, illustrated by Ronan Cliquet, with cover by Clayton Henry - 1.5 stars
3. Moon of Three Rings from Moonsinger by Andre Norton - 4.5 stars
4. Exiles of the Stars from Moonsinger by Andre Norton - 3.5 stars
5. The Seventh Cross by Anna Seghers (trans. by Margot Bettauer Dembo) - 4.5 stars
6. The Life and Death Parade by Eliza Wass - 0.5 stars
7. Washington Black by Esi Edugyan - 1.5 stars
8. Minimum Wage Magic by Rachel Aaron - 2 stars

Currently Reading


An Impeccable Spy: Richard Sorge, Stalin's Master Agent by Owen Matthews
Started: 26/3/2020


What is the Romani language? by Peter Bakker, Milena Hübschmannová, Valdemar Kalinin, Donald Kenrick, Hristo Kyuchukov, Yaron Matras and Giulio Soravia
Started: 1/5/2020


Cyril and Methodius of Thessalonica: the Acculturation of the Slavs by Anthony-Emil N. Tachiaos
Started: 5/6/2020

Slipstream: a Royal Air Force Anthology edited by Squadron Leader R. Raymond and Squadron Leader David Langdon
Started: 7/6/2020


The Complete Tales of Nikolai Gogol, Volume 1 by Nikolai Gogol (trans. by Constance Garnett; edited by Leonard J. Kent)
Started: 9/12/2019


Smoke in the Lanes by Dominic Reeve (illus. by "Beshlie")
Started: 19/6/2020

On Kindle:


The Charles Williams Collection by Charles Williams
Started: 25/4/2020

Ghost Stories of an Antiquary (enlarged edition) by M. R. James
Started: 6/2/2020

Audiobook:

Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone by J. K. Rowling (read by Daniel Radcliffe)
Started: 5/5/2020


A Grief Observed by C. S. Lewis (read by Ralph Cosham)
Started: 10/5/2020

PDF

The Russian Revolution by Alexandr Petrunkevitch, Samuel N. Harper, Frank Alfred Golder and Robert Joseph Kerner
Started: 16/05/2020


Out of the Silent Planet by C. S. Lewis
Started: 18/05/2020

Series in progress

Fiction

DFZ by Rachel Aaron: 1 - Part-time Gods
Rivers of London by Ben Aaronovitch: 1-4, 5, 6, 7 - The Cockpit; False Value
Dania Gorska by Hania Allen: 1 - Clearing the Dark

Chronicles of Amber by John Gregory Betancourt: P1, 1-10 - Chaos and Amber
The Folk of the Air by Holly Black: P1-3, 1-2 -The Queen of Nothing
Dominion of The Fallen by Aliette de Bodard: 1 - Children of Thorns, Children of Water
Pieter Posthumous by Britta Bolt: 3 - Lonely Graves
Alpha and Omega by Patricia Briggs: 1-2 - Fair Game
Mercy Thompson by Patricia Briggs: 1-8 - Fire Touched
Sianim by Patricia Briggs: 3-4 - Masques
World of the Five Gods by Lois McMasters Bujold: 1.1, 2 -Penric and the Shaman, The Paladin of Souls
Chains of Honor by Lindsay Buroker: P1-P3, 1-2 Snake Heart, Assassin's Bond
Emperor's Edge by Lindsay Buroker: 1-8 - Diplomats and Fugitives
Fallen Empire by Lindsay Buroker: P-3 - Relic of Sorrows

Holly Danger by Amanda Carlson: 1 - Danger's Vice
Spellslinger by Sebastian de Castell: 1-5 - Crownbreaker
Greatcoats by Sebastian de Castell: 1 - Knight's Shadow
The Daevabad Trilogy by S. A. Chakraborty: 1 - The Kingdom of Copper
Chronicles of an Age of Darkness by Hugh Cook: 1 - The Wordsmiths and the Warguild
The Saxon Chronicles by Bernard Cornwell: 1-2 - The Lords of the North
Sharpe by Bernard Cornwell:1, 6, 8-9, 13 - Sharpe's Triumph
Arkady Renko by Martin Cruz Smith: 1 - Polar Star

Marcus Didius Falco by Lindsey Davis: 1-6 - Time to Depart
Flavia Albia by Lindsey Davis: 1-2.5 - Deadly Election
Priya's Shakti by Ram Devineni & Dan Goldman: 1-2 - Priya and the Lost Girls
John Pearce by David Donachie: 1, 14 - A Shot-Rolling Ship
The Privateersman Mysteries by David Donachie: 1-2 - A Hanging Matter
The Marie Antoinette Romances by Alexandre Dumas: 2 - Cagliostro
The Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas: 1-3 - Louise de la Vallière
Cliff Janeway by John Dunning: 1 - The Bookman's Wake

The Beginner's Guide to Necromancy by Hailey Edwards: 1 - How to Claim an Undead Soul

Metro 203x by Dmitry Glukhovsky: 1-1.5 - Metro 2034
The Archangel Project by C Gockel: 1- 1.5 - Noa's Ark
The Earthsea Cycle by Ursula le Guin 1 - The Tombs of Atuan

Forever War by Joe Haldeman: 1 - Forever Free
Benjamin January by Barbara Hambly: 1 - Fever Season
Darwath by Barbara Hambly: 1-3 - Mother of Winter
James Asher by Barbara Hambly: 1-2, 4-5 - Blood Maidens, Darkness on His Bones
Sun Wolf and Star Hawk by Barbara Hambly: 1-3 - Hazard
The Windrose Chronicles by Barbara Hambly: 1-3 - Firemaggot
The Stainless Steel Rat by Harry Harrison 4-5, 9 - The Stainless Steel Rat Is Born
The Paper Magician by Charlie N. Holmberg: 1-2, 4 - The Master Magician

Conqueror by Conn Iggulden: 1 - Lords of the Bow

Alex Verus by Benedict Jacka: 9 - Fated

The Danilov Quintet by Jasper Kent:1 - Thirteen Years Later

The Jane Doe Chronicles by Jeremy Lachlan: 1 - The Key of All Souls
The Book of the Ancestor by Mark Lawrence: 1 - Grey Sister
The Kalle Blomqvist Mysteries by Astrid Lindgren: 3 - Master Detective

Robert Colbeck by Edward Marston: 1 - The Excursion Train
The Raven's Mark by Ed McDonald: 1 - Ravencry

The Psammead by E. Nesbit: 1-3 - The Story of the Amulet
Moonsinger by Andre Norton: 1-2 - Flight in Yiktor

Giordano Bruno by S.J. Parris: 5 - Heresy
Brother Cadfael by Ellis Peters: 1-12 - The Rose Rent
The Gaian Consortium by Christine Pope: 1 - Breath of Life
Discworld by Sir Terry Pratchett: 1-15.5 - Soul Music
The Devices Trilogy by Philip Purser-Hallard: 1-2 - Trojans

Divergent by Veronica Roth: 1, 2.5 - Insurgent

The Witcher by Andrzej Sapkowski: 1 - The Last Wish, Time of Contempt
Old Man's War by John Scalzi: 1 - The Ghost Brigades
The Rhenwars Saga by M. L. Spencer: 1 - Darklands
Merchant Princes by Charles Stross: 2 - The Family Trade
The Dolphin Ring by Rosemary Sutcliff: 1, 3-6, 8 - The Silver Branch

The Ember Quarter by Saba Tahir: 2 - An Ember in the Ashes
Jem Flockhart by E. S. Thomson: 2 - Beloved Poison
A Connecticut Yankee at King Arthur's Court by Mark Twain: 1-2 - Part 3

Miss Silver by Patricia Wentworth: 1 - The Case is Closed
Aspects of Power by Charles Williams: 1 - Many Dimensions

Non-fiction

The Spiritual Life by Hieromonk Gregorios: 1 - Be Ready

The History of Middle Earth by Christopher Tolkien: ??

Series Completed in 2020

Dragon Blood by Lindsay Buroker: P, 1-8
Heritage of Power by Lindsay Buroker: 1-5

Series up to date

Paul Samson by Henry Porter: 1-2 - The Old Enemy
The Hitman's Guide by Alice Winters: 1-2

N.b.
(i) This list is still probably incomplete.
(ii) The named book is the next to be read
(iii) Inclusion of a series does not imply intent to complete it.
(iv) I have read some of the series in bold type during this year (2020), others are outstanding.
(v) I have pruned out of this list some series that I began in 2019, but definitely do not intend to continue.

Congrats on the new thread! Thank you for the review of Imperial Legend: The Mysterious Disappearance of Tsar Alexander I.
You read the most interesting and fascinating books I would not have heard of otherwise!

Did you see I finally read The Armageddon Rag?

Touchstones don't seem to be working today, I keep getting no results.

>6 Karlstar: Thank you, again, Jim. Do I manage to tempt you down some reading byways occasionally?

My initial impression from your review of Armageddon Rag was that you did not particularly like it, but I was unsure why. Looking again at your rating system, did that interpret as "thoroughly enjoyed but would not reread"?

I have been watching YouTube clips of Les Miserables this weekend. I am struck how much the failed revolution in Paris in 1832, triggered by the death of General Lemarque, had in common with the failed revolution in St. Petersburg, 7 years earlier, triggered by the death of Alexander I. The latter was led by autocrats, with military units on their side, whereas the French settled to have genuine leadership from the lower classes (despite how it is portrayed in the musical).

But their agenda and intentions were remarkably similar. Except no one was executed out of the French revolutionaries

And yes, Touchstones seem to be completely out.
ETA: Touchstones now working.

>7 -pilgrim-: You absolutely do tempt me on many of your reviews! We overlap in reading interests in a couple of areas.

The Armageddon Rag was one of those, for example. While it was on my wish list, I was on the fence whether I wanted to read it or not. I enjoyed reading it, really, that probably didn't come across in my review. Do I agree with the character's point of view or his attitude towards the 60's? Definitely not, I can't relate at all and I would have been one of the people in 'the system' that they complain about. I shouldn't have let that affect my review so much though. I'd be happy to discuss it more, too.

I hope that helps.

The reviews of Armageddon Rag were enough that I bought a copy for my daughter Katherine though.

>8 Karlstar: Yes, it does.

I don't think it is necessary to actually like Sandy. He is simply an epitome of the "Children of the Sixties", with that peculiar mix of idealism and self-absorbed, casual selfishness.

But I am not sure that GRRM likes Sandy either. He gives a pretty powerful critique of those attitudes in the voice of Dave the under sherriff (and Vietnam veteran), who is an unambiguously sympathetic character. Overtly, he is criticizing the attitudes of the protagonist of Sandy's novel. But since Sandy obviously identifies with his character, and admires his choices, then the criticism actually applies to Sandy himself.

GRRM was writing in the eighties, and compared to the lack of ideals of that generation of students, I could see that he missed the idealism of a generation that wanted to better the world, rather than just their own personal circumstances.

But Sandy represents the faults of that generation as well as its virtues. And all his friends represent the varying ways that the hippy dream failed. So I think it is a criticism of both eras, even if GRRM has a certain nostalgia for the hopes of his youth.

ETA: I enjoy our conversations when we have read the same book, and would be happy to continue the discussion.

>9 haydninvienna: Has Katherine disappeared from LT? I tried to see whether she had reviewed Armageddon Rag, and I couldn't find her account
ETA: Turns out to be a function of the Touchstones problem.

>10 -pilgrim-: An excellent point. I got caught up so much in their attempts to recreate the feelings of the 60's movement, that I overlooked that it might be a criticism of the 80's. It definitely was. I was also struck by how 'back in the day' it was. A road trip with no internet and no cell phone or laptop. He actually had to call people on a landline from a hotel! How did we ever get by? They also wrote letters, which is a topic we've been discussing in MrsLee's thread here in the GD.

>11 Karlstar: I am wondering how much the problem with selling The Armageddon Rag when it was written, in the eighties, was the fact that it did not neatly fit genre categorisation, and how much, as I suggested in my review, the readers then were just not ready for a critique on the ethos of their generation.

They had rejected the sixties as a generation of doped up dropouts (or oppressive conservatives), in contrast to which they were focussed on achievement.

They probably didn't enjoy a book that portrayed all the children of the Sixties - whether they fought in Vietnam or protested against the war - as vigorously active in trying to make a better world.

>11 Karlstar: Yes, in the eighties, carrying on a long-distance relationship meant exchanging 5+ page letters, weekly or more often. Even if you could get to a telephone, either you paid exorbitant call box rates, or you had your family or flatmates eagerly listening in!

I find it interesting to track how the advent of portable technology has affected adventure novels and thrillers:

In the nineties there was the realisation that all the adventure stories of our childhood could be resolved by chapter 2: "George took out her mobile phone and called the police".

Books started having convoluted explanations of why this would not work: no signal reception, batteries soaked etc. etc.

Now the mobile phone is used as part of the threat, as, for example, the heroine finds herself being tracked via her mobile.

>12 -pilgrim-: >13 -pilgrim-: I wouldn't know how to categorize Armageddon Rag, but I guess it just falls into the 'fiction' category. I see your point, in the 80's, this may have felt like betrayal to people some people in their 30's and hippie junk to others. At this point, it is just interesting history.

I would say it improved my opinion of Martin as an author, especially after reading Fevre Dream. What a nice pair of different novels with a little fantasy influence.

I wonder how Elon Musk plans on handling mobile technology on Mars? It won't be needed in the beginning when everyone is in one or two buildings, but won't they want mobile technology fairly soon? I only think of that because as you said, everything written now has to take it into account, though it has been around since the Star Trek TOS days.

>15 -pilgrim-: I agree. I had had Game of Thrones recommended enthusiastically to me by someone whose recommendations are usually a good guide as to what to avoid, and nothing I had heard about the TV series changed that opinion.

I have you to thank for getting me interested, with your review of Fevre Dream. Since my local discount bookstore was carrying his non GoT books at prices between £1-£3, I could experiment.

>14 Karlstar: If the buildings are sharing an atmosphere, what about short wave radio (ham style)?

>15 -pilgrim-: Have you read any of Martin's Haviland Tuf books? They are... very different from his other works.

>16 -pilgrim-: That makes sense, but one thing I wonder about with his plans, how is he going to keep supplied with computer parts - boards, chips, memory, etc? It all has to be shipped. Radios are simpler.

Popping in to mark this thread.

I await your Washington Black review.

>17 Karlstar: Tuf Voyaging is another from that haul. Still on the TBR pile as yet. Do you recommend?

My impression is that GRRM is a far better writer when he did not feel the need to be constrained by genre expectations, but has found that writing into a specific genre niche is what has brought him the big money.

>17 Karlstar: As I see it, the problem with supply is going to be the forward planning.

We have had space stations that can be repaired in situ for a while now. That works with a careful husbanding of what is actually needed, plus s certain amount of built-in redundancy.

But when the "delivery" journey length has again become a significant factor, I think it would require a return to pioneer mentality: rather than ship the finished products, ship the components and have the facilities and capabilities "in house" to repurpose them as needed.

>18 libraryperilous: That may be a while in coming. So far I have been very disappointed.

I almost left a note on the previous thread where you'd talked about Barbara Hambly and her James Archer series. Someone else had noted that they had no idea that the series had progressed so far and neither had I. I followed her Benjamin January series for a while but got distracted. Now it appears I should go back and revisit her overall set of titles to see what else I may have missed in the meantime.

>19 -pilgrim-: I liked the Haviland Tuf books, but they aren't the same quality. Fun, but not nearly as good.

>23 Karlstar: Books, plural? I was only aware of the one volume. What else is there?

>22 jillmwo: I am not up to date - there are three more after Kindred of Darkness!

April

Average rating: 2.56 stars

9 fiction: 6 novels, 3 short stories
Novels: 2 romance, 2 fantasy, 1 urban fantasy, 1 science fiction
Short stories: 3 science fiction

Original language: 8 English, 1 Russian

Earliest date of first publication: 2006
Latest: 2020

1 paperback, 5 Kindle, 3 online publications

Authors: 4 male, 3 female
Author nationality: 4 American, 1 Russian, 1 French, 1 British
New (to me) authors: 3 (4 familiar)

Most popular book on LT: Old Man's War
Least popular: Dragon Rider (novel)/In the Lands of the Spill (short story (both only me))

No. of books read: 9
From Mount TBR (books owned before 2020): 1
Books owned before joining Green Dragon: 0
No. of books acquired: 94 (Amazon has a lot of classic novels for sale, free, at the moment!)
No. of books disposed of: 17 (moving house impelled it!)

Total Expenditure on books: £50.19

Best Book of April: Empire V
Worst Book of April: The Hitman's Guide to Staying Alive Despite Past Mistakes

>26 -pilgrim-: I have not paid attention to your previous month's average rating. Is this month average or worse than normal?

>26 -pilgrim-: It has not been a good month. One excellent book, several that were OK but not memorable, and a couple of "Why O why did I read this?" If it were not for a couple of good short stories in the last few days, the average would be much worse.

Then again, I was exceptionally fortunate in my choices during the first quarter of 2020.

Yep, have just checked. This was my worst month since March 2019.

>30 -pilgrim-: Thanks. It seemed like a rather low average but I didn't know if you routinely had low averages due to high standards, etc. My average has tended to be in the 3.2-3.4 range.

Hopefully May will bring that average up!

>31 BookstoogeLT: I probably do fall into the "high standards" category; a 2 star book is a perfectly OK read, just not particularly memorable. If it comes in the middle of a series I was enjoying, I would still continue reading it. 2.5 is genuinely an average book.

On the other hand, I tend not to star rate books that I abandon early (in case I was too impatient, and there was merit in the book that I never saw because of bailing), so that artificially inflates the average.- since finishing tends to imply some merit.

Moving house, and ensuing chaos, has limited my access to physical books, so I have been reading mainly virtual books.

Also, although Empire V is excellent, like most Russian novels it expects your undivided attention. I enjoyed it, but was trying to choose something lighter afterwards, whilst my mind was distracted by practical problems.

The"something light" did not always work out too well.

>24 -pilgrim-: It looks like there is only one book. I believe when I first read it, I had read some of the stories in anthologies, so my brain has always said there are two, but all I'm seeing is the one book.

>34 Karlstar: I will read it when I can find it again - the moving house blues - almost everything is in crates (and this times it is packing crates not display crates!)

Welcome to May Day!

I shall celebrate by posting my first review from April :-p

The Hitman's Guide to Making Friends and Finding Love (Book 1 of The Hitman's Guide) by Alice Winters - 2 stars

This was something I borrowed on a whim from Kindle Unlimited, on the strength of the weirdness of the title. It turned out to be primarily a MM romance. Now I am not gay, and I hate most romantic fiction, but I found that I kept reading nevertheless because it was funny.

Alternate chapters are narrated by the two protagonists.

Leland was raised to be a hitman. His personality switched between hyperactive and a cold and focussed killer, depending on whether he is "working". One day, whilst on a job, he finds someone else also hunting the same target; this is Jackson Stein, PI.(Note: the names are all terrible clichés, like this. Jackson has a domineering mother, so of course he has to have a Jewish surname). Jackson gets his "pants" (trousers) caught on a fence and Leland gets an excellent view of his "ass", he becomes infatuated. But, being who he is, this is expressed by shooting him and stalking him. He is the epitome of "creepy admirer".

Leland is actually a good portrayal of someone who has had such an abusive upbringing, and isolated lifestyle, that he actually has no idea how to behave around normal people. He can portray "normal" convincingly, but has no idea what it is actually like to be normal. He suspects every kindness as someone trying to get something over on him, and is very, very good at what he does, because he can't imagine anyone being interested in him for any other reason. He turns everything into a joke (usually a lewd one) because all display of emotion makes him extremely uncomfortable. Watching him try to adapt to normality, whilst his past life tries to catch up with him, is quietly touching at times.

Jackson is older. His own struggles to adapt on coming out of the army makes him tolerant of others and he is a kindly man. Gay himself, he has struggled to get his mother to accept his sexuality, and so is rather lonely. He became a private investigator because he wanted to do more to help people, and set the world to rights.

And while these two feel their way towards understanding each other, their quarry is still out there, and annoyed by their pursuit...

Not great literature, and the sex scenes followed the current fashion of being too detailed for my liking, but I did find this an amusing light read.

Helmet Reading Challenge: 7, 30, 35

>37 -pilgrim-: Bless you, you made me laugh because this is so far away from your usual reading. I've been wondering about romances lately myself (remember Rabbi Lionel Blue, who I referred to somewhere recently?), mainly because we could all use some happy endings. I looked at a few of the summaries in Goodreads and started noticing the cliches, and then used Amazon's Look Inside to read some excerpts. But the writing was often a bit sub-par and that annoyed me. I remember virtually tossing one aside because the author referred to the perfume of bougainvillea (as far as I've ever noticed, it has none—I've been familiar with it for most of my life, and pass quite a lot of it on my morning walks; I even sniffed some to make sure). Then I got to wondering, what if P G Wodehouse had written romantic comedies? But of course he did. There was a whole string of "light novels" before he hit the big time with Jeeves and Blandings. He kept at it even after Jeeves: the particular one I had in mind, Quick Service, was first published in 1940. From what I remember of them, the plots were just as cliched as the present romantic comedies, but PGW could write! The plots of the Jeeves and Blandings novels are just as cliched, but you don't notice or don't care because he writes so well. I'll bet that no rom-com writer has ever written anything so perfect as the scene of Gussie Fink-Nottle presenting the prizes at Market Snodsbury Grammar School.

>38 haydninvienna: I hate when writers get their botany wrong. Puts me off their writing entirely.

Though I had to research bougainvillea:

"There is a relatively new species in cultivation known as the tree bougainvillea, Bougainvillea arborea. This plant does not vine but actually forms a real tree trunk (solitary) and tends to have only varieties with lavender bracts. The flowers of this species have a nice smell (the other species have odorless flowers)."

>37 -pilgrim-: Interesting story line.

Your post reminded me of a book I read some years ago entitled, The Hitman Diaries. My recollection is that it was quite non-PC but very funny (or should I say, "...non-PC and hence very funny.). It is, as you would imagine, black humour.

I do not recall how well it was written, but I do not think it was a literary masterpiece. As you said about your book, an amusing light read.

I do recall thinking that I would recommend it to some people but that it would not be everyone's cup of tea.

>39 2wonderY: Just goes to show you, doesn't it. I spent a fair part of my childhood playing under and around a big bougainvillea in the neighbour's yard (being careful of the thorns) and never noticed a perfume. Now I find that there is a species with a perfume. Although I wouldn't bet that Bougainvillea arborea has made it to Santorini, where the story was set. I would cheerfully go back there though, just for research, you understand.

>38 haydninvienna: I had just finished reading Empire V which, although excellent, occasionally made me feel like my brain was dribbling out of my ears - there were sections of deliberately obfuscatory prose, which in translation were not only confusing the protagonist!

I needed something different.

I think your suggestion of Wodehouse was a good one. Unfortunately I read the next Hitman book instead...

The Hitman's Guide to Staying Alive Despite Past Mistakes (Book 2 of The Hitman's Guide) by Alice Winters - 1 star

This is bad. Really bad. I have suffered, you don't have to: stay away.

This is a sequel to The Hitman's Guide to Making Friends and Finding Love, and continues the story of Jackson and Leland who are now an established couple

Now we have Leland working for Jackson's PI firm - and trying to stay within the law (mostly),the chief of police having forgiven him all his past murders because a) he was an abused child b) Jackson loves him so much c) he only kills people who he thinks deserves to die, 'so it was alright really'!)

Unfortunately the first book really covered everything and came to a satisfying conclusion, and this is trying to do 'more of the same'. It is obviously being written because readers loved the characters and demanded more, rather than there being anything more to say.

Whilst Leland was pursuing Jackson, his obsessively lascivious thoughts were just part of his character, and the sex scenes, although too detailed for my taste, were not that frequent. Here we have chapter after chapter devoted to detailed descriptions of the couple having sex.

And they are the most incompetent private investigators ever, because they are fondling and flirting with each other even when working! Jackson just going along with all the kinky stuff Leland wants - and Leland keeps upping the ante - 'because I love him that much' is also a borderline abusive relationship itself.

The plot itself, when it actually happens, in mind-blowing predictable; I foresaw every twist. I skimmed my way through the endless sex, and stuck with it in case something interesting happened. It didn't. This previous book was detective story + romance. This was just porn.

It also contains one of my least favourite tropes: it divides people into two groups - those who are anti-gay, and those who are intrigued and potentially gay. The idea that people exist who are perfectly comfortable with the fact that you are a gay couple, but nevertheless do not want to receive pornographic videos, or hear the latest intimate details of your sex lives, never crosses the minds of the characters (or, apparently, that of the author).

Whilst the last book required considerable suspension of disbelief, this one throws all pretence at credibility aside. We are in the fantasy world of pornography here.

Apparently there will be more books about this couple. I will be going nowhere near them.

Helmet Reading Challenge: 7, 35, 41

>43 -pilgrim-: Oh man, that's too bad. At least the first book sounded funny.

>44 Narilka: Yes, I wouldn't recommend it to everyone, but the first book is both original and funny.

Leland IS obsessing sexually, and to say he has a potty mouth is a massive understatement (he reminds me a bit of Deadpool in that way). But I skimmed the sex scenes, which were actually fairly infrequent, since they don't become a couple until very late in the book, that being the Happy Ending, and enjoyed the basic premise.

The change of emphasis in the second book took me by surprise. I completed it because I was expecting it to move past the sex, back to the plot. (You know how some authors use sex to show how close a couple are, until X happens?) It didn't. It just got kinkier - all the innovation was there, and the plot itself laughably predictable.

>43 -pilgrim-: I'd say thank you for taking one for the team, except that it's extreeeemly unlikely that this would have hit "the team" (this member of it anyway). The fact that one of the romantic couple was a hitman would probably have been enough to warn me off. Having said which, I have Spotless by Camilla Monk languishing unfinished on my kindle at the moment. That appears to be a romance between a woman who finds out that her mother had Secrets and a hitman. (The hitman has OCD—after rifling through her bank statements, he re-sorts them into date order.) The first third is an acceptable thriller, but I haven't got much further and may not finish it because the woman is an idiot. Knowing (because it's been amply demonstrated already) that there's more than one gang of baddies after the Secret, and our OCD hitman is not the worst of them, she has already jumped from the frying pan into the fire once and looks like doing it again. Having said which, I've just looked at the LT reviews, and they're quite favourable. They note that there is

Is it possible that "Alice Winters" is a house name? A search for that author on Goodreads gives 198 titles (it says here). No way of knowing if they are all the same person (or pretending to be). The second book might then have been written by a different user of the name. Oddly, on Goodreads the second one rates higher than the first. Make of that what you will.

I thought I should search for "Camilla Monk" as well, and got only 11 titles, some of which are boxed sets of others. But the last one is Island Chaptal and the Ancient Aliens' Treasure, the fifth in the series that starts with Spotless. This is the description:

Okay, so it starts kind of like Hart to Hart. He’s March November, a self-made millionaire and former legendary hitman, who now runs Struthio Security, a wholly legitimate business catering to high-end clients in serious trouble—think being in the cross-hairs of a Nigerian warlord.
He works with Island Chaptal, his girlfriend and partner. She used to be a computer engineer, but a lot of stuff happened, so now she’s his CTO and hacks poorly-protected devices and fiber optic cables for him, which kind of sounds like she slept her way to the top, but no, actually.
Together, Island Chaptal and Mr. November fight crime. Mostly. This time though, they’re rescuing Joy—Island’s BFF—who ended up in a Cancún jail after nearly killing her boyfriend’s side chica with a three-feet tall birthday cake. Ancient aliens somehow get involved in this mess, and also a guy name Angel Somoza, who hates sloths. There’s gunfights, frenetic capering from Cancún to Cairo, passionate sex, Roomba cats, and a lot of questionable science thrown in.
It’s the final chapter of the Spotless series, and just another Monday for March and Island.

My major problem with that is wondering how Mr November got the Law off his back.

>46 haydninvienna: Is it possible that "Alice Winters" is a house name? A search for that author on Goodreads gives 198 titles (it says here).

That sounded a plausible idea, so I went across to Goodreads to see what they other titles were like. But I only found 20 books by that author.
(A much larger number comes up if you simply put "Alice Winters" into the search engine, because it includes any book about "Alice" by anyone with the name "Winters" and vice versa.)

My major problem with that is wondering how Mr November got the Law off his back.

Probably the same way as Leland did:
1. Have your boyfriend a personal friend of the local Chief of Police, who then agrees not to pursue you as a personal favour
2. Have the local Chief of Police secretly in favour of your activities, since you only kill Bad Guys - except for his partner, and that was a Big Mistake that you feel really awful about.

I had to go look up what the Helmet Reading Challenge was. Have you already satisfied the requirement of reading something placed in a location with a population less than that of Finland? (That's #10 on the version of the challenge that I found. But I am intrigued certainly.)

>48 jillmwo: Not yet. But I have a thriller by an Icelandic author waiting on my Kindle. :)

The Sami author is likely to be a problem though.

I am wondering if I can count a Roma author instead? (Indigenous minority in my own country.)

ETA: Credit should go to Sakerfalcon for introducing me to the Helmet Reading Challenge.

Gold Dragon: Book 5 of Heritage of Power by Lindsay Buroker - 3 stars

Passing over Unraveled, with its gaping plot holes, for now, Gold Dragon is the fifth book in the Heritage of Power series, and ostensibly the last; although the author's note at the end makes it clear that she may return to this world some time. All ends are tied up neatly except for Shulina Arya's desire to be romanced by a human male. Given that Duck is the only one of the long-standing cast not to have found a partner (except Leftie, who prefers to play the field), spent this book improving his language by reading romance novels, and shares a hunting hobby with the dragon, I foresee a romance between them at some point in the future.

Despite the marriage at the end of one long-standing couple, and indications that other ongoing relationships have reached a stable point, this end-of-series urge to leave all characters in a stable state does not make the romantic aspects dominate the book. Rysha and Trip have stopped have immature angst over their relationship; they worry about each other when in danger, and spend time together when not (thankfully, this is not described in lurid detail).

The focus of this book is the conflict with the dragons. War has been brewing since the dragons came through the portal from the world to which they had been exiled; they consider this world theirs, and are irritated that humans, an inferior species, are now claiming it. The whole sequence has been about Iskandia trying to find ways to cope with this threat; this is the book where it comes to the crunch, and they find out whether what they have done is enough.

Trip is coming into a state of recognising his skills, but in many ways this is Rysha and Shulina Arya's book, as they work together as a type of team that has not been seen for thousands of years.

There are many gold dragons in this book, and it is ambiguous to whom the title refers. Shulina Arya is the obvious candidate, although Bhrava Saruth makes his own claim, and a strong possibility is a gold dragon that makes his appearance in the epilogue.

I have been finding Lindsay Buroker's recent books to be somewhat lacking in originality. She seems to be writing "more of the same". But this was competently done, and she has assembled a cast of characters that are enjoyable to spend time with.

This was an undemanding "comfort read". I had been having a worse reaction to the chemotherapy tablets than before - not bad, just nausea, aching muscles, and tingling hands - at the time when I was reading this, and it was a good book to curl up with.

Helmet Reading Challenge: 24, 30, 33, 39

>48 jillmwo:, >49 -pilgrim-: I went with The glass woman which is set in Mediaeval Iceland for no.10. I did an online search for countries ranked in population order from least to most and came up with potential candidates that way. I thought about picking something by a Native American author as a substitute for the Sami author, when a search failed to reveal anything that had been translated into English. Wolf winter features Sami characters and the author has some Sami ancestry but she doesn't identify as that and writes in English so I didn't count that book.

I haven't been as diligent as you, pilgrim, in noting which categories my books fit, but I was planning to post a link to the completed list at the end of the year.

>51 Sakerfalcon: I didn't look up a list, as Iceland came immediately to mind for the challenge, but your comment prompted me to do so.

Some interesting things came out of it:

I had not expected Ireland to have a lower population than Finland

I had not expected Russia to rank so low (9)

I had not expected the United Kingdom to rank so high (21)

>53 -pilgrim-: The first of your three facts surprised me too. I didn't look at the top part of the list or your other two would have as well.

>46 haydninvienna: Let me know if you ever decide to finish Spotless. Maybe the hitman developed OCD from obsessively trying not to leave evidence behind?

Dragon Rider (Dragon Blood and Heritage of Power series' prequel) from Beginnings by Lindsay Buroker

This prequel is set approximately one thousand years before the Dragon Blood (and Heritage of Power) series, during the Cofah conquest of Iskandoth (which will later become Iskandia). Dragons are an established fact of life, and the Cofah use dragon riders as part of their forces.

The only character in common with the other books is the gold dragon, Bhrava Saruth. Here we learn his explanation of why he believes himself to be a god, and how he obtains his first worshippers.

Dealing with a military invasion of a fishing village, and focussing on civilian characters who are desperate and rather overwhelmed, there is less room for the author's characters to indulge in banter. Attempts at jokes feel out of place - and are reprimanded by other characters. This makes the tone rather grimmer than usual although the realities of such an invasion are rather averted by the fact that no named characters are killed or injured and the rape attempts that we are told about are all interrupted.

The main character is a girl who is handicapped by a hip joint that has been defective from birth. Although it is suggested that her family have been somewhat overprotective, before the invasion she had her own business, with a friend, creating magical artifacts. (She was the woodworker, he imbued them with magic.)

Oddly, although Sardelle (in the other books) speaks longingly of a time - 300 years before those books, and 700 after this one - when referatu were honoured, and not persecuted as witches, Raff here speaks of his village being disconcerted and made uneasy by this using his powers in front of them, even though they know that he had been to the mainland to train in sorcery.

I would like to know more about Iskandian society at this time (since Taylina obviously lives in something of a backwater), and how the history of the continent evolved between them and Sardelle's time.

Bhrava Saruth was coming across as lazy and selfish in Gold Dragon (although we were seeing him through Shulina Arya's critical eyes); here he appears in a much more favourable light, and could be described as heroic. But he is as immodest as ever, given his stated goal at the end to save all Iskandoth!

This is an OK story, although it raised more questions than it answered. Although chronologically it is the earliest story, it is probably not the best place to start reading about this world; it is probably of most interest if you already know Bhrava Saruth, and have been wondering why he is the way he is. (That is still not fully answered here, and there are some slightly uncomfortable hints that, whilst he thinks of himself as "special", other characters interpret this in the "special needs" sense - which jarred a little, given the setting).

After complaining that Lindsay Buroker's recent works have had romances between lead characters coming more and more to the fore, it was a relief that no one was in love with anyone here (other than the happily married couples, of course).

In the introduction to Beginnings, the author wrote about the marketing problem, as an "indie" author, of getting new readers interested in her established series, and that she had therefore decided to assemble a collection of the first books in four of her older series and sell it cheaply, as an introduction, but that, in order to interest her established readers, she wanted to add a new story. Dragon Rider is the short novel (41,000 words) written for that purpose. Unfortunately it feels like it. It seems a book written because "I want to write a book to use for a particular purpose, which sets parameters, such as needing to stand alone, but connect to other works" and choosing to answer a question that comes up, rather than starting with a story that "needs" to be told. It is competent, I can see nothing in particular wrong with it, but it just felt rather flat.

Helmet Reading Challenge: 9, 24, 25, 30, 33, 49

Beginnings by Lindsay Buroker - 4 stars

Having now read all the novels in this anthology, it seems a good time to review the collection, as a collection.

Usually in an anthology I find it a bit hit and miss; here I unequivocally enjoyed all the books included, except perhaps Dragon Rider, the short novel specifically written for this collection.

All the books are the first in a series by Lindsay Buroker, but only Warrior Mage and Dragon Storm really require you to read on, and even they have a reasonable amount of closure.

Balanced on the Blade's Edge and The Emperor's Edge were both originally intended as stand-alone novels, and so perhaps provide the most satisfying introductory reads.

The Emperor's Edge is set in an early industrial culture, where magic does exist, but is not encouraged. The protagonist is an Enforcer (i.e. a police woman), determined to make a name for herself in a male-dominated profession. (The book does not follow the hackneyed path of women being subjugated; it is just that women usually run businesses rather than follow more military paths.) She is idealistic, but practical. Her life becomes complicated after she is ordered to arrest a notorious assassin. She becomes the leader of an odd group, because her particular talent proves to be diplomacy and leadership. Not a kick-ass heroine in the usual sense, just a competent professional.

Encrypted is from the same world, a generation earlier. There are aspects of Amaranth's home nation which appear far from admirable in the Emperor's Edge series; here we meet a cryptologist from a nation that has recently been at war with that Empire, whose assistance the Empire now wants. It is an "we ought to be enemies but..." story, but engagingly done (although the hero here did tend towards super-competence).

The Empire is at long-running emnity with Nuria - a Japan-inspired culture of honourable service to their Great Chief, where there is no notion of social equality, but belonging to a Noble House imposes duties and expectations on its members as much as it does privilege. To be able to work magic is highly esteemed in Nuria; as the only child who is able to work magic, of a family disgraced by his mother's actions, Yanko, in Warrior Mage, is an endearing teenager with low self-confidence, who is desperate to do his duty to family and country. (No romance involved, unless you count Yanko's unrequited pining after his former babysitter.) This is a fascinating chance to see the Turgonian Empire (now a Republic), from the other side's point of view.

Balanced On the Blade's Edge is set in a brutal penal colony in the icy north of Iskandia. The colony is a mine for a power source that is essential for Iskandian technology, and which gives them a technological edge over their enemies - a much larger nation that ruled them before and wants to do so again - that can only be found at this location. The new commander of the colony has been posted there for an indefinite period with a promotion that is in fact a punishment. He is trying to win the respect of his subordinates whilst coping with an unusual "prisoner" (in fact a sorceress who has in been in suspended animation for three hundred years, until the mining broke her stasis chamber, and woken up to find her civilization destroyed and replaced by a society that persecutes "witches"), when the colony comes under attack.

Dragon Storm is set a little after the series that began with Balanced on the Blade's Edge, with some overlap of characters, although a new hero and heroine. Problems with the Cofah Empire have now faded into insignificance, as both nations are under attack from angry dragons, who want their world back. (And Dragon Rider is the prequel, set in the time before the dragons ever left.)

There are similarities in style between all these books. There is often, but not always, a significant romance brewing. There is always at least one extremely snarky character - and I like Lindsay Buroker's humour very much.

There is a tendancy towards romances that progress rapidly, but perhaps justified by the reaction of people to situations of extreme distress.

The later books of the Heritage of Power tend to descend into somewhat generic military fiction in a fantasy setting - the author served in the U.S. Army. The "my country - right or wrong" tone is perhaps understandable therefore. But seeing Iskandia's monarch, King Angulus Masonwood III, appearing in later books as a likeable, serious, young man (who gets a novella devoted to his own romantic adventure), it is jarring to be reminded that he is an autocratic monarch over a country where people are burned to death on suspicion of witchcraft (sometimes as a lynching, sometimes by government program), and where it is understood that the innocence or guilt of the convicts is less important there being a sufficient supply of miners - whose life expectancy is considerably shorter than their sentences. Prisoners are locked in at night, and left largely to govern themselves - with consequent levels of endemic rape.

In short, the author has created a penal system fairly clearly modelled on the Soviet GULag, and subsequently takes the monarch who rules over this system, and the pilots who enforce it (and summarily execute people suspected of witchcraft in a later book) as her heroes!

This is not heavyweight fiction, and I admit enjoying all the books that I read. The ones included in this volume are all fun reads.

But I would hesitate to recommend passing this book to an impressionable YA audience; the fundamental point that - in both worlds - we are being expected to sympathise with the enforcement arm of a brutal, totalitarian regime, is too easily overlooked. (It is easily missed because these are fantasy novels. But fascism made palatable is actually rather disconcerting, on reflection.)

>57 -pilgrim-: Thanks for the summary and the warning! I do from time to time get asked to recommend YA books to young readers.

>58 Karlstar: To be honest, I think it is a case of a form of "mission creep", rather than a sinister authorial agenda.

Taken on its own, the portrayal of the newly promoted Colonel Ridgewalker Zirkander in Balanced on the Blade's Edge is that of a good man, who had been serving happily, but fairly ignorantly in his country's military, doing the best he can to put things right, with only limited power, to improve a bad system. (The mines are dangerous, but they are the only source of those power sources - the mages who originally lived in the mountain would have referred to them as "ceiling lamps"! - and they are essential in powering the planes that defend the country against a much larger aggressor.) He is more interested in getting away from an unpleasant admin posting and back to flying than zeal to put things right, but as a portrayal of a decent man with limited authority, in a harsh world, it is fine.

The problem is that the author has got fond of her characters, so starts writing what happens after he gets back to the capital with his mage girlfriend. The king is initially introduced as an authoritarian figure that Zirkander is afraid of (and is repressing his urge to be snarky in front of).

But now she is in the familiar world of military comradeship and banter, the author has lost sight of the nature of the government they serve. And the king, who has started to fill the story niche of "long-suffering superior officer" thus becomes a sympathetic figure... and so on.

But the message is the more insidious because it is probably unintentional. I am sure many of the young men and women who fought for totalitarian regimes in the 20th century were exactly like the pilots depicted here: brave, patriotic young men and women who liked the excitement and cameraderie of military life; they feel confident that right is on their side because they are defending their country, even if they don't enjoy carrying out their orders to massacre people they at heart know to be guiltless, and don't think too hard about the convict slave labour that their economy is dependent on...

And now more military fiction, this time science fiction:


Old Man's War (Book 1 of Old Man's War by John Scalzi - 1.5 stars

After all the good things that I had heard about this book, I was really disappointed.

To start with, the protagonist is one of the most appalling "Mary Sue" author avatars - he even shares the author's forename! - that I have come across recently. Despite having been a writer in his previous career, he can

come up with technical strategy innovations faster than any of the thousand other people present, some of whom must have had engineering and other technical backgrounds

interpret alien cultures and motivations better than the specialists who have spent years studying them

think fast enough, and move fast enough, to keep up with Special Forces troops despite not having as advanced physical modifications as them

loved his wife so much more than anyone else that they stare in amazement at him when he talks about her.

Any one of these is not implausible, but all of it makes him not just the "overachiever" that Major Crick calls him, but Wonderboy.

Secondly, I found the profound selfishness of the main character made him an unpleasant person to journey through this world with.

I think part of the issue here may be that different countries have different models of military service. Some countries rotate their population through their military through conscription into short term service, with a relatively small core of career professionals. The United Kingdom has used conscription in times of emergency, but otherwise maintains a professional force. Those who join, usually intend it as a lifetime career; there are mechanisms for leaving if you don't "fit", but this will be perceived by those who remain as your failure. They tend to be highly trained, because given the expected length of service term, it is worth the investment. As I understand it, the United States maintains a mixed model between these: a larger, less well-trained (on average - of course specialists are compatible across all countries' militaries) force, where it is common to serve a term, perhaps in exchange for an education, and then go on to make your career elsewhere, with a much smaller core of professional career military.

So maybe John's attitude of joining the military because he wants the physical improvements on offer does not seem so odd, and nakedly selfish, to an American reader as as it did to me.

The point is that John is quite clear that he does not feel any loyalty, any sense of patriotism, towards the people whose military he is joining. He does not identify with the Colonials in any way. In fact I think he mentioned that they once fought against Earth - the people he identifies with. He joins the Colonial Defence Force (CDF) solely for the benefits he expects to receive from it, in terms of medical treatment.

Once in the military he finds out that the reason he has been recruited is to invade and kill other races in pursuit of an expansionary imperialist agenda that, since its first overture is military rather than diplomatic, does not even have the veneer of claiming to be benefiting the populations of the planets that are conquered. Again, this follows the model of American expansion, rather than the British, whose imperialists tended to invest considerable effort in learning to understand, and negotiating with, the peoples whose territory they desired. Once in the military, he expresses the understandable soldier's derision towards a fellow soldier (Private Bender) who expresses an intention to follow an agenda that diverges from their orders. But he expresses only a mild regret that the only way that he meets new people is via killing them and did not, on the whole, support the argument that "only obeying orders" may not actually justify everything that he is doing.

The whole tone is that, while his orders are distasteful, that is what he is obliged to do by the fact of his service.

Almost all the men in my immediate family served. Not all of their orders made them happy to carry out. But they justified them by their belief in the fundamental morality of the cause they were fighting for (defeating Hitler) and their loyalty to the county they were fighting for, of which they were part.

John has neither of those justifications. He signed up for someone else's army, with no knowledge of, or interest in, what they were fighting for. He did it solely for the personal rewards promised. We do not call such people soldiers; they are mercenaries. (I have known people who have taken that career path. But they are quite open that they do it because (a) they are good at it and (b) they enjoy it. They make no hypocritical claims towards morality.)

What bothers me is the author's implication that John's motivation is normal to the point of being universally comprehensible. "Everyone would do this." (Personally I find the military motivations of the Consu and the Rrey more morally acceptable than this.)

Which brings me to my third reason for disliking this book. Despite its lip-service towards diversity - it is implied (by Sergeant Ruiz's invective) that Jews, Christians and Muslims are all serving, as well as atheists, and in the descriptions of sexual activity it is made clear that not only homosexual and heterosexual couplings but less (currently) conventional interactions are taking place - the author consistently assumed that everyone thinks alike - AND that they share the views of him/his protagonist.

John and his friends, equipped with rejuvenated bodies and a short amount of free time with which to enjoy them, first jump the first person they see who is in accordance with their basic sexual orientation, and then spend the rest of their time at it like bunnies. And so, according to the narration, does everyone else.

Now I can fully accept that some people, that might be their most urgent urge, and what they feel makes best use of their time and new physical capabilities.

What I dislike is the claim that it is everybody's. Is there no other physical activity, the enhanced performance of which gives pleasure? Are all the aforementioned Christians, Jews and Muslims members of their respective religious communities in name only? Do NONE of them respect their religion's prohibitions on adultery? This is a community where all the members are over seventy-five. Have none of them experienced a sufficiently profound bond to a previous partner that casual sex with a stranger feels distasteful and a sullying of those memories?

In any non-brainwashed community one should expect a variety of opinions. There is nothing that leads one to believe that the America in which John and Kathy lived had such a totalitarian ideology and education. So the lack of diversity of opinion appears to be an attitude of the author's; he cannot conceive that his ideas and ideals are not universally shared by everyone.

I also found the description of John's relationship with his wife as exceptionally strong and loving offensive in context. He says he loved her - but apparently not enough not to be willing to deliberately inflict emotional pain in her, and jeopardise that relationship, by having an affair. It is certainly possible for a couple to be genuinely close despite his doing that (he says that his wife had an affair herself a few years later, as if that balances it out and make it all right). But to imply that there are NO men or women out there who loved their partners enough that such a fundamentally selfish action would be inconceivable (or to imply that their relationships were somehow less profound because they had never had affairs?) is a deep insult to a lot of real men and women.

I also noticed that, although the loss of his wife, and his inability to cope when surrounded by things that reminded him of her, is ostensibly the reason that John joined the military, he dives into a new, passionate love relationship (as distinct from the casual, frenzied sex), as soon as an available woman presents herself - less than a year after his bereavement.

The lipservice paid to John's love and fidelity is in marked contrast to his actual behaviour.

As to the originality of the science fiction aspect:

the reality of how the elderly volunteers were rejuvenated apparently came as a shock to them, but seemed the obvious one to me, and was what I was expecting

the existence of, and nature of, the Ghost Brigades, was so obviously signposted that there was no surprise there either.

The alien cultures were interesting, and I kept reading because I was hoping for more interaction with him. But that proved to be a very small component of the book.

I could not see why there is so much love out there for this author. Does this series get any better?

Helmet Reading Challenge: 28, 33

>60 -pilgrim-: Old Man's War was my first, and last, Scalzi. I gave him my "authors to avoid" tag on that book and haven't regretted it since. So I can't speak to whether his other books are better or not, but I doubt it...

>60 -pilgrim-: I have only tried Zoe's Tale and I gave up on it finding it boring and tedious. (Tautology for the sake of hyperbole.) Others commented that Zoe's Tale was a bit of an aberration in his work and I was thinking of trying another of his books to find out what everyone was finding so good. I was going to try Old Man's War as that appears to be the one launching the enthusiasts into John Scalzi's universe. Your post pushes me towards the "not bothering" course. Thank you for your detailed description of the flaws you spotted. I had felt Zoe's Tale was a bit school-boyish. It sounds from your description that Old Man's War retains that trait.

In terms of a mature approach to adult sexuality, I found Juliet E. McKenna's The Green Man's Foe to contain a responsible, mature attitude to sex and relationships. It is not a main theme of the book but it is one of the elements that adds to the story in terms of lessons for people and setting example. I know you have considered reading these books from the English folklore angle but, having seen your comments in >60 -pilgrim-: above, I think you would find Juliet's treatment refreshing after Old Man's War. The fact that Juliet is a responsible parent of two college aged sons might partially explain the relationship elements of the story.

>60 -pilgrim-:, >61 BookstoogeLT:, >62 pgmcc: I remember being very surprised when I read Old Man's War at how gung-ho it was about killing all the aliens to take their territory for colonial expansion.. I know Scalzi is progressive and politically liberal based on his blog and other personal writing so I was really surprised to see no criticism at all of this narrative. I kept expecting a twist to upend it, as in Ender's Game but there was none. I thought perhaps it would come later in the series but after reading The ghost brigades I still didn't see a change of attitude.

I am however enjoying the Collapsing Empire trilogy, and looking forward to the last part. That very clearly is taking aim at climate change deniers and trashing their attitudes, which is what I would expect from Scalzi.

>62 pgmcc: Yes, "schoolboyish" is an excellent description.

I have come to the conclusion that I can go along for the ride with an implausibly competent protagonist, if they are a character I like, or enjoy reading a book about an unpleasant protagonist when it is plausible and well-written.

But I require either likeability or plausibility.

>63 Sakerfalcon: Yes, that was why I kept reading. I was waiting for the denouement that never came.

Interesting contrast:
John Scalzi : noticeable liberal credentials : writes novel where "meet interesting people and kill them (tra la la!)" is portrayed as a perfectly acceptable.
Orson Scott Card: known for reactionary, non -PC attitudes : writes novel that is powerful indictment of a "video game" mentality regarding killing aliens.

>64 -pilgrim-: Indeed. A very interesting contrast.

>62 pgmcc:, >63 Sakerfalcon:

On reflection, I am rooting for the Consu. After all, they are acting out of a love of humanity (and all races alien to them).

Any hope, Sakerfalcon?

>63 Sakerfalcon: I recall being gob smacked by the ending of Ender's Game {novelette}. I might have to re-read the novel to see where that reveal lies there.

>60 -pilgrim-: I quit the series after book 3. Ghost Brigades is a deviation in that it focuses on a completely different character and has some deep themes that weren't explored properly, which I found frustrating. Book 3 goes back to John Perry so you might not enjoy that so much. I went back through my notes and honestly can't remember if it has the faults you pointed out above or not. Guess the story didn't stick with me very well. My favorite of his so far is Redshirts, which is a homage to original Star Trek.

>68 Narilka: It is not so much whether I like a character that matters -although favourites haunt your imagination for the rest of your life (well, mine do, anyway!); it is the attitudes of the author.

Looking back at Old Man's War, I think that none of his characters, with seventy-five years of life experience behind them, behaved with the maturity that comes with experience (at least some of the time).

Resetting your physical body does not wipe out the rest of your life. If I had my twenty year old self's body again, I would not behave exactly as I did then. I am not that person any more, things have happened since.

That was one of the fundamental problems that I had with the book. It paid lip-service to Perry and his cohort bringing experience from their former lives, but it was completely absent from their actual thought processes.

I have noticed that some young people in their twenties and thirties nowadays seem stuck in an immature, extended adolescence, with the heedlessness associated with that phase (and conversely, some teenagers are not, and never were, like that). Age-based generalisations are never sound.

My problem with the book is that it does generalise like that - and portrays an entire generation of seventy-five year olds as completely lacking in emotional maturity.

I am not just talking about the response to sexual capability that I mentioned earlier; I am thinking of their responses to the psychological manipulation that is part of military basic training, and to the visceral experience of warfare. (For example, if you join the army at twenty, a comrade being killed in front of you is quite likely to be your first experience of death up front and personal - at seventy-five, you are more likely to have watched people you care for die, some in ugly ways.)

My impression is of a somewhat immature author, who has not changed much since his teens, assuming that everyone else is an American youth exactly like him (with the same life experiences) and will never mature either. (And that does sound a harsh way of putting it, I know.)

Maybe he does better portraying children with the bodies of adults? Given the nature of the Ghost Brigades, I assume that is apposite to the sequel?

I am still tempted to try Redshirts, if I come across a cheap copy.

>69 -pilgrim-: Be as harsh as you want about Scalzi. I'll cheer you on :)

>70 BookstoogeLT: Care to add anything?

>71 -pilgrim-: Nah, it will get political and after my last try at dancing around the religious/political line here at the Dragon (and to be honest, what drives me batty is just how fluid that line seems to be depending on who is doing the talking), I've decided to just go full bore quiet on the subject.

I will say I think he's a blighter and leave it at that :)

In the Lands of the Spill by Aliette de Bodard - 3 stars

This is a short story available via the author's website.

In a Vietnam now lost to habitation - contaminated by the Spill in North and Centre and flooded in the South - a Vietnamese scientist, the child of émigré parents, uses an Avatar body as she responds to a rescue plea from an elderly, revulsive scientist.

She is also navigating the minefield of interactions with her teammate, Alex, a Vietnamese whose family was relocated to the coasts, and who disapproves of those who left.

I found the relationship subplot target an awkward addition to the main one, which was a beautiful evocation of a landscape left uninhabited in the aftermath of an environmental disaster. The landscape is more natural, not less, because what was accidentally released destroys both inorganic and organic materials.

There are Buddhist viewpoints involved here too, although those were beliefs our heroine's parents rejected. It leads to a new way of looking at change.

>69 -pilgrim-: To your spoiler about Ghost Brigades He does a little better, though the Ghost Brigade person doesn't exactly act like a child either.

>74 Narilka: My impression is that he had some interesting ideas, but never really thinks through their implications. Would you say that is fair?

Incidentally, for a novel that deals with genetic/cybernetic manipulation to produce supersoldiers, I would say Dog of War by Adrian Tchaikovsky does a far better job of thinking through the implications. The result is a book that is emotionally moving as well as full of action.

>62 pgmcc: You had already got me with a BB over Juliet McKenna's Green Man books. There was no need to get your bayonet and administer the coup de grâce.

>75 -pilgrim-: Yep, I'd say that's fair.

>76 -pilgrim-: I was thinking that as I twisted the blade. As we are alleged to say in Ireland, "To be sure! To be sure!"

>75 -pilgrim-: If you want a book that thinks through the implications of super-soldiers that are backed up and return in a cloned body if they are killed, then you should read Ken MacLeod's Newton's Wake. This is super in so many ways.

>79 pgmcc: Hmm. That also sounds promising.

*Whispers* Anyone got spare Kevlar? pgmcc is getting too good at this.

>69 -pilgrim-: To some extent, this is exactly the problem I had with Misspent Youth by Peter F. Hamilton. He assumed that 20-somethings behave badly and a 70-something given a 20 year old body would also behave badly. That assumes that we have the same standard of 'badly'.

The whole concept that humanity has to come out of the solar system fighting just for survival and there is little to no diplomacy never made a lot of sense.

On the other hand, did he really portray an unrealistic character? Is John Parry reprehensible, or just normal, but a normal we can't relate to?

>81 Karlstar: The Wonderboy aspects apart, I didn't find the selfishness, or even the immaturity, of John Parry to be that implausible.

What I found implausible was the statement that ALL the seventy-five year olds in his cohort were equally selfish and immature.

I do find him morally reprehensible, but that is just my personal reaction. People like him probably do exist.

What I found implausible was the setting that assumed that people like me did not exist.

There is supposed to be diversity of religious belief and sexual orientation - this is not Joe Haldeman's Forever War future, where the human race has been conditioned to have one viewpoint and one sexuality. So why do all Americans in this world think the same as John Parry? Why is there no diversity? (It appears the CDF recruits only from Americans - or at least only Americans serve with Americans - there is nowhere any indication as to what is going on among the rest of humanity.)

In other books which envision a dystopia in which everyone has the same beliefs, the same standards, and the same priorities - such as 1984, Brave New World, The Forever War, Consider Her Ways, to name a few - there is an explanation of why and how diversity of thinking was expunged from society.

As a contrast, consider The Doomed City. There all the citizens are volunteers, who have come to build the perfect society. Their government is a one party system. You would expect that with a common goal, and with only one socially sanctioned route to achieving it, there would be a certain similarity of thought between the citizens. But, even with these factors in common, the citizens have far more diversity and individuality than is shown by the characters in Old Man's War. (And that does not mean they are necessarily likeable; just plausibly diverse.)

>82 -pilgrim-: I see your point on the diversity. If I had to guess, the author might say that in his vision, only people with a similar mindset would volunteer for the CDF. Volunteer to join the military and go offworld, never to return, with a mission they won't tell you about but rumor says is war?

I wouldn't have thought this was your type of book anyway, but I find that very, very hard to predict, I apologize if we lead you astray.

>83 Karlstar: The idea that the generation who had outlived most of their friends would be the ones most likely to volunteer for one-way tickets was the idea I found most plausible in this book.

But I would still disagree, to a certain, about expecting a uniformity of motivation. Amongst the people I have known who have fought in armed conflict (or tried to), motivations have ranged from a naive idealism regarding what this would entail (which is not restricted to the younger ones), a burning passion for an ideal that leads to a "by any means necessary" ideology, a sense of pragmatic duty of service to one's country, to a few who make no bones about the fact that they enjoy the adrenaline rush of killing, are good at it, and are glad that there is a war going on somewhere that allows them a socially sanctioned outlet for this.

As I suggested in >60 -pilgrim-:, I think our countries have significant differences in the cultural norms of what are acceptable motivations, but I would still expect a range of responses.

The strongest point that you make for uniformity of mindset of the fact that the volunteers are not told what they are fighting for. As I said in >60 -pilgrim-:, it takes a certain personality to be willing to kill without any identification with a cause, or sense of belonging to the group who you are fighting for. Being a mercenary in this manner does necessitate a degree of psychopathy which would perhaps explain the other spectrum of selfish behaviours demonstrated.

I suppose that if we interpret John's vaunted love for his wife as the psychopath's version of "love" (i.e. " this person made me really, really happy and so I really, really mind the absence of the way she made me feel", with zero content regarding the wellbeing or happiness of the love object, except inasmuch as their ability to provide the desired services necessitates their existence), then even his claims for the superlative nature of his "love" for his wife makes a certain sense.

The grandiosity of John being so much better than everyone else, in every field that he puts his mind to, would also fit psychopathic thinking - although in this case, his belief in his own superiority would appear to have external validation in his rapid promotion at the end of the book.

But if we assume that the criteria of service in the CDF functions as a procedure that selects high-functioning psychopaths, and that is why there is such uniformity of behaviour and mindset (which I agree is a viable theory), that does rather diminish the appeal of the characters as representative of the human race.

I mentioned in my review of Battlestar Galactica my sense that we, the viewers, were being assumed to identify with the people whose behaviour, objectively speaking, made them the "bad guys", purely out of a sense of racial solidarity, because they were the human ones.

I think that it is very hard to engender any interest in a group with whom one cannot identify at all - there has to be some commonality of values, or else some primal identification that these people, with all their flaws, belonging to the same group as the reader.

If I now ask "what did you see in this author?" I don't mean "I didn't think much of this, how dare you praise it!" - we are all different and don't have to like the same things - but a much more specific question - what was it about this book that appealled to you?

>80 -pilgrim-: Hee! Hee! Hee!...

Have finally found a way to borrow a copy of Out of the Silent Planet (since my own appears to be unreachable!)

>85 -pilgrim-: I started to reply at 6 am this morning, but decided I should be more awake first.

Why I enjoyed Old Man's War.

First, I'm somewhat of a geek for technology and I found his solution, even if not 100% unique, good enough to be refreshing and interesting. I also found his premise of the galactic civilizations to be a plausible one. Yes, there are issues with it, but who knows what we'll find when we encounter other civilizations? Will they be peaceful? Will there be just one? Many? He certainly isn't the first author to assume that some will be hostile.

I know I enjoy a classic 'space opera', humans vs. aliens story and this is fairly close to a space opera, in my opinion. You have to suspend disbelief a bit sometimes to read those and I guess I didn't mind doing that while reading this one. John Parry isn't Aragorn in space, but sometimes the heroes aren't perfect, nor kings.

>85 -pilgrim-:
Hmm, I haven't read Old Man's War because space opera is not really my bag (and your description of it certainly doesn't excite me), but I absolutely loved Lock In. In fact, Lock In was one of the books that made me want to start reading more sci fi again. Its set up is intriguing and it asks some nice genre questions about the role of the government in developing technology. Perhaps the world could be more fully fleshed out, but (1) the main character is both sheltered and in their twenties (probably?) so a younger, less mature viewpoint works well and (2) it's essentially a detective story, so the naivety of the SF elements isn't the biggest problem, as the book's fun because the plot just rattles along. At any rate, Lock In certainly has lots of characters disagree about the central questions, so diversity of opinion is on display. However, he struck me as a bit of a one-trick pony because the sequel Head On isn't worth checking out.

>89 Kanarthi: Probably the coolest thing about Lock In and Head On was the protagonist. As you were reading, which gender did you perceive for Chris?

I agree that Head On was pretty much more of the same and didn't do much in the way of character growth.

>88 Karlstar: You are making me really want to persuade you to read Monday Starts On Saturday - particular the section that satirises the differences between American and Soviet Russian science fiction - the Americans are forever struggling to defend themselves against invading aliens or rebelling against alien overlords, whilst the future humans in the Soviet realm are heroic, perfect, and so boringly bland as to be almost indistinguishable from each other!

I thought the characterisation of the alien races was the best bit of Old Man's War; it was hoping to learn more about them that kept me reading.

I completely agree with the premise that aliens may well be hostile particularly if humanity is posited as having an aggressively expansionist policy - after all, despite its name, the CDF is fighting wars of Invasion, not defence. The only"defensive" aspect is in trying to hold territories taken.

I don't object to flawed protagonists either - my problems with Parry were (I) his super-competence (II) that his attitudes didn't fit his age. But it only became an issue when it came clear that everyone else was exactly the same as him (except not quite as brilliant).

But I think you are right the crucial point is this: the premise is the central feature of this novel. And to you it was original, whilst to me it was not.

Thank you for explaining your viewpoint. It is very helpful for deciding whether to read more by Scalzi.

>89 Kanarthi: I had stayed away from Lock In because I used to know someone who had had Guillan-Barré Syndrome and read their autobiographical account of the experience (nearly a year, in their case). I thought that if Scalzi's portrayal of what that feels like was too insensitive/too inaccurate, I would be too hostile to the book as a whole. (I have a pet peeve about disability being used as a trite plot point, by an author incapable of empathising with what it is really like.)

How central is that aspect to the novel? Or is it simply a starting point for a plot that goes somewhere else?

I think I am going to enjoy your threads!

Thank you for the warm welcome to the group.

>93 PaulCranswick: Thanks, Paul. I look forward to your comments.

>92 -pilgrim-: It's pretty central. The book kicks off by stating that the government is winding down its financial support of certain assistive technologies, and these technologies are the main SF element that threads through the detective story. I wouldn't describe Scalzi's treatment as thoughtful or empathetic. I wasn't sensitive enough to notice any particular missteps, but the framing is definitely off. He's WAY more interested in talking about cool new technologies or (shallow) political machinations surrounding them. Relatively little time is spent discussing actual embodied experiences, and even less time is given to talking about social or class implications. It's a plot-driven page-turner. I thought it was successful as such because the naivety of the treatment matched the choice of main character ... but this main character was undoubtedly chosen to be rich and sheltered to avoid diving into disability themes in any sort of nuanced or serious way.

>90 ScoLgo: Enh, I thought this feature was a little overhyped. I tended to be ambivalent but edge towards male, mainly because Chris's attitude towards fights was to fling themselves into them with little thought of physical danger (it really came across as "whatever, robot body!"), and I found it difficult to block out the sex stereotypes of such behavior. Although it's true and mildly thought-provoking that such traits might be less sex-indicative for people in Chris's situation ... it's also pretty clear that Chris is so sheltered that they haven't thought about sex or gender much and considers them unimportant, which I doubted was truly representative for others, especially those who fell ill later in life.... Scalzi really didn't want to get into the weeds to explore this aspect.

>95 Kanarthi: Thank you for that description. I am getting the impression that, whilst Scalzi may have interesting ideas, he ducks out of considering the implications just at the point where I would feel that it is starting to get interesting, in favour of the next "cool scene".

And I accept your analysis that, although Lock In is probably a better written book, its emphases are quite precisely wrong for me. It sounds like I am better off staying clear of this author (except perhaps for comedy?)

Thank you again, and thanks also to Karlstar and BookStoogeLT, pgmcc Narilka and Busifer and Sakerfalcon, reading_fox and haydninvienna (in another thread) for taking the time to help me work out that this is not just a duff encounter, and why this popular author works so well for others, but not for me.

And, having been discussing disability as handled in SF, it seems apposite to post a review of an SF short story that handled the topic well (in my opinion):



The Visitor: Kill Or Cure (Wild Cards 24) by Mark Lawrence - 3.5 stars

This is a short story in a shared world curated by George R. R. Martin, Wild Cards.

The basic premise of thus world is that after something was released in 1946, there have been both Aces and Jokers in this world, the former having been given special powers and the latter horribly distorted.

The setting for this story is London, in the present day.

It is not immediately apparent what is happening, as we see events from the point of view of people who invite The Visitor in (mostly, sometimes she enters without asking!), and from the contrasting point of view of Ruby, an embittered Ace who currently works as a hitwoman.

Even in this short story form, there is a lot more going on than simply a face-off between two Aces. There are themes of "Big Pharma", including the financial disincentive to manufacture cures, as opposed to merely palliatives. There is also a realistic consideration of handling living with constant pain.

Mark Lawrence is not just a fantasy writer with a background in research physics. He is also a carer for a severely disabled child. Although he never addresses the latter directly, his portrayals of related issues resonate with me, as usual.

I find people who have sudden experience of severe pain expect the world to stop around them. Everything is supposed to wait until they feel better. Those of us who experience pain as our 'normality' are expected to just 'get on with it'. (We do.) It is one of those issues of 'entitlement'. People for whom pain is not normal feel agrieved if it does not go away immediately; they ignore the people for whom it does not go away at all, and who have to try to fit their living into the gaps. Life is not fair, and this is our normal. This contrast is explored here.

And it gives a "superheroes" story a little more depth than one might expect.

I do however feel that Mark Lawrence might be overstating his case here: the level of "functioning despite severe burns" I am doubtful about the plausibility of - although I suppose one should take into account that severe burns are initially not painful, because the nerve endings that signal pain have also been destroyed.

And although this is set firmly within the "pop culture" milieu, the story is not uncritical of it. The inherent cruelty of a subculture that turns personal tragedy into "memes" for their amusement is here identified - and shown to have consequences.

Note - I also love the cover design for The Visitor: Kill Or Cure in >97 -pilgrim-:.

>96 -pilgrim-: Good discussion! Not all authors work for everyone and not all Scalzi is for everyone, definitely.

>89 Kanarthi: >90 ScoLgo: I also enjoyed Lock In, but it was just fun and fluffy.

War in Heaven: Book 1 of Aspects of Power from The Complete Charles Williams Collection by Charles Williams - 4 stars

This was another fascinating novel, where you really need to keep your wits about you. It provided a useful corrective to the overdose of the forgettable that I had in April.

The book opens with an unidentified corpse under a desk in a publishing house, but by chapter 2, the reader knows who did it. In the next few chapters, we gain some idea why; a more in depth understanding of why (and the attempts by the police to solve the murder) constitute the remainder of the book.

I found Sørina Higgins' blog on Charles Williams, "the Oddest Inkling", very helpful in understanding this book.

Most novels which deal with magic are written by authors for whom this is fantasy, while for some the novel is a method of recruiting for their genuinely held belief system. Charles Williams does not really fit either description. An Anglican priest, he was also a leading figure in the Order of the Rosy Cross - and thus practised what some would consider ritual magic. Yet this novel is certainly not a recruiting manifesto for such practices!

In contrast to the Puritans, who believed in magic, and believed that all who practised it were consorting with the Devil, Williams comes from the older Christian viewpoint that distinguished between theurgy and goetia. Thus, for Williams, when magical ritual is bad, it is because of what (or who) is being sacrificed to or invoked, not because it is magic.

Williams is a serious mystical theologian. His works have been praised by Protestant, Orthodox and Catholic theologians. It would be difficult for me to comment on to what extent his views are unorthodox, since he deals with images rather than formal debate. But his views are undoubtedly sincere.

He is also a poet. War in Heaven is a strange book, where the setting is a realistic version of England in the thirties, yet characters enter states of mind which acknowledge more than one level of existence.

Characters sincerely discuss the possible existence of God, and how to determine his Will. The possibility of serving Satan is likewise dealt with seriously.

But it is best described as literature with a real sense of the numinous, where the boundary between what can be perceived by the senses and what is felt with the emotions becomes blurred. They are treated as complementary, but distinct, modes of perception.

If you are actively hostile to Christianity, then this book will probably annoy you. But it is not doctrinaire or proselytising enough for the reader to need to be Christian to enjoy it. Not all the "good guys" are Christian, and not all those who describe themselves as Christian are noticeably "good". The portrayal of the Archdeacon is one of the best depictions of a genuinely good man that I have come across; but priests like Revd Bateby or Father Spike are probably more often encountered.

The lack of doctrinaire spirit is unusual for the period in which the book is written. The Archdeacon is a central character, but so so are the (Roman Catholic) Duke of the North Ridings and the (sceptical agnostic) employee of a publishing house. I found the scene where the Duke leans against the doorpost of the Anglican church, in order that he can be party to what takes place therein, without violating the dictum of his Church regarding entering an Anglican place of worship, moving in its reminder of how far we have come since those days.

It is not an easy book to read. Williams expects a certain level of intelligence from his readers; he happily drops allusions, and never insults the reader by spelling out the meaning behind these references.

An example: I correctly identified the man who introduces himself as John from his reference to the "seventy kings", but that did not help me in the slightest in anticipating his role in the story, because I had not been aware of this person's appearance in Wolfram von Eschenbach's Parzival!

There are also references, such as to "Mrs Eddy", that would have been easy for contemporaries to understand, but not quite so familiar nowadays.

Sometimes I was misled by the throwaway hints: a character referring to Gregory Persimmons as an "Evenstar" caused me to make some false assumptions about his nature.

I thoroughly enjoyed the mental workout in trying to recognise Williams' allusions. The Grail, and what it really does, is a central point in this story.

There is an evil Jew in this story. To a modern reader, this might trigger a certain unease. But this novel was written in1930, before the rise of anti-Semitic invective gave such a character the implications that it might have, if written later. The other evil characters are quintessentially British, and Greek. I think that the point Williams was trying to make is that evil has universal appeal, as being the obverse of the Christian option. Where there is the possibility of one (i.e. in someone from the monotheistic religions) there is the potential for the other. So he takes his evil trio from the three great Judeo-Christian traditions: Western Christianity, Eastern Orthodoxy and Judaism. The three also represent different motivations for the path they have chosen hatred of the world, apathy, and greed (for power and money). The motivation given to Manasseh does not fit the standard anti-Semitic caricature. Insatiable greed is the motivation of the Briton.

Although hindsight makes the reader uncomfortable at anything reminiscent of Nazi racial slurs, I think Williams' motive here is actually inclusivity. Just as his portrayal of his heroes seems to make a deliberate attempt to eschew inter-denominational bigotry, I think his choice here was meant to display the breadth of the Judeo-Christian tradition, and demonstrate that the Grail, and what it stood for, is not the parochial prerogative of the English alone.

It is also worth noting the ethnicity of the most spiritually authoritative character.

It will take a lot more thinking to determine to what extent I agree with Williams' theology, since he expresses it through imagery, rather than directly. But I do not think there are any attitudes here that cause me to dislike the man.

And the above discussion of the underlying themes obscures the fact that War in Heaven takes the form of an intriguing story, with flashes of delightful dry humour.

Two young men have just met, discovered they share a love of poetry, and of the same obscure poet, and one has just quoted his own current efforts, to the approval of the other, who asks whether he is published:

“I have printed,” he said, “and you are the only man—besides the publisher—who knows about it.”

“Really?” Mornington asked.

“Yes,” said the stranger. “You will understand the horrible position I’m in if I tell you my name. I am Aubrey Duncan Peregrine Mary de Lisle D’Estrange, Duke of the North Ridings, Marquis of Craigmullen and Plessing, Earl and Viscount, Count of the Holy Roman Empire, Knight of the Sword and Cape, and several other ridiculous fantasies.”

Mornington pinched his lip. “Yes, I see,” he said. “That must make it difficult to do anything with poetry.”

Helmet Reading Challenge: 7, 21, 33

>100 -pilgrim-: Snap! I started this just the other day, but got interrupted by Out of the Silent Planet.

Thanks for that review. I'll go back and finish the book properly now. Your point about Williams's view of magic is well taken, and the view would have been quite orthodox 500 years or so ago. See the discussion on pp5-13 of English Literature in the Sixteenth Century (Excluding Drama) by Lewis. I think there is a similar discussion in The Discarded Image, but I don't have that here to check. (A quick search on the Faded Page text doesn't show the precise reference I had in mind, but there is certainly considerable discussion of the mediaeval view of magic.)

I just had the thought that Williams is kind of like a mirror image of Lewis. Both are on the same side, obviously, but Lewis is rational and logical with poetry and the Numinous continually breaking through; Williams seems to live more or less permanently in the Numinous.

And here's a lollipop! I went looking for references to Williams being combustible and found this. The linked PDF is downloadable. The reason I went looking is that somewhere in the Lewisiana I remember a reference to one of the other Inklings (Hugo Dyson?) expressing a wish to burn Williams. That Researchgate link was the only relevant thing that a google search for "combustible possibilities of Williams" produced.

>100 -pilgrim-: Yep, I'm definitely going to be reading this. It sounds intriguing :-) I doubt I'll be giving it the depth of words that you have here though. However, I should be able to discuss it semi-rationally and intelligently by then :-)

>102 BookstoogeLT: I look forward to it.

>101 haydninvienna: I am enjoying that link! It appears to have been Lewis who described Williams as "eminently combustible" :)

>103 -pilgrim-: Apparently it was C L Wrenn (who succeeded Tolkien as Rawlinson and Bosworth Professor of Anglo-Saxon at Oxford in 1945). I did some more searching and got a Google Books hit on Greville Lindop's biography of Williams. On 28 September (the hit doesn't tell me what year), Lindop quotes from a letter to Warren Lewis:

during the debate:

Wrenn almost seriously expressed a strong wish to burn Williams, or at leat maintained that conversation with Williams enabled him to understand how mediaeval inquisitors had felt it right to burn people. Tolkien and I agreed afterwards that we knew just what he meant: that as some people at school ... are eminently kickable, so Williams is eminently combustible.

The hit doesn't tell me where the quotation comes from either. I'm probably remembering it from Letters of C S Lewis, but I know there is a much more complete collected edition which I don't have.

ETA: I downloaded the kindle version of The Inklings by Humphrey Carpenter and the incident is mentioned there too. Carpenter says it was soon after Williams arrived in Oxford, which happened in 1939. So if September and soon after Williams's arrival in Oxford, 28 September 1939. Carpenter says that Wrenn was not a regular Inkling but attended from time to time.

>104 haydninvienna: So CarlClay Waters misattributed the quote? I wish I could say I am surprised.

>105 -pilgrim-: Clay Waters. I wrote #105 much earlier this morning (before coffee, in fact) and didn't make it clear that the letter Lindop was quoting was written by C S Lewis, not by Wrenn, so Waters' attribution to "Lewis" is correct. The Google Books hit may not make it clear either, but Google Books now says I've reached my limit for viewing that book. That said, I would have liked to edit Waters' paper. Too many small typos, and if the standard for academic papers is the awkward passive voice in the last few pages, I'm glad I'm not an academic.

>106 haydninvienna: And I was replying in the half-awake stage between breakfast and medication - hence the mistake over the name!

But I agree. I was seriously unimpressed by the quality of that paper. It was 90% lit review, and the ostensible original information (what original material on Williams exists in two specific repositories) was so skimpy that anyone looking for it would be served better by simply writing to the custodians of these collections.

I realise that the author was only a Master's student at the time, but still...My supervisor would never have passed that as for for publication!

"Eminently Combustible" - Charles Williams, the Most Interesting Inkling (SLIS Connecting, University of Southern Mississippi, Vol. 7, Iss. 1, Art. 11) by Clay Waters - 1 star

Thus is the sort of article published for the sake of publication that gives academic scholarship a bed name.

After quoting from several published biographies in order to put together a brief account of Williams' life, and some paragraphs summarising his works (with critiques taken from such sources) - which takes up most of the article - the author then proceeds to list the sort of material by and about Williams housed in the two major repositories, along with brief comments on their physical methods of storage and state of preservation.

The descriptions are not, however details enough to enable a research worker to determine what is actually covered where - which is surely the only possible justification for this research. The fact that someone actually received a grant to travel to these two locations, to produce this account, which is less informative or detailed than the written catalogues he requested and received from the curators of these collections by post and email, appals me.

The one worthwhile thing that I learned from the article was that Charles Williams reviewed his friend C. S. Lewis's work in the form of letter to Scorpuscle from Snigsnozzle reviewing The Screwtape Letters - a letter from one demon to another, discussing the publication of a collection of letters from one demon to another.

And here it is: https://apilgriminnarnia.com/2015/10/26/cw-screwtape/

I really have not been feeling like reading anything this month. Too much on my mind, so that I can't seem to focus on anything.

And the degree of crap that the chemo makes me feel is not, objectively speaking, that bad, but it always hits harder after I have had the chemo reportedly cancelled like this, so that I have had a reminder of feeling normal.

I found some more Ben Aaronovitch short stories, from his Rivers of London setting.

The Domestic (short story from Rivers of London) by Ben Aaronovitch - 2 stars

In British terminology, "a domestic" can either refer to a domestic servant, or police slang for a (usually violent) crime perpetrated by one member of a couple (who live together) on another. Both meanings are relevant to this short story, which is a solo investigation by Peter Grant.

It is better than many of the author's other shorts, but again demonstrates his love of the poorly thought through "cool twist", at the expense of all logic.

Having clearly signposted conclusion A, he then brings conclusion B out, as an alternative, without any attempt at explaining what, if B is true, was the real explanation for all the evidence that pointed towards conclusion A. MAJOR spoiler: Yes, it is very "edgy" to have the ostensible abuse victim revealed to actually possibly be the abuser/murderer - on zero evidence other than the fact that she "has a temper". But what then of all the clues pointing to the ghost as dating from the nineteenth century?.

The conclusion was actually rather depressing. Assuming that no domestic violence had actually taken place - the "victim" really had "walked into a door"! - why did Peter feel justified in breaking up an (unusual) arrangement, which was satisfying to all parties involved? (I am assuming conclusion A was correct. If Peter had doubts, he could dispel them by talking to the ghost of the murder victim.)

Favourite Uncle (short story from Rivers of London) by Ben Aaronovitch - 2 stars

This is an investigation carried out by Abigail Kamara. It is OK seasonal tale for Christmas, with too little explanation to be really satisfying.

It seems mainly to exist in order to facilitate an "info-dump" about Abigail's background.

I will revise my opinion if the hints about Paul Kamara are ever followed up on.

♪♪ King of Rats (short story from Rivers of London) by Ben Aaronovitch (read by Ben Bailey Smith) - 1.5 stars

I listened to a video stream via Tumblr from City of London Libraries, of this being read by rapper "Doc Brown" to a small audience in an unused bit of the London Underground.

His voice acting, in persona as Peter Grant, was quite good. But the story itself was obvious to the point of being completely banal.

It also has the complete lack of sympathy for victims of glamour, that I have commented on before (here) in discussions of Maksim and Uncle Bailey. Admittedly these victims were probably not nice people, before they had their real personalities stripped away. So the listener is encouraged to laugh at the "King of Rats", both now and in his former life.

However, if you are unfamiliar with London and its Underground, the sight of a black Londoner (the authentic accent for the protagonist) reading a story in the correct setting for the story, and for Whispers Underground - which it takes place some time after - might make this a worthwhile digression.

>109 -pilgrim-: Sorry you haven't been feeling well, hopefully it passes.

>113 Karlstar: Thanks, Jim.

I was just going to come over and see how you were doing as I hadn't seen you around for a couple of days. Then I saw all the activity on Sakerfalcon's thread and was like "Oh, there's Pilgrim!". Glad you're alive and kicking :-D

>115 BookstoogeLT: I haven't really been reading anything recently.

Or even reading GD threads. Then I found Sakerfalcon talking about one of my favourite novels... So...the rest is history.
(And Claire knew that would happen!)

A quick review of only other thing I actually read in May:

Invasion (short story) by Russ Linton - 1 star

A short story from the point of view of an American "prepper", the type of extreme libertarian who believes that everything that comes out of his government must be lies and how he responds to the announcement of alien invasion.

Now that I have described the character, you can imagine the rest of the story. He is as selfish as you would expect.

I know nothing about the author, and was reading this story from his website to try to get a feel of him. The actions of the protagonist are such an extreme cliché that I cannot tell whether he is mocking the viewpoint of his protagonist, or sincerely representing it as the sensible response to the situation.

I got nothing from this.

And my final book review for May:

♪♪The Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis (read by Ralph Cosham - 4 stars

This was a "re-read", in that I am a novice audiobook user, but I remember the book from when my mother gave it to me to read when I was about fourteen.

It purports to consist of a series of letters than have "somehow" come into C. S. Lewis' possession (as he explains in the introduction) from a senior devil to a younger, inexperienced one, about how to do his work of leading humans into sin. His tone is that of an upper middle class senior manager mentoring a junior.

In this conceit, devils, like guardian angels, are each assigned a human. Their job is to do deceive that person so that they make choices in life that lead them into Hell after death (when the devils will then feast on them).

It is a witty a satire as I remember, but there were two things that struck me more than they had when I was fourteen.

I missed just how challenging the theology was. Lewis' reasoning of what can be expected of a Christian is sound, but the goals that he sets are not easily achieved - and one of his strongest warnings is about those who thinking simply attending church regularly makes them a Christian, regardless of what is in their heart.

It is probably relevant that this was written in a country at war, a war it seemed quite possible that we might not win. In a country suffering regular bombing attacks, courage and willingness to make sacrifices in order to help others are not vague ideals; they are character traits that the population must practice, in order to survive.

However every time Lewis talked about the way women are different from men, I cringed. It is not that his views of women were demeaning, exactly. It is that he believed that there is a fundamental difference between how men and women think.

One of the distinctions that he made seemed to me to be true - that a woman will show her concern and affection for a person by selflessly making sacrifices for them and working for their comfort, whilst a man will demonstrate the same affection by firmly avoiding interfering in their affairs. In other words, a woman expresses her love in ways that are active while men are passive - and they each feel hurt that that they are not receiving the type of affection that they are giving.

But although he could conceive of different types of men, with different ambitions, some good some bad, and having very different ways of thinking, due to both temperament and social environment, with women the distinction seemed to only to be between "silly" and sensible.

I suppose this is a natural result of Lewis' life. His mother died when he was 10; his subsequent life at boarding school, in the army, and as an Oxford academic (which in those days made bachelor life compulsory) have him few opportunities to meet women.

The woman who played the largest role in his life was "Mrs Moore". She was the mother of a friend who was killed in the First World War, with whom he had made a mutual pact to support each other's families, in the v care of the other's death. He lived with her and her daughter, and some biographers believe that they became lovers; however he often used to introduce her as his mother. It is unquestionable that they became extremely close, and that he loved her. (He had not yet met the love of his life, Joy Davidman, when he was writing The Screwtape Letters.)

So, his main experience of "women" was one woman, one he loved and respected, but one with whom his close relationship had been forced by circumstance. They had not been friends before they became "family". She shared neither his interests nor his academic background. It seems to me that his portrayal of "women" is probably a very fair assessment of one woman - the only one with which he had had a close relationship at the time of his writing.

His fault is not that he has some theoretical stereotype about women which he is trying to force real women to fit. It is that he is over-generalising. He extrapolates from Mrs Moore and her daughter, the only women he really knows, to women in general.

So his views on gender differences are simply stupidly ill-informed, rather than naturally misogynistic. I find it surprising (and hence stupid), because as a trained academic, he would not have made the mistake of generalising from the particular in his professional life.

This detracts somewhat from the efficacy of his argument, which is a pity, since that is the only topic on which his reasoning appears unsound. (False premises lead to faulty conclusions.) When he is writing about men in general (and in those days, "man" meant member of mankind more often than it did "masculine human"), his analysis of character traits and subconscious impulses is perspicacious and thus unsettling.

Even the parts about the interactions between men and women are a perfectly reasonable portrayal of some relationships. The particular context of the Letters is that of advising the junior devil how to tempt his charge into sin, through sowing friction between him and his mother.

Lewis' other non-fiction Christian writing often remarkably candid about his failings and his struggles. I think, therefore, we may be getting a picture of Lewis' self-examination over his failings in his relationship with the woman whom he called "mother" - Mrs Moore. Taken as an examination of a particular relationship - rather than, as it is presented, in the abstract - it becomes as lucid and perspicacious as the rest of his work. And since Mrs Moore and her daughter were very much alive in his life, it could not have been presented any other way. Lewis was not of the generation where it is acceptable to expose one's family and friends to public scrutiny under the excuse of writing literature.

This incidentally, leads me to the conclusion that Mrs Moore was surrogate parent rather than sexual partner. We live in a society which finds it hard to conceive of friendship between men and women, or envisage a closeness that is not expressed through sex (unless the bond is already familial). I don't think it is necessary to assume that Lewis was chaste in order to accept that this particular relationship was as he presented it - a motherless young man taking on the mantle of her dead son.

I find it unlikely that he would have chosen to write here about a man chafing at the restrictions on his time and activity placed on him by the needs of a mother that he loves, if he had not himself some experience of that relationship. Failing to treat his mother properly is the chief weakness that the devil's victim demonstrates. Lewis has said that he did not enjoy writing this book, and putting himself in this mindset. So it would be easiest to give the victim what Lewis perceived as his own vices, rather than think himself into the mind of a different type of sinner.

I wonder what this book would have been like, had Lewis revised it after coming to know Joy Davidman - a woman as intellectually oriented as Lewis.

The attitude to women apart, I found this a sound, inspiring and challenging book.

But I also felt there was a lot more about Lewis the man that I gleaned from this second reading.

NOTE: This edition also included Screwtape Proposes a Toast, in which the old devil gives a speech at a dinner held at the training college for devils. Written a decade later, it is a pastiche on the sort of speech Lewis would have often been called upon to give. Screwtape starts by bemoaning how there are no great sinners nowadays, but then concludes that the college is doing an excellent job, since it is easier for a person to be tempted into sinning in small, "trivial" ways, than by making a conscious decision to defy God and sin by a deliberate choice to do wickedness.

(Crowley*, with his institution of the M25, as the perfect generator for low grade evil, was evidently an apt pupil.)

*Good Omens by Sir Terry Pratchett

Helmet Reading Challenge: 44

Oops, no - I missed this one:

Preface to Essays Presented to Charles Williams by C. S. Lewis - 3 stars

This is an introduction, available online, to a collection of essays that are not yet available. It was written in the immediate aftermath of Williams' unexpected death, when what was intended to be a collection to be presented to him on his return from Oxford (where he was evacuated) to London, in the manner of a Festschrift, turned into a memorial.

It is unashamedly written from the point of view of a grieving friend.

I have also found useful the blog "The Oddest Inkling", by an American academic, Sørina Higgins, who focuses on Williams.

Her essay on the relationship between Williams and magic - he was both an Church of England priest
theologian and a high-ranking member of the Rosy Cross Order - was something I found very useful in understanding his novels.

But a biographer works at second hand, and strives to be dispassionate and critical. An articulate fellow author, eulogising a recently deceased close friend, provided the necessary corrective by giving a glimpse of what it was about the man that others found so charismatic.

>119 -pilgrim-: I just got a decent copy of War in Heaven by Williams. I hope to have it read and reviewed by sometime late July or early August. Will try to keep you updated, and if I haven't given any start date updates by sometime in July, feel free to poke me and ask what's going on :-D

>120 BookstoogeLT: Sure. I look forward to reading your opinion on it

(Meanwhile I am feeling guilty, because my slow progress with Out of the Silent Planet has nothing to do with what I think of the book.)

>118 -pilgrim-: >119 -pilgrim-: As usual, spot on. I found your views on Lewis's attitude to women interesting, somewhat absolving him from the charge of misogyny, although "stupidly ill-informed" can look very much like "malicious". I'll go with "ill-informed" (wouldn't ever dare to call him stupid). I recall that he says somewhere that in his public speaking and preaching, if he needed to provide an example of a sin, he often found it helpful to use whatever sin had been his major problem during the last few days.

Was Williams a priest? There's no reference in his Wikipedia article* to his having been ordained, and he never finished the only tertiary education he ever undertook (which doesn't seem to have been theologically oriented anyway). A very quick skim of The Oddest Inkling doesn't suggest it. Membership of one of Waite's occult orders, yes; lifelong devout Anglican, certainly. I'm not very familiar with the Anglican processes of ordainment, me having been brought up Presbyterian.

I suspect the reason why the rest of Essays presented to Charles Williams isn't at Faded Page is that there's an essay in it by Owen Barfield, which isn't yet out of copyright in Canada (Barfield died in 1997). I don't have a contents list available, but Lewis says that the essays are "the work of one professional author, two dons, a solicitor, a friar, and a retired army officer". The solicitor would have been Barfield. (EATA: the 2 dons are Jack Lewis and Tolkien; the professional author is Dorothy Sayers; the friar is Fr Gervase Mathew; and the army officer is Warren Lewis.)

*Yes, I did read the blog post on Francis Thompson and not trusting Wikipedia!

ETA: and on the relationship between Lewis and Mrs Moore: what was Sherlock Holmes's maxim? "It is a capital mistake, Watson, to theorise before one has data"? On that question, there is simply no data. One can theorise without limit as to what the relationship "must have been", although some passages in Lewis's letters do not suggest that it was calm or in any way lover-like, but the question is simply unanswerable. Even Warnie didn't know—Jack didn't talk about the why of the relationship even with Warnie.

>122 haydninvienna: You have caught me out. You are right, I can find no evidence that Williams was ordained. (I think I temporarily conflated him with another Charles Williams, his contemporary, who was an Anglican priest.)

I have edited my review >119 -pilgrim-: to show the correction.

>118 -pilgrim-: I really need to reread The Screwtape letters, it has been years since I read it. I will take your comments about the characterisation of women on board before I start, though honestly I don't think it would have surprised me. So many authors who were perceptive in other ways failed to portray women as humans!
And when I read your NOTE I thought "Crowley!" then saw your comment! Great minds ...

>118 -pilgrim-: I also meant to add that I would be rather surprised if Pterry and Neil Gaiman hadn't both read The Screwtape Letters.

>124 Sakerfalcon: The problem is not how the women are portrayed, but the generalisations made.

>125 haydninvienna: I am not so confident: Pterry's hostility to religion might have made him prejudiced against such an unashamedly Christian author.

May

Average rating: 2.31

6 fiction: 2 novels, 4 short stories
Novels: 1 urban fantasy, 1 epistolary (both Christian)
Short stories: 3 urban fantasy, 1 science fiction

2 non-fiction: 1 essay, 1 research paper

Original language: 8 English

Earliest date of first publication: 1930 (War in Heaven)
Latest: 2020 (Invasion)

6 online publications, 1 Kindle, 1 Audiobook

Authors: 5 male
Author nationality: 3 British, 2 American
New (to me) authors: 3 (2 familiar)

Most popular book on LT: The Screwtape Letters (audiobook)
Least popular: Invasion (short story)/Preface to Essays Presented to Charles Williams (essay)/"Eminently Combustible" - Charles Williams, the Most Interesting Inkling (research paper) (all only listed by me! )

No. of books read: 8
From Mount TBR (books owned before 2020): 0
Books owned before joining Green Dragon: 0
No. of books acquired: 88 (still acquiring free Kindle books!)
No. of books disposed of: 5

Best Book of May: War in Heaven
Worst Books of May: Invasion (short story)/"Eminently Combustible" - Charles Williams, the Most Interesting Inkling (research paper)

>122 haydninvienna:

Re Mrs Moore:
The evidence that we have is

Lewis' explanation of the origins of the relationship, as stated, I think, in Surprised By Joy.

The fact that he introduced her socially as his mother.

We also have the fact that for the early part of his career, he was required by the terms of his academic appointment to be single. This demonstrates that

for much of their time together they could not have declared a romantic interest in each other

she was important enough to him to risk his career over her.

My inclination had always been that, given Lewis has never noticeably been untruthful about himself, and even rather candid about those faults that he was aware of, it is insulting to assume that he is a liar, and we should take his word unless there is good reason not to.

What annoys me about the Lewis industry is the way his sex life has been the subject of such detailed discussion, when he himself was a gentleman enough to never discuss such things himself.

And moreover, the arguments do not seem to start with the evidence but deductions from (supposed) character. Thus Walter Hooper et al. assume that he must have been celibate, because he was an exemplary Christian (ignoring the fact that Lewis never pretended to extraordinary virtue, but represented himself simply as a man who was trying his best).

On the other hand, I have come across biographies that insist that he was a masochist (as far as I could tell, simply because the author could conceive of no other reason why a young man should "burden himself" with an older woman whose needs prevented him devoting himself wholly to his work!), and others that diagnose treat he was a sadist (because, as a teenager, he wrote to his best friend about wanting to "spank" a teenage girl they both found annoying).

I don't know what his precise sexual needs were - and I don't care. What is worth knowing is how he actually behaved in relationships (rather than focusing on the bedroom). It was this obsessive interest in what one normally respects as private that resulted in my stopping reading books aboutLewis.

But reading The Screwtape Letters it seemed to me that Lewis was answering the question, if we let him. Just as he uses himself to illustrate human failings, rather than try to imagine up a different set of temptations, then it seems natural that he uses the closest relationship that he has, and his own failings in respect to it, to illustrate how interaction between two good people can nevertheless sour, if they do not take care.

If one takes the descriptions of "women" as being of one particular woman, I do not think they are unfair. The faults ascribed to tend to fit Mrs Moore, as described by her daughter.

The question of whether Lewis was misogynistic is an important one, because it does affect the validity of his theological arguments (not simply whether one likes the man). But I do not see any evidence of this.

Genuinely misogynistic writers tend to treat women as either

objects to be used (for sex)

the innately evil enemy

try to pretend that they do not exist.

I do not think Lewis does any of this.

I don't think he would choose a young girl as the point-of-view protagonist in his Narnia stories, if he wished to "forget the opposite sex existed". He simply is not very good at writing adult women, because for most of his life he had extremely limited experience of them. He writes all male environments because they are his reality, not because they are his ideal.

I do not see how one can read his writings about bereavement and see him as a misogynist. Of course, a misogynist can feel bereaved, when deprived of the use of his favourite sex object or housekeeper. But a man who is first friends with a woman, marries her in form only to enable her to free herself from an abusive husband (by giving her the right to stay in the UK), and then only marries her in truth when she is dying, is not motivated by selfish emotions, but genuine love.

>129 -pilgrim-: Evidently I wasn't completely clear! I wasn't intending to argue for any conclusion whatsoever about the relationship between Lewis and Mrs Moore. There is simply not enough information, and certainly no basis for concluding that they were lovers. Lewis himself was, as we both know, reticent about the relationship, although certainly in his letters he has the odd grumble about how hard he has to work on her account. I dislike and distrust the whole Lewis industry at least as much as I gather you do—there is certainly an overwhelming air of hagiography about a lot of it, whitewashing Lewis's self-acknowledged faults and failings. Even, I gather, glossing over the facts that he was a heavy smoker and drinker! There's a revealing little flash about Walter Hooper soon after he arrived in Lewis's world (I think it's in one of the essays in Light on C S Lewis): Lewis and Hooper are visited by some sort of American religious bigwig and Hooper goes to greet the great man "after having popped a mint into his mouth to hide any smell of tobacco". And I rather think that the "Lewis industry" has bred an "anti-Lewis industry", as tends to happen.

I also don't think he was actually misogynist, for the reasons you give. Given his upbringing and his life in college, his acquaintanceship with women cannot have been extensive. He knew Dorothy Sayers pretty well, but offhand I can't think of any other woman that he knew outside his family. "Ill-informed", perhaps, as we agreed in #118 and #122.

>130 haydninvienna: I, too, think we are discussing a topic where we are in basic agreement.

I think I was trying to explain why I brought his relationship with Mrs Moore into the discussion, whilst disliking his biographers' prurience regarding his sex life (whatever it was).

And that is because if we read his description of the the devil's target and his mother, in The Screwtape Letters, as Lewis mediating on his own failings in his relationship with this one particular woman, expressed in the abstract for decency's sake, then it produces a much more understandable perspective on what are otherwise some rather odd statements about "women".

You are right, Joy Davidman was not his only intellectual female friend. And I have not heard of any suggestion that Dorothy L. Sayers felt demeaned by his attitude towards her gender. have you?

>131 -pilgrim-: He seems to have regarded Sayers with considerable respect, and one of the essays in Essays Presented to Charles Williams is by her. She was an occasional visitor to the Inklings, according to Humphrey Carpenter. Wikipedia also mentions her participation in the Socratic Club.

>132 haydninvienna: Yes, I remembered her name amongst the list of contributors. I feel slightly embarrassed to admit that I have not read anything by her, except for her detective novels!

>133 -pilgrim-: At least you've read those! I've not even read them, even though at some point I'd like to change that. Any suggestions for lists to go by?

>134 BookstoogeLT: Her Lord Peter Wimsey novels should really be read in order (I didn't, and missed a certain amount of character development as a consequence).

Wimsey detects with his man, Bunter. He comes across as a 'silly ass", and Bunter like Jeeves (and the resemblance is deliberate).

You need the early novels to realise that this persona is deliberately adopted. Wimsey suffered a breakdown from shell shock, after his experiences in World War I. The facetiousness is initially a defence mechanism, and then, as he realises that he is actually rather good at detecting and can make a useful contribution that way, a intentional façade, aimed at making people underestimate him.

So: Whose Body? is where I recommend starting.

Edited for missing words.

>135 -pilgrim-: When you say read in order, do you mean publication order, or chronological order or some other order? I guess I'll check out wikipedia to see what orders there are.

Thanks.

>136 BookstoogeLT: As far as I recall, they are the same thing. DLS wrote her character in "real time" - so a book takes place at the time that it was published, and Lord Peter has the appropriate age for the date (if you see what I mean). She is not writing in a historical setting.

>137 -pilgrim-: Oh, I love it when authors make it simple for us readers. Wish it happened more often today!
Thanks!

>117 -pilgrim-: This review is perfection.

>135 -pilgrim-: He comes across as a 'silly ass", like Jeeves (and the resemblance is deliberate).

I presume you mean like Bertie Wooster, as Jeeves was the brains in the partnership and was always saving Bertie from his self-made disasters.

(and the resemblance is deliberate) which is demonstrated in Murder Must Advertise by Lord Peter Wimsey being described as a Bertie Wooster type person.

I concur with reading the books in order.

By the way, the work Dorothy L. Sayers was most proud of was her translation of Dante's Inferno. Umberto Eco rated it as one of the best translations of this work.

Her career as an advertising agent was very impressive. One of her clients was Guinness and she is responsible for such famous Guinness slogans as "Guinness is Good for You", and she is also responsible for the Toucan in the Guinness ads.

Quite an amazing person.

>140 pgmcc: Yes, there were missing words there.

I do regret (as stated in >133 -pilgrim-:) that I have not read any of her more serious work.

Also, the method by which the crucial fact that the body is not the body that it was assumed to be was determined in Whose Body? was really quite outspoken for the time in which it was written!

>140 pgmcc: Not Purgatorio? (Also published in Penguin Classics). She didn't live to complete Paradiso, but the Penguin Classics version was completed by Barbara Reynolds, almost seamlessly. IMHO all are equally good.

>142 hfglen: In Mouse or Rat: Translation as Negotiation Umberto Eco laments that Sayers did not get enough credit for her translation of Dante.

Eco is the only person I know who has presented some explanation of content in Finnegans Wake. He cited paragraphs and explained what Joyce was alluding to. I have had many issues with Joyce's novels but loved his short stories as contained in his collection, Dubliners.

>135 -pilgrim-: >140 pgmcc: IIRC, there's an incident where Wimsey thanks Bunter for something and Bunter says "I endeavour to give satisfaction, sir", to which Wimsey replies "And don't talk like Jeeves—it irritates me.".

I've long speculated about why Sayers' translation of (most of) the Divine Comedy wasn't taken seriously by the great and good, and the cynic in me wonders if they simply didn't want to know about a translation by a detective story writer*. Who didn't even get a proper PhD in anything relevant--she learned her Italian on the basis of school Latin, she says somewhere. What Sayers did know, of course, was the theology. The fact that Eco thought well of it is interesting.

* I suspect that Clive James's translation isn't taken seriously either, for vaguely similar reasons, and because too many people find him irritating. I've just re-read his introduction and he writes very clear English prose, which in some circles might be another strike against him.

>144 haydninvienna: DLS had a first in modern languages from Oxford. Was not Italian part of her degree?

It would have been extremely unusual to learn Italian at school in those days. I am wondering if her comment refers to how she coped with the language ab initio at Oxford, rather than implying that she was self-taught?

>145 -pilgrim-: Maybe. Long time since I read the comment.

Here's Zauberflöte: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x9nyPrJy5ek
and one of two complete recordings of Cosi fan Tutte: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MXCEuYL1pBU
and as a bonus, the 1989 Bolshoi/Svetlanov Golden Cockerel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AJnAkpqVDcc

Enjoy!

>147 hfglen: Thank you, Hugh.

I saw the Bolshoi Spartacus in 1989, and that was quite a memory.

Marvel Adventures: Super Heroes (2010-2012) #1 by Paul Toibin (illustrator: Ronan Cliquet; cover art: Clayton Henry - 1.5 stars

I do not really have either the time or the mindset for reading at present.

I do not "get" graphic novels. But I see a lot of love for them around, so I thought I would give one a try. I also have not watched most of the superhero films of the past decade or so, so I thought this might be a good way to update myself on the background.

I read it. There was nothing objectionable in any way. But also nothing to involve me.

The colouring sometimes made aesthetically pleasing patterns. But the face of a given character did not seem to be the same person from frame to frame - I could only identify that they were by means of the distinctive costumes.

This lack of a consistent appearance made it hard to identify any other than the most basic emotions as being felt by the character.

This just left a sequence of images of who hit who. And some rather painful attempts at witticisms.

This leaves a rather short and simple story, stripped of any emotional involvement with the characters.

I deliberately choose a free volume (that is the start of series) so that I would not be affected by a price per page reaction.

But I still cannot see the attraction of this method of telling a story.

I would appreciate it if someone who does enjoy graphic novels could explain to me what it is that I an missing.

Or did I just pick a spectacularly poor example?

>149 -pilgrim-: As someone who does enjoy graphic novels and manga, my guess is that you picked a bad one. Or even just the wrong genre. Most superhero comics are aimed at teens and unabashedly so. The older I get (because I'm SOOOOO old *wink*) the more I find that I need my graphic novels to have aged as I have.

Bone, by Jeff Smith is an example of a slightly more mature graphic novel. I read it in my mid to late 20's and really enjoyed it. I've been thinking of re-reading it to see how it stands up. It's fantasy oriented but I don't see that being a problem for you :-D

Nothing else immediately springs to mind though, unless you want to try some manga (japanese comics). I really enjoy Akira, as its a good SF action series that was produced in a large format.

However, it just might be that you don't like that medium. If that is the case, at least you'll have learned another thing about yourself :-D

>149 -pilgrim-: >150 BookstoogeLT: I've only ever read 1 graphic novel, but I did enjoy it: Logicomix by Apostolos Doxiadis. It's perhaps not strictly a graphic novel, though, since it's about the evolution of mathematics between Bertrand Russell and Kurt Gödel.

>149 -pilgrim-: Maybe take a look at either Neil Gaiman's Sandman and/or Alan Moore's Watchmen. I found both entertaining. Moore's From Hell didn't work as well for me - but I attribute that to the subject matter, (Jack the Ripper), rather than the quality of the artwork or writing.

I was lucky enough to get The Absolute Sandman books via ILL. Way too expensive for me to buy but I was drooling over the gorgeous leather-bound volumes the entire time they were in my possession.

A hardcover of Watchmen was much more affordable and remains on my shelf ready for a re-read.

>149 -pilgrim-: You could also try The Adventures of Tin Tin or the Asterix series. Tin Tin is about the adventures of a young reporter while Asterix is a humorous series about a Gaulish tribe in Britain.

>149 -pilgrim-: >153 BookstoogeLT: I've always considered Asterix to be specially bright because the puns (loose use of the word) change depending on what language you read the text in.

Don't shoot me, but what exactly is the difference between comics and a graphic novel? Is it just the length? I grew up with a couple of the Tin Tin series in the house and adored them, (we were just discussing these on another thread in here) but I always considered them comics.

-pilgrim-, I've heard great things about Maus and I even own the series, but I haven't managed to read them yet. Watchmen is decent.

>155 clamairy: I tend to think it has to to with how they're made. Comics are generally more pulpy and have the staples to keep them together. Graphic novels are made more like regular books and glued together. But there's also the fact that comics are often released monthly and continue with a story arc whereas GN's are usually self-contained stories so even within a title like Batman you can have both mediums being used with a monthly release being classed as comic book but something like The Killing Joke would fall under GN.

>149 -pilgrim-: Comics/GN's are similar in a way to anime and often get tagged with the "I don't understand the appeal" after a person tries one or two from what could be considered popular titles. The problem with that is that the titles that are popular might be so because they are aimed specifically at an audience you don't fall in to. As others have pointed out I don't consider what is termed "Capes*&t" would be to your taste at all. Fables might be a more appropriate starting point or Persepolis and I see Maus has already had a mention. Sandman has already been mentioned too but the problem with that one would be that it's all downhill from there as that's just the best there is.

>155 clamairy:

...what exactly is the difference between comics and a graphic novel?

It is like the difference between a "poster" and a "lithograph"; as described on the website, despair.com, "lithograph" is the posh word for a "poster".

They will be lining us both up against the wall to be shot.

>157 pgmcc: I’ll probably have to join you on that wall, Pete. Like “giclée” is Posh for “ink-jet printer”.

>150 BookstoogeLT:
Thank you for the suggestions. I did actually try to watch the anime version of Akira, but did not enjoy the graphic gore.

However, I thoroughly enjoyed the anime version of Death Note, which was recommended to me by a friend. I understand that this differs from, and abbreviates, the manga quite extensively. But I never felt up to facing such a lengthy series, just to find out the differences.

>155 clamairy:, >157 pgmcc:, >158 haydninvienna: I may have to join you against that wall.

I was going to say: because everyone balked at calling Maus a "comic".

>155 clamairy:, >156 AHS-Wolfy: Maus and Persepolis are both on my radar, but I couldn't face something that heavy right now.

>153 BookstoogeLT:, >154 hfglen: Maybe I could tempt haydninvienna into a joint read of Asterix in French some time?

And thank you everyone for some interesting suggestions that I have enjoyed investigating.

I am admitted that everyone is convinced that caped superheroes are not my thing; I will have you know that I assiduously watched the live action Batman, with Adam West, when I was very small.

On second thoughts, I think I may just have given convincing evidence as to why caped superheroes should not be my thing... :-D

You might find the general format more enjoyable if you start with a one-volume, self-contained story. Since you like nonfiction, you might also find more value in reading a nonfiction graphic novel.

Iron: Or, the War After is a beautifully bleak war story set in a wintry landscape and containing absolutely no whimsy. It's one of my all-time favorite novels and a daggered use of the graphic format.

For a gentler but still forceful graphic novel, you might find Coyote Doggirl appealing.

John Lewis' March trilogy is a graphic memoir recounting his experiences in the authoritarian and segregated Deep South during the Civil Rights Movement's rise. The second volume is a masterpiece.

Superhero comics probably aren't the best example of the format for you. If you want to try that subgenre again, Batman: Noël or one of the Marvel Noir arcs might be of interest.

I also have a taste for lighter graphic novels, and you can find a few examples in my LT catalog. If you like comic strips, the Phoebe and Her Unicorn series is a good place to start. The omnibuses form the kinds of story arcs you'd expect from a daily strip.

>163 libraryperilous: Those sound like some interesting suggestions, Diana.

Unfortunately that link to your library show me an empty set.

>161 -pilgrim-: Persepolis is awesome, and you are wise to avoid it right now. I would call that a graphic novel without hesitation. It was the mention of Tin Tin that threw me.

I think I'm getting it though, and perhaps we can all step away from the wall. My Calvin & Hobbes books are comic collections, because they were all published separately and just complied into a book. Whereas Watchmen and Persepolis & the rest are stand-alone narratives that just happen to be told in pictures with all text in speech balloons and info bars.

(You think they'll let me keep my mensa membership now? )

>165 clamairy: I do not think they take Mensa memberships away; just stop sending you things when you stop paying the subscription.

>166 pgmcc: Are you sure about that?

OK, I admit that was my second try. My guess was this January, when I was still reading the. Rivers of London series...

Rivers of London Volume 2: Night Witch by Ben Aaronovitch - DNF

Because of the plot loophole between Broken Homes and Foxglove Summer, regarding the location of Varvara, and Beverley's acquisition of her servitor, Maksim, I was induced to start reading Rivers of London Volume 2: Night Witch.

Unfortunately, the first few pages were enough to produce uncontrollable laughter.

The work opens with some Russian thugs about to set off on a criminal enterprise. And, since they are alone together, they talk to each other in Russian. So, the speech bubbles contain Russian, nicely written in Cyrillic script.

My problem is with what the thugs actually say. It is not that it is bad Russian. It's not. It is very good, correct, standard Russian.

But when did you ever hear a low-level gangster speak like that? The effect is like having all the characters in The Godfather speak the Queen's English.

And then later, still speaking amongst themselves, but when it is important for the reader to understand, for no good reason they stretch to speaking English even though the fact they were using a sign, written in English, to communicate with the driver of the van they were stopping, which suggests that at least some of them supposedly do not speak English

It is obvious that the author has written what he wants his characters to say, then asked for a translation into Russian, without bothering to specify the context.

He has already irritated me before I opened the book, by persisting in the mistranslation that I noted in review of Broken Homes: he gives the title as "Night Witch" in English, but Ночные Колдуньи (i.e. plural, "witches").

Actually, "witch" is, in my opinion, a poor translation for Колдунья, which is more "enchantress" or "sorceress" i.e. a practitioner of magic, who has learned the subject. ("Witch", for which the Russian is ведьма, is more someone born with innate abilities in that line.) Which would not matter at all, of it were not for the following:

In the Afterword to Broken Homes, Ben Aaronovitch notes that he chose to avoid the term Ночные Ведмы, because that is how the Russians translated the nickname, die Nachthexen that the Germans have to the female Soviet pilots of the 588th Night Bomber Regiment.

But that self-justification is specious. "Night Witches" is how that regiment had always been known in English.

By using "Night Witches" as the name for his fictitious unit of female Soviet magical practitioners, Ben Aaronovitch is deliberately stealing the resonance of the name for that regiment.

This is an insult to the memory of the extremely brave young women who flew slow, obsolete (but manoeuvrable) plywood biplanes, without the assistance of radar, in an effective series of night raids on German forces during the Second World War.

(The fact that he repeatedly uses Ночные Колдуньи - plural - when referring to a single individual, suggests to me that he started with the "Night Witches" in mind, but was later persuaded not to be so offensive to a Russian readership.)

pgmcc and I have discussed
before our shared dislike of books that misrepresent real, historical people, with portrayals that have nothing to do with the actual people, but are simply a hijacking of their name, and the recognition that goes with it, as a lazy way of engendering interest in their work.

This seems a particularly egregious example. When, as the story progressed, it started emphasising the history of this fictional regiment of sorceresses with the stolen name, I couldn't stomach it.

As to the artwork: one cover version has some style. But another, to the first issue, by Alex Ronald, has the most appalling "sexy Bond girl toting gun". That did not change my mind about this being slapdash and exploitative.

I didn't like the Akira anime either. But the manga has become my favorite. And I LOVED the death note manga :-D While I couldn't finish the anime, hahahahaa.

While not interested in a french version, I would be up for some Asterix later this year, as long as I knew the time frame and what book so I could track it down.

xx

>164 -pilgrim-: The graphic novel versions of George R. R. Martin's Hedge Knight and Hedge Knight II are very good, in my opinion!

>171 Karlstar: Oh, I'd forgotten about them! I'd need paper copies for those, I think.

>164 -pilgrim-: Huh, weird. Sorry about that. If you decide to peruse the titles, you can find them by searching my library for 'graphic novel'.

>161 -pilgrim-: Meant to reply earlier: no joint reading of Asterix in French until I can get it on paper. After that, I’m game. Of course I’d also need the English version as a crib.

I very much enjoyed selected stories from the Sandman series. I thought they were beautiful, thoughtful and well woven. However, I didn't read them all, I only read the ones my daughter selected for me.

Rather, those are the only ones I read after one venture into a story she said I wouldn't like, she was right. It was far too graphic in content for this old prude.

I apologise for initiating an interesting discussion and then disappearing. See the "I'm still here" thread for why I unexpectedly wasn't.

And now, I have a lot of catching up to do...

>176 -pilgrim-: Glad to see you back here...

Just started War in Heaven and that first paragraph really hooked me.

I do have to ask, is this typical of his writing style? I'm having to re-read a lot of sentences to parse out just exactly he's aiming for, as it seems he'll switch the goal of the sentence, mid-sentence.

I realize it might be quite a while before you get to read these, but I'm going to go ahead and ask questions that I have as they come into my head.

When the archdeacon is thinking to himself, he's thinking of the house of Sir John Horatio Sykes-Martindale and the name of the house is "Cully". That gives him amusement without distressing Sir John. Why is this amusing and how could it cause distress? It feels like slang that I have no context for.

One final question, which I'll wait for the answer to decide if I want to continue:

Does Persimmons get Adrian? Feel free to put the answer in spoilers, but it is vital that I know the answer before I continue reading one more word.

Thanks!

>178 BookstoogeLT: Yes, that may be one of my favourite book openings of all time.

Williams's style is idiosyncratic, to say the least. But I think it works.

>180 BookstoogeLT: The answer: Yes, but only temporarily. But - since I think this may be relevant to your reaction - I will add: this is NOT going down the road of child molestation or sacrificial victim.

Adrian is wanted as a seer - along the theme of "only the pure may touch the Grail". He comes to no harm, because he does not understand the visions that he sees in the cup.

Persimmons' future plans for the boy, as his pupil, are foiled.

>179 BookstoogeLT: This question is rather harder to answer as I am not quite sure what the Archdeacon is thinking here.

Relevant points are:

1. "Cully" is apparently an anglicisation of the Gaelic for "man of the woods", which is presumably the meaning that Sir John had in mind when naming his house.

2. "Cully" is, now mostly obsolete, slang for what in the context of professional confidence tricksters, would be called "the mark". But its usage is not restricted to someone preyed upon by professionals. If you "get one over on" somebody, then they are a cully.

As someone who is royally rooked by Persimmons Senior, then it is somewhat appropriate for Sir John.

I suspect that the Archdeacon sees humour in the fact that, whilst trying to choose a slightly pretentious name for his house, Sir John has in fact labelled himself a fool.

>183 -pilgrim-: Thanks for that all. I was really worried that Adrian would end up a sacrifice and I wanted no part of reading that Thanks for putting my mind at ease.

And your explanation about "cully" certainly seems to fit the situation. I'm going to choose to go with that :-)

Thanks again! :-)

>184 BookstoogeLT:
I am glad that was not too much information. I would not normally give so much detail in a spoiler, but I guessed you were under a misapprehension - since that line of thought also occurred to me whilst reading - and I wanted to relieve that.

I should add that when I say "mostly obsolete", I mean "in vogue in the 18th century"! It comes, I think, from the era when le beaux ton classified the world into "sharps" and "flats" - a cully definitely being a flat, but possibly a perfectly nice chap, for all that.

I also seem to recollect the phrase "a cully cove" popping up in the Dickensian underworld somewhere.

But basically the Archdeacon/Williams is making a joke using vocabulary that would have been outdated at the time that the book was written, not just to us now.

Trial of Duncan Terig, alias Clerk, and Alexander Bane Macdonald for the Murder of Arthur Davis, Sergeant in General Guise's Regiment of Foot A.D. M.DCC.LIV by Sir Walter Scott - 3 stars

This is a report made by an Edinburgh lawyer ( qualified both as advocate and Writer to the Signet) in 1831 (a year before his death), regarding a trial that took place in 1754. The author is Sir Walter Scott, by then a baronet and a respected author, and the paper is addressed to the Bannatyne club, a publishing club of which he is the president.

After an introduction by Scott, the paper consists of the charge, a fence statement, the witness statements given at the trial, followed by the adjudication. The accused themselves do not give any statements recorded here.

Scott's interest in the case derives from the testimony of a ghost, or rather a witness, who explains why he has knowledge of certain events by stating that the murderered man appeared to him and told him. Scott spends some time comparing other cases in England, France and Prussia, where supernatural testimony was either presented or attempted. (I share Scott's admiration for the judge who ruled that whether or not the witness was decreased, if their evidence were to be considered by the court, they must present it in person, and that the hearsay evidence of what they have told a third party is not sufficient.)

Scott's own explanation of the testimony is confident - and, I think, wrong. He believes that the witness does not wish to undergo the hostility of his neighbours by giving testimony of information that his has acquired by ordinary means, regarding the guilt of these two men, and is therefore resorting to the excuse of "the ghost made me do it"; since Highlanders of that time believed that to disobey the instructions of a ghost was a terrible offence,v which would bring great ill fortune. He assumes that the content of the testimony is true, to and that the accused are guilty of the murder.

I can think of an alternative explanation!

The context is crucial. Although the trial was not until 1754, the murder took place in 1746 i.e. just a year after the second Jacobite Rising. Sergeant Arthur Davis may be billeted among the locals, and fancy himself part of the community, but in effect he is there to police highly unpopular legislation, such as arresting those wearing "Highland dress" i.e. the proscribed kilt.

On the occasion of his murder, Serjeant Davis (sic) had been ordered to proceed with his men on patrol, but, as was his habit, gone off alone to do some shooting. He was also in the habit of carrying his savings on his person - a fairly large sum - and was, moreover, in the habit of taking his purse out in public places and playing with it, showing to children, and the like. (At which point I am coming rapidly to the conclusion that this man is "too stupid to live"!)

So, having painted a metaphorical target on his back, he takes himself off alone, under circumstances under which the sound of shots will not be notable... And someone shoots him.

It seems to me that there are a superfluity of possible motives: anyone whom he has interrupted in the commission of a crime (there are supposed to be cattle thieves in Highland dress in the area), anyone who has resentment against the government, anyone with a personal grudge, anyone who wants his money...

This has all the fascination of a whodunnit. The evidence is circumstantial, and largely incomplete - but it is all that the jury had to go on.

A lot of the contradictory evidence has to do with the good, or bad, previous character of the accused: Duncan Terig, also known as Clerk, and Alexander Bain Macdonald. (Note, the alias is not itself suspicious: it was common for a man to call himself by an English-style surname when speaking English, but be known by forename+nickname in Gaelic.) A lot of witnesses praise one man, but damn the other.

It is, in my opinion, very informative to note the surnames, and how the witnesses are related to each other.

It is obvious that someone has malice against the accused: they have been incarcerated without being brought to trial, successfully fought this, then been immediately re-arrested on slightly differently worded accusations. Repeatedly.

I was shocked that the charge against the men would not commit itself even so far as the month in which the murder took place - yet a lot of the witness statements are about who was seen where when, and thereforev whether they could have been at the seen of the crime on AC specific date.

My conclusion: What did one normally make of a "witness" who knows where to find the corpse? The circumstantial evidence against the accused seems inconclusive. I think they have been framed because of local financial grudges. The most damning testimony comes from relatives of those who they have allegedly defrauded in the past

And the verdict: Both men were acquitted (much to Scott's disgust and somewhat to my, relieved, surprise).

Reading 18th trial transcripts for fun may seem an odd thing to do. But this held all the fascination of a detective story, with the additional interest of the insight into the customs and attitudes of the period.

The Highlands after the Rising have had a lot of ignorant, romanticised nonsense written about them; it was fascinating to see a snapshot from ordinary rural life. Yes, the "cattle thieves" are probably desperate, dispossessed rebels; but did ordinary people, farming life goes on. Accusations concern dodgy dealings and sharp practice, not political loyalties.

>186 -pilgrim-: whether or not the witness was deceased, if their evidence were to be considered by the court, they must present it in person, and that the hearsay evidence of what they have told a third party is not sufficient: This is the hearsay rule in a nutshell. The basic idea is that I, being properly sworn and so on, give evidence in court that you said that Joe Blow hit Bill Bloggs with a mallet, it is evidence that you said that, but not of anything that Joe Blow did. If you are then brought before the court and sworn, and before the court you make the same statement, that is evidence and will be given whatever weight the court gives it. The point is that in the first case you are not available for the court to see you and form a view of your credibility, and you are available to be cross-examined. In the second case you are not visible for any view to be taken of your credibility, nor to be cross-examined.

That's how it operates at common law and in the systems derived from it anyway. Evidently Scots law on the point was the same.

Note that the hearsay rule applies only to oral evidence; the law relating to documents may differ. Disclaimer: not an expert of the law of evidence; never been an advocate.

The trial was conducted under Scots law, which was then and is now somewhat different from English law, although the basic trial procedure was kind of similar. The terms are often different though: the prosecutor is called the "pursuer" for example. One thing I noted in my very quick skim through the introduction and verdict, was that a Scots jury was 15 persons, not 12 as in England. The jurors' names and occupations are given—I count 7 "merchants" and all the others are apparently small tradesmen.

Incidentally: "advocate" = "barrister"; "Writer to the Signet" = "solicitor" . Three of the members of the Bannatyne Club are named Bell, and I briefly flirted with the idea that one of them may have been the Joseph Bell who is said to have been the inspiration for Sherlock Holmes, but it seems not.

ETA just looking over the list of members of the Bannatyne Club: looks like half of he aristocracy of Scotland is there! One name in particular leaps out: the Earl of Rosslyn. This would have been the second Earl, James St.Clair-Erskine. The holdings of the Earldom (still in existence) include Rosslyn Castle and the Rosslyn Chapel which features (so I understand) in The Da Vinci Code.

>187 haydninvienna:
What I liked was the elegance of that judge's solution. Instead of getting drawn into a debate into whether or not ghosts exist, he simply demanded that EVERY person who wished to present evidence (whether alive or dead) present it in the same manner i.e. by appearing in court in person.

"A ghost told me" is of course an even more dangerous pseudo-proof than "Joe Bloggs told me".

Note also the heavy reliance on a form of hearsay in this case - the trial is conducted in English, and many of the witness statements take the form of sworn depositions from a translator that this is what the Gaelic-speaking witness actually said. (There is no suggestion that the statements in Gaelic were ever made before the court, so the jurors are completely dependent on the translator, who in fact makes many of the "independent" testimonies, even if they happened themselves to know Gaelic.)

I notice also that at this point a Libel seems to mean simply "an allegation" rather than specifically a false one.

Incidentally: "advocate" = "barrister"; "Writer to the Signet" = "solicitor"
Yes, indeed. What I found noteworthy was the fact that Scott was both. Nowadays it is customary to qualify as either an advocate or a Writer to the Signet; one does not simultaneously practise as both.

looking over the list of members of the Bannatyne Club: looks like half of he aristocracy of Scotland is there!
That stuck me also. I was particularly interested to see, in a private club of which Scott was the president, members of ancient families about which he had been less than complimentary in his History of Scotland.

I know Rosslyn Chapel quite well, having had the advantage of visiting it when it was a minor chapel where Anglican services were occasionallyheld, and which could be visited by obtaining the key by applying to the churchwarden, before Dan Brown write his book, v which resulted in the need to install protective glass screens and institute tuned tours. It is actually will worth a visit, Dan Brown's fantasies notwithstanding, if should you find yourself in the Edinburgh area.

I would be very interested in the conclusion that you would come to, upon reading the trial transcript. I was particularly interested in the verdict, given that Scottish juries had until recently the "Not Proven" option.

Or did that not exist in the 18th century? You must surely know better than I.

>188 -pilgrim-: I am also not a Scots lawyer! However, I vaguely recalled that there had been some funny business over the “not proven” verdict. Summarising what is in Wikipedia, it appears that in earlier times a jury verdict in Scotland would be either “proven” or “not proven”, corresponding respectively to “guilty” or “not guilty”. In the mid-17th century, because of the difficulty in getting juries to convict, judges began referring to the jury not the general verdict but specific questions of fact, and the judge would then decide whether a “proven” allegation established guilt and give a verdict accordingly. In 1728, sez Wikipedia, a jury asserted its ancient right of returning a verdict of “not guilty”, but the practice continued of returning a “not proven” verdict.

Most of Scott’s text appears to be depositions by witnesses. I’m certainly no expert on Scots trial procedure, but I infer that the depositions were placed before the court and the witnesses were required to appear so as to be available for oral evidence. Note that one witness didn’t appear and was fined. It may be that no oral evidence was taken, the jury deciding that even if the facts set out in the depositions were taken as proved they were not enough to justify a guilty verdict. It may also be that the depositions are summaries of oral evidence given, but that Scots courts of the time didn’t allow cross-examination.

As to being either an advocate or a writer, I, having been originally admitted as a legal practitioner in the Australian Capital Territory (which has a “fused profession”), am a “barrister and solicitor”. Or I was, anyway. I may now be just a “lawyer”, under the current Australian uniform legal practitioners laws.

I’ve never been to Rosslyn but my wife has. We were in Edinburgh a few years ago, me at a conference and her gallivanting. She did Rosslyn Chapel and Sir Walter’s baronial pad Abbotsford on a day trip.

Now I’ll have to go and read Scott’s article properly, preferably with a book on historical Scots trial procedure handy.

>189 haydninvienna:
Now I’ll have to go and read Scott’s article properly, preferably with a book on historical Scots trial procedure handy.
I look forward enthusiastically to hearing about the results.

The issue of whether any cross-examination of witnesses took place, or whether the trial was conducted completely by sworn depositions also occurred to me. There are certainly questions that I would have liked to have asked some of them!

The other factor that I vaguely seem to recall was that defendants could not be called to give evidence in this period. Or was that only in England? My knowledge of the history of Scots law is non-existent, I am sorry to say.

I, having been originally admitted as a legal practitioner in the Australian Capital Territory (which has a “fused profession”), am a “barrister and solicitor”.
Does this "fused profession" mean that your practice then actually involved performing both roles?

I’ve never been to Rosslyn but my wife has. We were in Edinburgh a few years ago, me at a conference and her gallivanting.
Pre- or post-Dan Brown? Unfortunately it makes an awful lot of difference as to how much you are allowed to see.

>190 -pilgrim-: I look forward enthusiastically to hearing about the results: Don't hold your breath. The Wikipedia articles on trial procedure are very thin and I don't have the resources of a law library at hand, but I seem to recall that under English law in earlier times (not precisely sure when, but certainly mid-17th century) the accused in a criminal trial wasn't even allowed counsel. This is certainly not the case in Scotland in the mid-18th century, where our two accused have counsel, and Lockhart (for the accused) says "And further, the panels would be able to prove a true and warrantable cause for going to the hill libelled on in arms ...", which is clearly intended to presage evidence on their part. There are 3 depositions by witnesses "adduced by the Panels in exculpation". All of the depositions seem to have been taken orally and reduced to writing and sworn, as you would expect, and a couple of them note that the deponent cannot write. There is also an interpreter provided and sworn.

Re "fused profession": warning, law nerd stuff ahead.

Australia is, as you probably know, a federation like the United States and Canada. There are 6 States, which were originally separate British colonies which agreed to combine under a common national government. As with the US States and Canadian Provinces, the States have legal and political independence and the national government cannot abolish them. The national government (in Australia, called the Commonwealth) has a set of powers which are enumerated in the Constitution, and the residue lies with the States. One of that "residue" is the regulation of the legal profession. Some colonies established legal professions on the English model, with separate professions of barrister and solicitor, so that as a shiny new lawyer you were either "admitted to practice as a solicitor" or "called to the Bar". Victoria and Western Australia (that I can be sure of) established professions that were unified, so that you were admitted as both barrister and solicitor, and you could practise as either or both. There was very soon a discernible trend for a separate Bar, so that lawyers who wished to specialise in advocacy could do so.

The Territories (the Northern Territory and the Australian Capital Territory) are creations of the Commonwealth Parliament, in that both exist because of Commonwealth Acts, so that the Parliament could in theory abolish them, although that is extremely unlikely to happen. Those 2 Territories have legislative bodies with a limited range of competence. Both have laws regulating their legal professions, and both (I think; certainly the ACT) have fused professions, as I said. I was admitted as a barrister and solicitor in the ACT, and as a solicitor in New South Wales, in 1986. (Admission, particularly in NSW, was a Big Deal. In NSW it was done in the banco court in Phillip Street, Sydney, which was the court used for full-bench appeal hearings, before a full panel of 3 judges in their formal full-bottomed wigs and ceremonial robes, and Chief Justice Street made a particular point of presiding personally. You as a baby legal practitioner showed up with whatever family you wanted to bring, and a person who was already admitted moved the court that you be admitted to practice and your name be entered on the roll of solicitors. The presiding judge would then formally order that it be done. Then you had to go to the court registry and actually sign the roll. The roll was literally a huge leather-bound book, and the court registrar would have added an entry of your name to it, which you then had to sign and date. This was important because your seniority as a practitioner ran from when you signed the roll. And yes, apparently, if you commit a serious enough offence to justify your being "struck off", the registrar apparently does rule a line through your name.)

The reference to now being a lawyer was because in the last 20 years or so, both the ACT and NSW have laws based on a uniform legal practice act (the legal independence of the States has led to the obvious issues about different laws in different places, and one way in which this has been dealt with is by the States agreeing to pass uniform laws—easier to do when you have 6 parties than when you have 50). Under the uniform law, I can now only call myself a "lawyer". To be able to call myself "legal practitioner", solicitor" or "barrister" in either NSW or the ACT, and probably also in the rest of Australia, I would have to get a practising certificate. Since I have no interest in working as a lawyer otherwise than what I do now, I don't see that happening.

And a final note about the Bannatyne Club: one of the members is listed as "James M Hog (sic), Esq". This is, I think, James Hogg, the "Ettrick Shepherd" and author of Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner. Hogg was certainly a friend of Scott's, and lived in the area at the right time.

ETA as to pre- or post-Brown, post. She has read the book; I haven't.

>191 haydninvienna:
Pursuers.
            Procurators in defence.
William Grant, of Prestongrange, Esq.,
            Mr Alexander Lockhart,
    His Majesties Advocate.
            Mr Robert M'Intosh,
Mr Patrick Haldane, and
                Advocates.
Mr Alexander Home,
    both His Majesties Solicitors.
Mr Robert Dundas, Advocate.

The Kindle version appears to have screwed up on formatting, but I took this passage as meaning that Mr. Alexander Lockhart and Mr. Robert McIntosh were the advocates for the defence, and present.

The role of Mr. Robert Dundas is unclear to me.

I have not met the terminology procurator for the defence before. Have you?
Also strange to me was the user of the term Pan(n)els for the accused.

Solicitors (i.e. Writers to Signet) and Advocates also appear to be separate professions.

And my nerdiness is well-established: I found your explanation of Australian legal qualifications fascinating.

>192 -pilgrim-:
The Mr. Robert Dundas, Advocate. appears to be the then Lord Advocate of Scotland.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Dundas_of_Arniston,_the_younger

Note that his son,
William Dundas , then Lord Clerk Register, was a member of the Bannatyne Club, to which Scott is presenting this case.

>192 -pilgrim-: >193 -pilgrim-: I'd need to see the actual printed book to be sure, but I think you're right that the kindle formatting is a bit off. Looking at the HTML on line, it's clear to me that Grant of Prestongrange is the prosecutor ("pursuer" in Scots), Haldane and Home are the instructing solicitors, as we would say in Australia, and Dundas is an additional counsel for the prosecution. Quite normal to have 2 prosecuting counsel, particularly (I would think) in a murder case involving an English soldier. Yes, Lockhart and Macintosh were for the defence. Scots law terminology is different to the English, as already noted. I've met the term "procurator" before (if you've ever read Dorothy Sayers's Five Red Herrings, which is set in Scotland, you will have met the Procurator-Fiscal, who has the duty of investigating the cause of a suspicious death, similarly to an English coroner, except privately). But what it means beyond that, I have no idea. And no, I have never encountered "pan(n)el" for the accused before, nor "libel" for the details of the accusation.

Writers to the Signet and Advocates were indeed separate professions, exactly like solicitors and barristers. Another bit of legal antiquarianism: once upon a time, "attorneys" practiced in the courts of common law and "solicitors" in the court of Chancery. Solicitors were of a higher social standing than attorneys. There were also "proctors", who practised in the ecclesiastical courts and the courts whose jurisdiction was based on ecclesiastical law; basically, the matrimonial courts and (weirdly, IIRC) the courts of admiralty. The distinctions disappeared when the administration of law and equity was combined in 1870, although people still style themselves "solicitors and attorneys".

Just for a treat, here is what a an NSW solicitor's certificate of admission from about the right date looks like:


This one is older than mine but says all the right things, and looks about the same. ("Prothonotary" = chief clerk.) The certificates are quite impressive close up: embossed A3 (say 12" by 16") sheet of heavy paper.

>195 haydninvienna: Interesting. Under the VOC (Dutch East India Company) the third-most important person (after the Governor and Secunde) at the Cape was the Fiscaal. And to this day a lawyer/solicitor in Afrikaans is a prokureur.

>196 hfglen: ... a lawyer/solicitor in Afrikaans is a prokureur: Not hard to see that prokureur and procurer (and probably proctor also) are related, and are synonyms of solicitor in more than one way.

Well, this was an educational thread. I know more now about the hearsay rule and Scottish legal procedures.

>198 jillmwo: Are you basing your conclusion on hearsay?

>199 pgmcc: Ha!

>198 jillmwo: I thought most threads in the GD were educational!

>201 haydninvienna: Let's be honest. We do have those periods of expanding Pub piffle. Those are fun but can you truly classify them as educational?

>202 jillmwo: Well, let's say there was a certain amount of exaggeration for conversational effect applied. But I do pick up lots of bits of miscellaneous knowledge along the way.

>196 hfglen: It sounds as if your legal system's terminology owes more to the Scottish than the English legal system. What contribution did Dutch make?

>195 haydninvienna: if you've ever read Dorothy Sayers's Five Red Herrings, which is set in Scotland, you will have met the Procurator-Fiscal, who has the duty of investigating the cause of a suspicious death,

Most English people of a certain age are familiar with the term thanks to a popular TV detective series that ran for 5 seasons in the seventies: Sutherland's Law. That was the profession of the eponymous lead.

ETA: There seems to be a book of the series:
https://www.librarything.com/work/22301376

Ooh, that Sutherlands Law sounds interesting. I wonder if it is available via streaming at all.

>204 -pilgrim-: Roman-Dutch law is a foundation and a cornerstone of our legal system.

>204 -pilgrim-: I'll take the risk of putting in a bit more law-nerd stuff here, a lot of which is actually general history. I'm going very much on memory here, but I think the general outline is right.

The legal systems of most Western European countries descend from Roman law, as codified in the Institutes of Justinian in the 3rd century CE. That developed in mostly parallel ways, as "civil law", throughout the countries that had been subjugated by the Romans. England was conquered by various waves of Scandinavians up till the 10th century CE, and then by the Normans. By the time the Normans came there was a fairly well developed system of customary law in England ("common law") that the Normans didn't replace, and which continued to develop. At one time, legal memory in England was said to go back to (IIRC) 1189, and the reign of Henry II. So there was "common law" in England and "civil law" everywhere else in Western Europe (excluding Ireland, which was never colonised by the Romans but was colonised by the English). I've skipped over Scotland though. The oracle says unhelpfully that "The nature of Scots law before the 12th century is largely speculative ...". I infer that the ciivl law influenced the law of Scotland partly because of the Auld Alliance with France, and of course Scotland was a Roman Catholic country until the time of John Knox. If true, that's enough to show why there was apparently a connection between Roman-Dutch civil law in the Cape, which was colonised by the Dutch, and the law of Scotland. My impression is that where there was something like a developed legal system in a colony, the English/British tended to leave it more or less alone (so that the Cape Colony kept its Roman-Dutch law, and Quebec kept its civil-law system, unlike the rest of Canada, whereas Australia got a full-on common-law system, and don't get me started on native title and the doctrine of terra nullius).

ETA: Serve me right, I should have read the oracle a bit further: "Ecclesiastical courts also played an important role in Scotland as they had exclusive jurisdiction over matters such as marriage, contracts made on oath, inheritance and legitimacy. These courts, unlike their lay counterparts, were generally staffed by educated men who were trained in both Roman and Canon law and offered a more sophisticated form of justice. Litigants seem to have preferred to bring disputes before the ecclesiastical courts or an ecclesiastical arbiter rather than the lay courts in Scotland... From the 14th century we have surviving examples of early Scottish legal literature, such as the Regiam Majestatem (on procedure at the royal courts) and the Quoniam Attachiamenta (on procedure at the baron courts). Both of these important texts, as they were copied, had provisions from Roman law and the ius commune inserted or developed, demonstrating the influence which both these sources had on Scots law." That's enough to justify my assumption about the influence of civil law on Scots law.

>208 haydninvienna: Thank you for saving me from the thin ice of my own ignorance.

>208 haydninvienna: Extreme law nerdiness welcomed here!

Having been raised firmly on the precepts of the English legal system, I was fascinated to encounter - via French history - the differences of a system based on Roman law, and the effect of an inquisitorial, as opposed to an adversarial, legal system.

(For those interested in the vagaries of my mind, this became germane whilst studying how the KnightsTemplar were proscribed and persecuted in France and Spain, whilst the same systematic process did not take place in England.

And, digressing on my own digression, there did seem to be some truth in the legend that some Templars found refuge in Scotland, and participated in the Battle of Bannockburn (being the real explanat ion of the "camp followers" who turned the tide of the battle).)

In England it was c preferable to be tried under ecclesiastical law because the Church could not condemn a person to death.

Hence the "gallows verses": the test of whether one was a "clerk" (i.e. in lay orders) and therefore able to claim the right of trial by an ecclesiastical court, devolved into whether one could recite the Paternoster. The claim was so abused that courts developed the habit of branding those who escaped hanging by such means on the thumb, so that a repeat claim would not be viable.

The other quirk of English common law is the appeal to "time immemorial", with the latter having a definite date: before July 6th 1187!

don't get me started on native title and the doctrine of terra nullius).
Yep. Am vaguely aware of that...
*steps gingerly back from the abyss*

(stops to comb my hair back down...)
Whew. Well, now I know a lot more than I had thought I'd ever need to on that particular topic!

>211 Busifer: I blame -pilgrim- entirely, for egging me on ...

>212 haydninvienna: Guilty as charged, m'lud.

>211 Busifer: Care to contribute a description of the Swedish legal system?

>213 -pilgrim-: No, because I don't know it at that level: I know how it works, yes, but I can't frame it in terms of legal tradition, historical background, and so on.

>214 Busifer: That's a pity; the Wikipedia article implies that Swedish law occupied an interesting mid-way position between its derivation from Roman civil law, and its reliance on common law in a manner analogous to Britain.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_Sweden

>215 -pilgrim-: Well, if you can stand me not making any comparative analysis, I could do a general overview?

Many of our laws originated in the 1730's civil code, most of which still are in place though in sometimes heavily revised form.

The foundation is a set of "grundlagar", ie fundamental laws. You could say that these are the equivalent of a constitution, though that would be like saying that a cookie and a biscuit are identical ;-)
The fundamental laws are Regeringsformen (Instrument of Government), Successionsordningen (Act of Succession), Tryckfrihetsförordningen (Freedom of the Press), and Yttrandefrihetsgrundlagen (Fundamental Law on Freedom of Expression).

In addition there are the standard set of laws, such as Jordabalken - Book of "property that's bound to the land" - which was one of those 1730's laws that in its present form regulates the management and ownership of property such as houses and land; rental, owner-tenant relationships, and such. Laws that are "books" have central importance.

The laws are made by the government and enforced by the courts.

This article really says most of it -
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judiciary_of_Sweden#Courts

>216 Busifer:
Thank you, Pella. There were certainly some interesting points of divergence there.

The ones that I picked up were

acceptance of hearsay evidence

the prosecutor not being in an adversarial relationship to the defendant, such that they are obliged to also put evidence that favours the defendant before the court (as opposed to merely disclosing its existence to the defence)

a separate judicial system for dealing with disputes with the authorities

the absence of juries (except in defamation and a few other cases)

judges not being appointed from experienced counsel, but via a separate career path through other court functionary roles.

Fascinating.

>217 -pilgrim-: Well, to me it's rather how things are, but as I know relatively little of other legal systems I'm no good at making a relevant analysis of the differences.

The only case I personally know of which had a jury was in a Freedom of the Press case, back in the 80's. I no longer remember what it was about, but probably defamation.

We have a "ombudsman" as well - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parliamentary_Ombudsman - to whom anyone can file a complaint over the way an authority manages its jurisdiction.

>218 Busifer:

That was rather my point. One grows up with "how things are", and there is a temptation to assume that is "how things are everywhere" - or at least, in all democratic countries.

It is salutary to see the differences, and note that what is normal here, is not necessarily the norm everywhere.

I am not qualified to opine on any comparison regarding which system is "better" (and would probably not presume to make any such comments here, even if I were). But it make the point that "because we have always find it this way" does not mean"this is the only possible way". Variants exist.

>219 -pilgrim-: Most definitely so.

The systems of Sweden and Finland are the two closest, mainly thanks to us being the same country for about 700 years. Yet there are many differences, and those differences affects behaviour on the individual level as well on the societal. Though that is not only the legal system as such, but also the way the laws are written.

In once worked for a company that got bought by a UK corporation. One of the first things that happened was that the UK HQ issued a statute that if one hadn't submitted ones timesheet at the given deadline no salary would be paid. Hah! That is in direct violation of Swedish labour law and would at the minimum level have meant breach of contract. They had to backtrack really fast ;-)

A similar thing happened when my employer then got bought by a Canadian corporation having the bulk of its business in the US. They started out trying to enforce a, from a Swedish perspective, entirely ridiculous dress code. We had a good laugh at it. No one tried to enforce it, not even HR. You can't run that game on us, we're human beings, not automatons waiting to be commanded. Swedish labour law reflects that.
Some upper management bootlickers complied when corporate level people, such as the president or the CEO, visited, though.

(It makes for some rather interesting cultural clashes, though.)

>220 Busifer: Dress code? Really? What was it?

>222 -pilgrim-: Nothing revolutionary, but it mandated dress jacket and dress trousers, in dark colours. Dress skirt for women was acceptable. Tie, preferrably red, for men. Red scarf for women. Company colours ;-)
No sneakers, sandals with covered toe acceptable for women in summer: no sandals for men.
There was some provisions regarding make up as well.

Given that 100% of us know to dress nicely when meeting clients, given the situation (actually, showing up in a dress jacket and a tie is not instilling confidence in some settings: rather the opposite). Slacks, jeans, and a tennis shirt or similar is rather standard; as is comfy shoes. Often shorts is OK in summer, especially if they're of the extra long variety. Tank top, not so much in an office setting, but a sleeveless dress is OK.

To us it was the idea that there was a dress code, at all.
We just ignored it.

>222 -pilgrim-: >223 Busifer: We had a new Secretary (civil-service head) try to institute a dress code at the Attorney-General's Department in Canberra, trying to make us look "professional". It was simply ignored. That Secretary eventually proved to be a pretty decent bloke notwithstanding; he (and the Department generally) were pretty good to me when my second wife died.

Australia pinched the idea of the Ombudsman from Sweden, and has a separate system of law for review of administrative decisions.

>218 Busifer:, >224 haydninvienna:

We also have an Ombudsman to oversee disputes with administrations:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parliamentary_and_Health_Service_Ombudsman

How this office compares with yours, I don't know.

As a side note I've always found it kind of funny that no one has managed to translate the very Swedish word "ombudman".

>226 Busifer: I admit that I never knew that it was a Swedish term! How would you translate it?

>223 Busifer:, >224 haydninvienna: I never worked anywhere that attempted to enforce a dress code. Like photographs on CVs, it seems to imply a strange set of priorities to me.

I did, however encounter the opposite problem: I was once told that I was unsuitable for a job, because "you would not manage with those heels in our lab"!

Like all the other candidates, I had turned up to the interview in a suit, with dress shoes. I fully expect that they, like me, would switch to jeans and trainers when working on a reactor.

Obviously, if I had turned up in lab attire to the interview, I would have been criticised for inappropriate informality. So I was doomed either way.

June summary

Average rating: 2.625

7 fiction:
Novels: 2 science fiction, 2 urban fantasy, 1 political thriller, 1 historical fiction
Graphic novels: 1 superhero

1 non-fiction: 1 law report

Original language: 7 English, 1 German

Earliest date of first publication: 1831 (Trial of Duncan Terig, alias Clerk, and Alexander Bane Macdonald for the Murder of Arthur Davis, Sergeant in General Guise's Regiment of Foot)
Latest: November 2018 (Minimum Wage Magic)

3 Kindle, 3 paperback, 1 softback

Authors: 4 male, 5 female
Author nationality: 6 American, 1 British, 1 Brazilian, 1 German, 1 Canadian
New (to me) authors: 7 (2 familiar)

Most popular book on LT: Washington Black (1,170)
Least popular: Marvel Adventures: Super Heroes (2010-2012) #1 (graphic novel) (only me)

No. of books read: 7
From Mount TBR (books owned before 2020): 2
Books owned before joining Green Dragon: 2
No. of books acquired: ?? (+1)
No. of books disposed of: 1

Best Book of June: Moonsinger
Worst Book of June: The Life and Death Parade

June was a month of extremes, reading-wise. There were some truly excellent books and some utter stinkers. Ironic then, that the average result for the month is precisely "average".

Reviews for June (and other Spring) reads will follow here. Eventually.

Minimum Wage Magic (Book 1 of the DFZ) by Rachel Aaron - 2 stars

I was looking for a light read after the previous books that I had read in June (for which reviewed will follow): 1 brilliant but intense, and 2: absolute stinkers!

The situation here is this: after suddenly disappearing from the world around 1000 C.E., it returned equally inexplicably in 2035. Around 60% of humans are now mages, and the rest are trending to heavily cyber-enhance themselves in order to keep up.

But along with the magic, there are magical beings, old and new. Dragons exist. Ànd the spirit of Detroit is now, a literal thing. She rules Detroit, but, being the spirit of the city, she is chaotic, selfish and amoral (because that is what the city is like). The US government is stepping back from this, so the Detroit Free Zone (the DFZ of the series' title) is now an area where there are no laws. However a dragon, Peacemaker, had taken up residence there, and annoying a dragon is extremely unwise, so Peacemaker's Edicts have the force of law.

Our protagonist Opal Yong-ae, is a former student at the elite university there, now working as a Cleaner. This means that she bids for contracts on apartments where the tenant has defaulted on their rent: she gets the contents in return for cleaning the place to make it ready for the next tenants.

This is not a normal career choice for someone's with her education, but money is a priority because there is a loan that she really, really needs to keep up the payments on. She has been unlucky recently, and so is fairly desperate, and then the apartment that she bids on, turns out to have the deceased tenant still inside.

I enjoyed the fast pace of this book; it was a pleasant enough light read.

I disliked the lack of explanation of the setting, but Narilka tells me that there is another series before this which explains that, so the fault is probably mine for where I chose to start. I did find out frustrating, however, to have no idea if what our heroine was actually capable of, nor of what other mages are likely to be able to do.

However in the course of the story a rival Cleaner decides to team up with her (for the larger share of her profit!) He repeatedly puts his life at risk to save hers - before even making that deal with her. And, given that she has urgent financial problems and considerable physical peril, she spends am inordinate amount of time pondering his physique.

This is the aspect that I really disliked about the book. The relationship between Nik and Opal never seemed realistic. It is repeatedly emphasised what a bad, ruthless person Nik is. He takes the easy contracts that involve actually evicting defaulting tenants from poor homes, he has gang connections and is later revealed to also work as an enforcer for them. He states that the only thing that matters to him is money, and there is nothing about his lifestyle that suggests that is not the truth (except his behaviour around Opal). So, why is he being altruistic around Opal, and why did this negate all her knowledge of what an awful person he is, in terms of how she feels towards him?

It is obvious that there is going to be a relationship developing eventually between these two, and that she is going to "reform" him. But the fact that he is unashamedly what he is and then suddenly makes the moral choice that costs him a huge amount of money is completely implausible. What he refuses to do is awful, but not orders of magnitude worse than the things he has already done - whilst the pay IS orders of magnitude higherMAJOR SPOILER: Letting intelligent creatures be sold as pit-fighting animals is certainly not OK, but then neither is torturing people for money!

There seems to be the underlying morality that I often see in American drama. I found it also in the TV series, Cloak and Dagger; both there and here it is explicitly stated: if bad things have happened to you in your life, it is "perfectly understandable" if you then take out your unhappiness on anyone else around you, even if they do not know you, have never harmed you (or anyone else) either wittingly or unwittingly, and are, in fact, already suffering more severely than you.

Nik tortures people for money. He does this because money is the only thing that matters to him. And this is something the "heroine" does not disapprove of, but considers furthermore "perfectly understandable".

Frankly, I find this disgusting. This assumption that "everyone" would do whatever they "had" to in such circumstances is false.

The background Nik is given may be bad, but you cannot tell me that the concentration camps were not far worse. And studies have been done on the behaviour of prisoners in those ultimately awful places. And it has been found that whilst some prisoners preyed on those weaker than themselves, callously causing the death of others in order to survive themselves, the majority helped over another - and furthermore, the survival rate was higher amongst those who supported each other.

So, although bad situations will cause some people too deteriorate into bestial savages, it is neither necessary nor inevitable. Nik is prepared to cause suffering to innocent people because he profits by it. That is his choice. That Opal considers this acceptable puts her on the same level as him.

Furthermore, she actively encourages him in torturing one person. She has good reason to dislike them, but this is torture for self-gratification, not even with the exist of their being information that they need to extract.

The world is an interesting setting, but this was a quick read because I could not care much about two such unpleasant people. (Nik's frequently described abs notwithstanding.)

Washington Black by Esi Edugyan - 1 star

It took me from the beginning of April until the end of June to read this; it was so incredibly badly written, and nakedly exploitative, that it was making me too angry. I persisted because its multiple shortlist status implied that there was something worthwhile in it; there was not.

This is going to be a long review - so I have divided it up into parts.

The opening section is set on a Barbadian sugar plantation in 1830. The author goes for the Grand Guignol effect in her listing of maimings inflicted on the slaves, none of which are themselves implausible. But she then trivialises these, by pretending that such horrific injuries have no real consequences. Some examples:

A slave has the "bulb" of her shoulder "hacked off" without losing any of the function of her arm;

Men are castrated but able to somehow carry out fieldwork whilst still bleeding. (It was difficult to castrate an adult male without them bleeding to death; that is what made eunuchs so valuable and led to the horrors of the eunuch-creation factories of North Africa.)

An 11 year old slave girl becomes pregnant. This is not treated as a prodigy. Certainly the sexual exploitation of such a child is completely believable; I recall reading a speech made in the Lords in 1875, against raising the age of consent in the United Kingdom to 13 (it had been set at 10 in 1861!) on the ground that "it would be hypocritical to deny our sons the pleasures that we all enjoyed in our youth". BUT is only in recent times that the menarche at such as age has become common. In my own youth, 13-14 was the average; amongst the Victorian working poor, over 14 was normal, as it was amongst my mother's generation, whose puberty was retarded by the impoverished diet caused by wartime rationing. To imply that plantation slaves were better fed and nourished than the children of wartime England is nonsense.

There is a lot of rhetoric put into Washington Black's mouth about the horrific nature of treating people as "things", but the author seems to have no actual understanding of what that mindset actually means. Someone might destroy a tool casually, in a fit of pique, but they do not calmly ruin a large number. Not because of human sympathy for an "object", but because one does not waste money rendering a tool unfit for the purpose for which it was purchased.

I have read as much as I could stomach of Thomas Thistlewood's diaries - a Jamaican plantation owner and overseer in the 18th century. The ingenious cruelty is astounding, particularly when one remembers that these were the actions that he was proud of enough to want to record in his diary. But though he is an expert at inflicting pain and humiliation (preferably simultaneously) he is attempting to achieve these goals without maiming - not because he is anything other than one of the most monstrous beings that I have encountered, but because that would devalue his property.

I know that Erasmus Wilde is meant to be an out-of-control sadist, but he is also described as running a plantation whose profits are supporting his family in England; such wanton wastage of his investment would not be supportable.

Similarly the plantation, as the author describes it, has overseers positioned so that all slaves can be physically observed at all times, as they work. In reality, no plantation could afford so many white, paid employees. Overseers rode around a plantation on horseback, on the watch for organised misbehaviour. Enforcement of the work of individuals was devolved into gang leaders, who were motivated by the certainty of group punishment.

Any forced labour system is at root inefficient, because of the economic overheads of supporting non-productive employees - the enforcers (whether slave overseers or prison guards). The savings achieved by not paying wages to the enslaved workforce are offset by the need to feed, clothe and house them. Brutality cannot actually extract harder work than that obtained from the waged labourer terrified of losing his job, because it requires a greater level of underlying health (which must be invested in through food etc.) for the body to endure the punishment, without incurring loss of labour due to illness, or ultimately the capital outlay for a replacement. So the profit achieved by paying for an enslaved labour force's subsistence, as opposed to paying "subsistence wages" for a free one is reduced by both the capital outlay and the need to pay the wages of non-productive employees like overseers. Reducing that overhead is the source of profit - which requires efficient terrorisation of the labor force!

Why does it matter that the author's description of plantation life is a sick fantasy that could never have existed in reality? Because to thus trivialise the horrors that really existed is to silence a people whose suffering deserves a voice, and exploit them over again.

I remember the insistence of a former GULag inmate, when pressed to recount what she had endured: "but do not say that we did not also laugh". (The regime in the penal labour camps of Kolyma was worse than anything on a plantation - simply because the economics and purpose were different. The goal there was infliction of suffering, with the labour merely an expense amelioration.) That prisoner's point was that she did not want to be portrayed merely as a passive victim. People remain people, even in the most horrific circumstances.

Accounts of slave lives intended for abolitionist audiences tend to focus on their treatment by their masters; but the autobiographies of former slaves make it clear that the slave quarters had their own vibrant culture. Slaves had their own lives, which their owners knew nothing about - even through it frightened those owners who realised this.

No one can stay terrified all the time. If you are permanently in real danger, you become inured to it - or break down completely. The passive, permanently terrified slaves of Faith plantation are a white master's fantasy: completely cowed, obedient and having no personality of their own.

To portray them thus, ostensibly through the eyes of a black slave, is a travesty - and an insult to the real men and women who suffered, endured and preserved their own beliefs and values, in spite of all that was done to them.

(To Be Continued...)

And more comments on Washington Black

The portrayal of the white people in the novel is equally false; perhaps less surprisingly, the author has no understanding of 19th century English mores either.

Washington Black is enthusiastically taken under the wing of the plantation owner's brother Christopher - who demands that the boy must address him simply as "Titch". Given Titch's views - one of his reasons for being on the plantation at all is to gather examples of the brutality, for presentation to an abolitionist audience - such an eccentricity is possible.

But by insisting that the boy address him informally, by a nickname, without any honorific, and that he use that name when referring to him in front of others, he is doing him no favours. Any free white child who addressed an adult, who was not his social inferior, in that manner, would expect a beating. A black slave child would not be treated more leniently. If Titch has any sympathy with young Washington at all, why is he gratuitously exposing him to physical censure, both from his notoriously unstable and violent master, and any other passing adult who decides to "teach him his manners"?

The plantation owner Erasmus, subsequently teases his brother, by insinuating that Titch is having sex with Washington, in front of witnesses. Now homosexuality existed then as much as now (and male slave bodies were no more inviolable than female). But the huge difference is that sodomy remained a hanging offence under English law until 1861 - 30 years after this conversation supposedly took place. So whereas abuse of a slave child might be a matter of casual conversation, accusing a man of committing a capital offence could not. This is an accusation of criminality, not merely a slur on morality. Titch would be obliged to call out (i.e. challenge to a duel) any man who made such an allegation publicly, even if that man was his own brother (and even if the allegation had been true).

The attribution of 21st century attitudes to 19th century characters is particular apparent in the book's attitude to physical appearance. Almost every character is introduced with derogatory remarks about their physical defects, except the "heroine", who is repeatedly described as "plain", regardless of the eulogies to her "golden skin". It is evident that lack of physical perfection is something awful in the author's eyes, but put as the viewpoint of a slave who grew up on a harsh plantation, it is laughable; he will have seen enough deliberately inflicted scars to find them commonplace. And it is particularly hypocritical coming from Washington - since his face has become horrifically scarred from burns, and he comments repeatedly on how this makes him feel an outcast, for him to sneer at uneven teeth is an appalling double standard being attributed to the character.

When Erasmus sees a slave, Washington, with a badly burned face, he comments that the slave is "ruined". Why?! It in no way impairs his ability to work. Masters did exist who chose their house servants (free or slave) for magnificent physique or handsome features (in the same way as some masters chose matched pairs of horses for their carriages, or extravagant livery for their servants), but the attitude was not ubiquitous. Given Erasmus' tendency to facially scar his property, he is hardly one of them. It is a particularly bizarre comment coming from someone whose actions, as I described earlier, would genuine ruin the value of many of his slaves.

The author seems to have no comprehension that revulsion at deformity of physical appearance is a very modern phenomenon. In the 19th century politicians were not judged on their perceived handsomeness; good looks were only relevant to sexual attraction, and the fact that the smallpox vaccination had only been invented in 1796 meant that many people of all social classes had facial scarring. Add the crippled veterans of the Napoleonic Wars begging on the street, and injuries inflicted on slaves, and it is obvious the modern habit of squeamish revulsion at deformity, and sneering at minor blemishes, had no place in that era.

The behaviour of most of the characters, both black and white,, never rang true to me. It is obvious that the author intends the reader to detect some behaviour as "off", and see it as an intriguing mystery - there are definite attempts at magic realism with hints of the supernatural such as Philip and the statue of the man who died on the day of his birth, and Titch's claim regarding being present, unseen, in his father's camp. But I found it impossible to separate the deliberate oddness from the aspects that were simply poor characterisation or understanding of setting.

It was, however, these mysteries that kept me reading.

Unfortunately the "twist" at the end - that Titch has not been a good person in the past, and was motivated by guilt - was so obviously signposted as to reveal nothing that was not clear already. On the other hand, Titch's much emphasised facial scars were a point that went nowhere - we got a half-explanation of how he acquired them, but there seemed no real point to this, after all the heavy foreshadowing.

The Washington Black who is supposedly writing this complains that Titch never saw him "as an equal". How could he expect him to? This is not an issue of race, but of maturity. There would be something very wrong with a man in his thirties who expects to relate to a thirteen year old child on terms of equality. (The fact that children, of all races, were expected to work much earlier than we consider acceptable did not mean that they were considered adults. The age of maturity, in terms of being not under parental control, was twenty-five.)

But lack of equality does not negate Titch's claim to have regarded Wash as "family": that is about love, not equality. A good parent loves their child, without seeing them as an equal. To make him an early teen whinging endlessly about "not being treated like an adult" by the adults around him trivialises all the very real injustices that Washington Black has suffered in his life.

The blank acceptance of everything, the complete passivity, that Washington Black demonstrates throughout the book may well be a realistic portrayal of an abused, terrified child, who has grown up sooner in a horrific environment. (Although this is not strictly true, since Big Kit was looking or for him for 7 of the most formative years.)

But although he is described as being extremely talented, and a prodigy in both art and science he is portrayed as rather stupid. Despite being taught to read and write, he struggles to make notes in "rudimentary language". By that time he has been living with an erudite man for quite a while, who shares and discusses his ideas with the boy on a daily basis. Why is this "clever" child so unable to articulate his own thoughts in English, which is his native language? Late and imperfect acquisition of literacy might lead to eccentricities in spelling, but why should it prevent him formulating sentences?

Moreover, he never grows out of this passivity. He is lost and rootless, unless being told what to think, first by Titch and then by his girlfriend. (The latter, incidentally, is an extremely unflattering portrayal of a girl made so insecure by her father's neglect, that she is not satisfied unless she can undermine Washington's affection for anyone except her, by persuading him that no one else ever cared about him.) We are told that he has drive, ambition and enthusiasm, but we never actually see it - the book consists of him observing other people and what they say to him.

It seems to me the ultimate condemnation of a book whose protagonist is supposed to be a talented black man, who has been to extraordinary places and experienced many things, is that he remains a cipher without personality, whose contribution to the book is primarily as the observer of the interesting white folks that he meets.

>233 -pilgrim-: >234 -pilgrim-: Wow. I think this is the longest review I've ever seen in LT. The book has a lot of 4-star reviews on LT, but I don't intend to read it—it's clearly not for me. I would trust your judgment anyway. I suspect that a lot of the opinions about the book have somewhere underneath them a feeling that the book is about the cruelties of slavery and therefore must be good, or that it's a moral duty to read it. I found this on the One Minute Book Reviews blog:

Quotes from (The Catsitters by James Wolcott): A priest describes an artistic sensibility he has observed in New York: "These days, any time I attend something cultural, I dread what might be in store. I don’t mind shock effects as much as I resent the notion that they’re for my own good, to roust me out of my moral slumber. One thing I learned from my work as a military chaplain is that in real life, shock numbs people, and the worse the shock, the deeper the numbness. After a while, your response system shuts down."

Or, putting it another way, compassion fatigue sets in.

>235 haydninvienna: I suspect that a lot of the opinions about the book have somewhere underneath them a feeling that the book is about the cruelties of slavery and therefore must be good, or that it's a moral duty to read it.

I fear that is it, in a nutshell. I was aware that if I simply said, as a British woman, "I hated this", there is always the risk of the assumption that that must be because I am somehow "in denial" and would rather not deal with the subject, rather than the actual content.

Similarly, I felt that the author was relying on her skin colour being taken as a guarantee that she would somehow instinctively "know" the realities of that time, without actually having to do anything but the most cursory research.

It seemed to me an intensively exploitative novel, that was trying to ride current racial tensions, and people's understandable interest in the origins of current attitudes.

I noticed that in the immediate aftermath of the downfall of the Soviet Union there was a rash of novels set under Stalinism, which obviously had done only the most cursory research, but wanted to explore the horrors of the GULag.

At that time, similar exploitation of the Holocaust seemed to be taboo, presumably because of an awareness that there were sufficient Anglophone survivors who were capable of protesting.

Now that the remaining Holocaust survivors are extremely elderly, I have noticed that the ill-researched garbage on that theme is being published in abundance.

I understand that there is a human urge to gawk at how appalling human beings can be to one another, and slavery provides ample opportunity for this impulse.

There is also the impulse to understand how such things can happen,: and there are powerful novels that have been written, driven by that impulse, as well as the non-fictional discussions of the subject.

But I find the urge to appeal to the former disgusts me. And when it further insults the real victims of atrocity, by misrepresenting their suffering, it angers me.

But it is an easy way to sell books.

Oof. Woof to that book. Goodness, it sounds horrid. Thanks for the detailed review. I enjoyed the way you explicated the depth of your dislike for Washington Black.

I've stricken the book from my TBR. We all know I don't do grim. Plus, my interpretation of the book was off. I thought it would be a picaresque adventure that also looked in-depth at the racism inherent in voyages of scientific discovery. I had been iffy on the element of racial paternalism that seemed to undergird Washington's and Titch's relationship. I had hoped the thrill of the adventuring would offset. It sounds like it does not.

>235 haydninvienna: I agree. I also think prize and year-best lists motivate consumption of a book while creating a barrier to voicing criticisms. Washington Black also received largely positive reviews from prominent critics. I will spareshow everyone my rant on the incestuous nature of book reviewing and the marketing of books.

To a larger point you've both made: Black authors have noted that publishers seek stories of slavery from them. There is a large (white) market for redemption arc stories that, frankly, assuage white guilt: slavery as a personal dilemma to be overcome by an individual; White Savior abolitionists or kind slaveholders*; excessive horrors of slavery as sanitized and/or exploited. In turn, stories about other aspects of Black history—or stories that have nothing to do with race or racism but are by Black writers—get left in the slush pile.

-pilgrim-, did you get a sense from the book that the author was trying to address some of these 'slavery as stylized horror' tropes in the book and just didn't stick the landing?

*For my money, nobody has ever skewered the benign white planter stereotype better than Charles W. Chesnutt in The House Behind the Cedars. It also has the advantage of being a gimlet-eyed portrayal of the Deep South's chivalry nonsense.

>237 libraryperilous: Yes, my initial expectations were along the same lines as yours - a picaresque, with some lampooning and subverting of the Robinson Crusoe/Man Friday exploration trope. I could not have been more wrong.

I actually felt that Titch was the character who came out of the book the best. He was not a good man, but then he never claimed to be. He was just trying to assuage his guilt and do the best he could, within the limitations of his time and upbringing. He was never the White Saviour that Washington first sees him as, nor the inherently paternalist figure that he then resents him as being. He seems to be the butt of everyone else's projections and assumptions. He has his own demons, and he is completely open as to what he is, and is not, offering Washington.

His failures towards Washington don't seem to me to arise from racism, as much as from a blind refusal to accept that racism exists as a fact going on around him. If Washington were white, we would read this as the normal behaviour of an excitable idealist towards a talented young protégé. Where Titch fails, is in his refusal to acknowledge that Washington's blackness does make a difference in how he will be treated by society at large, and that expecting him to make his own way is not as simple as telling him that he ought to be doing so.

That resonates with the point that you were making in your "rant". There is the sense here that slavery is a state of mind that Washington needs to overcome in himself, rather than the fact of an external oppressor.

My honest reaction to the author was that she was exploiting her visible appearance to market a book that she had done neither the historical nor the emotional research for before writing.

As I said earlier, she is factually implausible in her search for shock value (when the real facts are quite appalling enough!) By misrepresenting real suffering, to make it more "dramatic", it felt exploitative in the "torture porn" mode while I was reading it.

And the fact that she seemed to take the abolitionists' paradigm of "poor simple black folk, helplessly waiting for us to save them" as an authentic representation of how black people actually coped with enslavement was disappointing to say the least. She seems to have neither read any of the accounts written by former slaves about their lives, nor spoken to any more recent victims of enslavement.

I have noticed the same pattern in portrayals of the Holocaust: the market for gleefully detailed description of suffering and humiliation inflicted, combined with a preference to represent the victims as downtrodden masses, with narratives that give them agency and a will to resist being less welcome. That, thankfully, is beginning to change.

But I had expected Washington Black, given his many talents, to be an example of a black character treated as an actor. Instead he was still primarily there in the role of victim.

I see the problem that you identify, with writers from an ethnic minority being expected to write as representatives of their race, rather than simply as writers about whatever topic should happen to inspire them. I had felt that the author here was exploiting the fact of her skin colour; maybe you are correct in assuming that she was forced into this topic because it was expected of her by the industry.

The strange feeling that I had throughout on reading it was that it was by a white author; in the attitudes it took towards its characters, and in the way that Titch's anomalous behaviour became the focus of the book.

If the author was white, I think the book would have been dismissed as simply condescending, ill-informed and exploitative.

I was recently listening to an audiobook excerpt from Sidney Poitier's memoir, Life Beyond Measure. I was struck by his description of how, growing up in a rural area of the Bahamas, for the first ten years of his life, his skin colour was simply a fact, that elicited no value judgment, and how this gave him a completely different response to racism, when he first encountered it upon moving to America, than that of his Florida relatives, for whom it was simply a fact of life.

His sense of self, and of identity, was already formed before it occurred to him that other people might prejudge him according to his skin colour.

It is a valuable reminder that everyone's experience is different, and unique to them. Membership of a disadvantaged minority may render you automatically subject to a particular set of experiences, forced upon you by other people's assumptions about you. But your response to that shared experience will not be identical to that of other members of that ethnic (or religious, or gender) group, but will be affected by your personal circumstances of personality, family, support networks.

To expect members of minority groups to be both responsible for, and capable of, acting in the capacity of representatives of their "race" (or other minority group) involves an assumption of homogeneity that is itself profoundly racist. To see a group of disparate individuals as sharing somehow a profound understanding of each other, simply based on commonality of experience, is an offensive assumption.

We do not generalise about ourselves; we make general categorisations about outside groups.

Whether the fallacy that shared skin colour imbues common understanding (rather than simply certain experiences in common) is internalised or imposed by the preconceptions of others, it remains dangerous. It denies the humanity of the individual.

Manuscript Tradition (a short story) by Harry Turtledove - 2 stars

It took me a while to get around to writing this review because I had nothing in particular to say.

And that actually describes what is wrong with this as a short story. It is very nicely written but the denouement, when we get there, is so mind-blowingly obvious that the entire read felt like a complete waste of time.

There is a loving attempt to create and of the future as a different place, with different norms - most obviously, by the user of time terminology based on a decimal system. But this is thrown by people having the same cultural assumptions, and stereotypes, as they did 200 years earlier.

Example: baseball is currently an American cultural obsession, but it has only existed for under 200 years. (Its predecessors were not codified with nationally agreed rules.) Is it plausible that 200 years from now, it will still be the sport with such cultural dominance as to be reported on the news - and that the noteworthy teams will have names that we recognise? (For comparison, the winners of the inaugural Football League Championship are no longer playing First Division football.)

And the janitor, who is described as having "a slight Italian accent", talks like Tony Soprano. Over my lifetime, I have seen regional speech diluted considerably. Children nowadays do not have the pure regional dialects of my parents' generation, because national television has exposed them to a standardised form of English from an early age - they may choose to deviate from it, as a demonstration of local pride, but they do not remain unaware of those forms.

I have always found the portrayal of specific dialects for certain ethnic minorities in the USA strange - does it actually exist outside TV conventions? The largest single minority group where I grew up was Polish. That meant that Polish may well be the language that was spoken in the home, but when speaking English, second generation members of the community sound no different from their neighbours. First generation immigrants may well continue to speak English with a distinct accent, but I rarely heard leakage of grammatical structures from their first language. For an entire community, not just the recent arrivals, to speak a hybridised language seems a contrast between our educational systems eighty years or so ago. (Even in my childhood, some schools still held formal elocution lessons!) Would such ghetto-ization of language still be taking place in the future?

Why would buzz-phrases of this decade, such as "basket of deplorables", still be current?
Early 20th century cultural attitudes to physical disability, and the acceptability of conversationally mocking it, are no longer current, two centuries hence, would social attitudes towards mental illness have made no such improvement?

And why am I nit-picking like this? It is because the story itself is banal in its simplicity. (It explains the Voynich manuscript.)

The interest, such as it is, lies in its world-building, in how well it envisualises how America in the 23rd century might differ from the present. And here it does have some interesting ideas, but (as demonstrated above) is too flawed to hold my interest in those grounds alone.

It had been done well enough to provide background colour for an interesting story, but the interesting story was not there, and if does not stand up to being the focal point.

>241 -pilgrim-: "For an entire community, not just the recent arrivals, to speak a hybridised language". It happens. When the language is stabilised it is called a creole, as in Mauritius, the Pacific and the Caribbean. Even in South Africa, there is a distinct variety of "black English". In my relatively pure English, I often use Afrikaans or African phrases -- how else does one describe boerwors, putu or chakalaka? And if someone doth protest too much I'm more likely to say "She's gaaning aan again".

>242 hfglen: That is true enough, but for a creole to stabilise as a community language, did it not require the existence of relatively segregated communities?

It does not surprise me in the least that such communities existed in the past, it was their extrapolation into the otherwise optimistic future that seemed unlikely.

The retention of vocabulary as a matter of cherishing one's heritage is a different matter. Although many of my relatives will naturally use a dialectal form of English, they are perfectly capable of removing such distinctive patterns from their speech when conversing with those to whom it will be unfamiliar. (My parents came from different cultural backgrounds, so, I did not grow up speaking it at home myself.) Similarly, although I find samovar, troika and banya to be useful terms, I am capable of replacing them with less descriptive standard English equivalents if they are likely not to be understood by the person to whom I am speaking.

Presumably you could likewise remove the Afrikaans and African vocabulary from your speech, and replace them with less convenient alternatives, if that would help you be understood. You use them because they are useful, not because you do not know to express yourself otherwise.

Such code-switching is the norm nowadays.

In the 1971 census only 30 people were monoglot Scottish Gaelic speakers (presumably due to the aggressively any assimilationist education policies that prevailed until recently). There will be a much larger number of people for whom it is their native language, but they do not speak English like characters from a Sir Walter Scott novel, with characteristic Gaelic grammatical constructions and idiom - they speak good Gaelic when speaking Gaelic, and good English when speaking English. If they use loan words from their native language it is by conscious choice, not because they do not know standard English.

My criticism in the context of this novella was that the character was speaking to a person from a different social background, and was not trying to make a cultural point - this appeared to be the only form of English with which he was familiar. It is pointed out that she is actually only able to understand him because of her study interests. The idea that America had become so ghettoised that he (and presumably his family - actually he is an extremely long-lived alien) had no exposure to Standard American English is what does not fit with the rest of this story's vision of the future. He is extremely intelligent, so one would expect him to be capable of multilingual adaptation.

The Seventh Cross by Anna Seghers (trans. by Margot Bettauer Dembo) - 4.5 stars

Having said that I don't read novels about the concentration camps, unless written by survivors, I promptly read a novel about the camps, written by an author who never experienced them personally!

To be fair, although this was not her personal experience, it was undoubtedly that of many of her friends; she also had personal experience of being arrested by the Gestapo in 1933. She wrote this novel whilst in exile in Paris, but it was not published until 1942, after she had fled Vichy France for the Americas, and settled in Mexico.

It is thus a novel set in Hitler's Germany, published when that country was in the ascendant, and with no sense of any inevitability of his downfall. It is a chilling exposé of how fascism actually works.

The setting is in 1936, in the environs of Mainz - Anna Segher's home town. The novel follows the thoughts and experiences of a large cast of characters over the course of seven days. It reminds me somewhat of Doctor Zhivago, both in its resonant love for the land, and in the way we learn as much about characters from how they are seen through the eyes of others, as from their own innermost thoughts.

Seven prisoners escape from Westhofen concentration camp. We follow what happens to each of them over the next week. The camp commandant has erected seven crosses, by nailing boards studded with nails crosswise across seven of the plane trees that border the area of the camp known as the Dancing Ground, and has announced to the prisoners that by the end of the week, all of the escapees will be tied to one of these. (The ingenious form of this torture is necessitated by a promise that he has made to the Gestapo officers who are investigating the escape, that he will not physically harm any of the escapees, until the investigation is complete: instead they are only hurt when their own exhaustion at being tied in that posture causes them to lean back against the nails.)

As the week progresses, some prisoners are recaptured, some die, but on the seventh day, one remains at large.

There is no clear division into "good guys" and "bad guys" in this book. We see the thoughts of the vilest torturers, the prisoners, the locals. The extremes are obvious. But in between there is grey.

There is Bunsen, "with the face of an angel" - and the disposition of a sadist - and Zillich, a bully seething with rage, who only feels calm at the sight of blood. In contrast Overkamp, the commissar from the special police (i.e. Gestapo), is simply a policeman who wishes to do his duty and purge his country of undesirable elements; he does not particularly enjoy his work, but he is very, very good at it.

Our "hero", George Heisler, the seventh escapee, is not a good man. He is a terrible friend, husband and father. He seduced away the girl his best friend was in love with, married her, then abandoned her after just three months, leaving her with a child. He is an incorrigible womaniser, and someone who will abandon friends when they start to bore him.

He is also a big, strong guy - the one the camp guards decided to make an example of, by torturing him in front of the other prisoners, to demonstrate "anyone can be broken". But George did not break; he never gave up the list of names that he knew. So - scoundrel or hero? It all depends on who you talk to.

People are not simply good or bad. There are characters who make you despair, and those who restore your hope in humanity. There are appalling betrayals, and also people willing to risk everything for a stranger. George's little brother, who used to idolise him, is now in the Hitler Youth and eager to prove himself by helping hunt him down. But what of the SA thug, who is prepared to risk everything to save him?

This book is chilling. It is one of those books that should be more widely known, because it shows precisely how a country can fall into fascism, and how impossible it is to escape from it.

One of the things that comes across most clearly is how terrified everyone is. It is not that people are unaware of the concentration camp on their doorstep. They have the vague idea that things are pretty bad in there. But even gossip speculating on the subject gets you arrested, and the people who are released from there know better than to talk. Those who are willing to help do not know who else to trust - and they make mistakes

The origins of Hitler's rise to power is rooted firmly in Germany's defeat in the First World War. Her soldiers went through the same horrors as their opponents, but they came home to poverty and unemployment and a wrecked economy. So what does a man inured to violence do when his farm is repossessed? He fights and gets into trouble - or joins an organisation that values thuggery. This novel is firmly set among the working classes. Many young farmers join the SA, not because they believe in it or the militarism appeals, but because it is the only way they can see to keep their farms and their way of life.

What we don't encounter in this book are profound believers in Nazi ideology. There are many who have unthinkingly absorbed its tenets. But the motives of even the most vicious are mainly selfish - a love of power, a lust for violence, a fear of being a despised nobody. For many it is the pomp, the feeling of being able to feel proud to be German again. Sometimes simply the benefits that the state now gives to large families, so that soldiers who want to put war behind them feel economically able to fulfil their dream of marrying and raising a family, are enough not to think further.

However the novel strongly implies that this outcome was not inevitable. "National Socialism" was not the only workers' movement. Several of the concentration camp inmates (like George) are imprisoned for membership in such organisations.

And that, I think, is why this book was published during the Second World War (in abridged form) in English, but never again thereafter, until now. Although it is never explicitly stated, the assumption that "if we were free, we would be fighting in Spain", and other side comments, make it clear that some of these workers' rights activists are Communists (as was Segher herself). Wallau joined the Spartacist League; his former leader was Karl Liebknecht.

Such an orientation causes no problems when "Uncle Joe" was an ally, but would be impossible to publish during the McCarthy witch-hunts. To be fair, Segher, unlike many Anglophone authors of that era, is no naïve apologist for Soviet Communism. A character's reference to how they have failed in Spain, and how things have gone wrong in Russia, makes it clear that her ideal society is not that under Stalinism. Her communism, like that of her characters, has native German roots in social justice, not a Soviet import. But I doubt that is a distinction that an Anglophone audience was making in the 1950s.

One of the genuine weaknesses, however, of the novel, is this : almost all the truly heroic characters turn out to have, or have had, some connection with organised socialist/communist groups. Are there no good men who were never involved in politics? I suppose it is plausible, because this is George's milieu; these are the contacts that he has. He was a man who dumped friendships if he "outgrew" them; is it likely that he would have connections who were not at least friendly to his ideals? .

But the book is obviously intended to rally flagging German idealists. There is a certain amount of scorn directed towards those who have abandoned their ideals in favour of a comfortable life. But really such encouragement must have been very necessary in 1939, when this was written. Socialists had been arrested, their leaders imprisoned or murdered, their organisations destroyed, ever since Hitler came to power in 1933.

The way that National Socialism had betrayed "the working man", reversing the cuts in working hours that the strikes had won, and introducing cuts in wages, with spells in the camps to silence those who grumble, is repeatedly emphasised. But those former activists must by then have been doubting whether anything could still be done.

There is one character in the book who is never named. He - presumably, since I don't think camps mixed the sexes in accommodation - is the narrator in the opening and closing sections, commenting occasionally on how the prisoners remaining in the camp react to what news they get of the hunt. He tells us nothing about himself. There is no "I", only "we". The prisoners are united in their suffering. As the tortures inflicted on them by the increasingly frenzied guards increase, one wonders whether they would resent the escape. The answer is that that is what gives them hope: their escape is "our" victory over powerlessness, a proud that the state machinery is not omnipotent. And this commentary is the most moving in the book.

Perhaps it is surprising that Anna Segher, herself Jewish by race (having formally renounced the community in 1932), concentrates on the socialist victims of Nazism. There is only one identifiably Jewish character (an admirable doctor). Partly I think that she wants to focus attention on the universality of the problem - Germans of all backgrounds are suffering, this is not special pleading on behalf of a particular sector of society. And I think that it is also that she wants to emphasise the range of Germans who are opposed to Nazism, and deny the idea that all who are racially eligible apart Hitler. But there is a further point to consider: the date. She is writing before the downfall of the Nazis. For her information, she is reliant on those who have been released from the camps, and can tell of what they have endured. How many Jews were among them?

The most disappointing aspect of the book for me was surprising: its treatment of women. There are good women and bad women, brave women and complacent ones - but for all of them, life revolves around men. Children, or husbands - they feel incomplete without them, and routinely sacrifice themselves for them. Even the woman who is intelligent, determined and "often spoke at party meetings" is subservient to her husband, and focussed primarily on their relationship. The woman whose husband informs sees him as having "destroyed their marriage". The statement that "a young girl can't be alone" is never questioned.

Although I did also find it ironic how the author, when emphasising that the camp commandant is not as terrifying as he wishes to be points out that his eyes were "more suited for peering down clogged pipes" - his father was a plumber. So calling someone a plumber is a put-down? The author's solidarity with the labouring classes appears to have slipped a bit and her middle class origins are showing through!

This is not a romance (as it was marketed when turned into a Hollywood movie), nor is it a thriller (as it is currently being marketed), although it has elements of both.

It is a study of rural life - and the frightening reality of ordinary life under a fascist regime.

If one uses "fascist" or "Nazi" as an insult, one start to think of them as monsters, not regular human beings like us.

By portraying the "monsters" as human beings, just like the other characters in the book, with their own worries and foibles, does not make the horrors any less monstrous. But it erases the comfortable dividing line that says "they are not like us". And "that could never happen here".

Note: the above conclusion is not a comment on any particular situation. But I have noticed that as the generation who can remember these events dies out, there is a tendency to mythologise them. It was not a unique event, and therefore safely in the past and available to be fictionalised. The "banality of evil" applies. It happened like this then. Under the "right" circumstances, it could again.

I received this as a softback preview copy from the Amazon Vine programme.

Moon of Three Rings (Book 1 of Moonsinger) by Andre Norton - 4.5 stars

I gleefully bought Moonsinger, on learning that it contained both this book, which was one of the first to introduce me to science fiction, and a sequel that I had hitherto been unaware of. Having bought it, I had not dared open it until now; I was afraid that it would not live up to my memories.

I need not have worried ; it is as wonderful as I remembered it. I perhaps value it even more now, in comparison to so much of the SF that I have read since.

Krip Vorlund is a Free Trader - a profession that has evolved into an ethnic identity. Free Traders call no planet home; their lives are lived on ships. Their loyalty is to their crewmates. Unlike the ships of the Combines (which are major corporations with maybe a touch of mafia in their mode of operation), members of the League of Free Traders operate independently, but abiding by a strict code.

Since to sell higher tech weaponry to a world at an earlier stage of development would bring down the wrath of both the League and the Patrol (an interstellar police force) on a ship, before going planetside on such a world crewmembers have mental blocks applied, so that neither bribery nor force can induce them to reveal information that they no longer remember.

Moreover, to prevent them being lured into a disadvantageous situation, they are conditioned so as to be unable to enjoy alcohol, any mind-altering drugs, gambling, or sex with women of another species. Free Traders do not go planetside primarily for recreation - although they are allowed some leave from their duties - but to try to find a particular trade deal. Each crew member tries to develop an area of specialist expertise, apart from their shipboard duties, which will enable them to find the uniquely valuable item, the side deal, that will turn a profit out of all proportion to its size and, carried alongside the main cargo, will result in their being put under contract, and edging closer to their dream of owning their own ship.

When Krip, and a crewmate, go exploring the Trade Fair on Yiktor, he meets a young woman, a Thassa, whose beast show impresses him, because the animals seem to be willing collaborators in the spectacle, not compelled. On the spur of the moment he offers to help her, when she breaks off a convesation to go rescue an animal that she heard is being mistreated.

This leads him into a whole lot of trouble, unwilling involvement in the turbulent political situation, and ever more desperate situations. Meanwhile, Maelen, the eponymous Moon Singer, feels that she owes a debt, and takes drastic steps to repay it.

Even though I had read this before, there were many twists and turns of the plot that I had not remembered. At no point did I find it either predictable, implausible or a forced situation created simply to permit a set result.

The Free Traders are a clearly realised race, with a particular philosophy. The Thassa are a very different culture, who value the mental above the physical When the moon has three rings, the power of the Moon Singers is at their greatest and they are able to sing themselves, or willing others, into an exchange of bodies. The bodies in question need not be Thassa, or even human. To become a Moon Singer, a Thassa must first spend some time running on for legs.

This leads to one of the oddities of the plot. In considering a wild variety of alien species, both approximating to human, and Maelen's "little ones", who we would think of as animals, it is assumed that all divide into two sexes: male or female and that body swaps can only be made into a body of the same gender. Whilst I realise that ending up with an unfamiliar set of "plumbing" would be disconcerting, this is not a matter of preference; apparently cross-gender swaps are impossible. " Given that there are some species on our planet that have alternative means of reproduction that do not require two biological genders, it seems a little odd for the author to envisage aliens as less diverse than the species on this one planet.

Another oddity is to have the titles for men and women in Trade Speech as "Homo" and "Fem". Since it was explicitly stated that the ultimate origin of humans is a planet known as Terra - even if that is so long ago that most consider the planet to be mythical - then the resemblances to the Latin words homo and femina is obviously intended to be one of derivation, not coincidence.

This definitely has unfortunate implications! Whilst femina is the Latin for "woman", homo only means "man" in the old English sense of "mankind" - the Latin for a male adult human is vir. Thus it appears, from their speech, that the space-travelling humans of this future no longer consider women to be human, since they make a division in their honorific between "humans" and "females". This seems odd as a deliberate choice from a female author.

Although it is made very clear in the text that Maelen's performing troop of performing species do so of their own free will, I was still uncomfortably reminded of the American freak shows of the last century. The ethos among the performers may be healthy, but the attitude amongst the spectators that they pander to is less so.

But these instances of the author's apparent ignorance of biology and Latin are of less сonsequence than the ideal of harmony between species, and respect for those with wilder temperaments or less intelligence - even Maelen's circus troupe now seems a rather odd way of expressing this.

Note: the cover of this edition is unpleasant and seriously misleading. There is no sexual content, or even any romantic interaction, anywhere in the story. Maelen, the Moon Singer, is clearly described as dignified figure, dressed in a grey tunic and trousers. Her facial features are hinted as being somewhat elven (which may be relevant in later books). So where does the skimpily dressed teenager with snub nose, overbite and bared boobs come from?! (She obviously has Maelen's wand.)

This cover, from the first edition that I read long ago, gives a far better depiction of Maelen and her planet:

Exiles of the Stars (Book 2 of Moonsinger) by Andre Norton - 3.5 stars

This is set a (planetside) year after the events of Moon of Three Rings. Krip Vorlund has been accepted back by his old crew. He is working very hard to fit into his old life, and reassure everyone that fundamentally he is still the same person, despite the new body he now wears. He has explained that the small, furry glassia with him is an even more powerful esper (i.e. a ESP sensitive) than he is, without discussing how she came to be so.

On a disregarded planet, where Krip's ship is forced to make an emergency landing, they discover they are not alone.

I liked the way that this book deals with the consequences of the events of the previous one. But the science here had some concepts that I did not feel made sense. I had trouble with the idea that a corpse, identified as being dead by lack of brain function, could nevertheless be capable of strong ESP broadcasts, simply because it had been such a strong esper when alive.MAJOR SPOILER:When the controlling power behind everything turns out to also be dead, such that there is no personality or intelligence left, leaving it to be motivated only by an evil will so powerful that it has outlived everything else - and yet is not a separate demonic entity - I felt that the author was so desparate to have it clear that her heroes were not commiting genocide that she is left with a very confused central concept.

I also confess to a sinking feeling on learning that the planets of this solar system were named after the gods of Egyptian mythology - it was explained that early space explorers from Earth were in the habit of naming the planets of solar systems that they discovered after cosmological systems of cultures from their own ancient past. My initial reaction was justified.

I do wonder if the authors of Stargate SG-1 were guilty of plagiarism here. I have tried to watch that film several times, but always end up dozing off in places, so am not quite clear enough on the explanations given there to decide whether the charge is justified.

I still enjoyed this a lot, but it did have its flaws.

>245 -pilgrim-:, >246 -pilgrim-: I loved these books when I read them in my youth. I should read them again. I'm glad to hear that the suck fairy hadn't visited them and that you still enjoyed them.

>245 -pilgrim-:, >246 -pilgrim-: I think you have successfully wounded me with Moonsinger. I just read Catseye and really enjoyed it, and these two sound like good titles to follow up with.

It's great that Baen have been reprinting some older OOP SF, but the covers are horrible! I'm thinking of P. C. Hodgell's Kencyrath books, the first few volumes of which show our slim, rather androgynous heroine with a heaving cleavage!

>248 Sakerfalcon: You may just have got me on the retrieve volley there!

And I do see what you mean by the cover you mention. Do you think the Baen artists are having some sort of "who can publish the most implausible cleavage competition"?

>248 Sakerfalcon: >249 -pilgrim-: You mean like this: https://www.goodshowsir.co.uk/?p=7367 (in which thread the difference between the heroine’s endowments and the cover picture is specifically noted)?

>249 -pilgrim-:, >250 haydninvienna: Yes, exactly that! I managed to get an old edition of the first 2 novels with a better cover, but I had no choice but Baen for the others in the series. I do love GSS, when I have time to browse the comments.

The Life and Death Parade by Eliza Wass - 0.5 stars

This book irritated me right from the start. When the author has pony rides and shooting ranges at a garden party at an English country house, it is evident that she believes a garden party is simply a party held in a garden! And when she explains that these amusements were provided to entertain the locals in gratitude for their work on the estate, it is obvious that she has no understanding of English rural life - estate workers are some of the few English people who have easy access to shooting (if they wish), and riding in rural areas can be done by any child - you simply exchange rides for livery work. A horse-mad daughter of a wealthy rural family would certainly not get excited at the prospect of a pony-ride, since in a family of that background she would of course have her own. (Livery is the greatest expense in keeping a horse, and not a problem when you live in a country estate.) And that was just the first three pages!

It does not get any better. A 16-year old steals her foster-brother's car and drives to the neighbours, with whom she does not get on well, with no concerns of being reported for driving without a licence (which she obviously is, since the minimum age is 17).

Her young foster sister is apparently wearing to school the blood-soaked clothes of her dead brother, since she "never takes them off", yet no one calls the social services about the family's negligence in permitting this.

And it concludes with her foster father agreeing with the heroine that she need not go back to school, despite being two years before the minimum school leaving age. This is to go swanning around the country on a barge, not taking a apprenticeship of any kind (which is the only legal alternative to full time education at her age). The fact that by doing so he faces fines at least, and if he does not return her to school, go to prison, is ignored.

So this is an American author who has decided to set her story in England, without even a basic attempt to find out about its laws and customs (despite having apparently lived in London for a time).

As I was reading the book, I was making notes of every such error. Then I threw them all away because I realised that this level of inaccuracy was not accidental. It was wilful ignorance. This author is not trying to set her book in England and getting it wrong; she wants to set it in a fantasy place of her own imagining and call it by the name of my country.

What I found particularly offensive was her importation into the English countryside of "the Life and Death Parade", who practice a voodoo-style belief set. Now there are Vodun practitioners in some of our cities (that being more common here than Haitian Vodou), but in the countryside?!

If you want your fortune told in a rural area, you would naturally go to a Romany. There are several different types of travelling folk in the United Kingdom, and although some traditional groups (but by no means all) tolerate New Agers, the idea that an alien group could simply appear, take over a traditional role, and not meet with firm opposition is ludicrous. For an author to pretend that a whole people, who have lived in this country for centuries, simply do not exist, and attempt to whitewash them out of existence, in order to replace them with a fictional group of her own creation is an insult to a real, existing culture.

If I were to write a story set in Haiti, where the only practitioners were Romany, because in my version of Haiti Vodou did not exist, would anyone consider that remotely acceptable?

Since she has created a version of England where English laws and customs do not apply, but ones that exist in her native land apparently do, why set her story in England at all? Why not set in the country that the laws that she assumes exist, and the culture that she wants to write about, actually exist? Why not set it in America? (I suspect it may be because her knowledge of Vodou is as inaccurate as her knowledge of England, and she fears to offend her fellow-countrymren, but feels she can make up lies about foreigners with impunity.)

But what moved this book from the category of "worthless trash" to "vile and disgusting" is this: the main plot concerns how the teenage protagonist handles the death of the teenage son of the family that is, in effect, fostering her - and who are all taking the death badly.

The author has the girl take spiritual comfort in voodoo-style practices partly inherited from her (now dead) mother, and partly from this travelling carnival. That's fine. What is NOT fine is the author making it absolutely clear that the only possible alternative is suicide.

To be absolutely clear: this book preaches, "if you cannot accept my beliefs, then the only rational alternative is suicide".

Approach another spiritual tradition (such as talk to the priest, since the family is apparently Catholic - although, in another misrepresentation, they never attend mass, and the funeral does not take place in accordance with Roman Catholic practice, nor does their parish priest ever approach the bereaved family)? Never mentioned as an option. (I am actually puzzled as to why she chooses to state that the family IS Catholic, when at no point do their religious beliefs appear in the story. Why bother to ssign them to a minority faith when that plays zero actual part in the story?)

Seek secular support and bereavement counselling? Also never considered.

No, unless you sign up for the author's particular set of beliefs, this book says that a grieving teenager's only other alternative is SUICIDE.

I have no objection to the author's beliefs as such. I have found this review so awkward to write (and hence it has taken me so long!) because it is stated that she wrote this book in response to losing her own husband, unexpectedly. If these beliefs helped her, I do understand her wanting to share them.

But ANYONE who writes a book, aimed at young people, with the effective message of "if you have lost someone and are mourning them, but cannot accept MY beliefs as true, then go kill yourself, as that is the only alternative" is beyond the pale.

I received this book from the Amazon Vine programme, and this felt obliged to finish it, in order to review fairly. I would never have got through it otherwise.

ETA: In addition to the beliefs mentioned, there is also a fantasy element to the story (which conveniently resolves the heroine's problems).

Books awaiting review from 2020:
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Books awaiting review from February: 1
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Books awaiting review from April: 1
Books awaiting review from October: 3
Books awaiting review from December: 6

>252 -pilgrim-: This sounds truly terrible in so many ways. Thank you for your excellent review which will ensure I never make the mistake of trying the book.

>254 Sakerfalcon: aye. same here.

>108 -pilgrim-: I'm Clay Waters, the author of the paper being talked about. It's one thing to give a nasty review, apparently without understanding or even caring to find out the strict parameters for the paper laid out in the class syllabus. But this sentence is pure fantasy (or else my check got lost in the mail):

"The fact that someone actually received a grant to travel to these two locations, to produce this account, which is less informative or detailed than the written catalogues he requested and received from the curators of these collections by post and email, appals me."

Where are you getting this? I received no grant. I paid a rather hearty sum of money for the privilege of going to England and studying for a month (one of the best years of my life). In between the other mandatory course requirements that took up 4-5 days a week, I also made two trips to Oxford on two separate days to conduct research during two sets of limited opening hours. (And I got nothing "by post" either, not sure what that's a reference to.)

Clay Waters

Oh, wow, this is what happens when I couldn't keep up with threads, last year! I just realised that you had asked a question, -pilgrim-, and rudely enough I dropped out mid-conversation!

Up in >227 -pilgrim-: : how would I translate "ombudsman". The answer is: I have no idea. It gets a bit complicated because ombudsman has two slightly different meanings: either it is an appointed official, such as "Diskrimineringsombudsmannen" (or DO, for short) which is a public office who act as an advocate for people who feel that they have been discriminated against in the workplace or as citizens in their relationship with the state/government.
Or it is an employee at a political party or non-profit organisation: someone who prepare agendas, apply for permits to hold rallys, do administrative work, and so on.