Books in October & November 2020

 

Running ahead of track still.

Sometime in November, I got my fiction reading mojo back, albeit heavily alternating with roleplaying books (which has pushed me well above my 2020 Reading Challenge target). I suspect that I won't be breaking 100 this year though, as the lost month will tell. Although, I could re-read the whole of the Sandman over Christmas as it's been quite a while since I dove into that universe. Anyway, here are the books which (mostly) delighted. Only one disappointment.

Babylon Berlin (Volker Kutscher)

Personal circumstances made 'Babylon Berlin' hard to read, but ultimately it drew me back and got me reading fiction again after my mother passed away. Once my head was in a better place, I enjoyed this a lot. I came to this having watched the first two seasons of the TV series, and there are differences. Lotte and Rath's relationship accelerates faster, the plots are different and if anything, Gereon is more morally ambiguous and questionable than he is in the series. However, the story captures the feel of a city in transition, in a country where normality has been shattered. Shades of grey with bright colours of decadence, this is very much Berlin-noir. I shall certainly look out the next of the series.

The Anarchy: The Relentless Rise of the East India Company (William Dalrymple)

I came to this with very little knowledge about the history of the British in the Indian subcontinent, drawn by an interest on what the East India Company actually did. I learned a lot. The book draws on company records, parliamentary records and contemporaneous local records in India from local rulers. I knew that the period was brutal, with truly atrocious behaviour (by modern standards) on all sides, but I hadn't realised just how nasty it was. The history is told compellingly, although I found the earlier parts more engaging as they were more focussed around specific protagonists. Throughout citations are given. It leaves me wanting to learn more.

I read this on a mix of the Audible book and the Kindle one, as it was a companion while driving distances for work and more. I do like the syncing process; it wasn't perfect, but definitely close enough.

Of Dragons, Feast and Murders (Aliette de Bodard)

An enjoyable short story in the Dominion of the Fallen series (which I've bizarrely read the shorts for but not the novels as yet). This story is a political drama as Asmodeus, the ruthless leader of one of the Houses of Paris travels with his husband dragon prince Thuan to his home country to celebrate the Lunar New Year, to find a country in turmoil and plots and machinations under way. The setting is pseudo-Vietnamese and delightfully interesting, and the plot twists nicely. Recommended.

The Tindalos Asset (Caitlin R. Kiernan)

The Lovecraftian inspired apocalypse continues to approach in the final volume of the Tinfoil Dossier. Novella length, this felt (like it's predecessors) more like a set of different vignettes, snapshots of the story rather than a novel. The points of view and characters involved change, as does the timeline. It brings the plot arcs to a satisfactory conclusion; overall a good series; in gaming terms, this feels more 'Delta Green' adjacent than 'Call of Cthulhu' in its style.

Abandoned Places: 60 stories of places where time stopped (Richard Happer)

I'd had this on a wish-list for a while, and ended up picking up a secondhand copy that I stumbled upon. Although some of the locations are predictable, this is an evocative and fascinating book which discusses paces that humanity has moved away from in a variety of depths. The photographs are often beautiful and several of the descriptions had me wanting to learn more and perhaps even use the places in roleplaying games.

Embers of War (Gareth L. Powell)

I read this after seeing it recommended by several of my friends. This space opera revolves around the crew of the Trouble Dog, a decommissioned heavy cruiser which quit the military after it started to develop a conscience about the war crimes that it had been involved in. The ship signed up with the House of Reclamation, an organisation which provides search and rescue across the whole of the Generality (human space). The crew are misfits; military veterans looking for redemption and others with secrets to learn. The plot doesn't go quite the way I expected, and the focus of the story is very much about how each of the characters (including the ship) find their own way to redemption after the horrors of the end of the last human war, when a world was burned to end the conflict. The story beings as a search and rescue operation and escalates with military conflict and ancient threats.

It's not as complicated as Iain M Banks, not as sharply written as Neal Asher, but it does deliver a satisfying story. Throughout I could see how you could play this out as a roleplaying game. I was drawn through by the energy of the story. Enjoyable.

 

Fleet of Knives (Embers of War #2) (Gareth L. Powell)

The second of the stories about the Trouble Dog and her crew, this continues the theme of redemption. The Trouble Dog is on a sabbatical (having been refitted following the climax of the first novel) when it is directed to attempt the rescue of a merchant ship which has suffered some kind of catastrophe while trying to rob an abandoned alien generation ship of artefacts in deep space. This is risky, as the alien race that created the ship see it as a sacred artefact and it is near their space. Meanwhile, the Marble Armada, the abandoned massive fleet of high technology knife ships continues to negotiate with humanity, but then decides to act to prevent a catastrophe.

The story never moves away from the events which made the Trouble Dog join the House of Reclamation. The atrocious war-crime continues to haunt the story with many of its protagonists still in play.

Light of Impossible Stars (Embers of War #3) (Gareth L. Powell)

The forces of the Generality have been crushed by the Marble Armada, and the Trouble Dog retreats towards the Intrusion, an area of space where reality is flexible due to the existence of a wormhole. The Intrusion connecting two universes was established by the builders of the fleet of knives when they fled their creation. The destruction of the forces of the humanity has attracted the attention of creatures from the hypervoid, exactly the opposite of the aim of the Marble Armada.

Running for safety, the Trouble Dog continues to find itself at the heart of the story, and as the series end, several of the characters find their own routes to redemption.

I enjoyed the series; overall, it doesn't grab me quite as much as Neal Asher's work does, nor does it engage me intellectually the way that Iain M Banks does, but it's really good space opera, with energy and entertaining and interesting characters. Worth reading.

Starve Acre (Andrew Michael Hurley)

The writing is delicious, the scene-setting evocative and there’s a sense of creeping horror throughout. Then it just ends. Reading it on a Kindle without the page progress on, I didn’t have the benefit of knowing I was near the end which made it worse. The ending feels deliberate, but it didn’t work for me. I don’t mind things being open at the end of a story but this left me cold and disappointed. I’d have rated this lower but for the craft in the writing being so good.

Box 88 (Charles Cumming)

The latest spy thriller from Charles Cumming delivers; he's probably the author I look forward to most after John le Carre. Box 88 is a deniable Anglo-American intelligence agency, of which Lachlan Kite is a senior member. It's dark enough that MI5 do not know about it and are investigating after a whistleblower reported Kite's involvement in an illegal agency. The story starts in the modern day with the funeral of a friend, where Kite is kidnapped by Iranian Intelligence from under the noses of his surveillance. The story then jumps between the search for Kite and the story of how he came to join Box 88, with the threads gradually coming together. Well-paced, well written and enjoyable, recommended.