Books in March 2024

 

Pages read in March 2024

March 2024 was a good month for reading, with 11 books and 2715 pages read. Year-to-date, that puts me at 27 books and 7632 pages, or as the target tracker says, "Brilliant, you are ahead by 14 books". I set myself a target of a book a week (something I've done for a long time), but do expect to beat that based on past years.

I read 3 roleplaying games, 1 graphic-novel, and completed 1 non-fiction autobiography. The balance were  a range of novels.

The roleplaying games were Old Gods of Appalachia (link to review), Comrades, and Heart. I think I will be running the first two of those at some point. Comrades is a Powered-by-the-Apocalypse engined game of revolution, in which the players take the role of the revolutionaries against an oppressive state. Heart is a fun game, built off the same setting as the Spire roleplaying game, but I came to the conclusion that it just wasn't going to get to the table as there were multiple other fantasty games that I wanted to play before it.

The graphic novel was the second volume of the 2039 Blade Runner spin off, which is providing much of the back-story fill in that the roleplaying game really doesn't. That's not to say that the game isn't great, just that it's a little lighter in content than I expected.

The autobiography was Rory Stewart's Politics on the Edge, which talks about his time as an MP. In some ways, its pretty depressing as it really explains how the UK parliamentary system works and how bad the fast rotation of ministers through departmental roles gives a huge challenge to any of the departments that they are to maintain consistency and focus. I already understood Stewart's opinion of Boris Johnson, but this also expands out on how he came to the view that he regularly expresses on The Rest is Politics. Speaking of which, I had to speed up the narration (I was listening to this on Audible during work trips) as Stewart reads his book at a much slower pace than he talks in the podcast, and it was frustrating. I usually listen to podcasts and audiobooks at 1.1x speed, but had to go higher. Definitely worth a read, but his colleague Alastair Campbell's last book (But What Can I Do?) is a more hopeful companion.

The novels included the third book in the Prefect Dreyfus sequence by Alastair Reynolds, Machine Vendetta. This does draw upon elements of the first two books, but I didn't feel a need to re-read them despite it being quite a while since I read either. I enjoyed the story, especially as it shows more of the Glitter Band (a democratic anarchic collective of space stations and asteroids) first mentioned in Revelation Space. The book comes to a satisfying end and reminded me why Reynolds has remained one of my favourite authors.

I finally got to Aliette de Bodard's excellent A Fire Born of Exile, a story set in the Xuya universe. It's a love story, a revenge story, and a story of unrest and repression. I enjoyed it a lot; there's a beauty to the author's writing which draws me through.

Speaking of that, I feel very much the same about the two Emily St. John Mandel books I read, The Glass Hotel and Sea of Tranquility. The former is more traditional, following the life curves of two half-siblings, Paul and Vincent, against the backdrop of a Ponzi scheme. I loved the writing style the story drew me through. Sea of Tranquility is literary SF; it takes a science-fiction concept and uses it softly, exploring time travel. Initially, the connections between the stories aren't obvious, but as the story builds they become apparent. There's also a link back to The Glass Hotel, and for a moment I wondered if Vincent would escape her fate, but it was a delightful easter-egg. I suspect it made me enjoy the book more than I would if I hadn't read the first book immediately before.

I also completed Len Deighton's London Match (the first of the three trilogies about Bernard Samson). I really enjoyed how it played out, but decided to change gear for a bit before I read the next three books. Finally, I read the latest Kevin Wignall, The First Death of Winter, which was a slight change of gear from his normal novels. If anything, if felt more like an Agatha Christie story. Matt, the night supervisor of a Swiss Tourist hotel in the mountains, faces the arrival of a group of teenagers and teachers out of season, when the mountain is closed for bad weather and the hotel is also not open. Soon after they arrive, one of the kids is murdered, and Matt is forced to do the initial investigation for the police as they cannot access the hotel as the cable car cannot run safely in the storm. However, he also has a secret from his past that he doesn't want to come out. It was a fun yarn and avoided being predictable. 

Overall, a good month of reading.

1 April 2024