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Death in the clouds by Agatha Christie
Well I thought I’d long since read all the Hercule Poirot mysteries, so it was a positive shock to find this novel in a second-hand bookshop, which I don’t remember ever seeing before. When I read it, I still wasn’t sure. Have I read this some twenty or thirty years ago and just forgotten it? Or are my vague stirrings of memory just being jogged because all the Christie novels were similar in style and plot. I actually managed to solve part of this one, which is reassuring as it shows my brain hasn’t yet atrophied. Also, I spotted what I think is a hole in the plot... or rather, an unnecessary complication. Of course, it doesn’t matter in the slightest. I always enjoy reading about Hercule Poirot and his little grey cells, and I enjoyed Death in the Clouds as much as any other.
The wise man’s fear by Patrick Rothfuss
This massive book of nearly 1,000 pages is the sequel to The Name of the Wind. As with The Name of the Wind, I enjoyed it, and it’s probably a book that no fantasy enthusiast should ignore. I like the characters; I like the world in which they are let loose; and there’s a fine sense of mystery building up as to where the whole thing is going. My only worry is that Rothfuss might start getting a bit self-indulgent, just as Jordan did with the Wheel of Time series. There are hints of it here... some parts of the novel could clearly be shortened, and the plot jogged on more quickly. I hope this doesn’t become endemic, because I enjoyed the book and I’m looking forward to the next one: and I don’t want to be in the position of blogging that uh-oh, it looks as if this series won’t be finished before 2020, by which time I’ll long since have lost interest. As I say, only mild indications of that so far. I thoroughly enjoyed The Wise Man’s Fear, and I’m looking forward to number three in the series.
The sense of an ending by Julian Barnes
This little book, of course, won the 2012 Booker Prize. I already read Arthur and George (reviewed some time ago) and enjoyed it, so I thought I would give this a go. Verdict: it’s well written, evocative in its own way, but I couldn’t help thinking, ‘Is this really the best we’ve got?’ The book is going to appeal to older people (lots of ruminations about the meaning of life once most of it is past, plus much of the first half of the book takes place in the 60s); also to those who feel they aren’t bound overmuch by convention (hence Barnes’ frequent blunt mentions of sex); plus those who enjoy a fairly normal, if smooth, style of writing. There’s nothing adventurous here. It’s good, yes. It’s innovative? No. Is it likely to be regarded as a classic x years down the line? I suspect not. If you are, say, over 45 and a have a vaguely introspective character, you’ll enjoy this. If you just like reading something that’s well written, regardless of its actual content, you’ll enjoy this. But, perhaps surprisingly given it’s pedigree, I wouldn’t recommend it otherwise.
The house of silk by Anthony Horowitz
There’s a lot of good publicity surrounding this book, lots of favourable comments. ˜A fresh take on the Sherlock Holmes tales,’ says the Sunday Express, ˜swirling with all the suspense of the originals.’ So, does it live up to the hype? The short answer is Yes. It’s well written, the plot is nicely calculated to keep you guessing without getting irretrievably complex, and Holmes works his usual deductive magic right from the first sentence. Horowitz has captured the style of Conan Doyle, without going over the top, and the camaradie between Holmes and Watson is also well drawn. My only complaint is that I thought the denoument and ending came a bit too quickly, but it was a quibble and not a full-scale moan. I thought The House of Silk was well done and if you are a fan of the Old Master, you shouldn’t miss it.
Embassytown by China Mieville
Well, me old China, what have we here? A new book, obviously, but is it in the brilliant Perdito Street Station mode, or more in failing Kraken mode? I guess the answer is somewhere in between. I enjoyed it. It’s not as good as PDS, but it is cleverly put together and raises lots of interesting ideas about how difficult it might turn out to be for two different species to communicate with each other. If anything, I’d say it introduces too many concepts, in that travelling in the ˜immer’ (known as ˜immersing’) is made much of throughout the book, but in fact it doesn’t impact much, if at all, on the plot. So, I’d place this closer to the top of China Mieville’s offerings than to the bottom. If you are a keen SF fan, I have no doubt you’d enjoy it. But if you’re not, I suspect you’d find it heavy going.
Pure by Andrew Miller
If you only read one book in 2012, read this. It’s seldom that I think to myself:˜This is going straight into my top 20 list’, but this one has. It’s a beautifully written historical novel that effortlessly uses France in 1785 as a background, and still manages to paint real characters on top. The basic premise of the story - the emptying of a giant burial ground and destruction of its associated church - is a bit gruesome in places, but no more so than the depiction of normal life in those days. I thoroughly enjoyed this book and found myself admiring the way it flowed evenly over difficult times and difficult decisions. I confess I hadn’t heard of Andrew Miller before, but I shall have to search out his other novels to see if they are anywhere as good as this one.
The last four things by Paul Hoffman
Reviews of this book say it is ˜wonderful’, ˜tremendous’ and ˜magnificent.’ Well, no. It isn’t. It’s a good workmanlike book but I wouldn’t say it’s a masterclass. I say this for two reasons. First, I found the ascension of Cale a bit hard to swallow. He goes from being a gifted killer in the first book to being the general of, well, of just about everything, in the second book, and it just doesn’t ring true. Not enough time is spent showing how he gets to this exalted state. Secondly, there isn’t enough foreshadowing and pulling the whole plot together: the book reads like a series of episodes. This happened. And then this happened. And this was next. And so on, instead of there being one harmonious whole. Still, it’s fun in its own way. If there’s a sequel I shall probably get it just to find out what happens, not because I think it’s a ˜must-have’ for my collection.
The magic door by Dan Billany
I don’t usually blog about the books I read Dylan but I’m going to make an exception for The Magic Door. Read my main blog if you want to find out why. If you have a boy between, say, 7 and 12, get online and get him this book. It’s old-fashioned and some of the concepts will seem strange to today’s youngsters, but it is a ripping good yarn. I’ve just finished reading it to 7-year old Dylan, and he thought it was great. I don’t think I’ve heard him laugh as much at the funny parts of any other book, and he was captivated by the ending. And, imperceptibly, he’s picked up some facts that he wouldn’t have got anywhere else, because Dan Billany was a teacher. No punches are pulled, either. Ancient Britons get stabbed and shot, and an allosaurus wreaks bloody havoc in modern-day 1940s London. None of this worried Dylan in the slightest and it makes me wonder whether some modern books pull their punches far too much in efforts to be politically correct. It felt quite strange reading Dylan a book that had been read to me when I was at primary school back in the 50s, but I have to report that The Magic Door had lost none of its magic for me.
Three men on the bummel by Jerome K Jerome
I freely admit I had no idea that this book existed, until I found it in the attic of a friend’s house (he had decided I should sleep up there during my visit). Well, I obviously couldn’t resist borrowing it, as Three Men in a Boat is one of my all-time favourite books. So is this sequel up to the same standard? Almost. I found myself giggling at various places, and JKJ’s observation of the human condition is just as spot on as it was in Three Men in a Boat. At one point this book is (in today’s enlightened age) Not Politically Correct, and the end is devoted to a very long diatribe about the German way of life (remember, this was written way back in about 1900). But these minor complaints aside, I thoroughly enjoyed the book and it helped to while away some of the worst weather I’ve ever experienced on a holiday in a most pleasant fashion. I can hardly advise you to go out and buy a copy, given the than the version I was reading was published in 1945 and might, for all I know, be the last time it was printed. But if you see it in a second hand bookshop, don’t hesitate to pick it up.
The way of kings (vols 1 and 2) by Brandon Sanderson
Brandon Sanderson has, of course, shot to recent fame as the writer who’s been chosen to finish off Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time series. I have a previous post on that venture. My sons told me that The Way of Kings was worth reading so I gave them a try and I have to say that they are very good. There’s a great cast of characters, several plot lines slowly coming to a climax, and the whole thing is well written. I don’t quite know how long it’s all going to be, though. I thought these two volumes were it, but the story clearly has a lo-oo-ong way to go yet. Let’s hope that what happened to Wheel of Time doesn’t happen to the Way of Kings, and that Brandon finishes before he shuffles off this mortal coil.
The silent girl by Tess Gerritsen
I read my first Tess Gerritsen novel when we were out in Malta a few years ago. I fact our hostess had several Gerritsen books up on her shelves and, having nothing better to do while I lazed around on the beach, I read them all. I don’t remember each book in detail, but I do remember that they made easy reading. So when I saw The Silent Girl in Waterstones when I dashed in at 5.59 to get myself something for a train trip, I looked no further. I enjoyed the book. I thought the action and overall feeling of mystery were well done, though I’d guessed pretty much what was happening long before the end. Lots of subplots are piled up early on and Gerritsen is good at switching from one to another, keeping the reader on his or her toes. It’s not a masterpiece but it certainly isn’t dross. It’s the ideal sort of book for a long train trip or lazing around on a sunny beach somewhere.
Dark fire by C.J.Sansom
There’s a funny thing about the CJ Sansom novels. I read the first two or three (no doubt there’s earlier posts on them if I could be bothered to look back), and I thought they were really good. But several of my friends, whose opinion I usually respect, disagreed with me, saying they were nothing more than Agatha Christie set in a different age. Well, yes, but what’s wrong with that? I thoroughly enjoyed Dark Fire, with two relatively minor provisos. The first is that everything tied up wonderfully smoothly, with no real loose ends. As I’ve mentioned in other posts, this sometimes irritates me no end, as the author lurches from one plot point to the next, assiduously making sure that everything is tied up. Okay, most of the plot lines and probably all of the main ones need to be tied off, but it can be taken too far. A minor niggle only in the case of Dark Fire. The other proviso is that in a couple of places I thought the plot was too obvious. I won’t tell you what they were, but I got the uncomfortable feeling that Sansom thought he was pulling one (two) over the reader, but, in my case anyway, I thought it was all glaringly obvious so the corresponding denouments fell rather flat. But overall, I thought this was an excellent read and I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend it, despite what my learned friends say.
Pure by Juliana Baggott
I actually bought Pure for Middle Son and then borrowed it when I visited him recently. Cunning, eh? I say recently, but in fact I borrowed it quite a while ago, and it’s taken me all that time to read through it. I’m not sure why. It’s quite a big book, true, but I can finish a big book in a few days if it grips my imagination. Pure didn’t capture mine, and I’m struggling to think why. I’m not really giving any secrets away by saying that it’s post-apocalyptic and one of the features of the atomic-like blast that ended the world is that people became fused with whatever happened to be close to them at the time - sometimes other people, sometimes something inanimate. This sounds a splendid idea, but when you think about it, it’s full of holes. For a start, if you get blasted by something that has this fusing effect, you expect to fuse with more or less everything in your immediate vicinity, not one object, or one person, or one animal. I also didn’t see how the post-humans managed to exist. What did they eat, after a few years when to canned goods were gone? Nobody was doing any farming, that’s for sure, and even the Dome which apparently housed the favoured few who escaped the blast wouldn’t have had the resources to feed the masses (even if its occupants wanted to). Finally, the way in which one family dominates the story (and I am giving away part of the plot here) just doesn’t ring true. There’s a definite hole in the plot towards the end, too, which doesn’t help things. The writing isn’t bad. Some of the descriptions are very good. Some of the dialogue is too. But overall I just wasn’t convinced by it all, and I found it rather disappointing.
Forgotten life by Brian Aldiss
Well, I grabbed this book on the way out somewhere and naturally enough I thought it would be science fiction. But it isn’t. Instead, it’s a piece of literary fiction that had me enthralled throughout. Whatever else Brian Aldiss may have been, he was a very fine writer. The story centres around Clem Winters, who is an academic living in Oxford with his wife who is a best-selling writer of fantasy novels. At the time the story is set, Clem’s brother Joseph has just died and Clem spends a lot of time sorting through Joseph’s diaries and notes, many of which deal with his time in the war, and with their joint childhood. Towards the end of the novel Clem’s wife leaves him but... I’ll say no more. This is a little lost masterpiece. If you see it anywhere, grab it before it goes away. It certainly revealed a side of Aldiss to me that I hadn’t known existed - especially as, judging from the cover blurb, much of the book is semi-autobiographical.
13 steps down by Ruth Rendell
This is something of a cross between a mystery story and a horror story. It’s well done and has a horrible air of inevitability about it. I read it on the train between Glasgow and London, and it’s just the right sort of read for that - nothing too deep, but well written. It won’t make my top ten list or anywhere near it for two reasons. One is that very inevitability - the reader knows pretty much what is going to happen, so some tension is lost. And the other is that, in my opinion, RR tries to do too much. There’s actually too muchy backstory and attempted character development, some of which I really don’t think added much to the story. We would have done much better knowing more about the key character (of which we know very little other than a few traumatic incidents), and less about the affairs of the women he ends up stalking. Maybe I’m being picky. I certainly wouldn’t dissuade anyone from reading this, just as long as they aren’t looking for an out-and-out Agatha Christie style mystery story.