Eden

Butterfly Swords (Jeannie Lin)

Given that this was published by Harlequin, I wasn't really holding out very much hope of it being a good book. Still, when it was mentioned during the discussions of the cover of Cindy Pon's Silver Phoenix, I decided I'd give it a try when it was out, and have finally got round to it. It does have an Asian woman on the cover, and she is indeed holding a butterfly sword (though she should have two, I'm told). So it's winning there, at least.

From her author bio on Goodreads, though:

"After four years of trying to break into publishing with an Asian-set historical, her 2009 Golden Heart Award–winning manuscript, Butterfly Swords, sold to Harlequin Mills & Boon."

At the very least, she deserves better than a publishing house associated -- among the people I know, anyway -- with dreck and exoticisation. I don't know much about the historical setting, really, and since I don't read much in the romance genre, I have little to compare it to in terms of exoticisation. There wasn't anything that made me deeply uncomfortable, at least, but how much that is worth from a white reader...

In any case, the main character, Ai Li, is a strong woman. Not "fiesty", but fierce, honourable, great-hearted, willing to do whatever it is she has to do. She's naive, too trusting, but she never simply expects Ryam to look after her. She is willing to take care of herself, and to some extent capable of doing so, without being a superwoman.

Ultimately, some of the episodes seem to have little point -- the interlude with Lady Ling, for example -- and the characters aren't going to stay with me. I have truly no idea how plausible it all is. But it's a reasonably enjoyable read, I wasn't bored, the sex scenes were reasonably well-written, the story didn't feel like just a vehicle for the sex scenes... As an undemanding read to relax with on a Saturday afternoon, it was good fun.

Kindred (Octavia Butler)

Shelved as fantasy, rather than SF, because while it deals with time travel, that aspect isn't explained at all. It simply isn't the focus: it's set up enough that the main character can go back in time to that of her ancestor, and forward again to her own time, but there's no explanation of why it starts or how it works. In a way, I do wish there'd been more of that, but ultimately it isn't the important part.

Octavia Butler writes well -- not just interesting writing, but writing that is just easy to read. There's no barrier to enjoying the story: the writing isn't ornate, but it's not too simple, either. Personally, it walked a perfect line, and the voice of Dana -- the narrator -- worked well for me.

The stories alternates between the 1970s -- Dana's time -- and the 1800s, when she had a white, slave-owning ancestor. The co-dependency she has with him, and the way things fall apart at the end, are well-drawn, and the contradictions of liking him somewhat while knowing the kind of man he is... The way she's trapped, forced to play the role of the slave, is a little heart-breaking. Someone else's review talks about wishing Dana were a stronger character, but when you think about the time period she was put into... a different kind of strength was needed then, which to some extent she develops, and some of which is beyond her...

I liked the inclusion of her (white) husband, Kevin. He seems to be a great guy -- not untouched by the world he ends up spending five years being a part of, but fighting it all the time -- and one likes to hope that the two of them manage to be happy after the end of the book. It's a big strain on their relationship, after all.

I'm not sure how articulate I'm really being! In any case, I found it fascinating and definitely recommend it, with the caveats that you have to be okay with the lack of explanation, and with slave narratives. And if you're one of the white people who has read this book and complained about the racism towards white people shown in it, think about it this way: a) however little you like it, it's historically accurate, and b) it's not about you.

Both times I've read a book by Octavia Butler, I want to immediately go out and find the rest. So I expect I'll read some more soon.

Enchanted Glass (Diana Wynne Jones)

In a way, all Diana Wynne Jones' books remind me of each other. There's something very similar in the style of them -- though Enchanted Glass is perhaps a bit more subdued than the others -- and yet also something fresh, every time, something in the tone... A feeling, I suppose, that I wish Diana Wynne Jones would come and tell me bedtime stories, in a way: something about her stories would make my toes curl with glee at the same time as I would know it would be okay to go to sleep.

Enchanted Glass has the same sort of pitfalls as most of her other stuff: somewhere in the last few chapters, everything that got kinked up straightens out with a jerk. And then there's a happy end. I've sort of got used to it, started seeing the signs, so when the rug starts to go from under my feet, I go with it. So now I can't really judge what effect that moment would have on the unsuspecting. If you're a fan of Diana Wynne Jones' work, though, it won't be a problem.

I finished my exams today. This was a perfect book to unwind with. I loved Andrew most of all -- the mildness of him, I think, so different to the manic energy of Howl or the wizards from the Chrestomanci books. I liked the people of the village, perhaps especially Tarquin, and had such a soft spot for Shaun.

My favourite part was when Aidan used Excalibur as a verb (yes, I'm predictable). "I seem to have excalibured this knife," indeed.

It's -- fun. Not earth shaking or heart-breaking or even so very funny. But it's fun, and easy, and familiar.

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (Elizabeth Jewell)

I should probably be screaming at the liberties taken with Arthurian myth, knowing me, but I actually really enjoyed this. I found it hilarious to begin with: first with the inappropriateness of saying things like, "Camelot was a liberal place, after all.", and then at other observations which summarised what I've always really thought about certain knights, e.g. of Lancelot, "Gawain steeled himself for a long, drawn-out, nonlinear narrative of rescuing fair maidens from dragond, conquering supernatural demons disguised as human knights with fire-breathing horses, and getting oh so very close to the discovery of the ever-elusive Holy Grail and yet somehow once again not quite managing to bring it back to the castle."

Once Gawain left the castle though, it settled down a bit into something that was much better than I expected. Most of the elements of the familiar story are here, but used ingeniously. A tenderness and a tension does build between Bertilak and Gawain, and I began to need to finish the story to find out how things turned out for them. It didn't totally neglect women, either, as Bertilak's wife is a part of the story, is given a name and feelings of her own. The tenderness between her and Bertilak, despite their lack of attraction to each other, and their cursed situation, is rather lovely. The sex itself is pretty well-written, too: nothing egregiously bad, or inherently hilarious.

It all added up to a surprisingly satisfying story, which made me laugh along the way. I don't think one can really ask for much more.

(Just. Gaheris and Agravain are not Gawain's cousins.)

Cards on the Table (Josh Lanyon)

Cards on the Table is relatively short, but -- as with all Lanyon's work, actually -- I very quickly came to care about the characters. Jack is a good guy: not a jerk who you like anyway, but an actually good guy who has legitimate concerns about being with Tim. That makes him all the more likeable -- that his issues are understandable, even sensible. I actually liked him more than Tim, though there was nothing I particularly disliked about Tim.

The story of the mystery itself was well written, too, though decidedly -- personally, anyway -- second to the relationship developing between Tim and Jack. I didn't really get invested in the mystery, if that's any indication: the climax for me was the relationship between Tim and Jack, not the solution of the mystery.

Dangerous Ground (Josh Lanyon)

Whenever I want something quick and fun to read, I'm starting to realise that I should just pick up something by Josh Lanyon, since there's plenty of his work I haven't read yet (and isn't that a lovely feeling?). Dangerous Ground is more action/adventure than mystery, but the build-up of the relationship is as well-done as ever, and I quite liked the way he handles the action/adventure aspect. I liked the history between the two characters, and their helpless misunderstandings of each other -- which didn't embarrass or annoy me as they would in a chick flick, which just seemed real and believable.

My only quibble is that the main characters are very alike. Taylor and Will... for a while, I couldn't keep them (heh) straight. They are meant to be alike, with a lot in common, that's why they're drawn to each other, but they shouldn't be alike to the reader.

Still, plenty of fun, as well as being light and easy to read.

Seaward (Susan Cooper)

This is a lovely, lovely book. The tone and quality of the writing reminds me very much of Susan Cooper's The Dark is Rising sequence, although it seems in some ways more mature than that sequence. It's the first book in a while that I just couldn't put down once I got started -- I stayed up late to finish reading it. Fortunately, it's quite a quick read, so that didn't matter too much. It's also the first book in a long, long while to make me think that I couldn't actually go to Cardiff without taking it with me, just so that I could sometimes pick it up and reread a favourite part to make me smile.

I love the relationship between West and Cally. Somehow, in such a short book, Susan Cooper builds up a love story that I really feel and want to follow. The build-up of awareness between them is well done, even in so short a space. And the ending is beautiful -- the knowledge that they will find each other. It's enough, in a way, too: I would read more, and I do want more, but I feel it ends on just the right note, and neither too early nor too late.

The world of the story is magical, drawing on Celtic myth and making up a mythology of its own, as well. I love the descriptions of the world -- the chess game, the tower, Snake, Peth...

I'll definitely be revisiting this book. Probably many times.

Snowball in Hell (Josh Lanyon)

I love the way that Josh Lanyon makes me feel about his characters. I always seem to start feeling ambivalent, maybe not even caring that much, and then no matter how short the story is, I quickly come to care about them and feel very strongly about them. I grew to love Matt and Nathan very quickly, and to hurt for them, and also -- obviously, I suppose -- to believe in their feelings and their predicament.

Snowball in Hell also has a reasonably solid plot: I wasn't too far behind the game, but it wasn't horribly predictable, either. I didn't care about the plot nearly as much as I cared about the characters -- there wasn't enough danger to either of them of being suspects, I think, so they weren't as deeply connected to the case as I'd like. I mean, Nathan was a suspect, but it didn't seem for a minute like Matt would push that angle.

Shades of Milk and Honey (Mary Robinette Kowal)

I'm vacillating between two and three stars on this one -- it's not halfway between, I'm just trying to decide whether I'll give it credit for keeping me reading, or dock it for how very high its debt to Jane Austen's work is. It's basically a cut and paste job on Austen's characters and situations, and while the writing is competent enough, it doesn't have the same subtlety and humour that Jane Austen brought to her work. It suffers very much in comparison, because of its debt.

The fantasy woven into it lies awkwardly on top of Jane Austen's work, I found, and wasn't fully explored. For example, if the working of glamour is so essential to a lady, but so few men do it, why is there no sign of any assumptions of effeminacy that would likely go with that? There's a few hints that being a "glamuralist" -- a person who goes around making complicated artwork out of glamour for people who don't have the skill themselves -- is considered lower class work, perhaps, or is stigmatised in some way, but at the same time both male and female characters admire Mr. Vincent's work, and hardly seem to treat him with inferiority.

Something about the language Kowal used doesn't ring true for me, either. When you read Jane Austen, it's plain that she's writing in her own style, in a natural sort of manner. The style of this, though, is so plainly a copy of someone else's style, and the gaps show through in the choice of language here and there.

I think I'll settle for two stars, "it was ok", since I'm not turned off Kowal's work, and enjoyed it well enough to fill a few hours.

The Dark Farewell (Josh Lanyon)

I've been meaning to read more of Josh Lanyon's work for a while. Wanted to grab something for my iPod tonight -- I was going to a gig where I knew I didn't care for the support band -- and ended up getting this from the Kindle store. It's quite a short book -- nine chapters -- and easy to read, though I felt weird about reading the sex scenes while leaning up against the barrier in front of the stage!

Not that it's all about the sex. There's the mystery, of course, in the background, and the supernatural elements, and the relationship which grows between Julian and David. I didn't like either of them much at first -- David is too closed off, and Julian too... flamboyant. But I got to like both of them, even in such a short space.

The mystery itself, I should've seen the end coming more clearly than I did. I got distracted by the misdirection! One part of the end is terribly convenient, really, removing a certain problem from the equation... and I do wish, in some ways, there was more of it, and it went on to show how Julian and David get on. Still, everything wraps up nicely.

There's a pretty good sense of place and time, too. It's not a setting that's particular familiar or resonant to me, being a Brit, although there are aspects that Britain and the US share -- the strikes the characters talked about, and the young war veterans...

Josh Lanyon is pretty good for light reading. I'm tempted to read more of his stuff when I'm on the train, on Saturday, but on the other hand, reading sexy stuff on the train... Hmmm!

The City & The City (China Miéville)

I read this one in bits. The last half or so was all in one go, on a long train journey, but for the most part, I just read it in bits, a few pages at a time, and didn't really get involved with it. I didn't really care how it ended, for most of the time. I did get tense during the last parts, and I was sad for the main character about the ending, but I didn't really care, for the most part. I wanted to care more about Corwi and Dhatt, but I didn't really see enough of them, or enough positive about Dhatt...

I suppose it was pretty realistic, in that, but what actually kept me reading was the core idea -- and, to some extent, the mystery. I've always said that cities were the most interesting thing about Miéville's work: he's really good at making them feel alive, I think. Less the individual parts, more the whole life of the city. This is a particularly interesting one, especially the way he navigates it: nothing here is overtly fantastical or sci-fi ish, really. I mean, it sounds completely far-fetched, but we know how deeply cultural conditioning can affect people, and if you just take it as a thought experiment...

Still, I like the idea -- and Miéville evokes his worlds well -- but it really didn't have me on the edge of my seat, or caring about the characters, or needing to read more.

( The Keys to the Kingdom 1-7 (Garth Nix) )

Heat Wave (Richard Castle)

This is a pretty awesome idea, all things considered. Put out the book that the character writes, and do it all in character. Even the marketing, from what I've seen. Right down to the acknowledgements in the back. It's a moneyspinner: even people who don't know the show, Castle, might pick it up, and certainly loads of people that watch the show will pounce on it. And people who read it unknowing might end up sucked into the show.

Also, tons of opportunities to reference it in the show, and to further characterise Richard Castle himself.

The mystery itself is way secondary to all that concerns, reading it as a fan of Castle. It's pretty trashy, an easy read, quick: good to just kick back with, and not think too much about. The story on its own is so-so, I guess: I was there for the Castle references, not for anything unique and scintillating on its own. Pretty much standard fare.

Not sure how I felt about the idea of Castle writing a sex scene about the characters so clearly based on himself and Beckett. I guess I'll have to see how it's played in the show, but I didn't think he'd go that far.

Still, pretty fun, and an awesome idea.

Boneshaker (Cherie Priest)

I'm vacillating between giving Boneshaker three and four stars. It mostly fell down for me for very, very subjective reasons -- liberal use of a trope I'm not fond of -- although there's also a bit of a problem with the pacing. In places it worked very well: beautifully tense and exciting. But after a while, the sneaking and hiding wears on you. It's like watching a movie consisting of nothing but scenes in which the characters crawl through tunnels. No matter how well-shot those scenes are, it gets boring.

The trope that irritated me was the trope of 'they just missed each other'. Briar and Zeke could have met several times before they actually do, and while that might have shortened the book if they hadn't missed each other, I'm not sure that would have been a bad thing. Still, that's one of my pet peeves. It always reminds me of romantic comedies, which invariably make me want to beat my head against whatever's convenient (and I got dragged to a fair number as a teenager).

I also wasn't terribly pleased with Zeke. He ran when he should have stayed still, and stayed still when he should've been running. I know that he wasn't psychic and doesn't know what the reader knows, but even early on, Rudy is obviously not the kind of guy he should be running with. You take what you can get, I guess, but...

I was much more impressed with Briar. An older, working class single mother, kicking so much ass. She doesn't make the same stupid decisions as Zeke, so she's a lot easier to sympathise with. She's not perfect, no, but she does what she thinks is right.

The setting is well done -- quite vivid, and oddly realistic despite the fact that, yeah, it's full of zombies. It's not the most convincing explanation, I guess -- gas that creates the living dead? -- but it's not too necessary, either. The whole thing with Minnericht... I called it, to some extent: I guessed why Briar was so sure about who he was (or, rather, wasn't). I liked it, though.

I enjoyed Boneshaker, yeah, but I'm not in a tearing hurry to read the other two books set in the same world.

Like Twin Stars (N.K. Jemisin, Neil James Hudson, Giselle Renarde)

The rating is mostly for N.K. Jemisin's story, which is the reason I bought this little collection. Jemisin's story evokes a whole world, despite the shortness: a matriarchal society, tribal traditions, the hint of other stories in the background, and the promise of a future for the characters. I found some of the descriptions a little awkward, mostly during the sex scene, in a that-doesn't-sound-right-to-me way, but all of it builds the world of the first person narrator, so it does fit. The story is unquestionably erotic, building tension all the way through, and I think that's made better by the ease with which I connected to the characters.

The other two stories, on the other hand, did this much less for me. There's nothing wrong with the descriptions of sex in the second story, 'Incubus, Succubus', but I didn't really connect with any of it, and it really failed to build a world for me to care about in the way that N.K. Jemisin did.

The third story could be a really intriguing idea: it started strongly, I thought, and I liked the idea. Sebastian was hard to like, though, in the way that he was so very goody-goody. Would anyone really not hesitate or fear for even a second before doing something rash and life-changing? I like to think I would rescue someone who was being subjected to invasive medical testing that goes against their wishes, but I know I would have a moment of hesitation, of sick indecision. Sebastian doesn't seem quite human, in that sense. And the sex wasn't particularly erotic, at least from my point of view: it seemed written almost by rote. Insert tab A into slot B, scream in pleasure, have an orgasm, stick tab B into slot A and repeat.

blueeyedboy (Joanne Harris)

I got impatient to read blueeyedboy. You sort of expect Joanne Harris' work to show up in charity shops in short notice: I've found most of the rest of her work there, in my charity shop binges, after all. But I got tired of waiting, and didn't want to wait until Christmas, so I actually bought it for the Kindle app on my phone. That made it very convenient to read a chapter here and there -- even two chapters while I waited for Delta Maid to get off the stage so Seth Lakeman would come on! -- so that meant I read this quite fast, but in snatches, whenever it was convenient...

The plot is very convoluted. There are so mistaken identities, so many unreliable narrators. The format itself is an unreliable sort of style: it's presented as an online journal-type site, very much like LiveJournal and its offspring, and we all know that people there can fictionalise their lives as much as they want. And you know the narrators are unreliable, and the further on it goes, the more you see that.

I was assured blueeyedboy was a big departure from Joanne Harris' usual. I really don't think so: her writing style bleeds through into the characters, and whenever she writes in first person or third person limited, her style bleeds through. There's something about it -- a hint of flavour, perhaps (appropriate, to be a synaesthete commenting on this book!), something in the phrasing... Anyway, that seemed typically her, and the darkness, the twisted relationships... I can see where in the rest of the work they come from.

blueeyedboy is dark, and not feel-good at all. The theme of food is there, but twisted, where before it's always seemed like a kind of good magic, in Harris' work -- although again, I can see a theme continuing, like the smell of oranges from Five Quarters of the Orange.

Interesting to read, but not so great a departure as I'd been led to believe, although without the comfort I've found in her other books, the way things tend to turn out okay -- changed, yes, but okay, with wounds lanced and poison drained, the danger faced and gone. Not so here. And even that's not new: The Evil Seed ended on a similar note. Not a departure at all, then.

The Acts of King Arthur and His Noble Knights (John Steinbeck)

Steinbeck's Arthur novel was never completed, and never even properly edited by him. I enjoyed it very much as it is -- I do wish it'd been finished, and edited, and made more consistent. If I rated without considering that, I'd rate it at least one star less. The introduction, claiming that it isn't changed substantially from Malory, isn't true: there's a lot of humanising going on, and some additional humour. If I held Steinbeck to that, too, he'd probably lose a star.

As it is, though, bearing these things in mind, he gets all the stars. I really enjoyed reading his version, particularly after the first few tales -- it felt like, after a while, he felt his way into it, and some of the letters of his included at the end suggest that that's just how it felt to him, which is nice to know. There's a sort of tenderness in the way he treats the tales, a love for them that still allowed him to see the humour a modern audience might find in them.

I liked his treatment of Kay -- a little more understanding than other writers, I think. An attempt to understand him. And the touch of someone catching Arthur crying, which I don't recall being in Malory. And some of the descriptions of Lancelot, particularly through Lyonel's eyes. And here was a Lancelot I could like, too, although of course Steinbeck never got to the parts where Lancelot was a traitor. Still, I felt for Lancelot, in the last few pages.

(For those who know of my affection for Gawain: no, I don't like his portrayal of Gawain. But I'll pass that over.)

One thing I love specially is something that people tend to find lacking in Malory -- knowing what people are feeling, and I'm particularly talking about Lancelot. Malory tells us what he does; Steinbeck tries to tell us why.

And the thing I love best, oh, most of all, is this:

The queen observed, "I gather you rescued damsels by the dozen." She put her fingers on his arm and a searing shock ran through his body, and his mouth opened in amazement at a hollow ache that pressed upwards against his ribs and shortened his breath.

My breath, too.

It's rare because it's a moment that really makes me feel for Lancelot and Guinevere, and for their plight. I think Steinbeck could have caught me up in their story, and hushed my dislike for all they do. I wish he'd written it: I'd like, just once, to be swept up in Lancelot and Guinevere's story, and to buy into it as somehow justified by passion, just as they do. Other writers tell that without showing me it. (Guy Gavriel Kay perhaps excepted, but Lancelot and Guinevere aren't the centre of the story he's telling there.)

I enjoyed it a lot, what there is of it, and this edition also contains a lot of Steinbeck's letters concerning it while he was writing it. Very interesting to read those and get an idea of what was on his mind.

I think part of what I love here is what the stories could have been, more than what they are.

I managed to stay up all twenty-four hours of the read-a-thon, and spent most of it reading, apart from when I was providing food or answering mini-challenges. I'm now really tired, but it was a lot of fun. Here's what I managed to read. The links go to the goodreads review pages.

1) Shakespeare's Richard III. I needed to read this for a class on Monday. It took me something like three hours and felt like it'd never be over, but I managed it.

2) Nennius' The History of the Britons. A short text, but not precisely easy reading. Contains one of the earliest references to King Arthur.

3) The alliterative Morte Arthure. An Arthurian text I've barely heard of: might be useful for my course.

4) The stanzaic Le Morte Arthur. Need I say more?

5) Yevgeny Zamyatin's We. One of the earliest dystopias, and massively influential.

6) Alison Goodman's Singing the Dogstar Blues. I needed a change of pace at the time, and this provided it wonderfully.

7) The Mabinogion. It's obvious why I read this, right? Arthurian references, and it's Welsh!

8) Mari Strachan's The Earth Hums in B Flat. Only managed two thirds of this, but finished up the last third this afternoon. Mari Strachan's also Welsh.

I think in future I'll do this again, and maybe monthly twelve hour readathons, to try and attack the to read as comprehensively as I did today.

Oh, god, guys, but I'm exhausted.

Lancelot and the Lord of the Distant Isles, or The Book of Galehaut Retold (Patricia Terry and Samuel N. Rosenburg)

According to the authors of this book, in the Vulgate Cycle originally there was a book called The Book of Galehaut. Galehaut was a knight who could have defeated King Arthur, but for the love of Lancelot, surrendered to him instead. He was the enabler for Guinevere and Lancelot's love, again because of (and despite) his love for Lancelot. He's since faded from the story almost entirely, though he's sometimes mentioned with no particular connection to Lancelot. The introduction to this book suggests that that's partially because of the deeply homoerotic subtext of his relationship with Lancelot, and partly because he can be read as Welsh and Malory (for one) was writing at a time of disturbance between the English and the Welsh (what a surprise).

I haven't read the Vulgate Cycle for myself, or read any secondary sources discussing Galehaut, so I can't speak for the accuracy of their statements. It would make sense, of course, but little errors in the introduction -- it's spelt "Caerleon", or "Caerllion" if you're going for the Welsh spelling, not "Carleon", unless you're talking about a beach in Cornwall; Geoffrey of Monmouth is now thought to have been unlikely to be Welsh -- make me somewhat dubious about the scholarship. Plus, as a retelling, they might have been extremely choosy about what they took from the original text, and viewed through a modern lens stuff like sharing a bed seems more sexual than it is in medieval texts.

Still, it's interesting for two reasons: one, this is a part of Arthurian legend that has been neglected, and two, it's actually a really good story. They chose to write their retelling in a similar way to direct translations of the texts, so it feels familiar and authentic. They admit to tweaking and rearranging a little, so the final section of the story is a little different to the standard accepted versions, but mostly it fits into the canon reasonably well. Galehaut's love for Lancelot is deep and affecting: more so than the love between knights and ladies in romances of the period. Guinevere is mostly sympathetic, too, and the love between her and Lancelot is well-written in places, but the focus is Galehaut and his utter devotion to Lancelot. The ending picks up on something I just read about in a part from the Vulgate Cycle: Lancelot is buried beside Galehaut.

There are also a couple of bits that I honestly find quite funny, like this part:

Then Galehaut asked Gawain what he would give, if he had his health again, to have the Black Knight [Lancelot] as his companion. Gawain hesitated, wondering if his wounds would ever heal, and then replied that he would willingly be transformed into a beautiful young woman, if he could have the Black Knight's love his whole life long.
"And you, my lady?" Galehaut asked the queen.
"Now that Gawain has offered all that a lady can give, a lady can do no more!"
With that, they all laughed, but Galehaut when they demanded that he too answer the question, said that for the love of that knight, "I would let my very honour turn to shame."
"God knows," said Gawain, "that you have offered more than any of us." He realised that Galehaut had actually done what he said: at the very moment when he had won the war, he had given his triumph away.

The queen's response is awesome!

This story made me interested in Galehaut, in tracking down anything that mentions him, researching him, and bringing him back to life in my own writing. I think the authors of this retelling would be happy to hear that. For me, they've brought back to life a character who has been shamefully neglected. Well worth buying, I'd say, if it sounds like something you'd enjoy!

It helps that this edition includes some lovely illustrations -- wood engravings, actually -- alongside the text. They're quite detailed and lovely to look at.

The Boats of the Glen Carrig (William Hope Hodgson)

I first saw William Hope Hodgson's work published in the "fantasy masterworks" series, so I was curious to read these forerunners to modern fantasy fiction. It's a bit like fantasy, a bit like speculative fiction, and a bit like horror, all mixed in. Quite interesting to read, and to guess at who it might be an influence for.

I couldn't help thinking of Homer's Odyssey as I was reading this, although the men and women of this story don't have to go quite so far as Odysseus -- except perhaps the ones in the hulk, who have to endure seven years hanging around in the weed continent, fearing the monsters all the time... In any case, this book isn't really about any of the characters -- there are few named characters, and little dialogue, and not many descriptions of people -- but about the semi-supernatural monsters the luckless ship comes across. The writing is slow to read, and quite dense, but the descriptions and the tension of it are good. There's a touch of romance, too, and although Mary Madison isn't exactly a fully realised character, and the narrator isn't wonderfully sympathetic and human himself, that does add a bit of life and cheer to the end of the story.s

The House on the Borderland (William Hope Hodgson)

The House on the Borderland is weird to read. In about the first half of it, things are happening: an attack by supernatural "Swine-things", which the narrator has to repel. However, the frame story is about two men on a holiday discovering the narrative written by this unnamed man, and surprisingly little is made of that. Nothing supernatural happens to them, really, and for all they know, it's simply a fantastical story made up by someone with a weird imagination, or someone who is somehow deluded. That makes their part of the story dead and unexciting, and although they have little to do with it -- their frame story seems only there to give the old man's narrative a kind of vague authenticity, in the same way that Bram Stoker's Dracula is meant to be a collection of authentic letters -- it has a rather anticlimactic effect, especially at the end.

The unnamed narrator of the main part of the story is a relatively uninteresting character himself, and the best moments of the story are when he's fighting the creatures and, close to the end, when he struggles with himself against a compulsion to open the door. There's a wonderfully real feeling of horror when he notices the faint, luminescent scratch, as well. However, at least a third of the story is taken up with weird journeys through the cosmos, to little purpose or revelation. Some of the description is wonderful, but very little happens that's worth feeling anything about.

One thing that did strike a note of pathos was the dog, Pepper, who I was fond of, and who deserved better.

It's a weird story -- again, part fantasy, part horror, part speculative fiction, perhaps even more of a blend of those genres than The Boats of the Glen Carrig. Interesting, and weird, but not exactly emotionally engaging.

The Ghost Pirates (William Hope Hodgson)

Another horror/fantasy blend. There's not much by way of explanation in this one: the first line of the first chapter kind of sums it up: "He began without any circumlocution." Hodgson builds up the setting quite well, the slow beginning of the supernatural events and the spreading fear and paranoia. There's a lot of concrete detail about life on board a ship that serves to make it very much like realism, and then all hell breaks loose. The hows and whys of it aren't explained, only the events. Creepy and urgent at times, and a bit quicker paced than The Boats of the Glen Carrig and The House on the Borderland.

There are more named characters, in this one, though they're not very distinct from one another -- I might remember a few of them, Williams and Tammy for example, but mostly they were just Generic Sailors. There's also dialogue, unlike in the other two books I've read by Hodgson, which does seem to get things going a bit more urgently.

Atmospheric, and well-described in places -- not exactly fast-paced compared to modern novels, though.