We Need To Talk About Kevin

By Lionel Shriver

Am I qualified to comment on this? Neither being a parent nor a depressive, how easily can one relate?
The big question seems to be 'How much can we trust Eva?'
The story is told as a series of letters from Eva to her estranged husband looking over just where everything went wrong with their lives and relationship, something that can be pinned pretty squarely on the birth of their vile child Kevin, now incarcerated for multiple murder in a Columbine style shooting.
Eva seems to have suffered from some form of post natal depression, and Kevin seems to have grown up with the sole aim of identifying anything Eva cared about and destroying it. Obviously writing now, as she approaches the second anniversary of Kevin's massacre, she has plenty of reasons to think herself a failure as a parent, though God knows, she tried.
I remember a Guardian review of the recent film, which I've not seen yet, but will probably catch as soon as it comes on the telly, which was subtitled with the idea that Kevin was Satanic. Since I was already planning to read the book, I only skimmed the article for fear of spoilers.
Satanic. Not a word I would have used. Not really supported by the article either. Still.
Kevin seems a nihilist. He takes no joy except from spoiling things for others. Probably he'd be flagged as EMO these days, another of those trendy descriptions that doesn't mean anything in particular. But Satanic? Doesn't that somehow pass any responsibility onto someone else? If there really were a devil, then knowing that he was leaning over Kevin's shoulder, whispering murderous suggestions into the boys ear, means that the deaths aren't actually his fault. But that would make it far too easy.
Kevin is a nasty child. He hurts things and especially people. He takes delight in upsetting a mother, who while somewhat aloof and dismissive, at least tries. We don't like the idea that children can be nasty, but surely some are, though fortunately rarely this nasty.
(Aside) I am suddenly reminded of people writing about The Wasp Factory, in it's day seen as a very shocking book. I could never quite work out why it was so shocking, save perhaps that they couldn't cope with the idea of a malicious child. (Aside ends)
Back to Kevin. I enjoyed the book. It's a traumatic read, but as it goes on, and the narrative approaches that awful Thursday, becomes increasing gripping. Eva blames Kevin, but blames herself for failing to engage with her child. Would she have redeemed him had she given herself unreservedly in the delivery room. She doesn't know, who could?

I've still not worked out why the writer chooses to style herself as Lionel though. Especially for something like this, where the viewpoint is so very maternal.

Adolf Hitler: My part in his downfall

By Spike Milligan

If there's a pattern to the books being read in the first weeks of 2012 it's that they're things I've had on the shelf for an age and a half, and really should have read before.
So here we have a work that I honestly cannot explain why it's taken me so long to get round to. I picked up the first five volumes of Spike's war memoir trilogy at least five years ago. If not longer. It's an ideal 'slot it in between the hefty tomes' length. It's Spike Bloody Milligan, the greatest humorist of his generation.
And it's been sat there on the shelf getting ignored for half a decade.
I honestly cannot explain why. My tardiness shames me.
I suppose that when published this must have been riding the coat tails of quite a few other things. The Virgin Soldiers, Carry on Sargent, umm, err, surely there must have been others or my theory falls flat. The somewhat humorous look back at one's military experience. When did Fraser start his McAuslan stories?
Still. Not exactly breaking new ground when written, a well trod furrow by 2012.
That's sounds like I'm being horribly critical. Which I don't mean to be. It's biography. You can't condemn a man for having a similar set of experiences to his whole generation, or having had them, for writing about them, especially not when written about with engaging gentle humour.
Spike Milligan was one of the great humorists of his generation, and while the book's certainly not perfect, it's more a collection of incidents than a narrative, I'll definitely be reading the rest. Still don't know why I didn't years ago.

Labyrinth

By Kate Mosse

And the people have spoken, so back to work I go.
Its one of those books I bought years ago, and only just got round to, partly because I was feeling slightly bored by the stream of low quality SF. I seem to remember that it was mightily lauded in its time, honestly can't remember how long it as say in the spare room bookshelf. A volunteer archaeologist working in the mountains south of Carcassonne turns up something unexpected, two bodies in a cave shrine. A teenage girl in Cathar Carcassonne becomes involved in an ancient conspiracy. Past lives, holy grail, though without the Holy Blood, yadda, yadda, yadda.
I read on Wikipedia that Labyrinth possesses the dubious distinction among major best sellers of having the worst 5 to 1 star review ratio out there. I am not entirely sure why, unless there's a meme out there I missed.
I didn't think it a great book, by and stretch of the imagination. The characters are all a bit one dimensional, and I never really believed the 13th century girl being able to multi-class as Herbalist/Fighter. But it's not that bad either. Decent enough action sequences. Give it 2 or 3 stars. And give it to Oxfam.

And that...

... Dear reader is what I read in 2011.

And dear me, there was some rubbish in there. I honestly did mean to read a Trollope, but damn it, those books are long, and to be honest the logical next book (Phinneus Redux) does not exactly inspire me. I rather enjoyed the first Palliser novel, but the central character of Phinneas Finn did not engage, and a whole book of him trotting back from whatever bog he wound up in? Might be better starting Barchester?

The thing I rarely commented on is format. Almost everything I read in 2011 I read as an ebook. Even books I bought on paper were often read after I downloaded copies. Yes, some books were torrented, though not all, and I'm perfectly happy to defend the idea that downloading a book you have a perfect right to read, so that it can be read in your preferred format is no more theft than copying a CD to your iPod.

I've fallen a bit behind. Writing this in early February I've read more since, and I'm havering slightly over whether to blog them. The odd thing, now that I think about it is how non-genre the 2012 reading has been. One of the things I was consciously doing last year was not to read multiple books by the same author, so I was sort of expecting to have read the same writers next novels by now. Nope. No overlap. They will come. Sir Terry's most recent is next on the list.

Thinks: as far as I know no-one reads this blog. If at least one person comments saying they do, and they'd like me to carry on, I will.

A Rising Thunder

By David Webber

Really. If ever you wanted an example of a series which has become bloated and pointless, this would probably be it.
The series started out well enough. Light American mil-SF, vaguely in the style of Hornblower, complete with a boringly perfect heroine, inventor of every worthwhile tactic in her systems war with their nasty oppressive commie-French neighbours. Oh yes, and has a telepathic cat.
Still, fun enough, if not in the least bit demanding, as she captains a light cruiser, a heavy cruiser, a battlecruiser, etc etc. By this point, about 15 books (depending on just how you count it) in she's Admiral-of-the-Fleet in two different navies, high ranking nobility on several planets, and has a whole tribe of telepathic kittehs. And. The. Whole. Thing. Has. Bogged. Down. So. Badly.
A few of books back the sinister manipulators who set up the original war started to emerge from the shadows, as they tried to set up an even bigger war with the huge, but out of shape, corrupt superpower in the area. Last book the Frenchies worked out that they'd been manipulated into war and declared peace, even offering to help deal with the fleet at that point bearing down on plucky little Manticore.
So here we are. Another hefty tome. A huge battle, even huger than the last huge battle. One that you knew was coming, and it did, about 70% of the way through the book. And guess what? The good guys, the ones who've been fighting a war for the last 20 years turn out to be as 'better' than the bloated corrupt types who've not fought anybody in 200 years as you'd expect.
So, several hundred thousand missiles later the dust settles, and one sides ships are unscratched. And the others aren't there any more.
That's the big event. Hundreds of pages in the inevitable has happened.
So what else is in the book? The sinister manipulators twirl their mustachios a lot. The corrupt bureaucrats act complacent and smug a lot. The shifty local governor who's been assembling a fleet so that he can hive off a little empire, just for himself continues to do so, as he has been for about five books now, without committing himself to anything. Everybody carries on doing the things they do. No surprises. Even the tactic employed at the big walk over battle is one that's been the key to the climactic battles in 3 of the 4 last books.
Fortunately, I need not say 'don't bother'. That it's the 15th of a series is enough to deter any sane person.

The High King of Montival

By S.M. Stirling.


Volume four, seven, or perhaps ten of a series, so for God's sake don't start here.
Do you remember The Changes? A series of books by the terribly underrated Peter Dickenson, better known at the time as a BBC children's drama series. The world wakes up with a loathing for any technology beyond the 15th century. There is a degree of chasing about, and in the books at least, Merlin is eventually persuaded to return things to normal. Some people died at the hands of mobs who found them trying to use their cars, but no-one starved. It was a series aimed at kids.
This isn't. At about the turn of the millennium the world changed. Electricity stopped working. Combustion worked differently - fires still keep people warm, but no cars, no steam trains even, no guns. No articulated lorries bringing tonnes of food into the heart of the cities every day. Ships carrying food from the antipodes still float, but drift at the mercy of the waves.
The civil society tries to cope, but fails. Seven billion cannot survive on a world were medieval agriculture is all that's possible. The densely populated parts of the world suffer almost complete collapse, where the people are spread more thinly, and where farmers are not overrun by the starving hordes coming out of the cities, societies can be reconstructed.
In much of America the survivors are ranchers, farm managers and the like. The people who remember real farming, not just how to sit on a combine and mow a flat field larger than some European countries. In Oregon it's the reenactment crowd. Who take it all too seriously. There's a bunch of SCA derived nutters who style themselves knights, and by the time of this book have built castles all over their lands and are honestly quite good at it. They started out as the main villains, but the primary robber baron died a few books back. Their main opposition is a pseudo-celtic clan who practice Wicca and Agincort style massed archery. Oh, and some genuine headcases who claim the Lord of the Rings is a work of history, and develop as ninja dunedain.
After three books of conflict between these groups and others the west settles down to an uneasy peace, and the series leaps forwards fifteen years.
By the time of the next books the protagonists are the children who have only known the changed world, who have been off on what is quite definitely a Quest, involving visions and a magic sword. Or at least a sword of some kind, its only really in this book that the magic becomes unavoidable. So yes, when the tech went away, magic seems to have appeared, much of it not especially nice.
So off they trot, a mixed party of Wiccan hero, knightly heroine, cleric, supporting ninja and rogues, picking up allies and enemies along the was in good D&D fashion. The enemies are largely from a Wyoming new age church who's upper echelons seem to be possessed by demons, plus assorted bandits, pirates and so on.
Come the end of the last book the hero had laid his hands on the Sword, which was proving decidedly magical, on the island of Nantucket. In this one he gets to trek back to the Pacific Northwest, but fortunately manages to do so in just the one book, and only two significant battles along the way, settings up for the big showdown with the evil wizards in the next two, or perhaps three books. Which will probably be fun, the whole thing isn't dragging like some series of this kind of length.
The great question I do keep coming back to though: is Stirling a gamer? There are increasing FRPG staples coming out in these books, but the previous ones, which started off as a time travel story, did seem to be rather optimised for gaming opportunities, and at least one of his stand alone settings resonated strongly with a GURPS alternate world concept I've been playing with for some time. George Martin would probably know, but I forgot to ask the one time I met him at a signing.
Though if he was a gamer, then it's a little surprising not to have any licences out there yet.
Still. Not especially demanding, decent romp. Looking forwards to the next.

Look to Windward

By Iain M. Banks


I was once working in a dreadful factory job, loading pallets with resealed packets of industrial beer, and on breaks reading one of Iain Banks early works. "What's it about?" asked one of my more literate team mates, just at the point the stories had intersected and folded in on themselves. I wasn't quite sure. I mean I'd had a pretty good idea until ten pages earlier, but it had suddenly got complicated and clever. "So not very good then?" asked workmate, forcing me to admit that while I didn't quite know what it was about, it was a very good book. (Walking on Glass, since you asked).
But that was Iain Banks, and one of his early books, this is Iain M. Banks, and I pretty much understood it all along. Which saddens me.
Iain M. writes big spectacle science fiction, generally set in an egalitarian high tech utopia called The Culture. Iain, without the M. used to write strange books which were neither realist nor fantasy, but somewhere in between. Then the M. came along, Iain pushed all his weirdness into his M. identity, and both sides became a bit more predictable.
This one is about a composer, an exile from a caste ridden alien race, now resident on a Culture world, and the emissary from his people who is perhaps sent to bring him home, perhaps sent for more sinister purposes.
There's a degree of structural cleverness, alternate chapters from each perspective, but it's not really breaking new ground. There's a degree of mystery - just what is composer Ziller running away from, just what is the Major's mission, and will he carry it out? Pretty much standard thriller stuff though. The mysteries are petty, the result pretty much inevitable.
Nothing fundamentally wrong you understand, but could try harder.
And to be fair, has. All three of the more recent books I read before getting to this on catch up were a lot more inventive. And one was the welcome return of weirdness to Iain without an M. in Transition. I could really do to read that again in the hope of understanding it properly. Alas, I understood Look To Windward perfectly the first time.

Dragonhaven

By Robin McKinley

Are books about a child and his/her dragon a recognised sub-genre yet? I think the probably are, from the late Anne McCaffery, to training, to sparkly dragonnets who're best friends with princesses. Not to mention at least two iterations in American comics.
This is largely of the same genre, but instead of being fairy tales, the setting is a terribly 'realistic' world full of cyrptozoology. Nessie exists, and following the discovery of a Norwegian community of fjord monsters, scientists are optimistic about a breeding programme. There are griffons and giant Caspian walrus, and of course, given the title, dragons.
Quite a number of draconic creatures in fact, but only the one type of true, huge, flying, fire-breathing kind, and they're on the verge of extinction, surviving only in Kenya, central Australia and the Dakotas.
The human-dragon relationship is a tad fraught. There is, it must be said, surprisingly little evidence that these gigantic, fire breathing predators have ever attacked a human (save for when the Aussies were trying to exterminate them, which is an extenuating circumstance if ever I heard one) and no-one's really sure how many there are, but its obvious that they could eat anything they want, so people are naturally scared. There's a fence, of unknown (to the narrator) mechanism which seems to confine the scaly beasts inside their national park, or perhaps keep unsupervised people from bothering the endangered animals. There are park rangers, largely drawn from a local indian tribe who seem to know more than they let on. There is the harassed park administrator, recently widowed, and his son Jake, who expects to become a ranger when he grows up.
To be a ranger requires that you can cope all by yourself in the wilderness, a coming of age ritual if you like, and while doing so Jake discovers a dead poacher, killed by a dragon he had mortally wounded, and the dragon's dead or dying offspring. Intervening in such things is thoroughly not done (illegal even as it turns out) but Jake saves the one surviving dragonlet, and with the help of his father and the Indian rangers, raises her.
Dragonlets are fairly helpless things, it seems that dragons are quite similar to marsupials - barely formed bloblike infants, pouches and so on, so it's a big job. Eventually though contact with the other dragons is established, proof that they are intelligent and telepathic is gained and everybody lives happily ever after. There's a bit of a crisis with the parents of the poacher, who stir up the public fears of big aggressive child killing reptiles in an attempt to get the park shut down, but Jake being caught on camera being friendly with them defuses that.
The whole thing is Jakes narrative, and because of the secrecy in which he's raising his dragon he doesn't get much exposure to the politics. Or the intriguing Caspian walrus. Alas, he does waffle. There's an awful lot of exposition, which sets up the authorial voice, conflicts with other park staff, pages and pages about cleaning out the cages of the minor dragonoids at the park visitors centre. A good 20% of the book after the big climactic reveal which is more about Jake's marriage than about the changed world.
Good core story, but over long.