Book review

Book review: The Greatest Viking by Desmond Seward

27 December 2022
Edoardo
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The Greatest Viking by Desmond Seward

Desmond Seward, who died on 3 April 2022, was one of Britain’s most accomplished popular historians, his many books displaying a mixture of vigorous storytelling and close attention to primary and secondary sources. Seward’s final book, published posthumously, shows that he suffered no decline in his gifts in his final years. The Greatest Viking takes the life of King Olav Haraldsson and brings the man and his times to life. In this, Seward was helped by Olav’s life being, like that of so many of the great Vikings, a tale of outrageous adventure, of reversals and victories, daring escapes and unlikely returns. Indeed, it’s the sort of life that if Seward had been writing a novel, he would have had to tone it down to make it more believable.

Olav, in life and even more in his death, became a symbol of Norwegian national identity, so much so that we was given – and still holds – the title of Rex Perpetuus Norvegiae, the eternal king of Norway. Olav, a descendant of Harald Fairhair, the first man to unite Norway, saw it as his destiny to bring the country under his rule. Following his conversion to Christianity, he widened his mission to include banishing the old Norse gods. Seward is particularly insightful in explaining the savagery with which Olav went about suppressing the old pagan religion, neither excusing Olav’s fierceness nor downplaying the depravity attached to worshipping the old gods. Although we have lost an excellent historian, The Greatest Viking is an excellent valediction of a lifetime’s work bringing the past to life for new generations.

Book review: Cult of the Spiral Dawn by Peter Fehervari

19 December 2022
Edoardo
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Cult of the Spiral Dawn by Peter Fehervari

Peter Fehervari is the unlikely Evelyn Waugh of 40k authors. Writing about Tyrannid genestealer cults is not an obvious opportunity to showcase a prose style that combines the economy of Evelyn Waugh’s Decline and Fall with the jewel crusted baroquetries of his Brideshead Revisited, but Fehervari, rather extraordinarily, manages to do so. One of the very, very few 40k books to read for its literary qualities.

Book review: Relentless by Dean Koontz

19 December 2022
Edoardo
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Relentless by Dean Koontz

I am, in principle, in favour of stories where the hero is an unassuming but nevertheless quietly heroic writer – I can’t imagine why. I also thoroughly approve of stories where the villain is a horribly unfair literary critic, of vituperative opinions and little discernment. Having been on the receiving end of a few reviews of the writer-is-an-idiot-and-his-work-is-worse variety I can aver that there are few retributions not fully deserved by such reviewers.

Despite all these points in its favour, I must nevertheless admit that ‘Relentless’ is boiler plate Koontz: standard late period fare without the original ideas of ‘Innocence’ or ‘The City’. One for Koontz completists only.

Book review: Tales From the Perilous Realm by JRR Tolkien

5 November 2022
Edoardo
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Tales from the Perilous Realm by JRR Tolkien

The mark of a great story is returning to it at different stages of one’s life and finding it fresh each time, as if seeing a fresh vista on the same image with each reading. That is true for the stories contained in Tales From the Perilous Realm and, in particular, Leaf by Niggle. Anyone working to fashion meaning and story out of the raw material of words, or paint, or sound, could find enough in here to ponder over a lifetime – and I have! If you are a sub-creator, labouring in the fields of Arda, read it and know that your efforts are not in vain, so long as you labour truly for the work itself and not the glory or honour or wealth or renown it might bring you.

Book review: Storm Front by Jim Butcher

5 November 2022
Edoardo
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Storm Front by Jim Butcher

I have a theory that the genres writers write in has nothing to do with their particular skills but everything to do with the name they were given by their parents. Jane Austen was always going to be the well spring of domestic, detailed fiction with women in the key roles: Austen has both the necessary toughness (austenite is a form of iron) while Jane introduces the plain spoken femininity. H. P. Lovecraft – what else but grandiloquent horror. Edgar Allan Poe: grand guignol fiction.

By my theory, there was no possibility of a boy baptised James Butcher growing up to write sensitive literary fiction set in small-town America and, sure enough, the adult Jim Butcher writes tought supernatural fiction featuring a trouble-worn warlock operating out of Chicago – basically Philip Marlow with a magic staff.

Is Harry Dresden as good as Philip Marlow? No, but then hardly anyone else is. The story is nevertheless a solid opener to what has become a highly successful series. I enjoyed it but not sufficiently to rush out and read the second. On the other hand, should I find the next volume lying on a shelf when I am taking a railway journey and have forgotten to bring something to read, I would pick it up as a gift from generous providence.

Book review: Piranesi by Susanna Clarke

5 November 2022
Edoardo
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Piranesi by Susanna Clarke

Sometimes, there was a tree.

Near where two footpaths met in the park, an unassuming tree, more than a sapling but not yet mature. The sort of tree you would not remark when you walked past it. The sort of tree you would not remark when you did not walk past it.

The world is a strange place. Under the cover of everyday mundanity, things shift and change. For Piranesi, in the House, things change too: the tide rolls in through its endless rooms, he waits upon visits of the Other, the only other living man he knows, and the seagulls nest. It is the only world he knows.

“The Beauty of the House is immeasurable; its Kindness infinite.”

It is quiet too, with the quiet of another liminal place: the Wood Between the Worlds in The Magician’s Nephew. Like that Wood, it is a junction between different worlds while being itself a place of forgetting.

Piranesi is the story of one who gets lost, for a while in the Wood Between the Worlds, in one of those liminal places where worlds meet. It is a marvellous story and, like all the best stories, it carries the stamp of Truth.

Sometimes, there was a tree.

Book review: Cold Fire by Dean Koontz

4 November 2022
Edoardo
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Cold Fire by Dean Koontz

What sets Dean Koontz apart from other bestselling authors is his ability to generate an extraordinary number of fascinating ‘What if?’ premises for his stories. His writing can be uneven, particularly when developing a character over a series of books – the Odd Thomas series is a great example – but his one-off books based upon a singular idea are almost always worth reading.

That’s true of Cold Fire. Another brilliant what if. What if you were a reporter on a small-town paper and you discovered a story about a man who appeared from nowhere, saved people from certain death, and then disappeared again – a sort of anonymous Superman. That’s the premise here, although we follow both the reporter and the anonymous Superman, as they first meet and then try to work out the source of his strange precognitory paper.

The twist as to the nature of Jim Ironheart’s power is interesting and adds some unexpected nuance to the story without necessarily being the sort of blockbuster reveal that leaves the reader going, “Wow!” Nevertheless, an excellent thriller.

Book review: Unwinding Anxiety by Judson Brewer

4 November 2022
Edoardo
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Unwinding Anxiety by Judson Brewer

I am not an anxious person but, like most writers, I do suffer from procrastination. The empty page and the blank screen can too often be a cue to do that long-delayed DIY task rather being a signal that it’s time to actually write the story that’s been buzzing around at the back of my mind.

So I’m pleased to say that there was a lot in this book about overcoming procrastination, which is a facet of anxiety, as well as much on actual anxiety. And, when I want it to be, it’s actually quite effective – it’s all to do with stopping the feedback loops that allow you to focus on immediate relief of mild anxiety rather than the far greater, but somewhat delayed, relief that comes from what you actually need to do.

Brewer is also rather good on the evolutionary origins of these anxiety feedback loops and how they have deep roots in our basic brain biology. So, overall, an interesting and helpful book.

Book review: The Dagger and the Flame by Malcolm Saville

20 October 2022
Edoardo
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The Dagger and the Flame by Malcolm Saville

I loved Malcolm Saville’s Lone Pine series when I was growing up. For the child of immigrants growing up in London, it opened up vistas on an England that I would never have known otherwise: Romney Marsh, the Yorkshire Moors and, most especially, the vast ridge of the Long Mynd and the sharp teeth of the Stiperstones in Shropshire. These became the landscapes of my imagination, grounding me in this country which wasn’t, quite, mine, but making it so.

So it was with some excitement that I learned Saville had written another series, intended for somewhat older readers, featuring British secret agent, Marston Baines. My wife kindly bought me The Dagger and the Flame, now reprinted by Girls Gone By, and I settled down to read it. Unlike the Lone Pine books, it’s set in Italy and, since I’m half Italian, this was actually a point in its favour.

Sadly, the story itself is a disappointment. Although I probably share most of Saville’s views, his dismay at the 1960s counterculture spills over into preaching – never good even when I agree with the views being preached – and Marston Baines barely even appears himself, the spy work being done by his nephew, Simon. There’s the bones of a good story there, but Saville was writing to make a point rather than tell a story, and the story suffers. Not one I will revisit.

Book review: Ringworld by Larry Niven

29 September 2022
Edoardo
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Ringworld by Larry Niven

I first read Ringworld many years ago, not long after it was published. Returning to it now, I was curious as to how well it would hold up and how much of it I would remember.

First, the remembering. The answer was, a surprising amount. The Ringworld itself, obviously. For those who don’t know, the Ringworld is a slice of a Dyson Sphere, a ring around a star with miles high mountains on each rim to hold the atmosphere in place. It’s an extraordinary idea, expanding on scale in an exponential fashion: the Ringworld is big, really, really big.

However, I do remember being disappointed that we never find out anything about the Ringworld’s creators, nor what happened to them, and in that too my memory held up. I’ve not read the sequel but in many ways the book is a stand alone story and it leaves a lot of questions unanswered.

Then, the Puppeteers. They are one of Niven’s most enjoyable creations. A race of congenitally cowardly aliens who manipulate the other races of the galaxy to ensure their own survival.

Speaking of manipulated races, the Kzin, the warrior felines who send a representative along on the expedition to the Ringworld are great too. But it’s not just the Kzin: the Puppeteers have manipulated mankind too, breeding people for luck.

Which brings us to Teela Brown, the luckiest woman in the world. The product of generations of lucky winners in the lottery of life, she’s an interesting creation: so lucky that she’s untouched by pain and can follow her whims wherever they please. But Niven, wittingly or not, posits a higher purpose to Teela Brown’s luck than just fortune: it becomes a force that wants what is good for her, not in the utilitarian sense of the maximum of pleasure and the minimum of pain, but a good that points towards a Platonic idea of the best Teela Brown. A person who is properly human, the Platonic Form of Teela Brown. So her luck brings her to a place where she can become who she is supposed to be. I’m not sure if this was the point Niven was making but it is the consequence of the story’s logic.

Then, there are the sunflowers. Oh, boy, I remembered those. Unending fields of reflective sunflowers that focus the sun’s energy on any threats, burning it to a crisp, like holding the point focus of a magnifying glass over an ant. I think it was the sunflowers that I remember best.

As to how the story held up: surprisingly well. Of course, the attitudes are different, but it would be strange if they were not: fifty years have passed. Some reviewers would seem to prefer that nothing had changed – or that they are incapable of appreciating another time in its own timeframe.