Book review

Adventures in Bookland: Xenos by Dan Abnett

29 December 2016
Edoardo
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Categories: Book review, Writers

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There are so many wonderful books out there, I seldom go back and reread a book I’ve read before. Why bother, when new worlds and new ideas are waiting to be explored? But, with Xenos, I’ve done just that: gone back and reread a book I first read six or seven years ago.

And it was great.

Xenos was the very first novel I read set in the Warhammer 40k universe. If you don’t know it, it’s a universe set up explicitly so that wargamers moving little plastic figures, often exquisitely painted, can play war games set in the far future. Given that the people playing the games are wargamers, you might surmise that the universe 38,000 years from now is not a particularly peaceful place. You’d be right. It is, however, a universe stuffed full of wonders. It turns out that all those goblins and elves and monsters that filled our fairy tales and folk stories were real – it’s just that we got the location wrong. They weren’t on earth, they were waiting for us out among the stars. In fact, that’s my only real criticism of the intricate universe that Games Workshop (the company behind Warhammer 40K) has created: with such a cast of creatures, there should be a bit of room for wonder in among the blasters and exploding alien heads.

But, no matter, for Dan Abnett manages to instil some of this wonder while remaining true to the dystopian roots of 40k and, at the same time, writing an amazingly involving adventure story. Indeed, so taken with the whole universe was I when I first read this that I immediately dived in, reading reams of the stuff, until I came to the same sort of realisation about Warhammer 40k books that I came to with fantasy and Tolkien. Back when I first read The Lord of the Rings it was actually the first fantasy novel I’d ever read. And I was completely blown away. So, I dived in, only to all but drown in Shannaras and Covenants and Belgeriads. I emerged, somewhat the worse for wear, to claim the hard-won knowledge that, with fantasy, I’d started at the summit and was busy working my way down. It turns out that, with Warhammer 40k and Dan Abnett, I’d done the same thing: I’d started at the top with Abnett and had been working my way downhill after him.

But, to return to the summit, it was a relief to reclimb the mountain to find the view from the top as exotic and brutal and breathtaking as the first time I’d found myself there. Thank you, Dan Abnett, and thank you, Gregor Eisenhorn. The Imperium is well served with both of you in its service!

 

 

Adventures in Bookland: St Augustine’s First Footfall by Gerald Moody

28 December 2016
Edoardo
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Categories: Book review, History

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This slim (87 page) book does exactly what it says in its subtitle: An Investigation into the Probable Location of the Landing Site of Augustine’s Mission in 597 AD. Of course, the really fascinating thing is why Augustine (the missionary sent by Pope Gregory the Great to bring the pagan and barbarian Angl0-Saxons into the fold of civilisation) should land right where, in centuries before and afterward, visitors and invaders ranging from the Emperor Claudius, through Hengist and Horsa, all manner of Vikings and, even would-be invaders such as Napoleon and Hitler, all made first footfall.

The answer lies in part in geography. Yes, Dover is closer to France, but it is exposed and has great towering cliffs standing over it: a particularly vulnerable place to make a landing. The great secret to landing where Augustine, and so many others, landed, is that the Isle of Thanet really was an island back then, a chalk hill cut off from the rest of Kent by the Wantsum Channel. In places, this channel was a mile wide, and up until the 15th century a ferry trip was still needed to get to Thanet. But the Wantsum silted up, joining Thanet to the mainland. However, while Thanet was an island, it provided a unique, and uniquely defensible, entry point to England.

In this book, Gerald Moody, deputy director of the Trust for Thanet Archaeology, employs the latest research into how Thanet’s coastline has changed to investigate just where Augustine and his team of Italian missionaries landed in 597 AD. According to our chronicler of the event, Bede, Augustine and crew were detained on Thanet while the king of Kent, Æthelberht, decided what to do with these strange visitors. Moody does an excellent job of examining the historical account through the lens of modern archaeology, and makes a convincing case for his siting of the landing and the location of Augustine’s stay on Thanet.

In short, an absorbing and detailed little book, well worth reading for anyone interested in the particulars (Augustine’s mission) or the general (England’s changing coastline).

Adventures in Bookland: 1847 by Turtle Bunbury

19 December 2016
Edoardo
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Before reviewing this book I must do something unusual: I must review the author’s name. Has there ever been a better name bestowed upon a writer? I  aver that there has not. It is the juxtaposition of dissimilarity that makes it so unique, the elision of armoured testudo with cricketing rabbits, the juxtaposition of slow, considered movement with the sparkle of celebrity sport. Surely such a name tells of parental genius. The question arises though: can the writer live up to his name?

Almost. The title tells the tale. It’s the story of a year, a year rendered significant for the Turtle as the time when the building of his family home, a great pile of a place in County Carlow, Ireland, was begun. Not perhaps the most obvious time to start such a project, as Ireland was in the midst of the Great Famine that saw a million people die and a million more emigrate. But, as the Turtle shows in this book, such a year will reverberate through the world, setting off ripples in all sorts of unexpected places. Bunbury follows the year through, telling its history through the lives of people affected by the events of the year. Some are Irish, part of the diaspora already gone from the island but, hearing the news, responding to it. Others merely share the calendar.

This tells the book’s strength and weakness. It’s a chronicle, connected only by time and, when finishing it, one is struck by the same thought that arises upon watching Stephen Fry on QI. Yes, it’s all very witty and sharp, but what, exactly, is the point? If wit and sharpness are reason enough then buy this book: it will delight. If, on the other hand, you require some uniting, narrative thread for your explorations in the 19th century, read the Flashman books instead.

Adventures in Bookland: Atlas Infernal by Rob Sanders

9 December 2016
Edoardo
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OK, I admit it. My guilty little literary secret is my love for books where blokes with big guns blast aliens into pools of green slime. And there’s no better universe for blasting aliens than the Warhammer 40k one: orcs, tyrannids (think Alien but hordes of them), the Tau (sort of like the Borg), necrons (metal zombies), Chaos (basically Michael Moorcock’s demons from the Elric era of his writing transplanted into outer space). And, of course, the eldar – basically elves in space but with spiky guns rather than shiny swords. In fact, the only failing of the Warhammer 40k universe is its unrelenting grimness – it’s really a world of wonders, only no one seems to have realised it yet!

One of the tropes of the universe that I particularly like is how it riffs on aspects of Tridentine Catholicism to inform the human world – for Imperium think Magisterium. Not least among the parallels is the Inquisition and, since you never expect the Space Inquisition, it has carte blanche to travel anywhere in this future, whereas other parts of the Imperium are more restricted. The Inquisitors even deal with alien species, which is just what Inquisitor Bronislaw Czevak does here: he travels the webways of the eldar (a tube system to the stars, but with fewer delays and no copies of Metro blowing on the line). So if, like me, you find the Warhammer 40k universe a place of wonder rather than just an arena for blasting aliens into alien gore, then this is a particularly good effort from the Black Library. So I’ve rather contradicted what I said at the beginning: my guilty secret is guns and marvels, and you’ll find them here.

 

Adventures in Bookland: The Norman Conquest by Teresa Cole

1 December 2016
Edoardo
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Categories: Book review

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Even 950 years after the event, the Norman Conquest still provokes division. It seems all but impossible for a historian to approach it without, in the end, taking sides: Norman or Anglo-Saxon, William or Harold. In part this is because the near contemporary sources are almost all Norman – with the exceptions of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle and, intriguingly, the Bayeux Tapestry – and thus require interrogation. That the Normans, alongside their skill in castle building, were also early masters of the dark art of spin is pretty clear: the question remains, how much was spun?

Teresa Cole firmly takes the Anglo-Saxon cause. She sets the Conquest in the context of the previous century of history, starting with the accession to the throne of England, by the foullest of means, of England’s worst-ever king, Æthelred. Gifted a settled, ordered country by the labours of Alfred the Great and his successors, Æthelred squandered it all, pouring the country’s wealth away in a futile attempt to buy off Viking armies. Finding the country such a cash cow, the Vikings decided to stay and, in 1016, England was conquered, by Cnut.

If there is any one person to blame for the Conquest, that man is Æthelred. A competent, even a less cowardly, king would have been able to face down the Viking threat. But Cnut had set the precedent and when, fifty years later, Edward the Confessor died without an obvious heir, the beasts began to prowl. England had been taken once; it might be taken again.

Cole does a fine job of leading the reader through the events of 1066. In hindsight, whoever you might favour, it’s clear that luck played the greatest part in that bloody series of events. But, of course, for the people of the time, it was not luck, but God’s will. That William should essay such an invasion without a clear belief that God, indeed, willed it seems incredible in the context of the time. His victory, eventually, confirmed it for his contemporaries. Although in reaching this conclusion they forgot Augustine’s dictum that God hates evil but permits it. Deus non vult.

Adventures in Bookland: Matilda by Roald Dahl

23 November 2016
Edoardo
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Staying for the weekend with some friends, I picked this book off the (children’s) shelf for something to read – then promptly dropped from social intercourse for the next three hours. Where, I thought when reading this, was Matilda when I was growing up? Were my parents – decent and loving though they are – guilty of the same sort of neglect as Matilda’s by failing to provide me with books like this when growing up.

Then I saw when the book was published. 1988. Ah. Just a tad past my childhood.

That explains things. Roald Dahl seems to have been around forever, but I don’t remember anything by him in the libraries when I was growing up – apart from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, maybe. But, being a child who found eating a chore (it took away valuable reading time as I wasn’t allowed to read at the table), the premise of the book never attracted me and nor did its follow up, James and the Giant Peach (see the consistent theme?). What I do remember is the tarot cards and the sub-James Bond dancing woman, and the music, of Roald Dahl’s Tales of the Unexpected on TV.

For a child who was somewhat wary of the adult world, the Tales of the Unexpected suggested that I might find some unexpected adult things in Roald Dahl’s books, so that was another reason to avoid them. As it turns out, I need not have worried – but I do think that modern-day writers for children, always so keen to expose their readers to the ‘real world’, might bear in mind my trepidation: children know perfectly well there’s all sorts of strange and icky things in the adult world and, really, they’d rather not read about them in their own books. And Roald Dahl had the good sense not to put them in – while still viewing the adult world with all the innocent scorn and righteous indignation of the child.

Matilda is a great book. I am glad to have read it.

Adventures in Bookland: Dynasty by Tom Holland

20 November 2016
Edoardo
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The title is not coincidental. House of Caesar: House of Carrington.

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Politics as show business: show business as politics. Turns out, the lessons of the past have been read by a previously unsuspected classicist:

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Give the public a show: the essence of the new politics. But in his book, Tom Holland examines the first proponents of show business rule: the house of Caesar. Certainly, Caesar himself, with his games and books and careful eye to the crowds; not so much Octavian, the persuader emperor, the shadow hider who convinced Rome that it was still a republic even as he folded all power around his person like a classical toga; nor Tiberius, the emperor of anguish, trapped in life and death between power and principle; but with Caligula and Nero (and to a lesser extent Claudius) the politics of show reach a zenith that no one else is ever likely to match. So, if current political developments fill you with dread, study this witty and zestful book for the reassurance of history. Things can always be worse – much worse.

 

 

Adventures in Bookland: Amazing Spider-Man: Peter Parker – the One and Only

16 November 2016
Edoardo
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Categories: Book review

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Comics, and specifically Marvel Comics, filled my life when I was young – or they did so far as I was able to get hold of them. This was the 1970s: pre-internet, pre distribution networks, pre globalised content providers. It was no easy task finding Marvel Comics in a north London suburb. There was the Marvel British imprint, which reprinted the American originals in a weekly black-and-white format and which was my first exposure to Marvel comics, but of the American colour monthlies, there was often no sign. From visiting the newspaper shops around me – there were a lot more them then, before the internet decimated print – I found one or two that occasionally stocked original Marvel comics. Some of these had been minimally rebranded for the British market – their price was in pence rather than cents (which should give you an idea of how much prices have increased) – but some were available in the exotic dollar format. These were the ones I prized, with their stamp-sized label affirming that they were:

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By Source, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=2089313

I could never tell which comics would come in on any given month, which made my collection rather haphazard, but Spider-Man was one of the most regular and the adventures of Peter Parker – geeky, science obsessed, shy – became mine because I was also geeky, science obsessed and shy.

But, slowly, comics slipped into the past.

Only for me to find, many years later, that comics have come round again and those people who grew up with are busy rediscovering them, while children seeing the Marvel and DC films are absorbing the comic book universes without even, necessarily, reading any comics.

So, I thought I’d take a read backwards. Nowadays, the easiest way to do so is via the book size reissues of a collection of comics, but I’ve found those frustrating. For some reason, Marvel and DC both have a tendency to publish part of a multi-part story, only for the book to finish before the story does. Is this to make readers buy the next part? For my part, this reader finds the practice annoying and, rather than buying the continuation, it puts me off going anywhere near the story again. So it was good to find, in this collection of Spider-Man stories, a number of complete, self-contained stories that didn’t go anywhere, that didn’t want to do anything other than to tell a good story and finish it off. And they did. The issue by thriller writer David Morrell was particularly good.

Adventures in Bookland: Through the Eye of a Needle by Peter Brown

15 November 2016
Edoardo
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This is the book for which the word ‘magisterial’ was coined. Except… Except magisterial, to my ear at least, now carries some undertones of something worthy and a little dull, and Peter Brown is never, ever dull. Never, not through 700 odd pages. And this is a view, with all the clarity of a pin-hole camera, of a an odd age indeed: when Roman antiquity was struggling into the middle ages, the Empire kicking and struggling and, above all, money gathering against the dawning of the light. The subtitle gives the subject: wealth, the fall of Rome and the making of Christianity in the West, 350-550 AD, but gives no hint of the wealth and wit of the insights within. You want strange new worlds: read this book. What’s particularly interesting – and an unspoken rejoinder to Gibbon’s thesis – is how even an officially Christian Empire remained, at its tax gathering, money raising heart, determinedly, stubbornly pagan. This is history at its best. Even if the subject doesn’t grab you, read it, for Peter Brown’s ability to bring the past and its people and cultures to life is without peer.

Adventures in Bookland: Ecgfrith, King of the Northumbrians, High King of Britain by NJ Higham

24 October 2016
Edoardo
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Categories: Book review, History

517twmhyeqlProfessor NJ Higham is probably (no, definitely) the foremost academic expert of the history of the kingdom of Northumbria. (In one of those peculiar coincidences, he is Emeritus professor of History at the University of Manchester but, just to cause confusion, the University of Manchester has another eminent professor who is also called NJ Higham – and Nicholas is the Christian name for both of them. The other NJ Higham is the Richardson Professor of Applied Mathematics.)

So imagine my delight when, reading Professor Higham’s latest book, I found…me! Yes, I was referenced and footnoted, and not just once but multiple times. It turns out that the great man has read the book on the history and archaeology of Northumbria that I co-wrote with Paul Gething, the director of the Bamburgh Research Project, the ongoing archaeological investigation of the castle and its surroundings. Turning to the back of the book, not only is Northumbria: the Lost Kingdom in the bibliography, but so are Edwin: High King of Britain and Oswald: Return of the King!

All I can say is that I wish this book had come out before I began writing the Northumbrian Thrones. It is quite the most rigorous and thorough treatment of the kings of Northumbria’s ascent to dominance, and the perfect foil to Max Adams’ book The King in the North. Where Adams treatment is poetic and anthropological, pursuing the limited evidence by recourse to cultural parallels even if they are far removed (an approach that suggests much that is intriguing but one that establishes very little), Professor Higham’s book is much more restrained, not seeking to push the evidence beyond what we know but, by bringing a lifetime of scholarship to bear, Professor Higham extracts every last bit of inference from what we do know, creating the fullest possible picture of the kingdom of Northumbria in its heyday. Indeed, for the period of Northumbrian dominance, this book is now the definnitive work, overtaking Professor Higham’s own magisterial The Kingdom of Northumbria AD350-1100.