Solaris, 2023, 339 p.   Reviewed for ParSec 12.

This is a collection of fiction of mostly fantasy stories, perhaps in keeping with Nordic traditions but there is a sprinkling of Science Fiction. They are split almost equally between translations and stories which first appeared in English, though they do contain a surprising number of Scottish terms. None of them would appear out of place in any speculative fiction anthology though, in most, character or place names display their provenance.

The book’s contents are ordered by the authors’ countries of origin.

Sweden:

She by John Ajvide Lindqvist, translated by Marlaine Delargy from the Swedish, Hon, has an epigram from Nathan Wahlqvist to the effect that “a haunting is dependent on a series of highly unlikely coincidences,” and so inherently rare. This tale of the haunting of a house newly built on the site of an older one relies on the facts that the owners, a couple trying to embark on parenthood, sourced its materials on the cheap and the grandfather of one of them had done wrong in the past.

Lost and Found by Maria Haskins, translated from the original, Vindspår, by the author tells of the mental disintegration of the survivor of a crashed escape pod from a ship surveying exoplanets for possible terraforming. Or was there really something out there?

Sing by Karen Tidbeck is set on a planet whose human inhabitants are strangely affected by the rising and setting of the system’s moons. Most can sing when a particular moon is up but our narrator can’t. She is also physically impaired and hence not fully part of the society. A visitor finds the planet’s parasitic ecosystem strange and is shocked by the method through which the singing is acquired.

Denmark:

The False Fisherman by Kaspar Colling Nielsen, translated from the Danish Den falske fisher by Olivia Lasky, concerns a man who did not take up fishing till he was over forty but nevertheless gets himself all the correct gear. He never catches anything (apart from one whopper.) This story could quite easily be read as having no speculative content at all – except for perhaps one sentence.

Heather Country by Jakob Drud is set in a world after what is always referred to as the impact, in a Jutland run by the NeuroClan a pair of whose investigators (both mortgaged to the Clan’s system of debt of body parts) stumble across a threat to the production of fuel from the local genetically modified heather.

The Traveller Girl by Lene Kaaberbøl, translated from the original, Rakkerstøsen, by the author, again has only a tangential relationship to the speculative. A man hoping to inherit land by marrying the landowner’s daughter is startled by the humanity he finds in the gypsy girl he encounters one day. Her group comes there so that their horses’ foals may be born on land that confers on them strength, sturdiness and speed.

The Faroe Islands:

The Abyss by Rakel Helmsdahl, translated from the Faroese, Dýpið, by Marita Thomsen, as a story, seems to be a metaphor for Limbo as our narrator climbs up and down and traverses across a never-ending series of iron bars too rigid and close-set to pass through, before deciding to fall into the abyss of the title and further adventures.

Iceland:

The Dreamgiver by Johann Thorsson. A child’s nightmares are relieved by a dreamcatcher hung up by her bedroom door. One night when our narrator, the child’s mother, carries out the daily task of emptying it she is startled by the Dreamgiver, who is not best pleased that his dreams are being discarded.

Hamraborg Babylon by Alexander Dan Vilhjálmson. Translated from the Icelandic Sódóma Hamraborg by Quentin Bates.

This Hamraborg is a tower dominating its city, Kópavogur. A woman penetrates its nightmarish depths in search of her brother. The story doesn’t quite deliver on the promise of its first two pages.

Norway:

As You Wish by Tor Åge Bringsværd. Translated from the Norwegian Som du Vil by Olivia Lasky. Brageson works in Mine-Blue 4 on the planet Nova Thule where the company provides all its workers with an idunn. Created from local crystalline sources these are not-quite-android simulacra of women with a highly developed sense of imitation. Their signature question is, “How do you want me?” –  a question which haunts Brageson as he struggles to accept his idunn’s presence in his life.

The Cormorant by Tone Almhell has more than a few similarities to Scottish Folk Tales. Not surprising really, given the same harsh northern climate, the salience of fishing as a means of earning a living and the overbearing presence of the sea. The story sets its stall out early when the narrator says she is a cormorant and if she spreads out her wings death will follow. She has been brought up without her father, who had mysterious origins anyway, and lives with her secretive mother on an island across a stretch of sea from the town of Grip. The townspeople view both her and her mother with suspicion. Possibly with good reason.

The Day Jonas Shadowed His Dad by Thore Hansen. Translated by Olivia Lasky. Jonas, whose mother has died, is intrigued by the vagueness with which his father describes his work, so decides one day to follow him. In a cottage in the woods he descends into a tunnel which leads to somewhere brighter and, to Jonas, more intriguing. Overall, though, this is a little underwhelming to regular readers of SF and Fantasy.

A Lion Roars in Longyearbyen by Margrét Helgadóttir. Global warming and migration have led to Longyearbyen becoming a destination city for its December light festival. One of the (unheard number of two) lions in its zoo – thought to be the last actually born in the wild – has gone from its cage. In the midwinter darkness a human hunter preparess to stalk it.

Finland:

A Bird Does Not Sing Because It Has an Answer by Johanna Sinisalo. A human monitors an extremely slow moving avatar suit overseeing the nesting site of a pair of (by now incredibly rare) flycatchers while not being supposed to intervene in natural processes. In the meantime, Central’s coordinating AI is decoding the meanings of birdsong. The story’s last word is devastatingly apposite.

Elegy for a Young Elk by Hannu Rajaniemi. In a world where most humans have disappeared into some sort of upload heaven, once and would-be poet Kosonen roams the woods with his talking bear Otso. Both like booze. He is visited by an avatar of his former wife who wants him to retrieve an object which fell into a firewalled city dominated by plague gods. Their lost son also happens to be in there.

The Wings that Slice the Sky by Emmi Itäranta. Translated from the Finnish Taivasta silpovat sivet by the author. Judging by the Author’s Note this seems to be a take on the Finnish epic Kalevala. Louhi, a woman with magical powers, marries into the well to do family which lives in Pohjola in the north. One day she rescues a shipwrecked man from the south and nurses him back to health. In return for a horse to take him back south she asks for a Sampo, a device which will ensure Pohjola will never again want for anything. The bargain is also to include one of her daughters. He sends a blacksmith to forge the Sampo but he in turn spreads the fact of Pohjola’s existence and soon many visitors arrive. Men being men – even (especially?) with magical powers – things don’t end well.

The following did not appear in the published review.

Pedant’s corner:- some of the translations are into USian. Otherwise; Fin (Finn.) “None of these alternatives were appealing” (‘None …. was appealing’ and, strictly, there can be only two alternatives, not three,) “hockey cards” (being set in Sweden these would more likely be ‘ice hockey cards’,) Janosz’ (Janosz’s,) laying (x 2, lying,) “a wee bit of sarcasm” (a wee bit? The author must have spent time in Scotland.) “None of them were armed” (None … was armed.) “The only movement along its streets were those of plastic bags and battered tin cans” (The only movement … was …,) “to such a prophesy” (prophecy,) smothes (smooths,) Douglas’ (Douglas’s,) “the less electromagnetic emissions the better” (the fewer … emissions the better.) “She sat down …and swung its legs” (either, ‘It sat down …and swung its legs’ or, She sat down …and swung her legs’,) sprung (sprang.)

Vintage, 2005, 242 p, plus xii p Introduction by Susan Sontag. Translated from the Icelandic Kristnihald Undir Jökli (Helgafell, Reykjavík, 1968) by Magnus Magnusson. First published in English as Christianity at Glacier (Helgafell, Reykjavík, 1972.)

In her introduction – which, as is usually the best approach with them, ought to be left until after reading the text – Susan Sontag states that novels that proceed largely through dialogue, or are relentlessly jocular or didactic, those whose characters do little but muse to themselves or debate with someone else, or are initiated into secret knowledge, those with characters having supernatural qualities or contain imaginary geography are – despite the long history of the picaresque tale and the many classic stories which exemplify these things – considered innovative, ultra-literary or bizarre, and are given labels to signify their outlier status

Science fiction

Tale, fable, allegory

Philosophical novel

Dream novel

Visionary novel

Literature of fantasy

Wisdom lit

Spoof

Sexual turn-on

and that “convention dictates we slot many of the last centuries’ perdurable literary achievements into one or another of them.” She concludes that thought with, “The only novel I know that fits into all of them is Under the Glacier.”

Our unnamed narrator has been tasked by the Bishop of Reykjavík to journey to the Snæfells glacier to investigate the situation there, where the local pastor Jón Jónsson, known as Prímus (he fixes stoves,) has taken no salary for twenty years. There are rumours the church has been boarded up, the pastor is living with a woman not his wife and he has allowed a corpse to be interred in the glacier.

This is the same glacier to which Jules Verne sent his adventurers under the influence of Árni Saknússemm and the leadership of Professor Lidenbrock to start their journey to the centre of the Earth. Laxness implicitly critiques Verne’s piece of cultural appropriation. The locals at Snæfells do consider the spot to be the world’s centre and have little consideration for the outside world.

The text is in the form of the emissary’s report and during it he only ever refers to himself as the undersigned or the Emissary of the Bishop, soon shortened to Embi. Dialogue is laid out as if in the text of a play and without punctuation otherwise.

Embi, the undersigned, is confused by life at Snæfells. None of his interlocutors seems to give him a straight answer, they talk to him as if he is the bishop and generally are only obliquely forthcoming.

His attitude is that, “‘I was just sent here like any other ass to make inquiries about things that don’t concern me at all and that I don’t care about at all.’”

There is a fair amount of philosophising. A shepherd called Saknússemm II tells Embi, “Of all the creatures that man kills for his amusement there is only one that he kills out of hatred – other men. Man hates nothing so much as himself.”

Pastor Jón says, “‘History is always entirely different to what has happened….. The greater the care with which you explain a fact, the more nonsensical a fable you fish out of the chaos….. The difference between a novelist and a historian is this: that the former tells lies deliberately and for the fun of it; the historian tells lies in his simplicity and imagines he is telling the truth.’”

Dr Godman Sýngmann has a robust take on religion, “‘The Christians without ceremony stole from the Jews their national literature and added to it a piece of Greek overtime work they call the New Testament, which is mostly a distortion of the Old Testament, and, what’s more, an anti-Semitic book. My motto is, leave the Jews alone. Those who deck themselves out in stolen gods are not viable.’”

Embi is particularly baffled by the information that Sýngmann (when he dies) has four widows but was not a bigamist.

In a diversion on skuas the narrator indulges in a little meta-textual teasing. “All birds fly better than aeroplanes if they can fly at all. All birds are perhaps a little wrong, because an absolute once-and-for-all formula for a bird has never been found, just as all novels are bad because the correct formula for a novel has never been found.”

At one point we are told that Prince Polo biscuits are the only gastronomical delicacy that Icelanders have allowed themselves since they became a wealthy nation.

A woman named Úa, who may be the pastor’s wife (or may not,) turns up. She has travelled the world and is of the opinion that “‘Americans are children. Children believe in guns and gunmen. One hundred forty-seven gunshots in children’s television a week. In children’s films there have to be child murders.’” She spends her time knitting sea-mittens as she thinks the world requires them.

She also says, “‘In our society the rules about love are made either by castrated men or impotent greybeards who lived in caves and ate moss-campion roots.’”

Under the Glacier has no plot as such, the concepts discussed within it are sometimes abstruse, the conclusion is illusory.

It is utterly memorable.

Pedant’s corner:- In her Introduction Susan Sontag slightly mischaracterises Science Fiction as always featuring a male protagonist. That is certainly no longer true and wasn’t in 2004 when she wrote it. Dr Godman Syngmann (in the text it’s Sýngmann,) La Vie de Henry Brulard (it’s La Vie de Henri Brulard.) Otherwise; “All birds are perhaps a little wrong” (All birds is perhaps a little wrong?)

Polygon, 2022, 112 p

On a cold December night in Edinburgh in 1591 Geillis Duncan awaits execution in the morning for the crime of witchcraft. She is visited in spirit by Iris, a woman from our own time, who calls herself a time traveller and a modern-day witch.

Historically 1591 was the height of the hysteria against witches encapsulated by James VI’s Daemonologie and Geillis Duncan was one of the victims of the North Berwick witch trials.

The scenario gives Fagan the platform to outline the misogyny behind the witch hunts and its prevalence today.

In the conversations between Geillis and Iris the question arises, “How does he” (the King) “fight the Devil?” The answer? “Via teenage girls. Doesn’t everyone?” The rationale back then being, “We go after the Devil via womb-bearers – they are weak for him.” So the targets were women. Women who were alone, or tall, or ugly, or smart; women who inherited, sassy women, women who were healers. If a woman doesn’t exalt men always she is a threat, “a Demon whore, a witch.”

Despite all her efforts to be polite, docile and unthreatening, not to draw attention to herself, still Geillis was picked on: primarily since she was handy, a servant in the household of a man called Seaton but also suspect because, “I helped women birth, I helped calves, I knew the right herbs to cure a headache.” Seaton was jealous of the fact that his sister-in-law, Euphame, had inherited her father’s estate and wanted a legal reason to eliminate her so Geillis was tortured and abused to implicate Euphame and others.

Fagan has her characters try to explain misogyny. Geillis says, “We bring life from our bodies where before there was nothing,” – that being a kind of magic – and Iris tells her, “Men want to know how they got trapped on Earth,” but the real crime is that, “There is no man on this Earth who didn’t get here except by a woman parting her thighs.”

Apart from the conceit of Iris time travelling Fagan’s tendency to indulge the fantastical sees Iris during the night begin to grow feathers and eventually turn into a crow.

Though Geillis’s prior suffering is never in doubt the set up allows Fagan to treat the witch trials almost indirectly but nevertheless underline that misogyny is ever with us.

This is another of Birlinn’s Darkland Tales (see here) and again was borrowed from the local library by the good lady.

Pedant’s corner:- lightening (lightning,) “filed into a tea-room” (in 1591?) “the thing I had that shined” (shone,) a priest comes to hear her confess at the last (a priest? In Reformation Scotland?) the priest uses a pencil to sign in to the jail (suitable graphite for this purpose was discovered in 1560 so it’s possible; but pencils as such would not, I suspect, have been widely available, a scratchy pen is more likely,) smoothes (smooths,) okay (in 1591?) ditto teenage.

Earthlight, 2001, 516 p plus 2p Map and 6 p Dramatis Personae.

The third instalment in Turtledove’s Darkness sequence (see here and here) where a version of the European campaigns of the Second World War is carried out in a world where magic is real and used as weapons of war, with unicorns, behemoths, dragons and leviathans taking the places of the mechanical devices of our world, sticks fire beams of sorcerous energy and similarly charged eggs are fired as projectiles or dropped from the sky.

Comparisons are easy to identify. In this book the Kingdom of Algarve’s soldiers’ advance on the city of Sulingen on the Wolter river only to get bogged down in a battle of attrition mirrors the Battle of Stalingrad, various behind the lines activities correspond to those of partisans, the mathematical and practical experiments of the mages of Lagoas and Kuusamo ape the Manhattan project. The Holocaust is not yet quite paralleled, but the Kaunians (hated by Algarvians and other nationalities here – though not by all concerned) are corralled into ghettos (or at least one such) but as yet not extermination camps, though some are being killed en masse to provide sorcerous energy for military advantage.

This has the same weaknesses as previous instalments; characters tend to the two dimensional, there is repetition of information and of characters’ thoughts, the prose is resolutely pedestrian and the misogyny of nearly all the male characters remains stark.

But it’s Turtledove. No point in expecting more.

Pedant’s corner:- “by Colonel Broumidis’ beasts” (Broumidis’s,) “King Tsavellas’ men” (Tsavellas’s,) “showing Lagoas’ jack” (Lagoas’s; all names here ending in s were not given an apostrophe s) “Merovec’s men” (Mezentio’s men,) “lèse majesty” (lèse majesté.)  “‘I hadn’t know that’” (known that,) “centered on camels and all the ways it could be cooked” (centred on camel (meat) and all the ways.) “A gust of wing sprang up” (gust of wind.) “As a matter of face, he wasn’t sure …” (As a matter of fact,) “‘who haven’t got the ballocks for that’” (bollocks,) “land crawling up over the edge of the world to mar the smooth horizon between land and sea” (between sea and sky,) “the marchioness’ friend” (marchioness’s.) “The women gave back her garments” (there was only one woman.)

19 this year; 12 by men 7 by women, 4 with an SF/fantasy tinge (5 if you count Beloved,) 1 non-fiction, 1 fictionalised memoir. Not in any order; apart from of reading.

News of the Dead by James Robertson

The Gift of Rain by Tan Twan Eng

Tomorrow by Chris Beckett

Purple Hibiscus by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe

Landmarks by Robert McFarlane

Toby’s Room by Pat Barker

Independent People by Halldór Laxness

Confessions by Jaume Cabré

Sparks of Bright Matter by Leeanne O’Donnell

Navola by Paolo Bacigalupi

The Forty Rules of Love by Elif Shafak

Star of the Sea by Joseph O’Connor

Human Croquet by Kate Atkinson

Lizard Tails by Juan Marsé

Creatures of Passage by Morowa Yejidé

Xstabeth by David Keenan

Borges and Me by Jay Parini

Beloved by Toni Morrison (review to appear here soon.)

I don’t normally do this year summation thing before Christmas (it offends my sensibilities to do such a thing before the full time span has elapsed) but in this case I don’t think I’ll be adding to the total before New Year.

I seem to have read 26 Scottish books so far this year (the definition of Scottish is loose;) 13 by women and 13 by men. Four were Science Fiction, Fantasy or Fable, two collections of shorter fiction, one was poetry and one was a fictionalised memoir. The links below are to my reviews of those books.

World Out of Mind by J T McIntosh

News of the Dead by James Robertson 

The Little Snake by A L Kennedy 

Love and Zen in the Outer Hebrides by Kevin MacNeil

Shrines of Gaiety by Kate Atkinson

The Second Cut by Louise Welsh

Young Mungo by Douglas Stuart

Things We Say in the Dark by Kirsty Logan

Solution Three by Naomi Mitchison

Not to Disturb by Muriel Spark

Dust on the Paw by Robin Jenkins

The Disorderly Knights by Dorothy Dunnett

Queen of Clouds by Neil Williamson

Kitchenly 434 by Alan Warner

An Apple From a Tree by Margaret Elphinstone

Human Croquet by Kate Atkinson

Squeaky Clean by Callum McSorley

The Hothouse by the East River by Muriel Spark

The Other Side of Stone by Linda Cracknell

To the Dogs by Louise Welsh

The Changeling by Robin Jenkins

Aunt Bel by Guy McCrone

Conquest by Nina Allan

Xstabeth by David Keenan

Borges and Me by Jay Parini  

The Silver Bough by Neil Gunn  (review to be posted here soon.)

Head of Zeus, 2024, 567 p.  Reviewed for ParSec 11.

A lot of fantasy takes as its societal template a mediæval setting, with kings, nobles, church, and so on clearly based on the feudal model. Very few, if any, have employed a late mediæval background based on the Italian city states. That, though, is what Bacigalupi has opted for here: a refreshing choice, and one which offers plenty of scope for intrigue and skullduggery, not to mention vendetta.

The family central to this story, though, is not descended from nobility. For three generations the di Regulai have built up their banking business in the city of Navola, using their money to thwart the encroachment of the nearby Empire of Cheroux on the city. That bank now has branches in every land with which Navola trades, its power and worth dependent on the bedrock of financial stability – not its gold but its promises. By its ever-growing influence through the years, its head, narrator Davico de Regulai’s father Davonico, is the de facto leader of Navola, its nominal ruler, the Callarino, sidelined, the ancient nobility’s domination of the forum of government, the Callendra, diminished, with rights granted to the ordinary people known as the vianomae.

The tone in which the book is written could easily be mistaken for a work of historical fiction, albeit history disguised, were it not for the fact that we start with a fossilised dragon’s eye. An eye with feather-like but sharp-edged tendril-like nerve remnants, an eye which sits on Davonico’s desk and draws attention to itself, seeming to follow you about the room with its gaze. Davico feels the eye’s power, and that of the dragon consciousness within it.

As the only heir to the di Regulai house Davico is being trained in the essence of banking, the art of governance, the necessity for faccioscuro – explained here as hidden face (though the apposite term in English would be poker face) – as opposed to clear face, facciochiaro. Faccioscuro is the signature trait of the Navolese whose rivals say, “‘The minds of the Navolese are as twisted as the plaits of their women’s hair.’” This is exemplified in the card game cartalegge, which requires a high degree of deception for a player to win. Davonico’s fixer and spymaster, the stilettotorre, Cazzeta, is an adept, as is Davico’s adopted “sister” Celia, taken in by Davonico when he disgraced and exiled her family, the di Basculi, to bring her up as if she were a di Regulai.

Unfortunately Davico has too open a heart to be able to dissemble much, is too burdened with conscience to accept without qualms the occasional need for harsh measures. Celia has a much keener appreciation of the ways of this world. Due to its constraints a woman has to be so much more aware than a man. Fiaccioscuro, she says, is “the weapon of the woman. The sharpest weapon a woman can wield.”

We see Davico’s growth from boy to man, his initial confusion over the feelings puberty invokes in him, his unease at the constant need to play his part in the game of life, all against the backdrop of intrigue, realpolitik and his father’s plans for him and Celia both. The dragon’s eye fades into the background somewhat until Davico’s naming day, when an attack on his life forces him, Celia and Cazzeta to use the secret passage behind his father’s library. Davico’s affinity with the dragon and its perceptions save their lives, but there are still twists to come.

This is an environment in which paranoia is justified. Even with eyes in the back of your head you might still not see danger approach. Fortunes can turn on an instant, loyalties suddenly evaporate. As one character reflects, “We are all flotsam in the maelstrom. To swim at all is triumph.” With the aid of the dragon’s eye Davico learns to swim. But it costs him.

In Navola, Bacigalupi has constructed a detailed image of a cut-throat world which would not be at all comfortable to live in. It is a very good novel indeed.

The following did not appear in the published review.

Pedant’s corner:- “I had seen thieves hung” (hanged,) another instance of ‘hung’ for ‘hanged’, “she lay down the black castello” (laid down.) “‘Trust is a vice a women can ill afford’” (either ‘a woman’ or just ‘women’,) “her her” (only one ‘her’ needed,) a missing comma before a piece of direct speech, another missing at the end of one. “There was a collected intake of breath” (‘collective intake’ is the more usual phrasing,) “that our family, who was so deeply tied to Navola” (our family, which was so deeply tied,) octopi (the singular is not Latinate so; octopuses, or – in the extreme – octopodes.)

Eriu, 2024, 314 p, plus 2 p Author’s Note and 2 p Acknowledgements. Reviewed for ParSec 11.

Sometimes a book just hits the spot, the reader can tell from the first paragraph – even the first sentence – whether the author is one to follow trustingly, whether her book will appeal. Word choices, sentence construction, details of description and subject matter all come into this but the sense of an author in control of her story, doling out information sparingly but tellingly, leading the reader on and in, is more important. Sparks of Bright Matter had me from that first paragraph.

O’Donnell has taken as a starting point here the last true alchemist, Peter Woulfe, and let her novelistic imagination run. Her story of his life, told in a compelling present tense, begins in the London of 1780 before ranging back at various points to Woulfe’s younger days as an apprentice to Mr Sweetnam in 1744, his late childhood in 1739 in Mount Gabriel, Cork, Ireland, and his infancy in 1726. O’Donnell’s Woulfe is an avid believer in the goal of alchemy and its divine trappings but his search for the Elixir is doomed to failure by “want of piety and charitable acts.”

O’Donnell has Woulfe born in Ireland 1726 as a sickly child, helped to survive by the local folk healer, Bridey Leary, a woman with secrets of her own and with whom as an older child Woulfe has a wary friendship.

In 1780, frustrated by his assistant, Mal Burkiss, not keeping his furnaces warm enough he throws the lump of quartz he was holding at the lad and seems to kill him, necessitating the bringing in of Robert Perle to dispose of the body, giving the latter a hold over him. Unbeknownst to Woulfe, and possibly Perle, the boy, however, is not dead and is found naked in the street and revived by Sukie Bulmer, a woman who now collects dog shit from London’s thoroughfares to sell to the tanneries. The pair form an unusual partnership as Burkiss has healing powers and Sukie acts as his procurer, a double act suspect to the authorities.

Back in 1744 Woulfe was tasked by Sweetnam with delivering a mysterious book, the Mutus Liber, to a Baron Swedenborg, but in his efforts he is delayed by an encounter with a streetwalker and misplaces the book. In perhaps a coincidence too far that woman is a much younger Sukie Bulmer who then sets about trying to sell the book, eventually coming to the shop of pawnbroker Shapsel Nicodemus Stein, whose wife Katia she beguiles. The failed delivery of the Mutus Liber is a problem for Sweetnam – and therefore Woulfe – as concealed in its spine was a communication between plotting Jacobites. Many authors would have made this strand their book’s focus, it is 1744 after all, rebellious undertakings are afoot, but to O’Donnell it is merely incidental. Such worldly matters are not Woulfe’s concern. However, the contents of the book are.

In the Mutus Liber Woulfe discerns “a complex, sacred procedure, not evident to the uninitiated, not laid out clear and simple for anyone to understand,” but with time, with work, with prayer, all there to be understood, along with “how the processes, the combination of the materials, the grinding, the careful combining, the firing, the sparks of bright matter will bring his soul closer to God.” Later he realises, “This book demonstrates how to purify and make order out of chaos. How to put things back as they should be.” A life’s work, then. “Surely,” he thinks, “there is something true and beautiful underneath all this chaos … something golden and good that can emerge when things are put in the right order, when the right method is applied, when the divine energy is channelled?”

The book teems with well-drawn characters, Sukie Bulmer when troubled escapes to roofs, Burkiss treats a howling young girl with uncontrollable movements (and whose father has questionable motives,) Shapsel Nicodemus is considerate and fair but also wary, his wife Katia astounded at her response to Sukie, Sweetnam is full of repressed anger, Bridey Leary treads the line between being accepted or persecuted.

Full of gritty detail about Georgian London, street toughs, bawdy encounters and an incident set during the Gordon riots of 1780, the writing is nevertheless tinged with an air of weirdness, of things unseen, never quite delineated, never explicit, ending with Woulfe’s vision on his return to Ireland of a group of young women attending cattle on their journey up to their summer pastures – something that had ceased twenty years before.

Though there are occasional acts of violence in O’Donnell’s story fans of action-packed adventure will need to look elsewhere. For those of a more philosophical bent, interested in character interaction and reflection, Sparks of Bright Matter does the job to a tee.

The following did not appear in the published review.

Pedant’s corner:- “of the most discrete kind” (context demands ‘of the most discreet kind’; ie  ‘unobtrusive’, and definitely not ‘separate’.) “He is sure than the young man’s presence” (sure that the young man’s presence,) “laughter of crowd” (of the crowd,) “he crosses to the hearth clears the charred wood” (ought to have a comma after hearth.) “There are a host of characters portrayed” (There is a host…,) a missing comma before a piece of direct speech, “the dark brown aureole of her nipple (dark brown areola of her nipple.) “He nods at the man the brown coat” (the man in the brown coat,) “carrying Peter bulging satchel” (Peter’s,) “none of the men spare her a second glance” (none of the men spares her a …,) “to dwell on over much” (overmuch,) “eats only a very little of mutton chop” (of the mutton chop,) “sometimes awkward his mouth” (awkward in his mouth,) “taping the compass” (tapping,) spaces missing either side of a dash. “He is not just a boy. He is man” (He is a man,) “four hours, sleep a night” (no comma needed between hours and sleep,) “in a glass tubes” (‘in a glass tube’ or ‘in glass tubes’,) “says in shaky voice” (in a shaky voice,) “that has fallen a from a height” (no ‘a’ after fallen,) “as tight as drum” (as a drum,) “none of the people in the book labour alone” (none of the people … labours alone,) “building to a consuming crescendo” (building to a consuming climax,) “feeling a tightness his in lower back” (a tightness in his lower back,) “the sounds of thousand man and women” (of a thousand,) “the gate way” (gateway.)

Jacaranda, 2021, 310 p, including 2 p Map.

I was attracted to this by its cover which reminded me of the Trylon and Perisphere at the New York World’s Fair of 1939-40 but having now read it there’s nothing in the book which links to that at all.

It is set in 1977 in a fantasy area called Anacostia whose geography actually corresponds to part of Washington DC. Many of the references are to contemporaneous places in our world to which in most respects Anacostia corresponds. However, it is surrounded by the various Kingdoms of Delaware, Maryland and Virginia so clearly not our world.

Nephthys Kinwell drives a Plymouth round town as a kind of taxi service where she just seems to turn up where- and whenever she is needed. Every so often the text mentions the white girl in the boot (Yejidé uses the term trunk) thumping on the tyre or otherwise making a noise. The girl is a ghost. A pointer to the fact that strange happenings are in store is that Nephthys’s domestic life is plagued by the mysterious moving of bottles and other objects.

Nephthys was a conjoined twin and where they were separated she and her brother Osiris both have/had a half finger which sometimes glows but Osiris died in the local river some while ago; thought to have been killed by a shark due to the teeth marks on his body.

His daughter Amber is the author of the lottery, a newspaper column which predicts odd deaths and other occurrences. On his sojourns to the river Amber’s son Dash sees and converses with someone he calls the River Man. A schoolmate witnessed him there apparently talking to no-one and goads him about it. His response gets him in trouble.

Dash also is concerned by an act of molestation he thinks he saw committed by his school caretaker, Mercy Ratchet, on a girl in his class. Ratchet of course has a long history of such acts including on Rosetta, another viewpoint character, whose life’s trajectory he precipitated, as his was by his own experiences at the hands of a priest.

Osiris exists in the book’s main timeline as a ghost, though flashbacks show how he actually died. His travels in the realm of the dead, his name and that of Nephthys reflect ancient Egyptian mythology and the book’s five sections are titled according to the five ways creatures of passage die: moving through spaces; staying in one place; resigning life to another; surrendering one’s life; entering the void.

The writing style is fluid but often non-standard, frequently omitting commas in lists, “Where signs omens bones transpired in infinite ways and indefinite outcomes …… Each hour was a day year decade,” the continued (over?)use of the phrase “Many years later” perhaps meant to invoke Gabriel García Márquez. A flavour of the novel’s interests lies in the invocation of the Conundrum of Three, where the mind sought the memory of a body long gone, and the body withdrew from the mind and the spirit, and the spirit chased the echo of the other two.

There is a lot going on here, some of which I may have missed as my knowledge of Egyptian myth is sketchy but Yejidé brings all the strands together. Creatures of Passage‘s portrayal of the humans involved, their flaws and dilemmas is convincing. Though it looks at life from an odd angle it is one that illuminates.

Pedant’s corner:- “boys hung in jail cells” (hanged,) “found a remnant of indigo cloth that their mother had made in her closet” (to avoid ambiguity this is better phrased as ‘found in her closet a remnant of indigo cloth that their mother had made’,)

Plus points for areolae and for the subscripts in C₁₆H₁₄N₂O.

Earthlight, 2001, 596 p, plus 5 p Dramatis Personae and 2 p Map.

With Harry Turtledove you know what you’re going to get. No-nonsense utilitarian prose. An episodic narrative seen from many points of view. Actions telegraphed long before they happen. Reminders of information previously revealed (in that respect it’s as if Turtledove may himself have needed reminding.) Characters not acting for or as themselves but there simply to make a point or progress the plot. Not great literature certainly, perhaps not even literature at all.

And yet somehow it doesn’t seem to matter. His grand sweep carries you along. Even when his inspiration is ridiculously obvious – as it is here in an allegory of our Second World War, with the Kingdom of Algarve standing in for Germany as the baddies and its main opponent, the Kingdom of Unkerlant, a Soviet Union analogue; still baddies (or at least its ruthless ruler is,) as was true in our 1940s. There is no true counterpart to the US however, the other countries here (all political entities in this scenario are Kingdoms) are all too small – and none parallel the British Empire either.

The feature of this series, an exotic flourish, is the fantastic elements; ley lines, dragons, unicorns, behemoths, leviathans, magic; all pressed into military service. Apart from that the war follows a familiar pattern.

In this episode the hitherto always victorious Algarvians are held before the Unkerlant capital, Cottbus; the magical equivalent of the Manhattan Project trundles on slowly in this world’s southern regions; Kaunians are already suffering the early stages of a Holocaust, being herded into ghettos, transported to the front to be killed so that mages can use their deaths to unleash sorcerous energies on the enemy; and it seems as if one of the characters may be destined to become a counterpart of Anne Frank – though I admit her prior experiences have been fairly different.

Sourcing cinnabar, a mineral necessary for dragons to breathe fire, is being set up to be the main Algarvian military objective of the next book, precursorily promising a battle to emulate Stalingrad.

This society of Turtledove’s is, however, almost relentlessly sexist and misogynistic.

Pedant’s corner:- “Pantilo swept off his heat” (his hat,) “for Brivibas’ sake” (Brivibas’s. Most names and words ending in ‘s’ here are treated by Turtledove as if they were plural rather than singular,) Unkerlanter (used several times when Unkerlant was meant,) “the eastern back of the stream” (bank of the stream,) “he hadn’t know” (hadn’t known,) “because he obviously did not care about what happened to the Kaunians” (the character thought the opposite; ‘he obviously cared about what happened to the Kaunians’,) “hauled him to the feet” (to his feet,) “making certain she’d not a spy” (she’s not a spy.) “Hearing Kaunian spoke inside the Algarvian Ministry” (Hearing Kaunian spoken inside…) “Even the Forthweg would have been better off if King Penda hadn’t gone to war” (that sentence doesn’t make sense in the context,) “now they kept spring into his head all unbidden” (they kept springing,) “who know no more than he did” (who knew no more,) “had proclaimed him his cousin Raniero King of Grelz” (had proclaimed his cousin,) “a teamster might have envied” (these societies do not have teamsters,) “They know what happened to a village” (They knew what happened to.) “‘Nonsense, my dead,’ Siuntio said’” (‘Nonsense, my dear’.) “But no: Now his name was on the list” (a colon is not usually followed by a capital letter,) receiving more than a curtsy from some of the, but that” (from some of them, but that,) “a couple of more soldiers” (no need for that ‘of’,) “‘were farther from Trapani than we are from Cottbus’” (we’re farther from,) “might try to settle a score that had simmered, unavenged but forgotten, for half a dozen generations” (context demands ‘unavenged but unforgotten’,) “towards the other Algarvians” (there was only one other Algarvian.) “The soldiers would have known nothing” (again there was only one,) “seeing more or you” (more of you,) “it was narrow, twisting, altogether, unpaved” (ought not to have that comma between altogether and unpaved,) “even the women who yelled” (the woman.)