ParSec 12 is due for release this Friday, 8th November. By my count there will be six of my reviews in this edition.

Lake of Darkness by Adam Roberts

Nordic Visions. The best of Nordic speculative fiction edited by Margrét Helgadóttir

Laughs in Space edited by Donna Scott

Birdwatching at the End of the World by G W Dexter

Darkome by Hannu Rajaniemi

and Strange Beasts by Susan J Morris.

Two books arrived last week for me. I was away over the weekend and so didn’t get round to noting them here until now.

They are Strange Beasts by Susan J Morris and The Queen by Nick Cutter, both writers new to me.

The cover of The Queen says, “Bestselling author of The Troop.” I looked that up and it was published in 2014 and was followed by four (and a half, co-written with Andrew F Sullivan) more since. Nick Cutter is a pseudonym of Craig Davidson.

These books are of course for review in ParSec.

Hodderscape, 2024, 296 p. £16.99. Reviewed for ParSec 10.

Welcome to the Grand Abeona Hotel, a once (and still) luxury spacefaring hotel, now a little down on its luck but still presenting a sumptuous face to the universe. Curtis tells us it has ‘class.’ Well, maybe, but as described it has – for 2774 – a decidedly (but deliberate) retro aesthetic, a restrained colour palette, an analogue appearance. Internal communication is by printed paper slips sent in sealed tubes through hydraulic glass pipes. It even has an old-style cinema (which hosts The Shit Movie Club.)

Its manager in 2814, Carl, blagged his way onto the hotel forty years earlier by pretending to be a porter/bell boy. Its 2774 manager Nina took him on and he has worked his way up. Absorbing waifs and strays – or inadvertent stay-ons – seems to be the hotel’s only recruitment policy as this is how Daphne – who bears an echo of the second Mrs De Winter in that she was in service to a domineering employer (but was sent back to retrieve a forgotten muff not aware she was on the last shuttle out) – comes on board. A measure of her diffidence is that Daphne speaks in a s-s-stutter. Back in the day the Abeona used to roam the galaxy almost at random but since Nina’s retirement its schedule has become more regular.

Background information and commentary are vouchsafed to us through intermittent ‘dispatches’ from someone known as The Lamplighter. Through these we discover the political system in this corner of the universe is exploitative. Various planets are systematically stripped of their resources, the workers on these worlds exposed to a harsh existence and left with little to themselves at the end. All this is overseen by a seemingly immortal Emperor, the Great Patrician, against whom the Lamplighter rails in his missives, disseminating descriptions of the Empire as decadent, stagnant, over-stretched, propped up by propaganda and the toil of the workers, and – worse – providing salacious intimate details about the Emperor, suggesting his longevity is merely through the creation of a succession of clones whose heads lie pickled on a shelf somewhere in the Imperial Palace. By decree, all thoughts of life forms outside ‘the Pyramid of Consciousness’ (at the top of which are humans and whose supreme pinnacle is of course the Emperor) are “Absurd, Anti-intellectual and Not allowed.”

Is Curtis perhaps being a little unimaginative here? Emperors and Empires have been a bit passé in SF for some considerable while, after all. And yet they do seem to be making something of a comeback (though under other designations) in the world where her book will be read. I also wondered about the economics of such a travelling resort, we are given no information about such mundanities beyond the fact that maintenance is most likely being skimped.

Successive chapters focus on events occurring to individuals on the ship, mostly hotel workers but with the odd passenger/guest added in – with a potted biography provided for every one of them.

Someone is sending poems, specifically sonnets, and Shakespearean ones at that, to various recipients but this strand seems to be a bit of a red herring and soon peters out.

The Shit Movie Club meets once a week and its present offer is an “over-acted, badly written, glitzy, teeth-rotting affair of the highest order” called Friends from Beyond and is of course a violation of the Pyramid of Consciousness. The staff love it.

A minor strand deals with the Problem Solvers’ Conference held on the hotel, whose attendees have been given a message to decode. Linguist Professor Azad and maths whizz Ooly Mall (a mathemagician) are drawn as one of the pairs to try to solve the puzzle. Their findings trouble them.

The main plot revolves around the identity of the Lamplighter. His, or her, dispatches used to be sent from chance locations but now are seemingly on a steady rota. As a result, agents of the Emperor have come to suspect he, or she, travels on the ship. They are ruthless in their investigations.

There is no dazzling new concept here, no innovation – the story is set in a hotel after all, the events could occur in any similar establishment (or cruise ship) – no deep insight into the human condition, but Curtis writes well enough, though her characters can be broadly brushed. It’s not meant to be anything more than entertainment (which that world in which it will be read certainly sorely needs) but in that it succeeds.

The following did not appear in the published review.

Pedant’s corner:- “when he arrived into the lobby” (when he arrived in the lobby.) “‘Aviary law states’” (last time I checked an aviary was for birds. Whatever else it is the Grand Abeona is not a bird. ‘Aviation law’ will not do. ‘Space law’? ‘Interplanetary law’?) “rose to a fresh crescendo” (No, no, no. The crescendo is the rise, not its peak,) “outside of” (just ‘outside,’ no ‘of’,) “the hoi polloi” (I know people misuse the phrase in this way but ‘hoi’ actually means ‘the’ so this reads as ‘the the polloi’.) “‘Who’s language is it?’” (Whose language is it?) “hung a pair of necklaces, either sides of a waxing crescent and waning gibbous, becoming on occasion a whole full moon as they overlapped” (the ‘either’ is odd, ‘moon’ ought to follow gibbous, and the image conjured up actually makes no sense; how can a pair of necklaces resemble both a crescent and a gibbous moon? The geometry is wrong,) Ralf (previously Ralph,) “didn’t ordain to respond” (didn’t deign to respond.) “He was knelt up on the seat” (He was kneeling up on the seat,) “the throw blanket folded neatly on” (just ‘a throw folded neatly on’.) “There were around the half a dozen people still in the running” (There were around half a dozen people…,) “the mesh underside of the catwalk” (not ‘of’, and it ought to simply be ‘the mesh of the catwalk’,) an unindented new paragraph, “a truckload of idiotic aristocrats set to work” (a truckload … sets to work,) “Ephraim relished in the rules” (Ephraim relished the rules,) “bearing down on the Uwade” (bearing down on Uwade,) “his sock draw” (sock drawer,) “same with the trouser draw” (trouser drawer,) “a place to lay low” (to lie low. Annoyingly, ‘lie low’ was used later,) “reached a painful crescendo” (no: ‘reached a painful climax’,) “that clunk-hiss of decompressing air” (it’s not air that escapes when you open a drinks can, it’s CO₂,) “vocal chords” (vocal cords,) “the sense he was sat beside her” (sitting, or, seated.)

Hot off the presses and to be read for ParSec, come Birdwatching at the End of the World by G W Dexter – a post-apocalypse novel with a twist – and Darkome by Hannu Rajaniemi, seemingly another post-apocalypse novel this time in a world of multiple pandemics where an implantable mRNA vaccine factory will protect you from new viruses.

The twist in Birdwatching at the End of the World is that the survivors are the pupils of a girls’ school located on an island. The pitch writes itself.

Hannu Rajaniemi I know. He used to be part of the same writers’ group as I was before his day job as a microbiological researcher took him to the USA. His expertise in the field will doubtless lend authenticity to his story. I have reviewed several of his books already; here, here, here, and here.

NewCon Press, 2023, 239 p. Reviewed for ParSec 10.

This is the author’s first collection of short stories. Ten of them appeared in a variety of publications over the past five years, eight are original to this book. Each is provided with an authorial afterword. Some of these mention Cristofari’s French background and the latitude she gains as a writer from having two languages to draw on. She casts her net wide, with settings ranging from prehistory through to the present day and beyond. A common thread running through them is ecological collapse and possible recovery from it, in perhaps a sign of recent events some feature characters living in the aftermath of a pandemic.

A few are set in France, two even in Québec. Most succeed well but The Fishery, where “fishing boats” scour the universe for usable materials while avoiding inhabited worlds, has a central metaphor which is unfortunately stretched beyond breaking point. All have a firm focus on the humans at their heart and the dilemmas which they face.

The scenarios vary widely: a woman lives in a house with a window which gives onto other worlds so providing a means of escape, a couple try to evade an ongoing apocalypse on an otherwise deserted island, an intrusive cat in a care home seems to be a feline angel of death, a girl in post-Great War France talks to her never born brother to honour her non-French origins, a dangerous encounter on a mountain road ends in various ways, a witch has an uneasy pact with a hangman, another woman, with the help of the Moon, flies to Pluto in a plastic bottle to find her son who set out to search for his dead grandmother, a research scientist in a kind of steampunk fascist dictatorship secretly works against the regime, two children put a cat into a quantum bag in a glorious excuse for the author to deploy numerous cat puns (the least of which is is it alive or dead, and in which world?) An alien reports back to her planet from World’s End in Tierra Del Fuego, a museum caretaker converses with the (long dead) exhibits after hours, three travellers bearing gifts for a newborn trudge through a post-apocalyptic Québec winter, a stone-age woman finds a home outside her birth group despite the disfigurement inflicted on her to prevent it, a woman meant for sacrifice is surprised to find herself in the goddess’s world, a witch and a space-faring knight come to an accommodation after the battle they fought destroyed the world. The end can come in three ways, by wind, by flood, and by someone singing “My Bloody Valentine”, a group of archaeologists investigating the interior of the god who fell to Earth on the local mountain find an unusual treasure.

With the single exception mentioned above Cristofari handles all of them very well.

The following did not appear in the published review:-

Pedant’s corner:- “outside of” (just outside, no ‘of’,) “knowing fully well” (the phrase is ‘knowing full well’,) “that forced me to quiet” (to stillness,) “a thick handful of filaments were already drying on the windowsill” (a thick handful … was already,) “sank behind underwater buffs” (bluffs?) “Madame Darmon sit up” (sits up,) “Gaspard withdraw his paw” (withdraws,) “between oaks trees” (oak trees.) “Door and windows were open everywhere” (Doors and windows,) “the brand news dreadnoughts” (brand new,) “I will not baulk at any sacrifice” (balk.) “None of us have.” (None of us has,) a missing end quote mark, “as soon as the oil had ran out” (had run out.) “They dragged me until the edge of the woods” (dragged me to the edge of the woods,) “terrified that the he would ride away” (no need for the ‘the’,) “in disgust of our marred faces” (in disgust at our marred faces,) “the moon waxed and waned nine more time” (nine more times,) “on all four” (all fours,) fit (fitted.) “Its flower-fruit were turning” (was turning,) “precious guinea fowls” (the plural of guinea fowl is ‘guinea fowl’,) “always easier than thriving for a real solution” (striving for?)

The latest edition of ParSec magazine (no 11) is available for purchase. At £5.99. It’s a bargain.

This edition contains no less than five of my reviews.

The Last Pantheon by Tade Thompson and Nick Wood.

The Phoenix Keeper by S A MacLean.

Dark Shepherd by Fred Gambino.

Sparks of Bright Matter by Leeanne O’Donnell.

And, last but not least, Navola by Paolo Bacigalupi.

Those reviews will appear here after a decent interval.

Hard on the heels of me finishing Nordic Visions for review for ParSec along comes an anthology of (supposedly*) humorous SF works for my delight – or otherwise.

This is Laughs in Space edited by Donna Scott.

To be reviewed for ParSec 12.

*I say supposedly because in my experience humour and SF can be uncomfortable bedfellows.

We’ll see.

I happened to be in my local library the other day. The good lady and myself were looking at the new books section when she said, “What is speculative fiction?”

“SF and Fantasy,” I replied, “Why?” and she pointed out to me a book called Nordic Visions and subtitled The Best in Nordic Speculative Fiction edited by Margrét Helgadóttir.

As well as the editor herself I recognised the names of the three Finns who have contributed, Hannu Rajaniemi, Johanna Sinisalo and Emmi Itäranta (here and here.)

I of course borrowed it on the instant.

Despite its publication date of 2023 and any review of it not going to be timely I offered my review to Ian Whates at ParSec magazine.

He accepted and as a consequence the review will not be appearing on here for some time.

Yesterday, Lake of Darkness, the latest novel from Adam Roberts, was handed over by our postman.

Another one for review in ParSec.

Judging by the blurb it’s a murder mystery involving a black hole.

The cover you will notice features a spaceship.

That ship seems to be streamlined, more like a jet fighter in fact.

I wonder what atmosphere it would need to pass through to make streamlining necessary.

Head of Zeus, 2023, 309 p. Reviewed for ParSec 9.

The Yorkshire Moors make an ideal setting for tales of the uncanny. A thin place. Remote, wild, desolate, atmospheric, and above all, wuthering. A world beyond the world. It is easy to imagine strange goings on, mysterious creatures, ghosts, hidden menace, inhabiting the landscape. But we don’t have to. The Brontë sisters (well, Emily) already did. And now, so too has Tim Powers in a story whose central focus is on the Brontë family and Emily’s dog, Keeper, but also incorporates the author’s usual injections of weird. In particular here we have boggarts, gytrashes, barguests, (the latter two being essentially the same thing,) werewolves, a temple on the moors to the Roman goddess Minerva, double-bladed knives called dioscuri, an ancient creature with latent potency buried inside Haworth Church under a slab with an Ogham inscription. Not to mention clandestine human organisations known as the Oblique and the Huberti.

The prologue sees Branwell Brontë inveigling Emily and Anne along to a cave where they all leave smears of blood on the rocks. This acts as a primer for the subsequent plot, a debt to be called in. (I note again the prevalence of blood in these sorts of invocation.) Later, in his time in London, Branwell is bitten by a dog and more recently pricked by a dioscuri. Emily too has been bitten, though escaped the knife. But both are marked.

Their father Patrick’s great-grandfather, Hugh Brunty, had been on a boat crossing to Ireland when a child stowaway was found whom the crew said was a devil and wanted to throw overboard. Hugh saved the boy, who received the name Welsh (his believed origin,) and adopted him. Welsh was a spirit and possessed Hugh, and later his son, but in the next generation Patrick’s father resisted possession, and with the help of his dog killed Welsh’s body but not its spirit. When Patrick (now Brontë) came to England the spirit followed him. It is to keep any such demons at bay that Patrick fires his gun at Haworth Church every morning.

Emily’s embroilment comes when, near a ruin called Ponden Kirk, she saves a man named Alcuin Curzon from a werewolf. He is one of the Huberti, working to prevent the Oblique reuniting the two halves of their biune god (one half being Welsh and the other the thing under the slab.) Emily in this tale is the strongest of the Brontë siblings, and along with Keeper, whose ghost doppelgänger manifests itself when times are needful, is instrumental in the resolution.

Powers has form with incorporating literary figures in his work. Previous books of his have featured Lord Byron, the Rossettis, and William Ashbless, a poet of his own invention (with James Blaylock.) How much this convinces may depend on the reader’s knowledge of those characters’ backgrounds but in My Brother’s Keeper there is too little of the Brontës as Brontës. It could of course be argued that in the context of the story Powers had little room for this, but while mention is made of the sisters’ initial book of poetry, the manuscript of Wuthering Heights being at a publisher and Branwell’s tendency to see himself as his fictional creation Northangerland, only once do we see the sisters sit down to write. (Branwell’s attempts to do so are depicted as futile, counterproductive and tainted by possession.) That the sisters’ work exists is, however, essential to the way Powers resolves the story and he gives us a supernatural – and also literal – explanation for the disease then called consumption, which in real life was to take both Emily and Anne.

All that aside; as a fantasy the novel is gripping and very well written, as is customary with Powers. Certainly not a chore to read.

Pedant’s corner:- “an uncharacteristic howel” (howl,) “toward he parsonage” (the parsonage,) “in that that wilderness” (only one ‘that’ required,) “none of the Oblique order were very eager” (none … was eager,) “‘has strived’” (I’m sure Emily Brontë would have said ‘has striven’,) ditto “‘a different route than the one’”  (‘a different route from the one’,) “keeper had laid down beside her” (had lain down,) “off of” (it’s just ‘off’ no ‘of’,) “the paralysis had been had been some consequence” (no need for that second ‘had been’.) “‘Where’s your crows?’” (‘Where are your crows?’,) “straps on this shoulders” (on his shoulders,) specactles (spectacles,) metioned (mentioned,) “and laid down between their boots” (lay down.)