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.)

NewCon Press, 2024, 298 p. Reviewed for ParSec 11.

In his first novel Gambino gives us space opera of a fairly traditional type, though shorn of big interstellar battles. Nevertheless, fans of the form will likely lap it up.

Via the kind of wormhole known as a Reality Interstitial Paradox, RIP, humanity has spread across the galaxy but is restricted to a certain volume of space beyond which trips cannot be made. There is evidence that a previous space faring civilisation known as the Firsts deliberately blocked off expansion beyond this, possibly to prevent whatever their nemesis was from affecting any subsequent culture which evolved to expand into space. Legend surrounding an alien spacecraft known as the Derelict suggests that an artefact from those First times was retrieved from it by the expedition which found it.

At the book’s start our protagonist, Breel, is working breaking up scrapped spaceships on the Beach, a more or less desolate plain on a minor planet called Hope. She is plagued by her sexually predatory boss and other workers trying to deny her the salvage rights that are her due. A confrontation leads to her being sacked – though she was on the point of quitting anyway.

Winding down alone in the pub before she goes home to tell her (step)father, Falian, the news, she is approached by Matt Harken-Court, a spaceship owner, whose interest she at first misinterprets. During an intrusion by proselytisers of the Church of Second Light, each marked by a distinctive white circle round one eye, Harken-Court vanishes. On her way home, in an alleyway, Breel rescues him from an extremely violent encounter with hired thugs. When it comes to it Breel is no shrinking violet.

She takes Matt home to clean him up but his questioning of her stepfather reveals that Falian, a survivor of the encounter with the Derelict, had indeed brought something back from there, a detail which Breel had not known about up till then. Their examination of the artefact is interrupted by agents of the Church, Matt and she have to flee with it, chased by an augment, whom they with great difficulty finally manage to shake off, while Breel’s childhood home is destroyed, Falian presumably with it.

Orphaned and disorientated, examining her life in this new context, Breel agrees to go along on Matt’s ship, the Scavenger, which is crewed by Ellyella, Matt’s longtime associate, the Deacon, a renegade priest, and Kaemon, another refugee from the Church. Scavenger is piloted by Cross, a symbiont who can interface with the ship’s controls and through it sense everything which it does, across all wavelengths of light. The Deacon apparently knows the coordinates of an RIP which would give access to space beyond the boundary, something which the Church would dearly love to find in order to precipitate the Coming of Light and the salvation of true believers. The Deacon and Matt have plans to block that RIP instead, in case what lies beyond is inimical.

During the first stage of the trip, to a hub known as All-Points for its many RIP connections, Cross introduces Breel to the ship’s symbiont interface, with which she has a natural affinity, while the Deacon notices her unnaturally quick healing abilities. At All-Points, Matt’s meeting with fellow Church opponents and Ellyella’s, Cross’s and Breel’s R&R while the ship undergoes necessary repairs are cut brutally short by a Church invasion from which they barely escape, though Cross was deliberately assassinated. It is left to Breel to fly the ship, though she has to overcome resistance to the idea. After doing so strange patterns appear on her skin.

In the meantime and subsequently, some chapters dwell on the Church’s head, the Emissary, a charismatic and hypnotic individual, who started off cynical but came to see the light and rose rapidly through Church ranks. Life on worlds saved by the Church is harsh, restrictive and far from woman friendly as is evidenced by Church soldiers on All-Points using the term breeder as a form of abuse.

More adventures ensue before the ship, pursued by the Church and the Emissary himself, reaches its destination RIP, and the final confrontation. During these Breel finds out the truth about her nature and origins via a message her mother left in the artefact.

This is all good space-operatic stuff, if sometimes a bit heavy on explanation of acronyms and information dumping, with the occasional dose of visceral violence.

The following did not appear in the published review.

Pedant’s corner:- “dust …. like the waves of a particulate sea” (seas made of water are actually particulate as well, only the particles are very much smaller,) “mechanics grated” (these were parts of machines, not people; ‘mechanisms grated’,) “two story building” (two storey,) “temperatures of 40c” (40C,) “that could comfortably fit a billion suns’ inside it” (no need for the apostrophe.) “‘That the murder you talking about?’” (you’re talking about,) meters (innumerable times, metres,) “a visitors eyes” (visitor’s,) “the crushed stories” (storeys,) “potential problems of any addiction, an addiction,” (only ‘an addiction’ not in addition ‘any addiction’ needed.) “‘I could give a Deshi-damn for any of it’” (I couldn’t give,) “on my resume” (in my resume.) “Breel eyes widened” (Breel’s eyes,) “adapting to the dark.- It” (has an extraneous dash.) “New Haven” (elsewhere always Blue Haven,) “but Emissaries soul” (Emissary’s.) “‘Don’t thank me, Breeder,’ He snarled” (either full stop after Breeder or ‘he’ before ‘snarled’,) a missing comma before a piece of direct speech, “‘playing us for fools, girl.’ the armed man growled” (comma, not a full stop, after girl,) “to find something anything to hold onto,” (to find something, anything, to hold onto,”) Amaris’ (Amaris’s – as elsewhere,) hanger (several times; hangar,) “pleasures of flesh” (pleasures of the flesh,) “believe Deacons’ evidence” (Deacon’s,) CO2 (CO₂,) “inertia sling-shot the Scavenger away from Hygot” (slung-shot?) “as shocked las the rest of us” (as the rest of us.) “Now her father had died” (this was about something that happened years ago; that ‘NowC is inappropriate,) “to the Deacons tests” (Deacon’s.) “‘Aw, come on ‘Deac’” (no need for the apostrophe before Deac,) gasses (gases,) “mother load” (mother lode.) “‘He said Brokers a dick’” (Broker’s.) “‘I’m Sorry Riva’” (no capital needed on Sorry,) “beyond anyones experience” (anyone’s,) Sarcophagus (in the middle of a sentence, therefore ‘sarcophagus’.) “It’s engines were” (Its engines.) “‘It had to the Firsts, right?” (It had to be the Firsts. And elsewhere Firsts is usually italicised.) “‘as we approach the transit.’ The Deacon supplied” (as we approach the transit,’ the Deacon replied.) “‘Look here.’ Breel said” (Look here,’ Breel said,) “‘along with everyone else’” (along with everyone else’s,) “‘of full disclosure we, should go through everyones room’” (no comma required; and ‘everyone’s room’.) “‘Who’s going to do it,’ Kaemon demanded” (should be a question mark, not a full stop, after ‘it’.) “‘You sure about this, Matt,’ Breel said” (question mark, not a comma, after ‘Matt’,) “clothing draws” (drawers,) “paused crouched and pulled a trunk out” (paused, crouched and…,) “the Emissaries fleet” (Emissary’s.) “ ‘Just what is it you think we can do, Breel?’ The Deacon asked” (‘… we can do Breel?’ the Deacon asked,) “a shout of fear anger and frustration” (a shout of fear, anger and frustration.) “The Emissaries preferred method” (The Emissary’s,) Rip (elsewhere always RIP,) “on the one hand the room the Deacon and Ellyella” (on the one hand the room, the Deacon and Ellyella,) “by creating a damn” (creating a dam,) “if a small build up of energy might arrived at that collection” (might arrive.) “The whole drama was playing out silence” (… playing out in silence,) “By nowHarken-Court and his companion reached the far side if the chasm. rendered in harsh chiaroscuro by the troopcarrier lights” (… Harken-Court and his companion had reached the far side if the chasm, rendered in harsh chiaroscuro by the troopcarrier lights,) “the Scavenger” (the Scavenger,) “the troopcarriers cabin” (troopcarrier’s,) “revealed in, the Scavenger’s outer hull” (revealed in the Scavenger’s outer hull,) “‘he is not to disturbed’” (not to be disturbed.) In About the Author; “the peak district” (the Peak District.)

Gollancz, 2024, 474 p. Reviewed for ParSec 11.

Aila Macbhairan has been besotted with exotic birds, in particular the Silimalo phoenix, since she was eight years old. Now, having been through zoo college, she is, along with other responsibilities, the keeper of the Silimalo phoenix at San Tamculo zoo, which specialises in magical animals. The Silimalo is critically endangered but her zoo’s breeding facilities have been in abeyance for over ten years and the exhibit houses only one specimen, a female called Rubra.

Aila’s other main charges are an archibird, somewhat unimaginatively dubbed Archie, a kind of superannuated magpie, with an eye for shiny objects and whose spit is a superglue for metals, and, oddly, (birds and sea creatures tend to be somewhat different,) the zoo’s kelpie, Maisie, a carnivorous aquatic horse usually wreathed in mists.

Aila is socially awkward, tongue-tied in public, shy of contact with others, but can be voluble when she is talking about phoenixes. The only people with whom she feels at ease are her parents, who encouraged her youthful enthusiasm, and her friend Tanya, the girl with whom she shared a room at college, who always took her for who she was and now looks after the zoo’s Bix phoenix.

Others of the zoo’s employees are the impossibly accomplished, perfectly groomed Luciana, with whom Aila shares a dislike having its origins at college, which Luciana seemed to breeze through with effortless grace and who puts on the zoo’s popular show starring her peacock griffins, while the “gorgeous” Connor looks after its diamondback – and other – dragons.

Aila’s main trouble is her interest in and concern for animals overrides any she might have for humans. I note, though, that she shows no distress for the mice Luciana feeds to her griffins or the goat carcases the kelpie is fed. It seems empathy can only go so far. But, of course, these animals have to eat.

Plot kicks in when a break-in at Jewelport Zoo in the South Coast area of Movas sees its recently hatched phoenixes stolen without trace. Within hours Aila has emailed the directorate of the International Magical Wildlife Service, in charge of the phoenix breeding programme, to put forward San Tamculo as the ideal site for the transfer of Jewelport’s remaining male phoenix. There follow anxious times waiting and preparing for the IMWS inspection, the further wait for its decision and the inevitable (without it there would be no story) arrival of that male, Carmesi.

Minor plot tension comes from whether the pairing of Rubra and Carmesi will be successful and if any chicks hatched will be safe from theft but there is also a gradual development of both Luciana’s and Aila’s characters.

So far so fine, if not particularly remarkable, and it is pleasing to read a fantasy eschewing the default mediaeval setting, but on the level of the writing there are some reservations.

The planet this is set on is clearly not Earth and there is no mention of it being a colony world yet the people are referred to as humans. While the planet’s geography is sketched out in terms of its different climates, and the zoo (map provided just before chapter one) has exhibits from the various regions, Kenkaila, Vjar, Fen, Ziclexia, Ozokia, the creatures depicted – vanishing ducks perhaps aside – are not noticeably magical, as opposed to Earth-mythical, unicorns and dragons for example. It does come across as odd, though, that among all this fancifulness the vegetation – olives, cypress, eucalyptus and so on – is not exotic, characters’ names, Connor, Tanya, Teddy, Patricia, Tom etc, are profoundly quotidian, and the societal trappings here, mobile phones, an internet, live camera feeds, would not be out of place in the twenty-first century of the reader. MacLean’s inventiveness has clearly gone into what she considers to be the interesting aspects of her story, including cod illustrated zoo information plaques for the Silimalo phoenix, the archibird and the peacock griffin, but this lack of attention to incidentals nags at suspension of disbelief. (Or is this asking too much of a debut novelist?)

There is a problem, too, with pacing, most of the background information has been front-loaded rather than drip-fed through the book. To be fair, though, the information MacLean has let us know about her creatures and the compounds in which they are held comes into play in the dénouement, in which Aila is faced with a pair of (rather cartoonish) villains along with their insider accomplice.

There is overuse, too, of unconvincing, invented minor expletives – horns and fangs, skies and seas – (despite usages of the f-word occurring elsewhere,) and expressions like “scrunched her nose,” plus a plethora of raised or rocketed up eyebrows, with MacLean’s treatment of sexual matters being coy to the point of sub-adolescence. (If this is supposed to be a YA book there is no hint of that in the accompanying blurbs.)

MacLean’s writing here is undemanding, doubtless targeted at her intended audience – who will most likely take to it. There is a place for simple entertainment after all. There is a story here but for me it is too overdosed with persiflage. Once MacLean has found the resolve to kill her darlings she may well come up with something a little more absorbing.

The following did not appear in the published review.

Pedant’s corner:- pegasi (this plural of ‘pegasus’ looks odd but then so does ‘pegasuses’,) “the perceptive mink” (minx?) “Teddy had an inch of height on her – unfair, both her tall parents passing on the lamest genetics” (has MacLean not heard of regression to the mean?) “an merlion” (a merlion – unless merlion is pronounced in a very unusual way,) “lights shined” (lights shone,) “from griffin show” (from the griffin show,) “a silver poof” (pouffe.) “Not teachers telling her” (this was in a list of sentences beginning with ‘No’. So. ‘No teachers telling her’,) “like a baton in a championship foot race” (like a baton in a relay race,) Movas’ (Movas’s,) “to get her feathers laying right” (lying right.) “She brought up her legs up” (only one ‘up’ necessary,) “the sweet of mango lingered on the air” (the sweet smell of mango,) “on rare occasion” (on rare occasions,) “laying low” (lying low.)

NewCon Press, 2024, 128 p (including 1 p Introduction by Tade Thompson, 2 p In Memoriam (of Nick Wood,) 1 p About the Authors, 2 p Genesis of the Pantheon, 3 p Interview with Tade Thompson, 3 p Building Super-Heroes and 3 p The Last Word on the Pantheon. Illustrated by Tade Thompson. Reviewed for ParSec 11.

This book is in part an In Memoriam for Nick Wood, who died in 2023. So it goes. Fellow author Thompson and he had an admiration for African superheroes of the 1970s like South Africa’s Mighty Man and Nigeria’s Power Man (who are name-checked in the story.) Together they wrote The Last Pantheon as a kind of homage and it was published in the collection AfroSFv2. Thompson’s Introduction here says this edition was more how they first imagined it would be, a short and sharp illustrated book wearing Silver Age bona fides on its sleeve. The illustrations were provided by Thompson himself, in his words a motivated amateur artist.

The story features Black Power (now using the name Sipho Cele) and Pan-African (Tope Adedoyin.) Though Pan-African refers to Black Power as brother they have been antagonists at various times over the years since they fled to Earth on a spaceship a very long time ago. Black Power can fly and move very quickly, Pan-African levitates, can read minds (and sometimes influence them) and is surrounded by a limited force-field. As the meat of the story unfolds their past is outlined in memories and flashbacks in one of which Black Power wonders at his anatomical and DNA similarities with humans. The story the book tells ranges over how they intervened (or failed to) at important moments in, mostly recent, African history – the deaths of Patrice Lumumba, Dag Hammarskjöld and Murtala Mohammed, the Sharpeville massacre – but also encounters with Shaka Zulu and a certain primate in 15,000 BP.

Black Power has always been on the side of law and order and Pan-African more or less the opposite. The last time they had clashed, the atmosphere over the Sahara was so disturbed it began to snow. In the aftermath Pan-African turned himself in. At this story’s start he is being released from prison after serving his time. Soon he is on a TV programme phone-in being interviewed by journalist Elizabeth Kokoro to explain his career choice. Black Power comes on the line. The ensuing conversation reveals their antipathies. Kokoro (who it’s later revealed has an extremely expensive brain implant connecting her directly to the internet) is amused by their verbal sparring but is then startled by Pan-African telling her the old comics featuring Black Power were propaganda, funded by the CIA and dosed with chemicals that may have been mind-altering. (Asides such as this help to provide an oblique critique of colonialism and its effects.) The interview, though, has laid the groundwork for the superheroes to meet in a televised last battle.

The novel has many grace notes, including a knowing nod to The Incredible Hulk, but, oddly, a scene near the end where Pan-African meets a pair called Nick Wood and Tade Thompson who are to write the graphic novel of the last encounter. A meta-fictional step too far?

For fans of superheroes there are plenty scenes of the pair demonstrating their powers but the structure and treatment, the characterisation, will also gratify appreciators of more literary virtues.

The illustrations are not (as Thompson warned us) up to comic standards, but neither are they crude.

I doubt anyone reading The Last Pantheon will have any cause for complaint.

The following did not appear in the published review.

Pedant’s corner:- Thompson’s In Memoriam of Wood is attributed to “Tade Thomson” (Tade Thompson,) “both victims and perpetuators” (x2, perpetrators,) low lives (usually lowlifes,) Jonnie Walker (it was whisky, so, Johnnie Walker.) “She wore shorts and burdened under a backpack” (She wore shorts and was burdened … ?) “Once the settled in a price” (Once they settled on,) staunching (stanching,) a missing full stop. “‘Thembeka, some back!’” (‘come back’ makes more sense,) “ a twelve miles journey” (a twelve mile journey,) “onto the stationery boy” (stationary,) “a chair in the next table” (at the next table,) Thendeka (several times, but elsewhere usually spelled Thembeka,) a line break after two thirds of the line, “the corpses ragged head and body wounds” (corpses’,) “where the chances for collateral damage was less” (where the chances … were less,) “far side of he hall” (of the hall.) “He out a cowhide covered shaft” (He pulled out a …,) bonafides (bona fides,) Addidas (Adidas,) “knew his presence has been marked” (had been marked.) In ‘About the Authors’; “in ddition to” (in addition to.) In ‘Building Super-heroes’; “is being control of” (is being in control of) “the character’s and their supporting cast” (characters.)

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.

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.)

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.

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.)