Gollancz, 2020, 360 p

This is a collection of the late author‘s shorter work culled from throughout his career. Each story is prefaced by a ‘Before’ section saying how it came to be written and an ‘After’ section describing how the writing went and where the story was published. Priest’s writing is always controlled and well executed. In general it tends towards a feeling of unease, as if something is lurking below the surface or what has seemed to be reality morphs into something else but here I was surprised by how much of the contents leaned towards horror.

The Head and the Hand. A man who had become famous through allowing himself to be mutilated is persuaded out of retirement for a final cut.

A Dying Fall relates the thoughts that flash through a man’s mind as he is falling in front of a subway train. They are of travelling on a motorway in Belgium and of the training course in parachute jumping/sky diving he took there.

I, Haruspex is, I assume, in the mould of H P Lovecraft. (Priest’s ‘Before’word says it was solicited by a games company wanting something based on that author’s Cthulhu Mythos but he had no familiarity with that at all – similarly I have not. The company, while paying, never used the story and Priest later found a home for it elsewhere.) Effective in its own way it is told in an old-fashioned language of stilted particularity that, for a first person narration, is curiously distanced (not to mention distancing) and overladen with exclamation marks. After consuming his special meals, narrator James Owsley, descendant of a long line of haruspices, can halt or reverse time for a while. Off the Great Hall of his home, Beckon Abbey, lies a hagioscope over a pit which loathsome things are seeking to escape. In a nearby bog a German bomber plane is held in slow suspension as it crashes after being shot down, even though this is 1936. Someone, not a member of its crew, waves to him from the impending wreck and a voice speaks in his head.

Like the author’s novel The Space Machine, written as an hommage to H G Wells, Palely Loitering, a tale of time travel and thwarted love, bears the influence of Edwardian fiction. Despite including space travel (the McGuffin here – called the Flux Channel – was built to help launch a starship on its way,) the story has a resolutely antique feel to it. Its atmosphere of picnics and bandstands, its social and family dynamics were distinctly retro even in the 1979 in which it was first published. After the starship left, three bridges were built across the Flux Channel. The one leading straight across is the ‘Today’ bridge, two others, built at slight angles to the Channel, lead respectively to ‘Yesterday’ or ‘Tomorrow’. Our narrator as a boy one day leapt off the end of the ‘Tomorrow’ bridge and found himself thirty-four years in the future, where a young woman is pointed out to him by a man who says she is waiting for her sweetheart. The reader can from then fill in the gaps but Priest’s execution of the story is impressive.

An Infinite Summer again bears Edwardian hallmarks – but then part of it is set in 1903 where Thomas Lloyd is on the point of proposing to his intended, Sarah, when he is frozen by a camera-like device wielded by someone from the future. The frozen tableaux which result from these capturings can not be seen by contemporary passers-by but only by the unfrozen and the travellers from the future. The effect on Thomas wears off only in 1935 when he is free to move around again but has to wait more years for Sarah to unfreeze. In 1940 he, and Sarah’s image, are caught in the aftermath of the shooting down of a German bomber. The image of one of the bomber’s German crew held in suspension above a river after being captured by a freezer is unforgettable. I note the similarities here between this incident and the one in I Haruspex.

The Ament* is the tale of a man who was once part of a project to film two children, one male and one female, every week, to document changes during their growth and beyond, but who in his adulthood has dreams of committing murder. But are they dreams? The story is told in two alternating voices, his and a third person viewpoint.

The Invisible Men are those (not all men) who are detailed by their USian masters to spy on a British Prime Minister who feels he has to resign due to a financial scandal. (His statement that, “It’s British tradition for a public figure to resign his position if caught in the wrong,” seems altogether quaint now, 50 years after first publication.) His observations of his surroundings on a clandestine meeting on the Norfolk coast with his USian partner – a co-leader of a UK seemingly on the brink of becoming the 51^st State – imbue the tale with a sense of foreboding.

The Stooge is employed by a stage illusionist to fake amazement at his tricks on being ‘randomly’ picked from his audience. The story’s title becomes doubly apposite.

In futouristic.co.uk a man responds to an email offering to sell him a time machine. It doesn’t work. For him.

Shooting an Episode presents the ultimate in reality TV, though it’s more like reality streaming. For its subjects no holds are barred. The trouble comes when our narrator has to go in amongst the participants to clean up their mess.

In The Sorting Out Melvina comes home late one night to find her door lying open having been forced. With increasing fear she moves through all her rooms, wondering if the man she has recently dumped has something to do with it, but a phone call reveals he is an hour away. Yet various of her books have been misplaced, their dust covers placed upside down, their normal, random arrangement systematised. One has been glued to a curtain.

In its ‘After’word Priest describes the gathering of books (which is what most readers do) as a kind of quiet madness. Well, all obsessions are. At least it’s a harmless madness.

*Amentia is the condition of feeble-mindedness or other general mental deficiency.

Pedant’s corner: Méliès’ (Méliès’s – especially since the final ‘s’ of Méliès is unsounded, thus demanding the apostrophe ‘s’ for its possessive,) maws (used for ‘mouth’; a maw is of course a stomach,) interlocuter (interlocutor,) aureole (areola,) Mrs Adams’ (Adams’s,) “more yachts were parked further away” (parked? Can you park a yacht?) “the king” (x 2, the King,) “the sort of problems the bank were concerned with” (the bank was concerned with,) soccer (football.)

Pushkin Vertigo, 2024, 405 p.

Alison McCoist has been all but shunned in Glasgow’s police after she made a mistake in believing the confession of a man called Knightley to the murder of a young pregnant woman. The real culprit remains at large and DI McCoist – who has enough on her plate already what with her name being similar to a well-known former footballer (‘I’ve heard all the jokes already’) and only seeing her twin children under access conditions at weekends – is as a result widely thought to be on the take.

In parental terms Davey Burnet is in the same boat as Alison. His estranged wife Sarah is seeking an order to prevent him seeing his four-year-old daughter Annalee. His job at Sean’s carwash does not pay well and he has problems with booze.

When Paul McGuinn turns up in an expensive car asking for it to be cleaned – of evidence of his extra-marital exploits – Davey and would-be law student Tim do too good a job. McGuinn keeps returning.

Meanwhile DI McCoist is working away in the background trying to redeem her reputation. Her attention is drawn to the carwash by a complaint from a female customer who left her child in the back seat to go shopping while her car was being cleaned and was subjected to abuse and threats by Sean when she came back.

One day Davey mistakes the date of his child access hearing and when reminded of it by his mother panics into taking McGuinn’s car to try to make it on time. He is blocked in on the way, and kidnapped. People out to get McGuinn – a local crime boss into trafficking, prostitution, and with a yen for violence – have made a mistake. As a harmless innocent they let Davey go and burn the car. But Davey’s error has delivered both himself and the carwash business as a whole into McGuinn’s hands. Soon all sorts of clean-up jobs, most of them grisly, fall Davey’s way.

There is a sticker on the front cover saying this won the McIlvanney Prize for Scottish Crime Novel of the Year. I thought it was all right, diverting enough but not especially notable in terms of crime fiction. It did have a strong sprinkling of Glaswegian dialect. For my taste there was too much violence but I suspect crime readers would not be displeased by that.

Oh, and despite the foregrounding of the detective in most of the commentary/reviews of Squeaky Clean I have seen this is actually Davey Burnet’s story not Alison McCoist’s.

Pedant’s corner:- on the back cover “half the Glasgow copshop think DI Alison McCoist is bent” (half the Glasgow copshop thinks ….,) bicky/bickies (biccy/biccies,) gyprock (several times. That building material’s proprietary name is Gyproc,) “next him” (next to him.) “Dannie’s Gibb’s body” (Dannie Gibbs’s,) sprung (sprang,) “dove in” (dived in,) “a twitching bag of ticks” (of tics,) epicentres (centres,) “pouring out a gash on her forehead” (pouring out of a gash,) staunch (stanch.)

Harper Perennial, 2005, 190 p. First published in 1989.

Father Angwin is a Roman Catholic priest in the remote parish of Fetherhoughton in 1956. There is a small convent affiliated to Angwin’s Church of St Thomas Aquinas. The convent and attached school is overseen by Mother Perpetua – called Purpit by just about everyone. She has a fierce grip both on the nuns and the children and a downer on just about everybody except the bishop. Her contempt is particularly strong for Irish people, which is bad news for Sister Philomena who as a consequence gets all the drudgerous jobs.

The bishop is a moderniser in favour of updating the mass by dropping Latin. Angwin, despite being a man who lost his faith years ago is against this, fearing his parishioners would stray. He tells the bishop his flock “aren’t Christians. These people are heathens and Catholics.” Without the statues and their superstitions they wouldn’t attend Church. The bishop, however, insists on the removal of most of the plaster statues of saints in the Church. Angwin’s only solution to this problem is to have the statues buried in the churchyard.

Soon after, a knock comes on the presbytery door. In walks Father Fludd, whom everyone assumes is the curate the bishop had promised/threatened. Fludd is a mysterious character who quickly manages to winkle out Angwin’s and Philomena’s reservations about their respective situations. In one of their conversations he tells Angwin, “‘Common sense has nothing to do with religion.’ It is on Philomena, though, that his influence is most profound.

Oddness and a hint of the supernatural accompany him. Though he drinks Angwin’s whisky, the level in the bottle does not seem to drop. He laments the congregation’s lack of appreciation of what they are saying in their responses – formaligh for foe malign, destrier for death’s dread. He is, he says, in the business of transformation. It is never spelled out as such, but the invitation is clearly there to see him as an incarnation of the Devil.

Fludd is a short novel, but says what it needs to – even if the treatment, a kind of distancing, an opacity (which reminded me a little of the writing of Muriel Spark,) renders it almost dream-like.

Aside: In a foreword, Mantel says the Catholic Church portrayed in this novel bears “some but not much resemblance” to the one in the real world.

Perhaps redolent of the times in which it is set it contains the dismissive phrase, “digging like an Irishman.”

Pedant’s corner:- medieval (mediæval, please, or at least mediaeval,) “the camphor smell of their Sunday clothes” (the smell of mothballs, presumably. Those were made of naphthalene, not camphor,) “alarum clock” (alarum is archaic,) “like genii let out of bottles” (like genies let out,) “Thomas à Beckett” (nowadays written ‘Thomas Becket’.) “‘I’m not afraid will they recognise me’” (I’m not afraid they will recognise me’.)

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?)

Earthlight, 1999, 595 p, plus ii p Map and vi p Dramatis Personae.

This is the usual Turtledove type of story-telling. An episodic narrative seen from many viewpoints; very similar to, indeed indistinguishable from, his Great War, American Empire and Settling Accounts series as well as his World War and Colonisation books. Only the setting here really differentiates it from those.

Unlike in those though everything is prefaced by a map. This world has seemingly only one major continent, Derlavai, though there is a counterpart to Antarctica to its south and a minor one to its northeast. Only the latter (plus a few scattered islands) is situated north of the planet’s equator. To the east of Derlavai is the Bothnian Ocean. This presumably goes all the way round the world to Derlavai’s west but there it is labelled on the map Bothian Ocean.

Magic or sorcery (both terms are used,) not technology, is the driving power in this world and there are frequent references to its governing rules of similarity and contagion. Since the discovery of ley lines from which power can be drawn (it’s not clear if this source is purely magical or if it derives from magnetism) travel has tended to follow those lines. Adding to the fantasy factor we have dragons, unicorns, behemoths, leviathans, and sticks firing energy beams. Rather than bombs, artillery fires eggs, also able to be dropped from dragons. Military units can be accompanied by mages. Beyond the range of ley lines magical energy needs to be procured by the sacrifice of human life. (Despite the exotic setting the people described are in effect humans – or as much as anyone in a Turtledove book can be said to be human.)

Dragons of course take the part of aeroplanes here, behemoths are in effect large rhinoceroses adapted and armoured for warfare, leviathans are counterparts of whales and take the role of submarines though with only one crew member. The unicorns are just glorified horses and don’t seem to have exotic uses. In amongst all this make-believe, names like Algarve, Cottbus and Ventspils do tend to break the spell a little.

Sometime in the past Derlavia was dominated by the Kaunian Empire. It was overthrown though, and now its successor realms of Unkerlant, Algarve, Forthweg, Valmiera, Jelgavia, Gyongyos, Lagaos and Kuusamo form various and variously shifting alliances. Each of these are monarchies with social hierarchies embedded in them. Ethnic groupings are frequently referred to in what amounts to racist terms, blonds, redheads etc. Those identified as of Kaunian descent are particularly disdained. There is also a high degree of sexism or outright misogyny in the way female characters are spoken about and treated by the male ones. Very few men here show any kind of respect towards them.

The story revolves around a war of revenge instigated by the Provinces of Algarve and Unkerlant but anyone with a passing interest in the Second World War (not as the back blurb has it, the First World War) or who has read Turtledove’s ‘Settling Accounts’ trilogy can spot resemblances and the tactical and strategic manœuvres to come. There even promises to be, in further instalments, a magical equivalent of the Manhattan Project whose nascent stirrings are given here.

As usual, Turtledove’s “characters” are no more than cyphers, in place merely to push the overall scenario forward or illustrate attitudes. Often we find them saying the same things over again in only slightly different ways. Unlike in Kate Atkinson’s Human Croquet, this is not beyond the purpose of emphasis, with the result it feels like being beaten about the head with words. Moreover, it reads as if parts of the book were written by different authors who did not know what the others had already told us.

There are five (five!) others of these ‘Darkness’ books to go. At least they’re not demanding reading.

Pedant’s corner:-Written in USian. Otherwise; a missing opening quotation mark at a piece of dialogue, “the Twinkings War” (many times; to avoid being misread this would have been better rendered as ‘the Twin Kings War’.) “He brought a chunk of melon … from a vendor” (He bought a chunk,) “that would have burned a hole in man” (in a man,) “‘wouldn’t by any chance by Algarvian ships’” (be Algarvian ships,) “on the other wide” (other side,) “had bee anything but idle” (had been.) “Bembo instead, he said,” (Bembo instead said.) “‘If I had to chose’” (to choose.) “‘You can borrow the book after I’d done with it’” (after I’ve done with it,) “a carried at his beck and call” (a carriage,) “found water with it in the days of the Kaunian Empire. Now people all over Derlavai dowsed for water with it in the days of the Kaunian Empire. Now people all over Derlavai dowsed for water, for metals, for coal,” (The sentence I have italicised is superfluous,) “‘till we shop up on their doorstep’” (till we show up,) a missing comma before a piece of dialogue, “even though a crystal” (even through a crystal,) a missing closing quotation mark, “wracking their brains” (racking,) ley lines/ley-lines (spelling switches between the two.) “‘We shall also put yachts to see’” (‘to sea’ makes more sense even if the next two words were ‘to peer’,) “on to the streets” (onto the streets,) Forgiathwens (Forthwegians.) “Wherever they were, though they had great strength.” (needs a comma after ‘though’,) “let alone to dot on a map” (let alone to a dot,) “to peasants haled before such tribunals” (hauled before,) an extraneous quotation mark at the end of one paragraph. “‘Just get the filth of my blackboard’” (off my blackboard.) “He patted Eforiel, bring the leviathan to a halt” (brought the leviathan to a halt.) “The first trousered soldiers was labeled Valmeria” (were labeled – and of course it’s ‘labelled’ in British English,) “had one of the tables up and spoken” (upped and spoken,) “Raunu shook his head” (the character concerned was Skarnu,) “arguing about for year” (for years,) maw (it’s not a mouth.) “Kaunian wheezed” (the character was Krasta, and she isn’t Kaunian.) “‘to send word or your doings’” (word of your doings,) “the ass’ ear” (x 2, ass’s,) “to find out of” (to find out if,) “squeeze in close behind him” (close beside him,) “in the paly” (in the play,) “the mist might lay on the sea all day” (might lie on the sea.) “They’d overran her” (overrun her.) “He thrashed for a couple of minutes, ever more weakly, they lay still” (then lay still.)

Plus marks for ‘stanch’ referring to a flow.

Farewell to old Ireland. Vintage, 2003, 419 p, plus xiv p Preface.

The Star of the Sea of the title is a clapped-out paddle steamer making a crossing from Cobh (Cove) in Ireland to New York. It is 1847, the Famine is at its height and the steerage compartments of the ship are crammed with hundreds of refugees, mostly starving. These desperate lives and the Famine itself are essentially background, though, as the narrative does not mention most of them except in passing when extracts from the log of the ship’s Master, Josias Lockwood, notes which of them have died in the night and been consigned to the deep, as well as instances of disease and quarantine, or incidents requiring incarceration of the perpetrators.

Is this a general aversion? I am personally not aware of many works of fiction dealing with the Irish Famine (or the Great Hunger as it is also known.) Perhaps the subject is just too overwhelming, too raw, or even too daunting for the novelist to approach, except obliquely as here. Though Irish writers appear prominently in British literary life the subject itself tends to be shied away from in Britain and perhaps British publishers may be wary of it.

In the book Star of the Sea, each chapter (plus the prologue and epilogue) is prefaced by an illustration from the time it is set along with the usual Victorian novel practice of the short chapter precis. Some of these illustrations depict Irish life or scenes of the famine but many show the grotesque stereotypes of so-called Irish characteristics prevalent in the nineteenth century.

The book as a whole is supposedly drawn together in retrospect by passenger G Grantley Dixon, a US journalist, from letters, diaries, newspaper accounts, conversations of his with the characters and his own writings. In the prologue he describes the only clergyman on board, a Methodist minister as conducting, “the adamant hymns of his denomination.”

The story is woven around the well-to-do passengers David Merridith (Lord Kingscourt,) his wife Laura, their children’s nanny, Mary Duane from Carna, and one Pius Mulvey, initially a shadowy presence on the ship – referred to as a ‘Ghost’ – though not entirely inconspicuous as he has one wooden foot. While following the ship’s voyage and the ever-mounting toll of dead passengers the narrative skips back to cover incidents in the principal characters’ pasts.

In her youth Mary Duane lived on Merridith’s estate (then in the hands of his father) and they formed a friendship. He greeted the Duane household with “God Bless” about which her father would say, “‘And as for God-bless, he’s a God-blasted Protestant. He doesn’t even believe in God.’” The relationship was developing into something deeper when Merridith went off to boarding school, where he learned ‘rules’. Neither his nor her father thought that their liaison could or should progress and he broke it off. In the aftermath she was betrayed by another man and only many years later did she and Merridith come across each other again.

Merridith himself displeased his father by his later marriage to Laura and by the time he inherited, the estate was in a poor condition, hence the journey to the US. Merridith and Dixon are at odds since Dixon berates him with the conditions of the Irish poor. Merridith responds with the fact of slavery in the US. That Dixon is having an affair with Laura (the Merridith marriage had long been on shaky ground) is added reason for dislike.

Mulvey has reasons to keep himself to himself on the ship. On pain of death he has been tasked by the ‘Liable’ men of Galway to kill Merridith for his many perceived sins against his tenants or for passing them on to those who treat them even more badly. The Liable men represent one of those many clandestine Irish associations desiring overthrow of English rule and gained their name because they signed off their warning missives with “Els-be-lible.” Mulvey (whose father once said to him that when you were talking about God you couldn’t expect bloody miracles,) has a chequered and violent past, once escaping from Newgate Jail thereby engendering the term Monster of Newgate, and has gone through many pseudonyms. Later Dixon tells us that the Monster led to an evolution in the representation of the Irish. Previously shown as foolish and drunken, now they more frequently shown as murderers. Ape-like, fiendish, bestial, untamed. There are also quotations from various sources exemplifying the prejudices of the ‘superior’ classes against the non-landed Irish.

In his time in London Mulvey had met Charles Dickens and spun that voraciously avid author a tale about a Jew who ran a school for young thieves – adding in details from Connemara ballads. Prompted by Dickens for the name of the Jew, Mulvey remembers that of an unpleasant priest who had hated Jews and also inveigled Mulvey’s brother (albeit temporarily) into the priesthood. The impeccably Irish-named Fagan.

In the Epilogue we find Dixon latterly wrote a book with a short section on the Monster of Newgate, which beguiled the public’s imagination. People attended fancy-dress evenings costumed as the Monster or one of his victims. Plays were performed. Grantley adds, “Soon the monster was to be subjected to the final indignity. That horror among horrors. A musical.”

Dixon has other observations to make, that among those of certain religious persuasions “Dancing was ‘back-legs fornication,’” that “Any assemblage comprising human beings … will bind itself together not by what it shares but ultimately by what it fears, which is so often so much greater.” Most powerfully that “The dead do not die in that tormented country, that heartbroken island of incestuous hatreds; so abused down the centuries by the powerful of the neighbouring island, so much as by the powerful of its native own. And the poor of both islands died in their multitudes. … The flags flutter and the pulpits resound. At Ypres. In Dublin. At Gallipoli. In Belfast…. Yet they walk, the dead, and will always walk: not as ghosts, but as press-ganged soldiers, conscripted into a battle that is not of their making.…They do not even have names. They are simply: The Dead. You can make them mean anything you want them to mean.” As people do to this day.

Though the connections between all the main characters are perhaps a little too close and strain credibility somewhat, Star of the Sea is still a superb piece of work. And it has to be said that a book whose plot turns on a first edition of Wuthering Heights by Ellis Bell has to be saluted.

Pedant’s corner:- “staunch the bleeding” (stanch,) termagents (termagants,) “Verazano narrows” (Verazzano narrows,) Engels’ (Engels’s.)

Ace, 1993, 234 p.

On a future Earth where everyone is genetically designed to be perfect Dante McCall is a misfit. Viral treatments to cure his asthma didn’t take but instead warped his perceptions so that he was unfit for Normal interaction. He escapes a fire in the home where he lived and boards a spaceship about to launch. That ship is picked up by a rogue trader, the Mangueira. On board Mangueira, Dante, being Italian and knowing Spanish, can just about make out the language used aboard, Brazilian Portuguese due to the origin of its large crew. Its occupants are known to the rest of humanity as Malandros. Their ship-board life is dominated by samba dancing and singing. ‘Dancing changes body and brain chemistry and makes us more receptive, more reactive.’ Dante is at first as much of a misfit here as he was on Earth.

Lewitt makes no concessions to the reader at this point. Life on board is presented as it is and the reader has to decipher it along with Dante. As he does, so do we.

A feature of Mangueira is the prevalence of birds, especially hyacinth macaws, which can speak and turn out to be the repository of the Malandros’ history. “All together they form the memory and central processing unit of Mangueira.”

Further plot intrudes when Veronica, a spy from another Trader ship, boards. Her father was Malandro but she can’t remember much of what he told her. As time goes by she gradually assimilates to life on Mangueira and goes native.

There is a lot going on here. The idea of a space faring group making a virtue of singing and dancing, continuing the Brazilian tradition of Carnival, that songs are the records and contributions of a ship’s people, is beguiling. However, we also have genetic manipulation. Malandros were manufactured, like the birds. Altered with a virus so that their genetic structure included bioactive interface chips – invented and made illegal before the first emigrés left Earth. It is bred into them, to go down through the generations. A man called Jorge Almovardo had created the living machine and was later burned for it in a Charismatic Revival.

Dante too has been (illegally) manipulated, subject to perception of time-shift, with which he can change his own past, “all the reality he had ever lived.”

Songs of Chaos is a good, solid piece of Science Fiction all the better for its unusual setting and background.

Pedant’s corner:- Dante lay the cutlery across the plate” (laid the cutlery,) Guimaraes’ (Guimaraes’s.) “None of the structures were identifiable” (None … was.) “picked up the samples and lay them” (and laid them,) “to change he design” (change the design,) imposter (impostor.) “Her Night-dark skin” (why the capital ‘N’ on Night?) Plus marks for ‘autos-da-fe’ though.

White Rabbit, 2021, 363 p.   Illustrations by Mark Edward Geyer.

This tale of a hanger-on of a rock-star, general factotum of the (oddly named it has to be said) big house, Kitchenly Mill Race, whose telephone number provides the novel’s title, at times reminded me of the style of Iain Banks. Espedair Street obviously, but also Dead Air, yet is a different beast altogether from those and different, too, from David Mitchell’s Utopia Avenue, which also hymns the prog rock era.

Each chapter is preceded by an illustration of the house – or part of it – plus a few words, like those you might find in Victorian novels, indicating what said chapter will contain. The novel is markedly lighter in tone than Warner’s previous works. Reading those I could never have imagined myself laughing out loud while enjoying one of his books. But I did here at one particular scene.

Apart from first person narrator Crofton Clark, the house is in many ways the most prominent “character” in the book. It has an extensive set of connected buildings based on the Tudor original – mostly destroyed by a fire – with Elizabethan, Queen Anne, Georgian and Arts and Crafts extensions, different sections of which are connected by two air bridges. Here is where Marko Morrell, member of the band Fear Taker (and greatest guitarist in the world – according to Crofton,) lives with his Scandinavian wife Auralie and daughter Molly. Or at least where Marko stays when he is not touring or away seeing to his business interests. Crofton patrols the place every night, switching lights on or off depending on their location and shutting all the curtains. Through his eyes we are given an extensive depiction of the rambling pile. It is almost as if the house is taking the place of that delineation of landscape which is a feature of the Scottish novel. But that box is ticked by Crofton also extensively describing the house’s surroundings.

This attention to detail, and his obsessiveness about Fear Taker’s œuvre, indicate that Crofton may be in some way autistic. Though he believes himself to be essential to Marko and the house’s smooth running he only got the job after a stint as a roadie as he was a friend from way back. He has illusions of competence but he is not as close to Marko nor as privy to his employer’s intentions as he thinks. Then there is his belief that an intruder makes his or her way onto the property at night.

Minor mishaps begin to spin things out of Crofton’s control but his life really begins to unravel when two fifteen-year-old girls from the local village come to the gate to ask for a Fear Taker album to be signed for the brother of one of them. Crofton cannot resist showing off and invites them in for a tour of the house.

Kitchenly 434 is a portrait of a man who thinks he knows who and what he is and his station in life but who is deluded about almost everything – including Doris Boardman, the good time girl he had been seeing in his home town of Stafford before she found a better option.

(Though Warner clearly intended it as a signifier of different, less informed, times there was an unnecessary and therefore needlessly provocative aside about Jimmy Savile’s effectiveness as a presenter on Top of the Pops.)

Pedant’s corner:- “had strode” (had stridden,) “hide-and-go-seek” (USian, in the UK, Scotland certainly, it’s just ‘hide-and-seek’,) Whacky Races (this TV programme was titled Wacky Races,) Some Mother’s Do ’Ave ’Em (mothers plural, not ‘of mother’, Some Mothers Do ’Ave ’Em,) “which would lay … on … her thighs” (which would lie on,) “prime ministers” (Prime Ministers.) “The Cream” (x 2, that band was called, merely, ‘Cream’, and in the text its chronology seems a bit askew,) Prestos (Presto’s,) “‘was if fact spent’” (was in fact spent,) sunk (x 2, sank.) “Rose looked and me and frowned” (Rose looked at me and… ,) “troop of horses had shit all down the road” (had shat,) “in any good chemists” (any good chemist’s,) imposters (I know it’s an alternative but it just doesn’t look right to me; impostors,) “turned towards to me” (‘turned towards me’ or ‘turned to me’,) “abit like” (a bit like,) “‘ hasn’t had his barbers open since’” (barber’s,) “‘I amn’t’” (nice to see this grammatical Scottish usage but it was said by an English girl so unlikely. They usually say ‘aren’t’,) “in a weave patterns” (in a weave pattern,) Herstmonceaux (that village is spelled Herstmonceux) “Quick as shot” (Quick as a shot.)

In Four Great Cornish Novels, Gollancz, 1984, 185 p.  (First published in 1936.)

In its set-up this could almost be a children’s story. Protagonist Mary Yellan’s mother has died after seventeen years of widowhood stoically looking after both Mary and the family farm at Helford. With no parents Mary might be footloose and fancy free – as the protagonists of children’s stories tend to be – but her mother’s dying wish was for Mary to go to live with her Aunt Patience at Jamaica Inn. Her sojourn there makes for a deep, dark experience.

The foreboding starts with the driver of the coach taking her there warning of the inn’s ill reputation. She immediately finds Patience’s husband Joss Merlyn to be a boorish, overbearing drunkard and the Inn itself an inhospitable place, taking as it does no customers and having no visitors except those occasional ones Jess warns Mary not to pay any attention to, indeed to hide away from. Not so much “Watch the wall my darling” as cover your face. Mary wants to flee back to Helford and only her concern for Aunt Patience persuades her to stay.

Gradually, during which time Mary explores the countryside around, Jess’s true malevolence manifests itself through drunken confessions – not just a smuggler but a wrecker and murderer to boot.

du Maurier obviously had a love and an eye for the Cornish landscape, which is described in generous, admiring terms. These passages reminded me of Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre, especially when Mary got lost on the moors and was rescued by a clergyman, (here the vicar of Auchtarnun, Mr Davey.) du Maurier’s affection for that work is usually noted in relation to her later novel, Rebecca, a more obvious reworking of Jane Eyre, but the writing in Rebecca does not carry the same visual stimulus.

There is a coyness to Mary’s interactions with Jess’s brother Jem, and a scarcely believable reticence to the way in which she is treated by Jess’s smuggling associates; but the book was first published in the 1930s – which does make it a little surprising that the villain of the piece (who in truth from his first appearance was not difficult to decipher as such) tells Mary that he found “Christianity to be built upon hatred, and jealousy, and greed …. while the old pagan barbarism was naked and clean.”

Notwithstanding my observations on du Maurier’s treatment of landscape above there were times when I found the novel – for a so-called classic – to be a touch overwritten.

Pedant’s corner:- the text repeatedly refers to Jamaica Inn’s tall chimneys. The illustration at the story’s start has small chimneys. Otherwise; “when the first cock crew” (crowed,) waggons (many times. I know it’s an acceptable alternative but since the first time I saw the word it was spelled ‘wagons’ I have always persisted in the belief it should have only one ‘g’,) “‘for my husband sake’” (husband’s sake,) to-morrow (nowadays unhyphenated,) havered (not used in the Scottish sense of talking nonsense but more like ‘tarried’.)

NewCon Press, 2022, 331 p.

Billy Braid has been brought up in the Moulspur backwoods, apprenticed to Handmaster Benoit Kim. Kim is able to fashion from the local wood a type of animated treeperson known as a sylvan. (Other creatures can be made too.) The sylvans can speak to Billy in a sybillant tone. One day they warn him of the approach of a stranger. This is Bullivant Smout, a kind of larger than life, cartoonish braggart like something out of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang or Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. He carries a message to Kim from Karpentine, the city Kim had fled before coming to the Moulspurs. The message asks for a sample of his work to be sent back to the city. Despite Billy’s objections Kim has no choice. The message has been written in compellant ink. Kim entrusts Billy with the task of conveying the sylvan, named Seldom, with the instructions: go straight there under your own steam; avoid talking to people; don’t accept gifts; come straight back.

Life, not to mention fiction, is of course more complicated than that. Even before reaching the city Billy has encountered the slightly roguish Ralston Maundy, who agrees to look after Billy’s package while he enters the Tower of Hands to make the expected contribution, and then a woman who asks him to help fix her weird contraption before taking him up into the clouds. For she, Paraphernalia Loess, is of the Weathermakers Guild and the rain is not behaving itself, creating drought in parts of the country from which refugees have descended on Karpentine. Billy is startled to find the clouds are also full of voices, which although inarticulate as yet are more malevolent than sylvans. Paraphernalia turns out to be the daughter of Jelena Loess, Queen of Clouds, though by the end of the book deserves that accolade herself.

Karpentine is a hierarchical place run by the Guilds; Artificers; Printmakers; Constructors; Inkmasters etc. The city itself is also stratified by class, from the lower levels to the upper. Billy soon runs foul of the law (machines have been banished from this world and sylvans seem to be just that. Motes left over from the destruction of the machines are what produce the sentience in sylvans and the clouds.) He is imprisoned in the Institute of Improvement, basically a forced labour establishment whose inmates are helpless due to the compellant ink used to ensure their compliance. Billy’s abilities have been noticed by the Guilds though, and he is released to the Loesses after a bidding war. He is not, as the Law of Man commands, ‘Rightly Bound by the Limits of his Humanity.’ Due to his training, he can fashion wood to some extent but, later, his capacity to manipulate paper becomes more important.

Though Paraphernalia takes him under her wing he is still a servant, but she is almost as constrained as he is, frustrated by the looming necessity to make a marriage alliance to aid her family. For the Weathermakers’ stock is falling. Paraphernalia and Billy gradually from a mutually appreciative alliance.

Though there are several strands, the main plot revolves around the Guilds’ desire for carbon black made from the charred wood of sylvans, as it is believed that will have even stronger compellant properties, and Billy’s desire to protect the sylvans from harm.

Apart from the resourceful Paraphernalia and Billy himself, Queen of Clouds is replete with variously memorable characters; the twin enforcers, Innocent and Erudite Bello, Maundy’s nephew and niece Vern and Clymie, the needy Killick Roach, the haughty Stillworth Crane, the spider-like Moraine Otterbree, the slippery sisters Sin and Skin, and, despite being caught up in the fantastical scenario which surrounds them, even the minor characters here are well drawn and totally believeable.

There are also pleasing Scottish grace notes – a publisher called Blackie, the words skelped and skelfs, Billy being addressed as ‘son’.

This is emphatically not the standard mediævally based fantasy world. It is agreeably complex, well thought through, and despite its repugnant aspects (which world does not have those, and fiction would not be compelling without them,) engaging.

In our present world of communication silos it also acts as a warning to question what you read.

Pedant’s corner:-  “What echoed across the moor were brash caws and clacks” (What echoed … was …) “Whatever sense of adventure Billy had evaporated” (Whatever sense of adventure Billy had, had evaporated.) “He made that the wish that would drive him forward” (He made a wish that … ???) “What surprised him, were the crowds” (no comma; and, perhaps, ‘What surprised him was the crowds.’ If the sentence was turned round I think it’s natural to say, ‘It was the crowds that surprised him.’)  “the only family you need us the one” (is the one,) “that led his and Maundy’s rooms” (that led to his and,) ‘“What’s going?”’ (‘What’s going on?’) “‘Never mind, I already know?’” (is not a question,) “The valuable supply of Noteworth, Kim had used” (no comma needed,) “rather patronisingly, named Diligence Way” (no need for the comma,) benefactor (benefactress?) “The hoi polloi” (Common usage I know, but, strictly, hoi means ‘the’ so the ‘the’ before polloi is unnecessary,) Kinglsey (Kingsley,) “that even these Artificers” (even if these Artificers.) “What little he could see of the courtyards below the nest of roof ridges were in late afternoon shadow”  (What little he could see of the courtyards …. was in late afternoon shadow.)  “Who knew another attempt would” (Who knew if/whether another attempt would,) “in which the aerialists and horsemasters performed their shows in at the Canza fair” (only one ‘in’ needed,) “about emotionally attachments” (emotional attachments,) “‘All the way round to the low for’”  (the low for?) “but she had she didn’t let on” (but if she had she didn’t let on,) an unindented new paragraph, “while she guide it up” (guided it up.) “The base of it, all but touching the Weathermakers’ tower” (no comma needed,) “went meet the governor” (went to meet,) a missing quotation mark as a piece of direct speech is resumed, “Billy suddenly had shocking , vivid image” (had a shocking, vivid,)  “both inside and outside of his head” (doesn’t need the ‘of’,) “the destruction of refugee camp” (of the refugee camp,) “Alicia’s sniffed haughtily” (Alicia sniffed,)  “but he they should have been” (no ‘he’,) “many years in from now” (no ‘in’ needed,) focussed (as I recall this appeared on other pages too but usually had ‘focused’.) “Para got up from settee” (from the settee,) “to the anguish of city” (of the city,) “inside of” (inside,) dumfounded (dumbfounded,) “a ramp that down from the central room” (that led down from,) a missing full stop after ‘sums’,) “‘What the Institutionalised?’” (‘What about the Institutionalised?’) crenelated (crenellated.) “Then their threats changed then to” (only one ‘then’ needed,) “but in then he heard” (but then he heard.) “He right of course” (He was right of course,) “and the reeked of booze” (and he reeked of,) “and that the hallway a mess” (and the hallway a mess,) “a turn in the stairs. The hush of the house forcing him to whisper.” (a turn in the stairs, the hush of the house …,)  “birth right” (birthright.) “Roach’s said thickly” (looks a bit odd. ‘Roach said thickly’???)  phlemy (phlegmy,) “not be depended on have scruples” (be depended on to have,) Vern (needs a full stop,) “‘You have allow us’” (You have to allow us’,)  “And that was the ones who” (And those were the ones who”,) “The only signs  that the pair were still alive was their breathing” (The only sign that,)  “staunch the blood” (stanch the blood,) “done something disappear to, something to change her in body” (I can’t decipher something disappear to,)  “‘to compliment your inks’” (complement.) “‘Stick him in there too,’ he can give her a hand.’” (‘Stick him in there too, he can give her a hand’,)  “looked to on the verge of collapse” (looked to be on the verge.)

I also noticed indentureship. I’ve always considered indentiture as the noun for this condition but I can’t find a reference for it. It may just have been indenture.