sixthlight

Mostly sequels in fiction across these months but one new and utterly delightful mystery series. The non-fiction was a bit of a mixed bag.

Fiction

The Sunforge (Sascha Stronach)

Sequel to The Dawnhounds and a step up in every way on that book, which I did enjoy but was clearly the work of someone finding their voice. In this sequel the main characters from the first book are on the run in a foreign city undergoing a fascist take-over, and time is running out to figure out what’s going on. I described the first book as ‘throwing stuff at the wall to see what sticks’ and this is a book which knows what’s sticking. It also makes it much clearer what kind of story this is and as a reader I always feel more comfortable when I know where I am. Anyway, I highly recommend reading both and I believe the final book is coming out in the not too distant future.

Lake of Souls (Ann Leckie)

A compilation of Leckie’s short fiction - only the first and titular story is new but I’d only read a couple of the others. They range across her fictional universes and genres. Some are sweet, some are horrifying, all are thoughtful. Leckie is a very very good writer and I think there’s something for everyone here who’s liked her work so far.

Saving Suzy Sweetchild (Barbara Hambly)

Third in her 1920s Hollywood mystery series, this one about the heroine solving the kidnapping of a child star. It doesn’t stint on the hideous conditions for children in 1920s Hollywood (and all child workers in the 1920s, let’s be realistic). A bit repetitive if you’ve read the other books in the series - I suspect Hambly might be somewhat past her artistic prime, and it kind of gives me late Pratchett vibes, not in the style but in the relationship to earlier work - but perfectly readable.

A Comedy of Terrors and Desperate Undertaking (Lindsey Davis)

Finishing up my catch-up of the Flavia Albia series. I won’t repeat myself from last month but these are very good noir detective novels which make excellent use of their novel setting. My main difficulty was that Desperate Undertaking revolved around a serial killer carrying out some extremely grotesque torture-murders and I found it very tough going because that is not my sort of thing at all (context: Hannibal was the very first fandom I blacklisted on Tumblr). I recommend the series generally but oof.

Hilary Tamar series (Sarah Caudwell)

Starting with Thus Was Adonis Murdered, these largely epistolary (and telephone call, and fax, etcetera) novels written and set in the 80s and 90s follow a deliberately ungendered Oxford academic as they solve murders along with a small group of young lawyers working in London. They are a tonne of fun; witty, well-paced, very evidently written by an author who knew the setting and legal work well. They are also unexpectedly and delightfully queer considering the time they were written in, both in terms of the general vibes and the straightforward fact that some of the characters are actually queer. There’s a consistent and very funny undercurrent of flipping the gender script regarding the female characters’ love lives as well. They do mostly concern horrible rich white English people (in the way where the rich people are meant to be horrible), so fair enough if that’s not your jam. They weren’t period pieces when they were written but have aged gracefully into them. They would make excellent TV and I’m mildly surprised they haven’t already.

The Dead Cat Tail Assassins (P Djèlí Clark)

An assassin who’s been brought back from the dead in a fantasy city (swords and sorcery edition) is stunned when she’s sent to assassinate her younger self, and many shenanigans ensue. I did not enjoy it as much as Clark’s other work for several reasons, perhaps the most pertinent being that I really don’t like torture and it features heavily. It’s not bad it just was…not so much for me.

Rules for Radicals (Saul Alinsky)

A now-classic text on community organising strategies, fairly short and accessible. It’s definitely of its time and place (there’s one anecdote where Alinsky complains about people being upset he told an extremely tasteless and sexist joke, and the context is firmly Civil Rights-era America) but if you can put that aside I think there’s stuff to be gained here if you are interested in organising to create community and political change. I just wouldn’t take it as the be-all and end-all of the genre.

The Light Eaters (Zoë Schlanger)

This is a book about whether plants are ‘intelligent’, on the surface an interesting and worthy question. Unfortunately it is the equivalent of a series of Tumblr posts by someone who has developed a hyperfixation about a topic they know nothing about and is determined to Reveal The Truth to their followers. The writing is good because the author is a journalist and there’s a bunch of interesting sections about various pieces of research as she interviews scientists who have studied the topic, but it fails to cohere into a narrative that goes anywhere. It also very much fails to engage with the broader research on non-human intelligence and what that means for understanding plants. Because the author is not a scientist and is very much bent on pursuing her own personal theory/understanding there are many bits that are just plain incorrect, usually in service of making plants the most Important and Cool topic possible. Can’t really recommend it.

Mountains of Fire: The Secret Life of Volcanoes (Clive Oppenheimer)

This is basically a memoir from someone who’s spent his whole life as a volcanologist, except it doesn’t talk about his personal life at all, which is to say it’s a book about volcanoes strictly through the lens of stuff the author has personally studied. It is very very good on those bits but not a comprehensive discussion of the topic at large because there’s lots of other types of volcanoes and areas of volcanology and geology more generally that lie outside his own research. That’s a fairly mild criticism; it’s otherwise very easy to read and sound on everything I know about, which is a bar many science books do not reach. If you like volcanoes you will probably like this.

Botany of Empire (Banu Subramaniman)

A bit of a bait-and-switch (for me, not on purpose) in that it was billed in the blurb as being about the ways botany has supported imperialism and I expected therefore that it would be largely about the history of botany. What it actually is, is fairly heavy-duty queer/feminist theory about the ways science (the term used generically, but it’s mostly really talking about ecology) underpins and is underpinned by colonial and imperial projects. I don’t agree with everything the author says (her experiences and mine of science are somewhat different) but she’s raising discussions that are very worth having.

Sunken Lands (Gareth E Rees)

A series of essays about places formerly inhabited by humans that have now sunk under the sea, in the context of climate change and the author’s own life. It was…fine? Middle-aged white Englishmen Finding Themselves is not a very interesting topic for me. If anybody has books to recommend on this general topic which are more about the archaeology/geology/history of the areas and less about Guy Thinking About Stuff I’d be keen.