Agents of Empire

Knights, Corsairs, Jesuits and Spies in the Sixteenth-Century Mediterranean World

Noel Malcom, 2015

(November 2017)

  

A fascinating book. Takes as its premise the interconnected stores of a family of minor Albanian nobility, and follows them through their various trials and tribulations in Venice, the Balkans, and Istanbul in the late 1500s. Slightly ponderous writing, but not overbearingly so, and every so often contains gems such as this: "…the chronicler Ureche would have nothing good to say about Aron. His main passions, allegedly, were 'pillage, debauchery, gambling and bagpipe-players.'" Thorough, enlightening, and on occasion surprisingly funny.

Four Roads Cross

Max Gladstone, 2016

(October 2017)

The culmination of the first round (Series? Season?) of the Craft Sequence. I've finally learned not to bounce out of one of these books straight into another, so Ruin of Angels will have to wait, despite the lure of the brand new shiny-shiny.

The Glorious Angels

Justina Robson, 2015

(June 2017)

Justina Robson is a novelist whose scope of imagination frequently leaves me in awe, but whose plotting just as frequently leaves me scratching my head trying to work out exactly what’s going on. In this regard Glorious Angels, somewhat counterintuitively, seems to do slightly better than those of her other books I’ve read.

The North Water

Ian McGuire, 2016

(April 2017)

Moby Dick—In Space!

Voyage of the Basilisk & In the Labyrinth of Drakes

Marie Brennan, 2015 & 2016

(August 2016)

I’ll refer you back to my previous comments about needing a bit of a breather after reading The Vegetarian, and what better way than with Marie Brennan’s Darwin genderswap mind candy? I mean, it’s a superior sort of mind candy, certainly, but it’s exactly the sort of world you can sink into without having to challenge yourself to analyse every detail, should you so wish. And I so wished.

But is it art?

CUNTBOAT! CUNT! BOAT! CUNTBOOOOAT!

Use of Weapons

Iain M. Banks, 1990

(March 2014)

  

“What shall we put the cover?”

Chunky

The fruit sank. The fruit always sinks. I am the baked goods equivalent of Captain E. Smith, but still the band plays on...