Money Shot

Christa Faust, 2008

(October 2017)

  

I love the unabashed pulpiness of the Hard Case Crime covers, even if I’d never actually read one prior to this. It certainly lives up (down?) to its billing.

Call for the Dead

John le Carré, 1961

(October 2017)

I’d not read any le Carré before, so I was pleasantly surprised by how much I enjoyed this. A satisfyingly unthrilling thriller about downbeat spies in 1960’s suburbia. An amateur dramatics society plays a significant role. A supporting character keeps bees. The main character spends much of the time in bed. The espionage equivalent of a cosy catastrophe, which is exactly what I needed on a four-hour train ride through rural Japan in the pissing rain.

The Prey of Gods

Nicky Drayden, 2017
(July 2017)

Reviewed over at Strange Horizons. Fun, in a kind of slapdash, puppyish way.

Nowhere to Be Found

Bae Suah, 1998 [Sora Kim Russell, 2015]

(October 2017)

  

A book so slim that even calling it a novella might be pushing it; I finished it in under an hour. It’s good; interesting in that kind of unanchored, dissociative way that seems to be becoming something of a trend for female East Asian writers in translation.

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.

Fever Dream

Samanta Schweblin, 2017 [Megan McDowell, 2017]

(September 2017)

This is a gloriously unsettling little book; the kind you can polish off in under two hours but will stay with you for a long, long time after. It's been getting enough press elsewhere that I can't really add anything new here, so I'll content myself by saying that, for all that the underlying mystery turns out to be a touch disappointing in its mundanity, this is still an absolutely terrific (in all senses) demonstration of tone and voice. Recommended.

October

China Miéville, 2017

(September 2017)

Derivative. Animal Farm reimagined with an overly complex plot, too many characters, and a frankly disappointing lack of relatable livestock.

Political Order and Political Decay

From the Industrial Revolution to the Globalisation of Democracy
Francis Fukuyama, 2014
(September 2017)

Well, quite.

The Vagrant

Peter Newman, 2015

(August 2017)

I remember this book generating a fair bit of buzz a couple of years back, but it doesn’t really live up to it (or, to be fairer and more accurate, to my memory of it). There are a lot of interesting parts here, but somehow it never quite adds up to more than the sum of them.

Heathern

Jack Womack, 1990

(June 2017)

A lot of life has intervened since I read this book, as it has a wont to do. From what I can remember, Heathern fills the chronological space between Random Acts of Senseless Violence and Ambient, and so it was kind of an odd experience reading it prespoiled, as it were. Still entertaining enough, certainly, but lacking the linguistic virtuosity of the former of the ludicrous satirical anger of the latter.