Amberlough

Lara Elena Donnelly, 2017

(March 2018)

A spy and a love story in three acts, of which the middle one is excellent, the first is an excessively detailed infodump, and the third is a little too bleak for its own good. All this adds up to a good book that needs, but repays (but then reclaims), quite a bit of patience.

Amberlough City is the capital of the self-named region that surrounds it, one of the four semi-autonomous states of the federation of Gedda. It’s a playground for what, in our world at least, we might label Jazz Age hedonism, and we explore it through the eyes of Cordelia Lehane, a burlesque dancer, Aristide Makricosta, her part-time MC and a full-time smuggler, and Cyril DePaul, his lover and a spy. Over the course of the first act it’s revealed that the far-right Ospie party is rising to power in one of Amberlough’s sister-states, and Cyril is dispatched in order to subvert their planned theft of the election. It goes wrong in a way I’m still not entirely sure about. In fact I’m not entirely sure about a lot of things, exactly, but it all (eventually) clicks into place when you realize that the Ospies are the Nazis and Gedda is a simplified version of 1920s Europe. The middle section of the book takes us on a rollicking gallop through a city in the throes of occupation, and it closes in a frankly distressing manner as the noose tightens around our three leads and all that they love.

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.

Asura Girl / A Clockwork Orange

Otaro Maijo, 2003 [Stephen Snyder, 2014]

Anthony Burgess, 1962

(May 2017)

Japanese ghosts will fuck you up.

But is it art?

CUNTBOAT! CUNT! BOAT! CUNTBOOOOAT!

Nudge Nudge, Wink Wink

The football World Cup is almost upon us. I care less about this as I get older, but it’s still a pleasantly diverting way of killing time over the summer months. I think not living in the UK makes it a bit easier as I don’t have to deal with all the hubristic triumphalism that invariably attends the England team’s entry to the tournament, nor the weak-assed post-imperial wailing and self-abuse which accompanies their inevitable exit on penalties in the second round.

One Star

One-star reviews. They’re great. Not for the authors, obviously, but for everyone else they’re an unbridled joy being as they usually are completely unfair, ill-founded, incoherent, and irrelevant. I don’t generally like panning books here (though that’s not wholly true; I just don’t like reading books which are likely to deserve a panning), but sometimes there can be something quite cathartic about just letting loose whatever ill-formed brain-vomit is frothing about at the top of your head. So here are a few one-star reviews from Amazon, some of which are genuine, and some I’ve fabricated myself.

Look, it’s either this or bang on again about the continued shit-fountain that is the NHK board of governors*, and I don’t think my will to live can survive much more of that unscathed.

Too Shocking Even for Channel 4

Bright lights, big city.

Growing up in rural Middle-England it’s fair to say I didn’t have much exposure to the seedier aspects of the human experience. I mean, sure, there was the village tramp who everyone viewed with a sort of tolerant condescension and the church committee would give a hamper to at christmas.* Looking back, the guy was clearly suffering from at least one sort of mental illness, but talking about these things isn’t done so the fact his lifestyle choices included living under an upturned bath in a cave was publicly attributed to nothing more than good old-fashioned English eccentricity.

A Pretty Mouth

Molly Tanzer, 2012

(April 2013)

  

Sod’s Law, isn’t it? You wait ages for a Lovecraft/Wodehouse mashup, featuring everyone’s favourite Gentleman’s Gentleman pitting his wits against eldritch forces, and then two come along at once.

The Cold Commands

Richard Morgan, 2011

(December 2012)

              ‘Do I look like a fucking slave to you?’ he asked them.

              And though, finally, they would bring him down with sheer weight of numbers, none who heard him ask that question lived to see the dawn.

Tits and Ass(es)

Chewing The Cud, Part One

Herbivorous men. Grass eaters. I’ve touched on this before, and I promised (to myself if no-one else) that I’d come back to it later. So here we are.

In all honesty I’m not sure quite where to go with this, I just hit upon a very clever (and I do mean very clever) little opening conceit, and thought I’d run with it a bit. Of course, having now taken it for a little jog I’ve realised that it’d be better as an opening to part two, so you’ll just have to wait until then. It’s definitely worth waiting for though; as I said, it is very clever.

So in the meantime please join me on a directionless thrash through gender politics and social ossification in early 21^st Century Japan. Don’t pretend like you’ve got anything better to do.

Look What You Made Me Do

I'm a good man. I'm a considerate husband, a loving father, and a conscientious employee. I don't deserve this. What did I ever do to you?

That's Not Suitable

Being a parent is a wonderful, joyous thing. Sometimes. Other times it’s definitely not. And while there are massive emotional highs, the likes of which I’ve really never experienced before, it is perhaps not the most intellectually stimulating thing I’ve ever done. Recite ‘Twinkle Twinkle Little Star’ twenty times in as many minutes and your mind would start to wander as well.

Google Image Search is a Joy

But I'm sure you knew that already.

I know my writing can be a bit wordy, so it's nice to break it up with some pictures and pretty shapes and colours. Recently I was doing that and stumbled upon the oeuvre of Jade K Scott. There's been a bit of hand-wringing about people using Kindles and the like for reading smut, instead of the relentlessly improving works they might otherwise be grinding through if people could actually see the covers. I, however, can only applaud Ms Scott and her ilk for identifying a potential market and pursuing it with such verve and consistency. It would be beneath me to suggest that she's just a pseudonym for a bunch of cut n' paste merchants and/or monkeys with typewriters.

I now present a selection of titles from the first two pages of a Google Image search for "jade k scott", for the elucidation of those of you who remain unhappily ignorant of the canon.

Jumping on my Tu-Tu

I was trying to prepare for a debate lesson the other week. Teaching debates in English class is very popular over here. And like lots of things which are very popular over here it’s a nice idea on paper, but awful in practice.

I love debate, argument. I’m such an ivory-tower idealist that I still cling hopefully to the concept of public discussion as meaningful way of approaching a mutually acceptable truth, as opposed to the diametrically-opposed cock-waving sessions it appears to have devolved to. So I adore the idea of teaching it, and of students learning it.