Record of a Night Too Brief

Hiromi Kawakami, 1996 [Lucy North, 2017]

(March 2017)

On the one hand, I loved this, on the other, I found myself in a broadly grudging agreement with Ishihara Shintaro, which those of you who know me (and him) will understand is not a position I ever really wanted to find myself in.

The Moor’s Account

Laila Lalami, 2014

(March 2017)

  

A tale of imperial hubris gone awry, as it inevitably will. Reminds me in many ways of Dan Simmons’s The Terror, if that book had been written without the supernatural elements.

A Grain of Wheat

Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o, 1967 [1986]

(March 2017)

  

Set in and around the Mau Mau Rebellion which preceded Kenyan independence, an incident I’d previously heard of but know shamefully little about. Political dimensions aside, what’s surprising about this book is just how much it sweeps, despite its relatively short length (barely 240 pages). I was expecting the politics, I wasn’t expecting the melodrama, nor was I expecting them to mesh quite as well as they did.

Izanami's Choice

Adam Heine, 2016
(November 2016)

Reviewed over at Strange Horizons. Robots and ronin. Solid action, but not much else.

Dear Friend, from My Life I Write to You in Your Life

Yiyun Li, 2017

(March 2017)

I am, once more, rendered incoherent by Li's writing. I genuinely can't fathom how anyone is capable of producing anything simultaneously so precise yet so supple, so pitiless yet so profoundly humane. Just extraordinary.

Viriconium

M. John Harrison, 1971-85

(March 2017)

  

A full compendium of M. John Harrison’s Viriconium stories, originally published separately (as three short novels and a short story collection) between 1971 and 1985. I’ve previously written about how superb Harrison is as a stylist, and while that’s clearly evident here, I also suspect that reading all these stories together like this didn’t really do them many favours.

  

The Stars Are Legion

Kameron Hurley, 2017

(February 2017)

Very good, very meaty (figuratively and literally), but I also read this with an increasing sense of déjà vu.

The Wolf Border

Sarah Hall, 2015

(February 2017)

A wonderfully written book, this, but one that took me far too long to read.

Norse Mythology

Neil Gaiman, 2017

(February 2017)

Asgard reimagined as the prototypical frat house. Which is not such a departure from the source material, to be honest.

The Steerswoman

Rosemary Kirstein, 1989

(February 2017)

  

Continuing what has become an impromptu ‘Competent Women’ season here on this is how she fight start, we have the first volume of Rosemary Kirstein’s long- and glacially slow-running Steerswoman series.