Tangled Mind

What is it in humans that makes us so eager to believe ill of one another? ... What makes us so hungry for it? Failed idealism, he suspected. We disappoint ourselves and then look around for other failures to convince ourselves: it's not just me. [Prologue]

Audiobook reread, after listening to The Sparrow. It's many years since I last reread: here are my brief notes from 2007 reread. I stand by my original opinion, that this is not nearly as good or as well-structured a novel as The Sparrow. There is gorgeous prose, interesting ideas and a crowd of new characters: but there is also uneven pacing, political manoeuvring, and outright war.  There are, possibly, too many viewpoint characters, and a lack of the precise focus of the first novel. And there are several developments which felt unnecessarily cruel. ('She died last year.')

Narrated by Anna Fields, who manages the many accents and character voices -- across three species and a dozen nationalities -- admirably, with the sole exception of Northern Irish priest Sean Fein. I was especially impressed by her range of masculine voices.

I still hope for more SF from Mary Doria Russell, and I wish more of her books were available as ebooks in the UK.

‘At the end of his description of the first contact, in a locked file, Father Yarbrough ... wrote of you, “I believe that he was inspired by the Holy Spirit. Today I may have looked upon the face of a saint.”’
‘Stop it. Leave me something.’ [p. 298]

Audiobook reread on a lazy Boxing Day -- perhaps inspired by the excellent Jesuit priest in Snake-Eater. I first read this novel in 1997, when it was a submission for the Arthur C Clarke Award (which it won): some thoughts from an informal review back then. I hadn't reread since 2007, and was surprised at how much I remembered -- mostly about the humans, rather than the Runa and the Jana'ata.

The audiobook is splendidly narrated by David Colacci, who manages a huge range of character voices. Listening to the novel gave me a better appreciation of its structure: the pacing, the braided timelines, the suspense. ( Read more... )

‘I put my hands in the mud and it said to come here. Mud, speaking to me in my head. They had a word for that when I was young: touched, they would have said. But here I am, and I’ll be touched if that is what’s next, because I felt certain it was Tom’s voice. Can you tell me—was it Tom’s voice? I suppose it couldn’t have been.’ [loc. 2155]

By the author of Three Eight One, this novel is set in the aftermath of interplanetary war. Two veterans of the war, Isley and Jem, have returned to the Western Protectorate (Devon and Cornwall: 'a small area of a small country that decided to secede from modern life, from space flight, from the Coalition and the conquering spirit of the new age') to run the Skyward Inn, née the Lamb and Flag. Jem is human, and comes from the nearby town, where her brother Dom (the Mayor) looks after her estranged son Fosse. Isley is a Qitan, from the side that lost: he's in charge of preparing the Qitan drink, 'brew', that the pub serves. It may be addictive, and it is certainly popular.

To marry a woman close to fifty years his senior, on her deathbed, for no better reason than money on his side and malice on hers -- it was contemptible. He'd be a laughing stock.
He'd be a rich contemptible laughing stock.
'All right,' he said. [loc. 131]

ARC provided out of the blue, waaaay before publication, with ideal timing as year-end werk-stress hit and several book-disappointments triggered a reading slump. This was a complete and utter delight, and cheered me immensely. John Julius Angerstein! Marie Antoinette! Diamonds! Painter's colours! Actors! Punctuation marks! Dashing rogues! Non-binary character! And a flawed and difficult romance that came right in the end...

Full review nearer publication date, which is 30th April 2026.

Luxury felt like a different game when the people involved were officially enemies of the state. [loc. 1328]

Appalachia, 1942: the luxe Avallon hotel has been designated as an 'assembly point for Axis diplomats and their families' -- an arrangement made by the Gilfoyles. who own the hotel. June Hudson just runs it (and is conducting an ongoing clandestine affair with Gilfoyle heir Edgar: clandestine because she comes from an unsuitable, i.e. poor, background). The luxuries of the hotel, and the benefits of the mysterious 'sweetwaters' that bubble and flow beneath it, are turned to the service of Nazis and fascists, and it's up to June to keep the peace between the various Japanese and German factions, the hotel's staff, and the FBI.

She’s cutting off the weak to save the strong. No, not even that. Cutting off the poor to save the rich. [loc. 6441]

There has been peace in Concordia for a thousand years: the twelve provinces are united against the threat of invasion, and each province has an heir who's been granted a magical gift, a Blessing, by the Goddess Herself. Voyage of the Damned begins just as Ganymedes ('Dee'), the representative of Fish province, is desperately trying to avoid embarking on the eponymous voyage -- to a sacred mountain, on the Emperor's own ship -- with the other eleven Blesseds.( Read more... )

Nowhere is truly empty. The thought makes me feel lavishly alone. Somehow, space is so deeply melancholy that it’s not at all sad, like a note so low it ceases to sound. Even my sorrow about my insignificance feels insignificant. [loc. 161]

Ambrose Cusk wakes up on a spaceship, the Coordinated Endeavor. The ship's operating system (OS) informs him, in his mother's voice, that the ship is well on its way towards his sister's distress beacon, on Saturn's moon Titan. Ambrose has been in a coma for two weeks, says OS, and has fallen behind on important maintenance tasks. Ambrose, who feels dreadful, can't remember anything about the launch.

But as he regains mobility and memory, he realises that OS is not being completely honest and open. ( Read more... )

The real problem is that a species that lives inside its own fictions can no longer imagine a healthy fiction to live inside, and this failure of the imagination stops us from steering towards the better versions of our potential futures. [p. 19]

The Future Starts Here: An Optimistic Guide to What Comes Next is a cultural analysis of how we view the future, focussing very much on the positive. The book ranges from an overview of why colonising Mars is a daft idea to explorations of the Knebb rewilding project, of natural versus artificial intelligence (and why Higgs feels his cat is smarter than Alexa), and of the ways in which virtual reality can be more than just entertainment. ( Read more... )

There had always been Puttis -- round and soft, made for children. She had kept hers because it was the last thing her mother had made... Puttis were four-legged and tailed. Their heads were round, with shining eyes made of buttons or beads, upstanding ears, whiskers above the small mouth. Puttis were loved, played with, adored in the child world; their origin was those brought by children on the First Ships. [loc. 2219]

This was the first science fiction book I remember reading, from Rochford Library, probably pre-1975. I don't think I've read it since, though I did briefly own a paperback copy. Apparently the blurbs of newer editions mention 'university complex' and 'epidemic virus': aged <10, I was hooked by the cat on the front.

There are many Turks who believe that the capture of Constantinople was a just vengeance for the fall of Troy. The Greeks were at last made to pay for their perfidy. [loc. 2376]

Reread: my review from 2010 is here. I remembered nothing at all about this novel! Apparently I purchased a paperback copy in 2007: as with almost all of his other novels, no Kindle edition is available.

Ackroyd bases his novel on the life of Heinrich Schliemann, who first excavated Troy, and his marriage to a much younger woman, a Greek (famously chosen on the basis of a photograph and 'Homeric spirit'). Ackroyd's fictional archaeologist is named Heinrich Obermann, and he has all of Schliemann's flaws and more:( Read more... )