When I walk up to automatic doors, I wave my arm so that I look like I'm exercising my awesome jedi powers.

Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell - Susanna Clarke

I wanted to like this book.

(I'm very tempted to stop and leave it at that, but that would be lazy.)

Set in London, in the early 1800s, with Napoleon skirting around the edges; a period and area I'm rather fond of. And magicians. This should have been my sort of book.

But...

I do not believe that a book should be a test of endurance, either of my mental stamina or the strength of my wrists. 782 pages is a long time, for both of these things. It could just be that the book didn't gel with me, but before it even came into my possession I'd been told by multiple people whose opinions I trust that 'the first 500 pages are a bit slow but then it picks up'. 500 pages of slow is a lot of slow.

By the time I'd waded my way through that 500, I no longer cared, not about the characters or the outcome of the story. Not caring is probably the worst reaction I can have to a book. There are plenty of terrible books I've read that I've cared about, in a rabid frantic frustrated sort of way, which worlds more love than this received. I reached the end, and thought "hoo-bloody-rah".

Which isn't to say it had this affect all the way through. I was enjoying myself at the beginning. Clarke has good control over her voice, and it is consistent throughout the entire book. Norrell, despite being one of the most annoying characters I have ever come across, is incredibly well drawn, and has more depth than all the other characters combined. (I felt a particular empathy to his concerns about his books, and the fact that people might touch them. I'm also now more aware of how ridiculous such concern looks from the outside, not that this will change my attitudes.)

I was also fond of Strange's adventures in Spain, if only because he was protaging.

(I'd almost go as far to say that Clarke didn't write a book set in the 1800s, but wrote an 1800s book. But, not having read many books from that period, it's entirely possible that that statement is a load of horse shit.)

(Still, she did work hard at it, but I do wonder at the wisdom of it. It's quite an accomplishment to write a book from another century, but it is THIS century's audience which will read it. The mindset is...different now.)

Having had a couple of days distance from the book, I'm left wondering exactly what the point was. The ending didn't satisfy me. There were loose ends, large ones, messy ones. It didn't end, it just stopped. Was there a point? I'm not sure of the message. Given that a prophecy was involved, one that had some sort of purpose behind it...I still can't see what was actually achieved. This, more than anything else, makes me resent 782 pages.

Doors have been opened, however. I will read her again.

Verdict: Make up your own mind.

Thud! - Terry Pratchett

This will be another short musing, as I generally feel with someone as popular as Pratchett, everyone knows already anyway. They already have and have read the book, and my opinion is worth bleargh.

For me, this book was largely miss. There were a few very lovely instances where he hit the spot, but overall, it was miss. This was surprising considering his last few books have, for me, been very hit. I felt that the themes didn't resonate, including weirdly enough, prejudice. It was there, it was clear, but I didn't feel it. The Summoning Dark didn't hit a nerve, and I wondered through the length of the book what it's actual purpose was.

Regardless, it's still a well written book, as Pratchett seems incapable of writing a bad book. I daresay I'll go back and read it at some stage, and wonder why it didn't work for me the first time around.

Verdict: It's Pratchett. You've already made up your mind.


And now, I am caught up on verdicts. Go me. (Which was why I chose to read Johnathon Strange & Mr Norrell as I knew it would take me a while to get through.)

Midshipwizard Halcyon Blithe - James M. Ward

I didn't intent to buy this book. In fact, before I saw it in a bookshop, I'd never even heard of it. There are hundreds of books I've been meaning to buy for a very long time, but when I saw this, and that it combined His Majesty's Royal Navy and dragons, I couldn't very well not buy it. One of those Sir Tessa's dream come true books.

I'd like to say it is well written, but it's hit and miss. The first page made me cringe significantly, and I wondered if I hadn't made a rather large mistake. It comes from trying, and not quite suceeding, to affect a narrating voice reflective of the time. Formal, full of 'quite' and 'splendid'. Sometimes, Ward succeeds with this, other times it wobbles quite drastically. Having attempted to write a story with a strong and unfamiliar vernacular myself, I fully understand how hard it is, and even more the importance of maintaining it consistantly throughout the book.

Aside from that, he is also guilty of sentences that are wrong. Just wrong. He and possibly his editor need a smake for basic sentence structure.

In terms of overall structure, the story is quite simple. It is Midshipwizard Fifth Class Halcyon's Blithe first assignment to a naval ship, none other than on of the great dragonships, the Sanguine. He arrives, makes friends, makes enemies, learns the ropes, and inevitably saves the entire ship from certain destruction, because he's special. Yes, he's from a family famous for its accomplishments in the royal navy, a family with demon blood, he's the seventh son of a seventh son, a rope speaker, a dragon speaker, knows the articles of war inside out, good with a sword, etc etc etc. Everything he does, he does brilliantly. Every now and then, it got a little sickening.

This isn't Ward's first book, as I'd assumed. He has previously written for TSR, which explains why his world building is pretty damn good. Although the enemy, a race of evil shapeshifters, were fairly generic, the dragonships were truly magnificent. A lot of though has gone into their creation and utility (and ultimate destruction, which is a red herring that never comes about), and I probably took more joy in reading about the ship than anything else. Ships have souls, this I do believe, and to see one personified as a dragon that looked after the crew as the crew looked after it was wonderful, and struck a very true note.

Yes, red herrings. There are a great many of those. All sorts of things are hinted at, not at all subtly, only to never, ever, be mentioned again, let alone actually happen. This I found entirely vexing, as I waited to be surprised, all anticipation, for things that never occurred. Instead, all my expectations (which weren't high) were filled. I'm never fond of books which, while refusing to state outright who the antagonist is, will make absolutely no effort to hide their identity. If it's so obvious to me, the reader, it should be obvious to the characters as well.

Despite all this, I had an absolutely brilliant time in the book. I know most writers have a hard time turning off the inner editor while reading, which isn't a problem I seem to have. This book is incredibly rough, but at its core it is something author had a great deal of fun writing, and that comes through. For a book that isn't trying to revolutionise the industry, giving the reader a good time is all you can ask for, and in this, Ward succeeded wonderfully. I hope he will continue to write stories about Halcyon Blithe and the world he lives in, because I will continue to read them.

Verdict: will grate on your inner editor, and delight your inner sailor. Yar. I know ships aren't everyone's cup of tea, but if you have the sea bug, it's well worth it.

Anansi Boys - Neil Gaiman

Is there anything to say about this book that hasn't already been said a thousand time before?

It's a good book. Well-written, and Gaiman does absurdist comedy quite well. I was very fond of the lime in particular. But I don't think he stretched his story-creating muscle much, and I didn't feel like I was reading anything new.

The 'special features' at the back startled me. As Peek said, it's not a DVD. With DVDs, just having the movie isn't enough, there needs to be extras as well. Books are there for the sake of having a story. From a writer's point of view, I quite enjoyed the cut scene, and the notebook, as it provided insight into Gaiman's writing process...but reader discussion questions? I dug my hooves in there. It's enough that I read the book and enjoyed it. I don't need to be told what I should be analysing about it, thank you very much.

And then, the dedication. I thought it was lovely. I also thought he asks for every shark-woman groupie he gets, from here on it.

Verdict: Yeah, I know. Short innit? But as I said, it's all been said before. It's a good book, well worth your time and money, but I don't know that it will open new doors in your mind.

I'd Forgotten That Colour

I had a moment of insecurity the other day. It came poncing up out of nowhere, sat down, made itself real comfortable, and didn't budge. Took me by surprise. Partly due to the extremely non-existent sleep I've been getting, partly due to the monthly rag time, and mostly completely uninvited.

Tiredness makes me crabby. This is generally inflicted upon other people.

Hormones make me glum. This is generally inflicted upon myself.

But insecurity? I can't remember when I last felt insecure. Hopeless, useless, apathetic and full of despair, but not insecure.

I'd forgotten quite how crippling it was. One of my main supports is that I know I'm a strong person, and the price of being strong is to be strong. My two feet are all I stand on and other such prideful sayings. To have that foundation up and disappear left me a bit shaken.

(But of course, the price of being strong is that I can never be weak, not to others nor myself, so I will not call friends at midnight for the sole purpose of reassuring myself that I'm not a waste of meat.)

It left quickly. It had no reason to stay. And it brought to my attention that I'm not an insecure person, not inside or out.

Chalk that up to one of the year's sucesses.

The ninjas have given up on bees, and they're resorting to summer instead.

The end is nigh. Doom is at hand. Etc.

The Historian - Elizabeth Kostova

Here is a case where marketing actually worked on me. An excerpt of the book was sent in the mail with a newsletter, and because it was there, I read it, and was completely suckered in. How could I not be, when it ends on such words "Vlad Tepes is still alive." The fact that it was beautifully written didn't hurt at all, as I've been known to pick up excerpts for the sole purpose of reading out the horrid bits to annoy mum.

This is not a vampire book. It contains vampires, just as some foods may contain nuts, but don't taste like nuts at all. The vampires are a subtle menace, thwarting the protagonists, but not poncing around as stories tend to make vampires do. They remain unreachable, a mystery, and as such work incredibly well.

The protagonists themselves aren't tough, macho vampire hunters, or heros of any description. They're scholars, all of them, and aside from a remarkable intelligence, they're ordinary people, and remain ordinary people. This is, I think, one of the key succeses of the book.

I'm very guilty of pitting my characters against monsters that are unlikely to afflict anyone walking this earth, and I'm also guilty of having those characters become heros. Of being able to cope with it all, not necessarily well, but being able to come out the end in one piece, on top. I'm guilty, in my head, of being a hero. Ordinary people aren't. Ordinary people don't have armies, swords, BFG's, etc at their disposal, and ordinary people don't wound, let alone kill. That Kostova pitted her characters against some of the greatest monsters of time, and had them remain ordinary people, is a marvellous feat. It gives the book a grounding and an air of validity that drew me in much deeper than I would have otherwise gone.

As well as not being a vampire story, it isn't really a family story either. It's more of a travel book than anything else. As various characters travel to various cities in Europe and the Middle-East, each destination is a marvellous treasure that the character falls in love with, and I had no choice but to do so as well. Everything was wonderful, beautiful, a perfect individual day that would never be replicated. Food was magnificent. People were blessed. Everything had a history I can't even begin to imagine. If you're given to itchy feet, as I am, be warned; this book will make them itchier. I rue the current situation of the Middle East, as I now have a strong desire to see Istanbul, among other things. Kostova is incredibly evocative, and all her settings become characters themselves.

But...she gets a bit carried away with the story. To begin with, I don't know that she can cope with anything but first person. There are multiple POVs within, from the daughter, to the father, to the professor, to her mother, to monks who died in centuries ago - and they're all written in first person. This wouldn't be so bad if there were distinct voices between them, but for the most part, there aren't. The same measured, educated and refined voice dominates all, and so for a book that contains several POV characters, it reads as only one character. There were several times when I forgot exactly whose eyes I was reading through, and what year it was.

Then, her supposedly intelligent characters make assumptions that appear to be there for the sole purpose of the writer being able to pull back the curtain and shock them later. I'm not fond of situations in which the reader has information that the character needs, as it makes me impatient with the character and the story, as there's nothing left to reveal. That the characters don't possess this information for no very good reason at all makes it worse.

Ah, and then we come to the miraculous coincidences. There's nothing else to call the meeting of Turgut and James but out of the blue 'oh what luck!' to get the story moving along. Once I can handle, twice is far too often and smacks of laziness.

The reason for Helen's disappearance, and her continued disappearance, didn't work for me at all. At all.

Finally, the book is too long for the story. I don't usually say that, but with 100 pages to go, I was heartily sick and tired of them digging up one supposedly pointless clue after another, jumping from one dusty library to another, which is what they were doing for the majority of the book. It was interesting for the first part, then it got repetative, then boring. I just wanted them to hurry up and find Vlad's tomb, and get it over and done with. I shouldn't come to the end of the book with relief that it is finally over, I should approach it quickly, to know what happens, and sadly, knowing that I'll never be able to read it for the first time ever again.

It is still, however, a beautifully written book, and refreshingly different. It's full of love and mystery, with just the right amount of menace.

Verdict: Well worth the time, just remember about the last few pages.

Dead in the West - Joe R. Lansdale

I'd almost caught up on verdicts. Then I went and read three books in as many days.

After reading something that had as much impact as City of Saints & Madmen, any book that follows has its work cut out for it. So, I deliberately chose something that wasn't trying to be genius (not that I wanted a repeat of The Phantom Menace experience) and this one had 'pulp' written all over it. As well as 'zombie western'. Really, I couldn't go wrong.

It always takes me a couple of pages to adjust my gears for a book that is shooting for pulp. The initial metaphors and similies make my inner editor cringe, until said inner editor realises that they're totaly deliberate and unshamefully so, and shuts up. Didn't take long to do that, in this case, as I spent a while staring at the cover.

Big bosomed young lady clings screaming to big muscled hero who is fending hordes of zombies off with a shotgun. (Although he's not actually using the shotgun the traditional way, he's swinging it around like a club, which I can't imagine is nearly as effective.) Brilliant!

The small town of Mud Creek is cursed, oh woe, and they asked for that curse, what they did to the medicine man and his woman. And only one man can save the town! Reverend Jebediah Mercer! Who's currently having a severe crisis of faith! And drinks! And kills! And oooooooooh! His troubled soul! God has sent him to this forsaken town to test him, in several different ways if his reaction to Abby, the Doctor's daughter is anything to go by.

I had a lot of fun with this book. Lansdale is consistent with his pulp and cheesy, and mixes it in with horror quite well. Zombies don't frighten me. It's hard to work up fear about some that shambles, that even I can easily out run. But damn, these ones grossed me out. Bits hanging out, bits of goop and ick everywhere. Ick. Ick ick ick.

The end did surprise me, because I'd forgotten exactly how zombie stories worked. It's okay, I remember now.

Verdict: Much fun, although not for everyone. I know I have a very high tolerance for cheese (I enjoyed Van Helsing after all), and this is cheese very well done.

In the morning, ninjas try to garotte me.

They have, dare I say, an unholy alliance formed with the spiders of suburbia. In the night, the spiders drift down across the foot path, casting a line of thread which resides perfectly at throat height for someone of my stature. No one else walks these footpaths until I do, on my way to work. I feel the threads break on my throat. They're trying to lure me into false sense of security. It won't work. I'm onto them. In winter, I wear a scarf, and now summer is coming, the sun is at just the right angle to reveal those infernal lines.

In the evening, ninjas try to cripple me with caltraps.

They have, dare I say, a blasphemous alliance formed with the snails of suburbia. They creep out after dark, crossing from one side of the footpath to the other, just like the metaphorical chicken. It is dark. There are few street lights. The walk home is crunch, crunch, crunchy. I rue that these snails sacrifice themselves for so useless a cause, for my guard will never be lowered.

In the afternoon, the ninjas get fed up and try to kill me with a swarm of bees.

Well...shit.
I don't know why they decided a swarm of bees hanging around a street light at the end of the road was an efficiant way to do me in, because it wasn't. Bee swarms are pretty easy to see, and thus, easy to avoid. But ninjas must know they've failed, so I walked through the swarm. Bees don't really fuss me. They were just buzzing around, doing their thing, which had nothing to do with me.
Which I think has lulled me into a false sense of security, because when I walked home that night, I passed the lamp post and they were all there. All of them. Huddled in a tight clump. Still. All of them, watching me. It turned my heart, in that instance I caught it out of the corner of my eye. They've been there for a few days now.

My time is coming. Doom is at hand.

While ZZZ Hunting

I dreamed that terrorists blew up the World Trade Centre in Melbourne. This was a bit of a drag, considering I actually work in the WTC. Thankfully, I wasn't there at the time. I'd swapped my 9-5 shift for a 3-11.

Instead, I was in a shopping centre, deadling with an idiot. Not a terrorist, just an idiot opportunist with a gun, who wanted everyone's money, as they do. But hey, I'm a hero. I ran around the shops grabbing their big canvas sale banners, threw them on him, tackled him, and had a mad wrestle for the gun, which I won. No one else helped though, of course not.

Then the alarm went off.

And I went back to sleep, and dreamed that I had to spend the night in a haunted church. Naturally, this freaked me right out, until I saw the ghost. Who happened to be a four inch tall blue-glowing dancing baby.

Still, it upset the dogs.

While ZZZ Hunting

I went to Mars in my dream this morning. Although I've never been to Mexico, Mars reminded me of it. Red dirt. Dirty shopping strips. Put-put-bang cars. It was always night there, always a sky full of stars.

I can't quite remember why I was there. I think I was part a space shuttle mission, testing out a new-old spaceship. We arrived. My parents weren't at the base to pick me up, so I had to get a lift with one of the other astronaughts. It turned into a school camp of sorts, full of people I have no real desire to see again. Even in my dreams, my High School people happen around me, not to me.

But I couldn't stay long. I had to get home, to earth. For some reason, instead of taking a space ship, I was expected to accomplish this with a cream coloured toyoto corolla as old as I am, which didn't actually start.

Mars, quite clearly, is a hole.

City of Saints & Madmen - Jeff Vandermeer

I just found seven words of interest on the spine. Now I'm tempted to forgo this verdict and spend my time putting these words where they need to go, but perhaps not. Wouldn't want to end the world. This is the price I pay for buying hardcovers and then putting the dust jackets aside so they don't get damaged. There's an entire story on this dust jacket, and only now have I read it.

It's a good sized book. Just the right amount of heft, with a loose spine that isn't too stiff, and cover art that is just gorgeous.

And it has pictures.

I'm not so old that I don't get excited over a novel with pictures. Not even pictures, do some fancy formatting, get carried away with borders, use footnotes: break the monotonous block of text, and I'll adore it for no reason. The King Squid plates are fantastic, and the Disney mushroom dwellers hold a special place in my heart.

City isn't a novel, but it's not quite a collection of short stories. It could be the dossier of a man gone mad, a hallucination, it could be an anthropological study of a city on no map of ours. Whatever you chose it to be, it is brilliant.

(Oh no, she's going to gush.)

Dradin, In Love
It's a false beginning to the book. It is, perhaps, the only adhering-to-the-standard-definition-of short story. The reader is Dradin, who has just stumbled into Ambergris from the jungles, and as we are new to the city, so is he. Not a walking tour, but a shamble, a stagger, and a run for your life. Dradin is a sad man, and instead of wanting to shake his naivety from him, I just want to pat him sadly on the shoulder. It's a rich story, so very textured, and Ambergris completely overwhelms all else. It isn't a setting, it's a character, and we quickly learn so much from it. Full of life, of wonder, of mess, and full of death. The Festival of the Freshwater Squid unsettles me, whenever it is mentioned. This is the only good look you'll get of that Festival, and I didn't want to look any further. O thought this story was wonderful, beautifully written, and yet, so quickly overshadowed.

The Hoegbottom Guide to the Early History of Ambergris
Suddenly, from literature to comedy. Should I have found this so amusing? It's non-fiction, a historical account of the city, dotted in highly opinionated and subjective footnotes from a snooty history who has, I think, a severe chip on his shoulder. I do love pieces of history, and I swallowed this whole. It was wonderful. I sat on Flinders Street Station at 11.30pm, not used to catching trains after dark and more than a little threatened by the vagrants that wandered the platforms, and this story made me forget all that. No, it isn't a story. The mushroom dwellers fascinate me, as all things that are mysteries must. The Silence chilled me, left me raw and horrified, especially that little gesture, what they did leave behind. I thought this was the best in the book. I was afraid everything would be left standing in its shadow.

The Transformation of Martin Lake
It's good to be wrong.
I'm hopeless at writing about that which I truly love. Things that get me into a tizzy, things that make me giddy with delight and incoherant with joy; I'm left gobsmacked. This story gobsmacked me. I use the word brilliant too much, but it is, it's an amazingly brilliant story. It narrates one of the greatest events in the life of Martin Lake, a soon to be famous painter, broken up with pieces artistic criticism and history. One stream of what really happened, and another stream of what others guess might have possibly happened. The chasm between truth and speculation is enormous, but usually they're on the opposite sides. No one could have guess what truly happened, it seems wild, crazy, more like rumour that the speculation does.
But most of all, what won me over was the paintings.
This story doesn't have pictures, but in the art historian steam, there are descriptions of Lake's work, after the event. They were beautiful. I came out of that story feeling heavy, that I would never be able to see the paintings described. I want to, oh I want to.

It is the footnotes, the art history, that makes Ambergris not a story, but a city. It lives.

The Strange Case of X
This controls the rest of the book. Alas, the twist at the end came as no surprise for me, for it was what I'd assumed from the first page. I thought that was all that story was, until it hit me. Vandermeer was doing something I'd never seen before, doing something I can only think of as brilliant, brilliant, and entirely unapologetically.

The chapbook on King Squid had me in stitches, at work no less. "Remove your tentacle from my birthing canal immediately!" and my favourite:
Their annual celebration, held at roughly the same time as the modern day Festival, culminated with the choosing of one man to hunt the scuttlefish. Given that the average Mothean Scuttlefish, flattened against the riverbed, forms a circle roughly six feet across and that their primary defense consists of stuffing as much of their invertebrate bodies as possible down their attacker's mouth and other available orifices- at which point I choked and died, and had to explain to my supervisor exactly why I was dead. Not one of my finest moments.

I was quite entranced by The Cage. It was a strange story, but Vandermeer knows how to work mystery, how to drop the right revelation that is not a revelation at the right time. An air of quiet menace fills the entire story, as mushrooms can only ever be quiet, soft, and still.

He merged the writer with the world, the world with the writer.

This book left me tizzy. I didn't enjoy it, it enjoyed me, and blew me away. Tizzy, giddy, terribly excited by all that had been done, and all the possibilities that could follow. I enjoy so many books (except The Phantom Menace), but there are only a very few, a mere handful of books that shake the foundations of my mind, break down the walls, and give me the opportunity to build something new. This is one of those very rare, very special books. There is no writer out there who should not read this, there's so much too learn from simple good writing on a sentence level, to genius.

But genius can't be learned.

Verdict: Please, do yourself a favour, and read this. Please. I beg you. The tizziness must be spread.

Star Wars: The Phantom Menace - Terry Brooks

I'm not even linking to this one. Stop looking at me like that. I found it for $5 in a remaindered pile, and I had a SW hankering. Don't worry, I suffered the full consequences of my folly.

Never read any of Brooks's novels, and have no desire to change that. The only piece of writing I've read of his was a short story in Legends II, which completely failed to impress me. It was far too simple, too easy, and reminded me of stories I'd written when I was in high school. (They weren't very good stories.)

Admittedly, Brooks was given a crap story to begin with here. The movie of EpI is just sloppy, and I'm being nice there. I'd come to this book assuming that he had fixed it up a bit. Made it more palatable.

Noooo.

The first page should have warned me, but I'm an idiot. Either he, or his editor, in fact both of them, need to be taught about commas, and shifting perspectives within a sentence. I'm not fond of the latter, not at all, but it is possible if you use commas wisely. Unfortunately, he doesn't use commas. At all.



Okay, so it isn't well written, I can deal with that, I said, and promptly ignored everything that happened on a sentence level, which left me with the characters and story itself, which really wasn't much better.

Oh, Anakin.

We hates him, we does.

You thought he was bad in the film, he's seriously bloody ugly here. He's perfect. He's a golden haired angel, with such a big heart, and everyone loves him, and he loves everyone, and he helps out little old ladies, and total strangers and is soooooo good it made me want to vomit and smack him around. Children aren't like that. Sometimes they are, but not ALL THE TIME. They're children. In fact, NO BODY is like that. Not all the time, and not in the depths of their hearts, but noooo, Anakin is peeeeeeerfect.

Surprisingly, I didn't mind Jar-Jar Binks. Perhaps because I had to concentrate to figure out what it was he was saying. I have picked up the unfortunate habit of saying "Okie-day!"

And then, about half way through, I just stopped. It wasn't worth my time. I even knew how it ended, fancy that.

Verdict: Don't. Just don't. Jedis can't save this.

Monterra's Deliciosa & Other Tales & - Anna Tambour

(What's this, you cry, a verdict?)

I began chewing this book whilst stuck at Heidelberg Railway Station. The next train wasn't due for ten minutes, and wasn't going to my stop anyway, so as I slouched against a street light waiting for my brother to pick me up, I started on the first story, Klokwerk's Heart. In it, I found a flavour that would suffuse through all of Tambour's other stories: delight. It is, I think, her greatest strength, that she has mastered that incredibly hard atmosphere that is joy, happiness, and love, without the added bedbugs of trite, cliche, and sloppiness. They're warm stories, friendly stories, stories that want to be your friend and hold your hand for a while. And yet, even as they're wooing you, some of those stories are down right nasty. Here, I'm thinking of The Eel and Crumpled Sheets and Death-Fluffies.

Travels with Robert Louis Stevenson in the Cévennes left me in stitches. Told through the eyes of the donkey that is Stevenson's sole companion, it was full of practical, no-nonsense observations from said beast, and a brilliant insight into exactly why donkeys are unwilling to go where ever they're asked to go. The last line, however, was the crown.

Valley of the Sugars of Salt is a beast of a story, but a gentle beast. It is perhaps the story that contains the most love in it, a peculiar sort of love that comes from the orchid and its special trees to its tender. Tim, a man with too much money, has taken it to his head to revive a virtually extinct species of fruit tree; the medlars. Medlars are a peculiar fruit that is best eaten when near putrescent, close to being rotten through, and looking just the same. (No, it doesn't sound all that appealing, does it?) His scheme to set the gourmet world afire with them falls through, for aesthetic reasons, but he choses not to give up the orchid, having found a peace there he has never known. The trees themselves have the most personality in the story, rascals the lot of them, telling stories and jokes night in and night out, to the delight of the spiders, birds and beasts around them. It was such a warm story, I felt the strong urge to go out and hug a tree once I'd finished.

The Ocean in Kansas was a lovely, whimsical piece, and I think the world would be a better place if more people gave into such flights of fancy.

And then there was Monterra's Deliciosa, the true beast of the book. A giant rambling story that wandered about the place, looking over here, investigating over there, taking its time to get to where it was going. The journey was worthy of the end. Food, something that Tambour paints vividly in all her stories, was rife throughout, as a country boy moved up and out in the world of high class chefs and restaurants. (What they did to the pigs!) But I couldn't have predicted where it was going, and didn't. I won't reveal it here, as it is something best discovered yourself, but it left me shocked, and slightly nauseated. Still, good writing is good writing, and it was very good.

These are but a few of Tambour's works contained in the collection. It is my preference to read collections all the way through; I do not break them up with other stories, I treat them as any other book. As such, it was wonderful to witness little nods and smiles that went from one story to another. The medlars snuck in a couple of times to say hello, her fascination with lips and food spread about. Although none of the stories are related, it lent them a feel of connectivity. They were all part of the great mind of Anna Tambour.

Verdict: Different, always unexpected, brilliant.

Hawksmoor - Peter Ackroyd

(Ha! Bet you never thought you'd see one of these again!)

This book doesn't belong to me. Matthew Farrer clobbered me with it, and I've never been one to say no. It was given to him by Dan Abnett, in return for a David Malouf book. I've only read one Malouf, but I think Matthew got the better deal.

He intrigued me initally by outlining it as being about the churchs of London, and the incredible symbology that went into their construction. That perked my ears. My favourite chapter in From Hell involves Sir Gull and his driver seemingly randomly trotting around London, viewing churches while Gull delivers something of a lecture on their history. It was fascinating, and sinister.

But perhaps I didn't time my reading of this as best I could. I started reading this book the same time I started work. Instead of being able to give it the hours of attention that I like to languish on books, it was read in bursts and fits; on train stations, in lunch breaks, with a suddenly shifted sleeping pattern that killed my ability to concentrate, until everything spiralled together, and I became as adrift as the characters in the book itself.

Ackroyd is a remarkably talented writer. He exerted a control over his voice that I learned a lot from. The book slips back and forth between two timelines; that of Nicholas Dyer, the architecth who designed and built the churches, full of a purpose I'm sure their majesties would not approve of, and Hawksmoor, in our present day, investigating strange murders occurring in the churches.

It began with Dyer, and at first I was taken aback. His voice, the writing, was heavily 'olde worlde'. I'm not sure that's the best way to put it, but it stemmed from a time when spelling differed from sentence to sentence, and captials went where ever they wished. It was thick, full of colour, and took some effort to read. It put me in mind of my story 'Bitter Elsie Mae' which was written in a thick dialect that tripped a lot of people up as well. One trick I was told was to lay it on in the beginning, and then back off slowly. People will remember the dialect, and hear it even if it isn't there. Either I became used to Dyer's voice, or Ackroyd pulled the same trick.

Then came Hawksmoor, and Ackroyd did something interesting with him. Although Hawksmoor's line could have been written in our current and familiar dialogue, it wasn't. There was no dialect as Dyer had, but turns of phrase, the voice, and mannerisms were such that I never lost contact with the century that Dyer lived in. I wasn't shaken out by modern devices or slang, and occasionally, as the story lines seemed to refect and tangle themselves across time, I lost track of what time I was in, and wondered when I was in the story. (Perhaps that was exhaustion.) Given that one of the themes of the book was the spanning and compressing of time, it felt right. Appropriate. A very complex spell.

But while I understood Dyer, I don't think I ever truly got a handle on Hawksmoor. (Did he have a handle on himself?) He seemed a creature entirely of the present. I knew nothing of his origins, where he had come from, what path his life had trod - he existed only for the duration of the book, with no sense of history or future to his being. As he unpeeled the murders and progressed towards some inevitable conclusion, he was a stranger, as he was to the people in his life. When at last (SPOILER) he entered the church, and found the tramp, and all infinity spun around him, I can't say I had the slightest idea what was going on. From Dyer's perspective, I understood he was successful. From Hawksmoor's...

Perhaps the problems stems from the simple fact that I don't know why Hawksmoor. Perhaps it was something I missed, but I don't know why Hawksmoor had this fate, and not another.

I felt I learned a lot from this book, and although I was unable to give it the full concentration I think it required, I enjoyed it. One of those books that sits slightly sideways of everything else, one that challenged me and still sits in my head, daring me to sort it out.

Verdict: Well worth the time. But yes, have something of a concentration span when you begin. Writers will learn a lot. And I apolosise for mistakes/typos. (Matthew, need your postal address.)

11:44 Hurstbridge

I caught the train home last night. Previously, Hamish had been picking me up at the end of all my afternoon shifts. I didn't expect him to keep doing so, and told him. The cricket was on anyway.

This is why I hate being a short, little, female.

The city was full of drunk people, swearing people, aggressive people, people asking for money and staring at my rack. There were normal people mixed in there, just enough for me not to feel entirely threatened. I'm not, and have never been comfortable around drunk people. They upset me in a deep in the stomach way.

The train worried me, until I stepped on it. It was mostly tired students and workers, all with earphones in. No longer any inhibitations of listening to my iPod. I parked myself next to a huge japanese samurai guy (probably a student) and stared at the floor.

Strange, worrying people don't confine themselves to one carriage. They walk up and down the train, continuously.

There was a domestic at Alphington. Yelling. I couldn't see, but as the doors closed and the train pulled away I could see a woman picking herself up off the ground, and I realised that I had just sat there and done nothing. Disgust. Shame.

Kids. A large mob of them. Thinking they were real tough hot shit. Only one word in their vocabularly, and it began with F. They worried me. A lot. Aggressive. Up and down the train, up and down the train. Yelling at each other. Forcing the doors. I didn't relax until they got off at Watsonia.

Stepped off the train, and it was raining. Just a light rain, enough to give the air that hot wet smell that only summer storms bring. Lightning was frantic in the sky, but thunder only intermittant, and in lazy grumbles. I walked through the storm, and I felt clean again.

There's no other way to say it; humanity makes me feel dirty. Under my skin.

(The rain brought the snails out. The walk home was a bit crunchy.)

The Science of the Discworld III: Darwin's Watch by Terry Pratchett, Ian Stewart, and Jack Cohen

The Sciences are books that I don't read for Pratchett's contributions, in fact in this one and the second I've found the fiction chapters to be lacklustre at best. The wizards amuse me, but the wizards always amuse me.

No, what I enjoy is having the comparison between a fictional world, and our own. Narrativium is an element I understand, and the resulting contrast means that the science served up I find easier to swallow.

Most of the time.

The theme of this Science was evolution, although for reasons I never quite grasped, several chapters were spent dwelling on time travel. At first, I was interested (who isn't?), and although physics normally makes me shriek and run away, I stuck with it. It was interesting to learn about all these theories on how time travel could theoretically possible, usually involving cutting black holes and white holes in half and sticking them together, or folding space into a tube, but I had to wonder how anyone arrived at these theories. The practicality of all of them was non-existent. Perhaps because I am a physics pleb, but rolling space into a tube doesn't seem like a possible or even practial thing to do.

Then, however, it moved on to string theory.

Sweet mercy, given me quantum, please! Whilst I think I may have grasped a hazy idea of what they thought they were talking about, that's all it is. String theory seems even less practical than cutting black holes in half. I remember branes, and I remember Goldilocks, and that's all. Mostly, I found it a bit disappointing that I just didn't get it, but I don't think String Theory exists for bum-wannabe-writers to get.

Once free of string theory, it was smooth sailing. The chapters detailing Darwin's life were fascinating (barnacles! ha!), and especially the notion of 'steam engine time'. It was something I noticed before the concept actually appeared in the book; regardless of Darwin's publication of The Origin of Species, it looked as though the concept of evolution was stirring the water, and would have found an outlet in any other of a number of people if Darwin hadn't trod the path he did. Time, progress, science create the conditions that make some inventions/discoveries/ideas just about inevitable. Like steam engine time (so many people were making steam engines, it was only because Watt had the money to make lots of them that he gets the credit).

But, I don't feel I came out of the book haven't had the boundaries of my mind reset. Sure, string theory made a mess in my head, but in regards to the rest, I don't look at the world any differently. It was an interesting read, and I picked up many useless/useful facts, but I wasn't blown away.

Except possibly about the barnacles. That still makes me laugh.

Verdict: interesting, amusing, easy to read. 'cept for the string theory.

The Risen Empire & The Killing of Worlds by Scott Westerfeld

Having emerged from The Time Traveler's Wife I wanted something entirely different to read. Preferably something with guns and explosions. I ended up nibbling on Scott's books, as when he signed the first he wrote, 'within these pages you'll find all the action scenes you'll ever need'. (For his week at Clarion South, I wrote an unbalanced action piece that broke my brain.) With a promise like that, I couldn't go wrong.

(I feel I should apologise for any typos. I'm making a lot more than I normally do. Tired.)

I don't know that I've read much space opera previously. Maxine McArthur's books and those Star Wars ones, and that's pretty much the sum total. I think, all things considering, I could get really obsessive about space opera. One of the reasons I haven't read much science fiction is the vague menace of hard science - I don't have a scientifically wired mind, and I hate the idea of not getting the central conceit of a book. That, and I have a quite loathing of physics. Space opera isn't so much science, as stories in a science fiction setting. I hope that makes sense. My own brain isn't making sense. Regardless, these books didn't intimidate me, which is just what I wanted.

The Risen Empire was founded around 5000 years ago, and for its duration has only had the one immortal Emperor, he who defeated the Old Enemy, Death. Those deemed worth, those of influential families, those who died in combat are given the symbiant which returns them to life, and grants them immortality. The social implications of having previous generations hang around and retain the balance of power and wealth are amazing, and as much as I liked the guns and explosions, exploring the fallout of such a civilisation was fascinating. It stagnates as the living bow beneath the dead. New ideas can't take hold, progress stops because those who cling to the old ideas are those in power, are those who will not die and thus step aside. It's horrifyingly stifling.

However, mostly I find the idea of living forever horrible, and not something I will even wish for. Ugh.

The kick off sees the Child Empress, the Emperor's sister, hostage in her own palace. Warriors from the Rix cult are holding her to ransom, threatening to kill her if imperial forces attempt to interfer with the seeding of a compound mind in the planet's infrastructure. An AI the size of a planet wakes up. Captain Zai has the impossible task of rescuing the Child Empress from the bridge of the Lynx high above the planet, and it all spirals out of control from there.

There have been very few scenes in books that have started my heart thumping and got the adrenaline going. In fact, I think the scene with the rail gun is the only time I've ever reached the end of a chapter in a book, looked up, and said "Holy cow. That was cool." And that is impressive.

Most of all, from reading these books I learned how to balance action in writing, something I wasn't aware of with my week six story. In real time, action does go indefinitely, but the reader doesn't. The reader needs regular breaks to step back and take a breath. This doesn't necessarily mean that the character in the thick of it gets to (oh no, that would be easy). In this case, Scott used flash backs exceptionally well. I quite liked the House Mind, and was waiting for it to single-handedly taken on and thwart the Compund Mind.

That said, I got to the end, and something very large was missing. Tying up of ends? What happened to Alexander? I mean, it's kind of big and creepy...I guess I'll live not knowing the answer.

I know this vedict doesn't really say anything, but the wiring in my brain is kind of faulty right now.

Verdict: All the action scenes you'll ever want, and some damn cool shit to boot.

The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger

The first night of reading this book, I put in my bookmark, turned off the light, and lay in the dark with a little smile on my face.

It takes a fair amount of clobber for a book to drive someone to tears. It takes a whole lot more to stuff them full of joy peas and happy beans. Have I ever known a book to fill me with giddy delight before? Not because it was funny, or clever, but because it was lovely.

When Clare first met Henry, she was six and he was thirty-six. When they married, she was twenty-two and he was thirty. Henry suffers from a disorder that makes him chronologically unstable; at times of high stress, when started, when doing nothing at all, he is flung about in time. Thus, Clare has known Henry all her life, yet when finally they meet in the present, she is a total stranger to him. From childhood, she knows that he's the love of her life, her future husband - he told her. It's inevitable. And while there's a wonderful, glorious, warm, tizzy, funny-in-the-tummy excitement as the time comes when they meet in the present and start their life together properly, there's also a creeping despair, as the forces that drove them together must tear them apart, as it has done, over, and over, again. There lives are so intricately intwined that imagining them apart, unreachable, the mind shies away.

For me, I fell in love with their relationship, particularly from Clare's perspective. To know someone so long, so intimiately is incredibly alluring, and holds all sorts of promises of comfort and trust, especially trust when one's partner has a habit of vanishing for unknown times to unknown times (to, as it turns out, your past, to watch over you as you are growing up, and going through those growing pains).

What extraordinary and yet normal lives they lead.

I can see why this book isn't in the speculative fiction section of any book stores (none that I've seen). Although genetically triggered time travel is an incredible science fiction, it isn't the heart of the book. Clare and Henry's beautiful and bizarre relationship fills every nook and cranny, and the time travel is incidental, a strange circumstance that while central, is almost an after thought when set next to the couple. It dominates their lives, but they're normal people. Henry vanishes just as partner's leave for work. It happens.

It's a wonderful look at relationships, all sorts of relationships. It occured to me, around the half-way point, that if I stopped writing protagonists who were hermits in extreme isolation, I could have this effect as well, all these dynamics, all these moments.

I think I rather like love stories.

Yet, I wasn't satisfied with the end. Did she live, or did she wait? No hint is given. Perhaps I am meant to decide, and after knowing them for a whole book, I'm inclined to think she waited, and waited, and waited. When married to a time traveler, who knows when he'll appear. But that outcome irks me to no end. Her entire life, all of it. When I flipped the last page, my first thought was that Niffenegger was rushed, or afraid, or just couldn't bear to go any further in that territory. It felt like a betrayal of sorts, given how all Clare's horrible and beautiful days had been laid bare before hand.

Alas, such a story can only be followed by mourning. It's already too late for me to meet my own time traveler.

Verdict: this story got under my skin, into my blood, and moved me. It's a beautiful thing, and you do yourself a disservice by not having it in your life.