Jules Jones

Allie Brosh has written two books (so far), which I'm reviewing together. I love them. They're somewhat hyperbolic versions of stories originating from her real life, told in the form of comics. Most of them are funny, some of them are not, and a few give a deep insight into the mechanisms of a mind grappling with nightmares.

Allie Brosh - Hyperbole and a Half

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Allie Brosh - Solutions and other problems

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Fifth installment of the series about Inspector Singh of the Singapore police, forever being shipped off elsewhere to get him out of his superiors' hair. This time he's on compulsory sick leave, and thus can't claim pressure of work to avoid being dragged by Mrs Singh to a family wedding in India. But the Singhs arrive only to find that the bride-to-be has disappeared. The last thing her immediate family want is the police involved, because of the social stigma -- the obvious motive for the young woman's disappearance is to avoid an arranged marriage. For the family patriarch, worried about his granddaughter's welfare as well as her reputation, an investigation by a family member who just happens to be a member of another country's police force is a much more appealing prospect.

Then a corpse turns up, and the local police are involved whether the family likes it or not. But Singh keeps digging, and finds a tangle of motives that he's not willing to ignore.

Once again Flint has blended a police procedural with a sensitive look at the ramifications of a real life tragedy. This book is deeply rooted in Sikh culture, and that includes the ongoing after-effects of the 1984 riots and massacre in India. But the latter does not overwhelm the book -- it is only one strand in a complex story about a complex society. A particular feature of the book is that it is quite openly an outsider's view of India, complete with an outsider's prejudices and reactions -- but the outsider here is not a white European, but a member of the Indian diaspora of Singapore. Singh finds India at once both alien and familiar, and this colours his reaction to the things he encounters during his investigation.

Singh is a joy of a character to read about, and Flint has created yet another fascinating twist to her series hook of a police inspector who frequently ends up investigating murder well outside his official jurisdiction. The Singaporean Sikh is a marvellous addition to the ranks of maverick detectives in mystery fiction, and I'm very much hoping that there will be a sixth book in the series.


http://www.librarything.com/work/11236931

79) Pati Nagle - Pet Noir

Note: I received a review copy of this through the LibraryThing Early Reviewers programme.

Short fix-up novel about a genetically engineered cat whose creation is commissioned by the security chief of a large space station. The chief wants an undercover agent who'll be overlooked by criminals who might be suspicious of humanoids. A Maine Coon who's been genetically engineered to have human level intelligence, opposable thumbs, and a tongue that can wrap itself around human language is a useful thing to have loitering around fast food outlets and in cargo holds, picking up the gossip. An ordinary-looking cat won't be suspected because the high cost of gengineered animals means they're still rare -- but it's a price that's worth it for someone who wants to bust a drug-smuggling ring.

The book is structured as a series of short stories covering the first year or so of Leon's life, a first person retrospective from the day the Chief collects a know-all kitten from the labs to a year or so later, when Leon's experienced enough to understand how very inexperienced and naive he was that day. The general tone is that of a hard-boiled detective story, only here the hard-boiled tone is distinctly feline-flavoured and the setting is futuristic.

It's a lot of fun following Leon's emotional and intellectual development alongside his cases, and the cases themselves mostly make good stories. There are some good observations of feline behaviour worked into this. Leon's mostly plausible as a portrait of a cat with boosted intelligence, and his relationship with his human partner Devin, a mix of self-centredness and genuine affection after a rocky start, works well. However, there are two flaws which badly broke suspension of disbelief for me.

The first is that Leon is not just super intelligent, at 4 weeks old he speaks fluent English and he's already showing a better grasp of human culture than a human ten year old. Yes, cats develop much faster, but there hasn't been time for him to physically assimilate that amount of information, even if he does spend all day in front of the tv.

The second is that Leon speaks to other, unenhanced animals, who appear to be also human level intelligence in their conversation, even if they're speaking in cat rather than English, which rather undermines the point of him being genetically engineered for human level intelligence. There also appears to be a single human-level language across at least three species who are not regarded as fully sentient by the humans and other sentient species on the station. It felt as if the author was trying to appeal to readers who like to think of their cats as being just little humans in fur coats.

One of the things I did like about the book is that it touches on the ethics of uplifted animals. It's a very light touch, and anything stronger would have unbalanced the book, but it's made clear that Leon is under an indentured contract and is required to pay off the costs of his creation by working for whoever owns the contract. He's effectively the property of Gamma Station Security for several years, and he's unimpressed by this.

Overall, something of a mixed bag. It's a fun light read, and has some laugh out loud moments, but there are some niggles which mean I can't wholeheartedly recommend it. A free sample consisting of the prologue and first chapter are available for download at Book View Cafe, which will give you a reasonable idea of the style.

LibraryThing entry

35) James Goss -- Torchwood: Ghost Train [audiobook]

2 CD Torchwood story written for audio, and set between second and third series. It's read by actor Kai Owen, for the very good reason that it's a first person narrative from one Rhys Williams, haulage manager. What we get is not just "actor reads book", but "actor in character tells us a story about what happened when he got mixed up in an alien invasion last week".

Rhys has a problem in the form of missing fridges, which to begin with looks like perfectly ordinary pilfering. But as Rhys looks into it, the mystery starts acquiring enough weirdness round the edges to make him think it could be Torchwood territory. Pity Torchwood's having a really bad day, and he can't even get advice about how to investigate his own little problem, never mind actual assistance. Rhys turns private investigator, and finds himself couriering packages that were delivered to Cardiff railway station - after midnight, on a long disused platform. It turns out that there's a Torchwood interest after all, but Torchwood proper is missing or dead, and only Rhys is in a position to put things back the way they should be.

The story's very entertaining, with a perfectly balanced blend of humour and horror, and a lot of running gags that turn out to be plot elements as well. Those plot elements are part of a carefully constructed story where various small details which have been layered in become important as the story gradually unfolds. And it's wonderfully read by Kai Owen. But along with all this, we get some lovely pieces of characterisation. The story revolves around Rhys, but we also see Rhys's view of Gwen and her job, and Ianto and Jack. A great story with plenty of re-listen potential. This entertaining audiobook easily justifies its cover price.

LibraryThing entry

Note: I received this as a review copy from the LibraryThing Early Reviewers programme.

Omnibus edition of the Starfarers Quartet, published as an ebook reprint edition. The basic concept is a near-future setting where a space habitat is being built and fitted out for the first attempt at an interstellar voyage, using a recently discovered piece of cosmic string in the Solar System as a means of accessing almost instantaneous travel to another solar system. The habitat is set up as a university campus under international control.

In the first book, the station's purpose is being politicised, with an attempt by the US government to commandeer the habitat and re-purpose it as a military station for use in a peacekeeping mission on Earth, nominally under international control but in reality completely controlled by the US. The university faculty vote to continue their mission as planned, even if it means making an emergency run to the string and out of the solar system.

The second book begins with the Starfarer's arrival in the Tau Ceti system, accompanied by a parting shot from the military cruiser which had been sent to stop them. The alien contact team who were the main focus of the narrative in the first book now get to do their job for the first time. The third and fourth books continue the story of the Starfarer crew's attempts to interact with Civilisation

I found the first book somewhat frustrating to begin with, as I found the writing style a little hard to get on with, particularly the way a lot of point of view characters were simply dropped into the narrative with their own chapter and then abandoned for a while. It made the book feel very bitty to begin with. But once I had a handle on who all these people were and how their individual stories started to weave together, I found it fascinating.

The first book ends on something that is both a bit of a cliffhanger and resolution of the main plot. It could be read as a standalone. The next three books each end with resolution of that book's piece of the story arc, but leave the reader expecting to see more arc -- and unfortunately that includes the last one. It felt to me as if the author had left too many loose ends dangling at the end of the quartet, even though we do see the resolution to the main question of whether they will both make it safely back to Earth, and whether they will be able to leave the Solar System again once they have returned.

Some of those loose ends *really* needed tying up, to the point where I found it seriously irritating that they weren't. It's not billed as a mystery, but one of the plot threads certainly came over to me as being a mystery, with clues being dropped that the Starfarer crew had got something wrong -- and it was never resolved as to whether they had or not. It may be just that I was misreading the author's intentions and she *had* intended for the wrap-up somewhere in book 2 or 3 to be the Final Wrap-up of that thread, but if that was the case she should have refrained from making suggestions that there was a further secret behind the one unveiled. It left me feeling as if the final bit of that storyline in the last few pages was missing a significant part.

That niggle aside, I found the books very enjoyable to read once I'd picked up enough of the character threads in book 1 to follow what was going on. There is wonderful, wonderful world-building with a description of the maiden voyage of Earth's interstellar ship, and the things it finds Out There. And while the number of characters introduced in a very chop and change manner is confusing at first, it makes for a great depth to the characterisation over the course of the four books.

Some particular points of note -- this series has both good science and good emotional development. And on the latter front, the people side of it includes the three members of a poly partnership amongst the lead characters - in a world where legally binding romantic partnerships of any sort are mildly unusual. This isn't thrown in for titillation, but forms part of the world-building. And while we're on the subject of diversity, the lead characters aren't non-stop Default White American.

While I've rated this 3 stars overall, that's partly a reflection of my disappointment with the ending. I'd happily recommend that people download the first book, available as a free sample from BookViewCafe, and try it to see if they like it enough to buy the full quartet.

Book 68

This YA novel was first published in 1963, and was set around fifty years in its then-future. Nearly fifty years on, it has aged remarkably well. Right on the first page, I was taken back to the sensawunda I had when I first read this book as a young teenager around thirty years ago -- not least because in the first paragraph Clarke beautifully evokes the sense of wonder his teenage protagonist feels at the sight of an international cargo vessel and the daydreams it inspires about the places it has seen.

When sixteen-year-old Johnny Clinton finds that the giant hovercraft has made an emergency landing near his home, his curiosity leads him to sneak aboard for a look around, and leaves him trapped as an accidental stowaway when it lifts off again unexpectedly. The orphaned Johnny's not too upset at the idea of being carried away from the home he's reluctantly offered by his widowed aunt, so he doesn't come out of hiding until the craft crash-lands in the Pacific Ocean. The crew have abandoned ship, and Johnny is left with nothing but a packing crate and his own clothing to keep him afloat and sheltered -- until a pod of dolphins find him and and save his life by pushing his makeshift raft the hundred miles to the nearest land.

That land is Dolphin Island, an island on Australia's Great Barrier Reef which is home to a research station studying dolphins. The station tracks down where Johnny came from before he's even released from the infirmary, but he's offered the chance to stay, an offer he's quick to accept. He rapidly builds a new life for himself, one that mixes ongoing formal education with involvement in the scientific work on communicating with the dolphins. There's more than a little adventure as well.

This is an excellent short novel, with an engaging protagonist, an interesting story, and some superb world-building. Clarke drew on his own experience of skin-diving on the Great Barrier Reef to paint a wonderful word picture of the Reef and its marine life. Clarke's extrapolation of technology hasn't suffered too badly as reality caught up with it -- it's different to what really happened, but not so much so that it jars. And glory be, the story hasn't been visited by the Sexism Fairy. There's a distinct absence of female characters, but not in a way that says that women shouldn't worry their pretty little heads about difficult things like science. Definitely one for my keeper collection.

LibraryThing entry

Book 62

Third of the Superintendent Hannasyde mysteries. Silas Kane is the senior male member of the Kane family, childless owner of the Kane family fortune. When he's found dead at the foot of a cliff one morning' his family are distressed, but most of them suspect nothing more than the obvious -- he insisted on having his usual evening walk along the clifftop path in spite of it being a foggy night, and must have missed his way. But when his heir is found shot dead not long after moving into the family residence, Silas's death takes on a more sinister aspect. And it's not as if there's a shortage of motives. A nice obvious one is that the other partners in Silas's business wanted to go into a risky but potentially profitable deal, one that could only go ahead with a capital injection from Silas, which Silas wasn't willing to give. And of course, Silas's nephew and heir Clement needed the money he inherited, and Clement in turn has the next oldest cousin as his heir. Then there's pure personal animosity as a motive for an eighty-year-old lady, of all people, to have committed one of the murders.

Hannaysde's problem is that there are several good candidates for each murder, but anyone with good motive and means for one is a poor candidate for the other. If, of course, the death of Silas really was a murder and not just an unfortunate coincidence of an accident. And that's before it becomes clear that someone is now targeting Clement's heir.

I spotted the murderer fairly early on, when the second murder took place, although I didn't work out how he'd done it. It took me a little longer to make the connection on what his true motive was. This is no criticism of the book, because Heyer kept me guessing almost to the end as to whether I was right. That's just as much fun as not spotting the clues until near the end. And there's plenty of entertainment along the way, with ample red herrings, a cast of characters large enough to provide plenty of character interaction without being too large to keep track of, and some sparkling dialogue.

Hannasyde is a recurring character, and there are references to earlier cases, but he's actually something of a cypher in comparison with the one-off characters he encounters. There's no real development of him as a character from book to book. Instead, what shines here are the character studies of the people caught in the backwash of murder. They're often stereotypes or exaggerations, but still are nicely drawn caricatures of certain personality types, and the way they react to stress.

Great fun, and I'm looking forward to the next one.

LibraryThing entry

I've previously reviewed the three books published so far in the Inspector Singh Investigates series by Shamini Flint, but those were reviews that tried to give an idea of what the books were like without significant spoilers. Is anyone interested in spoilerific discussion, since at least one of you has gone out and read the books as a result of my reviews?

A quick summary: Inspector Singh is an overweight, chain-smoking, unfit detective in the Singapore police force. He's very good at catching killers, but he doesn't really fit into the current force culture, and his superiors are only too happy to get this disgrace to the force temporarily out of sight and out of mind by loaning him to the police forces of neighbouring countries.

One of the reasons he's so good at his job is that he works by understanding how and why people behave the way they do -- a Singapore Sikh version of a certain Belgian detective, or a little old lady from St Mary Mead. Singh's his own man, not just a flimsy pastiche of those characters, but he holds the same appeal for a reader.

The books are set in South East Asia, but some aspects of policing are the same the world over. And the setting is written from the inside -- Flint is a lawyer who has worked in both Malaysia and Singapore, and knows whereof she writes.

I picked up the first book from a table in The Works, because the premise of a crime-busting Sikh detective travelling South-East Asia sounded intriguing. The blurb on the book looked worth investing a couple of hours of time, so I bought it, and found a book that certainly had its flaws, but showed a lot of promise. When the author found my review and offered me review copies of the next two books, I was glad to accept. Those books made good on the potential I'd seen in the first, and I'm now eagerly waiting for the fourth book to come out. Some reasons why coming up in the comment thread...

Book 54

This edition is an abridged audiobook on 3 CDs, running time about 3 hours, read by Nigel Anthony. According to LibraryThing, it's the last of four novels featuring Colonel Race.

A year ago, a group of people sat down to dinner around a table in the Luxembourg table. One of them was dead by cyanide at the end of the evening, apparently a suicide. But Rosemary's husband tells a friend that he has come to believe that she was murdered, and has set a trap for the murderer in the form of a remembrance dinner on the anniversary of her death. It's a trap that will be sprung in the worst possible way, leaving his friend Colonel Race to tease out the clues -- before a third murder is committed.

In a series of flashbacks, Christie shows how each of the people around the table that night had a motive for murdering Rosemary, including her husband. As the action moves forward to the anniversary dinner and its aftermath, each character study is developed further, shedding new light on people's behaviour but often only changing their motive rather than removing it. Race has a problem on his hands -- there is an abundance of suspects for each murder, but any individual suspect really only has all three of method, motive and opportunity for one of the murders. And yet the murders are clearly linked...

The solution to the mystery is simple in hindsight, but well concealed by the array of convincing motives on offer. And even when Colonel Race finally understands the pattern of events, the suspense continues, because the pattern points to one more murder that must take place.

The mystery is an enjoyable way to pass a few hours, and the book is by and large well read by Anthony. I did find his reading of female characters' dialogue slightly irritating, as he used a slightly falsetto voice which simply sounded silly to me and thus pulled me out of the story slightly. But it's an enjoyable audiobook that I'll be happy to listen to again.

LibraryThing entry