Title: Lords of the North
 Author: Bernard Cornwell
 Rating: 4 stars out of 5
 Publisher: Harper
 Copyright: 2007
 ISBN: 0061149047
 Pages: 317
 Keywords: historical, fiction
 Reading period: 5-6 April, 2008

Uhtred, a Saxon warrior raised by Danes and the right-hand man of King Alfred the Great, returns home to Northumbria to settle old scores. Settle those scores he eventually does, but not before he is betrayed by a man he trusts and sold into slavery.

Cornwell is best known for his long-running series about Richard Sharpe, an officer promoted from the ranks in the Napoleonic Wars, and for his battle scenes. Here he proves that he can write about 9th century swordsmen as well as he can write about 19th century riflemen. All of his heroes tend to resemble Sharpe: grim-faced loners with their own sense of honor, who are deadly when crossed.

Title: The Unquiet

Author: John Connolly

Rating: 4 stars out of 5

Publisher: Pocket Star Books

Copyright: 2007

ISBN: 1416531386

Pages: 515

Keywords: crime, horror

Reading period: 3-5 April, 2008

Maine PI Charlie Parker is asked to warn off Merrick, a father looking for answers, from harassing his client. The case leads him to uncover a decades-old project of sexually abusing children who've fallen through the cracks.

Atmospheric and disturbing, as Connolly's novels tend to be.

Title: Variable Star

Author: Robert A. Heinlein, Spider Robinson

Rating: 4 stars out of 5

Publisher: Tor

Copyright: 2006

ISBN: 0765351684

Pages: 339

Keywords: science fiction

Reading period: 30 March-3 April, 2008

Joel Johnston is a budding young musician and the son of a Nobel-winning physicist, who gets engaged to Jinna, a fellow orphan, only to learn that she's the granddaughter of the richest man in the Solar System. Her grandfather, The Conrad, wants him to breed more heirs. In a fit of pique at the deception, Joel goes on a bender then hops on a colony ship to a distant star. Even at relativistic speeds, it's going to be a one-way trip.

Fifty years ago, Robert Heinlein wrote a short outline for this book, then put it aside. A few years ago, Heinlein's estate asked Spider Robinson to complete it.

Robinson has done a great job of writing another Heinlein novel, exploring one of his classic themes, a young man finding himself, and sounding very much like Heinlein himself.

Very enjoyable.

Title: Dreams from my Father

Author: Barack Obama

Rating: 4.5 stars out of 5

Publisher: Three Rivers Press

Copyright: 1995

ISBN: 1400082773

Pages: 457

Keywords: autobiography

Reading period: 8-26 March, 2008

This book was originally published, to little acclaim, in 1995 before Obama first ran for public office. His primary claim to fame at that point was that he had been the first black president of the Harvard Law Review. It was reissued in 2004 after his celebrated keynote speech at the Democratic National Convention placed him on the national stage.

Obama is articulate and thoughtful. This excellent memoir tells of his childhood in Hawai'i and Indonesia, his experiences as a community organizer in Chicago, and a formative trip to Kenya.

He was raised by his white mother and her parents. He hardly knew his Kenyan father, a village boy turned Harvard-trained economist. Obama met his father only once when he was ten, after his parents separated when he was two. His ill-formed impressions of his father were significantly changed by his trip to Kenya, where he learned far more from his half-siblings and extended family.

Obama's intelligence and capacity for self-examination shine through. He is frank about his mistakes and his undirected wandering in his high school and undergraduate years. He talks of his struggle to find an identity, part black, part white, feeling an outsider in both worlds.

The contrast with Emperor C-Minus Augustus could hardly be more stark.

Highly recommended.

Title: The Sparrow
Author: Mary Doria Russell
Rating: 5 stars out of 5
Publisher: Ballantine
Copyright: 1996
ISBN: 0449912558
Pages: 408
Keywords: science fiction
Reading period: 25 February-7 March, 2008

Father Emilio Sandoz, S.J., is the sole survivor of the first expedition to an alien planet, an experience that has left him physically maimed, traumatized, and reviled. He doesn't want to talk about it, but the Jesuit order who sponsored the expedition require answers.

Russell's narrative weaves two tales together: the expedition itself and the inquiry afterwards. This is a first contact for which the expedition crew, Jesuits and lay people alike, are not adequately prepared. The two alien races are more alien than they seem at first, operating from fundamentally different axioms. With the best of intentions, the humans' ignorance leads to great tragedy.

This is an astonishing first novel. Accomplished, nuanced, and moving, it deals in deep issues, examining what it is to be human, and the crisis of faith of a priest who believes himself abandoned by God. Bittersweet, yet often very funny. The characters are memorable and complex.

Unreservedly recommended, this is only the second book to which I am awarding 5 stars.

Title: Cursor's Fury
Author: Jim Butcher
Rating: 4 stars out of 5
Publisher: Ace
Copyright: 2006
ISBN: 0441015476
Pages: 544
Keywords: fantasy
Reading period: 23-24 February, 2008

Cursor's Fury is the third book in Jim Butcher's fantasy series, Codex Alera, and the sequel to Academ's Fury.

Tavi is now a cursor, a special agent of the First Lord. Planted undercover in a newly-formed legion, Tavi suddenly becomes its leader when all the other officers are assassinated, just as an invading force of Canim have landed nearby. Meanwhile, his aunt Isana, is trapped in a besieged city, when one of the High Lords, Kalare, attempts a coup. Isana's brother Bernard and his wife Amara lead an attack against Kalare.

Exciting and entertaining, with almost every chapter ending in a cliffhanger for one of the principals.

Title: For a Few Demons More
Author: Kim Harrison
Rating: 4 stars out of 5
Publisher: Eos Books
Copyright: 2007
ISBN: 0061149810
Pages: 546
Keywords: urban fantasy
Reading period: 12-13 January, 2008

Another urban fantasy featuring the witch, Rachel Morgan, who runs an investigation agency with a vampire, in a world where ordinary humans were decimated by a virus and vampires, Weres, witches, pixies, and more live openly.

Morgan is reckless and addicted to living on the edge, and her friends will pay a heavy price before the end of the book. You'd want Rachel on your side in a fight, but you'd probably be exasperated with her the rest of the time. She battles demons, both metaphorical and literal, before bringing the book to a bittersweet conclusion.

This is the fifth book in an ongoing series. The books are heavily linked together and best read in order.

Enjoyable and fast-paced.

Title: Coronado
Author: Dennis Lehane
Rating: 4.5 stars out of 5
Publisher: Harper Perennial
Copyright: 2006
ISBN: 0061139718
Pages: 232
Keywords: fiction
Reading period: 12 January, 2008

A collection of short stories and a play, all characteristically dark. Tales of fucked-up lives, tales of people with shitty pasts and no futures, tales of revenge.

Lehane writes brilliantly. His spare description, his dialogue brings the characters to life on the page.

The play, "Coronado", is adapted from an earlier short story, "Until Gwen" — also part of this collection. The repetition does not feel redundant. The play fleshes out the short story, telling it in a different manner.

Recommended, but depressing.

Title: The Assassin's Cloak
Author: Irene and Alan Taylor (editors)
Rating: 4 stars out of 5
Publisher: Canongate Books
Copyright: 2000
ISBN: 1841951722
Pages: 686
Keywords: autobiography
Reading period: 1 January, 2007 — 12 January, 2008

This anthology of diaries contains several entries for every day of the year, drawn from 170 contributors across three-and-a-half centuries. Everyone from Pepys to Goebbels, from Che Guevara to Alec Guinness.

I spent all of last year reading this book, trying to read each day's entries as they occurred. I often failed and would have to read a week or more's entries to catch up. I fell behind towards the end, not finishing my daily devotions until yesterday.

The book was drawn from several years of entries in two Scottish newspapers, and most of the diairists are British. The 20th century is well represented, particularly the two World Wars. Some of the entries from a particular diairist tell a story; others are unrelated snapshots of their lives. Some entries tell of momentous events, such as the birth of a child, the death of a loved one, or victory in war. Others are banal records of an ordinary day, noteworthy only because they give us an insight into a lifestyle that no longer exists. Many of the diarists were famous, at least in their own lifetimes; some live quiet, unremarked, but not unobserved lives.

I wonder how many diaries are written now, in the age of blogging. Will a future anthology have to dig into the Wayback Machine and Google's cache to mine entries from blogs?

Recommended.

Title: Iron Council
Author: China Miéville
Rating: 4 stars out of 5
Publisher: Del Rey
Copyright: 2004
ISBN: 0345464028
Pages: 564
Keywords: fantasy
Reading period: 23 December, 2007 - 5 January, 2008

Iron Council is Miéville's third novel set in the world of Bas-Lag, where thaumaturgy (magic) works along with steampunk technology and humans live alongside other sentient species.

Two decades ago, the city-state of New Crobuzon started building a railroad across an enormous desert. The workers are humans, cactacae (cactus people), and Remade (criminals grotesquely modified by thaumaturgy, with animal or mechanical parts grafted on). Eventually, they rebel against the heavy-handed overseers, and flee far into the badlands. Known as the Iron Council, their legend lives on in New Crobuzon.

By now, New Crobuzon is at war with the distant state of Tesh, but also wants to punish the Iron Council. Judah Low, a golemetrist who was part of the Iron Council, sets out from New Crobuzon to warn the Council. He is followed by his occasional lover, Cutter. Back in the city, Ori is a young radical fed up with endless talk who joins a revolutionary group that assassinates the city's ruler.

Miéville writes a very different kind of fantasy from the Tolkien-derived swords-and-sorcery that constitutes so much of the genre. His is a grim world where oppressive oligarchies use militias and sadistic thaumaturges to keep the masses under control. They live in Dickensian squalor in a city that sounds a little like London, with locations such as Dog Fenn, Kelltree, Brock Marsh, Sobex Croix, Petty Coil, Griss Twist, and Lich Sitting Station. Miéville is a Marxist and it shows. His writing is also marvelously evocative.

Recommended.

Title: The Terror
Author: Dan Simmons
Rating: 4.5 stars out of 5
Publisher: Back Bay Books
Copyright: 2007
ISBN: 0316017450
Pages: 784
Keywords: historical, horror
Reading period: 27-31 December, 2007

In 1845, Sir John Franklin led an expedition to find the fabled Northwest Passage, connecting the Atlantic to the Pacific via the Canadian Arctic. HMS Erebus and HMS Terror were never heard from again. Later rescuers found some notes in a cairn, indicating that the ships had been trapped for a year and a half in the ice, and the crews had finally abandoned ship, making for the south.

Dan Simmons builds a tale of horror from all the known historical facts: the frigid dangers of an Arctic winter, when the sun doesn't rise for months; the ice constantly grinding the trapped ships; the terrible hardships of man-hauling sleds across the ice packs; the hunger as the food runs out early as many of the cans were improperly sealed; and the horrors of scurvy as they begin starving. The final horror is a beast from Inuit legend, which terrorizes them for months, picking them off one by one.

The book is told from the viewpoints of multiple characters on the two ships, most notably that of Francis Crozier, the captain of the Terror, a hard-drinking, socially inferior Irish commoner, who is far more capable than the inept Sir John. Despite the horrors, these men refuse to simply give up. They go on, sustaining hope, under the most awful conditions.

Recommended, though it would have been a better book were it shorter.

Title: Unnatural Selection
Author: Aaron Elkins
Rating: 4 stars out of 5
Publisher: Berkley
Copyright: 2006
ISBN: 0425216055
Pages: 264
Keywords: crime
Reading period: 17-19 December, 2007

Gideon Oliver, the forensic anthropologist saddled with the unfortunate nickname of the "Skeleton Detective" by the press, is on vacation in the Scilly Isles, with his wife Julie. She's participating in a small biennial colloquium organized by an eccentric Russian millionaire.

Naturally, he happens upon a bone fragment, which leads him to a dismembered corpse, who turns out to be an attendee of the previous colloquium.

The main characters are likeable and, despite the somewhat gruesome descriptions of skeletons and postmortems, it's an enjoyable, well-plotted whodunnit.

Title: The Best American Crime Writing 2005
Author: Otto Penzler (editor), Thomas H. Cook (editor)
Rating: 4.5 stars out of 5
Publisher: Harper Perennial
Copyright: 2005
ISBN: 0060815515
Pages: 384
Keywords: non-fiction, crime
Reading period: 9-16 December, 2007

Female sex slaves, Ukrainian oligarchs, an obsessive silver thief, white-collar criminals facing jail time, virus writers, self-destructive surgeons, and the Madrid bombers, are just some of the stories in this collection of non-fiction writing on crime and criminals, published in various magazines in 2005.

The book is bracketed by two pieces by James Ellroy. In the foreword, he argues that "true-crime writing offers a less kineticized and more sobering set of thrills [than crime fiction]—chiefly couched in human revelation". In the concluding essay, he pays homage to Joseph Wambaugh, whose writing inspired him to become a writer himself.

The other pieces are gripping articles, ranging from the picayune—human trackers following a tiny fraction of the illegal immigrants crossing a remote stretch of the Rio Grande—to billion-dollar Ponzi schemes.

Recommended.

Title: The Naming of the Dead
Author: Ian Rankin
Rating: 4 stars out of 5
Publisher: Little, Brown and Company
Copyright: 2006
ISBN: 0316057576
Pages: 464
Keywords: crime, fiction
Reading period: 8-9 December, 2007

The G8 conference is about to open in Gleneagles, Scotland, during the first week of July 2005. Hundreds of thousands of anti-globalization activists are heading to Edinburgh to protest.

Edinburgh cop, DI John Rebus, is about the only police officer in Britain who's not on G8 duty. He's been sidelined because of his propensity for pissing off his superiors. Instead, he gets involved in two different investigations.

A Labour MP plunged to his death from the walls of Edinburgh Castle. Suicide or murder? Why does Rebus keep getting the runaround from Special Branch? A serial killer has murdered three convicted rapists: cases that were not previously tied together because the police thought the dead men got what they deserved.

Rebus and his partner, DS Siobhan Clarke, are prickly, stubborn cops, morally compromised by the tacit agreements they make with men with power, and struggling to wipe away the stains by fighting on behalf of the dead. The background of the G8 leads to an extraordinary week in Edinburgh. The disparities between the powerful and the powerless are acutely apparent.

A strong novel, but weakened by the conclusion, where the two cases are implausibly tied together.

Title: Hogfather
Author: Terry Pratchett
Rating: 4 stars out of 5
Publisher: Harper
Copyright: 1996
ISBN: 0061059056
Pages: 384
Keywords: humor, fantasy
Reading period: 2-7 December, 2007

Last week, we watched the TV adaptation of Hogfather, which got me to re-read the book. The book is a lot funnier. Pratchett's written descriptions don't translate very well to the screen.

The Hogfather is the Discworld's equivalent of Santa Claus: a large, jolly fat man who delivers presents to children on the longest night of the year. The Auditors, celestial bureaucrats who take a dim view of the messiness of human existence, decide to have the Hogfather killed. Death takes it upon himself to deliver the presents to children instead, while setting his granddaughter Susan on the trail of the assassin responsible for the chaos.

One of the better Discworld novels. Pratchett entertains us with his characteristic humor, while ruminating on the human condition, notably the nature of belief.

Recommended.

Title: The Historian
Author: Elizabeth Kostova
Rating: 4 stars out of 5
Publisher: Back Bay Books
Copyright: 2005
ISBN: 0316154547
Pages: 642
Keywords: fantasy
Reading period: 25 November-2 December, 2007

For centuries, carefully selected historians have mysteriously received a book that contains only a picture of a dragon holding a placard that says, Drakulya. Three generations of one family have followed the trail of those books: the narrator as a teenager in the 1970s, her graduate student parents in the 1950s, and her mother's father in the 1930s.

The trail has led them from the Pyrenees to the Balkans and Istanbul, from libraries to monasteries to remote mountain villages. The narrative moves back and forth across the three generations, as each retraces their predecessors' footsteps. Each of them find fragments of evidence that show that Vlad the Impaler, prince of Wallachia and scourge of the invading Ottomans, never died but lives on.

The author weaves a historical mystery against a backdrop of Cold War Eastern Europe and the late Middle Ages, and the never-ending clash between Christianity and Islam. The tension builds as each generation makes its inevitable way towards a confrontation with Dracula late in the book.

Well-written and attention-holding.

Title: Coyote Dreams
Author: C.E. Murphy
Rating: 4 stars out of 5
Publisher: Luna
Copyright: 2007
ISBN: 0373802722
Pages: 408
Keywords: fantasy
Reading period: 25 November, 2007

Third in the Walker Papers series of urban fantasies.

Joanne Walker discovered six months ago that she's a powerful shaman, and she's not happy about it. She's an officer in the Seattle Police Department and a former mechanic, and being a woo-woo shaman does not fit with her self image. She's contrary and stubborn and her determination not to accept her new state leads to big problems.

The people that she's close to are going into comas. In her blundering ignorance when she first came into her powers, she unwittingly awakened an ancient power that wants to bring the world to an end. Joanne has to start accepting her shamanism if she's ever going to save her friends.

Meanwhile, the new boyfriend who seems too good to be true is too good to be true. And her love-hate relationship with her boss, Captain Morrison, becomes even more complicated.

Entertaining.

Title: Folly
Author: Laurie R. King
Rating: 4.5 stars out of 5
Publisher: HarperCollins
Copyright: 2001
ISBN: 0007111347
Pages: 400
Keywords: fiction, suspense
Reading period: 22-24 November, 2007

Rae Newborn has struggled with depression for decades. The death a year ago of her second husband and their young daughter drove her to attempt suicide. Now she's moved to Folly, a small island in the San Juans that she inherited from Desmond Newborn, her grandfather's brother.

Desmond went off to the First World War and came back broken by shell shock. He bought Folly in the 1920s and built a house with his own hands, then disappeared after the house burned down.

All alone on Folly, Rae starts rebuilding the house and finds herself retracing the events of Desmond's life. The parallels become stronger when she finds his skeleton in a cave and reads his journal.

As we learn her story, we find that she has reason to be fearful. It's not just in her head; there really is someone out to hurt her. The construction is therapeutic: as she rebuilds the house, she begins to rebuild her life. She starts to repair the relationship with her long-estranged elder daughter and draws closer to her beloved granddaughter.

The ending was a little too neat and pat for my liking, but otherwise I greatly enjoyed this book.

Title: 1634: The Baltic War
Author: David Weber, Eric Flint
Rating: 4 stars out of 5
Publisher: Baen
Copyright: 2007
ISBN: 141652102X
Pages: 728
Keywords: alternate history
Reading period: 18 November, 2007

The latest book from the 1632 series; this one is the long awaited sequel to 1633. The premise of the series is that through some mysterious alien event, a small West Virginian town is sent back to Germany in 1631, in the middle of the Thirty Years' War, utterly changing the course of history. The Americans ally themselves with King Gustav Adolf of Sweden, forming the United States of Europe.

The authors adeptly juggle a series of plots that were set in motion in the earlier book. The town of Luebeck is besieged by the French and the Danes. A diplomatic party has to be broken out of the Tower of London. The American-built "ironside" battle ships have to float down the Elbe and sail into the Baltic. The power of the Spanish in the Netherlands has to be broken.

One of the better books in the series. The authors have fun exploring the ramifications of such a world-changing event as the effects continue to ripple through Early Modern Europe.

Title: What Came Before He Shot Her
Author: Elizabeth George
Rating: 4.5 stars out of 5
Publisher: Harper
Copyright: 2006
ISBN: 0060545631
Pages: 722
Keywords: fiction, mystery
Reading period: 11-17 November, 2007

In Elizabeth George's previous book, With No One As Witness, a senior police officer's pregnant wife is gunned down in London by a 12-year-old boy in an apparently random act. This book tells the story of how that shooting came to happen.

The three Campbell children are abandoned on their aunt's doorstep by their feckless grandmother, months before the shooting. They are mixed-race children with deep-seated damage: their alcoholic father was killed in front of them a few years ago and their mother has long been in a mental hospital. Ness, 15, is deeply alienated and truant, and quickly becomes a drug dealer's girlfriend. Toby, 7, is mildly retarded and attracts bullies. Well-meaning, eleven-year-old Joel is his brother's protector. Their Aunt Kendra is wholly unprepared, emotionally or logistically, to become a mother to these troubled children.

Joel, Ness, and Kendra all proceed towards tragedy, through a combination of bad choices, poor options, inadequate coping skills, grevious miscommunication, and events that are beyond their control.

George paints an unsettling picture of a family at the edge. Each of the principals is strongly drawn, each one's actions makes sense of a sort, each one's demons compels them to fuck up. We know that ultimately Joel will kill a woman and we watch despairingly as he makes the choices that box him in to his destiny.

Not easy reading, but compelling.

Title: Paula Spencer
Author: Roddy Doyle
Rating: 4 stars out of 5
Publisher: Viking
Copyright: 2006
ISBN: 0670038164
Pages: 288
Keywords: fiction
Reading period: 2-11 November, 2007

Roddy Doyle has visited Paula Spencer twice before. First in The Family, a BBC TV serial; then in The Woman Who Walked into Doors. Ten years on from the last book, Paula is a recovering alcoholic who only recently crawled out of the bottle. The boom years