Kate Mosse: Labyrinth

From the back of the book-
July 1209: In Carcassonne a seventeen-year-old girl is given a mysterious book by her father which he claims contains the secret of the true Grail. Although Alais cannot understand the strange words and symbols hidden within, she knows that her destiny lies in keeping the secret of the labyrinth safe...
July 2005: Alice Tanner discovers two skeletons in a forgotten cave in the French Pyrenees. Puzzled by the labyrinth symbol carve into the rock, she realises she's distubed something that was meant to remain hidden. Somehow a link to a horrific past-her past-has been revealed.
I read all 697 pages of this monster tome and the best thing I can say about this book is that it is crammed with historical detail. Occasional hints of intrigue tease the reader into believing that the story is about to take off but it never does. The modern heroine lives right on the border of too-stupid-to-live and her historical counterpart is firmly in too-good-to-be-true territory.
There is great vagueness as to how the characters from the different time periods are related to each other. It is as if the author couldn't decide whether she wanted the modern characters to all be reincarnations of the historical characters (each modern character has a historical equivilant, to the point of having very similar names) or if she just wanted the modern heroine to be a decendent of her historical namesake.
As for the labyrinth of the title: the reader never really learns the significance of it, why it must be kept hidden or the consequences of its discovery.
Not since Katherine Neville's The Eight have I read a book so pointless through to the end. A major dissappointment.-Lyn

All Clear – Connie Willis

Post-graduate Oxford historians Michael, Merope and Polly have travelled to 1940 to complete their research. They were prepared for contingencies, and were given a lot of background prior to their journeys, but being stuck wasn’t a possibility and of them had contemplated. As window after window fails to open the likelihood of them getting home becomes ever more remote, particularly as the dates of previous trips to the past approach – nobody can be in the same time twice. And Polly has a greater concern – even though it should be impossible, their presence seems to be altering events, potentially changing the outcome of the War and history itself.
Far less a sequel than the second part of an enormous story (the novels combines total almost 1,200 pages), All Clear picks up directly where Blackout left off. This is an ambitious and complex return to the universe first encountered in The Doomsday Book, and is characterised by many of the same trademarks, most notably a breathless, pervasive sense of urgency. In The Doomsday Book and To Say Nothing of the Dog, the previous novels set in this universe, I found myself swept up in the emotion – Willis has an amazing ability to recreate that feeling so often encountered in dreams of being in a tearing hurry but beset on all sides by people and events seemingly intent on delay and derailment.
This time, however, perhaps because of the length of time over which it has to be sustained, I found myself becoming impatient with it. And instead had a far stronger feeling of irritation. That said, Willis does this time include a reason for it, though this itself opens the door to some interesting questions about inevitability, free will, self-correction, randomness and sentience.
There are several interwoven narratives, and the setting jumps from year to year, so the opening chapter set in “London – 26 October 1940” is followed by “London – 7 May 1945” and is then interspersed between “Bethnal Green – June 1944”, “Kent – April 1944” and “Golders Green – June 1944” among others. Combining this darting timeline with a host of character, including the historians adopting different personas, meant that I eventually gave up on trying to keep track and decided to be swept along by the story. I don’t think that this is necessarily a bad thing, but it did mean I ended up missing some of the nuances and detail.
While I enjoyed Willis’ homage to Jerome K Jerome’s classic Three Men in a Boat in To Say Nothing of the Dog, I found the unexplained references to Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest in the 1944 scenes set in Kent irritating – as well as Earnest there’s an Algernon, a Chasuble, Gwendolyn, Moncrieff, Cess, Prism, Merriman and Lady Bracknell; though I originally enjoyed the allusion, after several encounters it was just irritating.
It may well be that this was explained in Blackout, but I read that perhaps the better part of a year ago, and though I was able to pick up enough of it for All Clear to make sense, there’s a lot of information to carry over. It would, perhaps, have been better for me to read the two parts back to back, or at least in close chronological proximity, but that didn’t happen. I appreciate that Willis wanted to include a myriad of detail about this clearly well researched era, as well as the several individual stories, and for the most part this paid off. But there were certainly times where I wanted some heavier editing.
There are several touches I very much enjoyed, primarily to do with the evacuated children – from Alf and Binnie Hodbin tearaways to a quote from a letter in 1940:

There are six evacuated children in our house. My wife and I hate them so much that we’ve decided to take away something for Christmas.

I also liked the ending, which was a little messier and organic than most fiction completions, and I look forward to the release of another novel set in this universe, which I very much enjoy. I just hope that, should Willis continue the series, she returns to the slightly more straightforward plots of the first novels. - Alex

Barbara Erskine: Daughters of Fire

From the back of the book
The Romans are landing in Britannia... Cartimandua, the young woman destined to rule the great tribe of the Brigantes, watches the invaders come ever closer. From the start her world is a maelstrom of love and conflict, revenge and retribution. Cartimandua's life becomes more turbulent and complicated as her power grows, and her political skills are threatened by her personal choices. She has formidable enemies on all sides as she faces a decision which will change the future of all around her.
In the present day, historian Viv Lloyd Rees has immersed herself in the legends surrounding the Celtic queen. Viv struggle to hide her visions of Cartimandua and her conviction that they are real. But her obsession becomes ever more persistent as she takes possession of an ancient brooch that carries a curse. Bitter rivalries and overwhelming passions are reawakened as past envelops present and Viv finds herself in the greatest danger of her life.
I have long been a fan of Barbara Erskine. I particularly like her intertwined past/present story lines. But to be honest, this isn't one of her best.
The historical aspect is brilliant: well researched and rich with detail, she brings Celtic Britain to life. The past characters are vibrant, complex and wonderfully drawn. The past story line is gripping and intense.
Sadly, the present day portions of the story are not a shadow of their past counterparts and let the whole down. The present day characters are flat and so inconsistent in behaviour as to be completely unbelievable (even for people possessed). I simply didn't care what became of any of them. The modern story line felt forced and contrived. The pacing was painfully slow and the delightfully eerie mood that Erskine usually does so well was completely missing.
This is a great historical novel ruined by an overlay of deathly dull present day patina. A hard slog even for a long time fan.-Lynn

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows - JK Rowling

In what should have been his final year at Hogwart's, Harry is instead preparing for the fight of his life - the final showdown with Voldemort. From leaving the only house he's ever know, though it was never home, to the bitter end, Harry knows his life is in danger. He also has a task from Dumbledore, a secret only Hermione and Ron are privy to, but along the way he's tempted by another, competing mission. And why has his scar started to itch and burn again, giving him glimpses of Voldemort's activities?
The seventh and concluding chapter in the enormously successful Harry Potter series, The Deadly Hallows manages to wrap up every aspect, from a final parting from the loathesome Dursley clan to answering the question of why Harry alone survived Voldemort's attempted murder. Along the way several well-known characters die, predominantly in the final battle, and the truths about other characters are revealed.
There's no question that Rowling's concluded her series, and no space for another Potter outing, and I very strongly felt as though that was her driving inspiration throughout the novel. I read the first in the series before it became a phenomenon (through chance and an interest in YA and boarding school novels rather than any prescience on my part), and though I read each instalment again before starting the latest addition, it's been a while since I've read anything in the universe. So long, in fact, that though I was sure I read The Half-Blood Prince, I don't remember Dumbledore dying. Hmm.
Anyway, the point when I started this ramble was that I can't tell if it's that my involvement at the series' beginning was due to the writing, or if the plot and the premise compensated. In The Deadly Hallows there's no question - Rowling was well over her creation. Although I persisted to the end, I didn't really care that much about any of the characters, the central plot, the secondary plots or the ultimate battle.
There were irritating slabs of exposition, pages of info dumping articles and text books, chunks of telling-not-showing, and I didn't feel any emotional resonance with the characters - when Harry's beloved owl Hedwig is killed early on it felt decidedly uninteresting, and the deaths of people were no more significant. The recurrent theme that Harry didn't know Dumbledore as a person, as adolescents transitioning to adulthood recognise their parents as individuals with a past and present separate from their child, was particularly clumsy.
Harry is oftentimes unattractively self-oriented for a hero figure - he loses sight of the bigger picture, his arrogance almost causes catastrophe (when, despite multiple warnings not to, he refers to Vodemort by name instead of allusion), and he persists in thinking that those rallying to his side - even at great personal risk - are doing so for him, rather than seeing that he's the face of revolution against Voldemort. They're on Harry's side because the alternative is the totalitarian regime of Voldemort and the Death Eaters, not because they think he'd make a better leader. Every time Harry beats himself up over this I wanted to reach into the page and smack him, which is at least an emotional response to the writing.
I was at a conference last month that spent an evening session on the depiction of death in the Potterverse, and that perspective made some of the novel more interesting, though it also made me more aware of the inconsistencies.
I also felt disappointed that some plot lines didn't resolve - the house elves, in particular. And Rowling's reliance on coincidencejarred. Mostly, though, I didn't feel connected enough to Harry, whose journey is the heart of the series. I'm glad I got to experience the early part of this publishing triumph before the hype, and I'm really interested in seeing where it is twenty years from now. I still think the basic concept is an interesting twist on a familiar theme, a series of novels that incorporate adventure, duality, change and growth. I just feel a little flat and uninvolved with the end. - Alex

Testament of Youth - Vera Brittain

In 1914 Vera Brittain was twenty and about planning to study at Oxford, but a chain of events precipitated a war the likes of which the world had never before seen, and four years later the world, and Vera's generation, had changed in ways unimagined and unimaginable less than half a decade earlier.
The first volume of an autobiographical trilogy, Testament of Youth is Brittain's lauded reflection on that period of time. A great and lengthy work, it is not only a classic account of the Great War years but of feminist literature - it not only reflects on her own experiences but follows the impact of that war on a generation.
Or at least that's what the references to Testament of Youth that lead me to seek it out say. However I just couldn't get into it at all. I'm not sure if it was the style, the length, or just that I picked the wrong time to attempt it, but I skipped over much of the laudatory introduction and still couldn't make it to chapter 2 (entitled "Provincial Young-Ladyhood").
A taste, from pp. 27-28:

It would not, I think, be possible for any present-day girl of the same age to even imagine how abysmally ignorant, how romantically idealistic and how utterly unsophisticated my more sensitive comtemporaries and I were at this time. The naïveties of the diary which I began to write consistently soon after leaving school, and kept up until more than half-way through the War, must be read in order to be believed.

Not so much interested, but I appreciate the offer. - Alex

Shantaram – Gregory David Roberts

In 1980 Australian Roberts, less than two years into a nineteen-year sentence for a series of armed robberies to fund his heroin habit, broke out of Melbourne’s most secure jail and became Australia’s most wanted man.
Using a New Zealand passport, Roberts travelled through Europe, Asia and Africa, but he spent most of the following decade in India, primarily in Bombay. From his first day he felt a connection with the city and its people, and over time he became one of them – he became fluent in Hindi and Marathi, lived in five star hotels and had a hut in one of the slums, was a street soldier for a branch of the Bombay Mafia and set up a free medical clinic, found Western tourists to work as extras in Bollywood spectaculars and almost died in prison.
Roberts identifies as a writer and he kept notes throughout his journey, capturing with extraordinary vividness the characters he met, the friends he made, and the chaotic, mellifluous, aromatic, joyous, desperately poor cacophony of the city and its people. I was captured from the paragraph:

It took me a long time and most of the world to learn what I know about love and fate and the choices we make, but the heart of it came to me in an instant, while I was chained to a wall and being tortured. I realised, somehow, through the screaming in my mind, that even in that shackled, bloody helplessness, I was still free: free to hate the men who were torturing me, or to forgive them. It doesn’t sound like much, I know. But in the flinch and bite of the chain, when it’s all you’ve got, that freedom is a universe of possibility. And the choice you make, between hating and forgiving, can become the story of your life.

The language is considered, descriptive and poetic, and philosophical themes emerge frequently throughout, but at 935 pages I began to weary of it, and of Roberts. Maybe, if I'd taken a break, I would have felt differently, but toward the end finishing the book felt like one of the Herculean labours - clean the stables, slay assorted, unslayable, creatures, capture uncapturable other creatures, finish Shantaram...
I found the lack of a clear timeframe, both in sections and over the length of the book, irritating. And the ending doesn't indicate any kind of resolution or significant event (like Roberts being discovered or captured), it just... happens. Well, there is a sequel in the works. I think I'll wait for the movie. - Alex